Blending the Virtual & the Physical

I have always prided myself on creating an active classroom.  When we study European Exploration, we build ships and race them...when we study World War I, we flip the desks over and fight from the trenches.   Since my shift into 1:1 technology, I have not always found the perfect marriage between those physical activities that 7th graders love and the freedom that ipads allow.   I've often found myself wondering if the new ipad lessons I create are really that much more engaging/better than some of my old lessons.

Recently, I feel like I hit on a balance.  My task was to teach 7th graders the competing ideologies of the Cold War: US capitalistic democracy vs. Soviet communism.  Admittedly it is always something I dread...mostly because government and economic system are not always concrete enough for a lot of my learners.  I knew I wanted to use ipads, but I also have done a really cool Berlin Wall simulation in the past.  Which do I choose?  Which would illustrate the differences better?  I decide to blend it.  I set up a QR code scavenger hunt with 12 stations.  Six stations focused on the U.S. perspective and system and six stations were dedicated to the Soviets.  I set the opposing stations on opposite sides of the classroom and hung a giant "wall" (butcher paper strikes again) dividing the two sides.  Students used their ipads to visit a variety of sources and multimedia sites.  They had different responses or prompts at each station.  Half way through they switched to the other side.  Beyond that, I also treated the students differently on each side.  Students on the American side could choose which station to visit.  Students on the Soviet side had more structure imposed on them and less choice.

In the end, the blending of both virtual resources and the physical division in the room, really illustrated the concepts I needed students to grasp.  They enjoyed the lesson and were highly engaged, but more importantly the incorporation of concrete physical differences with visual/audio/written resources allowed me to target all of my learners.

As usual I forgot to take pictures.... :(