Putting+it+All+Together

Findings:
 * overall, students definitely showed increased pride in their work. Their enthusiasm was evident through frequent expressions of joy during the task, and especially when they first saw their work printed out. Many students were able to articulate that without Pixie, they would not have been able to complete an ad or book cover that looked so "special," "professional," "like a big kid's," and "perfect."
 * 100% of students achieved a level 3 or above for both the ad assessment and the book cover. Through their ads, the students were able to express their learning from our media literacy unit and could do so in an attractive and convincing manner. Through their book covers, students were able to design and create a book cover to introduce the stories that they created in language arts. In other media literacy and writing/reading tasks, between 5 and 20% of students did not achieve a level 3.
 * when we compared students' hand-drawn and Pixie-generated book covers, there was a noticeable improvement between the former and the latter; the improvements involved the neatness, detail, and/or clarity of the work. In some cases, students even added more to their Pixie cover than they had been willing to add with their pencil, so the work was more complete. For example, see the very pronounced differences between the two pieces of work in our first example under "Photographs of Students' Book Covers." For a few students, they demonstrated more confidence using the traditional means of pencil and paper, and their original book covers were actually more detailed and/or attractive.

Conclusion: Pixie definitely has the potential to increase students' pride in ownership and quality of work. When used for a well-developed, age-appropriate, and engaging task, it is one tool that helps to motivate students to do their best work. Particularly for those who struggle with creating high quality work with pencil and paper, Pixie offers them an opportunity to present their work in an attractive format of which they can feel proud. It is a wonderful tool which students can use to present or create work.

Next Steps:
 * we would like to do a future project that gives the students the opportunity to explore other features of Pixie to enhance their work; for example, they could do a multi-page booklet about an inquiry into one of their social studies projects, or they could use the symmetry function for explorations of their next math unit
 * for those students whose quality of work and/or pride in their work really improved with the use of Pixie, we want to brainstorm other types of technology that help these students to achieve similar positive results
 * when making unit plans for next year, we would like to consider how we can use Pixie (and other types of technology) through a more project-based approach