Chapter Two of Spreadable Media looks at worth from a variety of perspectives, starting with the term "appraisal." Instead of worth, the authors encourage us to consider "processes of curation, which create value not through buying and selling commodities but through critiquing, organizing, and displaying/exhibiting artifacts" (85). From a museum perspective, for example, an appraisal can focus on "historical, cultural, or symbolic value," all topics to consider when they decide whether or not an object is worth preserving (85). Simone's work on participatory museums includes the use of engagement techniques to include the visitors' opinions in the discussion of worth. Some of her techniques include:
- voting for exhibit items to be in the "Top 40"
- providing opportunities for patrons to respond to pieces that resonate with them most
- providing choices for patrons to pursue while there and making the experience personal
For us, we may consider our content very worthwhile, but the students have to agree. We can learn, like Simone did with museums, to determine how "worthy" students find our content in several ways. Some include:
- creating an engagement meter to be sure the students are still with us. Here is a classroom example:
And online examples can include polling in collaborative sessions, quick forms, or boards such as Padlet.
- creating surveys about our content and delivery - much like the museum "Top 40" so that students can have a voice in texts or experiences they found worthwhile and in experiences they felt disengaged.
The chapter continues a discussion of appraisal with material that is "shaped by virtue of its adaptability to different conditions and its ability to be adjusted to fulfill a wide range of needs and motivations" (86). This means cultural images that can turn into memes, videos that can be remixed, and texts that can be added to through fan fiction and other methods have a sense of intrinsic worth.
Some sites are now adding remix ability. Thinglink provides an opportunity to remix with a button on the right. Here is an example:
By hitting the button, the user can now begin with this template and add, change, or delete other pieces of the original. Remixing happens frequently on YouTube as well. The chapter details the Steampunk phenomenon as an example. Not only are people in the Steampunk community remixing a past culture, they are also repurposing objects for their Steampunk identities and using other cultural tools to create communities that can exist in a certain time and space and then dissolve.
What stuck with me most in this chapter was the idea of the students determining worth in many ways. One of those ways includes something like a digital portfolio, but this portfolio must include artifacts the student chooses to include, artifacts the student believes worthy. With an introduction to the piece and an introduction to the portfolio as a whole, the audience can connect the artifact with the student.
I'm taking a break from Spreadable Media because I'm at iNACOL this week. Palm Springs is beautiful! Here is a picture I took while here:
One of the 1/2 day sessions I went to discussed the emerging blended competencies. You can find a link to those by looking at the iNACOL resources. The mindset part, which surrounds the rest of the thinking, is what I found interesting. Here is the mindest iNACOL looks for in blended teachers (which I think works well for online, too...):
- entrepreneurial spirit, creativity, imagination, and drive
Orientation toward change:
- embrace change
- embrace ambiguity
- change in response to student’s needs
The document moves to qualities, which includes:
Qualities -
Grit
- Persevere
Transparency
- open and frequently share successes, failures, challenges
Collaboration
- balance individual with team and proactively seek to learn from and with others
We ask for a lot of these qualities from the students. I'm glad iNACOL brought up some of these qualities and mindsets needed from the teacher perspective. In particular, the ability to embrace ambiguity and be flexible strikes me as important. Embracing ambiguity means not seeking to order everything too quickly, and being okay with multiple interpretations of an event and a little bit of flux. This goes against our nature - we want to organize - to look at clouds and see things we understand.
Here is a video from IDEO about embracing ambiguity:
The video brings up some key emotions about ambiguous situations - there can be fear, discomfort, and frustration. Realizing that is natural may help us remember SCARF with no just our students but with our teams.
What stands out to you about the qualities and mindsets? Let me know - I think this is an interesting conversation...
Like the Introduction, Chapter One of Spreadable Media contains many opportunities for discussion in the world of online and blended learning. The title, "Where Web 2.0 Went Wrong," shows the focus on a tension existing and intensifying between commercial media and fan culture. Fans desire to remix and appropriate media, often not for profit, but some commercial media believe this infringes on their creation and seek to shut things down. Here are places I want to explore more:
Moral Economy
The book discusses the idea of a moral economy, a term from E.P. Thompson from 1971. A moral economy illustrates a "perceived moral and social value" of transactions whether those interactions are explicitly stated or not (52). A shift in the structure of the interactions can result in "diminishing the level of trust among participating parties" (52). To me, what does this mean? We're back to SCARF. The book does not mention SCARF, but it should right here. This is all about SCARF.
Online and blended learning dramatically shifts the structure of education. The learning changes, and so do the interactions. Trust diminishes, especially when teachers do not work to build relationships with students and take the time for community building. Trust in others in the class can also diminish without those community building opportunities, since students rarely "see" the other students can be alone. Other trust diminishes, too. Trust in the integrity of the work exists between traditional models and blended / online models. Time and communication can rebuild the network of trust, but ignoring this will not make it go away.
Other aspects of the moral economy also need discussion. What is the perceived expectation of how an online class works, or how one should participate in an online / blended class? What if the structure and delivery of the class does not meet those perceived expectations? How do we discuss these things in a way to move into the authentic work? One way is to take the time to build norms together. I've collected some resources on norm buildingat this livebinder site (code: communicate2learn). Sites like Tricider can also get the discussion started. For example, I'd love feedback on this one:
Community building and dealing with SCARF absolutely takes time away from content, but I believe the benefits outweigh this.
Engagement and Branding The previous post discussed what spreads versus what sticks. Chapter One delves into this more with this idea about motivation behind spreadable content, "Users generating online content are often interested in expanding their own audience and reputation. They may measure their success by how many followers they attract on Twitter, just as television executives value the number of eyeballs their programs attract" (60). The chapter continues, "When audience members spread this content from one community to another, they do so because they have a stake in the circulation of these messages. They are embracing material meaningful to them because it has currency within their social networks and because it facilitates conversations they want to have with their friends and families" (60). This means that students will spread not only what is meaningful to them, but also what they feel helps identify them to the world and to the people they care about. Authenticity. They need to have a stake in the work. For example, my son, a sophomore, thinks about how he wants to be perceived often. He devotes a lot of time and energy putting up videos of him doing Parlour or freerunning because he is a part of that community and wants to spark conversation and receive feedback. Here's an example of one:
Engagement for him, like for all his peers, depends on providing something to him that he can make meaning from, have a stake in, and care about. The chapter argues that being engaged also "recognizes that these communities are pursuing their own interests, connected to and informed by those decisions made by others within their social networks" (60). For him, the videos are a way to "give back" and contribute to the community in some way, including tutorials he has made for difficult flips and such (they are longer so I didn't post them here). His videos reflect someone engaged in a community, someone who can "feel an obligation to 'give back' to their 'community' and/or in the hope that their actions will direct greater attention and interest to the media they love" (62). He communicates his love for the mindset of Parkour and for the community with each video he makes, each comment he posts. Every entry strengthens his ties to Parkour and the community. How can we find ways to tap into the areas of life where students already feel they have a stake in something? How can we also be attentive to the fact that they are trying to create an identity for themselves that may not include our subject? How can we design learning experiences that would allow the students to "give back" to their communities? Choice. In skill-based learning objectives, such as in ELA and other subject areas, providing choice can be easy and an instant way to engage students in creating learning objects that mean something to them - makes them want to spread and transfer what they learn beyond the boundaries of the school. That means I'm back at UDL:
Sometimes the learning objectives just don't match their passions as directly as we would like. I think one way stems from the discussion of anacademic identity. We communicate via academic emails, and then maybe we should create academic accounts. I've had students tell me that they didn't want to tweet because the classroom tweets would show on their feed to their followers, and that wasn't the image they were crafting. I get that. For those instances, then, an academic account would serve their purposes. If my son doesn't want the people who follow his channel for Parkour to see him creating a video of a catapult in Physics, an academic account would ensure that would not happen. Their identity / brand remains intact and they can participate more freely. A class account for some things would work equally well. The Notion of Reciprocity and Exchange(Value vs. Worth) The chapter ends with a discussion of commodity view versus an exchange / gifting view. This is a topic I've done a lot of research about. I've looked at two different series with a gifting mindset in two different anthologies:
In this regard, the gifting mindset works "as an analogy for the informal and socially based exchanges which characterize some aspects of the digital ethos" from Howard Rheingold's The Virtual Community (65). One complaint about online/flipped/blended experiences is the belief that the burden on teaching falls on the student. To me, this complaint hits on many areas of Chapter One. The expectations of being "taught" do not seem to be met, which diminishes trust. A non-personalized click-through experience does not engage, which means the student may make no meaningful relationships. The reciprocity cannot be there if the students perceive they are doing all the participating in the course. The facilitator has to dig in, build the relationships, provide the feedback and teach. Otherwise, there is no balance. We step in when we design for choice, provide meaningful, timely feedback, and protect students from adverse consequences. To me, the facilitator's role parallels the role of the marketer in the fan/commercial relationship described in Chapter One, where the authors say that Gould claims the marketer (here the designer/facilitator), "build relationships through listening and interacting, deepening relationships with audience members when it's contextually relevant" and intentionally trying to "pay attention to the audience's agency" (80). In Chapter One, the idea of a "gift" in digital environments "depend on altruistic motivations; they circulate through acts of generosity and reciprocity, and their exchange is governed by social norms rather than contractual relations. The circulation of gifts is socially rather than economically motivated and is not simply symbolic of the social relations between participants; it helps to constitute them" (67). Using Lewis Hyde's distinction between value, a commodity, and worth, a gift, the question then becomes one of worth. We are right back to meaningful experiences. Worth comes from a sense of personal meaning and relevance. Something worth creating should be something worth spreading and sharing, be it through an e-portfolio or a video.
For the next couple of weeks, I'm focusing my posts on reflections from the book Spreadable Media by Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green. I chose this book because of the relevance to our desire to create engaging and meaning learning experiences.
In his introduction, Jenkins defines spreadability as "the potential - both technical and cultural - for audiences to share content for their own purposes" (2). If you've created or shared a funny meme like this one I made:
then you have spread media. Sites like memegenerator make spreading media easy and fun. My question as I read this is, what should be spread? When is the right time to get maximum benefit?
To add a further wrinkle, Jenkins moves into the distinction between "stickiness" and "spreadability." Stickiness, a concept mentioned by Gladwell, refers to content that attracts attention and engagement, a term focusing on numbers of hits on a page or mentions. Spreadability differs from stickiness because spreadability focuses on making connections. One could not track all the uses of the meme above because so many generators offer this as an option. Even without generators, several users could create them on their own. Another difference lies in the fact that spreadability leads to participation in unanticipated ways. Stickiness, as a rule, provides only one kind of experience. For example, when I shared this link on Twitter taking people to a quiz identifying their medieval alter ego (I was a princess, which made me laugh out loud), I showed the quiz to be sticky. I did forwad the quiz, and many others can take the quiz and share, but the only experience we can have is taking the quiz. I can't change the quiz or remix the quiz immediately into a new quiz (even if I get a link the tool).
Here's more - watch to see what King Arthur, Kony 2012, and other texts have in common:
According to Jenkins, both should exist. In a "world where citizens count on each other to pass along compelling bits of news, information, and entertainment, often many times over the course of a given day," the tendency to forward what sticks and remake and circulate what spreads seems almost organic (12). This means, in the world of education, I need to think about what should stick with them and what I want them to spread. I also want to engage students in the metacognitive practice of thinking about sharing in either form. Jenkins writes, "people make active decisions when spreading media, whether simply passing content to their social network, making a word-of-mouth recommendation, or posting a mash-up video to YouTube."
So, what needs to stick? To me, the list would include:
Learning targets - what do I want my students to leave my course knowing, understanding, doing?
Improved communication - I want my students to be able to share their knowledge and passions in an articulate and profound way
Significance - I want my students to understand the "so what" of my course
What needs to spread? To me that list would include:
Significance - I know it's in the list above as well. Things overlap, and that's okay.
Transfer - I want the students to know how to spread the learning targets of my course to their own lives, other courses, the world, etc.
Reflection - Metacognitive thinking on their part about what they share and why
How can I start? Here are some ideas:
Discover the extent your group feels comfortable participating within culture. In my online learning course for teachers, I begin the participatory learning course with a survey to do that. Yours would fit your situation. Here is my survey:
Discover the comfort level of your group with spreadable tools. In your survey, you could add a few questions about spreadable tools such as meme generators, social media proficiency, etc.
Design with participatory experiences in mind. As the book discussion continues, I'm looking forward to more ideas about this.
What do you think? What sticks? What spreads? Do students sometimes leave with topics sticking that you did not intend to stick? Why? Comment below - I'm looking forward to the conversation.
Yesterday the weather was really bad, and it happened pretty quickly. My father offered to pick up my daughter because he was closer to her, and I remain grateful that he can be that flexible. When I texted my daughter, I thought I was pretty clear,"Stay put. Grandpa will be there to pick you up in 15 minutes." Somehow, things got lost in translation. Many text messages and a phone call later, she understood the simple instruction. Why was it so hard? I felt like this:
The thing is, my daughter normally not like this. She's usually fine with simple messages, and she's pretty reliable. So, why as she struggling?
One problem may have been that she was stressed. I texted her at the end of the day, the weather was bad, teachers were not letting students leave, and chaos surrounded her. When that happens, even simple directions seem hard. Here's why:
I made assumptions about her day, those assumptions were wrong, and the result was mutual frustration. When similar things occur in teaching, what other assumptions am I making? Looking at this further, here are some overall assumptions about our students that can cause frustration and impede progress. Don't get me wrong - I want my students to struggle, but I want them to struggle with ideas and questions and problems, not navigating the task.
1. Students Today Do Not Want to Read - In many situations, I hear that students do not like to read. I think the issues is more that some students do not want to read what we want them to read. Penny Kittle's work shows that given the opportunity, students can and will read extensively. A recent Pew study confirms that students read quite a bit, more than some adults. With this in mind, we need to find a way to bring that reading back to us. When can we provide them with opportunities to choose what to read? How can we use their own reading to work on the skills of a reader? What can I think about when choosing content that will be engaging for the reader and still convey what I need?
2. Students Do Not Need to be Taught Tools - Ever since the emergence of the term "Digital Native," the assumption has been that students already know all the aspects of technology. We could assign a product to be made on a specific tool, and focus on the product, not the tool. In reality, our students may or may not know the tools at hand. New terms, including "digital refugee" and "digital explorer," better define relationships to technology. Taking time to understand the comfort level and experience base regarding technology, as discussed in this article, helps us ease that frustration level on both ends. Providing choice in terms of representation of knowledge and interaction with content, like within the UDL guidelines, also helps students work with familiar tools and spend their time with content.
3. Students Do Not Socialize Enough - Students socialize differently, but they continue to socialize. Creating the equivalent of the water-cooler conversation, for example, does not resonate with them because, as stated in the Beloit list, the water cooler isn't a gathering place anymore. Each year when Beloit publishes their list, the insight into the mindset of that year fascinates me and reminds me that we have very different worldviews in some ways. Use of social media changes how, when, and why students want to connect and discuss. This site collects work we gathered for a couple of presentations that show not only how teens socialize but how some experiences leverage this to engage students in learning.
4. Students are Too Egocentric - I think it can be easy to see the students on a device as a retreat, even a retreat into themselves, but many times the students are reaching out. A recent millennial survey shows these students want to reach out more, feel as if they are doing good, and make a difference. The study continues that students seek personal fulfillment. The Decreasing World Suck foundation, and the study with the same name, shows similar results. Asking them questions and using that input to reshape our design will help with engagement. This research from the Schlechty Center contains questions for students and other helpful tools.
The next time, before I get frustrated, I'm going to try to figure out what assumption I have wrong about the situation. Sure, I can keep repeating myself, just as I did with Catharine, but that gets us all nowhere.
Too often, I finish a task, put away my materials from it, and start thinking immediately about the new task before me. Last night, I finished another chapter in my dissertation writing, and I went right into an outline for the next one. I didn't even mention it at home or at work. I just saw it as a part of an overwhelming whole and moved on.
In talking to a colleague today, I realize I shouldn't have done that. I should have told my family (they were all in the room). I should have told my friends at work. Heck, I should have tweeted it or put it on Facebook. Why? Because celebrating the steps, the small successes is important - and often overlooked.
Do we do this in our courses? Probably somewhat. There are some busy times of the year when we all are just trying to get by. I think, though, that celebrating those successes would actually make us feel better when we are doing what seems overwhelming. Take a look at this video where complete strangers shared their successes:
In our district, we try to celebrate Strategic Design successes on our Strategic Design in Action website, which is regularly updated. On this site, we celebrate amazing learning experiences, provide a means for any stakeholder to nominate a bright spot in the district, and run a twitter feed showing how our goals and beliefs look in real life.
What about in our courses? How can we celebrate the successes? How public should that be?
I'm not sure about all the answers to this, but here are some thoughts: Badges - my Creative Writing course runs on badges. Some indicate mastery of a module, but others are spontaneous. They include being a good communicator, being insightful, and other qualities I want to highlight. Those badges show up on their profile for all to see. Twitter - we can celebrate successes more publicly on Twitter. If the person we are celebrating is also on Twitter, tagging that person can encourage others to chime in and celebrate as well. Padlet / Lino / Whiteboard - we could have a space embedded for people to paste successes on the wall. This way the students could have some say in what gets celebrated. We may find out more about their lives, and this will certainly build the relatedness needed. Synchronous Sessions - early time in synchronous sessions could be used to encourage people to share successes of their own or of others in the room. This will build community, which is also so important. Showing gratitude - with successes comes the idea of sharing gratitude for someone who did something that really meant something to you. That's a celebratory-worthy act as well. Even paying a gratitude visit can be worth discussing and celebrating. Specific, Positive Feedback - in our opportunities to provide feedback, I think we can celebrate what the student does well. I think this can be more celebration-worthy when the student shows significant growth in a certain area. For this to be a celebration, I think the more specific the better.
As we move from one module to the next, from one unit of study to another, from one project to another, what can we stop and celebrate along the way?
Many of us have taken personality quizzes on Facebook or other sites. Buzzfeed, in particular, holds many popular ones. In this clip, Ellen takes a quiz on which queen of comedy she would be:
Ellen asks an interesting question in the clip. Basically, she wants to know why finding out what kind of pizza slice we might be helps us in the world. Likely, knowing that I'm a particular type of pizza won't spring to mind when I'm facing a difficult problem. Knowing that won't help me make an important decision, or explain a particular reaction (other than when it comes from pizza). Pizza slice aside, how can finding our role in a popular television series, film, book series, or play benefit us at all?
In Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins discusses the need for role play. In discussing the Sims, a favorite of my daughter's, he wrote, "nothing is ever just a game. Games have consequences. Games also give us an opportunity to break out of the roles and actions that we might be forced into in real life" (231). I don't want to go down the trail of games in general, mainly because I already have before. In this case, I want to specifically look at the benefits of role play.
A recent Mind Shift article discussed the use of role play in a college course. And, of course, the article mentions a book to add to my wish list. In the article, the students reflect on a long-term use of role play to cover content. Students brought up engaging aspects of this kind of learning experience that included engaging the competitive spirit in some, engaging curiosity to learn how to play the appointed role in others, and more lively discussion.
Structuring a course-wide role play can be difficult to design, and may not be practical for some high school courses. In some high schools, student populations change, which makes a sustained role play hard for students with schedule changes and new students. Here are some smaller possibilities:
scenarios or simulations - these can be on a small scale as a beginning of class activity or a review towards the end. Here is one I wrote to review SCARF.This is more indirect role play, but people can read out the parts (that's what we did).
short skits to explore an idea - when done using a protocol (here is the protocol we used for the observers during SCARF role play where teams could tag in and tag out when it was their turn).
creating personality quizzes to help students with choices - one of our VLA teachers created a great personality quiz to help students see which book may be more to their liking, but this possibility can go beyond the book into types of writing, projects, etc.
creating or using personality quizzes to begin discussions of texts or other content - if we are more like Elsa in Frozen, for example, what does that say about her? about us? do we even agree?
finding online simulation games where students can role play in a content-oriented situation, explore possibilities, discover consequences, and reflect
I'd love to hear how other people use this strategy for engagement!
I was intrigued by some of the coverage over Scotland's upcoming vote. Many journalists covered the economic and political ramifications of a free Scotland, but PRI's The World used a different angle: the ramifications of the flag. You can read the story at this link to PRI.
I had not thought of the ramifications to the flag, or of the process needed to change a flag. The complications involved in discussing how a nation's identity and makeup change over time can provoke a lot of reflection.
Just the presence of a flag can produce an effect called priming (talked about in this article). We've already done that in our classrooms. We spent much of the first weeks crafting welcoming documents, breaking the ice, and trying to show students our expectations and what matters most to us.
Just like the presence of the flag, we have to keep priming the students. We need to keep reminders present in our online, blended, and traditional classes. We do this through establishing and reinforcing the community building we started those first weeks. We can look at what we post on our walls / site, what sayings we repeat, and what we demonstrate we value based on emphasis and assessment.
Giving the students a chance to build the norms and expectations of the class helps them create a sense of ownership and belonging as well. Strategic Design includes this kind of co-creation, and students enjoy these opportunities. For example, when Kid President asked for input on how to make things awesome after his video, he got a ton of responses that became part of the conversation:
I like ending on a high note with Kid President, because he reminds us that what we say and how we act sends a message about us, our course, and what we value. I think you all are awesome! I've enjoyed getting to see the great things you are doing and look forward to more conversations.
As the school year comes to a close, I often begin to start reflecting as I put away some of the work of the year. It's just second nature for me to start thinking about how I would redo an activity or make a new connection.
This link contains a taxonomy of reflection from Peter Pappas. He also has entries for the reflective student and the reflective administrator.
I also value input from participants. Whether it is from an online survey or a Post-it note exit ticket, I can reflect on their perceptions and find ways to revise that will bring more engagement and meaning. Grant Wiggins recently surveyed students about their coursework. He has done a series of blog posts about the student responses.
This link takes you to the open-ended answers to the question, "I learn best when the teacher..."
Because some similarities in the comments immediately appear, I wanted to put their remarks in a Tagxedo to see what words were repeated. Here is the result:
Some of the student input matches our student surveys. Students want hands-on activities. They want things to be interesting, interactive, meaningful, and relevant to their lives. They want to participate in the learning process in a more active way.
Because we'll be presenting at ISTE in June, we've made a site for our resources about learning in a participatory culture. You can access it here.
This summer my goal is to find more ways to respect those voices by providing more participatory experiences in the courses I help design. It can mean more work up-front, but I'm eager to see how it pays off with the students once they are in the course.
By far, my post about Burke's Pentad receives the most views. I even receive mail about it on occasion. Because of that, I'm linking these videos. I created them for an online course that will apply the Pentad regularly:
Intro to the Pentad: Based on the comic strips at this site.
Using the Pentad with Fiction: Based on a short story at this site.
Using the Pentad with Poetry: Based on a Silverstein poem at this site.
Using the Pentad with Informative Video: Based on this video:
It's Friday, and because the post is about music, here is my song for the beginning of the weekend:
Music has always played a large part in my life. My mother works as a Director of Music and has played the organ in many amazing places. I remember as a child being up where she practiced, sometimes turning the pages. Growing up, I learned to play the piano, the oboe, and the guitar. I'm very glad that my children enjoy playing music and listening to it as well.
Over the last few years, my mother has taught Music Appreciation at the college in her town. She also teaches a great class on occasion for teachers: using music in the regular education classroom (I know I'm getting that title wrong, so I'm not capitalizing it). During one visit, she asked me to speak to the soon-to-be teachers about how I weave music into the classroom, so I'm sharing some of that today:
Playlists - For years I've kept playlists for different units of teaching. In it, I kept things such as:
- thematic connections - popular music for older texts to breach the distance of time and help students connect. For example, when talking about Chaucer and courtly love, students often thought the rules about jealousy and instant love were ridiculous. For them, extreme jealousy = stalking and physical symptoms of love seem silly. But when I play something like this:
Or this:
They begin to rethink how we talk about love culturally. Asking them to go find their own examples and compare them to depictions of love in Chaucer or in the rules of courtly love help as well.
- cultural connections - In Beowulf, for example, there is mention of the woman who "sang sorrowful" during his funeral. Letting them hear a version of a keening song, for example, helps them understand the context of the singing in a deeper way:
- changes in point of view - one popular form of expression in participatory culture is to write songs and stories from a different point of view than that chosen by the author. For example, in the Harry Potter world, here is a song from the Ministry of Magic from the point of view of Voldemort and Lily:
On a more academic note, collecting songs with different points of view about war, such as "The Green Fields of France":
to contrast with a song such as "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition":
with some modern songs today about the effects and beliefs about war can add a new, emotional layer to facts that might seem dated and too far away to be relevant.
- content review - For me, there is nothing better than historyteachers when I wanted content review. I could show them this about the plague to just give them the little bit of information I needed before reading "The Pardoner's Tale" and ask them to be ready to share what they think the most important thing to remember about the plague might be to spark discussion:
Or this after Beowulf to ask the students to evaluate the song and determine if the song highlighted what, to them, were the important messages of the text:
- content enrichment - When moving into Romanticism, students struggle a lot with long, abstract texts like Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Even though Coleridge provides his own version of Cliff's Notes to sustain the reader, students struggle with the overall concept. What I wanted them to understand with this poem, and with Walton's experience in Frankenstein, was the relationship between the sailor and the sea. I wanted them to understand the mystery, the danger, the pull the sailors feel. For that, I used a variety of sailor songs including "The Sailor's Prayer" (this isn't my favorite version but I like it without instruments - try the one by Pandora Celtica - it wouldn't load):
or "The Mingulay Boat Song"- this is by a local group that unfortunately no longer performs:
or the song "White Squall":
- creating a soundtrack for in-class reading - For sharing important moments, I tried to find appropriate soundtrack music, which helped the students remember but also emotionally connect. A lot of people today are creating battle mixes while playing video games, so this is a great connection for them. So, for example, with Beowulf's fight with Grendel, I would play battle music from a mix such as:
After going through my playlist with them for the unit (I'd never hit all the songs in the playlist), I'd show them the list and ask them to make their own. I received great examples that I added to mine over time. The Ministry of Magic addition, for example, was from a student.
Figurative Language - Music can reinforce ideas about figurative language in a variety of ways. Here are some of the ways I've included music:
- tone - It's important to note that music alone can change the tone of a piece. Music can help students develop a vocabulary of tone words, because some can describe how music feels more easily than words. In looking at how tone can change dramatically, I like to choose two very different versions of the same song, such as Europe's "Final Countdown":
With Laibach's version of "Final Countdown":
I choose Laibach intentionally because they have done covers of this as well as songs by Queen such as "One Vision" for a deliberate reason that has a lot to do with music and tone. Their story is fascinating and can be found here, where an article calls them the "unlikely godfathers of Occupy and Anonymous" and here.
Another fun way to explore tone is with the very popular YouTube tendency to remake trailers into a whole new genre. For example, here is a realistic, original trailer for Cinderella:
and here is a remix with scenes from the same movie but altered music and selection of images:
Students can generate tone words and describe how the music changes the tone. Later, students can create their own sets of trailers or other pieces for tone exploration. This ability to play and remix cultural pieces is another component of participatory culture that students identify with and enjoy doing.
- allusion - Allusions are our conversational shortcuts. We use allusion to bring in cultural knowledge without having to explain certain elements that would distract from the main point. While expanding their allusion vocabulary so that students can better participate in those conversations, I often used music to support the notion that these kinds of terms are everywhere. By far, students enjoyed this one the most and often danced in their seats:
But there is also Enter the Haggis's "Icarus" which goes well with Breugel's painting and Auden's poem - really showing how an allusion can appear in many forms and how texts can carry on a dialogue over time. There is a long instrumental beginning, so it's a good time to show other art depicting the Icarus story:
After a few examples from me, the students are off and running. They begin to see and hear the allusions everywhere, which is what I want. We collect examples in a forum, musical or otherwise, and I ask them to bring in music that depicts an allusion, like thirty pieces of silver, to see if other classmates can determine the meaning underneath.
Research abounds discussing the benefits of music in classroom learning. Vh1 collected much of it for their "Save the Music" campaign, and that can be found here. While it focuses on formal music education, some of the quotes also discuss music and learning in general. Here is an article that discusses wider uses of music in forms such as the long-popular Schoolhouse Rock pieces (my daughter was humming the one for the Constitution as she took her test just last week) to modern rapping with math. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics offers a grant for using music to teach math in early grades. The American Historical Association provides this resource for using music in a social studies setting and illustrates how to incorporate music in a variety of ways, including like the example of different points of view I listed above. Finally, this Edsource article shows how the California State Standards called for implementation of music.
Even with online learning, our team talked about music implementation just a week ago, and we all shared a variety of strategies. Sharing music with the students helps forge a relationship and can show them new sides of our personality. While teaching content, to start a collaborative session, or as a creative opportunity, finding ways to weave music into a course brings a new layer to the content itself.
Recently, Seth Godin wrote a great post called "Deconstructing Generosity," and in that post he discusses the qualities that make up a generous act (as well as qualities that do not). It's a very thought - provoking post.
To me, when participants in a course share a product that reflects an inner truth or perspective about themselves, I consider it a generous act. Why? Often, students do not have to dig that deeply and be that personal in their work. Compliant students do not see a need to share something so authentic and personal because most tasks do not require that degree of personal sharing and openness, even if the design of the assignment calls for a personal connection. Here is a perspective on this from the Schlechty Center:
In looking at his characteristics for gratitude for students, here are some ideas that may make some more generous with the tools they have: their time, their individuality, and their vulnerabilities.
Sacrifice - I think the element of sacrifice lies behind the "Is this for a grade" question that many students ask about every task. They have finite time, interest, and patience for a task that they see has no payoff. This does not mean everything should be graded - far from it. To me, a couple of things are at play:
- be able to answer to yourself as well as to students, parents and others why you are asking students to do what they do. Here some of the work of Rick Wormeli helps. Here is one of his videos (but many are good) on mastery where he encourages looking specifically at verb usage:
In addition, here is a presentation that Wormeli shared via his Twitter account discussing homework and 21st century skills. To me, the payoff does not need to be a grade. It should point to a larger understanding that we have shown the students they need to know.
- be sure to spend the time early to get to know what matters most to the students - This way, you can connect their passions and goals to the skills and content in your course, making it more personal, meaningful and relevant. Here is Jeff Wilhelm on relevance:
Kindness - Kindness comes from being flexible when a situation calls for it, using your own discretion to accommodate for students who need it, and responding to their work in ways that help improve the work and their confidence in their work. One of the biggest acts of kindness can be allowing students to redo something. This shows the students we care about their learning and mastery of the work at hand, not about marching through a rigid course whether they remain with us or not. Again, here is Wormeli:
and Part Two:
Kindness also comes in the form of designing participatory experiences that engage our students. This means adding that touch of what Godin calls "magic" to the experience - that extra "beauty and style" to an experience that takes the experience to a deeper and more personal level. This shows the students we care about the experience - it is not a perfunctory lesson we all must sludge through before the end of the year. How can we add the magic? Through elements such as: creative responses, collaborative challenges, engaging opportunities to share and discuss the learning without fear of a grade. Here is an example of a student showing an understanding of First World Problems in music via video:
Recently my son was chosen by his Spanish teacher to go to an elementary school and share a Spanish poem and talk to the students in Spanish. Kindness and generosity permeated the experience. The high school students sacrificed their extra time to learn the needed poetry and other pieces as well as the time they will have to make up work because they were gone. The elementary kids sacrificed time from their busy schedules. Both groups made a real connection from the experience, and it was nothing that needed to be quantified. Here is a picture the AP sent me:
My son is a part-time gymnastic coach. He loves working with children. Being selected meant the world to him, and he will go the extra mile for his Spanish teacher because of this opportunity.
Vulnerability - Godin sees part of vulnerability as "showing up and caring and connecting, even if this time, it might not resonate." This is so perfect for learning. Being fully present is hard for all of us. If we can model that kind of attitude, the students will respond. This also means being acknowledging when a student participates in an area that normally causes him to be reluctant and making sure that student understands that we notice and appreciate that choice. If students can do this, they can grow in the learning, and the learning will be more meaningful. This means frequent and timely communication as well as making attempts to build relationships with all students. Otherwise, the learning cannot resonate, because they would not give it a chance. Maybe it is because the person is an introvert:
Or maybe it is because the student is afraid of losing status or respect because this area is a struggle. For more about working with those kinds of fears, see my post about SCARF. On Wilhelm's site, there are some presentations and other resources that show his research on motivation (primarily with boys) and its connection to learning.
By doing some of these things, we are beginning generous with our students, and many of our students will repay the favor.
