Raising the Dead (Languages, that is...)

I am a huge fan of Chaucer's blog posts and tweets. When he made this post earlier in the month celebrating "Whan that Aprille Day," I knew I wanted to find a way to participate. No longer in the classroom, I struggled with a way to encourage the revival of dead languages. My Master's work focused on Anglo-Saxon riddles, and I wrote an article for publication focusing on a tale in Canterbury Tales, so those languages in particular hold much interest for me, and I am focusing on these two languages. Kenneth Burke once wrote in Counterstatement that remoteness from what is being studied can impair the ability for the audience to connect with the text. This means that students enter already predisposed to find no relevance in older languages or their stories. We have to work that much harder to not only find the relevance, but also to hopefully inspire a love for these languages.

With that in mind, I wanted to post this week about ways to participate in "Whan that Aprille Day" within on online / blended setting for Middle / High school:

- Let students listen to the languages - Because many students read translations, they do not know what the languages sound like. Letting them hear the language, preferably more than once by someone who knows the language well enough to use inflections and emotions when reading the words, helps the students gain a new awareness of the text. Here are some options:

One example is Bagby's Beowulf. Here is an excerpt from the opening lines:

In the past, when I've shown this excerpt, my students (and my own children) were transfixed. My son watched the whole DVD. This clip gives them a sense of how this text was a story told to an audience, and it reminds them that the storytelling piece of this helped determine structure.

Michael Drout's Anglo Saxon Aloud site contains recordings of Drout reading Anglo-Saxon texts and includes poetry, prose, saints' lives, and more.

For Middle English, examples include this video from historyteachers introducing Canterbury Tales with a recitation of the prologue:

Another approach with a direct recitation of Chaucer can be seen at this site, which was an early entry celebrating "Whan that Aprille Day." Finally, there is the rap:

After viewing some recordings, the students can make their own and include an excerpt from the original language. Like the last two videos, the students can strive to bring the context for the recitation into a more contemporary setting that shows the relevance. For Middle English, the students can consult the pronunciation guide here.

- Exploring manuscripts - This site allows viewers to explore manuscripts. I think letting students see how the original works look on the page, when possible, provides another opportunity for the students to connect with the text, author, and audience. This site offers ideas for teaching with manuscripts. Finally, this site uses Thinglink to introduce the Anglo-Saxons, but I think that Thinglink would be a great place for students to analyze a manuscript or images of a manuscript. I could see an image from Chaucer's prologue with an analysis of the pilgrim and the devices Chaucer uses in his description.

- Progression of translations - Some frozen texts can be examined as the language changes over time. By looking at the progression of language, students can visually watch the words change and morph into modern wording. This site from Rice shows the progression of the Lord's Prayer from Anglo-Saxon to modern English. When there is no ready-made progression, even a dual language text can remind students of the original language while reading a translation. Here is one for Chaucer's Prologue and here is one for Beowulf.

- A study in translation - The act of translation requires the translator to make choices. Students often do not notice the choices involved in the translation of a text because they only see one translation. Starting with a read of the original text (preferably something short like some of the Exeter Riddles), students would then examine 2-3 translations of the riddle. Together, they would then discuss how choices made by the translator produced different meanings or different perceptions of the riddle. Because riddles require thoughtful translation in order to solve the riddle, they prove a good resource. Here is a riddle read aloud:

Here is one translation of Riddle 5. Here is another translation of Riddle 5 without the answer. Here is a third one. I'm not as big a fan of this one because it places the answer at the top, which is something the Exeter book does not do.

For Chaucer, here is a recitation of the description of the Pardoner from Chaucer's Prologue to Canterbury Tales:

The description contains a modern translation, but one can be found here and here as well. Discussing the nuances involved in translation is a great way to encourage language and build commentary about specific language choices. To extend the presentation of The Pardoner further, students can look at his relic trade. What would be a modern example? Do we still have relics? Do some still try to sell fake relics? A clip from Pawn Stars showing how we value items held or written by important people and the forgery surrounding those items can help put this in perspective.


I can't wait to see Twitter tomorrow and find out how others are celebrating #whanthataprilleday.

Moving ideas forward

This week I was struck by this blog post from Ewan McIntosh. He pulls information from a new book about creativity coming out next month from Pixar and then connects this to education. It's very worth the read!

In the post he cites the work of DylanWilliams and unpacking formative assessment:

McIntosh brings out of the article the need for rules and norms. I think sometimes we skip that part, but group-created norms brings a sense of ownership in the decision making process of the discussion that would not be there otherwise. I've accumulated some resources on this at this Livebinder site (code: communicate2learn).  Here is a Tricider I've made for the Creative Writing class so that the class can decide together how they will set up peer review.

McIntosh also highlights the role of the producer during a feedback session, explaining that the Producer captures the feedback for the Director and then helps make it specific and useful. This focus on feedback fits with the third point Williams makes that feedback should move learning forward.

I think some protocols can help with this. This site lists many, many protocols based on the goal of the discussion, and they can work with groups or students or teachers. In an online setting, this article lists protocols that require a sense of reflection and diving into an idea before contributing and then being silent. While many are not meant just for feedback. In many ways, they are providing feedback during the idea-generating, meaning-making stage.

Additionally, this article from ASCD discusses the timing of feedback: when it is most productive, how to deliver feedback for the best results, and what kind of content within feedback drives the student towards moving the ideas forward. I like her "Tale of Two Feedback Choices" in the end.

McIntosh ends with the student input. I love many comments the students made, especially their desire to be more involved, share ideas, and take risks. How can we open up our designing of learning experiences to those student voices?

Invitations

In 1994, the poet Oriah Mountain Dreamer went to a party. She was bored there and didn't particularly enjoy the small talk. The casual conversation didn't show her anything about the people truly standing before her. When she returned home, she wrote the poem "The Invitation." There is a pretty copy of it here. There is a more readable copy of it here. I looked for a video of her reciting it, but I couldn't find one. The only videos had music that made me sleepy...

I wanted to share it today because with online learning, we've accepted that invitation. It brings with it all of the joys, frustrations, and moments of happiness that she talks about. It also brings with it a chance to move beyond the superficial and try to connect with all of our students in ways that can help them be engaged in meaningful work.

Thanks for accepting that invitation!

Relevance as a point of Connection

One of my favorite shows made the news this week: Black Adder is at the center of a hot debate about perceptions of WWI. Here is one of the starts, Sir Tony Robinson, responding to the criticism:

This got me thinking about one of my favorite moments in Hamlet:

In this scene, Hamlet concocts his plan to verify the words of the ghost: the play within the play. Hamlet realizes that people watching a play cannot sit unaffected while depictions of crimes similar to their own appear before them. To Hamlet, if his uncle Claudius killed his father, he cannot watch one brother kill another in the same way without reacting in some way.

Shakespeare had personal knowledge of this belief in the power of theater. Supporters of Essex arranged for a production of Richard II in 1601 during the rebellion with the hope that it would energize others. This article shows even Elizabeth I knew the intent of showing this particular play at this particular time.

Shakespeare's work was the popular culture of his day. What about ours?

I'm a big believer that some pieces of pop culture resonate with their time more than others because they contain resonances of philosophies and questions that are pertinent to the audience today. Many of my publications attempt to begin a discussion about some of those questions and ideas.

Many other scholars contribute to these publications and discussions as well:

- Henry Jenkins recently completed a three part blog interview about political meme as rhetorical tool and opportunity to connect with the students' desire to create, share, and comment on them

- William Irwin, one of the editors of the Blackwell series, wrote this article for Psychology Today about the series in general but also about the need to explore what is relevant.

- Because our culture is participatory, students are not the only ones wanting to pull in what they love and make it a part of their daily life. Here is a fascinating marketing campaign tapping in on just that:

- Organizations such as the 501st Legion tap into the fans love of a story and leverage it for charity and collaborative experiences.

- UC Irvine created an online course called Society, Science, and Survival: Lessons from AMC's The Walking Dead and explores topics such as Maslow's hierarchy of needs, social identity, and spread of disease.

So, what are our students talking about today? How can we use popular, viral videos such as this:

As a hook or journal to talk about point of view?

Or, how can we thread an interest, like the course above with zombies, throughout a longer period of time to sustain interest and show our students we value what they are interested in and care about?

True participation

Earlier this week, I read the MindShift article "Are we taking our students' work seriously enough?" and the first paragraph really struck me, especially the phrase, "participatory projects had a distinct air of tokenism." Basically, the paragraph continues, we provide students with moments to participate, but those opportunities do not transform the class or the work on the class in meaningful ways.

The article moves to Hart's Ladder of Participation, which can be seen at this site. Basically, the higher

Hart's Ladder of Participation Image from:
http://www.whydev.org/moving-beyond-tokenism-to-make-youth-participation-a-reality/ 

up the ladder, the more participatory the students. We have to move almost half-way up to ladder to reach any sense of true participation at all.

Admittedly, Hart's work typically does not apply to schools. The MindShift article does discuss how some schools thinking on higher rungs of the ladder produced pretty amazing results.

Within the educational setting, I think we have many opportunities to take the students seriously, and in online learning I think we have the same potential. Here are some of the things I'm thinking about in this vein, but I am nowhere near finished:

Class Norm Creation
I know that class time is precious, but taking the time to co-create the norms of the classroom environment shows students that you take them seriously. This can happen at any age:

Norm creation is not the same as rule creation, and here is an example of some norms I hope to co-create with students in an upcoming Creative Writing class for the process of Peer Review.

Valuing Different Approaches to Knowledge Construction
I never want my students to feel that their participation does not matter to the working of the course or the work of the course. Using the UDL guidelines help with my lesson design, mainly because the guidelines remind me about the importance of honoring multiple pathways to representation, expression, and engagement. Specifically, I want to incorporate more:

Student Goal-Setting -

Within the context of the course, I want to work with students one-on-one to help them create their goals and then support them as they achieve them. I don't think they necessarily have to follow the SMART format, but I like what SMART stands for. Either way, I want them to be an integral part of the process.

Meaningful Choice - 
I want to provide my students with opportunities to make choices that matter in the course. Asking them to choose between a Power Point and a Prezi does not matter as much as choosing how they learn and how they provide evidence of learning. I've learned that the more I open up the opportunities, the more invested the students become in the learning experience. I get a lot less of this:

Instead, I get more pieces like this from the Please Understand Me Project I did with tenth graders. Granted, several entries are not stellar, but many of them provided the students with choice, voice, and a meaningful topic.

Providing an authentic audience - 

The affirmation design quality in Schlechty's thinking is about an authentic audience. Instead of creating an artificial audience or only making the audience the class or the teacher. The students need to hear affirmation from us, but they also need to hear it from the people who matter to them. We need to help that happen as often as possible. Schlechty talks about affirmation briefly here.

Wrapped in a SCARF

Image of a Scarf

When I hear scarf, I immediately go to pop culture, the house scarves in Harry Potter, mainly because I saw so many students wearing them, and Tom Baker's Dr. Who. In the case of Harry Potter, the scarves were part of their house identity on campus. It aligned them with other housemates immediately.

David Rock created the SCARF model for collaboration in 2008, and it is a fundamental part of coaching. In some ways, this model can work as the Harry Potter model: using SCARF, you can understand the causes of a barrier to collaboration, reduce the problem, and then align so that the group is harmonious. You can read the article here that shows the brain-based thinking behind the science and an in-depth description of each piece of the scarf.

You can also watch him talk about it here:

For this post, I wanted to look at the elements of SCARF and talk about how we can identify them quickly and reduce the barriers in the way of learning. I also want to key into which of Schlechty's Design Qualities address the components and some of the tools possible that can help.

S - Status
Description: According to Rock, status is about "relative importance, 'pecking order.' and seniority"
Threat to status: A threat to status means a reduction in potential or importance to the person, and Rock writes that it can "generate a strong threat response." Once this has happened, the person may shut down. This can happen through a well-meaning suggestion or
Ways to reduce threat: Let people give feedback on themselves (self reflection)
                                    Provide some opportunities for formative assessment that is not tied to a grade and that the student can use autonomously (but that you can have access to)
                                    Make available all summative assessment tools (rubrics, etc.) so that the student knows all the time how s/he is being assessed and what mastery  needs to be shown
                                    Communicate often - show students where they are, what they have learned, and that we have noticed their growth
Design Qualities: Protection from Adverse Consequences, Affiliation, and Clear and Compelling Standards
Tools: Google Drive can provide a way for students to collaborate, reflect, and revise easily. Spaces such as Padlet can create a single space for students to share ideas in a non-threatening, non-graded way. Tools like Padlet or Lino can be a safe place for students to play with ideas before committing to a larger focus or product. Announcements in the course that can show visually a public acknowledgement of an accomplishment will go a long way as well.

C - Certainty
Description: According to Rock, certainty structuring work so that the brain  can "know the pattern occurring moment-to-moment." This allows the brain to predict, and this lets the brain focus on other things.
Threats to certainty: Unclear expectations, unexpected obstacles in the completion of a task, implementation of big changes without clear guidance
Ways to reduce threat: Break large ideas or products into smaller, attainable steps
                                    Celebrate early successes
                                    Recognize and reward growth
                                    Help guide large ideas and visions into a plan with action steps
Design Qualities: Clear and Compelling Standards, Organization, Choice, Authenticity
Tools: Introducing students to organizational options at the beginning of the course will help them start organized and (hopefully) stay that way. Encourage them to choose the method that works best for them, and offer some examples of products such as Popplet, Evernote, Google docs, and many more will help students find the right tool for their thinking and working styles. Further, providing multiple pathways to engage with and present content helps provide certainty. For more on this, consult Universal Design for Learning and see the breakdown here. Growth can be rewarded using badges, either internally if the LMS offers it or externally through something like Mozilla. Badges can be given at certain expected achievements and given at unexpected moments when the student does something remarkable.

A - Autonomy
Description: Rock calls autonomy "the perception of exerting control over one's environment" and the perception of choice. This is the opposite of being micromanaged.
Threats to autonomy: lack of control, excessive management, being forced to collaborate, no choice in collaborators or roles in group work
Ways to reduce threat: Provide flexibility when possible
                                    Allow room for choice in an authentic way (not overly limited choice with no read meaning)
                                    Spend time with class building so students feel more connected
                                    Provide opportunities for student goal-setting, norm creation, and product planning within set boundaries that will enable success and learning
Design Qualities: Choice, Authenticity, Protection from Adverse Consequences
Tools: Providing authenticity means providing students to work on things that matter to them. Finding compelling questions and allowing students to choose how they want to answer them gives them the authenticity they want and increases autonomy because they have contributed to the design and process of their learning. Sites like Tricider help students weigh in on anything from controversial questions to class norms and processes. Building lists together in places like Pinterest or Learnist let students add their unique voice and have it recognized. With sites like Wiggio, students can work alone or in groups and set the times to collaborate when it is good for them.

R - Relatedness
Description: According to Rock, relatedness is a sense of belonging and feeling a part of the group. The opposite of this is feeling lonely. Relatedness is also connected to feelings of trust.
Threats to relatedness: always seeing the others as a competitor, lack of communication, lack of opportunities to connect to classmates, the teacher, or the learning
Ways to reduce threat: Provide opportunities for class building, especially early in the course, that is not tied to a grade and clearly intended to begin a feeling of relatedness
                                    Encourage social connections by sharing stories, photos, etc.
                                    In large group settings, form smaller groups or teams to build more connections
Design Qualities:  Affiliation, Affirmation, Protection from Adverse Consequences
Tools: Building connections in any class helps with the feeling of relatedness. Creating spaces on places like Padlet, Mural.ly, or within the LMS to share ideas, place images that are important to them, and share their work with the people inside the course and outside the course who matter can help students feel connected. Connecting students with the outside world when appropriate during the course of their learning will also help.

F - Fairness
Description: Rock describes fairness as a sense of reciprocity or evenness. If an exchange does not seem fair, people are less likely to experience empathy or relatedness.
Threats to fairness: feeling that rules are being applied differently for some, feeling that top-down directives are being applied unilaterally regardless of context, feeling that another does not act in accordance with stated values or beliefs
Ways to reduce threat:  According to Rock, these actions help - Increase levels of transparency
                                     Increase communication
                                     Establish clear expectations in all situations
                                     Provide students with a clear voice in procedures and norms of class
Design Qualities: Clear and Compelling Product Standards, Product Focus, Authenticity, Affiliation
Tools:  Creating more transparency in a class helps all students. This can be done with open access to materials, notes and other resources. This can also be done with clear explanation of the objectives to cover, an available rubric to show how the work will be assessed, a suggested pacing guide to show how much time to allot for the work at hand, and regular feedback about progress and expectations. Most of these products would reside within the system at hand, but communication can happen in a variety of ways in addition to within the course. Use of tools such as Twitter, Remind 101, and others can help keep the students prepared.

Reducing Roadblocks

Recently I showed a group of teachers this clip from a previous episode of The Amazing Race:

The task seems simple enough, yet almost every team failed to complete the task on the first try. Why? Some were not attentive to detail in general. Others were in too much of a rush. Others approached the situation already stressed because they were behind and let that overwhelm them. Some of the ones in the end saw the others have to return and did not learn from that experience, as they made the same mistake. This reminds me a lot of more educational situations. We all have moments when we think our directions are clear, but our participants / students seem to get tripped up in the directions. By getting caught up in the directions, they lost any joy or sense of meaning  in the actual experience.

 Some of this loss of joy had to do with the competitive nature of the pursuit. In an educational setting, there are very real deadlines and outside pressures as well, both on the students and teachers. Had those pressures been removed, would they have been more attentive? Would they have taken their time? Would they have reflected on what happened to others and applied it? I'm not sure. I do think that this fits in with the fear of taking risks for both students and teachers. Fear of failure based on looming deadlines and fear of the outcome not meeting expectations is part of one of Seth Godin's "four horsemen of mediocrity," and can be a powerfully paralyzing force. To alleviate this, Schlechty uses the Design Quality Protection from Adverse Consequences. It means taking the time to establish a culture that appreciates risk taking and sees failure as part of a meaningful learning process. One way may be to encourage curiosity, as Ramsey Musallam suggests in this TED talk:
 Another way is to work to free our experiences from the barriers that create frustration, such as the ones discussed in the article "Analysis of Communication Barriers to Distance Education." Here are some of the barriers mentioned and some approaches we could attempt to stave off frustration: -

Technical - Can we create a Knowledge Base (this is our growing one) for students with solutions to a variety of problems presented in a variety of ways? Some may want to learn by video, while others appreciate the step-by-step guides. Either way, a repository 24/7 of suggestions for typical issues may help. -

Social - Students report that it is important to feel connected to the teacher and other students in their courses. How can we create moments that build group connectedness? Here is a link to some online icebreakers. These icebreakers can be fast - we can use a took like Padlet where participants can comment quickly in a variety of ways without having to make an account. -

 Motivation - A motivated student will persist even when challenges arise. Where can we offer choice and flexibility to our experiences so that students will stay motivated? Where can we provide them with opportunities to take ownership on the management of the course? Here is the Tricider I set up for a future Creative Writing course. After looking at Peer Review forms, this site is for them to start having conversations and then eventually build their own form.  -

Lack of experience with a technology tool or medium - This is a common barrier. Prensky and others remind us that we may be working with digital natives, but that does not mean that they inherently know the ins and outs of all tools. They may be more likely to investigate and explore the tool, but some will still need help. This article discusses the need for awareness of the wide array of comfort with various tools. That brings us back to the Knowledge Base.  -
Belief in more traditional models - Some students have been very successful in more traditional models. I will never forget when my son told me to stop interfering because he "liked the worksheets." He didn't necessarily feel he learned more that way, but he liked the ease and lack of deeper thinking required when it came to classes that did not hold his interest. When looking at the model of engagement, he was not saying he was engaged. He and others, though, find rewards in being strategically compliant, and the fear of risk taking can overwhelm some of them.

The more we can remove the roadblocks, the more we can engage and spend our time on the real work of the experience at hand.