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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm a big believer in the importance of perspective. Changing perspective can change so much, and some don't realize how much of our perspective can be changed. When I'm feeling that a learning experience doesn't seem to generate the curiosity, complexity, or engagement I want, I try to shift perspectives and encourage people to re-examine from another point of view. Here's one TED talk about the importance of perspective:
Tolkien once said in his lecture "On Fairy Stories" that fantasy began with a shift in perspective, saying, "The human mind, endowed with the powers of generalization and abstraction,
sees not only green-grass, discriminating it from other things (and finding it fair to look upon),
but sees that it is green as well as being grass. But how powerful, how stimulating to the very
faculty that produced it, was the invention of the adjective: no spell or incantation in Faerie is
more potent. And that is not surprising: such incantations might indeed be said to be only another
view of adjectives, a part of speech in a mythical grammar. The mind that thought of light,
heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and
able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water." The change in perspective, creates the mythical world and also provides us with new ways to view our own. How to start? A good hook for beginning a change in perspective can be found in lots of ways on YouTube. Here, thanks to my children, are some of my favorites. The first is one that has gained a lot of popularity: "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On":
Students can look at how Marcel lives in our world and uses the objects we use but in different ways. It's a great way to start looking at the world around us in a new perspective. I certainly don't look at lentils or Doritos the same. You can segue Marcel into real life by looking at some of the fabulous photographs of Vyacheslav Mischenko and his documentation of tiny snails moving through our world at this Distractify site.
If shells and nature don't fit in as well into your learning experiences, we can look at the human experience through either of these series. The first series is "Convos with My 2 Year Old", and here is the first episode:
By taking conversations with his daughter and giving those pieces of dialogue to a grown man, the conversation changes entirely. Why is it creepy? What makes that one change such a significant change? How does this perspective on the words change when a new speaker recites them? To continue with the child perspective, excerpts from Jason Kotecki's The Escape Adulthood Manifesto (personally, I would skip the religious part).
Children have a natural curiosity and imagination that this video and others in the series show with this altered perspective. This can move into a great exploration of what our students are curious about. Here is a great post from te@chthought about the stages of curiosity, the characteristics of those stages, and how how stages process and the role of the educator.
Regaining the childlike perspective and celebration of the everyday can lead to great discussions and products. Here is a TED talk from poet Billy Collins about just that:
In this talk, Collins reads some of his poems that celebrate the everyday and discusses how those poems changed perspective some when turning them into animated films. Transfer of a genre is a great way to encourage a new perspective and shows a high level of synthesis! Students can remake things in a new perspective - whether the things are their own or someone else's. Students can also respond in a different genre than typically expected. After reading nonfiction, how about taking those annotations and building a haiku?
If you want to just remain with the childlike perspective, here is Collins reading "The Lanyard," which is in the voice of an adult considering a childhood gift from this new perspective:
To continue in the vein of creepy changes in perspective, Buzzfeed has a playlist of creepy videos also all about perspective. Here is the one called "Things Cats Do That'd Be Creepy if an Adult Did Them":
This piece resembles the video above with the notion of changing the agent of the action. By turning the agent into a human instead of a cat, the actions look creepy and out of place. Yet, we have no problem with expecting cats to do cat-like things. What other actions of people and animals do we accept because we expect this to be so? How does turning this on its ear help us reevaluate the action in the new and original contexts?
To move this into more depth, here is Billy Collins again, this time with his poems from the voice of dogs:
Collins discusses how he writes these poems in this excerpt as well. In the second poem, "The Revenant," the dog reveals that the human's perspective of their relationship was completely wrong. This gets into assumptions. What assumptions do we make about others? about animals? about how we see the world? Where do those assumptions come from, and why do we accept them? What happens when those assumptions are challenged or proved untrue?
Once the hook is there, perspective can be gathered and investigated in other ways. Sites like ProCon.org provides multiple perspectives surrounding current issues of the day. Students can debate perspectives and provide reasoning for their perspective on sites such as Tricider.
So What? In all cases, the simple change of perspective provides a variety of meaningful ways to enter into a topic, explore new ideas, challenge assumptions, and grow in our thinking. Encouraging a new perspective also reaches into the 21st Century Skills involving Critical Thinking and Problem Solving as well as Creativity and Innovation.
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.
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?
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:
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.
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.
I just finished watching this video from Dr. Chris Haskell from Boise State and 3D Game Lab. I would put the video here, but Blogger is coding it wrong and putting a different video in its place.
What I like about Haskell's brief talk is that he reminds us that school has always been a game, just not a game some students can win. Changing the game by providing choice and showing students how to master the learning requires rethinking how we do what we do. It reminds me of these talks by Rick Wormeli:
I agree with what both men are saying. If we are after mastery, I don't see why products cannot be redone. In the classroom, I was a big proponent of redoing work for that reason. Adding in more choice in how the work is done can be frightening as we worry about standards that must be met, but in the end, if we have designed the learning experiences in a thoughtful way, all of this will be addressed.
As a parent, I squirm a little about some of this. I have no problem with my kids coming home with less work, and I'm glad I don't have to do a science fair project, as I already did those years ago. That said, I've had times when both kids really struggled with concepts and nothing was coming home that I could help with. The teachers refused to step in and help, and I watched both kids really deflate. If more happens at school, which I agree should be the case, then part of the paradigm shift has to also address parental support. What new questions should parents ask? How can parents support what is happening in the classroom? How can parents enrich? How can kids communicate what is happening during the day in ways that parents can understand?
Maybe I taught Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead too many times, but I do see how school has always been a game, just like many areas in life are a game. If that's true, how can we change the game to help make students excited about playing?
Our students taking fully online courses spoke consistently about wanting to take online courses for the flexibility it would provide. Students want to go at their pace, set their own goals, and learn on their time in their way.
The problem with this desire for the teacher is how to build in collaborative activities, something that many students also enjoyed in their online classes. If my students are all over the place in a particular module or even in different modules, for example, how can I offer a collaborative experience that will reach all students where they are and not waste their time?
One way is to disrupt the normal pacing of a module with a challenge. Challenges can be for a small group you see are in a similar place in a module, but challenges can also be large-scale for the whole class to engage with.
Looking at the steps of Challenge-Based Learning from this article helps plan the kind of challenge that could help with designers. The key steps involved in designing a challenge for your course are these:
Coming up with the big idea - I would encourage this to be student led and teacher facilitated
Building the essential question
Issuing the Challenge
Facilitating and supporting learners as they break down the essential question into smaller questions and deciding on the research needed to address the complexities of the challenge (understanding what they need to know).
Coaching learners as they generate a solution. The big idea and essential question should be complex enough to allow for many solutions. The solutions produced by the learners should be concrete enough to implement. The goals for the solution should be broken down into stages that are clearly attainable.
Implement the solutions in the most authentic way possible. Let students decide the best way to showcase their work and solutions to others.
Provide opportunities for students to evaluate the work of others and reflect on their own work and process.
Teachers can download a classroom guide here and look in the toolkit section of the main site for more resources. Here is an interesting example for a writing-based challenge. The students created a video and book about body image. There is a more step-by-step template here. Because Challenge Based Learning started with Apple, there are more resources on iTunes U as well, including a student guide and a movie.
In the curriculum writing sessions we have held over the past two weeks, we have been talking about students being problem finders after watching Ewan McIntosh's TED talk.
Turning the problem into a challenge that encourages students to apply their learning, reach an authentic audience, and make a difference would be an empowering and engaging experience for students.
The challenge can be as long and wide-reaching (content-wise) as you want to make it. To me, this is the beauty of a threaded course that is not chronologically linked but instead linked around an idea. This way, the thread becomes the heart of the challenge, and the students can connect to that thread from wherever they are in the course. It links them together, even if they are individually working through different content.
So, for example, the blended English IV AP course currently has the thread of the outcast. With this thread, the teacher can issue a challenge to groups or to the course as a whole dealing with some of the many problems surrounding the outcast in society, something all students in all places of the course are thinking about and exploring. This could tie in to greater campus discussions, such as with cyber bullying, but it would not have to. Other courses with threads that embody the notion of change or the impact a person can make in the world could really capitalize on current events to make the challenge, and the course, more meaningful and relevant.
When we talk to parents and students about online learning, we often talk about motivation and the need for students to be somewhat self-motivated to succeed and finish the course. Some believe that intrinsic motivation, the ability to motivate from within, appears innately, but after more research, I am not sure that I agree. I began to think about motivation more after reading this article the other day. Education provides many extrinsic motivators, such as praise, grades, and other accolades. I believe that education can produce environments that would spark intrinsic motivation in many cases. Here are some of the pieces I have been looking at to understand motivation more:
Daniel Pink's TED Talk -
Pink's book Drive explains motivation and how to improve motivation. In his talk, he discusses the idea of offering incentives and how that works with motivation in general.
Research Studying Motivation - This research on motivation highlights education specifically. I think some of the recommendations at the end, especially about making connections and establishing meaning, support the comment from our student surveys about what made a course worthwhile and meaningful. I know that Pearson put up the study, but the literature review remains a good read.
Switch - I enjoyed reading this book last year. The Heath brothers uploaded a lot of free resources on their site, including this pdf that speaks particularly to motivation. In the case of Switch, the motivation under discussion is motivation to change.
Picturing Practice - The Schlechty Center discusses engagement in several of their publications. According to Switch, making change and being motivated to change starts with small, manageable steps. This resource has templates and scenarios to work out those kind of steps.
Mindshift article - This article has some interesting strategies to activate the student brain to think towards success and be more motivated. While some of the first parts are about genuine choice, which we hear a lot, I like the part about writing about a successful ancestor before undertaking a daunting task and other ideas.
After reviewing these resources and more, my big take-aways about motivation included:
- Meaning and Relevance - I am more motivated to finish work that I find meaningful and / or relevant to my work, studies, family life, etc.
- Manageable Steps - Like in the discussion in gaming, motivation research emphasizes the importance of a "win," or a success early on based on a manageable and attainable goal. If the project seems to hard or to take too long, I may not be motivated to even get started.
- Celebrated Successes - These celebrations do not have to be huge or even public, but big successes should be recognized in some way.
- Connectedness - As a teacher, I need to communicate regularly and often. Showing I care helps students be motivated to participate more. Being attentive to their comments, offering specific feedback, and recognizing their efforts will help with motivation as well, especially if the student's intrinsic motivation is low.
I don't know how many times I talk to students about use of second person in writing. From asking students to examine peer texts to circling examples in class myself, the use of second person continues in the next draft. Students seem to replace second person use when it is pointed out, but they don't understand deeply and in an authentic way why use of second person should be avoided. Here are some of my further attempts to eliminate second person use:
First, pass out copies of Merwin's essay "You Are the Second Person" (the full text is at the bottom of the post). I found this essay in Merwin's Book of Fables, but it was printed earlier. Let students discuss Merwin's reasoning for use of second person and what using second person says about the writer. Students can then revisit their work and reflect deeply on how and why they choose the words they do. When they return to class, they need options better than replacing "you" with "one", so here are some questions to ask in conferencing:
1. Can the pronoun be inclusive, turning the "you" to "we"? Merwin believes so. If so, what are the ramifications of making the essay inclusive? Does this allow for an anecdote or personal connection that would strengthen the paper?
2. Can the pronoun be elminiated? Doing so means seriously rewriting the sentence, but sometimes when doing so, the sentence loses some of the passive voice as well.
3. Usually the second person use appears in the beginning or closing, so can other leads or endings be explored? After showing how use of the second person can be off-putting, giving students examples of strong leads and endings may help.
4. What function does the sentence with second person serve in the paragraph? Asking students to describe the function of the sentence allows you to have conversations about paragraph structure, which can lead to a conversation about better options.
What are some other strategies? I'd love to hear how other people handle this particular issue.
Here is the Merwin essay:
The Second PersonYou are the second person. You look around for someone else to be the second person. But there is no one else. Even if there were someone else there they could not be you. You try to shelter in imagining that you are plural. It is a dream which the whole of the waking world is trying to remember. It is the orphan’s mother who never lived but is longed for and has been accorded a pronoun that is an echo of your own, since she has no name. Her temple is an arrangement of mirrors. But nothing stays in it. Think how you keep your thoughts to yourself, on your rare visits there. And how quickly you leave.
You are the second person. The words come to you as though they were birds that knew you and had found you at last, but they do not look at you and you never saw them before, you have nowhere to keep them, you have nothing to feed them, they will interfere with your life, you cannot hear yourself, the little claws, meaning no harm, never let you alone, so tame, so confiding. But you know they are not yours. You know they are no one else’s, either. Sometimes between sleeping and waking you really forget that you are the second person. Once again you have embarked, you have arrived, nothing is missing, nothing. The twilight is an infinite reunion. Then a messenger enters looking everywhere for someone. For the second person. Who else?
Made in the image of The Second Person, you never see your face. Even the mirrors show it to you backwards. Dear reader at times imagining in your own defense that I am the second person, I know more about you than I know about myself, but I would not recognize you. For your part, it is true that you do not know your own story. That it has all been given away. That it lies at the bottom of a river where everything joins it but no one owns it. No one admits to it. Why this elusiveness of yours, like that which lives in an animal’s eye? For you have to be found, you are found, I have found you. You make a pathetic effort to disguise yourself in all the affectations of the third person, but you know it is no use. The third person is no one. A convention. Can you never answer happily when you are addressed? Do I want you to? No, you insist, it is all a mistake, I am the first person. But you know how unsatisfactory that is. And how seldom it is true. –W. S. Merwin, The Miner’s Pale Children, 1970. Also in his Book of Fables 2007
