Relationship Building and Determining Worth

Happy Halloween!

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 an academic 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: 

The Body in Tolkien's Legendarium

 and

Hunger Games and Philosophy

 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.
   

So, Which Frozen Character are You?

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! 

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?

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?

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.

Challenge in Collaboration

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:

1. Coming up with the big idea - I would encourage this to be student led and teacher facilitated
2. Building the essential question
3. Issuing the Challenge
4. 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). 
5. 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. 
6. Implement the solutions in the most authentic way possible. Let students decide the best way to showcase their work and solutions to others. 
7. 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.

Annotation and Collaboration

This week I have spent a lot of time exploring collaboration and annotation. What I want is for a group to be able to annotate together, comment together, and distinguish the comments either by color or name without forcing people to make an account. It's a tall order, I know, but this would certainly benefit the learning experience. For this post, I am not discussing apps because I want tools with multiple possibilities for access.

I started looking at social bookmarking, but the ones I explored were not robust enough. For true annotation, we need to be able to do more than highlight or mark. While some offer commentary and notes, the collaborative part was not as intuitive as I liked. There are likely other options out there, and I'd love to hear about them.

Here is what I found:

Markup Toolbar

Markup - Markup requires the originating user to bookmark or use a plug-in on their browser. The collaborative users who would follow would not have to, however. Once that is done, the user can find a web site and click on the plug-in to get a markup that looks like this:
This bar will appear in the top right hand corner of the screen. Using the bar, the site can be annotated with text, underlining, highlighting, etc. Here is an example:

Annotated YouTube Page

Once finished, the user can publish the Markup. The publish button appears under the pen once the page has been annotated. A screen appears with a website url.

The site can now be shared via the link and others can respond. Everyone can work on the same one. The downside to Markup is that it does not seem to work with Google Docs, even if I make the settings public. There are a few other sites, too, that will not pull up the Markup bar.

Bounce - Bounce provides a method for commenting on a website. With Bounce, the first person will type a web address onto the main page.

Bounce Main page

Bounce will then capture the web site and provide the user with an image to use as the basis for comments.The user can click on the site and a box appears. The box provides a place for the student to comment.

A Bounce Box ready for comment

When finished, the user can save on the Bounce toolbar at the top and share. Like with Markup, Bounce provides a website to share, but the user can also share via Twitter or Facebook. When the next user opens the link, Bounce will provide that user a different number and color. This is nice because it keeps track of the users this way. The downside with Bounce is that there is no way to highlight or do anything other than type a comment. No downloading is required.

A.nnotate Home Screen after Log-In

 A.nnotate - A.nnotate requires an account to be made. Unlike the previous options, this one allows users to upload files or for users to take a snapshot from the web.
This way, a pdf can be placed in the tool and the site provides an opportunity for collaborative annotation. Only the originating user needs an account for A.nnotate, so this helps somewhat. To annotate, the user will highlight text. After highlighting, a box appears for a comment. When finished annotating, the user clicks "share" to begin collaboration. Do not hit "done" if you want to conntinue annotating the document!
After hitting "share," a pop-up will appear with options including email and a link. Click the "guest annotation" to allow non-registered user to have access. Unlike the other tools, A.nnotate gives the creator the opportunity to review comments before displaying them. Also unique to this tool is the ability to create a folder of files to annotate and share. Unfortunately, future users can delete current comments. To keep from requiring account creation, future collaborators can choose a color for commenting and be consistent.

A Padlet Created for Image and Argumentation

Padlet / Lino - I know these tools have been around for some time, but I think they work well for types of collaboration. Both provide a digital corkboard for collaborative comments / ideas. Like with the other tools, only an account by the first user needs to be made.
Only the creator can remove posts. Like with Bounce, there is no way to highlight or underline. Some of these sites will allow uploads of files, and some comments can include links and videos, which can make the site very dynamic and active. 

Thinglink / Speaking Image - These tools provide a way to make images interactive. If using a text, and the text is short, these will work here as well (see example). By creating buttons on the page, users can customize the buttons to represent the types of comments made. These buttons can link to video, audio and more.

Thinglink of a short text with buttons

Buttons can also contain a text box for comments. Sharing the link opens up collaboration, and new users can add buttons and create comments as well.  Speaking Image allows users to trace and circle pieces of text to specify comments in a more detailed way. Speaking Image also provides the opportunity to build wikis with the images. Building the wiki would require an account to be made and accessed. Many possibilities exist with these tools, and annotating the image with commentary would help provide a starting point for discussion.

There are some others out there, but most fell under these kinds of categories. All have pros and cons, but I think all have great possibility. We have to think first about what we want from the annotation and collaboration and then choose the best tool for the job.

Wiggio - Wiggio is a collaborative workspace where groups can create, collaborate, share files, and even text, email and send voice notes to each other. While there is a premium version, the basic version

Wiggio Feed Page

is free. This even includes a calendar for the group that will sync to other calendars. Groups can chat, hold a personal meeting, and work on documents together. They can also poll each other to make decisions.