What Needs to Spread and What Needs to Stick

For the next couple of weeks, I'm focusing my posts on reflections from the book Spreadable Media by Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green. I chose this book because of the relevance to our desire to create engaging and meaning learning experiences.

In his introduction, Jenkins defines spreadability as "the potential - both technical and cultural - for audiences to share content for their own purposes" (2). If you've created or shared a funny meme like this one I made:

then you have spread media. Sites like memegenerator make spreading media easy and fun. My question as I read this is, what should be spread? When is the right time to get maximum benefit?

To add a further wrinkle, Jenkins moves into the distinction between "stickiness" and "spreadability." Stickiness, a concept mentioned by Gladwell, refers to content that attracts attention and engagement, a term focusing on numbers of hits on a page or mentions. Spreadability differs from stickiness because spreadability focuses on making connections. One could not track all the uses of the meme above because so many generators offer this as an option. Even without generators, several users could create them on their own. Another difference lies in the fact that spreadability leads to participation in unanticipated ways. Stickiness, as a rule, provides only one kind of experience. For example, when I shared this link on Twitter taking people to a quiz identifying their medieval alter ego (I was a princess, which made me laugh out loud), I showed the quiz to be sticky. I did forwad the quiz, and many others can take the quiz and share, but the only experience we can have is taking the quiz. I can't change the quiz or remix the quiz immediately into a new quiz (even if I get a link the tool).

Here's more - watch to see what King Arthur, Kony 2012, and other texts have in common:



According to Jenkins, both should exist. In a "world where citizens count on each other to pass along compelling bits of news, information, and entertainment, often many times over the course of a given day," the tendency to forward what sticks and remake and circulate what spreads seems almost organic (12). This means, in the world of education, I need to think about what should stick with them and what I want them to spread. I also want to engage students in the metacognitive practice of thinking about sharing in either form. Jenkins writes, "people make active decisions when spreading media, whether simply passing content to their social network, making a word-of-mouth recommendation, or posting a mash-up video to YouTube."

So, what needs to stick? To me, the list would include:

• Learning targets - what do I want my students to leave my course knowing, understanding, doing? 
• Improved communication - I want my students to be able to share their knowledge and passions in an articulate and profound way
• Significance - I want my students to understand the "so what" of my course

What needs to spread? To me that list would include:

• Significance - I know it's in the list above as well. Things overlap, and that's okay. 
• Transfer - I want the students to know how to spread the learning targets of my course to their own lives, other courses, the world, etc. 
•  Reflection - Metacognitive thinking on their part about what they share and why

 How can I start? Here are some ideas:

• Discover the extent your group feels comfortable participating within culture. In my online learning course for teachers, I begin the participatory learning course with a survey to do that. Yours would fit your situation. Here is my survey: 

• Discover the comfort level of your group with spreadable tools. In your survey, you could add a few questions about spreadable tools such as meme generators, social media proficiency, etc. 
• Design with participatory experiences in mind. As the book discussion continues, I'm looking forward to more ideas about this. 

What do you think? What sticks? What spreads? Do students sometimes leave with topics sticking that you did not intend to stick? Why? Comment below - I'm looking forward to the conversation. 

It's Never as Simple as it Seems

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.

Let's Celebrate

Too often, I finish a task, put away my materials from it, and start thinking immediately about the new task before me. Last night, I finished another chapter in my dissertation writing, and I went right into an outline for the next one. I didn't even mention it at home or at work. I just saw it as a part of an overwhelming whole and moved on.

In talking to a colleague today, I realize I shouldn't have done that. I should have told my family (they were all in the room). I should have told my friends at work. Heck, I should have tweeted it or put it on Facebook. Why? Because celebrating the steps, the small successes is important - and often overlooked.

Do we do this in our courses? Probably somewhat. There are some busy times of the year when we all are just trying to get by. I think, though, that celebrating those successes would actually make us feel better when we are doing what seems overwhelming. Take a look at this video where complete strangers shared their successes:

In our district, we try to celebrate Strategic Design successes on our Strategic Design in Action website, which is regularly updated. On this site, we celebrate amazing learning experiences, provide a means for any stakeholder to nominate a bright spot in the district, and run a twitter feed showing how our goals and beliefs look in real life.

What about in our courses? How can we celebrate the successes? How public should that be?
I'm not sure about all the answers to this, but here are some thoughts:
Badges - my Creative Writing course runs on badges. Some indicate mastery of a module, but others are spontaneous. They include being a good communicator, being insightful, and other qualities I want to highlight. Those badges show up on their profile for all to see.
Twitter - we can celebrate successes more publicly on Twitter. If the person we are celebrating is also on Twitter, tagging that person can encourage others to chime in and celebrate as well.
Padlet / Lino / Whiteboard - we could have a space embedded for people to paste successes on the wall. This way the students could have some say in what gets celebrated. We may find out more about their lives, and this will certainly build the relatedness needed.
Synchronous Sessions - early time in synchronous sessions could be used to encourage people to share successes of their own or of others in the room. This will build community, which is also so important.
Showing gratitude - with successes comes the idea of sharing gratitude for someone who did something that really meant something to you. That's a celebratory-worthy act as well. Even paying a gratitude visit can be worth discussing and celebrating.
Specific, Positive Feedback - in our opportunities to provide feedback, I think we can celebrate what the student does well. I think this can be more celebration-worthy when the student shows significant growth in a certain area. For this to be a celebration, I think the more specific the better.

As we move from one module to the next, from one unit of study to another, from one project to another, what can we stop and celebrate along the way?

End of Year Reflections

As the school year comes to a close, I often begin to start reflecting as I put away some of the work of the year. It's just second nature for me to start thinking about how I would redo an activity or make a new connection.

This link contains a taxonomy of reflection from Peter Pappas. He also has entries for the reflective student and the reflective administrator.

I also value input from participants. Whether it is from an online survey or a Post-it note exit ticket, I can reflect on their perceptions and find ways to revise that will bring more engagement and meaning. Grant Wiggins recently surveyed students about their coursework. He has done a series of blog posts about the student responses.

This link takes you to the open-ended answers to the question, "I learn best when the teacher..." 
Because some similarities in the comments immediately appear, I wanted to put their remarks in a Tagxedo to see what words were repeated. Here is the result:

You can also look at the image online by clicking on this link.

Some of the student input matches our student surveys. Students want hands-on activities. They want things to be interesting, interactive, meaningful, and relevant to their lives. They want to participate in the learning process in a more active way.

Because we'll be presenting at ISTE in June, we've made a site for our resources about learning in a participatory culture. You can access it here.

This summer my goal is to find more ways to respect those voices by providing more participatory experiences in the courses I help design. It can mean more work up-front, but I'm eager to see how it pays off with the students once they are in the course.