Recently I had the privilege of sitting in on a workshop
conducted by Ewan McIntosh (http://www.notosh.com) who took us through a process where he helped us
(the students) become better “problem finders.”
He then challenged us to go out and help our students become better
“problem finders.” Giving up control is
often hard, especially for educators, but I realized I wanted to move this
way. Thus, I thought of a group of forth graders I
was going to work with the following week.
These forth graders come to see me twice a week for
enrichment and I decided to see what would happen. So on our first visit, I copied Ewan and took
these ten year olds through an exercise to help them learn whatever they wanted
to learn about. The only stipulation I
gave them was that they had to choose a science related topic, since this was
my field of expertise. After two thirty-minute
sessions with these students they came up with two very good problems to be
solved.
They fell into two distinct groups and they came up with two
VERY different questions: The first
group wanted to figure out how to solve the problem of groundwater
pollution. Once they settled on their
topic, they realized they didn’t really know very much about groundwater
pollution. In fact, their understanding
of what groundwater pollution is was incorrect.
I allowed this misconception to persist and encouraged them to learn all
that they could about groundwater pollution.
Once they understood what groundwater was, they realized that the best
way to “solve” the problem of groundwater pollution was to prevent it. As of this post, these students have decided
to make a 2-3 min video where they are going to educate people about the
dangers of groundwater pollution. They
hope to put it on youtube and educate the world.
The other group came up with the question: What is it about the human brain that causes
it to make the decisions that it makes?
This question was truly advanced for a bunch of forth graders. As they began their research they had a
daunting task. After about four
sessions, they turned to me and said that this answer is not out their on
google. They knew some things, but they
needed help. One young man told me we
needed to ask a “super smart scientist.”
So I told him we should do that.
He then replied, “Who would want to talk to a group of ten year olds?” And I told him you might be surprised.
So I encouraged them to reach out on the web and look for
some neuroscientists to skype in and help them.
And you can probably predict what happened. They are now looking forward to skypeing in
with a professor of cognitive neurology from MIT this coming Monday.
My take-away’s from these two events is that we do need to
give up the control of the learning to our students. They will pursue things with passion if we
only give them the chance.
With the advent of free video conferencing software (Skype) it is amazing how easy it is to get experts into your classroom. One of my goals this year was to bring experts in who can discuss what they do. Today I had the privilege of having Lillie Croft, a volcanologist skype into my freshmen classes. She shared with us a powerpoint about why volcanoes are important to the health of the world. She talked about how volcanoes are both destructive and constructive. It was a great experience for my students to hear from a “real” scientist who did research on the things that we have been learning about.
So how do you get world-class speakers “into” your classroom. For me I have begun to use twitter to connect with people all over the world. If you are unfamiliar with twitter, it is a micro blogging site that allows people to post small (limit 140 characters) micro-blogs. You might wonder how anything important can be shared in 140 characters. Usually what people post is a small teaser and then have a link to a website that gets you more information.
The other thing you can do is use what are called hashtags. Hashtags were developed as a means to create "groupings" on Twitter, without having to change the basic service. Essentially you put the “#” symbol in front of a string of text, do a search for that hashtag and then even people who don’t “follow” you, but who are interested in the same types of things you are will see your post. They then may respond to your post. Several hashtags that I use are: #edchat, #scichat, #scido. When you search these people will talk about education, science, or how to do science in the classroom.
So how did I connect with Dr. Croft? I simply put out on my twitter feed that I was looking for a volcanologist to skype into my classroom. I put it out on the #scichat search list and voila, I got a response from somebody who knew her. I then emailed her and she graciously agreed to talk to my kids.
Truly in today’s connected world, we have the opportunity, and dare I say responsibility, to bring the world into our classroom. So get with it and connect to people who can connect to our kids.
Tomorrow marks the first day of my 25th year teaching. Have I gotten that old? . I am blessed to have been in a profession that I love for such a long time. The energy I get from teenagers must keep me young.
I want to share two thoughts with you: They probably should be two separate blogs. One amazing video and some things I want to do differently as I move into this year of learning.
Amazing Video:
Students today are looking for an interactive experience in school where they don’t have to “dumb down” and “turn off” when they come to school. Unfortunately too often our schools do just that. Check out this video clip that demonstrates how our students want to interact with content.
How My Class Will Look Different This Year 1. VoiceThread.com: This past weekend I have been in Canada speaking at a technology conference (Touch-N-Go http://touchngo.sd.bc.ca/). There I was introduced to Voice Thread (http://voicethread.com/). Voice Thread has a unique way for folks to interact with content. We want to test uploading some of our podcasts to Voice-Thread and see how the students interact with this medium. We already have some great video podcasts, but to have the ability for them to be interacted on this level could add a whole new level of interactivity. We even anticipate others from around the world interacting with the videos online. Potentially our students will be watching these videos with students from around the world.
2. Multiple Means of Assessment: One of the hallmarks of our program is that every student has to complete each unit of study by achieving at least 75% on each exit assessment. We were introduced to a teaching methodology out of Harvard University called Universal Design in Learning (UDL) and one of the things that it asserts that all students need is the opportunity to be assessed in multiple ways. So this year we are going to provide opportunities for our students who want to demonstrate mastery through some method other than the exams. We are simply going to produce the list of objectives for each unit and have students show us how they know this content. They will be able to do this via any method that they choose. We are thinking along the lines of student produced videos, making up their own exams, or frankly any creative method that works best for each student. We will see how this open ended assessment strategy works.
3. More Engaging Activities For the past few years we have been so focused on making high quality videos that we have not given as much attention to making our activities more engaging for students. At this past conference one of the teachers told us she liked our teaching methodology (the reverse classroom) but she was wondering what she would do with the kids during her class if she didn’t lecture to them. Her moment of honesty was telling. We have things for our kids to do in class, but they can always be better and more engaging. I am hoping to team up with some of the other teachers in our building, and in my greater PLN community, to come up with better activities that will better connect students to the content.
4. Student Choice: Speaking of activities: We would like to have more than one activity that can get to the same objectives. Students really enjoy having control of their own learning. What if we gave them more than one type of activity that gets at the same objectives? That way, students who learn differently will be able to learn the way they learn best. This will be quite a process to make this happen—and maybe a logistical nightmare. I am thinking that this will start after the first unit. As I sit here on the airplane headed home I don’t see this happening for unit 1 when kids arrive Wednesday morning.
Class Visits and Further Trainings:
Last year Aaron and I had about one hundred educators visit our classroom. Know that each of you are encouraged to come and visit our blended 21st Century classroom. Feel free to contact me about setting up a time for you to come and visit. We try and have larger groups on set days so that we don’t go crazy. There is also some power in having more people observing what is going on.
Aaron and I have two engagements coming up.
1. September 15th: ISTE Webinar: Go to http://iste.org/ to sign up.
2. September 23-24th: Bib County Schools, Near Macon GA. We will be spending two days training their staff in the blended classroom and 21st Century Learning. If any of the folks on the east coast are interested in attending I can contact them and see if other folks would be allowed to come.
Last Thoughts:
If you have made it this far in the blog then congratulations. I hope you see my excitement as I move into the new year with my students. For the second year in a row I will have my daughter in class and last year it was good to see what I was putting students through with my program. She can be brutally honest so I am happy to have someone testing out our crazy ideas.
