Tag Archives: digital literacy

Making the Second Grade Buzz

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Credit: leemt2 (FlickR Creative Commons)

Self-published authors of children’s books tend to agonize over how to create a buzz around their work.

M. Knoop; Natl. Trust for Scotland

We try everything: Facebook, email, blogs, discussion boards, reader and writer organizations, library lists, book reviewers… all in the efforts to get some grown-ups to notice our books, buy our books and give our creation some validity in the mature world of children’s publishing.

Well, I may not even be a blip on the radar of the publishing world yet, but by golly I sure made a bunch of our second graders buzz. Here is a link to a class blog that our second grade teacher kindly posted: Making It Educational; Princess Ramona.

The student reactions posted in the classroom blog are priceless:

YeJin – I liked when after Princess Ramona said, “You hurt my friend’s owie,” because it was funny. The dragon was crying like a 4 year old.

Nykolas – I liked the part when the knight came through the forest and the animals were ready to attack him. I liked the part when the king was in his seat and the animals were next to him and the dragon behind him and he didn’t know it. It is about helping each other.

Devika – I liked the part when Ramona set free the animals from the cage. It reminded me of Noah’s ark. It is a good book because it has funny and interesting things in it.

Reading directly to the students and seeing their reactions and hearing what they are noticing and learning from the story make all of those hours of writing and rewriting and polishing and programming completely worth it.

When all is said and done, a writer of literature is not producing for the reviewers or publishers, we are producing our craft for the children. A buzz from the tiniest of bees is always sweeter than the sweetest honey to the soul.

The History of Books, Libraries, and Getting Kids to Write

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My final project for the COETAIL course in which I am currently enrolled consists of supporting a group of 4th graders as we attempt to create a digital book on the expansive topic of… The History of Books and Libraries. I work at an international school as the elementary division librarian, and the project began as a frustrated attempt to find readable and understandable material on the subject for my 3rd grade class as part of the library curriculum. I had one decent picture book to start with and had developed the curriculum from that point. After searching online for more kid-friendly information, I finally came to the conclusion that we would somehow have to create our own material. And that is why last year’s 3rd graders are now creating material that will be used by this year’s 3rd graders.

From an authentic need and an authentic audience comes an authentic use of technology.  The SAMR model helps to identify and analyze the uses of technology to determine whether technology is being used for its own sake or for accomplishing something original that technology finally makes possible.

Although academic instruction can be enhanced by the use of technology, the transformative use is the most valuable in pedagogy. The task which the 4th graders at our school are now tackling would not be possible without the use of technology.

Each student was given a subject within the span of the “History of Books and Libraries.” They were given a folder which contained a copy of one relevant page of a book on their subject  along with a few other resources. They began to work on the “who, when, where, what, why and how” or their topic and were shown how to search for additional information on the web relating to their topic.

Some of their sources were over their heads and a teacher or helper had to sit next to the student translating into age-appropriate vocabulary what their source material was trying to communicate. Then the student would write down what they understood from the material. A few students were tempted to copy the source material word-for-word into their own document, but were quickly found out when they could not explain the vocabulary words that they had typed. The content was explained and they rewrote their page in their own words. This was essential since students who were at their grade level or lower would be the audience for this book.

As the students researched more deeply and wrote in greater detail about their topic, they became more confident in their abilities. Merely learning that your first draft is rarely your best draft was worth the process as students self-edited, peer-edited and received many successive corrections back from the teachers. It was amazing to see how well the students persisted in their editing. They knew that it had to be polished and presentable as it would be published in the final book. They also understood that the content was more important than the form. They were not given the option of choosing their own font as this tends to sidetrack many for hours. They were not even given the option of finding graphics or illustrations for their page until their final text had been approved.

Students who finished editing the text of their page more quickly than others, were challenged to take their research and creation to the next level. Some wrote emails to experts on their subjects and some created models or paintings or pictures that would enhance their page in the book. A few are even creating movies to embed into their page.

One of the drawbacks of using iBooks Author was that the software is not designed to accommodate many creators or contributors at the same time. One person needs to compile the data; it is not a multi-user, magazine or newspaper publishing type of tool where copy editors and writers can all submit material in real time to a work in progress. Actually, my husband works for a company called Woodwing that sells just such a tool. It works very well and is used by Time magazine and other large companies. It has recently been adopted by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Mainichi Newspaper in Japan who used it first with their image-rich publication, Tap-i, which incorporates interactivity and embedded video into their weekly digital news magazine.

But for our purposes, the tech tools that we have chosen have served us well. We did run into some problems as the students attempted to drop their pages into my teacher Drop Box folder which has “Write-Only” capabilities and the folder did not show up. The tech department is fixing the link so that the next attempt will be successful. Students in 4th grade do not have their own email accounts so for some purposes, we had to use memory sticks to transfer data. The students could not access their student folders from home and so some could not work on their content at home. Many did not have Apple computers at home, so they had difficulty transferring some of the files. We are working around these issues, however, and the students are getting closer and closer to being ready to publish.

If this project is successful, we may make this publishing unit a regular fixture in the 4th grade curriculum. It gives the students a jump on the research and writing skills that they will need to tackle the more in-depth Independent Study Project, or ISP, that they all must deal with in 5th grade. As it is, they are getting lots of practice in editing, online research, proper image attribution and digital publishing. Many students will be embedding links into their pages that will take readers to museums, universities and other sites where further studies can undertaken. The students can’t wait to see where in the world their book may be downloaded.

 

Convolutions of Connections

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The connections that technology can weave are simply mind-boggling. On a personal scale, I can find old friends whom I have not contacted in years. On a global scale, I can discover new friends that bring fresh perspectives on the world. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, email, online discussion groups (like SCBWI), online communities (like DeviantArt), all bring a network of individuals with common interests within reach.

This is all a bit daunting and challenging to a true introvert. I must admit that I was a bit put off by all this connectivity at first, but I can see the value in it. As certain political situations worldwide can demonstrate, it is neither wise nor healthy to live in a bubble of isolation. Connections with a variety of contacts keep us honest, humble and human. (Democrats and Republicans… are you listening? China, with your “Great Firewall,” are you listening?)

So, connections are good, but they can also be convoluted and confusing. While it may be prudent to sort your connections carefully into personal, hobby, business and political categories, the lines invariably cross. We find valuable connections where we least expect them to be. I found the illustrator for my children’s book on Deviant Art. I have discovered famous authors who have connected with me on LinkedIn. By way of my Kidsermons website, have been contacted by a pastor in Norway who translated my content and included it in a children’s sermon book, called Annerledeskongen, which has been distributed to many of the churches in Norway.

And although my blog is rarely read by anyone who does not know me, every once in a while, I realize that even this is a connection that can turn up in places where I would least expect it. I recently came across a link to my “View from the Trees” blog by a person in Sweden (who is a friend of my illustrator, Therese Larsson. I have included the blurb below for those of you who can speak Swedish:

Hi Ruth,
Stefan Zackrisson commented on a status that you’re tagged in.
Stefan wrote: “Eftersom mina google-skills är a+ ,http://ruth.ingulsrud.net/blog/2012/10/13/distractions-or-enhancements-the-interactive-question/ , Verkar helt klart intressant Therese Larsson :)”

In relating all of this to teaching… we are undoubtedly instructing our students on the importance of making good connections; not just in academic instruction (text-to-self, etc.) but in personal relationships. We are teaching them to be interested and connected to the world around them, and if we build into our curriculum, the chance to make authentic and valuable connections, we equip them for dealing with the complex interconnected world that they are growing into.

Just as we tend to straighten up and project our best image when we realize that we are being observed, students also straighten up and put their best effort forward when they realize that they have an authentic audience.

When I told the 4th grade students in our school that they would be publishing a digital book that could be downloaded by any student in the world, the intensity of focus was palpable. Most students have not even complained about the many drafts and corrections that they have had to make to their writing as they prepare to truly publish their work to the world. They know that their product, a book on the”History of Books and Libraries” will be used as part of the curriculum to teach the 3rd graders as our school, but they also realize that anyone around the world will be able to read this book as well. Connections are important.

We will be using iBooks Author to construct our book and the students are each writing a page on various topics related to the the history of books and libraries. Students are tackling subjects like, “Hieroglyphics,” “the Great Library of Alexandria,” “Pictograms,” “the Printing Press,” and even “Cave Paintings” as they attempt to show the progress of literacy and books throughout the history of man. It is a big undertaking, but I have been amazed at what the students have come up with. Some are even making connections beyond the classroom, emailing librarians at the Harvard Library system and at the oldest free public library in the United States, the Peterborough Library.

Through their research, the students are even creating connections to the past and beginning to understand history better. They are discussing ideas about what the world would be like if certain writing systems or inventions had never come to light. They are realizing the value of innovation, progress and record-keeping as they attempt to see the progression of a very big concept over time. Thinking and education should be about making connections; activating dendrites and synapses in the brain. It appears that through the challenge of research and creation, these students are certainly learning to think!

Distractions or Enhancements? The Interactive Question

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What is a book? The concept of “book” is changing so fast, it’s hard to keep up with it all. There are so many options available now when designing a book, that it is almost mind-boggling. I would even go so far as to say that the options may begin to distract one from the original purpose in creating a book. This is a problem for the author as well as for the reader.

guardian.co.uk Photograph from Rex Features

An article published by the UK’s “Guardian” suggests that interactive digital books tend to distract children from the content and storyline of the book and make it harder for them to remember crucial details from the story. The headline of the article declares: “Enhanced eBooks Are Bad for Children.” The article then goes on to detail the results of a study done in the USA where parents, with their children, read a story together. Half of the group settled in with a print book and the other half with an interactive digital version of the story. The print book kids could recall more details and discuss the story much more readily than the digital book kids. The researchers concluded that while “print books were more advantageous for literacy building co-reading”, ebooks, and particularly enhanced ebooks, were better “for engaging children and prompting physical interaction”.

So an author has to consider the goal of any particular book before beginning to design it. Is the book created to promote physical interaction and initial interest or is it created to build literacy and present an engaging story? This is what I have been asking myself as I consider the digital options of my first illustrated children’s book. I began the project with an illustration that simply begged for a story. It was chosen as a “Deviation of the Day” and was simply titled…

“You!”

When I first saw the illustration on the Deviant Art website, the picture was so compelling that the story began to write itself in my head. And then it wouldn’t let me sleep until I had written it down.

So when designing the book, I knew that the detailed illustrations were a key factor of this story and they would be displayed beautifully on a retina-display iPad where the viewer could zoom in on the picture to see all of the creative, little details which the artist has tucked into every page. For example, there is a dragon hidden on almost every page of the book if you take the time to look carefully. And there are critters hiding in trees, in the grass and in wee hidey-holes, just waiting to be discovered. Because this particular artist, Therese Larsson, is very skilled at portraying light in her digital art, the back-lit iPad is an ideal platform for showing it off.

The story should always be the reason for a storybook. You write a book to tell a compelling story. Too many digital books that I have seen lately, seem to have been produced to distract a child or to provide a platform for playing games; they often lack an original story. So when thinking about how to design my digital book, I decided that I did not want to include animation or distracting games. I wanted to add things that would enhance the story. The read-aloud function will be included as the story uses a higher level vocabulary than is customary for a picture book. Some words may present an pronunciation challenge for younger readers and the read-aloud function can help with this. I certainly did not want to “dumb down” the text, especially not after the discussion I had with the 5th grade students at my international school when they realized that many modern authors are doing just that as they attempt to make their books more consumable to young readers who may not want a challenge. (The 5th graders were offended and went and checked out challenging books just to spite those authors.)

“Wily” and “plundering” may not be commonly used words, but they are delicious and poetic and deserve some airing out, and so they are staying in the book. But it does help to have a function that will read the words out loud so that “wily” does not become “willy,” (heaven forbid). I work with many students who are struggling to learn English as a second or even third language, and they are helped out a lot by being able to check out from our school library audio books and books with read-aloud CDs included in the back cover. Some of our EAL students check out the audio version of a novel when they check out the print novel so that they can hear the native pronunciation of the words while they are reading the text. I see read-aloud digital books as being very useful in the international school context where students may not have native language speakers at home.

In deciding what digital enhancements to include or not include in a book, the author has to think carefully about the purpose of the book. Will the book’s purpose be amplified or diluted by the choice of digital enhancements. This type of consideration applies to using technology in the classroom as well. A tool should help achieve one’s goal instead of becoming a distraction unto itself…. (one reason why I just cannot appreciate the design of certain pencils).

made-in-china.com

 

 

Digital Dystopia or Taming a “Lion” of Code

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In the physical world, you can eyeball a thing and observe its level of intricacy. Of course, microscopes reveal more intricacies than are apparent to the naked eye. In the digital world, if it looks simple, it is actually really complex. Of course, we want our digital tools to be user-friendly, clean and simple, but if we take a microscope to them and look at the coding behind the surface our utopia of effortless digital interaction become a tangled dystopia of code. Some geeks have an innate sense of direction. Others, like me, struggle with the syntax of embedded html. It has to be just right, or it simply does not work.

Here is an example from our COETAIL grading spreadsheet which we each have access to in our Google Docs:

At the top of my page it says: “Ruth’s COETAIL Grading.” Underneath are displayed columns A – E which list the Week, Blog Post Title, Date Posted, etc. In the past, I typed in my blog post title and then added the link string right into the cell making a clear but long and unwieldy entry. And then it was brought to my attention that the link string was not even clickable. If I had just dumped in the link string without adding the “Blog Post Title” then I would have been fine; the link would have worked. Adding the name of the title in the cell interrupted the function of a direct link.

So I began to try to figure out how to embed a link under the title of the blog post. I wanted just the title to show in the cell. When the instructor clicked on the title, it would automatically take her to the post. Not so easy. My resident geek found some advice on the subject here: Enter Links in a Google Spreadsheet . That was easy to do in this blog post because there is a link tool available. Not so with Google spreadsheets. You have to know the code…. and it looks like this:

=hyperlink(“http://ruth.ingulsrud.net/blog/2012/09/22/digital/”;”digital dystopia”)

There is one little hitch though, that my friendly “Enter Links in a Google Spreadsheet” page did not tell me about. You have to have “Normal” selected instead of “Plain Text.” (Those commands are found in the “More formats” pull-down menu which is hidden behind an icon that says, “123.” Why “123” should signify more formats is beyond me. So this little hyperlink trick did not work until the normal font was enabled…. and then…. TADAAAH! It worked. Looks simple on the surface; just the title of the blog post shows up. Below the surface lurks the coding which will not cooperate unless you say the exactly right thing in the exactly right format. Coding can be belligerent and cranky and very hairy.

But that is the least of my worries. I am trying to make a simple, illustrated digital children’s book that highlights its words as the embedded narrator speaks them aloud. Looks simple and obvious when it works, but underneath the calm surface is hours of coaxing the vicious code to behave. I may need a whip and a chair.

Honing the History iBook Project

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Sigh. Thinking about my final project and wondering how the heck it’s going to get done…

I need to bring myself from a valley of dull dread to pinnacle of sharp enthusiasm. Blogging my thoughts can serve as a whetstone for both attitude and ideas.

Writing a book in six weeks that encompasses the history of books and libraries sounds like an impossible task, right? My final CoETaIL project will be to produce an iBooks Author version of said book and I’d better get cracking or it will never be done in time. Oh, I won’t be doing it by myself. No, that would be inconceivable. How could one person manage such a far-reaching project? I will succeed with the help of a classroom of 4th graders! Ta-da! Isn’t that a brilliant strategy?

No, they have never used iBooks Author before, but that is a skill that, once mastered, will allow them to publish their own stories to the world. Our ES tech support person, Grace Y., will be assisting with this task. (What would I do without amazing Grace?)

We are spreading the monumental task around by assigning one part of the history to one student. Their task is to create one page for our book. To scaffold their task (and to move things along) I will provide lists of books, magazine articles and websites from which they can glean essential information. They will mock up their page in the “Pages” application, remembering to find, insert and attribute appropriate visuals. Because iBooks Author accepts input directly from Pages, this will simplify the construction of the digital book.

Challenges Thus Far:

1.  4th graders only have library time for half an hour per week.

2.  Library time for 4th graders was canceled this week for Pro-D days and is canceled next week because of a field trip.

3.  Some sections of the planned book have few resources in our library.

4.  iBooks Author needs to be installed on the student laptops.

Solutions or Plans:

1.  Add time available to the project by partnering with classroom teacher to incorporate iBook project into classroom writing time.

2. (See #1 solution.) Also use all of the library time to work on iBook and have students check out books during one of their recess times, before or after school.

3.  Allow use of web resources as long as the source is valid.

4.  Done. Our tech guy, Dusty Mack, (yes, he works with our Mac computers which are used so often they never do get dusty) has already installed iBooks Author on the laptops.

More honing to be done, I am sure, but at least I am ready to start.

Student-Created iBook About Books

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COETAIL Course 4 Final Project:

After checking with the 3rd grade teacher, I am cleared for revamping the 3rd grade library unit, “The History of Books and Libraries” for the 2012 – 2013 school year. I have designed tech-friendly unit that will create an end product which will be helpful as a teaching resource for not only our own school, but other schools as well.

The unit will incorporate several tools which we have explored in Course 4 of our CoETaIL cohort and will put into practice some of the things which we have learned so far in our pursuit towards a Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy. The end product will be a student-produced iBooks Author textbook that will be offered for free through our website or given away through the iTunes bookstore.

ISTE NETS for Students:

In designing this unit for our 3rd graders, here are the standards that I hope to address:

ISTE NETS
Creativity and Innovation
 1 Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology. Students:
a.apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes.b.create original works as a means of personal or group expression.
Communication and Collaboration
 2 Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. Students:
a.interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media.b.communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats.

d.

contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems.
Research and Information Fluency
3 Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information. Students:
a.plan strategies to guide inquiry.b.locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media.

c.

evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks.

d.

process data and report results.
Digital Citizenship
5 Students understand human, cultural, and societal issues related to technology and practice legal and ethical behavior. Students:
a.advocate and practice safe, legal, and responsible use of information and technology.b.exhibit a positive attitude toward using technology that supports collaboration, learning, and productivity.
Technology Operations and Concepts
6 Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations. Students:
a.understand and use technology systems.b.select and use applications effectively and productively.

The unit will begin with the use of the “Flipped Classroom” model…

Flipped Classroom:

Students will work in pairs to study in depth one section of the “History of Books and Libraries” unit. As homework, all students will be required to watch an overview video and will answer questions related to the content while they watch. Students will be able to replay the video or pause it long enough to record their answers. This will be especially helpful to the ELL students who sometimes have trouble understanding all of the content the first time through.

Possible Videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vg-9kOixAbQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fM7OZUWUC40

As I looked for resources before teaching the books unit this year, I found that there really wasn’t a lot out there geared to the elementary age level. What I really needed was an interactive textbook that a 3rd grade student could understand. The resource did not yet exist, so it would have to be created. The need for resources is part of the impetus behind this project.

 Technology Integration:

As technology should be integrated when and where it is most applicable and relevant, creating a digital book about the evolution of books themselves seems an appropriate application. The iBooks Author tool is designed to be easy to use and intuitive. In researching this option, I have experimented with creating some books of my own, but I was very impressed by one example of a student-produced book on the flora and fauna of Florida that I recently came across. I downloaded the book and will use it with my class to show what can be done with this book-authoring tool. Creatures, Plants and More! by Andrea Santilli and her 7th grade students is available for free download at the iTunes store. Their project was recently highlighted in an article for MacLife.

As you can see, this is a chance for reaching the Transformation level of the SAMR model as the task of creating an eBook allows the students to do something previously inconceivable.

I can’t wait to see what the students create and hear about all that they learn through the process of creation.

Is It PC to Police a PC?

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Is it PC to police a student’s PC? And even if it’s not politically correct, is it still necessary?No one wants to be a killjoy, obviously, but some of us are tasked with the unpleasant job of making sure that students do not misuse the ubiquitous tech tools that have infiltrated our schools with their amazing socially connective abilities. In other words, we have to make sure that kids are not texting, skyping, iChatting, messaging, Facebooking and Tweeting each other when they are supposed to be doing schoolwork or homework or some other kind of work that has nothing to do with talking to your neighbor. This role as overseer and PC police is the least favorite part of my job. To misquote the beloved Kermit the Frog, “It’s not easy being mean.”

I work in the library and the library is full of computers and full of students who bring various other electronic devices into the library with them. Part of my job is to monitor computer use and make sure that students are using their time wisely.  So, if someone is playing a video game, or chatting on Facebook, or watching the latest YouTube sensation, it is my job to redirect them… or if they have been “redirected” on previous occasions, simply take away their distracting device or revoke the privilege of studying in the library. Bummer of a job, but someone has to do it.

Of course, determining whether or not a student is on or off-task is becoming more difficult. At times, a student is searching for an image on Facebook to use in a multi-media presentation for Social Studies. Some students are improving their typing speed or math skills through the use of a fast-paced video game. Students collaborate with each other on many projects throughout the year and the content of text-messages during the school day is often precisely on-topic and quick succinct communication is helping the student group complete their project on time.

Most students know the rules and follow them. The biggest deterrent from veering away from work mode seems to be library layout. Most of the computer screens can be easily seen from the circulation desk where the library staff is usually working. The one table that is out of our line of sight is off limits to students who are using laptops. And students who are using laptops at the tables are aware that librarians and other teachers are often walking around, checking on student work.

One can usually tell when a student is off-task by observing body language, and by observing the students who are sitting next to them. It is hard to avoid looking at another student’s computer when a new music video begins to play. It is easy to ignore that same computer when a Keynote presentation is slowly taking shape.

But policing the personal computers is not the ultimate solution. Students eventually have to take responsibility for their own use of time and their resultant success or failure in school. They do need to understand that their own habits will help them or hurt them in the end.

There has been some talk about the benefits of “Tech Breaks” in class, where students are allowed a few minutes during class to check Facebook and messages before they all get back to the task of learning. I explained the concept to my 9th grade daughter and asked her what she thought of it. “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she said. “It pulls your focus away from class and is distracting. Besides, anytime that you are checking Facebook during school, you are doing so with a nervous attitude. I would rather wait till after school when I can really relax and enjoy messaging with my friends. I like letting the tension build throughout the day and then when the school day is over, you can see if you’ve got any notes or comments from friends. It’s more fun that way.”

I think that providing students with tools to manage their time and distractions and letting them design their own system is probably the most effective way to really manage in-school electronic device use. If a student wants to get a message to a peer, they will find a way to do it. Students do need to understand and experience the consequences of their choices, but they should also be offered guidance to improve their use of time. Perhaps a tech-night highlighting tools for workload and study time management would be in order.

Here are just a few examples of available tools:

Study Buddy App  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/study-buddy/id328245389?mt=8

iProcrastinate App  http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iprocrastinate/id413662017?mt=12

SelfControl (Free App)  http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/31289/selfcontrol

Omniwriter (simplifies desktop; removes distractions) http://www.ommwriter.com/

Pomodori (study timer; project management)  http://reborg.github.com/pomodori/

ManicTime (tracks time spent on which sites and applications)  http://www.manictime.com/

With students effectively managing their own digital device use, I could use my time for better things, like helping with research skills and incorporating eBooks into our library check-out system.

Classroom Outside the Box

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“The classroom is obsolete,” proclaims futurist architect Prakash Nair in a recent article about how modern schools should be redesigned. The world today is very different from the Industrial Revolution era when many of our classrooms today were designed.

www.designshare.com

Thinking back over my most memorable and content-rich learning experiences, most of them took place outside of the physical classroom during well-scaffolded field trips and all of them were significant because I was completely invested in the learning activity. Although I spent most of my time in within the four walls of a physical classroom, it seems that most of the learning occurred elsewhere.

Prakash Nair is an architect who designs environmentally-friendly learning spaces. His projects are all over the world, with several of them housing thriving learning communities near the city where I grew up in Minnesota. My family built a house near a forest of a hundred acres or so, land that had been set aside as a nature preserve by its owner, railroad magnate, James J. Hill. Portions of this preserve have since been sold off by his grandchildren, but while I was growing up, the forest was my classroom. I learned about the indigenous plants, animals, insects and biomes as I wandered daily though the woods with my Golden Retriever, Cinnamon, by my side. I always thought that a school that embraced the out-of-doors would be an ideal learning space.

 

egreenstore.com


So I was intrigued to see that Nair had designed the “School of Environmental Studies” next door to the Minnesota Zoo where 11th and 12th grade students interact often with their natural surroundings and through their project-based learning, make positive and constructive contributions to the environment. This all adds up to a compelling motivation to move back to Minnesota so that our daughter might be able to attend this school when she reaches 11th grade.

Another example of a school that does not box its student in is the Australian Science and Mathematics School where students design their own practicals and learn mathematics and science as they explore real concepts and design their own experiments often in conjunction with University scientists.

Photo by RiAus RiAus @ the Science Exchange

These schools have student motivation and interest at the heart of their design and function. They take seriously the fact that real learning is student-motivated and tends to extend out into the post-secondary education world of life-work.

The Horizon Report, which attempts to summarize where technology is taking the world of education also confirms the value of self-motivated learning.

As one of the “mega-trends” in the report states:

  • There is a rise in informal learning as individual needs are redefining schools, universities, and training. Traditional authority is increasingly being challenged, not only politically and socially, but also in academia — and worldwide. As a result, credibility, validity, and control are all notions that are no longer givens when so much learning takes place outside school systems.

So an educational system that provides competent resources and opportunity for collaborative, student-driven learning is becoming more and more valuable in our well-connected, resource and information-rich world.

It seems as if the teacher is taking on a role as more of a guide and mentor to help students find their own areas of interest and expertise. As knowledge increases exponentially, it seems that there is a value in students being able to hone in early on their intended area of expertise. The quicker they master the foundational knowledge of one subject, the faster they can build on that previous knowledge and take it even further.

Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine

Letting our students out of the box of the traditional school structure is frightening for some who feel a need to control most aspects of a student’s learning. But students do not learn best when knowledge is forced upon them. They learn best and most authentically when the learning is something that they chase after and discover for themselves. The resources for student-driven learning are now abundant and growing. Schools can now find their worth in how well they bring the tools and learning opportunities to their students and how well they ready them for the rigors of real-world work and innovative thinking.

Good Question

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If a student in the modern classroom asks a brilliant question related to the topic being studied, do they receive credit for positing that question?

From: uniqueteachingresources.com

Probably not. Most teachers are looking for answers, and they are often looking for the specific answer that they have in mind.

My husband recalls that when he was a boy, when he got home from school, his father would not ask, “What did you learn in school today?” Instead he would ask, “Did you ask any good questions?” I guess he was ahead of his time.

The authors of “A New Culture of Learning,” Douglas Thomas and John Seely, feel that the current state of education has it backwards. They believe that questions should carry more weight than answers. “We feel the leaders of the 21st century are going to be the ones who can ask the best questions and drive things forward. The kinds of questions we are talking about lead to outcomes and those also provide a kind of verification as to whether the questions are good ones or not.” (from Forbes.com)

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True learning comes out of an intense motivation to discover something or to unravel a problem. If there is no burning question or problem to begin with, then motivation can be lukewarm at best. Many of the new teaching methods build on the motivation kindled by starting with the problem, the challenge of a game or beginning the class with the homework or lab instead of the lecture.

I know from experience that my students are more engaged with a lesson when I announce that “today is a test day!” because they know that almost all of my tests involve a game of some kind. I do have the luxury of not having to grade my library students, but they also know that if they perform well during the test, there may be a reward at the end. The students have learned that I reward cooperation more than competition. In fact, during the last “test” of whether or not students could find a book from a specific subject area in the Dewey-organized shelves, I saw students on opposing teams helping each other out on several occasions. The whole class got gummy bears for being so “flexible” and sweet to each other.Portrait by Michal Fanta; michalfanta.com

Teachers are increasingly looking at games as a way to engage and motivate their learners. I favor active, interactive games during library class, but I can see the value of also occasionally using video game-type activities to motivate students to learn. The “games” that many teachers are talking about seem to be video-centric with each person meeting challenges presented by the computer software as it detects their level. The computer moves each user into their ZPD, their zone of proximal development. “With the best games, the player is challenged at exactly the right level and in the right way to keep the player playing. Maybe the question we need to ask is what about games causes youth to engage that our traditional approach to education lacks,” says Brian Alspach, Executive Vice President of E-Line Media, an educational games publisher well known for their game Gamestar Mechanic.”

 

Users, however,  do not usually have to collaborate with users not in their ability range, nor do they have to negotiate many of the social and interactive aspects of playing a face-to-face board game. The importance of providing opportunities for collaboration in the classroom cannot be stressed enough. Students can always play educational video games in the isolation of their homes, but the community provided by a classroom should always be used to its fullest potential.

This is why I think the “Flipped Classroom”  holds so much promise, especially for certain subject areas that require a basic knowledge of key concepts before problems and experiments can be tackled. I know that my own 9th grader would greatly benefit from flipped math and science classrooms. The lecture portion of a class often goes too quickly for her to retain all of the important points, and there is no replay function. The classroom setting is full of distractions and so the teacher does not always receive the full attention needed in order to grasp the complex explanations. Many students do much better in class when they are able to watch the lecture at home and then arrive at class full of questions, ready to do their homework in the presence of collaborating fellow students and a teacher who is now freed from having to lecture from the front of the room for the entire hour. Instead the teacher can circulate helping students one-on-one and in small groups with the important questions that are now being asked.orton-gillingham-tutors.com

There is somewhat of a problem applying the flipped model to my library classes, however, as library time is less of a lecture and more of a real-time interaction with story reactions and connections. During the read alouds and content lessons, there are many ad-libbing opportunities with puppets, and a constant adjustment of reading style and material to the audience present. Library time is, in part, performance and play. Some lessons can use the flipped model (for example, research skills) but others must maintain their life and liveliness.

Bringing the essential nature of play back into the classroom is a great idea. In some classrooms, of course, play never left in the first place, but in others, the spark and motivation that should always accompany learning needs to be re-introduced. Although every student needs to mature throughout the school years, too often the valuable components of the child spirit are squeezed out before a student emerges into the adult work world, just when they need the ability to be flexible, to create and to imagine.

The director of the current M.I.T. Media Lab explains, “In this new world, not only must we behave more like children, we also must teach the next generation to retain those attributes that will allow them to be world-changing, innovative adults who will help us reinvent the future.” – Joichi Ito

So here is a question for you… How can we ensure that students do not lose the best part of their childlike approach to the world while making sure that they are mature enough to meet all of its challenges? Although the word, “neoteny” usually refers to the retention of childlike physical characteristics, we seem to need a retention of some childlike mental attributes into adulthood, such as idealism, experimentation and wonder. Perhaps I’ve found a working name for my new school: The Neoteny Academy.