From Blogs to Wikis

For several years now, my math students have written in blogs. They've done some pretty amazing work on them. This year I decided to switch over to a classroom wiki. My kids are loving it! They did some pretty great work last week on an assignment that required them to create their own pages on one of the lessons from the chapter we are currently studying. Check the link below to see their work. They were able to find some awesome websites and quite a few of them posted some videos from YouTube and TeacherTube. They did grab some images from other sites and did not cite them. At this point, I just want them to be able to locate and insert the images. In the future, they will be required to cite everything.

As the year goes on, I'd like to continue to increase the complexity of their assignments on the wiki. The next one will require them to create a webpage on π. Kids are fascinated by this amazing number and I want to take advantage of that enthusiasm. But instead of individual webpages, I'll require them to construct the pages collaboratively--outside of school! I figure that wikis are meant to be collaborative spaces that are created asynchronously, so why not see if my students can work as a team while not actually working together in person! I'm very interested to see how it turns out.

Here's the link to the wiki pages. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see links to student work.


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Epistemic Games Movie

Summer reading is in full swing. I've just started How Computer Games Help Children Learn by David Williamson Shaffer. As with all the books I read, I also read the accompanying blog. A couple weeks ago they posted a video about epistemic games. I thought I'd publish it here.

A Field Trip to Stearns Woods

Inspired by my reading of the book Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv, one of my goals this school year was to take my students on a field trip to Stearns Woods, a local forest within walking distance of my school. My hope was that this field trip would have outcomes way beyond helping my kids get better test scores; this was field trip I wanted to take because I believe that school should consist of more than preparing our students for standardized tests. Last summer I introduced my own kids to a forest near my house. After witnessing the enjoyment they got out of running down the trails and playing in the creek, I was sold on the ideas that Louv presented in his book. I wanted to my students to have these experiences also. So the outcome I was hoping for was that this field trip would expose them to a natural area close to their homes and perhaps they would be motivated to visit it again.


As I started planning our trip, I realized that it was an opportunity for much more than a nice morning or afternoon wandering around the woods. I could develop a major project, one that would incorporate several forms of digital media, based on our trip to the woods. I decided to divide the kids into six groups and on the day of the trip armed each group with a digital camera. With the cameras they would take photos of various plants, trees, animals tracks, and fungi, each one evidence of the biodiversity of the woods. They would then use these photos in iMovie to make a slideshow (complete with vocals, music, titles, etc.) that explained the importance of the woods for the city of Wyoming.


As expected, my students were extremely excited about using iMovie. Before taking the trip, I checked out the computer lab for a couple days so that they could get some practice with it before creating their actual slideshows. With me giving simple directions here and there, they quickly learned how to use the software and were putting together slide shows in no time. It didn't take long for them to begin asking if they could incorporate music. I knew that they would be able to import music from CD's, but it was at this point that I seized another opportunity--to have my kids check out the royalty free music that was hanging out on the Internet, free and easy-to-get. Moreover, they could learn about the importance of attributing the music to its author.

I've taken a look at some of the completed slideshows (but have yet to grade them), and I have to say that they need a little work. But this was my first iMovie project and for most of them theirs too. Next year I'll go back to the drawing board and make the necessary adjustments so that the final products show significant improvement. Anyway, isn't the process is almost more important than the final product?


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"Look for the Second Right Answer." Roger von Oech

A Framework for 21st Century Instruction

The past few weeks have been extremely busy for me. I've had several projects that I've been working on for my classes and one HUGE project that I've been working on outside of school. This project has required a considerable amount of my time as I've been doing quite a bit of research and writing. The topic of the writing is teaching in the 21st Century. Through all of the work I've developed a framework for what I think are the most important elements of teaching in the present day. So I'm putting it out here on the blog to see if I can get some feedback. Here's an explanation of the different elements:

• Standards - As long as our education system is based on NCLB, every classroom activity must be based on state or national standards. Standards are not so bad in my opinion--they give me direction and eliminate any mystery about what it is I am supposed to teach.
  
• Engagement - Teachers then must integrate into the activity ways to authentically engage students so that learning can take place beyond just a surface level. More often than not, this means meeting basic internal needs. Among these are the desire for success, belonging, and originality.
  
• Assessment - Assessment is used for more than gauging student learning. By making students aware of the criteria for success, we can motivate them and support their learning. In other words, it’s not so much about how to assess (though I will talk about that), but more about how you can use assessment to engage students, support the growth of 21st Century skills, and meet state standards.
• Instruction - To develop critical skills for future success, teachers must use teaching approaches that require active engagement on the parts of students—inquiry-based and project-based teaching. It is of paramount importance that this instruction involve the use of technology.
  

There is so much more to each of these that I will try to write about in the weeks ahead. I've been getting some good comments here so let me know what you think.

Technorati Tags: 21st Century Skills, education, teachers

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PVC Instruments

What should learning look like in the 21st Century? I have endeavored to answer this question this school year by turning my classroom into a laboratory to test the ideas that I have read about and listened to over the past year. Build Your Own Instrument: Blue Man Group Style, a culminating project for a unit on sound, was my latest attempt to define my concept of learning in the 21st Century.

This project required my students to create an instrument out of PVC pipes, the same sort of pipes that you'll find in your house's plumbing. I was inspired by the Blue Man Group, a "rock group" that most of my kids are familiar with and a few have seen live. This trio can make pretty amazing music from instruments constructed with PVC. I knew that once my students had seen them perform (check out this video from YouTube), they would be eager to build their own instruments. And just as I thought, my students tackled the project with a gusto from the design stage through construction.

So what how do I define 21st Century learning? Here are the competencies that I feel the project included/developed:

• Collaboration - My students worked cooperatively in groups of 3 - 5 on this project.
• Creativity/Innovation - Sir Ken Robinson has defined creativity as "the process of having original ideas that have value." I'm not sure of the value of these instruments yet, but it was obvious from the multitude of different designs that each one was truly original.
  
• Problem-Solving/Critical Thinking - It was common for a group to put their finished design together, only to find out that their design was flawed. One group found that they need would need more than screws and pipe strap to hold their instrument together and had to find a new way to do it. Students tinkered with their designs throughout the construction phase.
  
• Right-Brain Competencies (see Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind):
• Play - The instruments that the BMG play are of the percussion variety. I knew that this type of instrument would appeal to my kids; what kid doesn't like to bang on things. Aren't we always telling our boys to stop using their pencils as drums? The project was meant to act as an assessment, but I purposely planned an activity that would make it an enjoyable one.
• Design - No need to elaborate.
  
• Symphony - Students created instruments that had a minimum of three notes. They accomplished this by using either a slide or changing the length of different pipes (see photo above). This required them to synthesize what they had learned about sound, particularly frequency and pitch.

So where is the technology? It permeates the project, but I can't say that what I or my students did with it was real innovative. Here's a list of the technology that was used:

• Google Video - To get the video of the BMG to spark interest.
• Think.com - I linked to Home Depot and another site so that students could create their budgets.
  
• Digital Cameras - each group took photos of their instruments throughout the construction phase.
  
• Microsoft Word - Students typed up the project summaries using this. They also inserted photos into their documents.
  
• Wireless Laptop Lab - Students completed the work on Apple computers.

The project has me thinking though--is this really learning for the 21st Century? Before 21st Century skills were invented, I (and many other teachers) had my students creating products in groups using technology. Don't most teachers make an effort to develop these abilities in their students through their teaching?


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A Whole New Classroom: Bringing Right Brain Aptitudes to the Classroom

One of the most influential books I have read since becoming an educator is A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. In fact, I have to admit that the books that influence my teaching the most are books that are not really for teachers at all; rather they are books targeted to the business crowd. With so many changes taking place in the world today, I feel that it is more important to know more about the world in which my students will work than to learn about yet another teaching strategy or technique to get more kids to pass a test.

What I like so much about Pink's book is that it not only describes the present and future world, but it also explains what skills workers will need to prosper in it. Pink's hypothesis is that they will need to develop right brain skills--design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning--to be successful.

What I'd like to do in this space is to explain how I have tried--knowingly and unknowingly--to cultivate these aptitudes in my classroom and what my efforts will be to do so this school year. One of my favorite right-brain skills to work on is design. Being a science teacher, it's easy for me to end most of my units with a project-based assessment--an assignment that requires my students to create an artifact that displays their knowledge of concepts learned in the unit. Most often this takes the form of a gadget. For instance, this past school year I had my students use their knowledge of open and closed circuits to create electric gadgets. Their task was to make the gadget work by creatively finding a way to complete a circuit to perform some kind of task. Batteries were the only power source they were allowed to use. With a little direction from me, and multiple examples from a book called Electric Mischief: Battery Powered Gadgets Kids Can Build by Alan Bartholomew, my students built incredible creations--cars, dice spinners, stop lights--that not only displayed their knowledge, but also often required a great deal of problem-solving and further learning to complete.

This project also required students to use the right-brain skills of symphony (combine their knowledge to form new product), and, I'm guessing, play (no test to assess their knowledge, but a fun project). I have planned similar projects for the coming school year. The one I'm most excited about is the Blue Man Group project--an assignment I will use to assess student learning of the properties of sound. I'm always looking for classes to collaborate with...


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Wow!

I read the following from the 21st Century Collaborative blog. It discusses the thoughts of Ken Kay, president of the Partnership of 21st Century Skills:

"...the amount of information is doubling every 24 months and that by 2020 the amount of information will double in every 72 days. What this means is content memorization will simply not work anymore. It is currently impossible; especially at the rate knowledge is changing, to master it all. And even if you did, the content that you learn in your freshman year of college would be outdated by the time you graduate. Literacy in the 21st Century is not based on do you know it- rather, can you find it, analyze it, adapt it, and synthesize it? John Tao says as we move out of the information age into this new era of creativity an individual’s value will not be based on what he knows, but what he can create."

Wow...does this resonate with me! When reading it, I immediately thought of:

• The first question on the Social Studies Ohio Achievement Test, which asked who Garret Morgan was. To prove how trivial this knowledge is, type this man's name into Google and you'll know the answer in less than a second. How cool would it be if students were allowed to have a laptop on their desks during the test that they could use to search for basic knowledge like this. Instead of assessing the most basic of knowledge, the question would then actually assess something useful, like information literacy.
  
• Daniel Pink's book, A Whole New Mind. You really need to read this book if you haven't yet.
  

Reading this stuff about 21st Century Skills gets me fired up for next school year. I have so many collaborative projects planned that I can barely wait to start them!


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Learning in the 21st Century

I've been reading quite a bit about the type of skills that our kids are going to need to succeed in the 21st Century and I find myself particularly interested in one of them, self-directed learning. Steve over at Teach42 had a post the other day called Book Learning or DIY Education that got me thinking about it even more. In his post, he states :

Let’s face it, at the end of the day our current testing system tells us precious little about how ready students really are going to be for life beyond the school building. And there’s so much that students learn in schools that just doesn’t get tested. What grade did each of you get in “Ability to find new solutions to unexpected problems?” I don’t remember that being on my school’s report cards.

What I have realized lately is that my state test only assesses content knowledge. So that is the only thing that most teachers teach--content. What it does not assess is critical thinking skills, innovation and creativity, collaboration skills, and problem-solving ability. So, guess what, in most classrooms these skills don't get taught. This runs counter to the thoughts of corporate leaders, authors, and organizations focused on infusing 21st century skills into the classroom.

Unfortunately, preparing for the state test often leads to a traditional, teacher-centered approach. Kids learn that their teachers are the source of knowledge instead of becoming self-directed learners--learners who see themselves as active participants in the creation of their own knowledge.

In preparing for a presentation that I gave this past Tuesday, I reflected on the work my kids have done this year, researched the possibilities of Web 2.0, and found other examples of best practices with the Read/Write Web. What I discovered is how well a project-based approach centered around technology helps develop the skill of self-directed learning. In creating a multimedia blog entry or wiki page, students are forced to look for resources that best serve their needs. By linking to another page, they must make sure that the page has accurate information that, once again, supports their needs. All of this helps them develop critical skills that will stay with them long after they have forgotten the content.



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Self-Directed Learning: A Perfect Example

So on the same day that I post about self-directed learning I come across an article in the Christian Science Monitor called In Science Class, It is Rocket Science. It's about a science class in Texas that works the entire year preparing launch several self-made rockets. So you're saying you've seen this before and probably have done it in your class. But these rockets are different--they are launched to the edge of space!

Read the article, it's a perfect example of how to develop self-directed learning.

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