The Assignment

Inspired to make the lesson less teacher-driven, I pulled together a set of technology related links(including a link to Steve Dembo’s blog), had students self form groups, and then each group had a short time to evaluate their site and share their evaluation with the class.  We then spun out our own understanding of ways to evaluate sites.

Much too often, we assume students have digital skills that they lack.  Even knowing that, however, I was quite surprised  at the problems our students encountered on websites.  Confronted with so many styles and types of sites (as I knew they would run across on this topic), they seemed somewhat befuddled about identifying the different types of sources they encountered.

It was both an interesting lesson for me in what our supposed “digital” students “need to know” about working with websites, and how they process information when viewing a site.

Areas of Difficulty

One of the most interesting aspects of working with them on this was that noticing how students approached sites.   When confronted with blogs, particularly, they seemed befuddled by how to handle the mixture of fact/opinion and they had trouble wading through some of the gadgets and advertising on sites that many of us who blog are quite accustomed to.  They had trouble tuning out the “noise” so to speak.

They had trouble figuring how how to determine authority of the blogger, as well.    Some students were fairly savvy about cross referencing when they ran across hoax sites, but it didn’t occur to any of them to do that to identify a bloggers’ expertise.  We also discussed the concept of ‘expert opinion’ versus ‘opinion’, as students’ inclination was to “toss out” anything involving opinions.

They were pretty dismissive about blogs as legitimate sources for information for research, interestingly, so we spent time talking about the role of blogs as “lead ins” to other sources and the power of following links.

Another area where students had difficulty was in dealing with websites for organizations/foundations.  If the “mission” wasn’t clear, students accepted them as websites at face value but weren’t quite sure what they were dealing with.  (Only one class suggested using the domain .org to identify the type of site.)

Even when they discovered a site’s  “about” page, many of the students still had trouble sorting out what the mission of the foundation was.   This seems a particularly critical ability for students to have as they navigate through their future–with so many think tanks and advocacy groups that students don’t know, it seems very critical to help them be more savvy about identifying them as such so they can be more aware of bias.

Findings

Things the students were fairly proficient at?   They were fairly good at   identifying bias in general.  They were good at identifying opinions.   They were good at spotting ‘flimsy’ or informal poll sites.   They were extremely critical of spelling/grammar and “teenspeak” on sites in terms of using them for research.  And they were pretty proficient at identifying the hoax site as well.  (as Tapscott notes in Grown Up Digital, they did seem to be more “skeptical” consumers in some respects).

As a blogger,this lesson made it clear to me that  as bloggers we could do a good deal to make our sites clear and user friendly. (Same for our library websites).  I presume that teachers new to reading blogs run into the same sorts of problems I was seeing in students, who weren’t dealing well with clutter or multiple focii (think Boing Boing).

It also became clear to me that we need to do a better job teaching students to  use  the “about” features on websites.    Though students were clearly reluctant to spend a lot of time evaluating sites(as one student boldly pointed out), knowing how to access the “about” information is a quick way to check a website and get a sense of credibility, and it’s a simple thing to teach students to do.

This lesson also worked well because students were already engaged in a research process, so it was in context with what they were already doing.

And it provided an excellent segue into talking about databases and how because of the consistency of database formats, they may be somewhat easier to evaluate and use.

Obviously students (or any of us) aren’t going to spend that much time evaluating each website we use.  But when we help students articulate and verbalize their thinking processes, it raises their awareness.   And it was a valuable experience for their teachers and I to see their strengths and weaknesses so we can better scaffold them as they move through the rest of their research.

And I don’t mean this in a ‘hokey-I’m a librarian’  way, but too often educators do make assumptions about students’ digital generation skills on the web that just aren’t an accurate reflection of what they know.   We have to remember that whether students are dealing with printed texts or websites, they have the same needs for scaffolding.

Flickr photo credit :   flickr users “coccu” and “xurble”

This morning, someone on Twitter reminded me of a blog post I wrote a long time ago, “How Long Does it Have to be?” about how students focused on the length of their research papers because they aren’t really engaged in their topics.

As I was thinking about that, Christian Long twittered out the link to a fabulous post by Chris Lehmann about the connection between caring and inquiry.

And somehow those two thoughts combined together for a realization of my own.

Not only do students often not care too much about the topic they are writing about, sometimes we don’t really care what they are saying either. That may sound like heresy, but once you’ve read 40 papers on gun control, the topic begins to pale unless someone has something new to say.   Like our students, we are dutifully participating in the process because research has to be “taught” and the papers have to be done.

I know, I was a teacher.  And I know sometimes my students “learned to care” about the topic they were researching.   But what got missed, what I missed, was the opportunity to learn all my students did know.   We had a prime opportunity to learn from one another as part of the inquiry/research process, but did we?

Which leads me to Chris’s post about his leadership conversation at Educon:

We were talking about modeling these values as leaders and the idea that teachers need to model inquiry for students as well and Ben Wilkoff asked a great question. He said (and I’m paraphrasing,) “I’m concerned that I don’t know how elementary teachers model their own inquiry in their classroom? After all, there are very few times when they really don’t know the answer.”

And I answered, “There’s one question that we always don’t know the answer to — ‘What do you think?’”

And it hit me yet again that too often our research “assignments” are not really asking students what they think.  And that’s why their papers end up being not very interesting (either to themselves or to us).

But Chris challenges us to do something differently, because, as he says:

Caring about our students is about listening to them. About learning about them — from them. It is, as I’ve written before, about understanding that if we hope to be a transformative figure in their lives, we must be willing to be transformed ourselves.

And that starts with a question — “What do you think?” and then listening, fully and deeply, to their answer. That is the ethic of care made manifest in the inquiry process.

What if our research assignments really asked students to tell us what they really think about topics they really care about?

When we do, students “manifest the care’ that Chris mentions.  They approach the assignment with a real sense of inquiry–curious about their own ideas and curious to learn more about a subject from others.    And when students manifest that care, and when they are researching and writing about something meaningful to them, then we become more than dutiful readers or teachers grading assignments, we become learners who care.   We learn about what our students are interested in.  We want to listen because what they are writing about is theirs, and unique.

We are able to listen to them more fully and deeply.

And when we ask them to write about what really matters, then they have not missed the opportunity to know themselves better.  And we as educators have not missed the amazing opportunity that lies in knowing each of them.

P.s:  Listen to the power of another educator who learned from really listening to his student–another great post that was twittered by Jason Kern this morning.

Today, by sharing his students at Arapahoe High School in Colorado, Karl Fisch gave us just that opportunity–to peer into a classroom and see networked, scaffolded, engaged students at their best.  

For weeks, students in several English classes at Arapahoe have been reading Daniel Pink’s book, Whole New Mind, and have been discussing it via live-blogging sessions, using an inner/outer circle discussion method.   (The inner circle discusses, the outer circle blogs their reflections on the discussion).  In the culminating event today, the students got to videoconference via Skype with the author, Daniel Pink, directly.

I was able to participate in one of the live blog discussions a few weeks ago, and it was fascinating to see as some of the students created meaning for themselves as we talked on the blog about the book.   They helped one another find understanding, work out details they didn’t understand, and it deepened my own understanding of the chapter as well.

Today those of us watching the videoconference via Ustream  with the students could see the fruition of this method in the classroom.  The students interviewing Daniel Pink were ninth graders, yet were having a detailed and in depth discussion with him about the book.   You could see that after having discussed it so much in the live blogging and in their classrooms, that they felt ownership of it.  And it was also clear that they have been in an inquiry-based, student-centered classroom because they felt really empowered to ask questions and even to challenge some of the things that Daniel Pink said.

Meanwhile, as viewers, we were able to participate with students in the room who were liveblogging the event, via CoverItLive, and have discussions with them about their reactions to the conversation in the room.   Again, students were asking questions, making comments, probing, and clearly were entirely engaged in what was going on.  The chat was flying by almost faster than we could read.

At own my campus, a group of us were gathered around one “unfiltered” computer in the library(since Ustream is blocked on our campus) and watching the video conference mesmerized.  (I wish I had thought to take a picture of that!) And every teacher who walked into the library came over and watched for awhile, then asked, When can I do that?   A student aide sat and watched with us and responded to the discussion here and there as well, and watched the entire time.

Karl Fisch, Anne Smith, Maura Moritz and the other teachers involved didn’t just create a unique and powerful learning experience for their students.  They allowed educators all over the world to ask their colleagues, “When can we do that?”   They set an example for administrators, IT departments, teachers, librarians, and students all over the world.

Since the event ended, I’ve seen countless comments on twitter or via emails on our own campus from teachers eager to try something similar, eager to engage their students this way, and countless comments about people who shared what Arapahoe did with their own principals, administrators and teachers.

When we share what we are doing beyond the walls of our classrooms, we are inspiring countless others to rethink their practices or to take a leap of faith.   When Karl Fisch posted their plans today, he wasn’t entirely sure all the technology pieces would cooperate, and his focus was first on his own campus.  But his generosity in sharing has created opportunities for teachers many times over.

That’s what happens when your classroom is heard ’round the world.  

People listen, learn and grow.

Thanks, Karl and all the teachers at Arapahoe for including us.

(and thanks to Daniel Pink, as well!)

image credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/74196805@N00/754581749

 His sister shared this photo with one of our students as part of a project our junior English AP students are doing, preparing brief video memorials for soldiers whose names appear on the Vietnam Wall.

We used to do this project on posterboard.  Last year, we decided to move it to the web, so that it would truly be more of a shared project that families and other veterans could view or respond to.

We have received so many moving letters from Veterans and family members with whom our students have been in contact, more moving and personal than I could have imagined.   Letters like this one from Rick Lewis–

“One of my Vietnam buddies . . . has contacted me and asked me to provide some information for this project. His exact words to me were, ‘Rick, you are getting your wish. Sarge will be remembered long after we are gone.’”

He wrote us about his lifelong wish that his best friend would be memorialized somehow:

“Your school is about to do something that none of us thought would ever happen. Our beloved leader will be known to many in a time that others have been forgotten. You truly are paying a tribute to one of the finest men that ever lived.”

Imagine your students receiving a letter like that. 

When I think of recent debates about the value of technology in schools, I think of what, really unwittingly, has happened with this project.   Our decision to take a leap of faith, and figure out the logistics of creating and putting these video memorials online has burgeoned into something important for veterans and family members far beyond our school walls.

Our students are seeing the power of real-life research, the power of interviewing and delving into local records for information.  And seeing the power of their voice in the lives of others.

We’re relying on the power of email, databases, internet sites, books, scanners, digital video recorders, blogs, wikis, and software like powerpoint, photostory, iMovie, Voicethread, Slide.com and lcd projectors in the classroom for sharing the presentations.   The reach of this once small project couldn’t have been achieved in any other way, and it’s taken all of us–teachers, tech staff, and library staff working together to bring it together.

 Yesterday, a swift boat pilot made a surprise visit to a classroom to present one of our students (whose project was about a fellow swift boat pilot who had died) with a memorial pin and tshirt for her efforts.   His wife emailed me afterwards that some of the details our student included in her presentation(which wasn’t about a soldier our guest knew) had actually involved him personally   The connections that are woven into our lives are so unexpected sometimes.

As I write this I am thinking of what Marco Torres’ asked us in his presentation at the TCEA conference last week–

What channels are we providing for our students?

There are so many gifts waiting in our own communities, so many stories to be told that our students can learn from, stories like Brian’s and Rick’s.  We had no idea this project would become what it is and I feel humble to even be part of it.  

And it’s not about the tools involved, but the tools in service of the learning.  I’m sure someone wiser than I coined that phrase.

But we also can’t dismiss the tools out of hand, because there are times they are the best and only way to make connections beyond the four walls of our classrooms, libraries, or schools.   And what power there is in those connections for our students, and also for our communities, as Marco Torres’ work demonstrates so well.

If you’d like to see last year’s projects, or comment on our blog, or see this year’s once they are posted, please share with us.

And let’s keep moving our students to, as Marco Torres calls it, the stories behind the facts, because that is where the real learning lies.

(and thanks to  Sandra Coker, Becky Stucky, Michelle Crocker, Valerie Taylor and Joel Adkins for your inspiration and work.)

But in schools, we often neglect that power.   It is  harder to make a striking visual, because it takes more time to make a well-designed handout—or a powerpoint that is thought-provoking—or a digital video that has impact—or even a well designed sign for the hallways.

And it takes longer for our students to be ‘producers’ of content rather than ‘recipients’ of content, as Marco Torres puts it.  It also requires that we trust their voices. 

But the results of their efforts can be very powerful and very empowering for them as learners.  Seeing the films that Marco Torres’ students are producing during his presentation at TCEA brings home the power of the visual to tell a story, to empower student voices, and to convey a message.

When we teach students about using visuals well, we are teaching them about evaluation– about making choices, judging information, and editing their own ideas;  we are teaching them about design and its power;  we are teaching them about the power of a well-crafted messages;  and we are giving them a voice and a way to tell a story.  And as Torres’ pointed out, when we teach them to design music for their videos, we can teach them fractions, math, rhythm, and style.

I believe our students already get lots of practice at doing worksheets, completing problems, writing analytical papers, and the like.

But do they often, at the high school level, get to practice gathering information into a story that can be shared?  Do they get the opportunity within the school community to learn  how to convey their ideas visually to others, whether in a well-delivered, well-designed slideshow, or a powerful digital film?

I can’t count how many times in the last week at TCEA that I have heard people say that it’s so hard to change because teachers and campuses are so focused on test scores, that they cannot make inroads in terms of teaching things differently.  

But I think every end has different means.  Sometimes we act as though there is one path to get there, and that path is drill and practice, or that path is only the path we have defined, as though there aren’t a myriad of ways to teach and learn something.   Are we sometimes using the “test” as a way to avoid changing our practices?  Or to avoid the problematic issues of allowing for student voice in our classrooms?

I believe students can become literate in a field in many ways, and that the more deeply involved with the content they are emotionally, the more it will resonate with them long after the class, and their deeper understanding will clearly show on any “measure” of their knowledge or abilities.

For example, Torres’ students who were studying health care, and made a film interviewing a family whose son had a brain tumor, probably know and understand that issues much more deeply than a student who reads an article about it.

His students who created a video on the power of voting, probably have much more of a sense of the power of the vote.    His students who interviewed Hispanic World War II veterans or Vietnam veterans for their films probably have a much more real understanding of what those experiences were like, rather than a student who reads a textbook about it.

Hall Davidson demonstrated in his TEC-Sig talk that we are all able to comprehend information visually very quickly, and in fact, even in a matter of seconds, since we are so attuned as a culture to visual media.

So, I think we have to let go of the fear of “the test scores” and believe.  Believe in our students’ abilities, believe in our own abilities as educators, and believe in our own judgment as to how to reach the literacies our students need. 

Part of that is believing in knowledge as something live and evolving.  We teach students knowledge sometimes as though it is set in stone, and we do the same thing with standardized tests and our curriculums—as though the knowledge they have defined is some fixed thing that will never change in our students’ lifetimes.

This student’s video, (“2+2=5“) points out the significance of questioning the status quo very effectively, in fact.

Are we teaching students just for tomorrow ‘s test, or are we teaching them for their lifetime?

We also have to have trust in our students.  That is a prerequisite to having students edit a wiki together or create a film.  Not blind trust–but trust built out of our classroom relationships with them.   Healthy relationships aren’t built on the fear of what someone “might say” or “might do.”  And our students do have much to say–how can we tap into that more significantly?

Marco Torres believes that the most significant thing we can do for a student is connect with their curiosity so they will ‘want to come back tomorrow, and next week, and the week after that.’

When we empower student voices, tap into their own communities, and believe they have something significant to say, it can make a tremendous difference for all of us.

photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/daviddave/399728857/

I

So in an effort to bring services TO the students, I’m experimenting with various methods of outreach.

We’re deep into a major project on Vietnam, and students are involved in creating a digital biography of a soldier from the Vietnam wall, so I went to visit a couple of classrooms that were using mobile labs, so that I could offer tech support, answer copyright questions, etc. 

It was fascinating being in the classroom with the teacher as opposed to being in our computer lab.  As I walked around the room, students were asking lots of questions(more than they normally ask when I do a walk through in the lab).  And it was fascinating because I could see how the teachers partner on this assignment and share materials and students openly back and forth between their rooms.

I also was learning a lot about how students are doing their “work” differently.  A couple of students were looking at the html code of a website on Vietnam and discussing the code.  I asked the teacher about it, and she told me they were building a website about their soldier instead of a video presentation.   We talked about code copyright, a discussion I had seen going on online a few days ago.

The other teacher told me that her students were using their phones to take photos of the title page of the books they were citing, so that they didn’t have to write down the title and author for their bibliography work later.  I thought that was pretty clever, and one I hadn’t thought of.

As I was rereading part of Wikinomics last night, preparing for our panel on wikis at TCEA 2008, (Using Wikis to Connect, Collaborate and Connect) I was struck by this quote:

“The future, therefore, lies in collaboration across borders, cultures, companies, and disciplines.  Countries … that turn inward will not succeed in the new era.”
I think this applies to schools as well.  If we turn inward, or ignore the tools students are using, or aren’t willing to be open to learning about them, we won’t succeed in the “new” era of collaboration and ubiquitous technology use.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit, because at the beginning of our session, we’re going to talk about the power of the wikis, and I’m going to use Wikipedia as a leaping off point, and share ideas Will Richardson showed us about the discussion tab on Wikipedia.   But I’m aware the conversation may start to derail into a debate over the merits of Wikipedia, even though I’m using it as a metaphor for the power of wikis for collaborative knowledge building.

My take on Wikipedia, and most other tools–is that we need to teach students more informed uses of these tools and to be information literate, but we also need to learn from our students.  It’s likely they know more about using Wikipedia than we do, for example.   (In fact, one of the interesting things about our session tomorrow is that the teachers involved are fledgling users of wikis, are interested in the pedagogy, and we wanted to demonstrate how we are all learning about these tools together.)

The real power of tools like wikis lie in this democratization of contributions.  And for us to believe in that, we have to trust our “customers” as Tantek Celik, of Technorati,  points out in Wikinomics.  We have to believe in our students, believe that they have something to contribute.  Yes, they may sometimes need guidance, support, training, scaffolding, but, they do have things to contribute and their voices matter.

 I just participated in a fascinating live blogging experiencewith Maura Moritz’s and Karl Fisch’s students at Arapahoe High School.   The students were using the inner/outer circle discussion method in their classroom to discuss the book.  While the inner circle held a discussion in the room, the outer circle was live blogging their discussion and holding their own with a few of us from outside the classroom (Jen Wagner) that had been invited to join them.  

The students probably don’t even think of what they are doing as that extraordinary because they have been using this method for a few weeks to study the book Whole New Mind.  But to me, it was invigorating to be listening in and participating with their discussion of Pink’s chapter on “Symphony” from my desk in Austin.

We were discussing Pink’s chapter on symphony, in which he talks about the power of bringing seemingly unrelated ideas together to create something new, to see relationships anew, to re-see. 

 It was fascinating seeing students struggle with that chapter, trying to determine what it meant to them, and for myself, to figure out what it meant to me in a way that I could communicate.

The multi-layered levels of this discussion were fascinating.  Students seemed engaged in the live blogging, and had a foot in their classroom(multi-tasking as an assignment!)  Interestingly, their perspective  on Whole New Mind differed widely from that of other teachers I have talked to about the book.  

Yet, you could witness the students’ understanding grow as they listened to others in the live blog or in their classroom, because it was in written form.  I really liked the idea of the conversation being a written one, something that they could refer back to, that their other classmates could read, and that others outside of the school(including the author, I presume) could engage with later on.

I also noticed that students were eager for us to help tie their understanding to things they know and could relate to, like sports, or school.   Which again, was an interesting reminder that we need to connect  to what our students are familiar with in order to build new understandings. In the book Made To Stick, Chip and Dan Heath write about appealing to a customer’s personal interest as a way to make ideas sticky.  And I could see that as we live blogged, my own understanding was also more personal;  an interesting point to remember as we are trying to get students engaged with a text–make it personal?

The best part about it as a visitor was being embedded in a discussion with students.  (I fear I wrote too much, but it was out of my enthusiasm for Daniel Pink and wanting others to share it, rather than out of a teacherly urge.)   The technology removed the barrier of me standing at the front of the room as an “educator” or a “guest” and allowed us to jump right into the discussion at hand.  As Arthus talked about at Educon, we were all speaking with an equal voice in the live blogging, all equal partipants, each with the same “rights” to contribute.

And as we explored the idea of symphony, I realized how much I value that trait.  I really live for  those aha moments when you are able to connect unrelated ideas together and make something new.   By live blogging the chapter, I really engaged in it more deeply than I had before, and it reemphasized to me how powerful engaging students in a conversation with a text is.  

First off, there is the notion kids have that length equals quality.   I’m sure we’ve enforced that notion ourselves by assigning lengths for papers, powerpoints, # of pages read, etc.  in our attempts to satisfy the students’ “need to know.”   Kids like that concrete definition and aren’t very satisfied by a vague answer.   So they pad their papers with inane expansions of their topic, find thin books with large type so that the book is “long enough,” fill their powerpoints with unnecessary bells and whistles so that they have enough slides, and on and on.   We all know that drill, and it can get downright amusing at times.

Secondly, their question bothers me because of the word “have.”  Students don’t ask us how long it could be, but how long it HAS to be.   The whole question doesn’t conjure up the picture of an assignment in which the students are so engaged that the idea of length doesn’t even occur to them, but rather the image of something onerous, something imposed on them from “above,”  something that as dutiful students they will try to fulfill, without really understanding the why of it.

One of the things I think is really valid about using blogging with students is that the writing is authentic.  Sometimes you have something brief to say, and sometimes it’s lengthy, but always, the length is determined by the content, not the other way around.

Which brings me to the real point of this post, which is brevity.  I’ve really been thinking about lately how we could use brevity and design better in schools.

Can we design mission statements that are short and easy to remember, more like a slogan than a statement?

Can we give students assignments where brevity, clarity, or simplicity of design are the point?    I have in mind assignments like Dan Meyer’s Four Slide contest (where participants were asked to represent themselves in just four, well-designed slides), or assignments like creating a sixty second video message, like these Library of Congress PSAs on literacy.   Or a story in a touching, but brief slide show like Alan Levine’s of his dog Dominoe(using slide.com).

   The point is, we teach students how to expand on their ideas, how to find lots of sources, how to write longer essays, how to read longer books, but when do we teach them the real power of brevity?   

Have them represent themselves in one slide, not four.   Have them read a one page short story or a picture book if they are in high school and consider how shorter stories still manage to convey the whole narrative.   Have them write a story that has just two words.  Have them create a brief public service announcement, a one page ad for a magazine, a powerpoint with just four slides….you get the idea.

If part of web 2.0 is helping our students become effective communicators, then we need to teach them the power of the blank slide, like in the Dominoe movie, or the power of silence, or spaces between things, and how that also conveys something about our human story.  These are things that good storytellers just know. 

Image credits:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/docnic/152907531/

http://flickr.com/photos/cogdog/882977676/in/set-72157600975093412/

One thing I learned during the session is that our students, too, are suffering from information overload and we need to be providing more help and to provide more time when possible. 

What have you heard from students about how they learn?  What are things you’ve tried or would like to try in the future to increase student engagement?  What were the results of what you have tried?  `

Any tools you’ve discovered along the way that have been especially effective?  Looking forward to a discussion of things, small or large, that you’ve learned from your students.

Image credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/xurble/376588066/

 We’re mixed in with some pretty good company getting this award, so big congratulations Bob, and thanks to Darren for the recognition!