Think Like a Teacher

Thanks to my friend Ollie Dreon, a former teaching colleague turned teacher ed prof, for sharing a video from the Chronicle of Higher Ed on his blog a couple of weeks ago. We K-12 people don’t often read what the grown ups in higher ed are doing, but this one definitely translates to K-12 land. Ollie spans these two worlds well and models what teaching and learning should be for all of us.

The video in the Chronicle for Higher Ed post shares a Google Plus “hangout” of college students  talking about the ways their profs use technology well (and not so well). At the higher ed level, students can articulate what works for learning and what doesn’t. My question for K-12 teachers is this: Would you try this with your students? If you asked them to tell about the highs and lows of  technology use in your classroom, what would they say? Even kindergarteners remember seeing adults who are stressed. If the web site you wanted to share did not work, they remember that day — perhaps better than the concept they were supposed to be learning. Would you risk asking them to retell the tech highs and lows of Room 12?  My former middle schoolers reveled in the tech disasters I invited by trying to outsmart a brand new network by “sharing” files or having too many kids “sucking the bandwidth” in the fledgling days of classroom Internet connections. But I never asked them about the highs and lows of learning with technology in my classes. I wonder what they would have said about learning because of — or in spite of — the technology.

Certainly, today’s high school students could make a video much like this one. They are intellectually able to describe how they learn best or “when gadgets feel gimmicky or class time is wasted as instructors fumble with gear.” Would you take the risk to ask? The safest time would be to ask now, at the start of the school year, since they would be talking about some “other” teachers they had in the past and not about you–yet. What an amazing “getting to know you” revelation this would be in early September. Would you repeat it in May to find out how well you did?

It certainly would be a learning experience. If you do try it, please share what you discover.

My husband inherited his great grandfather’s wooden tool chest from pre-1900, filled with beautiful hand tools. The wooden surfaces of the brace and bit shine from hours of rubbing against carpenter’s palms as he built shelves and homes for doctors, businesses, and scores of names. Each of the jobs is carefully penciled into small notebooks tucked into the tool chest tray, seasoned with sawdust. When we pull out a tool, we never say, “It does this.” Instead, we imagine the places it has built, feel how it fits in our hands, and assume it can do anything we are brave enough to envision.

When I see a new tool on the web, even one so simple and “old fashioned” that it lingers from a previous millenium, I do not label its place or task. I  wonder about it just as I do the tools in that chest. Somehow, I always come up with more ideas than it offers for itself. Last week I looked at a review of Box Templates. This simple site offers printable patterns for folded boxes. Like a brace and bit, it has obvious uses. But what if… they could be templates for mystery boxes that students make about themselves as a “getting to know you” activity the first week of school? The outside could be decorated with words or images of significance to the student, the inside filled with small objects or symbols or slips of paper with favorite quotes or song lyrics or… What if we challenged students to make their own box templates for other box shapes? What if we invited students to create a 3D container representing a concept we are studying: government by the people or cells or energy or biodiversity? Some might even render it virtually in SketchUp. Others will need to touch it and crease the folds with their fingernails.

Box Templates is my brace and bit this week. The palms that smooth this brace and bit each bring new materials and new products. This tool does what? Anything.

As today’s budgets make us ponder each available tool a little longer,  we can enjoy the smell of sawdust and inscribe a few notes in our own idea notebooks. It’s just a matter of vision.

In “reading” through a fitful string of blog posts sparked by a tweet, I ran across this post about the changes to our reading habits due to technology. It actually struck such a chord of guilt — as I was about to skim and run — that I stopped to read the entire post. I am living what Patrick Kingsley describes:

our hyperactive online habits are damaging the mental faculties we need to process and understand lengthy textual information. Round-the-clock news feeds leave us hyperlinking from one article to the next – without necessarily engaging fully with any of the content; our reading is frequently interrupted by the ping of the latest email; and we are now absorbing short bursts of words on Twitter and Facebook more regularly than longer texts.

We know our students are even more likely to skim and run, since their standards for full web site attention are more demandingly fickle and their reading skills more spotty. As Jakob Nielsen points out:

Teens’ poor performance [at web site “success“]  is caused by three factors: insufficient reading skills, less sophisticated research strategies, and a dramatically lower patience level.

So what does all this rather intriguing research tell me, aside from the fact that I am a true edtech readerwritergeek?  It makes me wonder:

How can we create incentives for Slow Reading?

An iPad zone with comfortable chairs might be the 21st century equivalent of the bean bags in the 1980s middle school media center where I once worked: comfy, inviting, and reading ready. But the physical space and gadgets do not make Slow Readers. The desire to stick with one article, post, or thread of thought long enough to see it through to a conclusion is what we are all missing.

What could make a teen stick with a thread of thought throughout an entire article and related discussions? It is much easier to toss the links into a class wiki or Diigo group after skimming two sentences, perhaps with a pithy comment.  Done. Next assignment, please.

I would like to try confronting some students with Nielsen’s analysis of teen site navigation. I would like to ask them whether his findings of 2005 are still true or more exaggerated today. I would like to share Kingsley’s post with the same group and ask them what they think. Of course, they’d have to READ both to be able to respond, and the only initial incentive might be a grade.  I really wonder what would happen if we confronted teens with these two posts to form framing questions for an entire semester in almost any course: social studies, English, even science:

What are your incentives for Slow Reading in today’s world? Where/how can it happen? Does it matter any more?

We might be surprised to hear what our kids have to say about all this.  Instead of telling them why they must Slow Read (for a test), ask them why they might want to. They might even create Slow Reading places and incentives of their own. How would that be for 21st century learning?

Teachers everywhere are decorating bulletin boards. That cheesy scalloped edging unrolls again, fencing in neatly printed names pinned into bus lists and birthdays. Posters with wise sayings come out of the closets, their corners perforated into patterns of tiny holes from staples and pushpins of years gone by. Shar Peis with mournful eyes tell us they hate Mondays, and maps depict pastel lands where foreign tongues are spoken. Back to School is here.

I wonder what students would put on a life bulletin board, one that they would actually pause to think about instead of staring out the window at teasing days better suited for swimming pools than desks. Perhaps an infographic of the top ten activities in the day of an American teen. Or the chief environmental damage caused by Americans… or my favorite, the hierarchy of digital distractions:

(I love the informationisbeautiful site!) If we’re going to make bulletin boards invitations to learning something, why not invite kids to contribute some questions? Let’s make information not only beautiful but meaningful. What infographic would best intrigue YOUR students, if you could have one made to order? Maybe you should have students make it on the first day. Give them the raw materials and see what happens.

Have an interactive whiteboard? Build an infographic together there on day 1,  something that shows how life connects to learning in your classroom.  It may be the one thing your students recall about your class ten years from now.

P.S. If you need something to fill some spaces in the meantime, try some quotes from TeachersFirst’s Hang Ups series.