Think Like a Teacher

Our classrooms face the same engagement challenges that the Wall Street Journal describes at historic sites across the U.S. More and more, consumers enter school doors with digital devices glued in their hands or tethered to their brains. BYOD/BYOT (Bring your own device/technology) is here. Even if the devices are NOT officially allowed, they are here, hidden under desks or behind books.

Historic sites have responded more quickly than most schools. You can play a texting game in Williamsburg, scan QR codes to learn more at almost every museum these days, or load an app to let you interact while physically standing at historic sites. Curators and education staff worry about the invasive juxtaposition of technology in a Shaker barn and the constant need to update their apps to avoid appearing “outdated.” Teachers face the same concerns managing new technologies. If they believe they must “stay ahead.” they are doomed to fail. We will never “stay ahead” of  what enters the school in students’ pockets.

Historic sites must woo consumers to perpetuate their income stream. They face a digital challenge: “How do we continue to appeal to consumers armed with — and distracted by– devices? What activities and apps can we make that will engage them via those devices?” But schools are more or less guaranteed  our “consumers” for longer periods of time. We therefore have a chance to flip the digital challenge around, asking ourselves, “How can we make students active participants in making the ‘school’ experience one where we not only participate, but create,  leaving a legacy for future learners?” Historic sites have little chance for participant legacy beyond good reviews on TripAdvisor. The difference between a historic site “visitor” and our “learners” is the legacy our learners can leave for those to come.

As I read about the digital experiences at Williamsburg, I wonder if we could gradually make school a digital immersion. Imagine a classroom filled with QR codes — that the teacher does not have to make. The learners make them. Imagine texting games or QR treasure hunts that kids embed in the physical space of a classroom.  Image simple apps, games,  and interactive maps created by kids. As current technologies age, they could be replaced by later student projects. Instead of “turning in” student projects for a grade, we could “turn on” student projects for future audiences of learners. In many classrooms, teachers already have students creating digital projects. The missing step is making them part of a perpetual learning place called school.  Imagine how much harder kids would work for such a vast audience. It would be interesting to find out whether a seventh grader would continue to monitor responses that come in to his fifth grade game about Explorers or would monitor the number of times her QR Treasure hunt was accessed. I am not sure, but I’d sure love to find out. If I were in charge of a physical learning space today, I’d be one of the learners alongside my students, plastering it with digital experiences for any learning consumer who walks in.

I had a conversation this week with a sixth grade teacher/university teacher-educator about the concept of “seatwork.” Many years ago, after teaching in middle school for nine years, I moved to an elementary gifted teacher position and was stunned to hear this term. “Seatwork” simply was not part of my teaching vocabulary or repertoire.  Frankly, I choke on the term and the idea of keeping kids busy during transitional times using pieces of paper whose primary value was to fill time.  I do not mean to offend or condemn teachers’ need to preserve their sanity during bus arrivals and instructional times while they pay attention to a small group and others are working on something “in their seats.”  We all plan lesson times where students work independently — from kindergarten to high school seniors. But let’s get rid of “seatwork” for the sake of soaking up time. Let’s gamify ” seatwork into Gameworks! (A tribute to #iste13)

Kids love games and invent their own all the time. (Watch a playground!) Even teens invent challenges for each other (not necessarily safe or positive ones). Instead of handing out “worksheets”  and filling time with “seatwork,” have kids create games and challenge their peers with their creations. Yes, you will may have to show the littlest ones how to make a game, but having an audience and purpose for their efforts will generate more meaningful practice with the spelling words or colors or numbers. The game creator and the subsequent players all benefit as you create a community of game-players (and even build some sportsmanship). Arrange the “seats” into  game circles or pairs. Bingo! (oops, pun),  you have gamified “seatwork” into Gameworks. In single computer elementary classrooms, use student computer center time for students to create games, then share them during Gameworks time.

Here are some simple tools to get you started  gamifying seatwork into Gameworks in a non-tech classroom. The TeachersFirst reviews give more details and the links.

Puzzle maker (TeachersFirst review) Use this oldie but goodie to make traditional paper puzzles or get a little tricky and use them electroncially on an interactive whiteboard “gamespace” for student gamers.

Bingo Baker (TeachersFirst review) Create Bingo games. Yes, Gameworks bingo will make some noise, but it will be on-task, productive noise.

Word Search Builder  (TeachersFirst review) Another word search maker. This one makes both printable and online versions you solve by clicking the letters to highlight them in yellow. There is no way to SAVE the online version, though. This is great for game-making on the fly. Try it on tablets for student gamemakers to pass to a neighbor to solve (does not use Flash).

How do You Play (TeachersFirst review) Find rules and ideas for nearly every game you ever knew and some you never did! Gameworks creators can invent their own games on ANY topic using these ideas. There are even simple games for little ones.

Tools for Educators (TeachersFirst review)  Among the many useful items on this site are game board makers and more. Kids will LOVE being the new Parker Brothers!

Online Egg Timer  (TeachersFirst review)  Handy for game players or to declare the end of Gameworks time.

Timer-Tab  (TeachersFirst review) Online alarm clock/timer for your Gameworks that displays the countdown in the actual browser TAB

Countdown Timer (TeachersFirst review) An online timer that looks like the kitchen classic. (Don’t forget to turn up your speakers.)

Next week I will share some “tech” tools for classrooms where students have access to laptops or other devices to play the games.

Today’s rapid-fire, tweeting world loves lists. We see numbered lists on Twitter, in headlines, on magazine covers, among the “popular” stories on our Google News sidebar, among our Facebook friends’ links, on blogs or sites we follow, and even on television. The lists often outnumber any significant substance. The headlines read “Ten best ways to do this,” “Top seven blunders of that,” “50 Best blah-blah,” “100 top whatever.” I admit that I have fallen into the numbered list trap when in a hurry. It’s simply easier and quicker to list a bunch of stuff than it is to finely craft a single idea.

I am tired of lists. Give me one solid, deep article or critique any time over a long list that allows the author to avoid a firm decision or  investigation of  one option in full detail. I would like a supported opinion on one book, a recommended investment, a classroom management strategy, or tip to deal with an ornery two year old, not a long list of possibilities that I must sort, probe, or filter. Yes, I like choices, but I also like to hear an opinion supported by evidence and flavored by nuance. Numbered lists are quick, but they share as much subtlety as an all you can eat buffet. They scream,” My smorgasbord is impressive because it has so many serving dishes, not because any dish can actually stand  on its own culinary merit.”

As teachers, we expect our students to provide visible steps for their solutions to equations, solid evidence for the thesis of their essays, and connections between data and conclusion in their lab reports. Would we allow a “Top ten options in solving for X”? or “Seven possible reasons for the Civil War”? I hope not. Numbered lists have value as brainstorms and for idea gathering — as preliminary investigations, not as ends in themselves.

We should model what we expect. If we write lists for our students (or parents), we should prioritize the items and explain why. If we allow Top Ten lists from our students, at the very least we should ask,”Now that you have chosen ten, can you rank them, explaining why you chose that order?”  If we write articles or blogs, we should skip lists and focus on one thorough critique or discussion.

Ready to go listless? Here is a teaching idea to promote 21st century skills and an opportunity for authentic learning: Have students collect as many examples as they can of numbered lists from their own experience of the media, web surfing, or social networking: articles, blog posts, videos, etc. Then ask them to select one list they care about, research it, and rewrite it based on evidence to support a specific rank order. Of course, they will need to write their explanation in a manner  understandable to the list’s intended audience, including all the supporting evidence, appropriate voice, and conventions needed for publishing in that venue. Have them share it as a comment, blog post, or in-kind response to the original author.

“Listless” could become a very productive oxymoron.

We’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’…

Remember how it feels to complete a project you are proud of? As teachers, the “projects” we complete are most often teaching tasks, such as getting our grades in on time or commenting on ALL our students’ drafts or completing rubrics for 20-150 projects.  Rarely do we celebrate something we have created. Our creative process — and a valuable one it is!– is most often applied to generating lesson ideas or coming up with a way to engage a struggling student. We just don’t have as many chances to proudly celebrate and share something we create.

Earlier this week, I found that feeling again. After a manic, messy, and thrilling creative push, TeachersFirst proudly announced Gettysburg by the Numbers, a way to learn about the watershed moment in the Civil War through infographics, data, and questions that are meaningful to us today– especially if you happen to be in middle school or early high school.

It feels good. It feels really good.  It feels good enough to make me wonder how many of our students get to experience that feeling. If we do our jobs well as teachers, they may experience it with authentic projects. But do we, as teachers, experience it enough to really know what kind of projects we should be designing and assigning? Do we know the experience of that lovin’ feelin about something we create? I don’t believe we can be effective as teachers unless we do. If we do not create things we are proud of –with some regularity–how can we really understand “authentic”?

I suggest that each of us should start by creating a me-portfolio where we can exhibit and share the lovin’ feelin’ moments we do have, however few and far between. Set up a simple web page using  Infinite.ly or Loose Leaves or Weebly and embed things you create elsewhere on the web (loads of tips here).  You could even house it on a simple wiki. What do you include? The sample projects you made to show kids how GoAnimate works or your Voki that explains meter in poetry. If you, like me, play with the tech toys and create samples as models of just to help you “figure it out,” save the samples as creative products of your own. There is a very good chance you will find yourself making better examples because you are collecting them– and getting that feeling. And you would be modeling a me-portfolio that you can show to kids. There is nothing wrong with letting your students know that you like that lovin’ feelin’,  and you hope you can all find it together.

1993: a year that none of today’s K-12 or college students can remember. No one texted or tweeted,  only some people used email, AOL was brand new, and nobody had ever “googled” anything. Nothing but the flu went viral. Friends were just that. We got bank statements and bills in the mail (yes, paper), and news came from the TV, radio, newspaper, or playground. Bill and Monica hadn’t had an Oval Office encounter yet, and the Twin Towers still towered. Many of us used computers and tried to use the Internet, but there was really nothing there.

At school, we had shifted from hand writing to typing IEPs on Apple IIe  keyboards and saving them on 5 1/4 inch floppies. The library was still the magic place to find out, and my students and I were pleased to find a single source that answered our question. My  interlibrary loan article requests for grad school research came back as Xerox copies from bound, printed periodicals via U.S. mail. I considered myself lucky not to have to pay for articles I needed for my research.

Yesterday was the official 20th birthday of the world wide web. The people at CERN — who originated this re-vision of what the then-obscure Internet could be  — posted their original page again to remind us of just how far we have come. What began as a way for researchers to share files and data had the most marvelous unintended consequences: Learning became both free and a matter of personal responsibility.

Twenty years later, we have so many sources we must sort them for value and reliability. We can find out from anywhere. We can waste more time than mankind ever knew we had, and every year a billionaire-creating innovation rides into our lives thanks to the www. Wwwe are bewwwwilderingly dependent upon it and occasionally wwwistful for the days wwwhen wwwe wwwere free of it.

It is impossible to explain what life was like before the www. Only by talking about the cultural details of life before www can we help our students understand. Is it important for them to knowww? Yes, because learning is free and a matter of personal responsibility. They need to know the difference between having to ask for a chance to learn and having the tools available to anyone. They need to know why the www made it important to find out instead of waiting to be told. In a broader cultural/historical context, they need to know how a seemingly minor innovation can, in just a few years, change so much. They need to ask questions about impact and change.

If you have any time remaining in your end-of-year plans, give a small assignment. It can fit in any subject. Ask your students to interview an adult who was “grown up” by 1993. If you teach science, have students ask about how people learned science before the www. If you teach history, ask about how people learned history or tracked current events. If you teach English, ask how people found books to read or places to share their writing. Most importantly, have them ask when their “adult” realized that the web was changing things.  Then have them share their findings on the web: blog, tweet, Faceboook post, whatever.  Back in class, make sure they read what their classmates found out — and ask them wwwhy it matters. By borrowing twenty years of perspective, maybe they will realize that learning is free and a matter of personal responsibility.

break:
verb. to smash, split, or divide into parts violently; reduce to pieces or fragments
noun. a brief rest, as from work [Break definitions from Dictionary.com]

Maker Dad tells of the strategies he and his son used in building a complex 3D printer, a task that spanned over 30 hours. I thoroughly enjoyed his account of persistence and challenge, tackled together with his 12 year old son. Why? Because he celebrates the importance of breaks. Breaks are time for incubation, refreshment, regeneration, reflection. Planned breaks are also times to savor the anticipation of returning to the successful portions. Breaks punctuate and act as expansion joints, flexing with the stresses of the task, while allowing it to fit together.

The marvelous irony/oxymoron of the word break is that it also means to smash, split, and essentially wreck things. Sometimes when we build something, we gain most from that kind of break: the moment when the Legos snap into pieces or the experiment doesn’t work.  Making things, even successful lessons or hands-on learning opportunities, requires that we savor the things that do not work, drawing from our failures to rise to better successes.

As we approach (or conclude) spring break, I hope that our breaks will be both opportunities to re-create  something new from broken pieces and opportunities to gain a brief rest, reflection, or incubation time for what is to come.

Spend some time looking at the definitions of break. It really is a marvelous word to hold so many contrasts in just five letters. Will your spring break make or break you?

If you have read my blog for long, you know that I am a former teacher of gifted students. One of the things we teachers of gifted quickly learn is that the teaching strategies and initiatives we use with gifted kids are often adopted several years later for all children, though altered in pace or depth. It is a source of pride to us, an “I told you so” that we knew what worked all along.  Many of the same philosophies behind creative teaching and learning for gifted can benefit all kids. The truly gifted, especially those my colleagues and I facetiously dubbed the “severely and profoundly gifted,”  need a hyperbolic version of these same strategies and rarely need any of the skill backfill that others do.

So I was not surprised to read a passionate post on Stephanie S. Tolan’s blog The Deep End about the politics within the National Association for Gifted Children and the irony that the children themselves were not invited to the NAGC conversation. This is the same discussion that is occurring among education reformers who seek to change education from “schools” to “learning.” Follow the Twitter hashtag #edchat for a few days to see the passion among educators seeking to rethink what learning is all about and to include students as key players and decision makers in their own learning. Ms. Tolan describes the gifted with powerful voice:

One of their major differences (at least until we squash it out of them with work sheets and grades and gold stars and tests, grade point averages, boundaries and limitations) is their rage to learn and understand, and to do something with meaning. [my boldface, her italics]

I absolutely agree that this describes the gifted kids I know.  I think it can also describe most kids. Gifted kids feel the rage in heightened fashion and seek meaning at greater depth, but all kids feel the rage to learn until we stuff the school experience into boxes that lack any personal meaning. The gifted often find meaning via their own odd connections or perceptions. Other learners may need some help discovering meaning and personal connection.

The many, many good teachers I know try to forge connections of meaning for students who do not seek them on their own or need help doing so.  The very best teachers are able to kindle the rage to learn despite institutional requirements that muffle it. I hope our current moves to build rigor in our schools will stop to allow students to join the conversation and find meaning just as Ms.Tolan asks. It’s not just good for the gifted.

What can I do to beat this, break this, or make people laugh?

When I taught gifted kids, their first approach when faced with a new technology tool, game, or toy was to beat it, break it, or make people laugh. I saw this reaction back in the day of early computer games we loaded from a 5 1/4 inch floppy disks. In the pre-PC days, my students — gifted or not –had the same reaction when faced with a special effects generator in the school’s black and white TV studio. (OK, now you can guess my age.) They wanted to make special effects that cut off heads or caused the TV monitors to go crazy.

Kids, especially middle school kids and older, will want to break, outsmart, or use any tech tool to make their friends laugh. We are missing a bet by not using this impulse to help them learn. There is a misconception, well debunked by Bill Ferriter, that technology itself is motivating. Ferriter is right. It isn’t motivating to ask kids to do what a tool is intended to do. It is motivating for kids to show their prowess in defeating it or molding it to their own purposes, preferably for an audience. The same social impulse makes them want to share on Facebook or YouTube. There may be some gender differences, but the stereotypes say what the boys break the girls will secretly redirect to their own purposes — giggling.

The makers movement challenges kids to MAKE things to fit a challenge. The gamification movement invites kids to create games to construct learning. I think we miss a bet by not asking kids to break things to meet a challenge. How can you use a tool of your choice to do something new and productive that it was NOT intended to do? What tool can you break to solve this unrelated problem? Give students the web full of  “tools,” and they will want to combine them or use them every way except as intended, especially middle and high schoolers. So let them.

Instead of  assigning kids tech tools to make a project using a specific tool, maybe we should simply allow them to break or “redirect” tools at will. The final rubric should certainly include curriculum accountability:  the result must show what they know about the prescribed curriculum. In the interest of teaching life skills and preserving our own jobs, we must include a requirement that the products have no more than a PG-13 rating (at least not in the version they submit for a grade). Share the rubric and any relevant acceptable use policy, but let students do it any way they want. Humor, even deviousness, can be a far greater motivator.  The teacher pleasers will ask for tools to be assigned, and that’s fine. The most able, most motivated,  and most creative will break something to make something. Isn’t that the innovation we want to build in our students?  The examples of “broken” or redirected  tools can serve to lure the timid into trying something a bit more adventurous themselves the next time.

One practical concern of this idea is that kids will take a long time to figure out the gimmicks and potential humor of the tools they choose. Let them do this on their own time. Schools have no walls, right?

Many years ago, I learned that comedy is far more difficult to write than drama. Parody, satire, and humor challenge the greatest minds. (I know how long it took to write a barely-adequate spoof of  “The Raven” last week!) If we can motivate kids to go above and beyond in their learning by following their impulse to break, trick, or make others laugh, we  have gone above and beyond our own curriculum. We have “mashed up” the student behaviors we can barely control with the curriculum we want students to master.  We have encouraged innovation. And we might even get a chance to laugh together.

Teachers make students put things away. If we did not, our classrooms would look like revenge of the two year olds. But how do we help students “put away”  and save valuable ideas that do not fit the format of the current assignment or discussion? We all need idea bins. I have written and spoken about idea bins as an important element in promoting creative process, but idea bins are also places to snag snippets of personal curricular connections. Idea bins hold many things.

I remember trying to find places to “put away” ideas that occurred to me during class. The teacher was talking or asking questions, and my mind wandered, often to intriguing thoughts or magnificent doodles.  I once snipped a particularly good doodle from the margins of a spiral notebook and actually framed it. Those wanderings were not necessarily bad. Many were my own personal connections to something in the discussion. Perhaps I simply loved the sound of a phrase or analogy shared by a peer or an oxymoron that stung me with its irony — a jalapeño in my mind’s eye. Sometimes the light coming through the window played on the classroom floor, creating a pattern I wanted to remember. Interestingly, every time I later saw that pattern, I also recalled the concurrent discussion. For me, visual snippets prompt memories like smells from a kitchen. Years later, I was told how to collect my visual ideas in artist notebooks required in various art classes, but I believe we each need to discover our preferred tool for idea bins.

I spent some time yesterday collecting idea bin options we could encourage kids to try as we start a new school year. Here are essential characteristics of an “idea bin” tool, arranged to create an easy acronym: the secret SAUCE for idea bins:

Semi-transparent: must allow you to share or show others ideas you are excited about (and keep other ideas to yourself)

Annotated: must let you make personal notes on items you collect

Ubiquitous: must be readily available where/when you need it (a real argument for bring your own device to class)

Cozy: must feel comfortable for you (fit your style)

Expansive: must allow endless additions and changes — without losing things

For some, an idea bin is a paper sketchbook, notebook, or journal. SAUCE score? S- yes; A- for sure; U- maybe not. These get lost easily! C- yes, for those who like the tactile feel of paper and pencil; E- not really. Linear and it runs out of room.

Here are a few digital idea bin possibilities in no particular order — all FREE for the versions I looked at — with SAUCE scores:

1. Evernote S-Yes, you can share notes and notebooks; A- for sure; U-yes, syncs from mobile app to computer and back in real time; C-OK, though I wish it were more drag n drop  and a little less “organized” into boxes/notebooks. E-Yes! Tagging helps. (Full TF review).

2. Linoit: S-share the full board by url, so maybe not so private unless you make separate boards for private stuff; A-Yes!; U-Yes, and it is iOS friendly. Play without joining, but sign up to save and share; C- yes, for me. Orderly folks might not like the drag and drop randomness; E- Yes, to the limits of the larger, draggable board. Can overlap stuff, too. Make additional boards and link them from your main one, maybe? (Full TF review). Here is a sample I used to prepare for a presentation on creative process.

3. Wallwisher: S-yes, but all or nothing. Make separate boards for private things; A-Yup; U-Yes, on the web and iOS friendly; C- yes, for those who like random, draggable elements. Certain backgrounds look more “organized;”  E- only as far as the board goes. Add more boards for more stuff. Here is a sample where you can play. (Full TF review).

4. Google docs/drive: S-yes, but all or nothing. Make separate docs for private things; A-yes, though primarily a word processing interface. U-Marginal. Yes on the web. Not sure how easy it is on smartphones. Must navigate to it by a long url or through GDrive log in and file management area. C- Not to me. E-yes. (Full TF review).

5. Pinterest: S- Yes, settings for each board; A-yes, comment on each “pin.” U- sort of — annoyingly connected to Facebook and less user friendly on mobile devices; C- Depends. Males tell me it is a female tool!  Very popular right now; E- YES! (Full TF review). Here is a sample board where I was simply playing.

Here are some TF reviews for others to consider. How would you score the SAUCE for each?
Edistorm
Wridea
Scribblar
Magnoto…though the embeds don’t work!
Canvasdropr
Scrumblr
Letspocket
Squareleaf
Corkboard
Protopage
 

Listen to kids talk about a tough project after it is over. You will hear complaints about how long it took, how they wish they had started sooner, how they did not really understand “what the teacher wanted,” how they wish they had read the rubric more carefully before they started, how they wish they had done a little bit each day. Resist the urge to say “I told you so,” and you will hear pride seeping through: pride that they eventually figured it out, pride that they know how to approach such a project the next time, pride that they can even offer advice to other students who “get” you as a teacher next year.

This is the time of year to let the kids talk — and for us, as teachers, to listen. My colleague, Louise Maine, took time during the final days of school to have her students talk about the many infographics they made this year in her ninth grade bio classes (the classes who provide fodder for our upcoming ISTE presentation). This Voicethread illustrates one student infographic as the student comments resonate with deep knowledge. They reflect and think about thinking and learning. What more could we ask? [The comments all appear to be from one Voicethread member because they used the teacher’s log in]:

Shelley Wright recently suggested that we should “flip” Bloom’s Taxonomy to make Creating the first level we approach with our students. She explains that in a science class, “It makes their brain[s] try to fill in the gaps, and the more churn a brain experiences, the more likely it’s going to retain information.” Listen to Louise’s kids in the Voiethread, and you will hear them talk about exactly that experience.

I am not sure we need to have a single, flipped graphic analogy to represent Bloom’s as Shelley suggests. I advocate for something more like the layers in an image editing program such as Photoshop or Fireworks. The layers palette allows me to move Creating to the top or to put it behind Analyzing for a while as I edit my learning (or my students edit their own). Bloom’s levels/layers can be rearranged as needed. They can even be “hidden” temporarily in order to focus on one. But none of them ever really goes away. Click and they reappear, ready to drag up to the top or down into the background. As the students in this Voicethread reflect, they discuss nitty gritty vocabulary terms (Understanding). They talk about visual communication and tools (Creating). Another layer– of affective knowledge– is also present: time skills, work habits, etc.

If  we listen, we can hear the layers of learning. What a joy at the end of the school year! #eduwin!