Flashcards and sticky notes, and quizzes, oh my!

We see a lot of web tools at TeachersFirst. If a tool is free and we think it will be useful for students and teachers, we review it. Lately I have seen so many variations on sites to make quizzes, flashcards, and sticky notes, I am beginning to feel guilty even sharing them.  It’s almost as bad as passing out printable worksheets over and over and over.  I don’t want any teacher to think that “integrating technology” means nothing more than using an online quiz or flashcards for assessment or practice. Yes, these tools have a place (everyone needs to start somewhere), but they are no closer to harnessing the true power of technology than tying a horse to pull your car.
When cars first appeared, no one knew the impact they would have. No one thought of drive thrus or suburban sprawl or  minivans and carpools. Automobiles were “horseless carriages” that happened to go farther and faster,  replacing hay with gasoline. When user-creation tools on the web appeared, friendly and entrepreneurial folks found ways for web tools to simulate favorite classroom routines: flashcards, homework, quizzes, etc. Yes, they are more efficient, more easily shared, collaborative, and even “like” able. But they are still horseless carriages.

What gets me excited are the tools and resources that become activities I have never seen — and am itching to try! I want tools that make learning go, “Ooooooo!” As one of my colleagues said about today’s drill and kill environment, “We used to play more.” As we enter summer, I am on a mission to find more easy-to-use tools that go “Ooooooo” and are not simply electronic versions of what I did in school decades ago. I gravitate to the visual tools for creating and sharing, like Jux (once known as Jux.io). These tools take me, the creator,  into an edge-to-edge visual space where I can show what ideas look like, juxtapose things, contrast or relate images, text, and more. A more basic tool that fits the bill is this simple tool from Critical Layouts that creates virtual picture cubes. Imagine the higher level thinking of creating a six image cube and asking what these images have in common, a la Guess the Google. Or challenging students to build their own cube of  six images — including text — as a political ad or a depiction of the factors that lead to the Great Depression or today’s financial crisis. Or have them show what lures them into a their personal learning passion.

My learning passion is thinking of creative ways to use anything that I find and finding things that make me think in creative ways. Join me in making this the summer where learning goes, “Oooooo!”

My current obsession: infographics. So what’s fueling this?

Louise Maine (aka @hurricanemaine) and I have worked on our ISTE 2012 presentation since last fall, a year long journey using infographics in her ninth grade bio class. This is also evolving into several new pages of content for TeachersFirst (TBA).  I find myself grabbing more and more great infographic examples, tools, and discussions: what makes a “good” infographic, how they can structure and assess learning, and who is creating good ones out there in marketing land.

I have always liked infographics, and I don’t think it is because I am a visual/design person. I think it is more because infographics are like an all-you-can-eat hors d’oeuvres buffet. JP Rangaswami gave a terrific TED talk, Information is Food, where he explained his gustatory analogy. His question about whether information will start coming with nutritional labeling to indicate its “fact” ( fat?) percentage is particularly appropriate and witty. Funny how my mental analogy independently went to infographics also something edible. Imagine how validated I felt to find the TED video!

At the infographic hors d’oeuvre buffet,  you can sample small bits of information, take an extra serving of the stuff you like, and walk past the chicken livers. You can stop to savor one bit of data like a foodie or enjoy taking all of it in. None of the servings is so large that it fills you up,  but you might overstuff yourself if you try to absorb too many databits. (Try the Cool Infographics blog to overindulge.) I think we like infographics because they don’t commit us to a full meal, but we can satisfy our cravings.

I do wonder how many of us actually read everything in an infographic, especially the text-heavy ones like this. I much prefer the less textual ones like this. I would guess that the typical read-rate is about 20%. That’s about what we try at an appetizer buffet, right? It’s probably a good thing that none of us receives either a nutrition profile or a comprehension rating on what we ingest from infographics. We simply enjoy the tastes.

No idea is unique. The difference is what we do with our dandelion-down thoughts that fly by while we are doing other things. Most of us ignore them. Maybe we should be showing our students the simple step of wetting a finger to catch fleeting ideas before they escape. The wet finger is the difference that innovators share. While temporarily stuck to the tip of a moistened finger, that downy seed is ours for a moment to do with what we wish. We might carefully plant it to watch it grow.  We might simply allow it to dry and blow away again. But once it is gone, it belongs to anyone and no one.

A week ago, I mused in a post about a new way to “track” what we learn in a post-post-secondary education world. A few weeks earlier, I posted about the trade-offs we make, giving our privacy to Google. My musings were certainly not unique. Within the last day or two, I have read about a potentially new way to preserve privacy — even from Google — and a start-up that hopes to containerize what we learn from open sources of “education.”  My fleeting, dandelion-down ideas most certainly did not implant themselves so quickly into others’ blossoming flower pots, but we all know how ubiquitous dandelions are! Someone else had these same ideas and took the time to wet a finger.

In our classrooms, we cannot see the dandelion down blowing about all those heads. In our society, often we mistake dandelions for weeds. But we secretly love to see the first dandelions come up in spring, a sign of new life and a warm summer to come.  We need to ask about the ideas our students allow to escape — or leave at home because school does not value them. As we let fly our own new ideas, we need to pause, wet-fingered, to publicly give them a chance in front of our students. We need to think aloud about them and model capturing them into blog posts or idea bins or sketchbooks or voice bubbles or — something. Not every idea is worth keeping, but none of us can decide that in the short time it takes for them to fly away.

If we have one great, untapped resource, it is all the ideas that fly away from our classrooms, ignored. STEM education is supposed to promote innovation, but ANY classroom can. Have you caught any dandelion down today?

I came across this wonderful Sunni Brown video today about the power of doodling in formulating and refining ideas. As a perennial doodler, I feel validated. As a teacher, I feel challenged. How do I usually react to a student who is doodling in class? (How do you?) Do I ever celebrate the doodle or even ask about it? I tend to use the old favorite “ignore it if it is not disturbing anyone” tactic when I see elaborate scribbles where student notes are supposed to be.  A less doodle-tolerant teacher might say that doodle laissez-faire will allow the student to discover the logical consequences of his/her inattention. As a more visual/artistic person, I secretly delight in seeing original cartoon figures and 3D graffiti in notebook or handout margins. But I honestly have never celebrated them as visual representations of thinking related to what we are discussing in class.

I wonder whether the student who draws would be willing/able to share about what he was thinking, perhaps on an illustrated blog post or Voicethread. I wonder what would happen if we posted the images on a class wiki, or collected many on Wallwisher or a bulletin board and asked others  for their reactions. I also wonder whether seemingly UNrelated doodles actually would help the artist retell or explain a concept that was in his/her auditory space while he/she was drawing.

Fast forward to a faculty meeting (or dreaded, day-long inservice). My agenda pages are always filled with doodles. When I pull them from the file folder months later, I look at the doodles and their relationship to the text, and I remember what I was thinking. This video says we each progress through various developmental steps as doodlers,  though at different rates. Surely the doodle-to-reenact-thinking  level is a one we would like our students to achieve. But first we must allow and respect the doodle, and make it clear that we expect doodlaccountability. Leave a little more white space. Ask about doodle meaning. Respect and share the doodle. Maybe even frame a few. Oh, and start paying attention to what you do(odle). We all might learn something.

I admit it; I was  “jock” in high school.  Actually, I went to an all girls school before Title IX (don’t start doing the math now…). It was OK to be athletic when there were no boys around. I was a good student, too– lots of academic accolades and all that– but my classmates remember me most for being captain of this or that and for getting out of the scary Algebra II teacher’s classes as many afternoons as possible to leave early for games. I did a lot of other activities, from glee club to yearbook, but 3 varsity sports a year really defined my reputation.  As a college freshman, I continued on to the first women’s field hockey and lacrosse teams at a formerly all-male college. I was not afraid to try anything, from sports to being a T.A. for a revered prof. Those who know me now would say that all of this “fits” with what they know of me today. My high school extracurriculars did help define who I became and how I approach adult life.

So I read with great interest on Education Next about the Academic Value of Non-Academics. Unlike many articles that correlate extracurriculars to student/life success, this analysis does a great job of critically analyzing whether either is a cause or effect. It probes into what makes a student decide to participate in an afterschool activity. What makes him/her stick with it? The research about the impact of extracurriculars intrigues me. As budgets shave away at students’ opportunities to participate, I worry. If I had been asked to pay for my activities, would I have chosen to try almost anything? Probably not. There was no extra money in my two-teacher family. My scholarship to the all-girls school was as a “professional courtesy,” and I attended school with many whose families had a hundred times more money. But I had confidence and an identity among them, in part because of being a “jock.” We played on the same team. We lost together (a lot).

EdNext’s article is on the right track in suggesting that the extra adult contact of extracurriculars could be a major factor in why participating students are more successful. But so is the extra contact and social parity of simply being in the same activity with other students you might not otherwise socialize with. We talk a lot now about how social learning really is. Employers want collaborators. Extracurriculars are often a much better suited environment to learn collaboration than a forced “group” project. Being a jock is not a frill. It is part of the same broadbased, personal, and ubiquitous learning that we advocate as “21st century.” I hope the kids who attend schools where “jocks” and bandmembers are being asked to pay up (or even lose the chance to have a team or band altogether) can find another way to play.

This morning NPR did a story on the Tribute Center Museum opened by 9/11 families across the street from Ground Zero and the thousands of artifacts shared there, found or donated to commemorate and make real the experience of that gut-wrenching day ten years ago. My hand involuntarily slaps over my mouth each time I hear stories of personal details: where were you and what did you see or hear on September 11, 2001?  Those of us who lived through it as adults, whether from 100 feet or 1000 miles away, still taste the cloud of ash in our minds and feel the urge to run or do something now. Somehow television images lined our nostrils with smoke as we watched. 9/11 went into the heart and lungs of every American.

The survivor-father in charge of the Tribute Center talks about a menu from Windows on the World restaurant and a boarding pass from one of the doomed flights that fluttered from the sky in the ash cloud and now are part of the museum. I stop my car to pry my hand from my mouth — again. There is such wisdom in this cloud.

This year’s first year teachers were in middle school. Today’s high school seniors were in second grade and likely were sheltered from the news until they got off the bus to find an adult glued to the tube, breathing distant ash. What are we doing to help today’s students touch the painful wisdom of this cloud?

We have a week until the tenth anniversary of Sept 11. If there were ever a time to stop following a curriculum map or forget about “eligible content,” this is it. [*Note to non-teachers: “eligible content” is the stuff The Tests are about.] Share the wisdom of this cloud. Share artifacts, share stories, tell your students to ask questions about 9/11 to everyone they know over age 25. Let them smell the smoke a bit.

What will you do with your class this week?

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To my regular readers: I will not be able to post as regularly for a couple of weeks, but I will resume soon. I hope  I can return with some new wisdom, as well.

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.

I spent most of the weekend prepping for one of my #ISTE11 presentations, “Cycles vs. Checklists: Fostering Creative Process in an Accountability World,”  In the process, I learned a few things that actually became part of the presentation:

1. one place is better than multiple places
2. color coding works
3. I never have to throw anything away

One the the best things about submitting ISTE proposals a eight or nine months before you actually give the presentation is the delightfully long incubation time to pull the presentation together in your head, make it better,  let it evolve to a higher plain. During the time from acceptance (December) to delivery (June), you collect, refine, do more research, talk to colleagues, read, read, read — and eventually create. At some point, it seems that everything you run across in your browsing and tweet-reading relates to what your upcoming presentation topic.

Along the way, you grab ideas and toss them into storage. In my case, Diigo seemed great at first because I could tag and add notes on the angle that particular image or article or video provides on creativity and creative process. But I also had my own ideas popping into my head: pithy things to say, questions to ask, things I wonder about, etc.– all related to the preso topic.  So I jotted some of them in a word doc on my cluttered desktop. About three months out, I also began a linoit wall– they call it a “canvas”–* which I dubbed my “idea bin.” I filled it with stickies and video clips and links, all related to the preso topic.  [*I chose linoit.com over Wallwisher because it has an app version for iOS users. Wallwisher uses Flash so would prevent the iPad folks from “seeing” and participating in the space. I considered Evernote, but I like the ease of lino.it for newbies. I also wanted to try something new to learn it.] Unfortunately, my own lack of consistency meant my idea collections were in three places. The lesson I learned: when it comes time to cull, arrange, and construct the actual presentation,  three attics filled with ideas are unmanageable. I had duplicates, lost things between the cracks, and wasted a lot of time.

Having learned that lesson, I tossed almost everything into my linoit “idea bin,” with the intention of sharing it during the preso as a model.  The result is a very cluttered space, especially it you are an outline-style person, which I am not. To help myself out, I found that color coding was huge! I sorted by making the “thinking question” stickies one color, the “MUST include” quotes another color, and so forth. If I had been really organized, I would have used tags on each sticky to sort, but I am visual, so I went for color. I even played with fonts and shrinking the relative size of less important ideas. Note that I intentionally did not “finish” color coding/sorting so people could see an idea-bin-in-progress. I LOVE this process and will use it again. It fits me.

An added benefit: That idea bin isn’t going anywhere.  I don’t have to throw anything out! I still have all the unused ideas as fodder for blog posts, future presentations, articles, maybe even a book. I am an idea hoarder, and having an omni-present, accessible place to throw things is right up my alley. Another lesson learned.

I have learned more than I could ever share about my topic, something about a tool, and something about myself in the process of preparing this presentation. And isn’t that what we want our kids to do?

If you are going to ISTE, I hope you will join me Wednesday, 6/29/2011, 10:15am–11:15am PACC 204B. If not, You will be able to see loads of related materials and resources — the equivalent of “handouts”– on the presentation support pages after June 29.

It’s late on a Friday before a long weekend. I have been thinking off and on all day about John T Spencer’s post about Why We Paint Murals (thanks @ShellTerrell and Tweetdeck). Now those thoughts have turned a little surreal– or maybe not. If you are looking for a straightforward opinion piece, stop now. If willing, breathe deeply and dive into my mental swim.

Spencer got me thinking about the space where we learn and our drive to make that space our own. I, too, have shared butcher paper walls and seen students seize the space as finally theirs.  I love what they write and ask and draw when the paper goes up. I have also seen ideas in other classrooms: atypical ways of moving the furniture around a hub for learning, rooms where vertical space suddenly becomes part of the landscape, classrooms as environmental art pieces.  While it might be nice — at times — to remove classroom walls, there are positive aspects of walls, too. Walls are our surroundings and partially define who we are as a group of learners. Spencer’s video shows students making the space their own with brushes of paint and personality. If we could have it, what would a class Dream Space for learning and thinking look like?  Here is my stream of Dream Space ideas.

Surround:  verb to noun

The walls of the Dream Space hold nothing in. They surround us with experiences. The dreaded (and much reviled) IWB, if one has been put here,  can be part of this “surround” as a place for students to create and collaborate. Unlike butcher paper, this electronic surround can be saved, erased, sent, “finger painted” and edited, text-recognized, and used as a collection point for leaking ideas. What else should surround us? Walls of sound, perhaps? Walls of light or dark? Walls of images. I would love an IP addressable imagespace– floor to ceiling — to which we could “send” images any time, simply by knowing the address. The people we know could send us their back yard or their llama. The scientist we know could send us an amoeba. We could send things to ourselves from our phones or our weekends. We could bring in our worlds to wrap us in visual mind graffiti. The Dream Space for thinking is our surround.

Flip the walls

Just as we grow accustomed to the walls we create, take a day in our Dream Space to  Flip the Walls again. What is on the back of this wall? Erase it all and ask us to show the back of our thoughts, like the back of a web page.

Bring it ‘Round

For some reason, my mental images of the Dream Space persistently appear more like the stand-up omnimax theater spaces that have no corners. The Dream Space does not have places for learning to hide or get lost in an angular trap. Ideas in this Space can bounce freely and endlessly because they continue to deflect off the circular hug of thinking.

Then the door clunks open on sturdy school hinges, and the spell breaks.  A skeptical voice inquires, “Why is this teacher lady dreaming about a classroom that doesn’t exist? What is the point here?” In my Dream Space, even one that has suddenly morphed back to a regular classroom with rows of desks, a chorus of voices simply calls out, “Come on in!”