Think Like a Teacher

A Class Portrait from Germain's collection. Click for full collection.

We all have them: faded, posed pictures of ourselves as elementary students in a class picture. Neat lines, tall kids standing in the back, shorter ones seated in front holding the sign with the grade, teacher’s name, and school year. These class pictures sterilize what school is all about, replacing a portrait of learning with a portrait of students as furniture. The picture strips the culture and details that provide context and priorities for what happens in school. What does the classroom look like? What is on the board and on the floor? What is the visual routine of day to day learning in this place?

Julian Germain has an ongoing photo project taking classroom portraits around the world. Photos taken 2004-2011 are published in book form, but selected photos are also available online. The images are familiar, strange, haunting, and encouraging. I could spend an hour looking at each one and hypothesizing what the children’s lives are like,  how the teacher conducts class, and what they might be thinking as this portrait is being taken. I imagine the moment after the shutter goes off and the pose disintegrates into talk, motion, chaos. I hear the teacher (invisible in most pictures) calling for attention and redirecting kids to the lesson at hand.

I also hear what other kids (and teachers) would say when they see the portraits of unfamiliar classrooms. We can learn so much by observing small cultural details and the questions they raise.

“Look! There’s a dog in their room!”

“What’s that written on the board?”

“They have jeans like mine.”

“How many kids are in that class?”

“It’s all girls!”

“Why do they look so serious?”

The seriousness, I believe, is imposed by the photographer  as part of the photo session (how else could “structured play” look so unhappy?). Indeed, the ability of the photographer to influence the message through pose, composition, lighting, and more could spark a sophisticated media literacy discussion.

The other questions are open to observation, discussion, and discovery. These classroom portraits of learning are an invitation for the viewers themselves to learn. What better way to entice our students to dig into cross-cultural understanding than to share unfamiliar images of a very familiar place: the classroom. I’d love to set up a sharing project for classroom portraits. Here are some lesson ideas for using these images and/or extending the idea in creating your own portraits.

World cultures/Social Studies/World Languages: Use as an intro into cultural differences and awareness. Project an image and have students note what they see and what they think it could mean about life as a youth in that culture/location. Take it beyond just school. What else can they tell about society there? How could they research to find out whether their hypotheses are true? If this portrait shows what it is like to be a child/youth in ___, what would be important details to include in an image depicting life in our classroom? Consider actually TAKING that picture and sharing it on your class wiki or web page, possibly with annotations to explain why the class included  the items it did.

With younger students: how would you feel if this were your classroom? How might the children seen here feel if they came to our classroom? List ten things that are the same as our classroom and ten that appear different. How is different NOT “better” or “worse”?

Science (yes, science): Entice kids into scientific observation and the difference between observing , hypothesizing, and concluding by sharing an image as whole class practice. Extend it by having kids (groups?)  “report” observations and hypotheses based on another photo in the series.

A picture is worth a thousand lessons.

The annual announcement of the MacArthur Fellows this week generated the usual media blitz about a fresh batch of surprising, creative, and potentially influential people stashed in little-known pockets and corners. Dubbed, “genius” awards by the media, these grants recognize “individuals who show exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future” and offer generous funds so recipients can continue their work with the greatest freedom and  flexibility.

The process by which MacArthur Fellows  are nominated and selected, contrary to what the media, guidance counselors, and tiger parents may say,  proves that accomplishment and recognition can happen to those who do not actively campaign for it or plan a deliberate path to a perfect pinnacle. These people are creative because it is their passion and their life, not their career goal. MacArthur is remarkably successful in keeping both nominators and nominees completely confidential. The rotating pool of nominators assures a never ending stream of potential candidates from an ever expanding (U.S.) world of possibilities. As nominators come and go, the process nears perfection like a mathematical function approaching its asymptote. There are no winners or losers because no one even knows who is in the game. The fellows are unaware of scrutiny until recognized, and that is an important part of the process. These are people who are chosen because they are likely to spread and share the brilliance of their light. And light can come from any angle and in any color or wavelength. The pool is blindingly large, but somehow MacArthur finds a prism to separate out the light of these individuals. Will they find them all? Not likely, but they will continue the quest with a process that mimics the “genius” of the winners.

It is time for MacArthur Teaching Fellowships. Grassroots efforts to change teaching today proffer exemplary new ways for students to grow and learn in this era of education reform. Most programs must struggle for funding or meet bureaucratic requirements to gain recognition and  continue their success. These efforts are institutional, however, and they at least have a process to try. They may be magnet schools or charters or university pilot programs. Yet we miss the isolated light of an individual teacher who shares surprising, creative light in unexpected classroom corners or even outside school walls. He/She may not be the principal’s shining star, suitable to be nominated as “teacher of the year.” He/She does not self-advocate and may actually be a thorn in the side of colleagues, an “odd duck” or a manic and disorganized genius. This is the teacher whose unusual ways or odd approach “show[s] exceptional creativity… and the prospect for still more in the future.”  A single, intuitive “genius” of a teacher may have discovered something that could spread a new light, perhaps engaging would-be drop-outs or highly gifted social outcasts. Or maybe he/she is a middle school math teacher whose students make poetry of Pythagorus or an English teacher whose students sculpt sentences at the town hall.

How would we ever find them? The same way MacArthur finds Fellows. A rotating pool of nominators adds letters of nomination on an ongoing basis. The process is silent and secretive, but finds them. We know “genius” creative teachers are out there, and they may never receive a pat on the back any other way.  But we could learn so much from them. With the generous, flexible fellowship funds to pursue their passions, who knows how many students could benefit.

Forget the Hollywood “inspired teacher” movies. I want to be inspired by the genius teachers. They are perhaps the ones who never intended to teach — or who could never imagine doing anything else. It does not matter to me what kind of prep they had or what happy meteor landing put them among our children. They are the light  that Departments of Education cannot see, the infrared to our “professional” eyes.

It’s a thought, anyway. Anybody want to fund it?

I began a series of overlays to Blogger Alison Anderson’s ten great ideas for opening our classrooms to parents without making it a time-consuming teacher task. As I have allowed the ideas to steep, I find more overlays, extensions and implications of the easy, tech-leveraged sharing that can emanate from our classrooms to involve parents. So here is Part Two:

6. Open sharing for parent involvement and learning reinforcement immediately begs the question: will your school allow Bring You Own Device (BYOD) sharing? If the kids have their phones and we can have them send the tweets or images to share with parents, why not? Perhaps some carefully conducted experiments in pro-active sharing can support  your efforts to promote a BYOD initiative. Kids share, Parents ask. Parents understand. Kids learn and remember. Repeat. [Yes, I know there are all sorts of monitoring and management issues, but if we survived open classrooms in the 1970s and 80s, we can figure this out. Other schools have done it, so we can learn from their policies and mistakes!]

7. The ultimate open sharing would be a live webcam. Would you, as a teacher,  you want a live webcam in your classroom? Legalities aside, this raises interesting issues, to say the least. Even if you password protect the webcam so only logged in parents can see it, how does a parent understand when tuning in for a few moments here or there? What about snippets viewed out of context? You could have a pretty good class discussion about individual rights and constitutionality by asking your middle or high school students what they would think of sharing via webcam. It might be interesting to hang a dummy camera for one day during your Constitution unit!

8. Teaching about context and purpose. As media consumers, we are all subject to manipulation. What a great way to flip this around by asking students their purpose in sharing a particular item from class. Did they offer enough context so others can understand it? Did they imply that it was something different by removing it from context? How can “innocent” social media sharing manipulate a message? If you ask any middle schooler how to push his/her parent’s buttons by selecting one thing to share from today’s class, I guarantee he/she will know which thing is certain to fire up mom or dad.

9. What did you learn from YOUR kid’s school today? It is important to show our kids that parents are learners just as we should show teachers are learners. This is where some positive spin from businesses or local media could help by asking/posting the question: What did you learn from YOUR kid’s school today? Wouldn’t that be a great app on Facebook, sponsored by Walmart or  Staples? Simply sharing the message that we can learn from our kids is a powerful way to validate learning across our society and support schools with more than money. I think a lot about ways we could bring businesses and others into more effective, grassroots partnerships with education, and this one seems easy.

10. Employers who value education should value their employees’ involvement as parents. If you allow employees to spend five minutes of their break checking out what is happening at their child’s school, you are saying that school matters and that parenthood matters. Celebrate the sharing. It will pay off with more involved parents, higher achieving kids, and better future employees.

There’s a lot more to social media than selling products. We can involve parents and sell learning.

In the 1970s and 80s, “open” classrooms were vast expanses of space with free-flowing, flexible arrangements of furniture and students around a curriculum in constant flux. I know. I taught in an open classroom school that attracted VIP fact-finding tours from far and wide. Today we “open” our classrooms with technology, allowing people to visit, observe, and participate. Parents are today’s VIP invitees, and today’s technologies make opening the classroom easier and easier. Blogger Alison Anderson shares ten great ideas for opening your classroom to parents without making it a time-consuming teacher task. Her tech-savvy suggestions are just one layer among the advantages, means, and results of involving parents in today’s “open” classrooms. I agree that having students manage the sharing is ideal.  The tools are plentiful. To make the student sharing and parent involvement/home discussion even better, there is some deliberate thinking we may want to do as teachers. So I offer some overlays on the subject. I can tell this will be on my mind for a while, but here is part one:

1. Parents may need help knowing what to ask. When their question is “What did you do in school today?” the answer is doomed from the start. What was that thing you were laughing at in the science class video? Who decided which picture to post today?  Why did you share that picture? By sharing media that prompts questions, we and our students can make the home conversations more informative, more supportive of learning, and just plain fun for both parents and kids. We might even make parents lives a little easier. It never hurts to make  busy parents happy.

2. As teachers, we take the time to encourage higher level thinking and questioning from our students.  How do we encourage parents to think and question deeply? We should be deliberate about which images. words, or multimedia we encourage students to share. Ask the kids what would make their parents curious. Ask them which two images would best represent the day. Two will invite comparison, contrast, or analysis to explain why they go together.

3. Ideas invite questions. Assuming you have a class Twitter account, use the brief format for text-only ideas. Tweet students’ what-ifs. Tweet the oddest question asked in class today. Tweet an alliteration about today’s topic. Have a contest for the best end of class summary tweet in a clever format. (Your gifted students will spend most of the class period trying to think of the best one — and actually stay connected to the topic at hand for a change). If there are bonus point attached to authoring a good tweet, you may have more than you need. Or let the class vote for Today’s Tweet.

4. Kids WANT to share (or we can nudge them a bit). Kids are social beings and braggers. Elementary kids will share anything(!), any time. Middle schoolers may not select the things you would want parents to see (the smartphone shot of the kid picking his nose with the lab equipment), but they definitely want to share something. Give them incentives to brag a little. Teens in secondary classrooms are more reticent and dare not be uncool by sounding enthusiastic. But if we teach multiple sections of the same thing, why not spark a little competition between classes to share the most thought provoking or clever or insightful tweet, image, etc. on the same topic.

5. Learning about what is appropriate to share from your open classroom is an easy way to teach digital citizenship in context. Adults offer long lists of social network do’s and don’ts, but our students need practice. The reports that come back the next day: “What did your parents ask last night  after we shared that Instagram from class?” may be exactly the life lessons we need so students learn ramifications of sharing.  The lessons are ongoing, self-reinforcing, and authentic.

Are you seeing different overlays on this simple topic? Stay tuned for Part two…

Eleven years ago, the day began with a sky as blue as today’s, the air as crisp as a back-to-school outfit. An hour and a half into my morning email routine as a technology integration specialist, my supervisor’s voice exploded from the conference room down the hall, “Candy, come quick! It’s a catastrophe!” The rest of the day unraveled in glimpses of TV sets through classroom doors as I tried to maintain normalcy inside a high school filled with gasps and to respond to email requests for news updates from elementary teachers behind news blackouts designed to protect the very young. The slide show of that day replays every time I watch or hear the tales again. As Americans, we tell our versions over and over.  As a teacher, I want our children and teens to hear them. I teach 9/11.

I have a son who has flown his jet in Afghanistan on missions I will never know about. He began the path to those missions on 9/12. I have numerous former students who have followed similar paths. Those who were old enough to remember 9/11 tell their stories in their own ways just as my parents, teenagers during Pearl Harbor, told theirs. I remember realizing as a child that the lesson in my history class  was my parents’ high school reality. Many times since then, especially as they aged, I asked for more detail. Teachers themselves, they willingly told me what they could recall, tinted by their perspectives of a World War and all the decades since. I don’t recall them ever being the ones to bring it up, though. But if I asked… they taught Pearl Harbor.

Now I have grandsons too young to know 9/11.  I know college students, teens, and tweens  who have no solid recollection of that blue sky, calamitous day. As  teachers, we must tell the stories. We must point our students to read and listen and understand what is beyond today’s clear sky and memorial bells. I know this day will always make me stop and think and want to tell the story. I utter a quiet “YES!” when I see sites like Moment Tracker.  I want to be sure that someone is telling the story so our children will continue to ask for it. I teach 9/11.

Make time for what’s “good for you.” Exercise 30 minutes a day. Eat organic. Go outside. Read to your child. Drink water. Set aside quality time. Model responsible behavior. Oh, and reduce stress.

We know what we’re supposed to do and why it is good for us. We just don’t know how to fit it all into a teacher’s week. Now add to the list: staying up to date on new approaches to teaching and learning (often using technology). As someone who finally figured out where to find the time for some of the above, I wonder whether the same strategies –with a little tech assistance– could work for the other things, like staying up to date with tech for learning.

Strategy 1: Where were you?

I have read that we are more likely to exercise if we have comrades at the gym or pool or on our walks. Simply knowing that you’ll be asked, “Where were you?” is often enough to make you go when you’d really like to skip. My swim friends have no authority over me, but anticipation of their concern is enough to drag me out of bed before 5 am on cold, winter mornings. Even the casual acquaintances who greet you on regular walks will ask why they have missed you. Easier to just do it than to make up excuses. Try establishing the same “where were you” type of group in your faculty room for Better Teaching Tuesdays or on Twitter by joining one of the many #chats. But be sure to  befriend enough buddies in the chat that they will ASK you where you have been if you do not show up.  As I scan chats, I see enough side conversations about vacations, family, and local lore to recognize the same kind of conversations that happen in my swim locker room. Support each other’s professional development simply by asking, “where were you” when a frequent chat buddy is absent, and ask your buddy to do the same for you.

Strategy 2: Let them notice

There is nothing like having someone say, “You look good. Have you been exercising?” or “I wish I read to my kids as much as you read to yours.”  If you keep your success at beating the time bandits completely secret, you may never hear these invigorating reinforcements. Leave a trail that others can find. Facebook is great for this. So are blogs. Mention the book you and the kids just finished or the great story you heard at the gym. Be honest about how much you hate broccoli as you share the first broccoli recipe you can stand on Pinterest. Maybe even share the first tech tool you figured out. It’s not bragging if you are simply giving people a small view of a minor accomplishment. I don’t think I’d list my breakfast menu, but I see how many comments my friends receive when they share a pic of a culinary coup. I personally have a bit more trouble with the running apps that share how fast you ran 5 miles, but that is probably my problem, not yours. To me, sharing limited peeks is better than trumpeting announcements. To each his own. A great side benefit of playing in the social network venue is that you are learning the way your students like to learn. How can you adapt it as a class activity?

Strategy 3: Find the app for that

If nothing else, apps add novelty. Heaven knows, they multiply like mosquitos, with a new buzz hourly. A lasting favorite of mine is Flipboard. I like being able to add Twitter searches, favorite blogs, and just plain news into one magazine-style app that I can browse without feeling like I am working. I admit I don’t stay up to date on all the new apps that come out. I wait to read what others say on Twitter and try them when I notice 3- 6 tweets about the same app. Must be good, right?  App shopping is like using coupons. You try new products when you hear enough buzz and you think it’s cheap enough to try. (Either that or your eight year old is hounding you to buy it.)

Strategy 4: Balance your diet

Twitter is dark chocolate for the teaching heart. I could stay on all day, but I know it is not the only food for thought. There are other options that offer high fiber (online pubs like Learning and Leading), large tossed salad webinars, and  the full meal experience of  creating a conference presentation or online PD session. I especially savor the face to face potluck paloozas like the ISTE conference where I meet and simply talk with other teachers.

I certainly don’t stick to what is good for me, and I often do not meet recommended daily allowances of professional development. I’ll keep working on serving things up at TeachersFirst if you promise to try some tech broccoli once in a while.

According to Daniel Coyle, talent is a myth.  Coyle recently synthesized results from years observing “centers of excellence” into a list of conditions that breed talent in “hotbeds” with

the combination of intensive practice and motivation that produces brain growth

Sounds like what we want our classrooms to be, right?

Although Coyle is focused largely on adult success and centers of excellence in sports or arts, his descriptions are very much what we hope our classrooms will be: places where our students maximize their potential. Coyle’s rules for adult success could work along the way for kids in a classroom, with some adaptation.

1. Staring: “fill your windshield with vivid images of your future self, and … stare at them every day.”

Encourage kids to develop the image and to keep it in front of themselves. Give them places to keep it: a journal where they can paste pictures, a locker wall, an electronic MePortfolio with a “dreaming of me” page. Have them stop to look at what makes an idol so special. What can he/she do that I want to do? Young ones have fleeting notions of what their future selves look like: fireman, snowman, roller coaster designer, cake boss… so maybe we need to ask what it is about that fleeting image that they like: Circle it. Write about it. Add more images of it. Keep refining the montage.

2. Stealing: “All improvement is about absorbing and applying new information, and the best source of information is top performers. So steal it….focus on specifics”

Kids call it copying, and they are very good at it. They watch how the pitcher spits, and they spit the same way. They listen to language at the bus stop, and …. But if we stare enough at the models from #1, we may come to notice things we’d like to copy. The trick is figuring out what to notice. That is where teachers can offer direction. We can help kids learn what to notice. We can talk as a class about what we observe, investigating which traits really matter. When they are young, kids need to develop the “eye” for what might be worth stealing. If you do one thing the same way Thomas Jefferson (or Copernicus or Shakespeare) did, what would it be? Show me.

3. Be stupid. (This is my favorite.) We rarely allow this. Humans spend a lot of time making fun of “stupid.” We post videos of it on YouTube and laugh at it on the playground. Coyle says talent hotbeds “encourage ‘productive mistakes’ by establishing rules that encourage people to take risks.” Guess we’ll have to toss out some of the testing culture. Darn.

I especially like this example: “once a week, make a decision at work that scares you.” How do we do this in class? Ask questions that have no answer. Put them on the test. Give credit for ANY attempt. Give students a weekly freebie to get credit for a WRONG answer backed by substantiated effort. Circling a guess one on multiple choice tests does not count. Even better: allow a one minute off the wall “be stupid” time for sharing what ifs and far fetched errors at the end of class.

The social dangers of being “stupid” at school can be avoided if systematically incorporated as part a creative teaching approach. David Markus notes that “Even Too-Cool-for-School Kids Can’t Resist” doing crazy, risky things if everyone can laugh about them together, such as in an arts-integrated math class.

5. Coyle’s observations about centers of excellence each warrant discussion, but I’ll skip to #5, his distinction between hard and soft skills, a place where most classrooms are seriously off target.

Hard, high-precision skills are actions that are performed as correctly and consistently as possible, every time.

Soft, high-flexibility skills, on the other hand, are those that have many paths to a good result, not just one. These skills aren’t about doing the same thing perfectly every time, but rather about being agile and interactive;

We do a pretty good job with hard skills. I will resist the urge to criticize our zealousness for careful delineation of the “right” way to do things.

Soft skills are all about process. In a test-driven world, we rarely have time to celebrate  or focus on these “soft” skills, yet they are vital to talent hotbeds. Coyle tells us that “hard skills and soft skills are different (literally, they use different structures of circuits in your brain), and thus are developed through different methods of deep practice.”  Our students need to routine, deep practice at looking for patterns, changing course, flipping to a different approach. No templates, no prescribed step by step method to recite and reuse. We so rarely ask questions where kids must experiment and analyze. Can you find one such question in your weekly lesson plans? How long will you let them suffer before you reveal the answer? Have you ever left a question unanswered yet scored it as part of a grade?  How many parent calls did you get?  To many people (including many teachers), open endedness is evil (see #3 above).

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
 

We are social beings, so why not use that to frame digital citizenship in the context of community?

This time of year, teachers are establishing the ground rules for their classrooms: what is expected, how students should behave during activities and transitions, and even what kind of language we use to interact. This is when we establish the standards for our classroom community. We tell, they listen — and we hope they do it.

I have noticed different kinds of communities lately and how each has a set of community standards
that develops and is shared with new members. One  such community is Facebook. Each member chooses the boundaries of our Facebook community by connecting to certain friends and adjusting settings for what shows in our newsfeed. Two of my own friends have recently cut others out of their feed (or blocked or unfriended them) because the offending “friend” did not adhere to unstated community standards. One complained about racist remarks a “friend” had shared (bye, bye!) while another bristled at a “friend’s” annoying political campaigning (see you after November!). As adults, we know that we both infer and establish community standards wherever we participate.

But back to our classrooms… Shouldn’t we be talking with our kids about community awareness and how to develop the skills to both read inferences of a community and to guide that community by our contributions? In elementary grades, typical social studies curriculum includes the concept of community in the very concrete sense: the place with a fire house, shops and roads, a town hall, a police department, local government, and our school, of course. Separately we teach about staying safe online, avoiding cyberbullying, and perhaps how to write comments on a blog or compose an email. Instead of treating digital citizenship as a separate entity, we need to help our students see the online world as just another community (or collection of communities) they belong to. They need to read the unstated rules of any community they enter, whether it is a workplace, a classroom, or an online social network.

Last week, I had the pleasure of working with students from across the U.S. in the pilot Boot Camp for MySciLife. This small group of students and teachers came from six different schools with six very different student bodies, six sets of school rules and policies, and surrounded by six varied, real communities. But in MySciLife, we formed a new virtual community. As the community grew rapidly (over 800 posts in 5 days!), students developed de facto community standards of behavior. Yes, we teachers nudged them a bit on digital citizenship in citing images, but they did what kids do. They watched the way their peers spoke (or wrote) and adjusted their language and the thoughtfulness of their posts accordingly.

Before we add yet another mandated chunk to K-12 curriculum, teaching digital citizenship, we should look at how easily this concept fits into our social nature and take advantage of that social impulse. Talk about how we figure out a group. Talk about the role of “citizen” in real and virtual communities. Talk about how the choices we make by voting, friending, commenting, and participating. Communities flow continually between real and virtual today. Citizenship is one extended discussion and lesson, not  separate curricula in technology or social studies. And we all teach it every day.

Bringing science to life.

If you’d like to see what happens when middle level students are turned loose to learn in a social learning environment for science,  peek into MySciLife.

Finally, after two years of work, scheming, and dreaming, we have launched the MySciLife science learning experience that began as a brainstorm between Ollie Dreon, Louise Maine, and me one snowy day in early 2010.  Our  proposal became a finalist in the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition 2010 but unfortunately was not funded. You can see the full description of our dream here. (Since the original proposal, we have shifted away from the online tool we thought might work and have instead adopted Edmodo as our platform — at least for our pilot.)

Enough history.

This week has been amazing. The kids in our pilot “Boot Camp” went crazy with MySciLife. Browse through the public stream (scroll down to the bottom via “see more”  to see the beginning of the modules as students introduce themselves) of all their identities throughout the week. Here are some intriguing or creative excerpts of their work/play as they take on and “live” science identities in a safe social learning environment:

A “Rock Band” video from one of our California groups.

A rock tour from the kids in Wisconsin.

We have seen metacognition, curiosity, student-generated learning activities, constructive and constructionist suggestions, humor, creativity, deep thinking, and some marvelous social interactions between students in 5 locations throughout the U.S. To paraphrase a popular Tshirt, MySciLife is good.

PS: One of many learning moments for all the teachers:

Even though we TOLD students to give image credits, it was not until we demonstrated it and made them go back to add the credits that they grasped what we meant. We therefore were not able to share some of their posts in the “public” stream because they have not completed the citations yet.