Take-aways and Poetry

If you're not familiar with the unique music blog La Blogotheque it's worth a look. Often the staging of the performance presents both a unique challenge to the band playing all the while helping to expose some aspect of the song or performers. Bands like Throw Me the Statue perform on the back of a ferryboat or Arcade Fire performs on a double-decker bus. What matters is that the form is mirroring the content. Below is an example from Local Natives and it's got me thinking of how my students could do something like this when reading poetry...

<p>Local Natives | Who Knows Who Cares | A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.</p>

Reigniting the Muse of Fire

It's been a tough week in my district with tragedy befalling our student body prior to an extended weekend coming up. While the shock is still something being processed, the students have been making good use of writing to work toward a sense of catharsis. Blogging, like writing, often offers the chance for reflection and thought. 

This video of a talk by Sir Ken Robinson is something that has this writer thinking about the future and what needs to be done in education. Sometimes in darkness it's incumbent upon us to ignite something if no other illumination can be found. This video is something that's shining a light for me. It's Sir Ken Robinson being given the RSA Animation treatment. 

Choose to Begin - Student Blogging Pt. 1

In the aim to simultaneously listen to what my students are asking for in writing instruction while allowing student choice, I have decided to move toward the use of student blogging. In earlier classwork students have expressed both an interest in multiple forms of writing and a value of choice, but also a pointed lack of experience in blogging beyond merely reading them. The hope then is to have instruction become paired with choice. In my own process of starting to blog the following Common Craft video provided a 'refresher' on what the basics of blogging are. 

The goal is to have students choose the way that they begin sharing their voice; something that is most likely tragically unique in the educational experience. To paraphrase a favorite poem of mine, I'd like for my students to choose to dare to disturb the universe, to choose to begin finding and sharing their voice. While any of the tutorial links below will provide a serviceable platform, I want them to find one that's more than merely serviceable - I want it to be theirs. And while we will both review the process outlined in Konrad Glogowski's great post on growing your blog, it's my hope that in coming up with their own metaphor they own their process and find voice. 

Some Possible Platforms

Blogger 

WordPress

Tumblr

Posterous

Socratic Circles - First Draft

Here are some of the highlights from my Honors English 9 sections during their first Socratic Circles discussions. The first time out of the gate is always difficult; will anyone speak, will the format seem too strange, etc. That was not the case with these discussions. While there was some ebb and flow it was as promising a beginning as I can think of. There will need to be some remediation on filming and volume levels, but my advice is use some headphones and take in the good work that these students are doing. 

Download now or watch on posterous

SocraticCircle091010.mov (52724 KB)

The Upside-down Syllabus Pt. 2

Yesterday's work was aimed at creating some "free write" beginnings for the class syllabus, but instead resulted in an interesting social experiment on anonymity, human behavior, and Google Docs. Yes, it will be the subject of a future post once the video is edited...

For now the YouTube video below will be the starter text used in conjunction with classwork thus far in the first Socratic Circle Discussion being held Friday. Enjoy.

Testing the Cupcake Dog

In preparing for the school year I've been approaching my planning from a different standpoint. In the same vein as this blog, the aim has been to be as transparent as possible in terms of the learning process. One inevitable reality of the learning process in public schools is assessment which often takes the form of tests. During this preparation an interesting meme that came at me sideways was Stains the Cupcake dog.

This clip from "It's Me or the Dog" has started to take on a small life beyond the show. It could be the production values, or the disconcerting amount of focus by the dog, but in any event it's amusing and thought-provoking.

While preparing for the school year I've been embedding multiple assessments of different natures, all with the goal of improving student achievement. Within this goal is the focus and assumption of education being something more than mere operant conditioning. Too many students consume information, retain it until the test, and then promptly forget said information to ready the mental space for new information presumably for the next test. In this way the learning of Stains the Cupcake dog is a cautionary tale. If all we assess is the memory of wrote facts we are racing not to the top but toward obsolescence. Learning requires a basic knowledge of facts but that knowledge is not the sum total of learning. Though it may be easy to manage I do not want a classroom full of cupcake dogs.

What's the answer then? I'm not entirely sure, but I want to bring my students into the process of the learning that they take part in. A first step is giving them power to choose, let them peek behind education's curtain, to have opportunities Stains did not. If we do not teach students how we create lessons and curate learning how can we then expect them to learn on their own? The interesting thing is that we know what to do. The talk below is something that I am going to share with my students. Because I want learners, not cupcake dogs.

If a picture is worth 1,000 words then video is worth...

Take a look at an outstanding video called "Words" from the creators over at Radiolab. Try to carry on a dialogue of the words describing each scene as it shifts and the excellence of this clip becomes clear.