So no sooner is the school year over but it's time to begin planning things for the next one. The major challenge and opportunity is to flip my classroom. Next year one of my sections will be an on-going pilot of blending both traditional face-time curriculum and online curriculum. Here is an example of one of the videos I used to explain the concept to parents of prospective students:
My district has other intrepid teachers looking to embark on the path to a blended curriculum. In a workshop today I listened to some wonderful math teachers plan out how they would be engaging their students using this model. My mind kept coming back to Bloom's Taxonomy.
Specifically, the changes that have recently been made to Bloom's come to mind. The top of the pedagogical pyramid of thought used to be "Evaluation" or the judgement of products based on criteria.
Now, however the pyramid of Bloom's has been revised to something more like this:
Which in preparing to "flip" and "blend" my classroom has me thinking of the following questions:
How can does one account for the "economy of focus" at work in most of today's students in regard to technology?
How are the economics of technology access going to be addressed?
How can technology be used to accurately check for understanding during the off-site learning process?
What role do anticipatory sets and classroom activities take now in this model?
But I did catch two great quotes from the workshop coordinators.
The art of understanding something is different than the science of applying it.
and
Our motto with technology should be 'if you can think it, it's possible.'
I'm working with some good educators and I've got to keep thinking.
A great but chaotic school year is coming to a close for this writer. In the hopes of writing more this summer I'm attempting to switch-up my workflow using Blogsy on my iPad. This, in theory, should allow for more posts and less time spent on learning markdown coding while keeping the focus on transparency and learning. If this works, look for many more posts to follow.
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...
This is the kind of post that gets a writer in trouble in various educational circles.
"I don't like Moodle."
There, it's out in the open. It's not to say that one can't be successful with it; there's a colleague in my building that lives by it and the achievement scores that result are great. But a thought keeps rattling around in my mind:
Schools are only good at assessing school.
The original speaker of this escapes me, maybe it's Seth Godin or maybe it's Sir Ken Robinson. But that this is in any way true still devastates me. Remnants of this quote popped into my mind when hearing students talk about Moodle. In coversations with students they've indicated to me that discussions and commenting on Moodle can feel "fake" at times.
It's like it's trying to be Facebook for school.
Anyone who's worked with teenagers knows that there is a polygraph-like detection of condescension at any given moment. The student in the quote above was merely pointing out that they felt that Moodle was something from the adult, or school sphere that was trying desperately to mimic something from the real world. You know, the one that occurs outside of school.
Then there came the replies from my high-achieving students. These are students that are amazing; they're one of the best groups in recent memory in my building. They will go on to study in colleges on the coasts and are far more responsible at their age than I was. They struggled to tell me good things about Moodle. Their main complaint however, wasn't in content delivery or discussion. They didn't like how they had to go back through logins to various pages to keep checking for possible changes and assignments. I don't blame them.
Take a look at the myriad of tech-savvy people in business and education out there in the wide web. What are they using? Is it Moodle? No. There will be talk of Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) and Facebook, Twitter, or Google Reader. Now, after discussion with a colleague who's far wiser than I, it's clear that there are benefits and safety provided by Moodle's "walled garden" approach. It's a way of ensuring a controlled interaction environment. Yet it I go back to what my student said. My concern is the paradigm of information delivery.
Go log in to Facebook, Twitter, or your Google Reader account. What greets you? Why information! Every minutia of informational change that has occurred in your network since your last login is brought to your attention. The difference with Moodle is staggering. Students live in a time where there is an economy of focus. If as an educator, I want to connect to my students I have to justify why they should give their focus to interacting with me.
Maybe it's not so much a case of Moodle vs Facebook as it is one of Moodle vs PLNs? I'll have to talk with my students and see.
In my reading of education blogs I keep coming back to the work of Will Richardson. One thing that has been a persistent mental irritant with no small measure of dissonance for me is Will's thoughts on how much of what bloggers do is, in fact, not really blogging. This list of what does/not constitute blogging resonates-
Posting assignments. (Not blogging)
Journaling, i.e. “This is what I did today.” (Not blogging)
Posting links (Not blogging)
Links with descriptive annotation, i.e. “This site is about…” (Not really blogging either, but getting close depending on the depth of the description.)
Links with analysis that gets into the meaning of the content being linked. (A simple form of blogging.)
Reflective, meta-cognitive writing on practice without links. (Complex writing, but simple blogging, I think. Commenting would probably fall in here somewhere.)
Links with analysis and synthesis that articulates a deeper understanding or relationship to the content being linked and written with potential audience response in mind. (Real blogging)
Extended analysis and synthesis over a longer period of time that builds on previous posts, links and comments. (Complex blogging)
And as my students begin their work reading "The Count of Monte Cristo" Will's list kept nagging at me. Then I thought "isn't a lot 'real blogging' just a Think-Aloud?" So in lieu of the usual pre-reading lists and worksheets my students are going to be blogging. Real blogging - but blogging as a Think-Aloud.
Given that mimetics is at the heart of learning I thought that I'd try my own Think-Aloud with a recent article. The article is about how Death Valley is experiencing a rare occurrence - an outbreak of wildflowers.
Right away images of the desert spring to mind with the mere mention of the name "Death Valley". The smell of wildflowers, dry winds, kalediscopic colors all flood the senses, but so do other texts. One I can't help but think of is the closing monologue of "25th Hour". While it's an amazing finish to a so-so film the use of the word "desert" always brings this scene to mind:
A rare burst of color is softening the stark landscape of Death Valley, with clusters of purple, pink and white wildflowers dotting the black basalt mountainsides and great swaths of golden blooms bordering the blinding white salt flats on the valley floor.
these connections just come given the idea of flowers springing from land that is otherwise dead. It also recalls T.S. Elliot's Wastelandand the opening stanza
APRIL is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
and while this poem connects to the processes at work in the article it also connects to my own experiences with poetry. Elliot's Wasteland was one of the first poems that I read and reread in high school. At the time I couldn't at gunpoint tell you why it was always around me, and even reading an article about wildflowers in Death Valley, the poem still haunts.
The article isn't without moments of confusion though. In all of the amazing descriptions surrounding this phenomenon and all of the flowers listed, I had no idea what a "chia" was. Contextually, it was obviously a wildflower, but I couldn't even place a color to the flower.
The other moment that I had trouble comprhending was the bit concerning the pools of water:
The recent storms have turned part of the salt pan around Badwater Basin — normally a brackish puddle a few inches deep — into a reflecting pool about five miles across. Kayakers and windsailers cut across the shallow, lifeless water. Other visitors wade in, only to emerge covered in a salt crust.
This is an engaging description but it's hard to fathom whether this pool became both deeper and wider, it must have to accomodate the windsailers and kayakers, but if it swelled to being miles across it just doesn't read correctly.
I don't know how often I'll come back to this specific article, perhaps only as metaphor. But images and idea of life and color springing forth from the desert is compelling. Especially when the article closes with something so closely connected to T. S. Elliot
"This isn't a wasteland," Muick said. "It will start looking empty when the flowers are gone, but there's life there at all times."
As a bonus here is my first attempt at using the webtool Storify. It's an interesting service and the features lent themselves well to the requirements of a Think-Aloud.
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.
My classes have gained experience in the use of Socratic Circles this year. The basic formula for that activity is one of the following:
students first read a passage critically and then form two concentric circles. First, the inner circle examines and discusses the text and the second circle comments on the quality of the dialogue. Then, the two circles switch places and roles, and the process is repeated with the new ideas from a new circle. The outer circle is required to remain quiet while the inner circle reacts and dialogues, and conversely, the inner circle must listen quietly to the outer circle’s evaluation of their conversation.
One new feature we are experimenting with is the use of backchanneling. One backchanneling that's been a part of this experimentation is Today's Meet. Today's Meet gives their own basic definition of backchanneling as:
The backchannel is everything going on in the room that isn't coming from the presenter.
The backchannel is where people ask each other questions, pass notes, get distracted, and give you the most immediate feedback you'll ever get.
The procedure is now altered to one of:
Group the class into two circles.
The Inner Circle speaks first using Socratic questioning methods.
The Outer Circle backchannels using Today's Meet while the Inner Circle discusses.
Time is called and the transcript of the backchannel is turned into a word cloud for analysis.
The Inner Circle's work is evaluated while new topics are generated from the evaluation and word cloud.
The circles switch and the new circles have their respective discussions and backchannel sessions.
So here is an example of Socratic Circles at work with students discussing the first part of "The Odyssey".
Here is the transcript of the backchannel from that session. Below is the word cloud generated from the backchannel session:
"Telemachia" Click on the link above to see this word cloud at WordItOut. You may also view it on this website if you enable JavaScript (see your web browser settings).
The other moment that I had trouble comprhending was the bit concerning the pools of water: