MYP Humanities Instructor. International School Teacher in Japan. Apple Distinguished Educator. Americorp Alumnae. National Board Certified Teacher. Traveler & TV Watcher. This is where I think about these things.

To see what’s going on in my classroom, visit my class blog

Then and Now: Project Based Learning

Part two of a three part series (Click here for Part I):  How I implemented Project-Based Learning in my first year of teaching with minimal tech and how I do it now in a 1:1 environment. This small little series will look at different learning strategies, how I implemented them year 1 of teaching (with minimal technology) and year 12 teaching (with 1:1) and reflect on what has changed and what has stayed the same.

Year 1, Grade 9 Geography at St. Joseph Academy in Brownsville, Texas, 2001,

The defining moment of my first year of teaching was September 11th. I’ve blogged about what that day felt like and when I close my eyes I can put myself back in that classroom quite easily. As anyone who survived first year of teaching can tell you, it’s impossible to make it through first year without making a lot of mistakes. But one thing I did right was after 9/11 I threw out the curriculum and spent several weeks learning with my students about Afghanistan. This was perhaps my first practice of project based learning. I checked out any book in our small library that mentioned Afghanistan. I printed up stuff from the internet*. And then my grade 9 students did a project about Afghanistan. From what I remember**, I came up with some questions but students also could come up with their own. Prior to 9/11 my own knowledge of Afghanistan was limited. However, I did know that I needed to build empathy for the people of Afghanistan with my students as I saw the rhetoric become an Us vs. Them in the days after 9/11.  Some focused on physical geography, others history, some looked at the situation of women, others looked at education. I don’t know how we found the information, but we made it work. They created oral presentations with some visual support (printed in the computer lab). It was important work, it was messy, it was student-driven and it was chaotic. But it was some of my best teaching. And a real turning point in my teaching philosophy. I started to believe that I could let the students control their own learning and I didn’t always have to know everything. This is a big lesson for a first year teacher.

And as I look at the Buck Institute for Education requirements for project-based learning, I think First-Year-Teacher-Me stumbled across PBL.

• Recognize students’ inherent drive to learn, their capability to do important work, and their need to be taken seriously by putting them at the center of the learning process. CHECK
• Engage students in the central concepts and principles of a discipline. The project work is central rather than peripheral to the curriculum. CHECK
• Highlight provocative issues or questions that lead students to in-depth exploration of authentic and important topics. CHECK
• Use performance-based assessments that communicate high expectations, present rigorous challenges, and require a range of skills and knowledge. CHECK
• Encourage collaboration in some form, either through small groups, student-led presentations, or whole-class evaluations CHECK

Year 12, Grade 6-9 Humanities at Yokohama International School,  Yokohama, Japan 2012

I try to have my class be as project based as possible. I’ve blogged a lot about different projects I’ve done and if you walk into my classroom it’s often messy, chaotic, but (hopefully) important work is going on. For the most part, projects don’t come at the end of a unit of study but are actually how my students learn the concepts in humanities. But new technology has added several new layer to my work.

1) Research is harder. After 9/11 we had about seven books and Wikipedia was in its infancy. That limited scope of research made it easier to process all the information. I know that after the March 11th earthquake we were almost paralyzed by all the different information coming from so many different places. With project based learning, my job is to help facilitate research and help student evaluate the validity of the sources. This is much harder now. And probably one of the most important things I do.

2) My students now have an audience. In my mind a good project is one my students want to share. They do a lot of work on their projects and if it’s not worth sharing, then its been a waste of time***. Moreover, the best project is one they share because by sharing they can make a difference.

Reflection

I spent a lot of my first year teaching trying to control things, probably because I felt out of control so much of the time. I enforced dressed code assiduously. I was uptight about how they turned in their work, how they stapled their work, and when they were allowed to leave their chairs. I did lots of tests that had kids memorizing random facts and lots of busy work. But I also integrated projects and I experimented with different ways of teaching. I truly believe my students liked my class, I know I loved my students, and I was the best teacher I could be. I do also think First-Year-Teacher-Me would be appalled at how slack I now appear. But in the chaos that is M103, I have a mission and an plan and I am by no means out-of-control in my class. I’m no more perfect now that I was as a first year teacher, but I am still working hard, experimenting, and focusing on my students’ learning. And I truly believe my teaching philosophy comes from my experiences as a first year teacher, struggling to teach students about what was going on in the world.

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* According to Wikipedia history the first wikipedia entry on Afghanistan was November 2001. So I’m not entirely sure what I printed up.

**Again, seriously annoying I don’t have any evidence that I can easily lay my hands on.

***What they share can be different each time. It doesn’t have to be the whole project, but at least an aspect of their work should be “sharable”.

Then and now: Global Collaboration

Part one of a three part series:  How I implemented Global Collaboration in my first year of teaching with minimal tech and how I do it now in a 1:1 environment. 

Setting the scene:

Teaching was supposed to be a two year gig. As part of a two-year service teaching program, I was sent to Brownsville, Texas  to teach grade 9 geography. I imagined teaching for two years and then getting a “real” job. I’m still not sure what a “real” job would look like, but I knew before I ever stepped foot in a classroom that I would be bored out of my mind teaching for more than two years. I’m currently ending my 12th year of teaching and I can’t imagine any job that could be more dynamic than teaching. There are tedious bits of my job, but it is never boring and always changing.

But looking back at my first year of teaching I’m amazed how many things I tried to do in my classroom in Brownsville with minimal technology and what I now try to do in my 1:1 classroom in Yokohama. This small little series will look at different learning strategies, how I implemented them year 1 of teaching and year 12 teaching and reflect on what has changed and what has stayed the same.

Global Collaboration:

Brownsville, 2001:

One the first people I met in my dorm room at the University of Notre Dame was Abby Gottschalk. She lived two doors down from me and quickly became one of my best friends**.  After graduation, I went to Brownsville with six weeks of teacher training. Abby went to a small town in Germany on a Fulbright teaching scholarship. We were teaching the same general ages and decided to do a project between the two schools. We were studying Europe and they were studying English and it made sense. We brainstormed with our students questions they had about Germany and Texas and Mexico***. To the best of my memory****, the questions were things like “What is your school like?” or “What do you do for fun?”. I remember vividly my students getting really into this project because they knew someone was actually going to read it and it would represent Brownsville. We created a scrapbook, with everything handwritten and loaded with pictures we actually printed. I then went to the post-office and sent it off to Germany. And it was incredibly exciting when a package of letters came from Germany. My kids thought it was strange the German students wrote on grid paper and how different their handwriting was. They realized they both ate sausages and listened to the same music. It was fun and it was real and simple.

Yokohama, 2012

One of my goals this year was to increase the amount of global collaboration I do in my classroom. Everyone has a computer, I teach in an international school, and I have connections to lots of people. Global collaboration seems like a natural fit.

Some of it has been simple, with a quick Skype chat between my grade 7s and a class in Australia. Other collaborations have been more complicated.** The Flat Classroom Conference in Mumbai was an incredible opportunity to see how kids can work together with people from all over the world. I have also participated in the Digiteen Project, though Flat Classroom with my grade 8s. It’s been a blast watching my kids sharing K-pop songs with kids in the States and working together to pull together a project on Digital Citizenship across time zones. I truly believe that by having a global audience, my students are more engaged and want to do their best work. It’s amazing how many opportunities our students have to work with other students from all over the world. It’s as easy as turning on Skype, joining a wiki, or sending an email. And many of these opportunities are fun, real, and simple.

Reflection:

The aim of global collaboration in education is to improve learning, breakdown classroom walls, and develop authentic audiences. A global collaborative classroom is able to connect, collaborate, and create products with other classrooms anywhere in the world.

Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds, by Julie Lindsey and Vicki Davis

Looking back at this year, I am pleased with my attempts at using tech to make global links. But as I look at the relationship built between YIS’a Zoe Page and Ben Sheriden in Borneo and I’m inspired to improve how I integrate global collaborations in my classroom. In remembering my small exchange with Abby eleven years ago I think one of the reasons the project worked between Brownsville and Germany was that Abby and I had a relationship and the project fit my curriculum. And it is no different now. I think that in order to create more sustainable relationships between classrooms, I need to take advantage of the individual relationships I already have with other teachers.  So next year, if I am friends with you, don’t be surprised if I ask you to work with me. And let me know if you want your class to work with mine. It needs to be real, authentic, and fun. Because I think amazing things can happen when we make these global connections.

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*If there is ever a reason to blog, it’s to make sure you can always find the cool things you once did in your classroom. I looked high and low for my paper portfolio that might have evidence of what I did in my first year of teaching. I know it’s somewhere, but after five moves, who knows where I stored it? I love that everything I’m proud of is now saved somewhere in case I want to reminisce.

**She’s now Dr. Abigail Nunez and a principal at Maya Angelou Community School in the Los Angeles Unified School district. She is one of the smartest, most thoughtful, and most impassioned people I know.

*** Brownsville is a border town, and when I was there, the border was quite fluid. My school was private, so Mexican nationals could attend. Many students were American citizens, but lived in Mexico and crossed over the bridge everyday. Culturally, linguistically, and physically it was quite hard to tell where Mexico ended and American began. I considered that a very special thing.

*** If you would have told First-Year-Teacher-Me that one-day I would take six kids to India I would have said you were crazy.

Photos used under Creative Commons Licence

The Oldest Ind. Brewery in Texas by Texasbubba

Vera Cruz by Ahuachtli

German Flag by domeniconicola

A simple step #beyondlaptops

One the reasons being a teacher suits my personality is that every day I have to put aside theory/debate/abstract thought and just teach. There is no more procrastinating when the bell rings and there are dire consequences* if I am not ready for the twenty students who show up every day. So while I know the theory/debate/abstract thoughts inform my teaching, every day I must have solid and real plans ready to go. This mix of dreaming and doing is why I keep doing this amazing job.

It’s with this spirit of just getting it done that I created this wiki for #beyondlaptops. The conference held at YIS in April has led to some amazing conversations. People seem inspired to get things done at their schools and the debates of how to do this have been intense. People are passionate about how to best educate our students and it’s inspiring to realize how much people care. So after reading many, many, tweets, blogs, and blog comments,it seemed the next step of what might be a long process is as simple as making a wiki. So, hopefully without being too presumptuous, I made the wiki. Kim, who was the brains behind the conference, and I sat down for about an hour and put together what we thought people wanted. The idea is that the wiki would be a space to share and collaborate on documents relating to teaching, learning and innovating in a technology-rich environment. It’s a simple step, but it felt good to have something tangible done.

So the wiki has been made. The idea wasn’t mine, but it’s a small thing I can contribute to  make sure the conference lives on. There are pages for policy documents, digital citizenship resources, curriculum documents, professional development resources, and community building resources. I kept the #beyondlaptops name because it’s easy. We’ve linked many, many of YIS resources**. The next step is for other schools to add their stuff. This is NOT my wiki. This is NOT a YIS wiki. This is a wiki for people who want to share what teaching and learning looks like in their school and to make sure we are not working in isolation. If people think that it will help them and their schools, then please add to it. Change it around. Reorganize it. And if you find stuff on there that you can adapt for your school, that’s great. And if it doesn’t work, my feelings won’t be hurt. But if it something that organically develops, I’m more than happy to help the wiki grow.

A final few thoughts on this wiki. I actually don’t think this wiki will bring about major culture shifts in teaching and learning. I do think it might be a small part of a much larger conversation about how our students will learn. I hope it will make people’s lives a little easier. And this wiki is just one way we can carry on the discussion we have started at the #beyondlaptops conference. In reality, this conversation will be messy. It will be held face-to-face and on Twitter and at future conferences and on blogs and in each individual school. So if you use this wiki, please promise me you’ll keep talking to other people. Say thank you to anyone whose stuff you use. Ask questions if you have them. And be respectful of other school’s ways of doing things, because you don’t know all the circumstances they are facing. Debate ideas at your school with teachers** and parents and students.

We know that change doesn’t happen because of a wiki, or a computer, or a conference, or a mandate. Change happens because of hard work. So let’s keep the conversation going, but let’s suck it up and get to work. Because the students will be there on Monday.

_________

* Seriously…if I don’t have a plan ready for my middle schoolers, my life is miserable. This is where chaos reigns.The plan can be flexible but it must exist.

** YIS is so amazingly open. Literally everything was online and took seconds to find. How incredible this culture of sharing is deserves more than a bullet point, but trust me we are better place because of it.

***I originally had another paragraph begging people to keep talking to teachers. Just because we want to be in the classroom doesn’t mean we don’t want to be in the conference room having these conversations about how to bring about change.

You can’t stop the beat

There has been so much going on at YIS that I haven’t had a clue where to start blogging. Beyond Laptops conference? Digital Citizenship Week? Moving into the instructor role of COETAIL? * There have been so many sincere, intense conversations about educational technology going on and I haven’t known how I can add to it. ** It’s an embarrassment of riches, but I’ve been stuck.

Then I saw this today:

YIS Can’t Stop the Beat from YIS Academics on Vimeo.

On Friday, I saw the amazing Asako run around school cajoling everyone to dance for a video for elementary sports day. Everyone had a simple eight beats to dance. And  everyone danced***. The kids. The Head of School. The teachers. The parents. The security staff. The Head of Academics. The secretaries. More kids. It was just so much fun to watch people take a couple of minutes and do a little dance. And then this video is so joyous. It has nothing to do with curriculum or learning objectives, but it made me remember why I love being in schools. The fact this video exists makes YIS a better place to be. And schools should always be this fun. For the kids, yes. But for us adults too.

I love a good fight about educational policy****. I get really geekily excited unit planning. I want to keep learning everything I can about new pedagogy and new ways of teaching. I am passionate about implementing thoughtful curriculum. And yes, I complain about marking and countdown days to vacation. But if this job ever stops being fun, I’m finding a new one.

There is a cliche that technology in education isn’t about the tool but about the learning. You choose what learning objective you have (storytelling, visual literacy, research skills, etc) and what content to teach (Industrial Revolution/Globalization/Silk Road) and then find the tool (social media/web2.0 tools/iMovie, etc)*****. I believe this. I am extremely thoughtful about how I integrate technology into my classroom and how I plan my assessments. Most of the time ******. Sometimes we just have fun. We play with a new tool that I just saw on Twitter. I try out a new teaching strategy because it sounds interesting. Sometimes we film a movie without a storyboard. We spend a little extra time on something because it’s fun and makes us laugh.  And it’s little things like these that makes a classroom a better place to be, for me and my students. And who knows where this can lead us?  Because what we do is important work, but we don’t always have to be so serious.

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* There could also be a post about how working with Kim offers so many incredible opportunities. And how that leads to a lot of googledocs.

** I will blog about all those things. I’ve started about three separate posts, but I’m still struggling.

*** One of my favorite memories is getting into a heated debate with my roommate about some educational policy issue on the DC metro. Only in DC would people be used to very loud wonky policy talk by twenty-somethings on a weekend night.

****I will make the admission that I did not dance for the video when asked. I have danced as a William Hung backup dance, a Gwen Stefani Backup dancer, a Sean Paul backup dancer and my star-turn as Nelly Furtado in front of 2000 screaming students at Lee HS legendary pep rallys. Talk about fun. But this was before cell-phone cameras and I need a live audience.

***** If any non-tech or non-ed people are reading this, this is the idea that if you want to talk to your best friend, it doesn’t matter if you do it on a phone, on Skype, or Google Voice. The tool doesn’t matter. The talking is the only thing that matters

****** To any current or future employers/bosses, I really am a thoughtful educator. I promise. Please go read my other blog posts if you’re worried.

Creating Infographics: Making Numbers Sing

… Few people will appreciate the music if I just show them the notes. Most of us need to listen to the music to understand how beautiful it is. But often that’s how we present statistics; we just show the notes we don’t play the music” Hans Rosling

Like many people I love Hans Rosling. Rosling is a professor of Global Health, who uses statistics, storytelling, and social media to re-think what is happening in terms of development throughout the world. He makes statistics “sing” and makes numbers act like a football soccer player.

For my grade 8 development unit, the final assessment is an infographic answering the unit question “What is progress?”  And so, when I prepare them for the assessment I have two goals for the students:

• Students will be able to present information in an interesting way
• Students will be able to interpret and analyze statistics in a meaningful way

Background:

We spent a couple of weeks looking at how countries are classified as Lower Economically Developed Countries and More Economically Developed Countries. We defined developed indicators and explored resources that give statistics of these indicators. Teaching development is one of my favorite units, because it lays the groundwork in understanding why the world is the way it is. And with Hans Rosling’s video (which my students LOVE), we start to see that the complex issue of progress and development can be summarized in an intriguing way.

And this acts as the segue to our assessment on infographics

Introduction to Infographics:

There are so many infographics out there that it is easy to show models. I show them examples from International School of Bangkok (whose link I can no longer find) and I show them examples of infographics websites. We look at definitions of infographics and try to come up with what we think should be included in an infographic.

And then I saw a post on  homemade infographics and I thought it was a fantastic way to introduce infographics. I kind of geeked out to be honest with you. This site has awesome ideas of how to present information with simple tools. We looked at examples from this site and then figured out how to make our own.

So to start, I gave them boxes with random supplies and random assignments.

They then had to use various resources to find appropriate statistics to represent using poker chips, yarn, balloons, and other random supplies. I loved that they had to use their computers for research, but the actual creation of the infographic was low-tech. They had 60 minutes to prepare their inforgraphic and then they had to share with the class. Some students had to compare birthrates in different countries.Others had to show variations of GDP per capita or HDI or gender inequalities.

This is what they came up with:

From top left, going clockwise: GDP/capita (poker chips), HDI (popsicle sticks), Life Expectancy by gender (balloons of different sizes) , and literacy rates by gender (pink water vs. blue water).

We then started to think about whether the homemade infographics fulfilled the requirements we established and which one of ours was the most effective.

Final Assessment: 

The final assessment requirements were pretty simple (though we talked about it a lot more than the text might suggest).

• Create an infographic that answers the question: What is progress? Quality of life in the countries of your choice.
• Combine text, visuals, and statistics in an interesting and informative infographics.
• Pick 2-10 indicators that best answer the question above.

Students created some interesting and informative infographics.

I believe that having thought about what is progress and what the goal of infographic helped each student know what was required despite the simple instructions. All of my students chose appropriate statistics, though perhaps not all made them “sing”. And so, some students who struggled with how to visually represent the idea of non  -linear economic/social progress were given the opportunity to reflect on the question on their blogs.

All in all, I can tell you that I will never ask my students to create online infographics without doing “homemade” infographics first. Besides being a good way to introduce the infographics, it’s always fun to play with balloons and popsicle sticks.

Telling Stories

There are people a lot smarter than me talking about digital storytelling. There are people doing crazy, imaginative things using hundreds of different tools. There are also people more passionate than I am about digital storytelling.  I could tell you about how I have my students brainstorm, storyboard and create stories on some digital tool (I worry that would be a boring story though). There is a lot I don’t know about how to create a story. And like I said, other people do it better than me. But what I have been thinking about recently is why we need to teach storytelling. And so that’s the story I will tell here.

There are anthropological reasons we tell stories:

Anthropologists find evidence of folktales everywhere in ancient cultures, written in Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Chinese, Egyptian and Sumerian. People in societies of all types weave narratives, from oral storytellers in hunter-gatherer tribes to the millions of writers churning out books, television shows and movies…Anthropologists note that storytelling could have also persisted in human culture because it promotes social cohesion among groups and serves as a valuable method to pass on knowledge to future generation.  Scientific American, The Secrets of Storytelling

There are economic reasons we tell stories:

 …a test audience responded more positively to advertisements in narrative form as compared with straightforward ads that encouraged viewers to think about the arguments for a product…. Studies such as these suggest people accept ideas more readily when their minds are in story mode as opposed to when they are in an analytical mind-set. A 2007 study by marketing researcher Jennifer Edson Escalas of Vanderbilt University

Perhaps why we tell stories could be summarized in a tidy diagram (though I doubt it):

For more on this see Pinker’s article “Toward a Consilient Study of Literature”).

We tell stories because we are complicated living organisms:

…What really hits people is the story because it’s not an intellectual thing and it’s not just a scream.  It’s not pure emotion; it’s a melding of those two things, which is where we exist as human beings.  We’re not thought machines, we’re not screaming machines, we are thought/feeling machines, if we’re machines at all, let’s pretend we’re not.  We are thought/feeling entities. Margaret Atwood

There are hundreds of reasons why we tell stories. To increase verbal skills. To develop imagination. To propagate the species. To instruct.  To attempt to make sense of the universe. To share. To help children go to sleep. To distract. To build community. To enforce morals. To connect. To teach.

I’ve been thinking a lot of stories as we passed the anniversary of 3/11.* As someone who studied history because she loves stories, I strongly believe that we tell stories to remember. There have been so many stories shared of the event a year ago because we cannot forgot what happened. My story of the event would start with a tweet and a blogpost. Others have created beautiful art, that may not be a narrative but still helps us remember. Others have created films, trying to capture the emotions of people and the power of nature. Articles have been written. Books have been created. I think for many of us, we couldn’t stop telling these stories if we wanted to. All of these stories will make sure that 3/11 is not forgotten. And the story is still be written in so many ways.

Storytelling is something essential to our existence and helping students tell their stories is our privilege. We teach them the tools so when they want to tell their own story, they are ready. We need to make sure that their stories and their voices are not lost. How they tell their stories matters less than the fact that their stories are told.

And so I leave you with one of my favorite stories right now, The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom. This narrative arc, from the power of the tsunami to the gentle sway of a sakura, helped me understand this place where I live in this strange time. And once you watch this, there is no longer a need to explain why we tell stories.

 

*It feels a bit funny to be incorporating the triple disaster of March 11th into this post. But it’s been on the forefront of my mind this week and if I’m really telling my story on this blog, then I’ve got to include it. 

Teaching Visually: Propaganda, Population Pyramids, and Infographics

In a grade 12 DP history class, a student might see the following images and have to answer the question: “Using the sources and your own knowledge, explain the role of Chinese youth in the time period between 1954-1975.”

"The happy life Chairman Mao gave us, 1954 [Poster}

“Protect the great results of the Cultural Revolution, 1974” [Poster

In a grade 10 MYP Geography class students might see the following image and answer the question: “ Apply the concept of population pyramids and explain what each one tells you about the development level of the country it represents.  Use labelled diagrams and appropriate vocabulary where necessary to support your explanation.”

Country A

Country B

Historical documents and demographic statistics are the bread and butter of a humanities teacher. Long before I heard of things like digital literacy or infographics, my subject areas demanded that my students interpret, understand, analyze and manipulate evidence in the ways a geographer or a historian would. Moreover, I require my students to think about the reliability and validity of data as historians and geographers. I believe, long after the IB exam, the skills of analyzing a political cartoon or interpreting a graph of economic indicators will be ones that they take forward into the “real-world”.

Middle School is a place where we should be stressing the skills of reading visual data. I am not only teaching using visuals for my visual learners, but also because they need the skills associated with visual literacy.

My 7th graders really loved this short visual summary of the decline of empires. It sounded like a soccer game was going on as we watched it. One of the questions asked was: “What trends do you notice about the rise and fall of empires?”

We watched it three times in class thinking about what was happening to the empires and how the creator chose to present their information. Not only is it more interesting that reading a book, but it has them thinking about how information can be shared in a multitude of ways, beyond just a timeline.

In 8th grade, when the world population hit 7 Billion, the variety of infographics was amazing And when we looked at the following infographic they were asked: What is the message of this infographic? What is fact and what is opinion in this infographic? Can we trust the information? What questions do you still have after looking at this?”

As a group we interpreted the data, compared our own understanding with the information being presented and questioned where the information was coming from. Infographics can be great, but it’s important to teach students how to look at all the pretty graphs and charts and images and have them synthesize the information. And not all infographics are good and we need to teach that too. This is not dumbing down information, but in fact encourages some high-level thinking.

If students learn how to read, interpret, and create their own visual understanding of the world, they are preparing for the world that is inundated with graphs and charts and images. It’s important when planning vertically to teach the skills that will prepare our students for exams and tests. However it is more important to prepare them for whatever-will-replace-newspapers or the iPad app that will be just be a part of their daily lives.

Sources: 

“The happy life Chairman Mao gave us, 1954 [Poster],” in Children and Youth in History, Item #270, http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/270 (accessed March 13, 2012). 

 

“Protect the great results of the Cultural Revolution, 1974” [Poster],” in Children and Youth in History, Item #271, http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources/271 (accessed March 13, 2012).

Students Inspiring Action and Creating Awareness

The Assignment:

Working in small groups or individually, you need to create something that communicates to people what you learned about modern-day Child Labor. It can inspire ACTION or it can CREATE awareness. You have freedom to ask a question about the topic of child labor and try to find an answer.

Three requirements**:

1. Do something that you find interesting .
2. Use your time productively.
3. If you use images, ideas, content from outside sources, you must cite it.

This is a formative assessment. You will be asked to post your work in your blog and the wallwisher will be posted in my blog. I will help you if you get stuck, but this is really about what you find interesting, exciting, or what you want to learn. It’s also you, thinking about what is the best way to present.

As part of our grade 7 MYP Humanities Industrial Revolution unit, we study child labor in 19th Century England. We look at primary documents, try to imagine what life would be like in those factories, and think about why child labor was allowed. At the end of the unit, I then ask my student to look at modern day child labor. One of the goals is to show that as countries strive to develop economically, certain patterns (including child labor and degradation of the environment) have remained over the centuries. But I also want students to start thinking about how they influence opinions about a real-life issue. I love this assignment, because it really introduces the idea of evaluating websites (which we do via a wallwisher) and then it allows for students to develop something that interests them in a way that is fascinating for them. The freedom of this assignment, without the pressure of grades and rubrics, combined with the idea of sharing with people outside my classroom, has produced some amazing things. They created posters, made movies, sang songs**, and given speeches and I know it’s something they will remember.

Last year I invited the principals to my classroom to watch their presentations and it really added an element of seriousness to their work.  But this year I noticed a difference in how my kids decided to present their information. My students this year immediately began to use social media to raise awareness. They were on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr sharing their work, connecting with friends, and pushing their message far beyond my class.

One group was particularly thoughtful about how to use social media. This is what they created and posted on Facebook and Tumblr.

They were incredibly thoughtful about how they presented their information.

• On Tumblr, “regular” posters aren’t reposted. So a straight on shot of the poster wouldn’t cut it. That’s why this picture presents information at an angle with other things going on in the background.
• They used handwriting, instead of typing it up, because it looks like a kid wrote it. They thought it would be more powerful.
• They wanted to use color instead of a picture of modern child labor, because colorful photos were often reblogged. They said red was particularly popular and they wanted it to look like a kid made it.
• They took the photo on instagram so it would be another place to share their message.
• The Facebook group on the bottom of the page was created by another group in the class.
• They actually contacted Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram to see if they could get money for every repost, tweet, and “like”. They wrote, “We are grade 7 students at Yokohama International School (YIS).  In humanities class, we are studying about child labour.  Right now, we are working on a project to help people become more aware about child labour. We are making digital posters, and planning to put them on Tumblr.  For every reblog and likes we were wondering if you could donate 50 cents to the Anti Slavery Campaign. This will really help the children that are being put through manual labour everyday. If you do help us this could be one step closer to help stop child labour.  Thank you.”  They have not heard back, but I love the initiative.

Social media is going to be one way our students can change the world. As we were working on this assignment, the Kony and the Invisible Children campaign became a phenomenon. My students learned about this issue because they saw it on Facebook.  They know that words aren’t enough. I want my students to be critical thinkers when it comes to viral campaigns, but it’s not enough to just be able to read and analyze visual information. They need to be thoughtful about how to use imagery to get across their message. They need to be creators of these types of campaigns, about issues they are passionate about.  And just as we need to teach persuasive writing or how to vary tone in a debate, we need to teach how to use and create powerful imagery to bring about change. This will help give kids the tools they need to be change-makers. And isn’t that what we really want our student to be?

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* These were successful requirements for the assignment. The kids were busy the entire time. We spent a lot of time brainstorming what the project should be and I talked to them a lot in the investigation and design phase, but it was incredibly student-driven.

** One of my biggest disappointments is that I did not record the two boys singing the anti-child labor song they wrote. Lesson–always have iPhone ready to record your students

Presentation Zen in Middle School

While I was away, a lot of the things I usually worry about were no longer under my control. I had to pass off responsibilities and trust that everything would be okay*. One of these things was a middle school assembly. As student council advisor, I am in charge of making sure our monthly assemblies run without a hitch. The students coordinate with teachers and students who want to present and organize a slideshow that shows the running order of the assembly. And while the students are in charge of making sure that everything is done, I am always hovering, making sure that everything is perfect on the day. This hovering was impossible from Cambodia. So I turned it over to middle school student body president and hoped it all worked out.

I came back from Cambodia and this is the slideshow they created.

Assembly feb.7th

View more presentations from ndbekah

I nearly cried with joy. The slides (with a few exceptions) were exactly what I would expect if I was there to nag advise. Not every slide is Presentation Zen, but it’s as “zen” as a middle schooler is going to get. There was not a flame or an insane transition between slides in sight. There was not a single bullet point. The images are Creative Commons images. The images are cited! Just thinking about it makes me warm and fuzzy inside. And they did it all without me. It took months of modeling and nagging reminding and talking about why neon green and orange isn’t the best combination, but they were able to do it on their own.

Perhaps this is just a post to tell other teachers “stick with it”. Keep expecting students to use Creative Commons images. Have a common expectations at school. The section on Oxfam in the slideshow was created by Alex’s tutor group and it also looks great. Alex co-teaches middle school humanities with me and I know that every kid in middle school knows what is required of a presentation. This helps a lot. They will get it. Just have faith. And persistence. You will be rewarded with a presentation that is worth watching.

Two Ways to Connect: Cambodia and Flat Classroom

In the month of February, I have traveled 27,324 kilometers with students. I have spent 16 days with students in places far from my classrooms on two separate trips*. I have eaten every meal, survived lay-overs, and joked around with people who call me Ms. Madrid.  And I have been lucky enough to watch my students develop their spark.

Trip 1 was a hands-on service trip to Cambodia with 23 grade eleven students. Trip 2 was a Flat Classroom workshop in Mumbai, part of ASB Unplugged, with six grade 9 girls. On the surface these two trips were very different.

Cambodia

• Dirty, hot, hands on service
• Staying in places way off the tourist trail**
• Physical labor, where at the end of the day you see a foundation you help lay or concrete you helped mix
• Computers OFF

Flat Classroom Workshop, Mumbai

• Workshop in a air-conditioned swank hotel with beautiful food
• Abstract thinking about what “Open Education” means***
• Computers (and iPhones and iPads and all devices) ON

However, in reality these two wildly different experiences have much in common.

• Project based. Both groups were creating something. Mumbai it was a multimedia presentation about open education. In Cambodia, it was a cement apron for a well. But there was a goal and the students knew what it was and how to reach it.
• Connections to a world far different from Japan
• Thinking about how important education is for the development of countries such as Cambodia and India
• Student centered. Both trips, the students were in charge of completing their projects. Teachers didn’t nag. Students didn’t complain. They just got it done despite the heat (Cambodia) or time restrictions (Mumbai)

Connected Learning

In a recent article in Spotlight on Digital Media described a new model of connected learning as defined by The Connected Teacher Learner Network. There is a change coming in education and connected learning is part of that. Connected learning is:

Interest-powered…Research has repeatedly shown that when a subject is personally interesting and relevant, learners achieve much higher-order learning outcomes.     

Peer-supported…In their everyday exchanges with peers and friends, young people are fluidly contributing, sharing and giving feedback in web-powered experiences that are highly engaging.

Academically oriented…When academic studies and institutions draw from and connect to young people’s interest-driven pursuits, learners flourish and realize their true potential.

…and the embrace of three key design principles:

Production-centered…Connected learning prioritizes the learning that comes from actively producing, creating, experimenting and designing, because it promotes skills and dispositions for lifelong learning, and for making meaningful contributions to today’s rapidly changing work- and social conditions.

Open networks…Today’s online platforms and digital tools can make learning resources abundant, accessible, and visible across all learner settings****.

Shared purpose…Today’s social media and web-based communities provide unprecedented opportunities for cross-generational and cross-cultural learning and connection to unfold and thrive around common goals and interests.

In many ways, both the Cambodia service trip and Flat Classroom show what connected learning should be about. And though different, both have huge value to our students. Both experiences allowed for students to do more that what they think the are capable of and to see what the world outside the classroom looks like. I’m not sure what they will do with this knowledge, but I imagine it will be great things. Because based on my experiences, I can tell you, students shine when given the chance to connect.

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* I owe a huge thank you to everyone who helped me do both of these trips..from the other chaperones on the Cambodia trip, to the people who substituted for me, to Kim who kept me sane at various points of Flat Classroom, and to my incredible administration that supported me doing both trips.

**We did go to Angkor Wat at the end of our time in Pursat. You just have to when you are in Cambodia.

*** Go to the Flat Classroom Wiki to see what students thought about open education. Some interesting ideas from the students.

****The Cambodia trip was obviously not about “open networks”. But one way that kids can use what they learned on this service trip is to share their experiences using open networks. That is really the next step of service learning and I hope to explore more in the future.

Cambodia Photos:

by ndbekah on flickr 

Flat Classroom Photos: 

By Flatclassroom on flickr

Cultural Connections at #flatclass #asbunplugged by superkimbo