The power of autonomy

Our social studies Wiki and our reading blogs are up and running.  We had them up for 2 weeks before Christmas break.  And the mood in the classroom has changed.  Students are asking Stephanie and I, "Can we add to the Wiki at home?"  "Can I post a blog on what I am reading over the weekend?"  "Be sure you check my blog tonight and leave a comment!"  Students are starting to become more proactive in their learning, and expecting us, as teachers, to provide them feedback.  I am beginning to feel that students in our class have truly begun to see that learning is journey...they feel that their thoughts and comments are meaningful.  They have a voice, and people are listening....  This is powerful.  

Our road bumps now:

• ensuring ALL students are able to access the wiki and blog (some have had difficulty becoming a member of the wiki)
• once all students have access to the wiki, ensuring ALL students have a voice
• mentoring students on how to be critical "colleagues" - teach them how to push back on each others' thinking with civility and without hurting feelings
• keeping the excitement and the momentum of the wiki and blog going throughout the rest of the year
• setting up the reading blogs so students provide each other with feedback using our reading rubric that the class created
• ensuring that each student has another student to provide feedback

I am confident, with more thinking, the above can be accomplished...

Noel

The Think on Pink!

Today we saw a TED excerpt with Daniel Pink, the author of Drive The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.  As I was watching, I couldn't help but think how his talk can be mega applied to the classroom.  Pink talks about the 3 things that motivate people in business.  

1.  Autonomy

2.  Mastery 

3. Purpose

Next, I started thinking...OK, what is already in place in my classroom?  Or, what is becoming the new standard in my classroom?  This is what I am finding.

What drives a student to remain engaged in a self-directed activity? What are some elements that you think need to be in place? 

I think a lot of it has to do with what Pink calls Autonomy - or in other words CHOICE - more specifically, offering choice in the way students process information.  This can be a slippery slope if it is not understood that the target needs to be clear, remain the same in all choices and be tasks that are EQUALLY respectful and demanding.  Choice I think is the first step in motivation.  Second, I do think that students become engaged if they feel they are capable of mastering the activity/content.  We need to load our students with schema on the content in order for them to feel that they can reach success even before they start the assignment/activity.  If students feel that they can't achieve success, there will be no self-direction in the activity.  Schema and their ability to think metacognatively, "Yes, I know this"- is key to self-direction.  Students need to be able to know themselves as a learner - what their strengths and weaknesses - to be self directed, and it is the role of the teacher to be coaching them through this before you can start self-direction.  Students also need to be very clear on the intended learning and outcome...it is the role of the teacher to ensure that the targets are clearly and demanding.  

What are you doing in the classroom:  I think that we (Stephanie Gallegos and myself) have those respectful tasks that include the element of choice.  Using the 3 Modes of Intelligence, we differentiate processing assignments.  This allows the element of choice for students.  We have also, this week, set students up with a Social Studies Wiki.  I am amazed with the buzz of excitement.  Here, students are given guiding questions and the final targets to "report" out on.  All opinions are valued...and though we only started it yesterday (December 2) students were already online last night adding their thoughts and opinions.  We have given students the knowledge to think critically and give their own opinions, and they are taking off with this idea!  So I think that acknowledgement of their opinions and thoughts is also key to self direction.  

Noel

Time to Vent

Today I had my students set up their blogs.  And by the end of the day, my nerves were shot!  I ran into soooo many problems that I didn't anticipate.  Some of the biggest problems:  

1) some students who had an email account other than Gmail had a difficult time setting up an account on blogger.com  

2) some students who do have a Gmail account couldn't get signed in and set up an account.

3) the word verifications are EXTREMELY difficult to read, by me and students.

4) in order to make sure that my students were not computers trying to set up a blog, they had to provide a cell phone number and have a verification code sent to them via text message.  After they got the text message with the code, then they could proceed setting up their blog.

5) many students didn't have their cell phones.

6) each cell phone is limited to how many accounts they can set up (4 only)

7) many students who DID have their cell phone couldn't get service.

8) Students who didn't have a Gmail account, and couldn't get set up using their other accounts, had to set up a new Gmail account, and many had to have the verification code sent to them via text...see problems 5,6,7.

9) did I mention the verification codes!!! Impossible!

10)  AND THIS IS SERIOUS:  we have a noticeable Information Technology Literacy GAP among our student population.   

The very rational side of me knows how VERY IMPORTANT and meaningful this is for our students...especially for helping to fix problem #10.  And I know that when we are all set up, and students are comfortable with the blog, that POWERFUL learning will take place...especially when students start providing each other with feedback...but I have to wonder...this has GOT to be easier.  What can our district do to make implementation of technology more seamless?  I know that we are responsible for implementing 21 Century Skills...and I am up for the task...but when we are bombarded with roadblocks that are time-wasters...how are we realistically going to do this?    

Survey Says...

As I took the Trails assessment on information literacy, I noticed I took less time on the questions that asked me to draw on the research skills I grew up on.  Meaning, I was able to connect those questions to how I did research in the past.  When I came across a question I had no schema with, or practice with, I took a longer time reading the question, comprehending it, and answering the question…these were questions that were asking me about more current ways to research.  I was very uncomfortable with vocabulary like truncation, physical forms, tertiary sources, web site coverage…terminology I don’t have a lot of experience with.  I was also surprised that I don’t know much about copyrighted material, and the differences between libraries. 

This tells me that for kids, we need to increase targeted vocabulary to decrease their clunks…hang-ups. 

I am on my way!

I've been busy this week!  I have set up a private Wiki for my 6th grade social studies class, drafted a letter to parents asking for their permission for social studies students to use the Wiki and played on Wordle; but most importantly, I have used what I have learned from the E2T2 grant days to add to my section of our MMS 6th grade website.  Inspired by a student who will be absent from November 19th to December 3rd, I have created some self-directed learning on the site.  The site is a Google site, and works much like a Wiki, but a bit different.  I have had to learn to create a Google docs. section in order to upload PowerPoint and note-catchers, but I was able to do that because I was already experienced with how to do it on a Wiki page.  I was also able to, with MUCH ease, upload important videos from YouTube.  I was NOT able to do this 2 months ago!  Check out the website to see my handiwork:  https://sites.google.com/site/6thgrademms/

As I delve further into the technologically literate world, I find I am also encountering unanticipated problems.  Setting students up with email accounts so that our reading groups can create a blog.  This is not as easy as it sounds.  We have discovered that in order to establish an account with Blogger, one needs a Google account.  Some students who already have an email account, don't have one with Google.  It is just a logistical nightmare, and trying to keep track of who has what and how we will get them set up is daunting.  I know once the ground work has been set, it will be easy...but it is the groundwork...the grunt work that is weighing me down.   I have also discovered the coolness of Wordle...it is a great way for students to synthesize their learning and then see what the main ideas of their synthesis is -but there are problems with that as well.  You can't create a personal account, so whatever you create you have to either print right away, or save to a blog or something else.  I have not been able to get that to work yet.  Any ideas out there??  

I know once I get over these humps, students will be ultra engaged and my head swims with glee at the opportunity for students to provide each other with feedback on their blogs and help each other build a collective understanding of social studies concepts and skills on our Wiki.  We just have to get through this upcoming week - when we are going through the logistics - and then we can be on our way!!

Information Overload - and Waiting

I am at the stage in my learning with Reinventing Project-Based Learning and the trainings under the E2T2 grant where my head is spinning with a myriad of ideas, though there is no one anchor idea that has found itself embedded in my brain as THE IDEA.  This usually happens to me when I am at an Expeditionary Learning Institute...the learning is so intense, vast and demanding that I feel like my brain is on the brink of going on strike.  It is usually at this moment though, on the edge of a total brain malfunction, that a switch within the deep caverns of my brain, turns on - comprehension sets in and equilibrium is reestablish.  

In Reinventing Project-Based Learning, the book we are using for our grant book study, John Seely Brown, former chief scientist at Palo Alto Research Center in California, comments that teachers, when drafting project ideas should "Replace the term project with passion and think about your ideas again.  What would spark your students' curiosity and make them feel that what they are learning is interesting and important?  When you tap your students' enthusiasm, you increase the likelihood that they will dive into deep inquiry and come away with essential learning(Boss 2007)."  I feel that being part of this grant cohort, combined with the classroom set of iPods Stephanie Gallegos and I were awarded after writing a grant to our  district, that I am on the verge of truly grasping the importance of 21st Century Skills and the idea of passion-based learning.  

However, there are some questions still drifting through my brain.  In this past chapter, "Imagining the Possibilities", blogs and Wikis are used as examples of rigor and authentic products.  I completely agree...however, I would like to hear what other teachers have done with these products.  Are blogs and/or Wikis used as formative assessments?  Or are they used as summative assessments?  If so, how is a students' thinking measured?  And what is used as a criteria for success?

As I wait for my equilibrium, I'll continue to swim in my thoughts and enjoy the feeling of being challenged!  

Noel

 

Technology 101...beyond the basics!

Today was my first day as part of Eagle County School’s E2T2 Grant.  This grant was awarded to Eagle County to increase “integreation of Educational Technology and Information Literacy as well as the 21st Century Learning Skills identified by research to be critical for students who can navigate the future with success”(E2T2 Grant, 2010).  Over the summer, I was fortunate to travel to Ireland on a Fund For Teachers Grant to research the potato famine as a push factor for emigration.  During my time in Ireland, I maintained a blog chronicling my experiences and synthesis of learning.  I am daily struck speechless with the impact blogging had on my processing of the new information.  It was an experience that has forever changed my way of learning and ultimately, teaching.  I feel that I am jumping onto the digital age bandwagon late – that I realized, far later than my students learned, that technology (and I am speaking digital literacy) can and should play an integral role in the classroom. 

Today was a wake-up call for me.  Students today expect more from a school education than students of yesteryear. But, it’s the teachers of yesteryear that are teaching our students for a tomorrow that doesn’t exist yet.  That is what teachers are charged with under 21 Century Skills.  21st Century Skills go beyond using technology – it’s not the technology, but concepts and skills that exist in a digital world that I have, until this summer, have been remiss to pay attention to.   Students today are digital learners, and to motivate and engage them, it is up to the teachers to ensure that this is what they get.  Under 21st Century Skills, as teachers, we are expected to teach students to think, create, analyze, evaluate and apply.  Learning no longer happens alone internally within the student – where it’s sink or swim on your own; it is a collective, group, process that requires students to interact and build understanding together. 

This is what I have started to learn from my first day of being part of the E2T2 Cohort.  I am excited to start this journey and learn.  I am excited that already, I can create, with confidence, a Wiki page.