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Engage Student Discussion: Use the Social Network in Your Classroom

social media
social media
Watch a typical whole group discussion in the classroom and you’ll most likely see a “hub / spokes” flow of information. Teacher to student A and back to teacher. Teacher to student B and back to teacher. So it goes as the “bluebirds” get to show how smart they are. Over time, students learn that their comments are of provisional value until “approved” by the teacher. That’s because in this style of discussion the teacher is most likely searching for specific replies – sort of playing “guess what I’m thinking” with the “best” students in the class.
 
Students tend not to listen to each other and only focus on what the teacher says or validates – “will that be up on a test?” When students are put in small group discussion, they rapidly get off subject. With no teacher to validate their comments, they naturally gravitate to other subjects where peer   comments are valued – “what are you doing this weekend?” Often teachers then conclude that small group discussion doesn’t work.
 
In my workshops I train teachers in discussion techniques that foster student reflection and interaction. The strategies are focused on getting the teacher out of the role of information gatekeeper and encouraging student-centered dialogue. 
 
With practice, teachers find that students are eager to engage and participate. We know they want to contribute, because outside the classroom, students are flocking to social networks to share their thinking with one another. It’s unfortunate that our students can’t be part of the (offline) social network sitting beside them in class.
 
While students don’t need classroom computers to be part of an engaging discussion, technology can be a catalyst to foster engagement. I was interested to see the following video of The Twitter Experiment – Bring Twitter to the Classroom at UT Dallas.

“UT Dallas History Professor Dr. Monica Rankin, wanted to know how she could reach and include more students in the class discussion. She had heard of Twitter… The following is a short video describing her “Twitter Experiment” in the classroom with comments from students about the pros and cons of Twitter in a traditional learning environment.” (Filmed by UT grad student kesmit3.) Link to notes on the experiment.

BTW – I found this video via my Twitter network. Follow  @monicarankin  @kesmit3 

Image credit flickr/Choconancy1
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What is the Real Value of Educational Technology?

money

I’ve come to depend on the folks I follow on Twitter to keep me informed and thinking. One of my favorite contributors is Instructional Technology Coordinator, Ben Grey. This morning I followed his tweet to the post “Why Technology?” he did at the TL Advisor Blog.  Ben raised an important question, 

“Something has been happening lately in education, and the implications are a bit unsettling.  People are beginning to ask a cogent question, but I fear it’s being framed for the wrong reason.  I’m hearing more and more important decision makers asking, “Why are we using technology?”

… If tomorrow you had to stand in front of your Board of Education and respond to the question, “why should we continue to use and pursue technology in our district,” what would you say?”  more

I invite you to join Ben’s conversation. I posted a response to his question at the TL blog. But I want to reprint it here to share with my readers. 

My response:

It’s a great question and one that I’ve had to answer as an assistant superintendent for instruction. Here’s a few elements of what I’d say to the school board.

As more information is digitized, we move from a top-down broadcast model of communications to one that fosters creativity and collaboration. The digital age devalues lower-order thinking skills but provides tools that allow us to analyze, evaluate and create. 

New technologies can put our students in charge of the information they access, store, analyze and share.  Many of our students only have access to those tools in our schools. They have the right to participate in the digital age.

Investing in technology should not be a thoughtless response. New technology does not necessarily improve the quality of instruction  (We have all sat through dull PowerPoint presentations that were as “mind-numbing” as an old filmstrip.)

We should continue to look for a ROI on our technology investments, but it may not be tracked in test scores that simply measure lower order recall of information. A better metric would ask if a technology helped us to create learning experiences that provoke student reflection in a new, more engaging and collaborative way. Such as…

  • Wordle, a free Web 2.0 offering allows students to visualize and interpret text. 
  • Google docs allows students to share their thinking in a way that is difficult to replicate on paper. 
  • Web access and social networking allows students to collaborate beyond the confines of the classroom and school day. 

Here’s an example of all three put to use in a collaboration by a self-directed international group of teachers (It was mainly coordinated / promoted via Twitter.) “Build Literacy Skills with Wordle”  

Shouldn’t our students have access to the technologies that allow them to create, collaborate and share their thinking on subjects that matter to them?

Image source: Flickr / Money ~ by PT Money
Money – Feel free to use this image on your blog, website or other publication. Please give attribution (i.e. link) to ‘PT Money’ ptmoney.com

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Lost All Your Contacts on iPhone? Here’s How to Get Them Back

Me I sync my iPhone, MacBook and iMac over MobileMe. I like that a change in an appointment or contact on one device shows up on the other two.  But MobileMe has a problem! Twice in the last week I have opened my iPhone to find that all my Contacts were gone. This calamity mysteriously happened on its own. (I did not make any setting changes to lose my contacts.) But here’s how I got them back. 

Note: This post detail the process for restoring contacts when running iPhone 3.0 software. If you are using iOS 4, follow this link to my July 2010 update.

1. On my iPhone I went to “Settings” and picked “Mail, Contacts, Calendar.”

All the email accounts you have on your iPhone will be there as choices along with your MobileMe account. 

Mcc

2. Under accounts I selected my MobileMe account. You get a list of all the data that MobileMe is syncing. 

Mm

3. I turned Contacts “Off.” (It’s the only sync I turned off.) You get this dialogue box asking you if you really want to do this. Be brave and agree to “Stop Syncing” your Contacts. 

Stopsync

4. I waited a few seconds then I went back to the screen in Step 2 above and turned Contacts “On.”

5. I gave the iPhone some time to sync. It probably helps to be on wifi.

6. When I reopened my Contacts on my iPhone, they had all returned. Note on this last step you might have to open and close Contacts a few times to get your iPhone to force a MobileMe sync.

I have no idea why this is happening. Looks like MobileMe has some work to do!

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Why Don’t We Teach Sequencing Skills? It’s an Essential Higher-Order Thinking Strategy

We spend a lot of time in school getting students to learn sequential information – timelines, progressions, life cycle of a moth, steps for how to. Typically the teacher teaches the student the sequence and the student correctly identifies the sequence for teacher on the test. Thus we treat a sequence as a ordered collection of facts to be learned, not as a thinking process for students to use.  This memorization reduces the student's "mastery" of the chronology to lower order thinking. I was guilty of this when I first started teaching history "Can someone give me two causes and three results of WWII?" 

When students are asked to observe a process and develop a sequence they have an opportunity to use a full spectrum of higher-order thinking skills – they must recognize patterns (analyze), determine causality (evaluate) and then decide how they would communicate what they've learned to others (create). Sequencing can be taught across the curriculum at a variety of grade levels – we simply have to ask the students to observe and do the thinking.

There is some interesting research that demonstrates that students have trouble when asked to develop sequences. It comes from the Program for International Student Assessment.  PISA is an assessment (begun in 2000) that focuses on 15-year-olds' capabilities in reading literacy, mathematics literacy, and science literacy. PISA studied students in 41 countries and assessed how well prepared students are for life beyond the classroom by focusing on the application of knowledge and skills to problems with a real-life context. For more examples of PISA questions and data see my blog post.

Sample sequencing problem from PISA 2003.

The Hobson High School library has a simple system for lending books: for staff members the loan period is 28 days, and for students the loan period is 7 days. The following is a decision tree diagram showing this simple system:

Hobson

The Greenwood High School has a similar, but more complex library lending system:
All publications classified as “Reserved” have a loan period of 2 days.
For books (not including magazines) that are not on the reserved list, the loan period is 28 days for staff, and 14 days for students. For magazines that are not on the reserved list, the loan period is 7 days for everyone.
Persons with any overdue items are not allowed to borrow anything. 

Task
Develop a decision tree diagram for the Greenwood High School Library system so that an automated checking system can be designed to deal with book and magazine loans at the library.  Your checking system should be as efficient as possible (i.e. it should have the least number of checking steps). Note that each checking step should have only two outcomes and the outcomes should be labeled appropriately (e.g. “Yes” and “No”).

The student results were rated on a rubric scale.  Only 13.5% of US students were able correctly answered the question. Their international 15-year-old peers didn't fare much better – 14.3% of them answered correctly. 

The correct response looked something like this.

Greenwood
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Using Print on Demand to Publish Your Own Books

New print technologies make it very easy to publish your own books. No need for the information gatekeepers to decide what we read. I’m showcasing a few approaches that may be of interest to my readers. 
 
Reading recovery teacher publishes new line of early literacy book
MaryAnn McAlpinand I worked together in the East Irondequoit Central School district while I was the Assistant Superintendent and she was the lead Reading Recovery teacher. I was not surprised when she recently started writing and publishing emergent texts. Although not my area of expertise, it certainly is MaryAnn’s.  She has a remarkable background in and passion for early literacy. She came to the East Irondequoit district just for the opportunity to train in and practice Reading Recovery.
Colors
 
MaryAnn’s Short Tale Press, features “little” books for early literacy that are based on real people and places and authentic life experiences. I can see my own grandchildren in her main character, Colin. This makes her books very appealing to modern children.  Parents and grandparents would be wise to visit her website when gift time rolls around, which we know is all the time! They are also written to be appropriate for students in Reading Recovery, ESL and classroom guided reading.   Visit her website-there is always a new text there – she is a prolific writer / publisher. 
 
Out of print author tired of rejections turns to self publishing
My dear friend and mentor – Abe Rothberg got tired of rejection notices for his latest works of fiction. Ironic – since his previous books were published by mainstream publishers and favorably reviewed in NY Times, Harper’s, Time Magazine, and Publishers Weekly. Plus he was frustrated to see that his previous work had gone out of print. 
We decided to cut out the middleman  - team up and bring a new series of his work into publication. He supplied the manuscripts. I formatted them in Word and converted them to PDF. I designed the covers in Photoshop. We created a free account to publish the books on demand at Lulu.com – a print-on-demand publisher. For more on Abe and his books go to to his site – Abraham Rothberg
 
Teachers – it’s your turn to become a publisher for your students’ writing
I think we need to re-think how we teach writing with a shift in focus from teacher to student.
Old approach:
  • Students are asked to write only on the teacher’s topics.
  • Student writes for the teacher.
  • Teacher grades their writing.
New approach: 
  • Students can develop topics that matter to them.
  • Audience and purpose for writing is identified. 
  • Students are asked to reflect on their growth.
We all struggle to create authentic writing experiences for our students. Imagine if they had an opportunity to see their work in print – and we’re talking about a real paperback.  Let them go through the process of writing, co-editing, illustrating and designing a book. Rigor and relevance meets motivation and self-directed study. I’ve gotten so excited by the results that I’ve done workshops to train teachers. You can see material and sample student books at my website Read > Think > Write > Publish
 
BTW – I’ve been following Theresa Reagan on Twitter. She’s an Elementary Principal from Michigan who is making great use of Lulu to publish student work.  See her students’ books on their Lulu page