What is a PLC? Why are we talking about this?
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Case Study: Coallition of the Willing
Coalition Of The Willing from coalitionfilm on Vimeo.
This video is an interesting example of a few different things that I think we’d like to see in our classrooms. While it’s true that this was produced by a network of some of the best people working in motion graphics, it is still the result of an ethically motivated, thoughtfully engaged, and entrepreneurial group. It is a product that we can point to as being both a learning experience and an active statement.
We have the technology available for our students to create such videos and networks. I would say that the vast majority of them are already very capable with the collaborative tools and networks necessary to participate*. Our job, to paraphrase Mr. Holland’s Opus, is to give them something to collaborate about.
* I should note that I am not just concerned about making videos. I am interested to see teachers creating opportunities for students to develop skills, knowledge, and values via problems posed by the real world (see Inquiry Method).
Just Because
I was going to try justifying posting this trailer because some of my students are reading the Scott Pilgrim series and I want to make a connection between graphic novels and their often flimsy film adaptations. The fact of the matter is that I do not believe that this film adaptation will be flimsy and I am just excited about it because it’s awesome.
Enjoy.
G-Portfolios – My Two Cents
I regularly love posts from Will Richardson’s blog Weblogg-ed, but one that George Couros tweeted today is particularly prescient. Will’s post, called “The G-Portfolio,” is exploratory inasmuch as he is seeking feedback about the subject of online portfolio management for students. He intends to write an article with the help of the responses he receives via his blog. The conversation has caught my eye because my school is looking seriously at having all students leave our school with an electronic/Google-able portfolio. Here are my two cents with regards to the questions posed in the blog:
- What types of literacies should be displayed in this Web portfolio?
This is hard. The trick will be to not have a student’s portfolio be a container for everything he or she creates in school; it’s more important to have the students choose their best work based on criteria that are relevant to their career goals*. Without going on forever, the literacies demonstrated by the portfolio ought to be the ones that are the most relevant to areas of interest or aptitude as selected by the youth and critical advisors (teachers, counselors, parents). The bottom line is that the portfolio must demonstrate the best examples of a student’s work (and students need to be taught the ability to constructively critique their own work).
- What role will this play in “reputation management” or the personal brand of the student?
The portfolio doesn’t play a role in this; the portfolio is reputation management. When a person takes ownership over his or her web presence, that person is making a commitment to cultivate the message sent by all content online that is associated with their names. It’s a big step but it’s worth noting that a digital footprint will exist for everyone anyway, so you might as well be in control of what yours looks like.
- What are the challenges and complexities of the process?
The biggest challenge for me is logistical. There are a million things to do in your senior year. Unless a student has time set aside to dedicate to cultivating his or her portfolio, it very easily gets shifted to the back burner (don’t roll your eyes…when was the last time you updated YOUR portfolio or CV? 
). Time needs to be built into peoples’ days or weeks for students to critically consider their content.
- To what extent should educators have their own “g-portfolios”?
My answer to this is connected to my previous answer. As lovingly as I speak it, the truth is that educational pros are among the worst out there for saying, “do as I say and not as I do.” It is difficult to sell the importance of personal brand management when we don’t pursue it actively ourselves. I would say that regularly examining one’s own portfolio (electronic or otherwise) is as necessary to professional development as flossing is to dental hygiene (when was the last time you did THAT?).
- What are the best tools, sites, etc. to create and organize these portfolios?
As with all things, the tool is best chosen after you know what you want to do. But, for my ease of use and flexibility, I would look to WordPress as the glue for this. It’s just dead easy and free. It can be connected to a million things and easily display images and video.
* I am writing this with a prejudice towards secondary education. This is not to say that portfolios aren’t a good idea for younger students. In fact, a lifelong and “evergreened” portfolio would actually be the best of all results in our web-focused world.
Inspiring Education in Alberta: The Way Forward
This is exciting: a great, informed educational plan from the Alberta Government! What’s exciting to me is that the focus for the future of Alberta Learners is going to be about these three E’s:
Engaged Thinkers
Entrepreneurial Spirits
Ethical Citizenship
In order to attain these graduates from Alberta’s schools by 2030, the steering committee report identifies three shifts that need to take place in our schools:
1) Schools need to establish partnerships within the communities they serve to create relevant and realistic learning opportunities.
2) The needs of each student must be the ultimate objective of any learning or assessment strategy.
3) Interdisciplinary study in the form of inquiry and discovery learning must be used to ensure that students can demonstrate competence in the “attitudes, skills, knowledge, and values required for lifelong learning” (Steering Committee Report, June 2 2010).
What does that mean for our school?
Educational stakeholders across the province are asking themselves this question in the wake of this long-term vision. What does it actually mean for our school to be suddenly shifting its focus to “community involvement,” “student-focused” decision making, and “competency-based” assessment? Many educators reading the report and hearing the discussions may feel that these things are already taking place in their schools (and they may be correct). So what does this really mean for your school?
Some of the things I have featured in past posts play very well into this vision of Alberta’s learning future. Dan Meyer’s TED talk about real-world mathematics is a great example of how a teaching strategy can create a situation for real “hands-on” experiences for youth. Jane McGonigal talks about how we can use games to really go to where the students are spending a lot of time and use gaming for transforming the world. Greg Ferenstein discusses how a community connection like Twitter can increase engagement among students if used at appropriate times. These are just some of the great ideas that people are employing to make the 2030 learner a reality today.
For my part, though, I need to step once back from the tools and look at what is really going on. This report represents for me (admittedly just one teacher out of thousands) an understanding that real learning must come from having experiences and reflecting on them. I am so excited to read in a report from the government that the teacher’s role is one that must shift from being one of “knowledgeable authority” to one that is an “architect of learning.” Hearing that there should be less focus on content and more focus on competency with content is like music to my ears because it means that, finally, we will focus on what students can be and can do rather than what they can recall and recite.
Is 2030 here yet? No. What could kill this vision is a failure to follow through on the development of assessment practices that continue to demand students to remember and recite things. Worse yet, however, is for educational stakeholders to blithely say, “oh…student focus? We do that already…” without taking the time to examine their practices with a critical eye. Talking with people in the community, discovering where learning is due for some disruption, and sharing what you learn in the process are all part of this. It’s time for us to take risks with our practice and to, as Sir Ken Robinson says, create a “learning revolution.”
We must no longer see ourselves as intellectual gas-jockies; we must now become experiential curators.
Cheers!
S
Drinking and Deriving: Passionate Math Teachers Bring the Sexy Back
I am bad at Math. A lot of people will make this confession wholeheartedly, but I would bet that few of those people have ever had to TEACH Math to people. I took on such a challenge and found two things:
1) Teaching Math is like teaching anything else: be clear about what the learner must accomplish, demonstrate it, get the learner to do it, assess, repeat.
2) I liked it a lot.
The second thing is more important for me than the first. It’s important because I was scared to do it. When I did it, though, I found myself really reaching back into my troubled Math past (the teary-eyed nights of struggling through long division) and my toolbox of real-world situations that I swore would NEVER involve math of any sort (just order too few pizzas one day if you want to see what I mean).
A few things have happened recently that have made me see that my little epiphanies are old news for the seasoned Math pros. These things have also shown me that there is something going on in Math education that the rest of us (yes…even in the humanities) should be paying attention to.
Thing 1
I recently had a great talk with a new, passionate Math teacher who just can’t wait to get kids pumped about polynomials. Now, new teachers like Tara (on Twitter at @tleipert ) often are the manifestations of both piss and/or vinegar, but what was great was about the conversation was that I could see her evaluating ways to take Math out of the textbook and into the real world.
Next, as is my tendency, I was looking for an interesting TED video to show to my homeroom class and I stumbled upon this talk by famous Math teacher Dan Meyer (you KNOW you are special when you are a famous Math teacher). You can see the video for yourself here, but the main thrust is that Math classes and textbooks take STUDENTS out of the equation by giving them all the information they need to solve problems. He espouses a type of Math study that asks simple questions as a starting point for a conversation about how to solve them.
Finally, I came across Shawn Cornally’s blog about being on a constant quest to be a better teacher. The things he tries in his classroom are really out of the box thinking for getting his youth excited about exponents. He awards game-like experience points for successes in his classes. He then allows the students the opportunity to “win some back” when they make mistakes. Take a look at this excerpt from his blog about how he allows students to re-try concepts they missed on before:
Cherub: “Mr. Cor nally, I was look ing at my grades, and I see that I don’t really under stand how to draw the graph of a function’s deriv a tive, I have a 5/10.” Cor nally: “Did you review the con cept with your notes, the book, and or try some by yourself?” Cherub: “Yes, I tried a few from the book, and I think I get it now. Can I show you?” Cor nally: “Sure.” The stu dent draws a func tion (sim ple parabola) and then draw its deriv a tive fairly accurately. Cherub: “Is this correct?” Cor nally: “Yes, but I need you to show me with a func tion that may not have already been in your head.” Cor nally draws com pli cated func tion. Stu dent draws deriv a tive fairly well. “Ok, you didn’t quite get this part … but you’ve def i nitely shown improve ment on some of the basic ideas behind this stan dard, I will change your score to a 7.5/10, a ‘C.’” Cherub: “OK, thanks. I’ll be in tomor row morn ing to try again.” This. Actu ally. Happened.(Source Cornally’s Blog, Think Thank Thunk)
The point of all of this is not that I want to go teach Math. I would still generally suck at it. The point is that the approach of creating relevant, accessible material in an area that has historically been such a huge block for people should be an inspiration to us all. In short, if Math can do it, why aren’t we all striving to make our classrooms THIS exciting?
Cheers!
S/c *M
Twitter – The Site That Needs NO Introduction (?)
I recently popped my school up onto Twitter. And by recently, I mean within the last eight hours. This is not, however, the first time I have used twitter. I have been using it on my own for the better part of a year now and, as my friends and family will tell you, I love it. Facebook is soooo “last-decade” for me.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Twitter, it is a website that allows its users to send out short messages to other users often and for free. It has allowed people to quickly and easily share resources, ideas, and even (in at least one case I know of) life-saving information. I have thus far used the service for a nice balance of business and pleasure (there’s no reason you can’t laugh at the latest episode of The Guild while searching for SMART resources, is there?)
Twitter is for me like a garden…but a garden where you can plant a seed at three o’clock and have a flourishing blossom before dinner. As the remarkably forward-thinking Principal of a school in Stony Plain, George Couros (@gcouros on Twitter) has embraced Twitter as a professional development tool for his staff. In this article, he tells a tale about how the great educational community tweeting away out there actually made believers out of each of his staffers. Long story short, he planted a seed and, with just the slightest action on his part, an incredibly leafy and robust result was (and is still) before him and his co-workers.
Perhaps I carry this metaphor too far. The important thing, however, is that even though this service can be seen as a colossal waste of time, I have thus far only found it to be so when I let it be. I get what I put into it. With putting the school onto Twitter, I am focusing much more specifically on jumping into the thriving community of educators who are using it as a tool to make their schools the best places they can be for both staff and students.
Sound like something you are interested in? Drop in an get an account. Meet some people. Tell people what you are doing and why it’s important to you. Come to a Tweetup. I guarantee it will be worth whatever you put into it.
You can follow me @ScottMeunier. You can check out my school’s feed @BoyleStreetEd.
Cheers,
S
Review of Teaching Graphic Novels by Katie Monnin
Cover - Teaching Graphic Novels
The subtitle of Dr. Monnin’s book is, “practical strategies for the secondary ELA classroom” and I am happy to say that she has definitely placed her emphasis on “practical.” Ready-to-use materials are the best for the weary classroom teacher looking to liven things up. What’s great, though, is the accessible theoretical basis for how using graphic novels can and should be a seamless experience in an ELA context. Bottom line: if you are looking for a few back-pocket activities to spice things up, they are here. However, a systematic use of the activities and theories described herein will engage your students in ways you, your administrators, and their parents want them to be.
There is nothing technologically amazing here. There are no links to SMART activities. There are no gadgets. What you get here are soundly-designed instructional activities meant to scaffold students of all literacy levels into a critical engagement with visual and print based texts.
What I love: The direct approach and accessible language. Dr. Monnin may have fancy credentials, but she is a reader at heart and wants to help other people love reading. This fact is evident in how simply she has designed the activities and the handouts that support them. I am happy to see that many of the novels and artists that Dr. Monnin recommends are already in use in my classroom – in fact, this external support has encouraged me in the knowledge that I am on the right track with building parallel visual and textual literacies.
What I’d love to see made better: A purely nerdy part of me wished for easier signposting for the different activities. Sometimes, I wasn’t sure if I was in a new section or in another part of the previous section. I figured it out, but I had to think about it (this, I think, is not a fault of Dr. Monnin as much as it is a design issue to be discussed with the book’s publisher.
All in all, I intend to put this book into the hands of my ELA and literacy specialists at the school as soon as possible. There are a lot of possibilities for our population in graphic novel study. Buy it, read it, use it!
S
A purposeful moment of geekdom
Ok. I am no Apple fan and I have certainly never been a Marvel fan, but take a look at the Marvel app for the iPad.
I love it. I don’t love it because I love comics and love shiny new technology (ok…that’s a bit why I love it). I love it because of what it can mean for how we interact with our content.
This month’s issue of Wired magazine features an article about the future of computing. One of the things discussed is the replacement of the Graphic User Interface with a Natural User Interface…the NUI where we swish, pull, push, and drag our content around as if it were in front of us. It doesn’t sound revolutionary when you read it like that (mostly because you are reading in your head and can’t hear anything) but, as this video demonstrates, the natural interface can be remarkable for small children and adults alike as they grab and manipulate the virtual images before them. This ability really dissolves the barrier of the interface and makes working with content so much more beautiful and natural.
And this MIGHT even get me to buy a Marvel comic. Might.
S
3 good reasons to have a “more open” internet policy in your school.
I don’t know if you’ve heard, but there’s this website called “YouTube” that has videos on it. Some of these videos are interesting and so, when available in school, YouTube can offer a distraction to otherwise studious pupils.
Oh great! Now I have to compete with interesting videos as well as iPods, cell phones, and fashion magazines for a moment of time for my insignificant “teachery” stuff!
Perhaps it is my own hubris, but I have never worried about being less interesting than the din of media. I have always found that if I use my time respectfully and in a way that “pays off” for everyone’s goals, I don’t have to compete with YouTube; YouTube has to compete with me. In fact, here are 3 reasons that opening the internet’s flood gates can actually be a benefit to you, your class, and your school.
1) Teachable moments galore*. As this Mashable article by Greg Ferenstein demonstrates, banning social media and device use can generally have the opposite of its intended effect. Not only is the lure of the forbidden too great to resist, student attempts to circumvent the blockage can take more time and energy than actual work.
2) Realistic workplace training. Fewer and fewer offices block parts of the internet. It creates an unpleasant workplace culture and is an IT nightmare. Instead, companies have employees sign an internet use policy and trust them to make appropriate choices with regards to their surfing. Having such a policy in place in a school allows teachers to guide students toward more responsible surfing choices.
3) Transmedia instruction. A big buzzword right now, “transmedia” just refers to telling different pieces of a story through different media. Think “webquest” with a narrative backbone (and reliance on more than just web resources). A more open policy allows teachers to create immersive units with video, social media, and wiki-based components.
*There is the possibility that numbers 2 and 3 are functions of number 1. I’m OK with that if you are.
Cheers!
S