At my school we recently spent tens of thousands of dollars on textbooks for only a handful of our courses. With some books weighing in at a hefty $170 per unit, it isn’t hard to imagine how schools, districts, and in the case of many independent schools, families, spend exorbitant sums each year on textbooks for their students.
Perhaps, though, appearing just over the digital horizon, help is on the way. Perhaps the reign of ten-pound and hundred-dollar textbooks finally is drawing to an end. Perhaps textbooks soon will go the way of handwritten letters and 8-track tapes. Perhaps, textbooks will be replaced by e-texts and free texts known as Open Source textbooks or Open Textbooks. How? Let me explain.
For starters, a recent article in TIME magazine and a recent story on NPR tell of a company, Flat World Knowledge LLC, whose goal is to stage a coup in the textbook industry. Flat World will offer free, yes free, textbooks beginning in just a few short months. These texts will be available to anyone via their website. To be fair to all you cynics, Flat World remains an unknown entity so I’ll offer something else to you for free.
If Flat World isn’t good enough for you (yet), would you be interested in a chemistry textbook, Concept Development Studies in Chemistry, developed at Rice University? How about a calculus text, Calculus, from MIT? Did I mention these are free?
So, how are these organizations offering free textbooks when textbook publishers keep telling us how expensive textbooks are to produce? The answer is in Open Source. Open Source is a term that computer geeks recognize immediately. Open Source generally refers to software and/or source code that is available for public use, public manipulation and public collaboration. The Open Source philosophy has been adapted to the written word and electronic information and adopted by institutions and organizations like MIT and Connexions. (In fact, MIT has taken it a step farther and offers not only free texts but also Open Source model courses called OpenCourseWare.)
Open Source communities like Connexions tend to organize information in modules and then link the modules together to form collections, courses or texts. Authors who wish to contribute can contribute their ideas and allow others to use their ideas with Creative Commons open-content licenses. Connexions, just one example of an Open Source community, is a great site organized into a number of subjects and it’s fully searchable.
Am I ready to toss my traditional textbooks in lieu of e-texts available for free online? No, but I am intrigued. How great would it be to tell parents of Calculus students at your school that your department is supplementing the adopted Calculus text with a text from MIT! And, to sweeten the deal, the MIT text is on a flash drive that the students can take wherever they go! And, best of all, the MIT text didn’t cost families or taxpayers anything at all!
So, the elephant in the room… The most obvious weakness at this point in the world of Open Source texts, perhaps excluding texts from universities such as Rice, MIT, Texas A&M, etc., appears to be quality control and quality assurance. The same arguments used against Wikipedia could be applied to some Open Source texts, modules, etc. However, if a trained educator helps students discern which are trustworthy and which may not be as reliable, e-texts suddenly seem more appealing. To take this a step further, if a trained educator, an expert in one’s field, evaluates an Open Source text or module before presenting it to students, the e-text becomes a potentially valuable tool (worth every penny paid for it). Another obstacle or challenge you may face with Open Textbooks centers on textbook adoption policies and procedures. Judy Baker of Connexions offers advice on Open Textbook Adoption that may help you overcome such a challenge.
In light of this discussion, where do you see textbooks in five years? Ten years? Are Open Source texts a viable option for schools? Have you used Open Source texts and, if so, what has been your experience with them? Are you intrigued by Open Source texts and modules for your school? Should the next generation of educational leaders be willing to take risks on ideas like Open Textbooks?
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Sunday, July 20, 2008
A Blogger on Blogs Part II
Part II of II
I have asked an esteemed colleague and true friend, Phil Sinitiere, to share his thoughts on blogging in the classroom. I had the opportunity to witness Phil's creativity and innovation firsthand while serving at Second Baptist School in Houston, Texas, where Phil chairs the Social Studies department and teaches AP European History and U.S. History. Phil dared to be different and offered his students the opportunity to learn with technology that included blogging, interactive whiteboards and podcasts. What follows is the second part of the interview.
NB: What has been the general reaction of your students to the blog?
PS: Visitors to this blog can read student comments for themselves in the posts about feedback, but overall I think students liked the blog. Although sometimes they saw it only in terms of homework, if they gave it enough time students were able to learn great deal about history. I found that most of my students really didn’t know what to expect at the beginning of the year, and I suppose remained that way throughout the year since I tried to vary the topics and types of posts I created. It was a bigger hit with juniors and seniors overall, I’d say, but a few of my sophomores thoroughly enjoyed posting their thoughts. My students really enjoyed the clustrmap site traffic monitor I use—it features a world map with red dots indicating from where in the world people visit the blog. It really drove home, visually, the globalized, interconnected world in which we live.
NB: Has the blog been a success? How do you measure the success of your class blog?
PS: I would certainly like to think the blog has been a success—and again the reflexive nature of the kind of communication blogs provide offers a window into this question so I’d direct readers to my student comments to decide for themselves. In terms of what criteria indicate success, on a blog I would examine the content of the posts, the range of topics covered, as well as the kinds of conversations that took place.
NB: What advice or recommendations would you give to teachers or administrators considering blogging for educational purposes?
PS: In no particular order, here they are: first, be willing to take the risks that using and incorporating technology requires. Don’t assume students know the ins and outs of EVERY bit of technology, and at the very least try to incorporate one new technological element each year. Of course you are not going to know anything and everything the first time you use it, but at least give it a TRY.
Second, see what else is out there, listen and learn from what others are doing, and then figure out how to apply it to your own setting and your own classroom. What works in Texas, for example, won’t always work in South Dakota, so you’ll have to get those creative juices flowing to find your niche.
Third, if you decide to have a class blog, post regularly, communicate that the blog is not an exercise in social networking but a serious academic enterprise, set some ground rules in terms of appropriate comments on the blog (which I think I did well), and be as clear as you can in terms of letting students know how they will be assessed for spending their time on these e-assignments (at which I could’ve done a better job).
Fourth, be willing to take risks in another way and ask for student feedback—but have them post their thoughts. You will most likely be pleasantly surprised at their frank observations, but in my experience the feedback typically involved constructive criticism.
Fifth, have fun and be flexible, allowing blogposts and e-conversations to shape and be shaped by what goes on in the day-to-day dynamics of the classroom.
Sixth, feel free to tailor posts on interests of your own choosing—students like to “see” you communicate on their turf as it were, and of course if you are passionate about a particular subject that can have drawing power as well.
Seventh, I consider every day that I use the class blog (or new technology) as something of an experiment, a new exercise in learning—and so keep in mind the reflexive nature of such technology.
Eighth, try to think of catchy, thoughtful, and perhaps humorous titles for you blogposts, as this helps to draw students in. (I regularly use puns in class, and so tried to have puns in the titles of my posts.)
Ninth, on a related note, use pictures or images in your posts—this is a communication device for your visually-oriented learners, but it is also a creative way to communicate ideas, trends, etc. relative to your subject matter.
Tenth, spend some time finding useful and relevant links for your blog (in my case, on-line primary document repositories for example, or news organizations representing multiple perspectives).
Eleventh, this almost goes without saying, but use it regularly, and bring student perspectives into the classroom—for instance I found that the proverbial quiet students were some of the more verbose and articulate in writing and if you engage their writing in class is it a very effective way to get them talking.
Twelfth, most blogging services have “save as draft” functions, so you can take your time writing up thoughtful posts—I did not write a post all in one sitting. Take your time, it is worth it and helps to insure clear communication from the educator’s end and elicit genuine and serious engagement from students.
Thirteenth, remember your audience, and remember that students, parents, colleagues, and administrators (and indeed visitors from the entire globe) read your blog. I’m an ardent supporter and vigorous advocate for academic freedom and scholarly rigor—and I’m convinced that we shortchange students by not investing time to talk through and understand the complexities and contradictions of contemporary affairs and world events—so I’m certainly not saying to tiptoe around controversial subjects (or what some deem to be controversial).
While there is of course always a risk of being misunderstood in terms of the aims of a lesson at communicated through a blogpost, and certainly a blogpost does not capture the content of conversations that take place in the classroom, this last point is simply a reminder that the tone of a blogpost can set the mood for conversations about particular topics even as it can be a powerful way to consider the complexity of opinions and the plurality of ideas. And one more point: while the conversations on my blogs this past academic year has been limited to my students and I, and those scholars and authors I’ve invited to participate—according to the clustrmap site traffic monitor people from the world over visited the blog. So I’m going to create a post inviting those visitors to provide feedback, comments, and criticism—so you may want to check the blogs to see if they offer some feedback and advice as well, hence potentially advice and recommendations as you consider starting (or revising or refining your own blog). This is the beauty (and risk) of what journalist Jeff Howe calls crowdsourcing (and check out his blog, too).
I have asked an esteemed colleague and true friend, Phil Sinitiere, to share his thoughts on blogging in the classroom. I had the opportunity to witness Phil's creativity and innovation firsthand while serving at Second Baptist School in Houston, Texas, where Phil chairs the Social Studies department and teaches AP European History and U.S. History. Phil dared to be different and offered his students the opportunity to learn with technology that included blogging, interactive whiteboards and podcasts. What follows is the second part of the interview.
NB: What has been the general reaction of your students to the blog?
PS: Visitors to this blog can read student comments for themselves in the posts about feedback, but overall I think students liked the blog. Although sometimes they saw it only in terms of homework, if they gave it enough time students were able to learn great deal about history. I found that most of my students really didn’t know what to expect at the beginning of the year, and I suppose remained that way throughout the year since I tried to vary the topics and types of posts I created. It was a bigger hit with juniors and seniors overall, I’d say, but a few of my sophomores thoroughly enjoyed posting their thoughts. My students really enjoyed the clustrmap site traffic monitor I use—it features a world map with red dots indicating from where in the world people visit the blog. It really drove home, visually, the globalized, interconnected world in which we live.
NB: Has the blog been a success? How do you measure the success of your class blog?
PS: I would certainly like to think the blog has been a success—and again the reflexive nature of the kind of communication blogs provide offers a window into this question so I’d direct readers to my student comments to decide for themselves. In terms of what criteria indicate success, on a blog I would examine the content of the posts, the range of topics covered, as well as the kinds of conversations that took place.
NB: What advice or recommendations would you give to teachers or administrators considering blogging for educational purposes?
PS: In no particular order, here they are: first, be willing to take the risks that using and incorporating technology requires. Don’t assume students know the ins and outs of EVERY bit of technology, and at the very least try to incorporate one new technological element each year. Of course you are not going to know anything and everything the first time you use it, but at least give it a TRY.
Second, see what else is out there, listen and learn from what others are doing, and then figure out how to apply it to your own setting and your own classroom. What works in Texas, for example, won’t always work in South Dakota, so you’ll have to get those creative juices flowing to find your niche.
Third, if you decide to have a class blog, post regularly, communicate that the blog is not an exercise in social networking but a serious academic enterprise, set some ground rules in terms of appropriate comments on the blog (which I think I did well), and be as clear as you can in terms of letting students know how they will be assessed for spending their time on these e-assignments (at which I could’ve done a better job).
Fourth, be willing to take risks in another way and ask for student feedback—but have them post their thoughts. You will most likely be pleasantly surprised at their frank observations, but in my experience the feedback typically involved constructive criticism.
Fifth, have fun and be flexible, allowing blogposts and e-conversations to shape and be shaped by what goes on in the day-to-day dynamics of the classroom.
Sixth, feel free to tailor posts on interests of your own choosing—students like to “see” you communicate on their turf as it were, and of course if you are passionate about a particular subject that can have drawing power as well.
Seventh, I consider every day that I use the class blog (or new technology) as something of an experiment, a new exercise in learning—and so keep in mind the reflexive nature of such technology.
Eighth, try to think of catchy, thoughtful, and perhaps humorous titles for you blogposts, as this helps to draw students in. (I regularly use puns in class, and so tried to have puns in the titles of my posts.)
Ninth, on a related note, use pictures or images in your posts—this is a communication device for your visually-oriented learners, but it is also a creative way to communicate ideas, trends, etc. relative to your subject matter.
Tenth, spend some time finding useful and relevant links for your blog (in my case, on-line primary document repositories for example, or news organizations representing multiple perspectives).
Eleventh, this almost goes without saying, but use it regularly, and bring student perspectives into the classroom—for instance I found that the proverbial quiet students were some of the more verbose and articulate in writing and if you engage their writing in class is it a very effective way to get them talking.
Twelfth, most blogging services have “save as draft” functions, so you can take your time writing up thoughtful posts—I did not write a post all in one sitting. Take your time, it is worth it and helps to insure clear communication from the educator’s end and elicit genuine and serious engagement from students.
Thirteenth, remember your audience, and remember that students, parents, colleagues, and administrators (and indeed visitors from the entire globe) read your blog. I’m an ardent supporter and vigorous advocate for academic freedom and scholarly rigor—and I’m convinced that we shortchange students by not investing time to talk through and understand the complexities and contradictions of contemporary affairs and world events—so I’m certainly not saying to tiptoe around controversial subjects (or what some deem to be controversial).
While there is of course always a risk of being misunderstood in terms of the aims of a lesson at communicated through a blogpost, and certainly a blogpost does not capture the content of conversations that take place in the classroom, this last point is simply a reminder that the tone of a blogpost can set the mood for conversations about particular topics even as it can be a powerful way to consider the complexity of opinions and the plurality of ideas. And one more point: while the conversations on my blogs this past academic year has been limited to my students and I, and those scholars and authors I’ve invited to participate—according to the clustrmap site traffic monitor people from the world over visited the blog. So I’m going to create a post inviting those visitors to provide feedback, comments, and criticism—so you may want to check the blogs to see if they offer some feedback and advice as well, hence potentially advice and recommendations as you consider starting (or revising or refining your own blog). This is the beauty (and risk) of what journalist Jeff Howe calls crowdsourcing (and check out his blog, too).
Thursday, July 17, 2008
A Blogger on Blogs
I have asked an esteemed colleague and true friend, Phil Sinitiere, to share his thoughts on blogging in the classroom. I had the opportunity to witness Phil's creativity and innovation firsthand while serving at Second Baptist School in Houston, Texas, where Phil chairs the Social Studies department and teaches AP European History and U.S. History. Phil dared to be different and offered his students the opportunity to learn with technology that included blogging, interactive whiteboards and podcasts.
What follows is Part I of a two-part interview with Phil about his blogging experiences in the classrooms.
NB: Why did you feel a need to create a blog for your class(es)? What did you hope to accomplish by creating a blog for your class(es)?
PS: Before answering this question, it will perhaps be helpful to explain briefly what led to my inspiration for creating a class blog. It came from several areas. First, prior to my decision to have a class blog, I had been following certain blogs for about 4 years, mostly related to research I was doing on postmodern religious groups in the U.S. Many of these folks communicate electronically, and so I began to see how powerfully blogs could communicate ideas. And I had started my own blog in 2005, mostly as a place to post about academic matters. Second, a history professor from Colorado I know, Paul Harvey, created a class blog I followed in the spring of 2007, and I was quite impressed with the consistently thoughtful student responses and the type of dialogue that took place. Here I began to imagine a blog in a classroom, and contemplate ways to use it. Third, for several years I had heard a few educators discuss blogs, and after I saw a presentation at the 2007 World History Association meeting in Milwaukee on blogs and teaching history and discovered the fascinating things one teacher was doing, I decided to create my own class blog (actually two blogs: one for my U.S. history class and one for my Advanced Placement European history class.
My reasoning behind the class blog was to communicate better with today’s wired generation on the one hand, and on the other to make my classroom global in a totally new and different way. Already familiar with the basics of technology in the classroom, I wanted to move beyond PowerPoint presentations, movie clips, and music; I wanted to facilitate conversation and critical analysis in a different setting, and in turn hopefully better address the multiple learning styles in my classroom. When I started I hoped that students would see history differently, enjoy learning about the past, take more ownership of their learning, and discover how to more critically navigate the infinite number of sites and (re)sources available on the Internet.
NB: How much time did you spend creating and designing the blog prior to posting for the first time?
PS: I was already familiar with Blogger, so honestly the morning before my first post (on both my U.S. history blog and AP European history blog) I probably spent about two hours deciding on the template, setting up the links, adjusting the comment settings, and other details. I probably spent more time thinking and pondering what I wanted to do with the blog, and really what subjects and topics I wanted to post about. I didn’t have an agenda of topics, per se, before I started, but wished to remain flexible in terms of posting on things students wanted to know more about as well as incorporating relevant current events that took place throughout the year. My first post on the U.S. history blog had to do with my global approach to teaching American history. The Thomas Bender quote on the blog is also the same quote I have on my syllabus, as is the W.E.B Du Bois prayer about the value of hard work in academics—so I saw these first few posts as a way to introduce the technology, communicate to parents, colleagues, and administrators what I was up to with the blog (I showed parents the blog during open house), and drive home how I structured my course and hopefully offer some historical inspiration for the beginning of the school year.
NB: What are some examples of the topics of your blog posts?
PS: First, another bit of prelim perspective may be helpful here.
I started out last August, posting on current events as well as creating links to primary documents I wanted students to read and analyze. Then, through the course of class discussions and simply asking students what they thought, the ideas began to flow and topics for posts came rushing like a thunderstorm on a hot, gulf coast afternoon. I also began to think more analytically about ways I could assess students (for more on this see the next question).
This led to the creation of an on-line Constitutional scavenger hunt, for instance, and a massive post about Alexis de Tocqueville that allowed students to travel virtually with him on his tour of the U.S. and read relevant diary entries to better understand his thoughts about the new nation.
If I showed a documentary (or parts of it) I would regularly post links to the documentary’s website which not only contained activities to do in class, but also primary documents—text—that usually fit beautifully with the audio and visual of the topic under discussion. (See, for example, the post on Lewis and Clark.) I would also occasionally post review terms and study items on the blog. The weekend before the final exam, I podcasted a 4-minute study skills message that offered tips on how to prepare for my final exam—something new and different yet it complimented the subject matter of the class review sessions.
Above all, though, I really strove to find as many primary documents as I could about the subject and topics we discussed. As you know, there is just tons of material on the Internet, and I was able to find some really interesting items. In addition to the Tocqueville post, during my unit on the progressive era I found a treasure of material related to Helen Keller, Upton Sinclair, and W.E.B. Du Bois and was able to incorporate it into class. I should also say that I was able to do a fair amount of art analysis and art criticism through the blog—posting links to artwork, for instance, have students pick a painting or image and study it for homework, and then call them up during class to come interpret and explain. This worked well using a SMARTboard, and gave students a chance to communicate visually, textually, and verbally. (See, for example, the posts on Gilded Age art as well as the artwork of the Great Depression.)
I also tried to give students a place where they could voice feedback on what I do in the classroom—a risk at being transparent for both parents and administrators that I think is necessary in a venture like this. So, for instance, I used a SMARTboard in class for the first time in January 2008, and created a post where students could leave their thoughts, and in May I posted again, asking students about their experiences with the class blog throughout the year. This is where the reflexivity that exists with this kind of technology can bear much fruit.
I would also try to post about unique topics, not necessarily related to the unit we were on in class, but relevant in terms of the aims of my class—to get students to think critically about their place in today’s global world. This led to a post, for instance, where students took a presidential candidate quiz and posted the results on-line—a post that generated wonderful class discussion. Another post on journalist A.J. Jacobs’ experiment about living the bible for a year provided a way to think about and discuss one of the most frequent phrases in my classroom: “to better understand the past we must walk in the shoes of those who preceded us.”
Since I grew up in the 1980s, and since I wanted students to really remember this period beyond the pop culture of this decade, I created another scavenger hunt that was just loads of fun putting together. Then I sent a questionnaire to some of my teaching colleagues who grew up in the 1980s, and asked them to share their memories. This post—in which I included pictures of me from the 1980s (let me tell you, it is quite interesting scanning those old Polaroid pictures into jpg files!)—while clearly the hit post of the year, also served as a lesson in oral history and historical memory. Students loved getting a different perspective on some of their teachers, but they also came away with more knowledge about the types of sources historians use to reconstruct the past.
NB: How do you incorporate the blog into your course(s)? What do you require of your students?
PB: I addressed this to some degree in the previous question in terms of content, but more specifically I use it for homework assignments, classroom discussion, student involvement, project announcements and resources, and general enrichment. Sometimes students would be required to post, other times I made it optional. I make it a habit to talk about the blog often, and so students incorporate it into the daily class rhythm. (For those who read through the U.S. history blog, I also used it for classes/electives I taught on religion and the Civil Rights Movement, Presidential Election 2008—those posts are in March—and a Communication Applications class I taught in June and early July.)
If a blogpost is a homework assignment, for example, students might have to read and answer questions on their own paper or leave comments on the blog. I created an assignment for the Vietnam War, for instance, and a free response exercise for Emmett Till and the Civil Rights Movement. In terms of classroom discussion, I created posts with links to documents, or photographs, or even sometimes links to YouTube segments that illustrated a point in class. Posts on the JFK assassination and the Great Depression allowed for this, as well as a post about shellshock. When I discussed the Jim Crow era in my U.S. history class, I found an on-line map that revealed lynching statistics—and here I’d have students come up to the SMARTboard screen, and find Tennessee or California, for example, and identify the numbers. This changed the dynamics of the classroom by getting students physically involved in class, even as it honed geography skills. In terms of project announcements and resources, I posted about a 1920s project and provided all the links students would need.
By far the neatest part of the class blog this year involved electronic conversations with authors, scholars, and colleagues. During the Age of Exploration unit in my AP European history class, I had students read a chapter from David Northrup’s Africa’s Discovery of Europe (Oxford University Press, 2002). They were required to answer a few question on their own, as well as leave thoughts about the chapter and questions for David on the blog since he agreed to respond to students’ questions. I met David through my involvement with the World History Association and simply emailed an invitation for him to join the conversation my class was having about the subject of his work—and he graciously agreed to respond. The student questions were very smart and engaging, and the conversation between all of us was informative and interesting. My students really enjoyed this. For my U.S. history classes and the unit on the Civil Rights Movement, I had students visit a website on Emmett Till created by historian Devery Anderson, and in conjunction with class discussion they were required to leave questions for Devery on the blog. Like David, Devery agreed to respond to students’ questions and I then turned that into another post. This was a big hit with students.
What follows is Part I of a two-part interview with Phil about his blogging experiences in the classrooms.
NB: Why did you feel a need to create a blog for your class(es)? What did you hope to accomplish by creating a blog for your class(es)?
PS: Before answering this question, it will perhaps be helpful to explain briefly what led to my inspiration for creating a class blog. It came from several areas. First, prior to my decision to have a class blog, I had been following certain blogs for about 4 years, mostly related to research I was doing on postmodern religious groups in the U.S. Many of these folks communicate electronically, and so I began to see how powerfully blogs could communicate ideas. And I had started my own blog in 2005, mostly as a place to post about academic matters. Second, a history professor from Colorado I know, Paul Harvey, created a class blog I followed in the spring of 2007, and I was quite impressed with the consistently thoughtful student responses and the type of dialogue that took place. Here I began to imagine a blog in a classroom, and contemplate ways to use it. Third, for several years I had heard a few educators discuss blogs, and after I saw a presentation at the 2007 World History Association meeting in Milwaukee on blogs and teaching history and discovered the fascinating things one teacher was doing, I decided to create my own class blog (actually two blogs: one for my U.S. history class and one for my Advanced Placement European history class.
My reasoning behind the class blog was to communicate better with today’s wired generation on the one hand, and on the other to make my classroom global in a totally new and different way. Already familiar with the basics of technology in the classroom, I wanted to move beyond PowerPoint presentations, movie clips, and music; I wanted to facilitate conversation and critical analysis in a different setting, and in turn hopefully better address the multiple learning styles in my classroom. When I started I hoped that students would see history differently, enjoy learning about the past, take more ownership of their learning, and discover how to more critically navigate the infinite number of sites and (re)sources available on the Internet.
NB: How much time did you spend creating and designing the blog prior to posting for the first time?
PS: I was already familiar with Blogger, so honestly the morning before my first post (on both my U.S. history blog and AP European history blog) I probably spent about two hours deciding on the template, setting up the links, adjusting the comment settings, and other details. I probably spent more time thinking and pondering what I wanted to do with the blog, and really what subjects and topics I wanted to post about. I didn’t have an agenda of topics, per se, before I started, but wished to remain flexible in terms of posting on things students wanted to know more about as well as incorporating relevant current events that took place throughout the year. My first post on the U.S. history blog had to do with my global approach to teaching American history. The Thomas Bender quote on the blog is also the same quote I have on my syllabus, as is the W.E.B Du Bois prayer about the value of hard work in academics—so I saw these first few posts as a way to introduce the technology, communicate to parents, colleagues, and administrators what I was up to with the blog (I showed parents the blog during open house), and drive home how I structured my course and hopefully offer some historical inspiration for the beginning of the school year.
NB: What are some examples of the topics of your blog posts?
PS: First, another bit of prelim perspective may be helpful here.
I started out last August, posting on current events as well as creating links to primary documents I wanted students to read and analyze. Then, through the course of class discussions and simply asking students what they thought, the ideas began to flow and topics for posts came rushing like a thunderstorm on a hot, gulf coast afternoon. I also began to think more analytically about ways I could assess students (for more on this see the next question).
This led to the creation of an on-line Constitutional scavenger hunt, for instance, and a massive post about Alexis de Tocqueville that allowed students to travel virtually with him on his tour of the U.S. and read relevant diary entries to better understand his thoughts about the new nation.
If I showed a documentary (or parts of it) I would regularly post links to the documentary’s website which not only contained activities to do in class, but also primary documents—text—that usually fit beautifully with the audio and visual of the topic under discussion. (See, for example, the post on Lewis and Clark.) I would also occasionally post review terms and study items on the blog. The weekend before the final exam, I podcasted a 4-minute study skills message that offered tips on how to prepare for my final exam—something new and different yet it complimented the subject matter of the class review sessions.
Above all, though, I really strove to find as many primary documents as I could about the subject and topics we discussed. As you know, there is just tons of material on the Internet, and I was able to find some really interesting items. In addition to the Tocqueville post, during my unit on the progressive era I found a treasure of material related to Helen Keller, Upton Sinclair, and W.E.B. Du Bois and was able to incorporate it into class. I should also say that I was able to do a fair amount of art analysis and art criticism through the blog—posting links to artwork, for instance, have students pick a painting or image and study it for homework, and then call them up during class to come interpret and explain. This worked well using a SMARTboard, and gave students a chance to communicate visually, textually, and verbally. (See, for example, the posts on Gilded Age art as well as the artwork of the Great Depression.)
I also tried to give students a place where they could voice feedback on what I do in the classroom—a risk at being transparent for both parents and administrators that I think is necessary in a venture like this. So, for instance, I used a SMARTboard in class for the first time in January 2008, and created a post where students could leave their thoughts, and in May I posted again, asking students about their experiences with the class blog throughout the year. This is where the reflexivity that exists with this kind of technology can bear much fruit.
I would also try to post about unique topics, not necessarily related to the unit we were on in class, but relevant in terms of the aims of my class—to get students to think critically about their place in today’s global world. This led to a post, for instance, where students took a presidential candidate quiz and posted the results on-line—a post that generated wonderful class discussion. Another post on journalist A.J. Jacobs’ experiment about living the bible for a year provided a way to think about and discuss one of the most frequent phrases in my classroom: “to better understand the past we must walk in the shoes of those who preceded us.”
Since I grew up in the 1980s, and since I wanted students to really remember this period beyond the pop culture of this decade, I created another scavenger hunt that was just loads of fun putting together. Then I sent a questionnaire to some of my teaching colleagues who grew up in the 1980s, and asked them to share their memories. This post—in which I included pictures of me from the 1980s (let me tell you, it is quite interesting scanning those old Polaroid pictures into jpg files!)—while clearly the hit post of the year, also served as a lesson in oral history and historical memory. Students loved getting a different perspective on some of their teachers, but they also came away with more knowledge about the types of sources historians use to reconstruct the past.
NB: How do you incorporate the blog into your course(s)? What do you require of your students?
PB: I addressed this to some degree in the previous question in terms of content, but more specifically I use it for homework assignments, classroom discussion, student involvement, project announcements and resources, and general enrichment. Sometimes students would be required to post, other times I made it optional. I make it a habit to talk about the blog often, and so students incorporate it into the daily class rhythm. (For those who read through the U.S. history blog, I also used it for classes/electives I taught on religion and the Civil Rights Movement, Presidential Election 2008—those posts are in March—and a Communication Applications class I taught in June and early July.)
If a blogpost is a homework assignment, for example, students might have to read and answer questions on their own paper or leave comments on the blog. I created an assignment for the Vietnam War, for instance, and a free response exercise for Emmett Till and the Civil Rights Movement. In terms of classroom discussion, I created posts with links to documents, or photographs, or even sometimes links to YouTube segments that illustrated a point in class. Posts on the JFK assassination and the Great Depression allowed for this, as well as a post about shellshock. When I discussed the Jim Crow era in my U.S. history class, I found an on-line map that revealed lynching statistics—and here I’d have students come up to the SMARTboard screen, and find Tennessee or California, for example, and identify the numbers. This changed the dynamics of the classroom by getting students physically involved in class, even as it honed geography skills. In terms of project announcements and resources, I posted about a 1920s project and provided all the links students would need.
By far the neatest part of the class blog this year involved electronic conversations with authors, scholars, and colleagues. During the Age of Exploration unit in my AP European history class, I had students read a chapter from David Northrup’s Africa’s Discovery of Europe (Oxford University Press, 2002). They were required to answer a few question on their own, as well as leave thoughts about the chapter and questions for David on the blog since he agreed to respond to students’ questions. I met David through my involvement with the World History Association and simply emailed an invitation for him to join the conversation my class was having about the subject of his work—and he graciously agreed to respond. The student questions were very smart and engaging, and the conversation between all of us was informative and interesting. My students really enjoyed this. For my U.S. history classes and the unit on the Civil Rights Movement, I had students visit a website on Emmett Till created by historian Devery Anderson, and in conjunction with class discussion they were required to leave questions for Devery on the blog. Like David, Devery agreed to respond to students’ questions and I then turned that into another post. This was a big hit with students.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
The Freedom to Fail: One of the Fundamental Rights of Education
Part II of II
I recently interviewed a candidate for a teaching position. The candidate had recently graduated in only three years at the top of her class at a major university with a perfect 4.0 average. In high school, a very large high school, she graduated as valedictorian with, you guessed it, a 4.0 average. During my interview with her she probably was the smartest person in the room. As I explained to her later in the week she didn’t get the job, the disappointment emanated from the telephone and I knew she was crushed. Her voice trembled and she had no idea how to respond. After a moment of awkward silence, I proceeded to encourage her and to recommend another school searching for a qualified teacher for a similar position.
I thought about her reaction in the hours following the conversation and I was reminded of a former student of mine. This 9th grade student had a perfect 4.0 throughout his illustrious and storied academic career and anything less than an A simply was out of the question for him and for his parents. One particular grading period he earned a B in my class because he failed to follow instructions on a major project and because his test scores weren’t stellar. Needless to say, he and his parents were devastated. No one in the family could come to terms with a B on the transcript much less a B permanently lodged in the family history. They begged and pleaded for mercy, for a second chance; they begged and pleaded for an A because in their minds a B equated to failure. I explained as best I could to the student and the parents that a B in 9th grade was a relatively inexpensive way for the student to experience failure, albeit ever so slight, and to find a way to respond in a positive way. It would be much easier to cope with some degree of failure in college or in the workplace if he had similar high school experiences with which he had to wrestle, I explained. Initially they went away unhappy but the parents told me later in the year that the incident turned into a valuable learning experience for the whole family.
Should someone along the way have given my teaching candidate a B in Geometry so she could handle let-down later in life? Should we make it almost impossible for students to achieve GPA perfection? Of course not. Should we think twice before giving out free extra credit, inflating grades and the like because of ramifications later in students’ lives? Perhaps.
I am quite proud of the candidate who went through the interview process with me. She is brilliant and will be a terrific teacher for someone somewhere. I hope the first real failure she’s ever experienced, though, doesn’t defeat her and doesn’t discourage her from putting herself out there again. After watching countless kids deal with various hardships and obstacles ranging from their first B to filing to get a job offer after their first interview, I’ve devoted a great deal of energy to this issue. I believe it is imperative that when a student fails, to whatever degree and in whatever venue, responsible and caring adults help the student back to his or her feet and then help the student respond appropriately to the failure. Students must be taught that with no risk comes no reward and that setbacks and failure are a part of life. Finally, students must be made to believe that failures do not define a person but rather the way one responds to failures defines a person. We as educators must grant our students the freedom to fail and then supply them with the tools they need to recover and to become successful later.
I recently interviewed a candidate for a teaching position. The candidate had recently graduated in only three years at the top of her class at a major university with a perfect 4.0 average. In high school, a very large high school, she graduated as valedictorian with, you guessed it, a 4.0 average. During my interview with her she probably was the smartest person in the room. As I explained to her later in the week she didn’t get the job, the disappointment emanated from the telephone and I knew she was crushed. Her voice trembled and she had no idea how to respond. After a moment of awkward silence, I proceeded to encourage her and to recommend another school searching for a qualified teacher for a similar position.
I thought about her reaction in the hours following the conversation and I was reminded of a former student of mine. This 9th grade student had a perfect 4.0 throughout his illustrious and storied academic career and anything less than an A simply was out of the question for him and for his parents. One particular grading period he earned a B in my class because he failed to follow instructions on a major project and because his test scores weren’t stellar. Needless to say, he and his parents were devastated. No one in the family could come to terms with a B on the transcript much less a B permanently lodged in the family history. They begged and pleaded for mercy, for a second chance; they begged and pleaded for an A because in their minds a B equated to failure. I explained as best I could to the student and the parents that a B in 9th grade was a relatively inexpensive way for the student to experience failure, albeit ever so slight, and to find a way to respond in a positive way. It would be much easier to cope with some degree of failure in college or in the workplace if he had similar high school experiences with which he had to wrestle, I explained. Initially they went away unhappy but the parents told me later in the year that the incident turned into a valuable learning experience for the whole family.
Should someone along the way have given my teaching candidate a B in Geometry so she could handle let-down later in life? Should we make it almost impossible for students to achieve GPA perfection? Of course not. Should we think twice before giving out free extra credit, inflating grades and the like because of ramifications later in students’ lives? Perhaps.
I am quite proud of the candidate who went through the interview process with me. She is brilliant and will be a terrific teacher for someone somewhere. I hope the first real failure she’s ever experienced, though, doesn’t defeat her and doesn’t discourage her from putting herself out there again. After watching countless kids deal with various hardships and obstacles ranging from their first B to filing to get a job offer after their first interview, I’ve devoted a great deal of energy to this issue. I believe it is imperative that when a student fails, to whatever degree and in whatever venue, responsible and caring adults help the student back to his or her feet and then help the student respond appropriately to the failure. Students must be taught that with no risk comes no reward and that setbacks and failure are a part of life. Finally, students must be made to believe that failures do not define a person but rather the way one responds to failures defines a person. We as educators must grant our students the freedom to fail and then supply them with the tools they need to recover and to become successful later.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
The Freedom to Fail: One of the Fundamental Rights of Education
Part I of II
In schools today we place an incredible emphasis on success, perhaps to a fault. I will be the first to argue that every student and every teacher should experience genuine success on a regular basis. I will also be the first to argue that we as educational leaders must do everything possible to put our students and teachers in a position to be successful. However, in our efforts to make our students and teachers successful, I fear we have lost the value of failure. Great coaches often remark that they and their teams learn more from losses (failures) than they do from wins (successes). Educational leaders must take this to heart and grant our teachers and students the freedom to fail.
As a classroom teacher I tried a wide variety of instructional strategies and methods of assessment. Some I created and developed and some I adapted or borrowed from other teachers or resources. Some of these experiments worked brilliantly while others were complete disasters. Had my administrators stifled my creativity, discouraged my innovation or, worse yet, put me on a tight leash and made me feel guilty after my first failure, I most likely would have ceased exploration, experimentation and creative thought. As an administrator, it is imperative I remember the freedom I was given to explore, create and take calculated risks when I was a teacher and I must give my teachers the same freedom. Too often I have seen teachers who fear new and creative teaching or assessment strategies because their former administrators chastised them for trying something unsuccessfully. What a shame! Teachers must believe without a doubt that they will be supported and encouraged in their creativity even when the end result isn’t what he or she had hoped. Only when teachers see that there will be no adverse administrative reaction to failed attempts at executing well-planned ideas will they continue to be creative and to be innovators.
Granting teachers the freedom to fail is only part of the equation for educational leaders, though. We will see the greatest improvement on our campuses when we help teachers turn temporary setbacks into learning experiences. We must emphasize that failure as an end is not acceptable but rather failure is often part of the process of achieving long-term success. When we find a teacher who has failed, we must guide that teacher through a supportive and non-threatening process of reflective thinking so he or she (and we) can learn from the failure. Was there adequate preparation and forethought? Was there a miscalculation? Did the teacher underestimate or overestimate the students’ abilities? Was there enough relevance for students? Was the plan flawed from the beginning or was there a mistake in the execution of the plan? Can the plan be tweaked and tried again or should the plan be abandoned? What can be done differently to produce the desired outcomes next time? Once a teacher, through reflection and careful analysis, has developed a new and improved plan, he or she will be more likely to make a second effort or to try something else new; the key for the teacher is the knowledge that he or she has been granted the freedom to fail and will be offered the support and encouragement to continue to strive for success.
In schools today we place an incredible emphasis on success, perhaps to a fault. I will be the first to argue that every student and every teacher should experience genuine success on a regular basis. I will also be the first to argue that we as educational leaders must do everything possible to put our students and teachers in a position to be successful. However, in our efforts to make our students and teachers successful, I fear we have lost the value of failure. Great coaches often remark that they and their teams learn more from losses (failures) than they do from wins (successes). Educational leaders must take this to heart and grant our teachers and students the freedom to fail.
As a classroom teacher I tried a wide variety of instructional strategies and methods of assessment. Some I created and developed and some I adapted or borrowed from other teachers or resources. Some of these experiments worked brilliantly while others were complete disasters. Had my administrators stifled my creativity, discouraged my innovation or, worse yet, put me on a tight leash and made me feel guilty after my first failure, I most likely would have ceased exploration, experimentation and creative thought. As an administrator, it is imperative I remember the freedom I was given to explore, create and take calculated risks when I was a teacher and I must give my teachers the same freedom. Too often I have seen teachers who fear new and creative teaching or assessment strategies because their former administrators chastised them for trying something unsuccessfully. What a shame! Teachers must believe without a doubt that they will be supported and encouraged in their creativity even when the end result isn’t what he or she had hoped. Only when teachers see that there will be no adverse administrative reaction to failed attempts at executing well-planned ideas will they continue to be creative and to be innovators.
Granting teachers the freedom to fail is only part of the equation for educational leaders, though. We will see the greatest improvement on our campuses when we help teachers turn temporary setbacks into learning experiences. We must emphasize that failure as an end is not acceptable but rather failure is often part of the process of achieving long-term success. When we find a teacher who has failed, we must guide that teacher through a supportive and non-threatening process of reflective thinking so he or she (and we) can learn from the failure. Was there adequate preparation and forethought? Was there a miscalculation? Did the teacher underestimate or overestimate the students’ abilities? Was there enough relevance for students? Was the plan flawed from the beginning or was there a mistake in the execution of the plan? Can the plan be tweaked and tried again or should the plan be abandoned? What can be done differently to produce the desired outcomes next time? Once a teacher, through reflection and careful analysis, has developed a new and improved plan, he or she will be more likely to make a second effort or to try something else new; the key for the teacher is the knowledge that he or she has been granted the freedom to fail and will be offered the support and encouragement to continue to strive for success.
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