Opening The Door A Bit Wider

The chaos of my learning

Premises I believe in:  People are messy.  Learning is messy.  And people learning stuff is super messy.

I kind of fell in love with Thomas Newkirk (shhh, don't tell Tobey) while reading the first chapter of his book, Holding on to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones.  I really liked how he described expression as "too individual and idiosyncratic to be evaluated by a machine" (4).  And then he started dropping expressions like "mechanized literacy" and "totalitarian logic" and I was hooked.

And while I could go on at length about the ideas I found interesting and applicable in this book, I am going to focus on two--depth over breath people!  My first "Ah ha!" moment in the reading was in Chapter Five "Popular Culture as a Literacy Tool" when Newkirk describes the use of movies as a "scaffold" for writing.  Mind blown.  Seriously.  I'd never thought of it that way. Allowing/encouraging students to create a new writing piece based on a pre-existing story is the equivalent of using sentence starters to help them transition to a new idea or refute a claim.  Students don't have to worry about being overwhelmed by the possibilities, the paralysis that sometimes overtakes us when we must build from scratch.

Unconstrained choice can be as disabling, as paralyzing as unconstrained direction (147).

The characters, conflict, props, setting, etc. have all been established allowing students to build upon or remix the basic elements of the story.  It's a way in for students who are overwhelmed by writing.  Training wheels for would-be storytellers.  Genius!

Newkirk also emphasizes the importance of validating student interest arguing that "the surest way to alienate any group is to indicate that their allegiances and interest are not respected." (109).  Just because you could care less about dragons or Asking Alexandria (ugh) doesn't mean that your students interests aren't worth exploring.  Interest fosters engagement.  If we forget this, we alienate students from their own learning.  At the high school level, the emphasis is on analytic writing.  All of our writing PD is focused on how to help the students craft better arguments.  Yet instead of allowing them to choose issues they feel passionate about, we force students to write about prescribed MCAS driven topics.  And we wonder why so many students hate to write.

I loved how Newkirk challenged the artificial dichotomy between "serious" writing and pleasure:

Any effort to teach analytic or reflective literacy skills [. . .] is built on the premise of engagement, for analysis is an unpacking of our reactions and involvement.  Without that engagement, there is nothing to unpack--indeed, no reason to read or write in the first place (129).

So that's my goal this year.  To provide students with more opportunities to play, to explore, to create.  I still want them to learn to construct powerful arguments but I'm going to take a cue from Gary McPail and open the door a little wider when it comes to what kids write about.

What the Hack?

Confession:  I hate the use of the word "hack" in educational context--Hack Jam, Toy Hack, what have you. It just feels gimmicky.  But I love, repeat love, the concept of hacking (ugh. I feel dirty writing it).  So I've opted to use the words tinker, remix, reimagine, redefine in its place.

I thought about my toy remix the entire drive home from RIC.  I even forced my husband to help me brainstorm some ideas.  The best we could come up with was to melt down some of Malcolm's toy soliders and recreate them into something innocuous like a bunny.  I nixed this concept because I felt like a true remix should leave some trace of the original toy.  If we'd melted down the soldiers, at some point they would cease being soldiers and just revert to liquidified plastic.  While I'm sure there's some fancy way to explain that transformation--Who are we really? Are we all just liquidified plastic at the core waiting for society to mold us into being?--I didn't want to go there.  I was more interested in the notion of relooking at something whose purpose/function you have taken for granted and trying to figure out what else it could be.

This is what I love about the concept of tinkering.  It forces you to not only think outside the box but to reimagine the box althogether.  (It's not a box, dammit!  It's a portal to the Xeres quadrant in the Flotsum galaxy!)  Just because Toy R Us says this thing is a sandtoy doesn't mean that it's the only thing it can be.  It gives you the creator control, puts you in the driver seat.

Little kids are good at this kind of thinking.  That's not a bucket, it's a hat.

That's shovel?  See that shovel there?  Yes, the one as big as my head.  That'd make an awesome spoon. Hand it over.

But as the opportunities to tinker, discover, and create are slowly replaced by more passive forms of learning, our ability to see possibilities atrophies.  And so we begin to accept the version of the world that is presented to us.  It is, what it is.

There is a danger to this kind of thinking.  It breeds cynicism and hopelessness; it makes you feel powerless. Tinkering helps to remind us of the complexity of things and empowers us by giving us license to explore, to fail, to try again in pursuit of a it self-determined objective.

And on that hefty note, let me present to a quick overview of my toy remix.  After abandoing the toy soldier idea, I decided to turn an old sand toy into a post-apocalyptic survival garden.  I chose the sand toy because I liked how the sand made the wheels move.  I thought it would be neat to water plants this way so I cut off the strainer at the bottom of the toy and replaced it with a plastic frying pan to make a container garden.    

In the end, my creation was only a partial success.  For while the garden actually came out quite lovely, the water stream is a bit too forceful (not to mention messy) to be a great watering mechanism.  I'm still thinking of  ways to modify my creation to make it truly functional.  Even though it's kind of jacked up, I'm ridiculously proud of it.  So much so, that I created a backstory to explain the concept behind the toy.

25 (ahhh make that 24) Word Story

When I checked my phone today, in the car on the way home from Mystic Aquarium, I noticed a tweet from Anne.

#25wordstory challenge..you in? @mthompson0703 @cookout70 @kellyjvreed @NMastroluca
— Ms. Barnhart (@Ms_Barnhart) July 21, 2013

Hmmm. . .was I? Creative writing has never come as easily to me as other forms of writing. I fall into the "It was a dark and stormy night" category of would be authors. Did I really want thousands of strangers to bear witness to my feeble attempt at creativity? After thinking it over for the rest of the car ride, I decided to go for it. Why not? What did I really have to lose? And taking risks is what we, writing workshop people, are all about, right? So I wrote (or at least tried to write) a #25WordStory:

Into the den runs a crazy-haired gremlin princess w/ a gap tooth grin. Mischievous and wild, the world is hers for the taking. #25wordstory
— Kelly J. Reed (@kellyjvreed) July 21, 2013

I know. I know. It's really a 24 word story. An embarrassing fact that I didn't noticed until after I tweeted it out to the masses.  Sigh.  I blame the aforementioned gremlin who was trying desperately to stand on the kitchen table whilst I was composing.  Still 25 words or 24, I feel pretty proud of my piece.

This is another reason I dig Twitter.  There I was just going about my day trying to keep my kids from jumping into the belgua whale tank when out of the blue I get a message from Anne seeing if I want to write a story (albeit a very short story).  Without Anne's gentle prodding and words of encouragement, I would never have written that piece, never have felt the satisfaction of creating it, sharing it.  Sometimes we need to be reminded that we are many things.  I'm not just a mom or an educator; I'm also a writer, a creator.  And I have things to say worth hearing.

Thanks for reminding me of that today Anne.  You rock!

Creating With Intention

In the chapter on presentations from Troy Hicks' Crafting Digital Writing, he defines two essential characteristics of an effective presentation--"stickiness" and storytelling.  I love this.  Particularly the idea of "stickiness."  It is a great way to start talking with our students about choice and intention in their own work and the work of others.  What stuck with you? How did the author/presenter achieve this stickitude? 

Wouldn't it be cool after discussing the criteria of effective presentations and viewing models to have students "hack" a terrible presentation?  To remix it, revamp it, reshoot it, to enhance its effectiveness?  Kids could turn boring PowerPoint presentations into movies, interactive timelines, podcasts, infographics, etc. If the objective--to enhance a presentation's message using digital tools--is all we care about.  The sky's the limit. Even if it was as simple as a student using a more interactive data visualization tool (like Infogr.am) to bring to life a static, two-dimensional graph, there would still be a valuable conversation to be had about choice and impact when it comes to representing data/information.

GDP Comparison Over Time | Infographics

These are the experiences and conversations which will hopefully increase the "stickiness" of our own instruction.  I can tell my students that their presentations should be "simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and storylike" (Hicks 2013, p. 73).  But if I really want them to internalize this message, I need them to play around with these concepts. To judge their work against the models that we've analyzed together in class. To see for themselves what works and what doesn't work.

Personally, I've been guilty of denying my students the opportunity to get messy, to tinker.  I've diligently gone over my expectations for the presentation of their work--and yes I've even required a set number of slides--only to be disappointed, angry even, when the students "failed" to live up to those expectations. Looking back, it's clear that I was the one who had failed.  I just assumed they'd figure "it" out on their own. I mean I'd told them to use "powerful visuals," to "limit the amount of text" on each slide,  right?

We have to do better than give students a checklist of criteria and hope that they'll figure it out.  If we truly wish them to become powerful producers of digital content, then we have to teach them how to make purposeful decisions, to "think intentionally about creating meaning" in a digital medium (p. 13).  Adults sometimes drink too much of the "digital native" kool aid.  But Hicks reminds us that just because students are "tech comfortable" doesn't necessarily mean that they are "tech savvy" (p. 20).  Just because a student knows what Tumblr is or has made a Vine, doesn't necessarily mean that he/she is a producer of meaningful digital content.

The danger in forgetting this is that we sometimes fail to act as the guides/mentors students need to fully tap into the potential as learners and creators.  To be truly creative, one needs to know so much more than how to operate a piece of technology. Technology isn't a tool until you figure out how to manipulate it to your fit your needs--not the other way around.  A rock was just a rock until someone figured out it could also be a hammer.  

Wrapping up, I encourage you to read my blog post, Youth in Action, to see what kids are capable of creating with the guidance and support of their teachers.

Youth in Action

On Friday my husband, Tobey, asked me if I'd every heard of the Perry County Project.  I had not. Apparently, Tobey had read a tweet about it from an educator in New Bedford, MA. No big deal, right?   Well the Perry County referred to in the Perry County Project is in Alabama.  And the project of the Perry County Project? It's a week long event held at Judson College where "25 students and 9 teachers in Perry County, AL will focus on togetherness, thinking big, getting creative, and creating a lasting and positive presence on the web" and it held its first ever conference this past week.  Below is a video "letter" created by the Perry County Project's directors Beth Sanders and Daniel Whitt, two Alabama public educators which gives a little background about how this project got underway:

  
 

Now what amazes me is not that there are educators out there trying to use technology as a means to empower students, although I am certainly impressed by the scope of their vision, but rather that by Friday of last week I, a semi-tech literate Massachusetts educator, knew about it. That by Monday night, I'd explored their website (Youth Converts Culture), watched their videos, blogged about it for class, and "liked" their Facebook page.  The power of digital media to reach and inform/inspire a broad audience is flippin' amazing!

I've been looking for ways to give my students a voice.  The population of students that I deal with have a difficult time finding relevance in what they are learning.  This disconnect between what they care about and what we try to teach them has caused many of them to totally disengage from their education.  Now before you get the wrong impression of me, I am not advocating some touchy-feely-let's-sit-around-the-campfire-and-sing-"Lesbian Seagull"-together-instead-of -learning-about-the Industrial-Revolution-or-reading-Othello attempt at relevance.  What I want is to bridge the gap between say the Industrial Revolution, which seems ancient and irrelevant to my kids, and their everyday lives.  I want them to take a critical look at capitalism and how it affects them negatively/positively, how they benefit/suffer under this system, how the people the world wide are affected by such systems and then. . . and this is the new part. . . I want them to take that information and do something with it, to share it with as many people as possible.  I want to empower them, not depress them.  So I need to do more than just expose them to new information/knowledge, I give them an outlet for their anger, frustration, confusion, wonderment, et. al.

I think we underestimate what kids are truly capable of when we give them the guidance, time, and resources they need to express themselves.  I was exploring the internet looking for some examples of youth in action when, lo and behold, I came across Youth in Action, a Providence, RI based organization that believes that "young people are at the forefront of creating postive social change."  What's really impressive about this organization is that they have their own media team called Next Generation Media that produces videos "on issues related to social justice and equality and feeds the community and their peers with knowledge about situations that they would not normally be informed about in their schools or on the news."  In the video below, Youth in Action members went out and interviewed not just their peers but members of the community about racial profiling in Providence:



This is what kids are capable of--this piece of serious cultural criticism.  Yet we ask them to fill out worksheets, write canned essays that will score a 8/10 or higher on the MCAS, and bubble in answers to standardized tests.  It is time to rethink everything we are doing in the classroom, to have the difficult conversations about the relevance of our curriculum, the effectiveness of our assessments. If a group of Alabama students and educators can produce a video that inspires a teacher in Massachusetts to redesign her curriculum to incorporate new technology in order to empower her students, what might my own students be capable of doing; who might they reach and inspire?

I'll leave you with The Perry County Projects slogan: "It's never about technology.  It's about empowerment."

I Share Therefore I Am

Sherry Turkle's TED talks and her article "The Flight from Conversation" gave me pause.  Over these last few days in Media Analysis, I became a believer in technology.  It's potential as a resource for the classroom is vast.  I am particularly excited about the possibilities of using technology to help my students become more active participants in their learning--creators/producers of knowledge rather than merely receptacles of it.  Yet just as my newfound excitement rose to a fevor pitch, Sherry Turkle doused me with a gallon of caution.

In both a TED talk and her interview with Frontline, Turkle discusses how we are too busy "communicating" to talk, to create, to connect.  She relates how teenagers, particularly ones with divorced parents, complain about competing with technology for their parents' attention: 

"The mom [who has not seen her child in four days] comes to pick them up at the soccer game; this is now their time with their mom, right? The mom is sitting there with the Blackberry, and until she finishes the Blackberry stuff, she doesn't look up to look at the kid. The kid's in the car, and they've driven off before the mom looks up from the Blackberry."

This story made me so sad.  I never want my children to think they come second to my cell phone.  After reading Turkle's article, I became hyper-vigilant about my own use of technology around my children.  I was disturbed by how often I had to urge to check my Facebook page or blog while I was with them.  Why did I care who "liked" or commented on the wedding photos that I'd posted?  Was their recognition of my work really more important than constructing elaborate foam block "bird condos" with Malcolm?  It's the "I share therefore I am" mentality.  The feeling of validation (of our feelings, beliefs, effort, talents, etc.) we get when we share a part of ourselves online.  Before the internet, if I took a bunch of pictures the only way that people would get to see them was if they came over my house or if I sent them copies via snail mail.  Now I can take a great picture and people I have never met can tell me how beautiful it is.  It is an intoxicating feeling.

Yet what do we sacrifice for this high?  Turkle argues that the price for all this connectivity is our real world relationships and most importantly our very sense of self.  While she is quick to point out that she is not a Luddite, Turkle convincingly advocates for a critical approach to our relationship with technology.  In her interview with Stephen Colbert, she jokes about wanting to "put technology in its place." She argues that technology has become so important to our way of life that it has changed "not what we do, but who we are."  We use technology to carefully craft the person we want others to see--editing our virtual selves to mask our real life flaws and insecurities.  It is an elaborate and often exhausting performance.  

We also use technology to "bail out of the physical real," to avoid/ignore that which we'd rather not deal with.   Real life is messy; it's complicated.  But life online can be as simple or as complicated as we allow it to be.  It's about control.   Unfortunately technology is not a panacea for our troubles. In fact it often helps us hide from the very troubles we claim to want to solve.  For if we never allow ourselves to be vulnerable, how will we ever take risks. And if we don't take risks how will we grow, learn, develop?  

I see this fear of risk all the time in the classroom.  It has become almost impossible for most of my students to finish an essay in a class period.  If I allowed them to, many of my students would literally ask me to read over every sentence to make sure what they had written was "right."  Is this technology's fault?  No, probably not.  But does technology enable such insecurities?  Definitely.  

We need to help our students overcome their dependence on simulated reality.  Simulated reality doesn't involve the same kind of risk that reality does.  We need to help them find a way to bridge the gap between the "I share therefore I am" mindset to the "I create therefore I am" reality.  The internet does indeed allow for constant connectivity but it also provides unprecedented opportunity for the creation and dissemination of knowledge.  It can help take education outside of the classroom and make it a global experience, transition it from a passive experience to an active experience, reignite the curiosity and enthusiasm for learning that has all but been driven out of today's student.  The thrill of creation exists whether four people or forty-thousand people see/experience your product.  But truthfully it is a bit sweeter when what you've created reaches a broader audience.  And I don't think Turkle has a problem with that.  Her issue lies in how we are using technology (or rather how we are allowing technology to use us) not in technology itself: "Technology is a wonderful conversation opener because it's so seductive. That doesn't mean it's where the conversation should end. It's a wonderful means of collaboration. But the collaboration is between people who are excited about the ideas. The technology is not the product."

As Turkle is herself fond of quoting Thoreau, I couldn't help but think of his quote "we do not ride on the railroad, it rides upon us" (Walden: Where I Lived and What I Lived For).   

Infographics in the Classroom

Infographic: visual image used to represent information or data

Infographics are more than just a way to represent complex data. They tell a story. And as we've been discussing in Media Literacy these past few weeks, the media is the message. We do a great disservice to ourselves and our students if we do not first learn the language that message is being spoken in and then teach our students the grammar of it. 

 Look at the infographic below from Oprah's website and see if you can decipher its message:

Did you notice how the creators of this infographic (who appear to want to remain nameless) drop Oprah's name to give their statistics a sense of legitimacy but do not cite any other sources?  What about the pie chart that claims that student achievement and therefore by default non-achievement is driven by teacher quality?  Homeless?  No worries. If your teacher's good enough, you'll make honor roll.  Underneath this infographic is a link to an article about Waiting for Superman.  This infographic isn't just a representation of data. It has an agenda. 

The current state of education is such a complex issue yet as a medium the infographic's strength lies in its ability to simplify, to summarize.  Take for instance the statistics used above regarding the U.S. rankings in math and science.   Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) results have long been used to discredit public education in the United States. But these statistics fail to take into account that the United States is a far more diverse country than those that it is being compared to. 

In 2007 Masschusetts entered itself in as a "country" on the TIMSS report to see how they stacked up to the rest of the world.  The results? "Massachusetts 4th graders ranked second worldwide in science achievement and tied for third in mathematics; the state's 8th graders tied for first in science and ranked sixth in mathematics" (Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education). 1st is a lot different than 21st.  Just saying.  (FYI: The National Center for Women and Informational Technology does a decent job of summing up the problem with relying on TIMSS scores alone to assess the state of U.S. education.)  

I'm not trying to say that everything is sunshine and butterflies in our public schools but statistics can be wielded as tools or as weapons. Humorist Evan Esar defined statistics as "the science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures."  That's why I think it is vital to help our students become more critical when confronting information presented in this format. 

But infographics are also a way for students to understand, to create and to inform.  They are free, relatively easy to create, digestible and dispensable.  Used correctly they have the potential to help students "reposition themselves, from cogs in the machine to social actions intent on jamming, resisting, and/or rewiritng the status quo" (Marshall and Sensoy, Rethinking Popular Culture and Media 11).  For example this infographic regarding the lack of diversity in Congress just popped up on my Facebook newsfeed:

Using publicly available data, the designer of this infographic is able to tell a powerful story about inequality and representation while simultaneously giving viewers an outlet for action--the link to register to vote at the bottom of the infographic.  This is the "outlet for [ . . .] despair" for which Linda Christensen advocates.  It isn't enough to expose them to the injustice inherent in the system; we must also give our students a way to deal with it.

This is where my desire to learn how to create an infographic came from.  I wanted a medium that students could create and share with one another digitally.  I don't know about you but I am sick to death of watching poorly designed PowerPoint presentations.  I don't like them, the kids aren't proud of them, so why am I still doing them?  It was time to explore something new and Media Analysis gave me the kick in the rear I needed to start.

I began by looking into two of the major infographic sites: Piktochart and Infogr.am (both free). I ended up using Piktochart because it allowed for more autonomy and was less glitchy than Infogr.am (though in Infogr.am's defense they make sharing your final product much easier than Piktochart).  Once I decided upon the site, I got to work creating an infographic.  I chose to use the data I'd collected during my teacher research (shout out to Dr. Johnson) because I hoped to use it as a vehicle to present my findings to the administration.    

After hours of trial and error, I created the infographic below:

Unfortunately, the only way (at least that I can figure out) how to share this in a way that you can read it is to email it as a .png file.  That's my big beef with Piktochart.  Otherwise, I'm pretty proud of my creation.

However, this infographic took me hours to create.  There is just so much that you can do on Piktochart.  I worry that if I have my students create their own infographics, they will be so fixated on making it look cool, they won't be able to finish the product in a reasonable time.  This is where the little voice inside my head questions whether this is really helping my students.  But then I think about all that you have to do in order to create an infographic--work with statistics, understand persuasive appeal, make an argument, tell a story, etc.--and I reconsider.

Really the only way to tell if this is going to work is to do it.  So I'm going to do it.  My plan is to show my students a version of the presentation on infographics that I made for our class.

Then have them analyze a few infographics and discuss them as a class.  Before we make our own infographics, I'd like to emphasize the idea that infographics have a point of view.  It is so easy for people to assume that because it is "published", that it looks nice, than it must be true/accurate.  After discussing infographics in general, I am going to have them sign up for Piktochart.  My first assignment will be for them to create an infographic about something they care about--Justin Bieber, motocross, animal rights, whatever tickles their fancy.  When they're finished I'd like them to publish their work by sharing it in some way--uploading it to Facebook, Twitter, their blog, etc.  I'm hoping that by sharing their schoolwork with a larger audience they will a) take it more seriously and b) feel pride in what they have created.  It all goes well then I will use infographics as a way for my students to analyze and digest more content driven topics like slavery, capitalism, war, etc. 

Stay tuned. . .