Summer’s Coming, Will Facebook Be Part Of It?

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I have had some good conversations and reads this week related to social media overdose.  Are You Suffering from FOMO? was a thought provoking blog post (CoETaIL) teaching us about the symptoms of Fear of Missing Out.  Gwen Martin sent it to me and a few of us teachers chatted a bit about our recent decisions or just inclinations to back away from, particularly, Facebook.

I have been creating some distance, as of late, because I  was experiencing an “ick” response.  While I really love how FB has kept me in touch with far-away friends and family and given me current conversation topics to have with these people when I’m home this summer, it also taps in to an ingrained response pattern for me.  Being a middlish child from a large family, I was the one often trying to make sure everyone at home was feeling validated and OK.  If there was a supper-table row between my older siblings or with my my parents, I would sneak off to their bedrooms, later,  and leave affirming notes in their underwear drawers.  I am a pleaser.  Can you extrapolate how that works on Facebook?  I become a universal “liker”.  I feel the eyes of the poster on me as I skim over posts.  I “like” one, I may as well give the next one a “like”, it’s easy enough to do and soon I’m stuck in my own web, afraid that if I don’t “like” a post, the author will feel that I “don’t like” it or that no one else will “like” it.  That is what is gross and frankly, unhealthy for me.  How do I feel if others don’t like my posts?  Well, obviously about 150 of them don’t “like” them as I only get a few “likes” or comments on my infrequent posts.  I don’t feel badly thinking about all of those noncommitters, but I do notice if I get absolutely no responses.

Another thing that has become icky is I feel like my active circle on FB has become so small.  One person posts something and the same five people seem to rush to “like” it.  If I come along a little later, I feel disinclined to just chime in with the others and yet feel conspicuous if I don’t.  I have adopted a rule of thumb about that, lately.  If I feel the post already has a quorum of “likers” or if my husband has already liked the post, I feel the poster has received suitable affirmation and I let it pass.

My youngest son, who is in college, has threatened for a couple of years to leave Facebook altogether and when he and his brother travelled with us in Europe over their winter break, he left his computer at home and didn’t check in one time.  I thought this was very mature of him.  I don’t want him to leave, however, because I like being able to contact him and see some signpostage of his activities through his Timeline.

Another friend at work was very active on Facebook and I had sort of noticed I hadn’t seen her there lately.  After reading Are You Suffering from FOMO? she admitted she had quit FB about a month ago.  She was getting pretty emotionally involved in political issues, staying up too late at night.  She felt she needed to calm down a little and fill her time more constructively.  Rod Dreher calls this going Facebook Sober and I think, like all forms of withdrawal, it can feel a little conspicuous at first, but it’s not long until you fill that space with other things.

My current Facebook pattern is to check it no more than once per day and even better if I let a day or two go by.  I get notifications through my gmail so If I get an urgent message from someone, I’m not going to miss that.  When I do check FB, I do a fairly quick skim and I assume a position of not “liking”.  People don’t really know if I didn’t “like” their post or if I just didn’t check Facebook that day.  I want to wait until something strikes me to “like” it.

Finally, I used to post an update on Facebook when I posted a new blog entry on my cooking blog: Bergamot Orange.  I’m not doing that anymore.  It felt like shameless self-promotion and I didn’t like it.  I also don’t keep track of how many Followers I have on my blog.  I write to please myself and my perceived audience. I am happy when people write me a comment sometimes that I can reply to.

Some rights reserved by Julie Bredy

Will Facebook be in my summer?  I don’t see it.  I am going to be with the people I check in about.  There are also my school friends from Tunis, but my school relationships have never suffered in the past from a 6-week break and in fact, they are sometimes strengthened by it.  My time is going to pretty full taking in my real life.

Final Project, Course 2, AUP

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This was a useful project.  When I first saw the final project description, I, truthfully, thought it sounded like the sort of work we have to do sometimes as educators that is neccessary, but not particularly inspiring or even that useful, like creating policy.  You need it in place, you’re glad you’ve got it written out if you have to refer to it, but it can easily spend its life tucked into a policy manual in an administrator’s office without seeing much light of day.

Gwen Martin and I compared the AUP documents from the international schools in Edinburgh, Singapore, and Tunis.  The first realization I had was that there were similar subheadings under which the agreements were chunked:  Equipment, Security and Privacy, Internet, and Email.  Being our first initiation into the bones of this document, we worked with the traditional headings, but I am now curious to notice how other schools may have thought to organize the agreements.  I like the idea of framing them through general behavior attitudes that pertain throughout our community life like:  Be Kind, Be Safe, Be Responsible.

Photo courtesy of Gwen Martin

Kristi Lonheim joined in with us at the revision stage and made the much needed suggestion of framing the language in positive terms and we did that.  We also met with the tech director and tech integration specialist at ACST and they made some small, but useful wording suggestions, such as changing students to patrons because we need to also communicate common expectations to parents  and staff.  For now, we are suggesting this language for use in the elementary school.

After listening to the Big Marker session on May 2nd,  and reading Kim Cofino’s blog on their Digital Citizenship Week, I got the picture of how to move these “rules” into living policy and with my move to 7th grade for next year, I hope to bring along that vision and inspiration.

ACST Elementary School

Technology Acceptable Use Policy


The school provides computers and other technology services for you to use and they are a powerful tool to help you learn and communicate your learning.   They are for everyone to share so we have to take proper care of them so they are available all of the time.  Also, because they are school property, we must use them in educational ways and with the same respect we give to books, equipment, and the school building.   Using computers at school is a privilege, not a right.  These are the school rules and also the laws, both Tunisian and international, we expect all patrons to follow.

Equipment

  • I will treat the equipment with respect.  I will not damage, disable or otherwise harm the operation of the computers.
  • I will not install any software on school computers without the permission of the technology director.
  • I will be careful that any files brought in on removable media  have been checked by antivirus software and are virus-free.
  • I will not connect mobile equipment without permission from the IT Department.


Security and Privacy

  • I will never reveal my home address, picture, phone numbers, or those of my classmates or teachers, when on the Internet.  I will use school email and phone numbers, only.
  • I will only use my account and password and keep my password private.
  • I will not change individual files that don’t belong to me and will never change system files.
  • I will respect the security settings on the computers and will not attempt to bypass or change them.
  • I realize that computer storage areas (the school hard-drive) are like cubbies or lockers.  Teachers or administrators may inspect them from time to time to make sure they are being used, properly.
  • I will report security problems or anything that makes me feel uncomfortable to my teacher, principal, or technology director.


Internet

  • I realize that computers may only be used for educational purposes during the school day.
  • I will not download, view on the Internet, or save any files that are obscene, pornographic, or offensive to others.
  • I will obey copyright laws and respect the work that belongs to other people, both at school and on the Internet.

Email

  • I will respect the viewpoint of others.  I will not reply using language that includes swearing or other offensive language.
  • I will not open attachments to email unless they come from someone I already know and trust.
  • I realize that all email must be appropriate for students and may not display information or images that are violent, dangerous, racist, or in any other way, inappropriate.
  • I realize that email is not private; it can be read by teachers or the technology director.

I am not sure that we will use this document as we wrote it.  If it is used, I see the need for continual tweeking of the language as we become more aware of our intent and our message.

Our tech integration specialist challenged us with an observation that there isn’t a stated consequence for lack of adherence to this code.  In a timely manner, Kim Cofino posted the “Three Strikes” policy her school (YIS) has come up with.  I appreciate the line they found to draw between holding students accountable for their ethical use of the computers and also teaching them and trying to help them establish better habits.  Giving them a snoozer of a laptop upon which they can still accomplish the rudiments of their school assignments seems like a brilliant deterrent.  We are not a 1:1 school so students don’t have their own computers, per se, but perhaps our tech department could still customize one computer that is reserved for use by a particular student who is on probation.

In the end, I really do have a new way of looking at these common technology usage agreements.  I see constant ways to integrate them into my 7th grade humanities classes and some other engaging ways of developing these understandings throughout the middle school and then hopefully, throughout the school.

 

Big Marker and Photography Fantasies

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I spent a couple of pleasant hours (seriously) yesterday afternoon catching up at the CoETaIL site.  Let me say how much I appreciate the Big Marker sessions.  Thank you brave cohort members who put yourselves up there to be asked what recent reading about technology is burning in your mind.  Frankly, I am finding is a struggle at the moment to want to be stimulated by my reading and it was nice for me to listen to you talk.  That in itself primed the pump in my head and got me thinking about these issues again.  That makes me realize that in the age of digital learning, there is still definitely a need for collective, human conversations.  Jeff identified some of you as participants and some as lurkers.  I don’t know what you call a person lurking behind a lurker, but that is me and I’m just happy to be there.

I have been working on an AUP with Gwen Martin and Kristi Lonheim.  Going from What’s an AUP? to creating a document that I wouldn’t mind sharing with my colleagues, parents, or children is a good thing and I’m glad the project brought me that far.  From the Big Marker discussion, however, I am seeing a much larger application of these agreements.  I am moving toward taking a 7th grade humanities teaching position next year and, hopefully, a blogging platform.  Yesterday, I got a vision for creating mini-lessons on digital citizenship and doing some horizontal planning in the MS around common agreements and language we want to live by.  I’ve got a full-day curriculum planning day coming up next week for the MS humanities curriculum and I’ve got a little fire in my belly now to start this conversation with my co-teachers.  I am heading right now to Kim Cofino’s blog to see what she has been working on with her colleagues, lately.

What else inspired me?  The two additional CoETaIL instructors, Clint Hamada and Brandon Hoover.  I’m sure they will both have interesting points of view to contribute.  Additionally, Brandon’s photographs blew me away.  How is he capturing that sort of color and clarity?  I am dying to take my photography skills to a new level and in Course 3, I intend to ask some pointed questions.  Mark my word.  As it was on our CoETaIL site I gave myself permission to take a look at a few pieces of equipment I might need to purchase this summer in order to be prepared for my Course 3 learning.

Style:
5D Mark II Body
Image, courtesy of Amazon.com
There was this with macro and wide angle lenses to boot.  It was a fun fantasy, but as usual, when I get home this summer, there will be children to clothe and feed, a farm on an island that is actively trying to revert to undeveloped land, and trips we will need to finance.  This snazzy photography kit might need to wait.  Some more.

Web Privacy Policies, They Know We Won’t Read Them

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I just listened to this piece on NPR’s Morning Edition.  Google, Facebook and the rest force us to agree to privacy policies before we can use their products, but who is going to actually read them?  Almost no one.

There isn’t a person alive who would allow a corporation to step into their physical world and collect personal information about them, but in the cyber world, we just don’t notice it much and we become willing to let our boundaries slip.

But that doesn’t mean it isn’t significant.

Many Web users have little idea about how, or when, they're being tracked. In this 2011 photo, Max Schrems of Austria sits with 1,222 pages about his activities on Facebook — the company gave him the file after he requested it under European law.

Ronald Zak/AP

Many Web users have little idea about how, or when, they’re being tracked. In this 2011 photo, Max Schrems of Austria sits with 1,222 pages about his activities on Facebook — the company gave him the file after he requested it under European law.


It’s Sharing When I Borrow

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I loved Everything is a Remix.  It is so true, in ways large and small, that we justify when we copy and vilify when others do it.  Exhibit A would be an angry, red-faced kindergartener who is furious at her classmate because she copied her drawing, painting, construction, you name it.  To manifest possessiveness of intellectual property at that young age, it must be impressed into our DNA that creations, in any form,  are our possessions.  Even as a fully grown adult I don’t fall for the “Imitation is the highest form of compliment” excuse.  I still get really bothered with my friends who nudge closer and closer to some design statement I have invented for myself.  I’m not proud of that, but it’s true.  Maybe good ideas are just hard to come by and we can’t stand losing the corner on them, but there is something really visceral about being unique.

So I’m not yet sure how I’m going to do with this “It’s time to share everything” window of life.  On my creative commons license there was one choice that was a little more protective than another and for now, I checked that one.  I don’t know, I’m still feeling a little clingy about my words and my pictures.  In truth, I do realize I should be so lucky for someone to want to reuse something that comes from my writing voice or my eye behind a camera.

In the last Big Marker podcast, Jeff made a quick reference to copying being a cultural allowance in some parts of Asia.  I lived in Kathmandu, Nepal for five years before moving to Tunis.  There were plenty of pirated DVDs for sale there, but what was interesting and conflicting was the copying of handmade goods.  The Newari and Tibetan cultures within Nepal are such artisans in metalwork, claywork, and textiles.  I devoted the weekends of my five years in that country to learning the Tibetan carpet industry and started a custom carpet export business called Knot Monkey (website currently under design).  I began the company in the first place because I became friends with a talented, Nepali carpet designer who was making pieces I thought were more marketable than what I usually saw in the tourist shops.  The longer I spent in the design rooms of the carpet factories the more I realized how motifs are borrowed from ancient Tibetan designs through to modern fashion magazines.

Some rights reserved by Julie Bredy

 

To mix it up even further, the projects from different export companies are often woven in the same factories so when you go to check on your work, you can see, and be influenced by, the ideas of other designers and exporters.  It is a rich environment for inspiration, but I had to try and stick to what I felt was my style and not wander off in imitation of the next pretty carpet I saw.  I must say my motivation there was more to create something different for the market than to protect the concept of another designer.

On the other hand, sometimes seeing the competition allows me to lay their ideas to rest and feel affirmed that I am creating something different and true to myself.  But then someone copies me and I feel, again,  like they’ve taken my soul.

Looking in the Internet Mirror

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Some rights reserved by Christi Nielsen

I’ve long been nervous about Googling myself.  I had never done it before today.  It seemed to me like looking at your face in one of those magnifying mirrors you sometimes see in hotels and who ever needs to see their pores with that clarity?  Having done it, Googled myself, I really can’t imagine what I ever thought I would find that was objectionable.  Actually, my primary impression was that I think I would have been almost Google absent prior to one year ago.  A year ago, I started publishing a blog, then a few months later I joined Facebook, and finally, CoETaIL, which pushed my footprint up a couple of shoe sizes.  Prior to that, I may have been little more than a Social Security entry and a listing in the Lummi Island, Washington White Pages.  Man, I thought I was a little more out there than that, but really I wasn’t publishing anything in my name on the Web and that is obviously key.

I was a little surprised at what popped up and what didn’t.  There were some really random comments I have made on blogs or on Facebook that had an entire entry, but I make comments every day, so why these?  I’m still curious about that.

Was there anything I wouldn’t want a potential employer to see?  Not at all.  I guess I’m pretty straight up, but my links were Edutopia, Facebook, CoETaIL, Prezi, Social Security, and my 3 blogs.  The most you could infer about me is that I live my work, I supported a project called Perennial Plate, and I’m partial to artichokes.  There were no embarassing photos or references and because my name has an unusual spelling, there weren’t even any others with my name to confuse me with.

We lost a dear friend this past week to brain cancer.  Maybe you know David Hevey at SAS.  David was the video journalism teacher and was very tech involved.  I Googled David and only found about one entry for him.  That surprised me a little, too, but he was probably busy producing in-house videos and wasn’t putting much work on the Web.  I know he produced a great body of work and it made me a little sad to see that his talent wasn’t really present.  On the other hand, I realized that having a digital footprint may not be the complete measure of the person.

Introducing Science Readers, Course 1 Final Project

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Students don’t know what they wonder about.  We sometimes convince ourselves that they are just dying for us to turn them loose to pursue their own learning in what they really want to study and for a few students, that is true, but for many students, that type of open-topic learning activity puts them into a panic.  Please, just tell me what you want me to know, some actually beg.

Last year was my first year teaching 5th grade.  The school I moved from, Lincoln School in Kathmandu, had been successfully involved in the Nesa Virtual Science Fair so when I moved to ACST, I asked to participate in that project with our fifth graders.  It was eye-opening to me to realize that my students didn’t know how to go about observing and wondering about things in their natural world.  I tried to immerse them in reading about many science topics through nonfiction reading, but the subjects were too vast and they didn’t have the skills to skim and then zero in on what was important and significant to them.  Even once they chose a workable science question, I still felt that most of them lacked contextual understanding about the science involved in their study and had done almost no research to learn about the scientific body of knowledge on the subject.

My teaching partner and I chose to withdraw from that project this year because we felt we needed to teach our students more science and spend more time leading them through a process of inquiry than the project timeline allowed.

Our students have done a lot of informational reading and writing this year so to begin with, they have much stronger abilities than last year’s students to read with focus and write with organization and persuasion.  We have also intentionally introduced them to multiple fields of study in science and an entire unit on setting up a scientific research model.  They are now ready to review what is current in science publications to try and formulate a question they can study.

Setting up an RSS Reader for Course 1 in CoETaIL has served to quickly broaden my awareness of issues in information technology and social networking so I hope that technology will serve as an effective tool for introducing fifth graders to current ideas and information in science that will hopefully strike a match to their natural curiosities.

Introducing Science Readers  

Subject: Science

Topic: Developing Scientific Questions

Grade: 5

Designer: Julie Bredy

 Stage 1:  Desired results

Standards/Goals:ISTE.NETS.T 1.BEngage students in exploring real-world issues and solving authentic problems using digital tools and resources

Scientific Inquiry 1A

Generate focused questions and informed predictions about the natural world.

Common Core Language Arts Standards

W.5.1

Introduce a topic or text clearly, state an opinion, and create an organizational structure in which ideas are logically grouped to support the writer’s purpose.

Provide logically ordered reasons that are supported by facts and details.

W.5.2

Introduce a topic clearly, provide a general observation and focus, and group related information logically; include formatting (e.g., headings), illustrations, and multimedia when useful to aiding comprehension.

W.5.7

Conduct short research projects that use several sources to build knowledge through investigation of different aspects of a topic.
Understandings :Students will understand that…  Learning begins with observation and questioning.Information is changing and being updated at a constant rate. Information is shared through digital publications and social networks. Essential Questions:What learning comes and has come from observation?What do I wonder about?How is ongoing scientific learning and thinking communicated with others?
Students will know… Current topics of interest in science. How to access current scientific research information. How to write a reading response.

 How to post to a blog.

 How to use Powerpoint or Prezzi to create a presentation.

 How to save and retrieve electronic documents.

                 

Students will be able to…Read current scientific articles using a digital reader application. Read, note-take, and word-process a reflection of learning about current science articles. Post a reflection about their learning and thinking to a social networking site.

 Access the posts of other students and leave a responding comment,  reflecting their own thinking.

Stage 2:  Assessment/Evidence
Performance Tasks:Students will read 20 articles or blog posts, sourced from a digital reader application as well as print publications.Students will write reflections about their reading, summarizing key content and identifying what they notice and what they wonder.Students will post 3 of their reflections to a blog on the class website

Students will comment on the posting of 1 other student, giving feedback about the completeness of the post and what they notice and wonder.

Students will present their learning from the one reading topic they are most interested in, through a Powerpoint or Prezzi presentation, summarizing key content and sharing what they noticed and what they wonder.
Key Criteria:

  • Maintenance of an electronic Reading Log (Word chart kept in own documents), tracking title of article, source, and date read.
  • Word-processing 5 responses to reading, summarizing main information and stating what the student notices and wonders regarding the article.
  • Posting 3 responses to reading on class website blog.
  • Writing a comment on 2 other students’ responses to reading, commenting on the completeness of the response and stating his own stance on the subject.
  • Presenting new learning from an article, including what I noticed and what I wonder, using Powerpoint or Prezzi.
  • Providing evidence of the ‘Meeting’ expectations on rubric.

Scientific Reader Rubric

  Exceeding Meeting Approaching Needs Improvement
Scientific Reading I produced a log sheet providing evidence of reading more than 20 science articles. I produced a log sheet providing evidence of reading at least 20 science articles. I produced a log sheet providing evidence of reading less than 20 science articles. I didn’t produce a log sheet providing evidence of reading science articles.
Response Writing I word processed more than 5 responses, summarizing the content of the reading and stating my opinion about what I noticed and what I wonder. I word processed at least 5 responses, summarizing the content of the reading and stating my opinion about what I noticed and what I wonder. I word processed less than 5 responses, summarizing the content of the reading and stating my opinion about what I noticed and what I wonder. I didn’t word-process any responses, summarizing the content of the reading and stating my opinion about what I noticed and what I wonder.
Posting on Class Blog I posted more than 3 of my reading responses on the class blog. I posted at least 3 of my reading responses on the class blog. I posted less than 3 of my reading responses on the class blog. I didn’t post any of my responses on the class blog.
Commenting on Classmates’ Responses I commented on more than 2 other student’s posted responses, commenting on the quality of the post and stating my opinion about the topic. I commented on at least 2 other student’s posted responses, commenting on the quality of the post and stating my opinion about the topic. I commented on less than 2 other student’s posted responses, commenting on the quality of the post and stating my opinion about the topic. I didn’t comment on any other student’s posted responses.
Making a Presentation I used Powerpoint or Prezzi to make a well-organized presentation, including a summary of my learning, what I noticed, and what I wonder. I used Powerpoint or Prezzi to make a sensible presentation, including a summary of my learning, what I noticed, and what I wonder. I used Powerpoint or Prezzi to make a presentation and included some information about what I learned, what I noticed, and what I wonder. I didn’t create an electronic presentation about my learning, what I noticed, or what I wonder.
Other Evidence:Contribution to verbal sharing with classmates.

 

Stage 3:  Learning Plan

Learning Plan (Activities and Resources):

1.  Teacher will vet web feeds appropriate for fifth grade and ranging through many areas of scientific study.  Multiple feeds can be found at Smithsonian, National Geographic, Time for Kids, and other sites.

2.  Teacher will create a public tab in NetVibes, adding the feed for the sites, then linking it to the class website.

3.  Teacher will engage students’ thinking regarding the role of observation in scientific discovery through the presentation of a Prezi, making connections to the shared prior-learning of the class.

4.  Students will read at least 20 science articles through the Netvibes reader, Foss reader, National Geographic Explorer, or Weekly Reader.

5.  Students will keep a Reading Log of their article reading on a Word document table kept in their documents.  Log will include title of article, source, and date read.

6.  Students will word-process 5 responses to reading, summarizing the content and then stating what they notice and what they wonder.

7.  Students will post 3 responses to reading on the class website blog.

8.  Students will create a Powerpoint or Prezzi presentation, including a summary of the content of 1 article and reflections of what the student noticed and what she wondered.

9.  Students will read the posts of other students and make 1 comment, giving feedback on the completeness of the reflection and stating what the student noticed and what she wonders.

Following this exploration of topics, students will have an opportunity to indicate three topics they are most interested in from the presentations.  This will be the basis of formation of science teams and their first task will be to formulate a research question and hypothesis.

Using some existing technology tools (i.e. the blog feature on our class website and presentation applications), we can maximize the sharing of our learning and thinking, modeling for students who aren’t certain how to think in this way and sparking areas of common interest.  Introducing the RSS Reader underscores the message that scientific knowledge is ever changing and growing, opening the door for students to add to the body of thinking, observation, and experimentation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flip, Only As Needed

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Khan Academy was probably the first notion many of us were exposed to around the concept of students doing more of their content learning away from school, or at least more independently.  After seeing his videos for the first time, my colleagues and I started buzzing about how we could change our instructional models.  I have pulled up Khan lessons and other online tutorials many times in my fifth grade classroom and have drilled with my students, “What can you do when you are at home and realize that you don’t understand?” and they recite back the resources that are available to them.  I’ve shown my parents these links on our class website, too, but very few kids ever go there.  Why?  It simply comes down to ownership of understanding.  Most of my students, despite me vigorously trying to push them out of the learning nest, still believe that the onus for their understanding lies with me.  If they are working on their math homework and realize they don’t understand the concept or procedure, they will most often do one of two things:

1.  Try to get their parents to show them some way to get the homework finished.

2.  Say, oh well, come back to school the next day and try to push the work back to me, thereby passing the problem back to me.

I talk metacognition with them constantly.  I tell them how to observe their understanding, how to notice when they’ve stopped understanding, and what to do about it, but it requires more effort for them that way and it takes more time.  Many students long for me to be a teacher who just tells them what they need to know, gives them reams of fill-in-the blank papers, and lets them hand in the paper for me to mark, at which point it’s out of their control. I know we educators talk like kids would hate a class like that, but I have found that many students are very comfortable with that set up and some of them never get over their disappointment that I always say, keep your work, you are going to explain your thinking to other students, and then we are going to go over it together so you can add notes about what more you learn.  That is so unsatisfying to many students, but that right there is a flip.  Just pushing the ownership of student work back to students is a beginning.  Further, asking them to analyze what they need to know and how they can learn it requires many students to make a powerful shift in their thinking.

I believe meaningful flipped learning must connect students to learning they want to do, anyway.  Shelley Wright wrote The Flip:  Why I Love It- How I Use It  which struck me as balanced.  She advocates looking for learning opportunities to build up where you can set students loose to build on their own levels of thinking.

Following are some increments of flipping that I think can lead students toward a greater level of understanding and then hopefully on to higher levels of thinking, too.

1.  Create curiosity

Students don’t always know what they are interested in learning or pursuing.  Setting them up with a NetReader feeding dozens of current articles and blogs on topics can spark an interest in something they weren’t previously even thinking about.  Simply responding to the foundational questions What do you notice?  What do you wonder?  Sets them up for deeper or continued learning.

2. Build ties to background knowledge

Independent reading and research can help students relate new learning to what they already understand and analyzing where it fits in their schema.

3.  Synthesize an inquiry learning activity

We hope that students understand, at least, the basic learning goal of inquiry-based instruction and that most will make higher-level connections as well.  They may need to do extra reading, thinking, and reflecting, however, to gain those deeper insights, which they can continue to pursue on their own.

4.  Differentiate learning

As with point #3, some students will need to do extra reading and thinking to understand the basic concepts of an inquiry-based activity, while others will be ready to explore the big ideas or pursue tangential learning.

5.  Use of technology and practice of social networking

This isn’t just nice to know.  Our students must continually push their skills at using current technology to research, capture, and communicate their learning, and then share it with others.  Social networking is not just a shout out about what we have produced at the end, but it is integral to the acquisition of the learning.

Andrew Miller supports cautious methodological shifting toward a flipped classroom.  Taking a lot of teacher time to create vodcasts for students to watch at home doesn’t seem like a great trade off in time vs. benefit.  Not all students will have consistent access to the technology they need at home and it has been often said that they are still just watching a lecture, which doesn’t seem like a brilliant learning engagement.    Also, there is great value in the shared learning of knowledge in a class, so we don’t want to eliminate that rich communal exploration of information either.

I completely believe the power of flipped classroom thinking lies in the gradual building of the message to students that they are really their most important teacher and then consistently engaging them with tools they can use to teach themselves for the rest of their lives.  I know it’s true because I’ve taught myself everything I know.

Information Bubbles and the Internet

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I have only been on Facebook since October 2011.  It was odd inviting people into my daily life who I haven’t seen in a very long time or perhaps never knew that well to begin with.  Many of these people have also aged since I knew them in the first place and there are days when I feel like I’ve inadvertently hosted a party in my living room for a bunch of opinionated codgers I wouldn’t spend five minutes talking to in person.

Then there are my other friends who seem “well-read”, to me.  They are intellectual, esoteric, and have a gentle wit, able to use their words, skillfully.  They send links from TedTalks, The Washington Post, and NPR and they help build my intellectual world and make me feel like a better form of myself.

I have had my finger on the Defriend button more than once telling my husband, “If so-and-so spouts off one more time about President Obama, citing Rush Limbaugh as her information source, I AM going to defriend her.”  Then I have waited because I have some thought in the back of my mind that it’s a good thing for me to know about this friend’s point of view.  I can’t relate to it, don’t agree with it, but many people say they feel the way she does and if she can help me understand where that mind-set comes from, I guess it’s good.  See, I’m also still a little reticent.

We do enough self-limiting of the information we expose our minds to.  Now, it seems that the information powers of the Internet, such as Google, are further culling links that have been coded to not be of our interest.  I have heard arguments against the personalization of the internet in terms of privacy, but another valid concern is that having more and more information that supports the way you already think does not help you to be a broad-minded thinker, speaker, or Facebooker.

Eli Pariser, in his TedTalk, presents us with some evidence about how searches for the same topic, by two different people, on Google, can result in completely different results.  I didn’t realize this was happening.  I’ve always heard about the rating system of Google links and thought we all got an even crack at the top-rated sites.

Eli asked the decision-makers about Internet information dissemination, who it seemed may have been in the room, to consider the journalistic practices of newspapers since about 1915.  At that time in US newspaper history, it became evident that journalistic practice wasn’t  open-minded or encompassing of multiple points-of-view, allowing readers to draw their own conclusions.  Press practices were altered and we have experienced at least a form of unfiltered reporting for about a century.

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This is probably going to be an international debate with some uneven information access until a balance between customization and flow of varied information is achieved, somewhat.  In the meantime, be thankful for your Facebook friends who challenge you with thinking you find unsupportable.  You need to get their perspective from somewhere.

Notes on Geeking Out

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How did humans keep a lid on their creativity and interests prior to now?  I hardly know anyone who isn’t making, publishing, and sharing something in some form, whether it’s a picture of a batch of stellar cookies on Facebook or a house-produced video on YouTube.  But then those posts lead to links, which lead to links, and in time, special interests gravitate together and online minicultures are created.

The Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project (pgs. 28-34) assigns what many find to be a hobby gone too far as a skill level called “Geeking Out”.

Geeking out involves learning to navigate esoteric domains of knowledge and practice and participating in communities that traffic in these forms of expertise. It is a mode of learning that is peer-driven, but focused on gaining deep knowledge and expertise in specific areas of interest.

Geeking out takes time and deep pursuit.  First, one must spend hundreds of hours reading and learning who are the already recognized experts in the field.  Studying their work and style, you may then experiment with  what you have to add to the body of work that is at least up to acknowledgeable level and hopefully, carries something unique.  There is terminology and references to standard examples that all become part of the required vernacular of participation.

…geeking out involves developing an identity and pride as an expert and seeking fellow experts in far-flung networks. Geeking out is usually supported by interest-based groups, either local or online, or some hybrid of the two, where fellow geeks will both produce and exchange knowledge on their subjects of interest.

As  a literacy teacher, this finding made a connection for me to nonfiction reading and writing.  In pursuit of the rigorous standards of the Common Core, students select a topic about which they already have some background knowledge and interest.  Writing from their prior knowledge and new learning, they take the position of expert in this particular area and write to teach others in the class.  Even in elementary school we are teaching students that everyone has something to learn and everyone has something to teach.  The next step would be to publish their teaching online at a site where others with similar knowledge levels are posting.

Rather than purely “consuming” knowledge produced by authorita­tive sources, geeked out engagement involves accessing as well as producing knowledge to contribute to the knowledge network.

I think my nephew, Jake, is a great example of someone who is completely geeked out.  Always an irrepressibly talented young man, he didn’t get into an art field in his 20′s and instead works a blue collar job at a net-making company.  But Jake has developed an active film-making and photography life by just going ahead and making projects and then promoting them to the interest groups they pertain to.  He recently celebrated his 1000th subscriber so he definitely has a following.

Jake’s mom is a champion Bulldog breeder and trainer.  She has entered her obedience-trained dogs in many contests such as America’s Funniest Home Videos and was recently a top-10 finalist on America’s Got Talent. Her dog, Gabe, is often used in videos along with Jake’s son, Taylor.  Here is a recent production for a Pet Hub video contest, combining the niche interests of both Jake and his mom.  Watch it and give it a Like.

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