Computers, the Internet and Creativity - Net Gain or Net Loss?

One topic for discussion in our gifted curriculum class last week was creativity. 

Our instructor began the discussion with a fact: since the 1980s, researchers have seen a decline in creativity.

::Alarm bells::

Hang on, what?

We've got kindergartners posting to their own YouTube channels, entire websites essentially dedicated to people trying to cultivate or share their creativity (Pinterest, anyone?), memes and "it" ideas of Internet culture last only a matter of days or weeks, and everyday, regular people, every day going out to work, trying to figure out how to stay ahead of the computer that ultimately wants to take their job, and people are LESS creative?

I'm less creative than the 1970s version of myself that came home from work, patted his kids on their sweet heads, ate whatever random Campbell's soup-based casserole was for dinner that night, and then watched a couple of hours of the generic, broadly appealing TV that the 3 broadcast networks were pumping to the rabbit ears on top of my television?

Come on... I realize that this research from Kyung Hee Kim of the College of William and Mary analyzing 30 years worth of results from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking supports it, but I don't buy that this is a closed question.

Perhaps we're asking the wrong questions now. The internet has changed the speed of innovation and shortened the shelf-life relevance of many ideas, so why wouldn't smartphones and the internet affect the way we think about and measure creativity? 

A quick digression in case you're unfamiliar with the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking
The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TCTT) was developed in the mid-20th century by educational psychologist Paul Torrance, and is built upon previous work from Joy Paul Guilford defining creativity and fleshing out creative traits of divergent thinking: fluency, originality, flexibility, and elaboration.

Okay, back to my argument (with a little bit of stats talk)
To summarize the article linked above from Dr. Kim about the decline in creativity, she observed changes in the median score on the figural (non-verbal) portion of the TTCT over a 30 year period. For most of the creativity traits, the normed scores were level-ish (yep, of course that's a scientific term. LOL), but particularly in this century, most all of the parameters median scores feel by a statistically significant level from the 2000 norming of the test to the 2008. She acknowledges that the scores might even be inflated because of the long timeframe between national norming of the test. As an example, drawing a smartphone during one phase of the figural test constitutes an "original" idea according to the scoring, because that would not have been an "average" object in 2008. In other words, test takers are getting points for originality that they probably should not be.

I read that entire article, and poured over every chart, hoping to find a chink in the numbers that explained what I was anecdotally seeing in my world - that the internet was, in fact, enhancing humans' creativity in 2018.

An interesting parallel trend to the decline in creativity is that average IQs scores have increased over the same period. So...are we getting better at thinking like computers? (And all the while programming our computers to learn and to think more creatively)?

What's the score?
Here's my general take - overall, computers and the internet have been a positive change for creativity and creative thinking, but that they have had a negative effect on some aspects. I'll use the TTCT Figural Test categories for reference.

Fluency: GAIN
Its nearly impossible to NOT be aware of more ideas and news in a broad range of topics in this day and age, and the more connected you are to social media and internet culture, the more accustomed you are to a breakneak speed of creative output and publishing. Ideas get old quickly on the web.

Originality: LOSS
This one was most important to one of my classmates. He sees his coding kids attempt to steal code from other projects they find on the web nearly every day, so its his professional responsibility to stress the importance of shutting out the echo chamber, sitting with your own thoughts, and having your own ideas.

Elaboration: GAIN
I think elaboration can be the inverse idea of both fluency or originality. Whichever it is, we get lots of practice in our connected culture taking other creatives' ideas and adapting it or viewing it with a critical eye for how we would do better.

Resistance to Premature Closure: EVEN
I've got to admit that I still don't totally understand this one. It has something to do with being okay with an idea not totally being "finished". This sounds to me like apps releasing in Beta and nearly finished products getting funding on Kickstarter. On the other hand...a lot of days long arguments on Facebook stem from individuals seeking closure of an argument that by its very nature probably will not.

Titles (Abstractness of Titles): GAIN
We title things on the internet all the time. Our reviews on Amazon. This blog post. The meme we created for the latest politician's blunder. That perfect caption under your Instagram post.

BUT...the research clearly says that creativity is in decline. So, what's your point?
We've got to keep looking into this! For everyone brave enough to attempt what becomes the next Pinterest Fail, for the DIYer that is going to transform their guest bath, and for every small-business and start-up that risks epic failure to address a problem that currently is underserved, we cannot stop and assume that our creative muscles are atrophying with our thumbs swiping screens, but that rather, we're only getting stronger.

Just because we haven't proved it yet doesn't mean we aren't.

JOIN THE OPTIMISTS!

Book Review: Called to Create: A Biblical Invitation to Create, Innovate, and Risk

Book: Called to Create: A Biblical Invitation to Create, Innovate, and Risk
Author: Jordan Raynor

Platform: I read this on the Hoopla Digital app (and the Hoopla Digital website) with my library card from the St. Louis County Library

You could also find it at:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks

Who's This Book For?

• Anyone who thinks they have entrepreneurial skills
• Anyone who thinks they might desire entrepreneurial skills
• Anyone who doesn't know what they want to do with their work lives
• Anyone who would describe themselves as a "creative."
• Anyone currently feeling unfulfilled in their "secular" job.
• Students seeking to understand entrepreneurship and working in a "creative" industry from a Christian, Biblical perspective

My Take:
Leading a single-income household with 3 children (my wife has been lovingly giving of herself, joyfully staying home since 2011), I've often felt a pressure to leave my paltry teacher's salary behind for greener pastures of private industry as a corporate trainer or the like.

The thing that usually made it hardest for me to envision myself NOT in education was the idea of leaving behind this people-centered industry for a job where my worth would largely be measured in efficiency over love, and generating wealth for others over shaping lives. It felt like a dead work. It felt less spiritual. It felt like a waste of the majority of my waking hours in the name of making my family more secure and comfortable. Certainly, I have a mandate to care for my family, but I don't believe God wants us to work so that we can put our trust in our 401k.

Part of that low view of corporate life came from ignorance on my part of the amount of face-time that you all not in education get with co-workers on your teams and in your offices, part of it was a blindness to the impact I could and should have been having to bless my fellow teachers (not only my students), and a low view of how God uses work and business to help us glorify Him in how we live and what we value.

If you've ever felt the same way about work, this is a great book for you. I appreciated Raynor's breaking the book into a what, why, how, and so what framework of entrepreneurship and creating from a Christian worldview. The tangible examples from businesses and business owners that you'll probably find familiar serve as a means to build your faith for the way God uses work, entrepreneurs, and creative productivity to bless those around you and to fulfill a mandate from Genesis to create and bring order, just like the Creator (who Raynor sometimes refers to for the purposes of this book as the "First Entrepreneur".

I also appreciated how Raynor mixes in biblical and scripture references into a genre that I've seen sometimes error toward vaguely biblical, but more self-helpy. I didn't come to this book expecting every piece of truth to come explicitly from scripture, but there is plenty of good reading on entrepreneurship and innovation if you're not looking for a Christian perspective. Layering the word God on an otherwise "regular" business book doesn't make it better, it makes it less genuine. All that goes to say, Raynor mixes biblical truth and business examples into the narrative in a way that enriches his story, rather than distracting from it.

Called to Create clocks in at 240 pages, which might be a tad longer than a busy entrepreneur/creative might typically be able to get through if not in the practice of reading, but the narrative is easy and the 4-part structure of the chapters also makes it more digestible.

I wholly recommend this book!

Using Visual Notes for Memory and Understanding

Are you an doodler? Associating notes and terms with images is helpful for recalling information later, so doodling (or finding images that relate and then pasting in) is a good strategy for taking something mundane like note-taking and creating an "experience" that will be easier to call upon during test time. I still remember the tank I drew with icicles hanging from it in 10th grade on my Cold War notes.

This brings me to today's use of visual notes. As much as it pains me to say, "victory" on the ACT does not always go to the "smartest" students, but instead, to those who can best play the game. In a bubble, I'd much rather teach math concepts and skills, but when it comes to gaming the ACT, sometimes those get in the way.

This is best exemplified in my experience from my 2 experiences taking the ACT as a student. The first time, I had a TI-83 at my side, checking every graph and solution I could, searching for just the right formula. I didn't finish that section - I don't even remember being that close. The second time I took the ACT, I did not have the graphing calculator (I have no idea where the graphing calculator I'd been using went) - I didn't even have a scientific calculator! I told my dad on the way to the test that I needed to get a calculator, so we stopped at a supermarket, bought a 2 dollar four function calculator. The magic of my 2 dollar calculator test was that I HAD to skip around to the things I could do easiest. I was much more agile in my thinking, skipped around more quickly when I felt stuck, and actually did 5 points higher that time. My "knowledge" got in the way the first time from me showing what I definitely knew, and there were probably some questions I could have done that I never got to.

I found a list of strategies for each section of the ACT on sparknotes.com for my students and I've tasked them to make a "poster" for each section and the included strategies. My skill set and interest leans toward illustrating in any whiteboard or drawing app, but I left open the option for using the PicCollage app to bring in images and text or Haiku Deck to make a slide show with an image for each strategy.

Here's the example I created using the Paper app based on tips from this video that I showed earlier in class:

Here's a preliminary student example:

My favorite part of this one is the crossed arms emoji for "eliminate answers". :)

More visual notes resources:
6 Apps To Visualize Notes on iPad
Sketchnotes and Visual Thinking Note-taking - This page summarizes and links to many OTHER resources
Show with Media: Visual Note-taking

Happy note-taking!

Defining Students' Capabilities (What Happened on the Scientific Notation Project?)

What do you think defines more of your students' capabilities to create, the tools you give them, or the content you teach?

Which builds more capacity in our students to solve (their own) real problems, teaching them to ask better questions, or teaching the content necessary to attack those problems?

I had a great conversation with +Jeff Horwitz from Chesterfield Day School in December about continuing to push myself to think out of a box about what problems kids can solve and what products they can create in 2015 with the technology and information available to them. There are skills we teach at the high school level in our career and technical ed and arts courses that 15 years ago a kid may have needed to make a professional-ish product.

When I was a kid...

• I "published" stories and books by using a printer, our best markers, and those little metal brads and giving them to my parents. One day, I even got invited to an city-wide event where I got to read my story in a classroom of TWENTY-FIVE other kids and parents who were attending the same event.
  
• I "produced" songs by recording myself singing along to the radio on a casette recorder.
  
• I "interviewed" people from other cultures by making up fake languages and talking into my casette recorder.
  
• I "published" a newspaper by drawing a picture in the box and writing on the lines of a pre-printed template on newsprint that my parents bought one time. (And just once. So, the fun was over in an evening.)
  
• I saw my grandparents on my mother's side fewer times than I can count on my hands, because they lived more than a day's drive away.
  

My 5 year old...

• Has published an interactive ebook and shared it on my facebook with her friends (okay, my friends, their parents, but you know what I mean.)
  
• Without even being given the idea, recorded music videos on a Leapfrog Leappad with songs she makes up herself.
  
• Has a "fashion" blog with images of her designs that she'll request we post to so she can show her friends her pictures of "horse braids", "tags for charming babies," necklaces, and more
  
• Can Facetime her Mimi and Poppa almost whenever she wants, sharing all the latest news from STL to ATL. 
  

Its hard for me to even imagine what she'll be capable of once she starts reading, but I have a feeling it will only be limited by our ability to get the tools into her hands, and her own imagination. 

I think in a lot of ways, I expect greater creativity and imagination from my preschool-aged children than I might from the high-schoolers in my classroom. Is there a chance our expectations of what they may be capable of is what defines the end product? If something is an "11th-grade" project, what makes it so? Is it the math content from a course they haven't yet taken, or is it a complexity limitation? 

Once you raise your expectations of the quality that students are capable of producing, how do you sell that to your students that have a fixed mindset of what they can accomplish? 

Two weeks ago I gave my Applied Math students a mini-project about multiplying or dividing numbers in scientific notation. I gave them the choice of 4 different questions to research and solve, and a choice of poster, collage, video, or whatever else cool they could come up with as their product. Several students steered toward poster, which was fine, but the disparity between quality was what rattled me for the better part of a weekend. Choosing to work by herself, one student finished her work in 2 class periods (and most of the 2nd was filled with coloring in block letters and graphics on her poster.) I had a group of 4 boys "finish" the same question in 4 class periods with what was probably a level of quality I could have produced in 3rd grade. 

What happened with these boys (the 2nd photo above)? Is it a matter of their teacher accepting this poster as "done," even as I already know that it will barely pass muster on my rubric? Can we mandate creativity in core classes? Do I have to put quality measures in my rubric that really should be assessing a student's learning of the content? 

From my experience, its not enough to give the option of creativity in the classroom and producing cool, quality work. Some students will flourish under that setting, but it cheats that ones who will continue to function at the lowest common denominator. I don't think its enough to show our students what they can do - we have some level of responsiblity to push and encourage them to make it happen. 

Valuing Focus vs Creativity

Which should we value more in education? Should we have to choose between the two?

Made us think of @SirKenRobinson talk on creativity and what we value in schools pic.twitter.com/OgfvHjzoy5
— teach the city (@NYCcollaborator) February 3, 2015

Have you ever seen this happen in your classroom? I remember lots of "he's not been on his meds," "they're in the process of changing meds," and "we're hoping the meds will help," conversations with parents and special ed case managers over the years that didn't always end have subsequent results I was hoping for that student.

It's hard to argue that attempting to control a child's hyperactivity or attention deficits is ALWAYS good or ALWAYS bad. While we see Calvin lose his imagination in the frames above, maybe we see his perseverance in problem solving increased. Perhaps because his brain is tuning out some inputs, he finally FINISHES well on a project and what may have otherwise been a serviceable B or C becomes an exceptional talk-about-it-to-everyone-you-know type project.

Are we putting Calvin and his parents in an impossible situation in the first place? Could Calvin's classroom teacher put more of an emphasis on learning through play and discovery? Could his teacher considered other ways for him to demonstrate his learning? (Unless report writing literally was the skill to be assessed - I believe we do still have a responsibility to produce capable writers, even as we provide alternative assessments.).  What happened to Calvin's work in art class after the meds? How elaborately planned and detailed were his creative freewrites?

What are you doing to welcome Calvin AND Hobbes in your classroom? Do you have any success stories from a time you may have welcomed the chaos of ideas that a non-medicated student brought to the classroom? 

Find the Antiquity in This MLK Poster-Essay Contest

There's something about the rubric to this Martin Luther King, Jr. essay-poster contest that just doesn't sit right with me. Can you find it?

 

I had a debate about this with one of my friends in my department, and he said he thought the "no computer generated art" rule was good for leveling the playing field for students who may not have access to a good digital art studio. 

I think the rule prohibiting digital/computer generated art does the exact opposite. I think sometimes my colleagues get the impression that I hate physical art and "traditional" processes. It's not that at all. If a child has the skill to do his or her best work with crayons/paints/markers/colored pencils, then by all means, they should. But if they don't?? Talk about UN-leveling the playing field.

I think the only thing prohibiting digital/computer generated art from this contest does is encourage kids that can write OR do the art to cheat and have someone else do the other requirement for them, or DIScourage kids who can only write to not enter at all.

   

Why do the organizers of this contest want FEWER kids to enter with LESS professional looking entries? I just don't understand.

Are You "Gifted"? - Try This Intelligence Test

Are you ready? 

This intelligence test measures your creativity and ability to think of multiple solutions. Play the timer below for 2 minutes, following the directions in the Google Form below. (reset the timer after each box.)

2 MIN TIMER

What's the Point of This?

I started reading Malcom Gladwell's Outliers this week. The basic thesis of this book is that "outliers," particularly successful or extraordinary people like Bill Gates or Andrew Carnegie are not solely the product of hard work, genius, or  go-get-ivesness, but a combination of brilliance, opportunity, and/or luck.

In one chapter he uses the case of psychologist Lewis Terman's longitudinal study of geniuses, "Genetic Studies of Genius". Terman's "termites," as he called them were children selected from prestigious families and schools for the highest of high of IQ scores. His hypothesis was that when these children grew up and impacted their professions, you would find multiple Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, and influential civil servants.

More than 40 years into the study, his hypothesis was critiqued as resoundingly false. One contributing factor to success beyond our popular notion of "high IQ" is creativity. Successful individuals are not only "smart," but they are often creative problem solvers and abstract thinkers.

Gladwell introduces an "alternative intelligence test," that measures divergent intelligence (ability to think creatively in many directions vs. traditional IQ assessments that measure convergent intelligence, the ability to eliminate other options to a "right" answer). One of the more popular tests is Guilford's Alternative Uses Task (1967), which asks participants to think creatively about common, everyday items.

How could I use this in my class?
I think administering the Alternative Uses Task would be a great thing to do with your students when trying to unlock creativity or effort in your classroom. Many students who may feel insecure about their traditional IQ intelligence could do well at the task, opening up for you (and them) the idea of who is "smart" in your class.

Divergent thinking is important in finding multiple solutions to problems that can often get kids stuck on word problems/ open-ended problems. Knowing who the creative thinkers are in your room helps you and your students know who to go to as the "experts" when students are stuck for ideas. Facilitating these exchanges also open up opportunities for leadership beyond the "smart" students, engaging more of your students.

It could be especially interesting as an opener to presenting your students with a 3-Act Math Story.

WANT SOME FOR MORE?

You can find "Brick and Blanket" and four additional creativity tests on this post from 99u.com

http://99u.com/articles/7160/test-your-creativity-5-classic-creative-challenges

Why Coding Isn't Just About Career Prospects

It's hard to throw a stick at the Internet these days and NOT get back a result about the importance of teaching and encouraging our students to code. Here are some results just from a Google search of news this week.

I generally agree with the premise that it's important for our kids to obtain the Internet literacy of coding, but I'm usually wary of any solution we present to students as a silver bullet for future success.

Even still, I write this to agree that we should be encouraging coding literacy to our students. Why? For me, it's a personal reason. Coding empowers students to make their lives better. That improvement may look like better lifestyle from increased salary, but it could also manifest as using coding to solve a personal problem. Let me tell you about my project this week.

My wife blogged recently about our journey recognizing, diagnosing, and supporting our son's speech delay and therapy, (http://heybethbaker.wordpress.com/2014/06/10/lets-be-serious/), and we had his first IEP meeting on Monday, setting up his preschool accommodations and interventions. It's occupying a lot of our prayers and time, so I was glad to get some unstructured time this week to work on a website/web app for him to use in support of his speech therapy.

A common speech therapy tool to support communication is a set of "PECS" cards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_Exchange_Communication_System), basically consisting of pictures of commonly used items for the child to grab and show to their caretaker. Beth made a set several months ago that Landon didn't really take to, but he's shown a lot of interest in the iPad recently as we've used it as a potty training reward, so I had some hope that a digital version might be more appealing. Here's what the finished project looks like:

If you'd like to try it out, here's the link I hosted on Dropbox. (bit.ly/landonPECS)

Maybe you're asking yourself, "But Chuck, hasn't someone already made an app for this? Why reinvent the wheel?" They have, in fact, but they are all super expensive. :P 

Here are some examples for the curious:

http://aacornapp.com/#index

http://www.speech-ez.com/apps.html

And here's another blogger who took a different DIY approach on the iPad

http://smallbutkindamighty.com/2012/02/28/how-i-make-pecs-on-the-ipad/

Beyond saving some money, there's an intangible quality to knowing you're crafting something for someone you love, and some enduring benefit to knowing my website/app will always be available and easily modified as Landon's needs change. Having the basic web design skills to put together this site allowed me to care for my son - something I take very seriously. Here's what this project led me to conclude about the purpose of coding-

Teaching our students to code allows them to make the web work for them.

When we speak the language of the web, we don't have to wait for someone else to meet our needs or fit our needs into someone else's box. 

And the richest aspect of my coding project? The HTML and CSS wasn't even half of the project! I have a student who wants to go into game design, but refuses that it would be of worth to put some programming/coding skills to go with her future design marketability. If all I'd done is coded the page, I'd have nothing to meet the needs I was trying address!

Here are the other things I did -

• Photography (the personalized images of Landon's toys and clothes)
• Image editing (taking out backgrounds to get transparent images)
• Sound recording (pairing sound with the images)
• File conversions (my recording app's output to the supported types for Chrome and Safari)
• Researching tools and methods you might not even use (I wanted the audio to play when the images themselves were clicked, but after several hours of trying/tweaking JavaScript examples just scrapped that route and adjusted course)

It was frustrating, it was fulfilling, it was led by passion, it drove further inquiry. It was pure project based learning.

#MOEDCHAT Blog Challenge #1 - I love being an educator because...

...of all the different experiences I have as a part of my job!

We try on different jobs and authentic experiences in attempts to prepare our students for the same. One trick to engaging your students is to pour yourself into your content to find your own passion for it. Like the method actor smoking a pack a day to play a lung cancer patient, diving into the same inquiry you desire for your students will enable you to know where you can look forward to pulling out particular students' interests in tour lesson for the day.

I spent 5 hours at the Ameren Corporation's headquarters on Tuesday shadowing different engineers and accountants, soaking up anything I could about the nature of their job and stealing (j/k, totally respectfully asking if I could have or take pictures of) whatever artifacts I could. It was a VIP treatment a randomly selected Ameren customer could probably not enjoy, but because of a STEM project based learning program I'm a part of right now, they opened their doors to us.

I've spent the last two days working with two of my co-teachers attempting to communicate to them the various ways I saw statistical graphs and analysis applied and we've worked together attempting to repackage that experience in a meaningful, approachable way for our future 9th graders. My co-workers weren't at Ameren with me, so I spent much of Wednesday showing artifacts and play-acting to bring them into my world. Co-teaching or PLC tip: If you cannot communicate your passion for a project or reason for pedagogical choice, you're going to have a hard time building consensus in the group, which means you won't get anything meaningful done. 

Your students don't expect you to necessarily have the same knowledge base as a best selling author, biomedical research physician, electrical engineer, or civil-rights historian, but they do have a right to fair expectation that you might teach with a similar passion as one. I'm guilty of not making nearly the attempt I could to bring in guest speakers, but having one for every standard is obviously impractical, so your students are relying on you to let them know why "insert-content-here" is worth committing their interest to.

...of the intangible value I place on knowing that being excellent at my job is important for more than increasing trading prices for public shares.

If that actually is your job, please don't feel like I'm getting judgey-mcjudgerson on you for it. That essentially was one of the tasks for one of the men I met at Ameren on Tuesday, and I found his passion for crunching statistical data to squeeze out trends infectious. He actually reminded me a lot of my father-in-law in the way that half of the work he did was not even his job, per we, but it was work he initiated to go the extra mile to add value to what he offered the organization because he had time left over after his regular work. That work he does investigating ways to lower the standard deviation of department expenditures to increas budget efficiency, and tracking customer satisfaction against a sample of Ameren's peers is important to a lot of people, I'm sure, but the exponential value a teacher can add to the world has a greater potential for good that appeals to me. 

That Ameren "continuous improvement analyst" didn't know how to do what he did with stats without an educator mentoring him through his postgraduate studies on his way to a PhD in Statistics. Somebody call Ashton Kutcher, is that a butterfly effect?

There's a question on the Gallup teacher insight survey that asks you to rate your agreement with this statement: "Teaching is the most important of all professions." I tend to get TOO meta on these surveys and overthink them, which means I factor way too many value-adding variables into this question, and I don't really come to a conclusion. Even in the last 10 minutes, I've convinced myself to both ends of that spectrum. I can get value and satisfaction out do ANY job if I do what I do to the glory of God. If your job sucks the life out of you, it probably means you're not contributing any passion to it. So, if any job can fulfill you with intangibles and an opportunity to please God, then teaching wouldn't necessarily be most important. No job would be. At the same time, as I thought about Ashton Kutcher as his Butterfly Effect, I remembered that any valuable learning needs some element of mentors hop or facilitating which means before you go and do any other work for God, a teacher was there to show you how.

...of the toys I get to play with that I generally would probably not have access to.

Many, many classrooms had interactive whiteboards and touchscreens before national news media began finding new ways to color election maps with them in 2010.

The iPad I've been using the past two and a half years was on loan to me from my district with the expectation that I would become an expert and investigate all the ways our students could use them in the future (or even if, perhaps, they were actually a poor choice to us with my students)

...of the things I have learned about for my job that I probably wouldn't know otherwise (and that make me a better friend/citizen/parent/husband)

how to talk to kids when you've let them down

how to talk to kids after they've disappointed YOU

why the way you respond in conflict is important because it doesn't go away (at least until the end of the semester.) :)

letting people know you're willing to listen to their concerns builds trust

sharing your life with people invites them to share with you

you cannot wait for the other person to ask to be forgiven - how you choose to respond should not be contingent upon their "worth" of it.

...of the number of people you can meet and small-talk with in public. 

For better or worse, everyone has an opinion about the teaching profession. And in a sense, it is unique among jobs in that everyone has spent years of their lives in direct observance of the profession, and that there are elements of the profession most of the general public practices. You may not be a "certified teacher," but you've probably tutored a friend or family member in at least one particular skill. That being said, you meet someone in public and reveal your secret identity as a teacher, you automatically have a common experience with someone beyond your burrito. 

During my jury-duty lunch break last week in Clayton at Chipotle, a gentleman on his 60s randomly started up a conversation with me while we were on line, and we ended up sharing the better part of 45 minutes together talking education. Being a teacher is like owning a Honda.

Source

On ACCOMPLISHING Goals and Success

I don't know if I'm unique in the classroom about this as it pertains to technology integration and innovation, but sometimes I find myself trying to get my hands in so many pots and spin so many plates that I don't actually accomplish anything of value. The way this manifests in my lesson plans with regards to technology is that I'll get lots of new ideas, and I'll pilot a lot of tools on a small scale, but I won't commit to anything for long enough to produce tangible products to share with colleagues who want to see examples before they're willing to try something new (unvetted).

I focused on not doing that this past semester, and I think I was able to sway a few of my colleagues closer to trying it out for themselves (see my posts about paperslide music videos and my elaborately schemed fake Google Sketch-up area project for more info). Being able to show off some student work, reflecting on some parts of the design that didn't go so well, and having a clearer vision for the next way I was going to do that project was really helpful in articulating to my colleagues why and how integrating the same on their classroom would work.

This principle works in curriculum, as well, which is why your district has probably identified "priority standards" for your course. The common teacher complaint that we can't do EVERYTHING is, of course, true. The blog post going viral from a 4 time teacher of the year that was sharing his reasons for leaving the classroom also quotes something like this: "In my 6 years in the classroom I've had lots of programs and mandates added on, but I've never had anything taken away." If you feel that way, too, then I don't think you have practically accepted the purpose of those priority standards. 

And don't we all see this in our personal lives? It's rare to feel much fulfillment out of the evening or weekend in which we did a lot of STUFF, but when you do a few things well in a weekend, those are the ones that refresh and recharge you emotionally.

Stop trying to do everything, simplify your life's busyness to only what you can commit to fully investing in, and do them with purpose.

Using Paper Slide Music Videos to Reconceptualize Content

Today's post is a super-easy way to integrate video creation into your class. All you need is one tool to record video (smartphone, tablet, digital camera, flipcam).

Resources:

Dr. Lodge McCammon's Math Songs

Lodge's resources (mp3 and lyrics) on Discovery Streaming

My Students' Videos

My first attempt at paper slide music videos I attempted to have each of my 3 classes collaborate to make one video, which turned out to be a mistake. Only 1 of the classes were able to pull it all together and finish.

This week, for my second attempt, I split the students into groups of (up to) 4. It was good for forcing more accountability for the work, and because it required fewer students to all be there/have their materials/do their work, we had more measures of success.

                                          

Lessons I've Learned about Paper Slide Music Videos (in case you didn't read them on the post-its) :)

1. Make your videos in groups of 3 or 4, and let the kids self-select. 

2. Don't be stingy with materials. I counted out enough slides for each group to have enough, but there will inevitably be crumbled slides on the floor that need to be redone, so keep a stack of extras on hand for the kids to access.

3. Reteach and reconceptualize the content throughout the process. The thought required to package the idea of proportions visually is more than simply solving problems out of your textbook, so you may be shocked about misconceptions students have along the way. Use it as a teachable moment.

4. Celebrate! Producing these videos in one take required my students higher levels of organization, perseverance, and attention to detail than I'm used to seeing from several of them, so it was a delight to be able to breathe a sigh of relief and congratulate them when they were successful.

Supersize the Floorplan Area Project

Designing a floor plan to have students calculate and study area is pretty standard fare for a high school Geometry course, but the further we get into the CAD-era of drafting, the further it gets from relevance.

The only way I've ever seen this done is on grid poster board or with grid paper. It's good for modeling how someone might draft up an informal plan at the kitchen table or your workbench, but its completely unlike what "real" architects, engineers, and designers do at their desks. Your students might get some exposure in the career and technical ed department with the heavy tools from Autodesk, but there's no reason you can't get everyone a quick exposure from these free tools.

Google SketchUp

My students are in the middle of a project right now designing a water park for a fictitious town in southwest Missouri using SketchUp to lay out the 2D geometry, pulling up into 3D shapes, wrapping it with colors or images, and adding dimensions. You can add some pizzazz to your plan from the extensive 3D warehouse gallery of items contributed by SketchUp users.

I'm not mandating this for our purposes, but you can also add any text you want for identifying parts.

When you're done you can export your SketchUp to 3D printers or as images to be embedded anywhere else on the web.

How to get it:
SketchUp is available for download here for your personal use, but its software, so you'll have to wait for someone with admin privileges to install it for you at school. (I always hate coordinating this, so I stay away from locally installed apps whenever possible).

You can also run it with a browser plug-in from this link. I haven't tested that yet, but I imagine it might get slow at times. On the positive side, your students will be able to use it at home without having to install it on their own.

Autodesk Homestyler

Homestyler is marketed directly toward consumers wishing to design for their personal home or office. Therefore, there's less to offer to the "power" user, but its easier to pick up and use for your students that might be wary toward the technology aspect of your redesigned project.

My favorite parts of Homestyler:

• When adding doors/windows/appliances to your model, beyond the generic options are brand name designs that you could specifically purchase at your favorite home improvement warehouse. 

• Adding a budget or cost layer to your project because as simple as keeping a window open to homedepot.com or lowes.com

• Exporting images AND interactive walkthroughs 

• Users have a choice of several nature backdrops to have peeking behind any windows, and can even choose a setting to have the sun shine through. The point is to get a better feel for how a paint color would look in the afternoon sun of your actual home, but for your students' fake floor plans, it just adds an extra pop.

How to get it:

Not only is Homestyler free, but its also a web app, which means all your students need is the url to finish on their own at home. Launch the web app here. (requires Adobe Flash)

CONFUSION WARNING: There is also a Homestyler app in the iOS app store that has a completely different interface and functionality. The app directs the user to take a picture of the room they want to style and then add elements layered onto the image of that space. From a consumer standpoint, its a lot simpler than having to measure and layout your space like you do on the web app, but for the purposes of your floor plan area project, its useless.

Honorable Mention: Free, online tools that may also work for your project

RoomSketcher - looks a lot like Homestyler

Roomle

Placepad

"Lying" to Your Students for Good - Crafting a Story to Engage Your Students

I'm lying to my students this week, and I think its okay.

Let me tell you about the town of Oklaville, MO...

If you're not from Missouri, you may not know, but "Oklaville, MO" is a completely fictional town that I created last week to hold a fake competition for designs for a community aquatic park. I created a relatively simple website in iWeb (but probably could have used Google Sites as well) and hosted it on Dropbox using these instructions.

This "design a water park project" is the marriage of something I've been wanting to do since February (use Google SketchUp for designing and area) and fixing a project that is never really as good as I want. The prompt for the design actually comes from my textbook -

The last two years when I had my students do this project, I gave them a clean sheet of 1cm x 1 cm graph paper, and it usually came back to me in a pretty rough draft that hopefully was not totally wrinkled. They were uninspiring to say the least, but maybe that wasn't completely the students' fault. Is there really a lot of sense in taking pride in a fake water park on a piece of paper that literally no one else but the teacher will see? I wanted them to look better for the sake of work ethic and pride in work, but honestly, I was kidding myself.

When the situation arose again this year, I knew it was time for something different. I just the last couple weeks spent many hours designing a website for my friend trying to launch a side-career in Gospel music, so I had design heavily on my mind.

Take a second to go back and peruse that site if you haven't yet - its three simple pages, but they look pretty legit, right? I included a "real" seal, an address for city hall, and a couple of examples. If you take 5 seconds to do a Google Map search for that address, or even Oklaville itself, you'd know it was fictional, so when/if my students get to that point, I'll easily fess up and tell them much of what I'm writing here.

Is it deceptive? Probably. It may be risky when I tie so much of my relationship building to honesty, but I'm really counting on the relationship we can build during this project as a serve as Google SketchUp mentor.

Is this for you? I don't know, but a colleague of mine pointed out all of the times she lies to her students when they ask her if something they do is going to be for a grade. We've probably all done that several times, but for what? A single piece of paper, 10 minutes worth of work? When you create worlds for your students' work, they can get real skills out of it.

Chuck's Tips for Lying To Students (for Relevance)
1. Take time to pay attention to the details. 
It's kind of like The Matrix - your students won't know things aren't real unless they are really looking for it.

2. Prepare multiple sources of "reality."
Besides the three pages I created for the website, I also registered a new Gmail address and crafted an official looking memo for another copy of the "proposal requirements"



3. Be non-chalant about everything
I showed this to all of my students today, but I pitched it briefly to just one student on Friday and was able to get him excited about it all weekend.

4. Have a real prize, reward, or recognition ready
Of course, there isn't a real Oklaville City Council waiting to vote on my students' submissions, but that isn't any reason why I can't make a big deal out of the best submission. Have a panel of your colleagues come in to judge once you let the students in on the secret. One student asked if he could have a medal if he wins. Sure!

5. Have fun.
The whole reason you're doing this is to bridge a gap between worksheets, bookwork, and teacher-driven assessment to something that is more authentic, more engaging, and more fun. Be creative in the setting you create, and cherish the enthusiastic conversations you have along the way.

1 Simple Question for Evaluating Lessons

Is it cool enough to put online?

Would there be any value on sharing this with others online?
Would people outside of your classroom want to see it? (Do the people inside the classroom really want to see it?
If you posted all of your students' work, would they all look relatively similar?
Is it cool enough to put online?
Would you want to blog about it?
Would someone want to showcase it on your school or district's webpage?

Positive answers to these questions represent varying degrees of relevance and rigor in instructional design, but they are all questions I ask myself when evaluating lessons, assessments, or applications of technology.

Does the work your students do in your classroom have any last relevance beyond the end of the unit? Beyond this week? Beyond tomorrow?

I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling that my own interest in teaching is pretty closely related to the creativity I'm putting into students' learning activities and products. You know the feeling - you come back from a conference on a buzz because you saw the coolest demonstration of the Pythagorean Theorem, or a self-assessment tool, and all you want to do it share it with others, talk about it, and try it out.

That sharing, the excitement - we don't have to try and desperately cling to it as we survive on fumes from conference to conference. Yes, the infusion of new ideas helps to get your started, but I'd argue that high you feel from the experience is in the sharing. In talking with others about it.

Why must that feeling be confined to someone else's work? I think its a relatively attainable goal to wrap up our week in reflection with this simple question: "Did I do anything cool enough to put online?"

And there are even several activities you could reasonably answer that question with -

• You put together a concise, clear, engaging tutorial for flipping your classroom.
• You (and/or your students) used a web 2.0 tool as a forum for class responses to a prompt or a container for shared information.
• Your students create presentations or videos and share them with social media
• You enhanced a lesson you usually feel is rather dry with a video, photo, or song to grab students' attention
• Your students explored a problem relevant to their lives. This one isn't even necessarily technology related. Our senior lit comp classes do an EXTENSIVE project that one teacher started several years ago that is essentially a semester-long, super in-depth career exploration. They write papers and create presentations, but a lot of the work I've observed secondhand doesn't necessarily depend on tech-rich environments. The point being, its a COOL project.
• Your students created something
• You created something
• You used technology to enhance or improve a common task

Your answer to the 1-question lesson evaluation is in many ways reflective of where you are in your professional development, with a scale of answers being appropriate.

In the Web 2.0 class I just finished teaching after school once a week for teachers in my district, I had a group of eager learners that always came back with tech celebrations from the week before, but in varying skill levels of implementation. "Cool" for one might be "normal" for someone else. Just as an example, here are two applications of Padlet that they came up with: a space to get a discussion going, and a student-controlled medium for class art critics and portfolio.

As an excuse to show a super adorable video I rediscovered as I went to make the one at the top of this post, here's "something cool" I made after my first son was born in 2011. To link it back to your classroom (even math), why couldn't your students use Animoto to put together a review product linking unit vocab to processes and applications? #ideafornextunit :)


Landon Jude

Flip Student Project Presentations w/ iOS App Touchcast

I asked a few of my colleagues in the math office about any the reservations they had about having their students make class presentations.

"I think I'm always disappointed with the end product."
"You do it for too long, and they get bored. They don't listen to each other."
"I worry that so many kids are off task and not engaged when the other students are presenting."

When I asked one of them how many days they usually allocate to project completion IN CLASS, her response was, "Days?! How about weeks! If you don't give more time, even those honors kids won't do as well because they're so stressed out about their other classes."

Needless to say, taking out time for project presentations is not something we usually get warm fuzzies about.

THE PROJECT
At the end of every chapter in AP Stats, I usually alternate between summative exams and summative projects. The exams are good because they get more practice preparing for the AP exam, but I think the learning is usually more evident (or lack thereof), and more authentic.

We usually write papers to practice formal, technical writing and integrating math with charts and text, but I was excited about using the Touchcast app recently for my flipped lessons in another class, so I thought I'd have my students kick the tires.

The students had a choice between two projects requiring similar skills, "A Fair Coin," or "Airline Overbooking."

THE PROCESS
The most I usually commit to these projects is one day to allow for questions and clarifications, but there was an obvious need for more support on this project (especially because students under-performed last year), so gave a day for stats work and a day for putting together the slides.

After the slideshow was together, students copied the share link and inserted it as an interactive app in the iOS broadcasting app, Touchcast.

RESULTS
Students were really nervous about being on camera and talking about their slideshows. In a good way, I think. I enjoyed the creative tweaks many of them inserted in their presentation, risks that I think they may have been less likely to take if they were up in front of the room. (even though they knew I would be sharing their videos).

Getting in Touchcast took about a day and a half, but it was time we would have taken any to present, and using Touchcast, everyone was ON TASK because they were making their videos at the same time.



OTHER WAYS TO USE IN YOUR CLASS

• Students create a current events broadcast for a social studies class
• Adding in a browser-based whiteboard (like Twiddla) and having students create tutorial videos
• Students discuss themes of a piece of literature
• Students create a news broadcast about historical events
• Demonstrate a procedure for a science experiment
• Present and critique a work of art or song

Blogging Options for Teachers

I offered a challenge to the Web 2.0 Resources course I’m teaching for teachers in my school district – start a blog and reflect on your journey.

Ar least one of them must have been interested, because just a heartbeat after I issued my challenge “homework,” they asked, “Which website would you suggest?”

Touché. I had not considered that question. :)

So, without further ado, here’s my take on leading blogging platforms for teachers who want to share their craft – both successes and failures.

Note: While I enjoy it as a blogging platform, i did not include Tumblr in this list for teachers because we block it on the filters in my district (and i assume thats true for others).

BLOGGER
Blogger is (for now) my platform of choice.
Pros:

• Integrated with Google, so it plays well with images you may have saved in other Google services, and can track your user stats easily with Google analytic tools.
• TONS of options for customizing your layout or design, whether you know HTML and CSS or not.
• mobile user focused layouts available. (You dont want your blog to be a pain for someone to navigate on their phone or smaller tablet
• One-step sharing to Google+ helps get your post in front of an audience
• Add widgets to your site with javascript. My Twitter feed is right over there on the right (if you’re reading this on Blogger)

Cons:

• It’s a little difficult to find other teachers to follow within Blogger, which would also mean its a little difficult of other teachers to find YOU.
• How many people “follow” my blog? (Subscribe to it such that when I update they receive an email, or it is fed to them through an RSS feed) I have no idea. This is hard to track in Blogger.
• The only thing you can do on the iOS app is publish basic text and plug in photos. Not even any embedded HTML, so I really must ALWAYS write from my desktop or macbook.

WORDPRESS
While Blogger is my main squeeze, I cheat on it with WordPress because my wife uses it and sometimes I get blog tool envy.
Pros:

• Reblogging. Did you find another blog post that is inspiring you to add commentary on or write your own on the subject? Reblogging puts that post along with your own text onto your blog. I think it builds community as other teachers share ideas, and it can drive a little more traffic to your own blog.
• Following other blogs and finding your subscribers. WordPress has a reader built within it, which makes it easier to find other teachers, read other teachers, and find out who else is subscribing to you. This is what I most wish Blogger had.
• Built-in user stats are more easy to use AND more extensive than Blogger. All or most of the data on the stats page of WordPress is available for Blogger bloggers if you also use Google Analytics, but who wants ONE MORE TOOL to check? I mean, you just added blogging to your list, right? 
AMAZING iOS app

Cons:

• Short on HTML and CSS customization. If you use the free version, you’re pretty stuck in the official WordPress templates
• No custom widgets on the free version. (although there are some official WordPress widgets you can add)

EDUBLOGS
Edublogs has been around since 2005, so they certainly have the most experience with teacher and student blogs, and (in my opinion) have a lot of polish on the product. The platform is built on the bones WordPress publishes for companies, so operationally, it quite similar.
Pros:

• COMMUNITY. Edublogs has a tab on their home page that takes you to a page organizing the community of edubloggers according to interest. Whereas I can do a search on WordPress.com and find many relevant teacher blogs to my interest, the Edublogs community page lists TOP blogs in that category. I see value in that because I don’t want to sift through potential junk.
  
• Professional development. New to blogging? Take the “Edublogs Teacher Challenge.” It’s like a self-directed online course in blogging.
• Mobile-friendly. I set up everything on my iPad.

Cons:

• COST. Unless you pay $7.95 a month to get a pro account, you might as well have a WordPress.com or Blogger account. The power of Edublogs is in organizing all of your students’ blogs in one place and having control over who sees your posts and their posts, but you have none of that power with a free account.

KIDBLOG
The favorite thing about Kidblogs is how they market themselves. Essentially its, “Do everything you would on Edublogs, but for free.” There’s a chart on this page spelling all of that out.
Pros:

• WordPress platform. Just like Edublogs, its built on WordPress’ product for hosting your own blogs, so the platform is easy to use and manage.
• TONS of privacy settings. If you’re writing only for your class and your students’ parents, you can completely lockdown privacy by making your blog visible only to individuals who login from that class. The younger your students are, the more important this is, obviously.
• Have your students blog and reflect with you. (For free this time, as opposed to Edublogs). Set up accounts and blogs for your students and manage their posts, comments, and privacy setttings.
• There’s an iOS app, but it’s slow to be updated.

Cons:

• It’s called KIDblogs. My high schoolers are always super sensitive to being “grown,” so I don’t know how jazzed they would be with sharing their super thoughtful reflection from their Kidblogs account.
• Just like WordPress, a little short on the customization of the layout and design. That’s a con for me as a teacher that likes that, but it might actually be a positive for kids who are going to spend all of their time on the layout instead of writing.
  

SUMMARY
Whichever tool you choose is up to your needs. Giving each of these an honest assessment, I would feel comfortable using any of them, with a slight reservation with the kidblogs name. I’m a grown man, for crying out loud. 

If you’re going to write WITH your students, I would strongly suggest Kidblogs, but I would at least peek over at the Edublogs community and professional development pages. I know I will.