#MOEDCHAT Blog Challenge #3 - The Importance of Student Collaboration

Rather than trying to write and convince that giving students opportunities to collaborate was critical to team building, problem solving, and soft skills (or the like), I decided to this week use the research tool embedded in Google Documents (bonus points for following this tutorial to learn how you can, too) and see what 5 others had concluded:

1. When teaming up for web searching, students find information faster and make fewer errors in judging relevance of search results.

Lazonder, Ard W. "Do two heads search better than one? Effects of student collaboration on web search behaviour and search outcomes." British Journal of Educational Technology 36.3 (2005): 465-475.

2. Student collaboration is critical in any constructivist approach.

This literature review from 1996 is so basic its genius. We have so many layers of technology available to us now that its easy to lose sight of the real power behind their utility.

“Online communication presumes that students can communicate, that is, that they

can meaningfully participate in conversations. In order to do that, they need to be able

to interpret messages, consider appropriate responses, and construct coherent replies.

Many students are not able to engage in cogent and coherent discourse. Why? Because,

most students have rarely been asked to contribute their opinions about topics. They

have been too busy memorizing what the teachers tell them.”

Jonassen, David H. Computers in the classroom: Mindtools for critical thinking. Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1996.

3. The ways we structure student collaborations is not be be careless. 1 + 1 may equal -3 in some cases with the wrong pairings.

Peer collaboration is a critical component to reaching learners in their “zone of proximal development” by taking advantage of pairings with “more competent peers,” but this paper investigates groupings in which the more competent peer’s opinions did not prevail, so both students actually regressed.

Tudge, Jonathan. "Vygotsky, the zone of proximal development, and peer collaboration: Implications for classroom practice." (1992).

4. Students who collaborate in study groups keep up better with material, have more opportunities to verbally practice the language of academic discourse, and garnered and gave feedback through critique and conversation of reading materials.
When students cram, even in groups, they may share some of the work load, but they lose out of the social, collaborative growth they could gain from discussing the content.

Lazar, Althier M. "Who is studying in groups and why? Peer collaboration outside the classroom." College teaching 43.2 (1995): 61-65.

5. The “cognitive surplus” or extra design and intelligent energy we contribute in our free-time make large-scale, global projects possible.
+Clay Shirky is betting on the idea changing the world as information is democratized and everyone has access to information no single person could accumulate, curate, or disseminate.

What does that mean for students? When students are collaborating and sharing, that “one kid” who decides to do a little extra research because they were curious benefits the whole group's expanded understanding.

Playing School: 6 Easy Ways to "Play" in Your Secondary Classroom

I know my 3 year old daughter has a bit of a misconception of what I do at school...

We're part of a great Parents as Teachers program that comes to our home once a month to work with the kids and "assess" them every few months according to developmental norms for their age. From Lucy's perspective, Ms. Chris comes over to play with her and Landon. She doesn't know she's learning, and she certainly isn't aware that sometimes she's being tested. Its just fun.

She knows that Daddy goes to work and is a teacher, so when I told her that Ms. Chris is her teacher, she made this connection:

"My daddy's going to work to play with boys and girls."

I'm not suggesting that your entire curriculum needs to be game-ified (although MangaHigh is my favorite) or that we need to change teaching styles (if you're generally a curmudgeon, you'll feel and seem fake if you try to do what someone else thinks if "fun"), but that everyone in the room will be more productive when a little bit of play is introduced.

And honestly, I think its good for all of us. Some days, I feel like this:

My wife, who stays home with our two little ones, is a great blessing to me because she saves me from most of those days. She has her own struggles as our children's first teacher, which she blogged about yesterday and has me reflecting more on today. (Being a good mama on a bad day)

Do you ever get so caught up in learning objectives, your curriculum and or mastery of content that everything else going on in your classroom gets lost? I did this to my daughter yesterday morning at the breakfast table. Good. grief.

Per the morning tradition, I was reading to Lucy out of the Jesus Storybook Bible during breakfast while she ate her cereal. Beth reports that the kids usually really enjoy this time and always ask, "More Bible, please! And cereal." This is where my "teacher" training totally got in the way of Lucy totally enjoying the morning's reading of The Prodigal Son - instead of just reading the story, showing some excitement, doing my very best character voices, and letting the narrative do its work, I kept checking for understanding and comprehension. With my 3 year old. Sure, she was able to answer my questions and was "engaged," but she certainly didn't really seem to enjoy the story. She asked for more, but kind of in a "this wasn't as great an experience as usual" kind of way. LOL

After some gentle(?) encouragement from Beth (who always supports my character talents) to just read the story, I'd say Lucy and I both had a much better time, and she was asking the questions the second time around.

Kids expect to have fun, enjoyable, memorable experiences at school because that's how they begin their educations. Somewhere in the system, we (I) kill a lot of those expectations because there are tests to prepare for, kids that don't "deserve" to be rewarded with a fun lesson, and content that doesn't readily lend itself to games.

1. Listen to music (and I don't mean classical).
I believe the research that classical music helps students learn, or raises tests scores, and have a Mozart playlist on Spotify for my "everyday" music, but sometimes its good to indulge yourself, or your students and play something you and/or they really like.

If you're afraid of the lyric factor, allow yourself to have a lyric-check policy. You don't want to play anything offensive, so go ahead and check those lyrics with any of these 5 tools. You can also search on Spotify, Playlist.com (or even YouTube) for "clean" or "edited" versions.

2. Laugh at yourself.
I shared this image with a few of my classes last week. I used it as an example of how I always try NOT to stand, and then the kids told me the ways I DO stand. At least they're watching. :) (Apparently I have this arms crossed, shoulders hunched thing)

3. Give high fives, elbows, fist bumps.
This is my number one ice breaker when I have a crummy attitude toward a student or they have one with me for the day. Its also a day-maker for a lot of kids. Henry Wong advises in The First Days of School that you give out hugs as students enter the classroom. That's obviously inappropriate (and often times undesired) to do with secondary students, but free high fives in the hallway? Just make sure to pump the hand sanitizer.

4. Use color.
Students don't suddenly lose their taste for colorful, welcoming, designed classrooms just because they're older. Sure, you probably didn't have that bulletin board class in your secondary ed courses that all the elementary teachers rave about, but that doesn't give you an excuse for boring, blank walls.

And don't stop the color there - let your students color. Your interactive whiteboard, tablets, and even regular whiteboard have dozens of colors of available to them. Don't YOU get bored writing only in one color? (Bonus points for having your students color code their notes. For example, each step of a  solution in a math class is color coded to show process, or in a Lit class, character notes one color, themes in another, and foreshadowing in another).

5. Have kids create.
Lucy's teacher recently just told her to draw a picture. Lucy was just doing something she loved, but Ms. Chris was assessing all kinds of spatial, kinesthetic, and imaginative benchmarks from just a few marks. With proper pedagogy of learning expectations and scoring guides, I think its possible to do the same with secondary students.

Giant rolls of butcher paper, video tutorials, stop-motion lego, ebooks, regular books, songs, websites, images, etc. Here are some iPad specific examples. They can even create mobile games for assessment, review, or constructive activities. (Free game designing tools)

6. Play boardgames as a class or in small groups, but make requirements for moving correct responses to questions.
I like this for:

• Differentiation - you can ask different groups different questions
• Immediate feedback
• Collaboration
• Quick gratification

Implementation tips: 
I see my kids collaborate more willingly and effectively in their game teams when I stick big whiteboards in front of them.  There's magic in those insanely expensive pens.
Project a physical gameboard with the pieces using a document camera, create your own simple version in your interactive whiteboard software (I did this fairly easily with squares and rectangles for Monopoly, and was able to make 3-way Connect Four), or find your favorite web-based version.

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What's most important? 

Making the effort, and trying play that feels natural to you. Just like different instructional strategies have higher yields in different settings, what play works in the classroom next door may well flop for you. Don't give up, and don't punish yourself. 

Have fun.

"Save to Google Drive" Extension - It's Not Going to Replace Your Social Bookmark Service

Mashable ran a post Dec. 12th about a new Chrome extension called "Save to Google Drive" (Chrome web store), but the service doesn't quite fulfill as advertised. ("New Chrome Extension Lets You Save Web Content to Google Drive")

As I was drafting this post in my head throughout the day, thinking of possibilities, I was hoping "Save to Google Drive" was going to replace Evernote or Diigo as my web-clipping/bookmarking utilities and integrate seamlessly for anyone running Google Drive.

I had visions of my students browsing in Chrome, saving their bookmarks in Drive, and sharing that folder with me and others in work groups.  Here's what I found out.

This extenstion is fantastic for syncing photos to Google Drive to save within my organization or classroom, but do I even want it there?

Why Does This Even Matter For My Classroom?

Sadly, I'd say it really doesn't. Bo.lt is a good service for anyone that wants a reliable backup to pages they archive or create (which sounds like every teacher who has EVER made a webquest), but its not even that great as a social bookmarker for students because it gives me a link I would still need to paste to Evernote or Diigo. I also continue to favor these two options over this new extension because both work well with iPads (Evernote app, Diigo app). Sure, Drive is cloud storage, and has its own app, but I feel let down by the Google Apps experience for my students on the iPad more often than I'm satisfied.

Google Certified Teacher, +Molly Schroeder wrote about it here on Chromebook Classroom, so perhaps she has a different take. Her environment is certainly different (Chromebook v. iPad), and sometimes in technology, that's all the difference.

Writing with Tech: Marzano "Chalk Talk" for Summarizing, Similarities and Differences

We've recently just finished solving systems of inequalities in my Algebra 2 class. Without really know what that means, its only important to know that there are many similarities between systems of inequalities and systems of equations in the manner with which you set them up to solve, and only a few distinct, but important, differences.

I knew several of my students felt like the inequalities was another example of the course seemingly doing something "new" every week or two, and I knew some of my students were really making the connection between the two, so I took a day to take advantage of the knowledge gap and practice some summarizing skills in small groups.

This activity was loosely based on what I thought I saw as a Marzano high-yield strategy called "Chalk Talk." I can no longer find any linked reference between "Marzano strategies" and "chalk talk," but here's a document that IS somewhat similar in explanation from The League of Professional Schools.

Lesson:

Day 3 of Solving Systems of Inequalities
This would have been Day 2, but I had not previously reviewed graphing linear inequalities yet in this course (where it was supposed to be in Chapter 2), so I tacked on a day here in Chapter 3 because I always felt like I was reteaching them anyway.

Do Now: (about 7 minutes)
Students came in, took out what was supposed to be their homework from the night before on systems of inequalities, and I played this video in which I'd worked out some solutions.

A couple of hours I just let the video play and allowed some talking amongst the kids about things they were noticing while I took care of administrative things, a couple hours I stopped it every once in awhile and had kids respond with what the next step would be.

Chalk Talk: (5 minutes)
Because this was the first time trying it out, I didn't want to invest too much technology-time getting the kids set up, so I did this step with Post-Its. Accomplishing this step with each group in a Google Doc would be simple as well.

There were two things I loved about this activity. I randomly distributed the group numbers around the room, forcing at least half of the class to move in order to sit with their numbers, and many students who had never worked together shared wonderfully together. It disappointed me that I hadn't switched them up sooner. Secondly, the last, summarizing step was a happy accident of scaffolding. Some of the groups basically regurgitated back a list of things they had all compiled, and some groups' writers spent several minutes writing wonderful paragraphs and being very thoughtful about using descriptive, math vocabulary.

Sharing and Conclusion: (10 minutes)
As the groups read, I put things I was hearing up on the SMARTboard.

You'll probably notice that a few things would up on both sides of the chart - a confusion I wasn't even aware of. It was helpful for me to see that and for the group that put it (incorrectly) on the similarities side to have the uh-oh moment after the other groups put it as a difference.

Tech Adaptations for YOU:

Charting the class list of similarities differences could have been done as a Google Doc, on the SMARTboard, with a document camera and a projector, or even just a whiteboard/big poster (but then the kids wouldn't be able to access later.)

A good conclusion activity for interactive notebooks/portfolios could be a reflective piece on how/why some things ended up on both sides, or something the student learned/strengthened as a result of seeing others' thoughts

This could serve as an introduction to systems of inequalities with a webquest, book reading assignment, or video completed prior to the post-it note silent writing time.

Using Old Stuff: Neglected Towers and Laptops

It's technology, so you're familiar with the inevitable march towards obsolescence, but you're nostalgic, too, so you don't want to just chuck the old machines out with the garbage (or try to recycle them). Why not get some use out of them?!



Here's just a few ideas that I've utilized, and the glorious machines that made it all possible.

1998 PowerMac G3  

• Offline Notes Sharer
• Document Creating
• (small) Reference Library
• Crowd(classroom)sourced Knowledge Creation Station (silent conversations, classwide KWL charts, etc.)

I recovered this old machine in 2008 from the back of the library in the A/V graveyard. After inquiring to A/V and the tech department about what I would need to do to "legally" take it home, I was met mostly with confusion about my motives for taking that super old tower. Translation - it was so old no one cared.

I had to buy a DVD drive for it so I could install my personal copy of OS X over the OS 9 living on the 7 gb (?!!) harddrive, and upgraded the RAM an embarrassingly small 256 MB, but alas, she was mine. My first goal for this Mac was as a media center to stream Hulu to my TV, but... this computer was from 1998. Surprisingly, it WAS able to stream Pandora.

This Mac returned to school after my wife (and I?) eventually decided we didn't need a bondi blue  Pandora machine sitting on the floor in our living room. And at school, it solved a problem for me! I felt like kids coming back from illness, field trip, or suspension and needing previous day's notes was becoming a daily occurrence, so the Mac eventually became my yesterday's-notes, type papers, and use the dictionary widget machine in the back of my class. 

Because the harddrive was so small, I had to be judicious, but I was also able to some helpful software on there, as well. 

• To most efficiently conduct my notes-sharing, I installed a slightly older, smaller-than-current version of SMART Notebook. If I were doing this now, I would probably just use Notebook Express.
• Open Office for document creation
• The newest iTunes version I could get on the old (pre-Intel) PowerPC architecture

This tower is officially retired now that I have a class set of iPads since the kids could use those for every role the Mac had filled.

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2004 Generic Dell Laptop 

• Mobile offline notes station 
• Small group work log (at the desk, which made it less obtrusive to the usual classroom environment than 4 people moving chairs to the back table)
• Document Creation
• (small) Reference Library
• Crowd(classroom)sourced Knowledge Creation Station (silent conversations, class-wide KWL charts, etc.)
• Classroom sign out spreadsheet

I don't even remember the specs on this laptop except that it has no internal wireless card and the install of Windows XP that was on there when I inherited it from my parents was trashed. To put it more positively, I finally had a machine I could (potentially) destroy by going all-in with a small Ubuntu Linux install. This was made EXPONENTIALLY more difficult without the internal wireless card (although, chances are it would not have played well with linux anyway), so every time I wanted to update software or retrieve a new package, I had to dig a network patch cable out of the basement and sit on the floor next to my TV (where the modem and router are). 

This harddrive was a little more manageable, but the processor is incredibly sluggish, so I soon realized the prospects for this machine were actually pretty similar to the Mac previously mentioned. I could run Notebook software (this time, Express). Video streaming was still pretty much a no go, but if I was patient enough, I could buffer some YouTube.

Again, because of the iPads, this laptop had no more of its current roles to fulfill. On a whim the first week of school, I made it my sign-out/sign-in sheet. I can leave it by the door with only one thing to plug in (instead of monitor and CPU), and its still out and present for other uses. I was a little concerned about theft, but since I got it free and don't really use it, I wouldn't really be missing it. I like having that record available right by the door for easy reference.

Anything interesting you're doing with your old machines? Budget-crunched schools are dying to know!

Web Publishing Requires Some Humility...

Naked before the world...

I taught myself another lesson, today.  I've been warning the Functions students for almost a week now that they were going to have a project coming up instead of another quiz over material from chapter 3, about transforming functions.  I also told them that they were going to do most of their work online, and submit their project to me via the class facebook wall, or via email to be posted by myself.

Some students seemed interested with the prospect, but I had a couple of students who were very resistant to putting their work out there for everyone to see.

"But Mr. Baker, I don't want to everyone to see my grade."
"What if I don't do very well? Everyone will know!" 

My response to them was one that I adhere to myself before posting things on here or sharing things on Twitter of facebook.

If you're worried about what other people will think about the work you've done, then make sure that you submit work that you know you are proud of.  There's nothing to be ashamed of if there's nothing in your work to carry shame about.

With that in mind, I shared a recent group project from my "Learning with the Internet" class last night on the Twitter hashtag #edtech, and even had someone retweet it to pass our wiki on.  I felt pretty good.  The first bookmark is our work.  While checking the class discussion board this morning, I found out that another group had also done their project on Diigo.com!  The second bookmark is the other group's work.

• islt9440 - Group 7: Diigo for Education - About diigo.com
  My group for my grad class, "Learning with the Internet" created this wiki about using and implementing Diigo in the classroom.
  tags: diigo collaboration bookmarking lesson plans educator
   
• Student Learning with Diigo
  One of the groups in my grad class, "Learning with the Internet" created this apge.
  tags: diigo collaboration bookmarking lesson plans educator
  
  Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

So, what's the lesson, here?  Well, first of all, there was a nice lesson in humility.  :)  But moreso, I'd say that the same thing I told my students about their future project holds true for myself.  I felt confident turning in that wiki for our group work.  I knew I had created a well thought out sample lesson, was proud of the way I had initiated our group's norms for communication on the wiki, and thought we had a good amount of knowledge on the site for a curious teacher to happen upon.

At first I was just stricken with panic over how much more professional in appearance group 8's Google site was.  After the fear subsided, however, I was able to appreciate how well thought-out the page was and was able to escape envy and shame.  I congratulated the group on a job well done.