New Semester Resolution #2: Never (Always) Ignore Student Responses

Do you ever feel like you must have fallen asleep at the wrong time during PD or way back at the university?

"Listen to your students," sounds like such great advice for a principal or instructor to give to any young or pre-service teacher, but sometimes its just as important to silence a voice so another can rise.

He looks so eager, right?

Listen to Your Students

Do you have any procedures in place for getting feedback from your students? I do this sporadically as exit slips every couple weeks on any given lesson or topic, but I always do it to begin and end a semester with a survey.

The initial survey is to get info on my students' learning styles and teacher history, and the exit survey is for feedback on how they learned, what they liked, what they didn't, what might be helpful to tweak, etc. Some of my exit survey responses are funny - "He dresses well," - some of it is mean - "can't ever teach" - but most of it confirms attitudes I already have heard from my students, and some of it comes as a helpful surprise (the first time I considered superfluous technology use may have impeded a student's learning).

When a couple students out of ninety say something similar, I often attribute those to outliers or students with an ax to grind, but if I see it over and over, it builds validity. Giving this feedback opportunity to my students is helpful in several ways:

1. I get favor collateral from many students because they know I'm trying to improve
2. Frustrated students can get things off their chests and start clean in January
3. I can model humility to my students (it takes some to even put yourself out there)
4. I get a window into my teaching that does not usually come out when other teachers are in the room or during walk-through or formal observations. (Contents of this past semester's survey mostly led to these new semester resolutions)

Ignore Your Students (So You Can Hear From Others)

As I alluded to earlier, this would have come as a surprise to student-teacher Chuck, but sometimes kids wanting to answer questions can be bad for my lessons. I'm sure you've see it too, but the rate at which I let the A/B kid answer and ask every question is often directly related to the number of eyes I see rolling or kids that check out and start doing anything besides math. I notices this fairly early on last semester with a particular student. 

This was the sequence of my responses:

For elementary teachers, the stick can is well, elementary, but I don't find it common place in secondary classrooms. For me, I probably never bothered to even try because we have so many more students. No part of me wants to keep track of 90 sticks and/or 5 different cans. Using the Stick Pick app makes your "can" MUCH easier to manage. The added benefit with the app is that you can set it to give you different Bloom's prompts for different students, allowing you to differentiate on the fly.

Conclusion

Finding methods to generate and receive feedback from every student that work for you is the bottom line. Its easy to pat yourself on the back when a couple students demonstrate mastery, but should it come at the expense of the large group that were almost there?

Face-Off: Which Bono Venn Diagram Is Correct?

Have you seen the top Venn diagram on Facebook or Twitter based on the U2 song "With or Without You?"

I'm always pleased with math-type subjects creep their way into everyday life, and this diagram is no exception. (Little known fact to the general public: English and history teachers stole Venn Diagrams from mathematicians)

The top diagram is cute, and a good conversation-starter, but I don't know if it's correct.


Here's the lyrics in the chorus we need to dissect:

With or without you

With or without you

I can't live

With or without you

Quick background on Venn Diagrams:

• The Venn Diagram was published by John Venn in 1880. The intentional was to show relationship between elements (things) in any given comparison of sets (groups). (Source)
• The overlapping area of two or more sets is called the intersection. An intersection would be the subset of both overlapping sets.
• A set that describes everything that is in two or more sets is called the union
• In common language, an intersection is usually appropriate when "and" is the conjunction between two sets, and a union is appropriate when "or" is the conjunction.

It seems to me that the correct placement of Bono depends on where you're choosing to stress your interpretation. Is it in the double-negative spiral of "can't" and "without," or is it as cut and dry as "or and "and"?

Which diagram is correct? 

Further study on this topic:

"With or Without You Venn Diagram Meme"

"You, Bono, and a Venn Diagram"

"Bono Residency"

FacebookStories.com - Infographics Your Students Will Care About

Have you checked out your Facebook "Year in Review 2012" yet? If you're a blogger, you're probably  a pro at reflection, so maybe you did. What you may have skipped (because I very nearly did) were the "Facebook Trends."

What delightfully surprised me about the 2012 Trends was that it was a collection of culturally relevant infographics. (and even broken down by country. and analyzed.)

Background

I LOVE infographics. They're really just a 21st century repackaging of pie charts, line graphs, or histograms with words and associated images, but I love them because (good) ones are designed (instead of produced) and they're relevant. Pie charts live in boring budget proposals; line graphs on the ticker of Bloomberg TV or the Wall Street Journal. But infographics get shared on your Facebook timeline. Their pinned to your "Isn't That Clever" Pinterest board. They're so integral to the layout of USA Today, you probably didn't even notice.

To start off the year in AP Stats (and to ensure my students had appropriate degrees of tech proficiency before I unleashed wicked expectations upon them), I had everyone bring in infographics to share and then we discussed the ways graphs were represented and repackaged on them.

I think most of them just ended up doing a Google image search for "infographics," but here were the sites I suggested they try:

nerdgraphs.com
visual.ly
coolinfographics.com
Infographics - GOOD
flowingdata.com

The unintentional consequence of this assignment was that I also got to know my students' interest a little better through their infographic choices.

Here was my favorite; the controller pie charts opened up a discussion for me. Lost scaling opportunity in the bottom left corner about best-selling genres.

So What?

My Stats students did a good job grabbing infographics, and most of them took a clear interest to the assignment and made it meaningful, but what I like about Facebook Stories' Trends is that they're simply produced, yet relevant to their audience, and in an marketplace your students are frequenting.  Better than that, in the endless battle between what I want and what I can accomplish, these graphs represent to me an even more approachable example to have my students creating their own infographs. (When that finally happens.)

The one at right features songs that came up most in status updates. It's a pie chart.... but not really. Way to psych me out. I like these the slices were scaled by radial length rather than degrees because my eye tends to ignore tiny slices that have arrows pointed to them. (No offense, east coast, but this is kind of what I do when I look at maps of the US, too)

I mean, seriously. Can't you imagine this on a .PPT slide with the speaker saying, "As you can clearly see..."

There were a few that were slightly confusing, however, and strangely enough, looked very much like something I'd expect to see from a student who lazily wanted a easily scaled shape.

Bottom Line:

In my opinion, infographics are one of the least intimidating ways for students to begin publishing for the web and sharing on social media. Kids love poster projects - infographics are a digital extension of that (but they don't even HAVE to be digital). 

Infographics can introduce percentage problems, experimental design, discussions on statistical bias, geometric similarity, and even log scales in upper-level courses. Because they're all over the web and literally relevant to any interest, they're also convenient for enhancing engagement through choice and personalization.

Resources:

I went to a great infographic breakout session with +Kathy Schrock (@kathyschrock on twitter) at METC 2012. She's said it better than I can; here's her infographics page. If you're going to METC 2013 (after you see me) make sure you check out at least one of her sessions.