Spotlight on Strategies: Blogging

Selecting a topic for the Spotlight on Strategies assignment was tough: at this juncture in my career, I am transitioning from a classroom full of forty or so students five or six times a day to a school full of teachers and students, where I have the opportunity to be an educational leader.

I found myself wanting to focus on a strategy that had teachers as the center of my attention, with the beneficiaries of the strategy being both teacher and student.

I ended up deciding on writing as my focus, and particularly blogging as a writing strategy.

With Common Core standards the norm in most schools across the country, and the goal of literacy in all subject areas as a part of those standards, it seems to me that many teachers might benefit from the ideas about writing that I share here.

I have two goals at the core of this strategy:

1. The first goal of the strategy is to help teachers in any subject start to feel comfortable assigning writing to their students, and to help them (including English teachers!) realize that not every writing assignment must be a formal essay or research paper. I want them to see blogging as a potential tool to engage students in writing in a way that a typical writing assignment usually doesn't.
2. To engage students in writing that is relevant, that requires them to make connections and think deeply about a topic, to include the thoughts and ideas of others in their work (and cite them appropriately), and to provide them with an authentic audience for their work so that they understand the importance of writing with clarity and for a specific audience.

The practice of writing in any subject area can be done without the use of digital media, but digital media adds an opportunity for depth and creativity that is unavailable in pen-and-paper writing. Adding digital media turns writing an essay or research project into an opportunity to blog, to create a product that can be read by a wide audience, and to contribute thoughts and ideas to a global conversation. By using blogging as a writing strategy, teachers and students gain a unique way to approach writing that can help both groups rethink the way they have traditionally thought about writing.

My hope with this Spotlight in Strategies is to reach students at two levels: I am hoping to reach teachers as my first group of students, since most teachers would benefit from rethinking how they approach writing, and I am hoping to help students become better, more thoughtful writers as a result of changing the way teachers think about approaching writing.

Here's a direct link to the SOS, in case they hyperlink above doesn't work: https://www.smore.com/u160v

Creativity in School

Interviewing high school students about creativity in the classroom for this week's post turned out to be pretty funny. First, I got a sort of dumbfounded expression... a blank face. When I asked again, I saw the understanding that they were being asked for opinions begin to sink in... and then they realized they'd need to answer my open-ended question. The expression "deer in the headlights" comes to mind.

Then the answers started to come.

I should disclaim that the students I interviewed were my daughter (Mara), a senior in high school, her friend (Libby), a senior at another high school, and my son (Ethan) who is a freshman at yet another high school. These are kids who are quite comfortable with me and very free with their opinions, so their initial response surprised me a little. In retrospect, it probably shouldn't have surprised me, since it's pretty much the same response I would get when I asked my students for feedback in the classroom. They always seemed a little shocked that a teacher would ask for their opinions on something, and then take those opinions into consideration.

According to all three of the kids that I talked to, creativity in the classroom is almost nonexistent.

Mara talked about the fact that even the graduation and college prep requirements in the schools minimize the need to develop creativity. She pointed out that high school graduation requirements include only one year of foreign language or art, and that the college prep requirements aren't much better, with two years of foreign language and one year of a visual or performing art. Her argument was that even the setup of the educational system minimizes the opportunity for students to develop their creative side, and that the creative opportunities within core classes are nil. She went so far as to say that creativity in most classes is actively discouraged, as responses that deviate from the teacher's specific requirements are penalized even when they meet the learning objective.

At that point, Libby jumped into the conversation and elaborated on Mara's point about being penalized for being creative when creativity wasn't necessary. She discussed an example from an English class, where her teacher required everyone to follow the exact same format for writing and would penalize students who didn't follow it, even when they were excellent writers. She acknowledged that there is a need for students to understand the structure of writing and that there are certain components that need to be there all the time, but she said that she found it frustrating that she was restricted to a specific formula throughout the year. She was never given an opportunity to apply what she had learned, to create even within a structure, and she and others in the class found it frustrating.

Ethan listened to both girls, and agreed with them. He pointed out that at his school, there is no incentive to be creative, even if he's not penalized. As he put it, why should he put in the extra effort to include an interesting graphic or other element to a project when he won't get a better grade for it?

I found Ethan's perspective to be particularly interesting because he went to a junior high where the learning was primarily project-based and required a lot of creativity. When I asked Ethan which he preferred using biology/life science as an example, he said that he preferred the experience from junior high. He talked about a project he had done in junior high where he had to develop a classification system for anything he wanted (he used Minecraft); in high school, he's been asked to put together a presentation about the classification system. The junior high project was much more fun for him, and it required creativity and a deep understanding of the underlying principles of classification that ins't present in putting together a Powerpoint about the topic.

When asked what they would change about school to encourage creativity, particularly using digital media and technology, they took a few minutes to get warmed up. I had to provide a couple of examples from my own classroom to get them going. Once they understood what I was asking, they had some pretty good ideas.

• They said that they'd like to have opportunities for cross-curricular learning (they didn't use the phrase, but it's what they described), where they can apply information across multiple subjects and do something with it. 
• They shared that they'd like to have more choices available to them. They pointed out that they have access to the internet almost all the time, and can search for pretty much anything that interests them, yet they are often restricted to a single topic on any given assignment. Libby described a memorable experience from a math class: for the final, students were given a choice of five topics that had been covered in class and had to work with a group, choose a topic, and find a way to teach it to the class. It was particularly positive for her because math is a very difficult subject for her, and it gave her an opportunity to take a strength and work with it and apply it, rather than being forced to work with something of her teacher's choosing, whether or not she understood it.
• They asked for opportunities to use social media to work on projects. Mara pointed out that a group Tumblr account could be used to complete a project, even when the students weren't together. Libby was quick to jump in that it would need to be up to the students to decide how to work on it, though, because not all students have access. (Libby goes to a school in an area that is lower socioeconomically than Mara, and is more sensitive to the struggles of families who have lower incomes.) Both girls agreed, though, that they would like to have the freedom to work in groups, on cross-curricular projects, in whatever way worked best for the kids in the group.
• Ethan pointed out that video games open up all kinds of opportunities for creativity. He used Minecraft as an example and said that it could be used to help kids learn everything from classification systems (like he did in his project) to how to build structures, to resource management. His point was that it's fun and it doesn't feel like learning, but requires a lot of knowledge to do it right.

As a parent, I am sad that my kids and their friends are experiencing an education where creativity is not a part of their experience. As a former teacher (and now leader) in the district that these kids go to school in, I am disappointed in their overall experience (from a creativity perspective), and I see that there is a lot of work to be done to make some changes that will enhance creativity.

Changing to Embrace Creativity in Schools

In the well-known 2007 TED Talk, "Do Schools Kill Creativity," Sir Ken Robinson asserts that our current school system was designed around the factory model in order to create trained workers, and that the current model is outdated for the needs of the 21st-century workforce. In fact, he asserts that the current model of education is killing creativity.

For the most part, I find that I agree with Robinson. As the current educational system is constructed, children are pressed into a one-size-fits-all model of instruction and assessment that encourages like-mindedness and largely marginalizes (at best) students who are divergent thinkers. Students are rushed through curriculum in order to match a pacing guide that is set up so that students can pass a test that shows that they have attained a certain amount of knowledge. There is little to no allowance for students who learn at different rates or who want to explore a topic in more depth.

The educational system desperately needs an overhaul.

While sweeping change in education will take a very long time, a lot of effort, and political mountain-moving, small changes made by many can start to shift the balance toward the changes that need to happen in order to develop an educational system that serves the creativity and critical-thinking needs of the 21st-century workforce.

With the introduction of technology into education, teachers have an unparalleled opportunity to create changes in they way they teach, and in the way students learn. Technology offers an opening that provides teachers with a reason to rethink what they do, why they do it, and whether there are different, or better, ways to approach student learning.

Digital media can be used for students to delve into a topic in depth, to provide them with opportunities to create their own knowledge, to share their learning, to solve problems, or to enter into a much larger community to discuss and solve problems.

In my last year in the classroom, I discovered that using digital media brought not just my students, but their work, to life. When my students were required to blog instead of write an essay, they learned the real meaning of audience, because they had an audience. When I told them to consider what they could add to their blogs to make them better, or to engage their audience, they found videos, other blogs, articles, and even songs that were related to the topic. While their basic writing skills were pretty much unchanged (except for the students who paid more attention to the nuances of writing because they didn't want to look bad), the quality of the work they produced improved significantly. When they realized they had an audience besides the teacher reading their work, my students' creativity in how they approached the assignment increased dramatically. Because they used a digital medium, they were able to incorporate so much more than they could in a traditional essay, and they embraced the process.

Had I stayed in the classroom, I would have incorporated even more use of digital media throughout the school year. Since I am now in a different position, I find myself encouraging teachers to incorporate digital media in their own classrooms. As I work with teachers and have conversations about planning their instruction, I challenge teachers to come up with ideas for how to use digital media. I ask questions, and I provide feedback to ideas that they generate. When a teacher is particularly struggling to find an idea, I will make a suggestion, but I try to keep it limited so that the teacher owns whatever they decide to do.

I find that teachers are currently my students, and the way that I can incorporate digital media to increase creativity is through providing a push for them to use it themselves in their classrooms. In this way, needing to plan how to use digital media in the classroom is the motivator for teacher creativity, which, in turn, should spark student creativity.

I am hopeful that if I do my job well, and even some teachers embrace changes that promote student creativity, I can help become a part of the shift in momentum that transitions education from a 20th-century model that encouraged conformity to a 21st-century model that embraces creativity and critical thinking.

Reference:

Do Schools Kill Creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson | TED Talks. (2007). Retrieved November 20, 2015, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

In the course of developing the media-infused presentation for this topic, I had an opportunity to build on a unit I started last year when I was still in the classroom, and then further developed in another Wilkes course. This presentation assignment challenged me to add depth and additional resources to a unit that I have now been working on for quite some time, and I am quite happy that I had that opportunity.

Here's the presentation:
Understanding Juvenile Justice

In considering how I would put this presentation together, I realized that it is an excellent opportunity to point students toward resources that can help them more fully understand a topic. In this case, it is a topic that we study in the CSU Expository Reading and Writing Course, which is taught throughout California. The last time I taught the unit, I took the core content (reading and structured scaffolding activities) and infused technology into it. My students had to blog as their final essay, they had to research additional information, and they had to include both class readings and outside sources into their final blog. This provided additional opportunities for my students to understand the topic.

By using this presentation as a starting point for additional depth of understanding, I am helping my students access additional information that directly connects to key ideas presented in the unit's texts, helping them develop the disciplined mind. By requiring them to take relevant information from their course readings, the information provided in this presentation, and through their own additional research, and develop a proposal for sentencing guidelines that would address some of the issues that surround sentencing juveniles as adults and then publishing it online, I am helping them develop their synthesizing minds.

On its own, the presentation I put together is not enough to provide students with a thorough understanding of the topic we cover in class; however, when combined with already-existing course materials and readings, this presentation allows students to develop a much richer, more personal, understanding of the issues raised in this unit, which is essential for success on the final blog assignment.

Having spent as much time as I have on this unit (and I am really excited about what this presentation adds to it!), I am sad that I will not have an opportunity to teach the unit again. Fortunately, I have colleagues who teach this course who will be able to take advantage of the work I have done, and I am considering turning it into a Wiki page and sharing it on a forum for other teachers who teach the course, in case they'd like to give my new approach to the unit a try.

Making a Clipboard to Share Resources

In trying to decide what topic to use to experiment with Educlipper, I had a bit of a struggle. Having spent ten years in an English classroom, I certainly had plenty of ideas of how I would have used it in the classroom. As a new administrator, though, my "classroom" has changed a bit. While much of my job revolves around making things go and clearing the way for teachers to do their jobs, the part of my job that I enjoy is being an educational leader. I decided to create my clipboard around a topic that I feel strongly about, and encourage with my staff members: student blogging. I took the approach of teachers as my students, and I provided resources and discussions that revolve around the topic of blogging in general, teacher blogging, student blogging, how to set up blogs, and a little bit of inspiration about authentic audiences from Alan November.

I included a blog post I wrote as part of a PD for staff about why teachers should consider blogging, which includes the resources I pulled together here (just in a different format), and my goal with this is to have something I can readily share with teachers who prefer a different format for finding information when they're interested in blogging.

Ultimately, I want to have a job in my school district that would allow me to shape the way we offer PD to teachers, the way we use technology in the classroom, and, ultimately, change the way we teach students. This particular tool is a way for me to explore what I would do and how I would do it before the job exists.

Writing Prompt- Juxtaposition: Freedom in Peril

Image: Megan Andrews, Refugio State Beach, January 2015

Generating this writing prompt gave me an opportunity to use one of my favorite pictures that I have ever taken. I have always found it powerful for the exact reasons I used when I created the prompt on the above image.

In an instructional setting, I would spend a few minutes explaining some of the juxtapositions I see in the image, and why I find it both haunting and beautiful. I would talk about how the image invites all kinds of questions, but that it ultimately answers none of them. The brief story I included with the image speaks volumes, though, and it is brief for a reason: to provide the reader with the opportunity to draw his or her own conclusions about the event and its consequences. 

I would then instruct my students to work on the assignment within the prompt: a blog post that analyzes a juxtaposition in a recent reading assignment. Since I teach English, this prompt could be used in nearly any unit; much of the work that I traditionally cover includes some sort of juxtaposition.

The purpose of this exercise would be for students to explore the impact juxtaposition can have, and how it can add depth to a work that may seem much simpler on the surface. While most of them lack the polish to effectively use juxtaposition in their own writing, recognizing it and how it is used in the work of others is an important first step. 

After writing about the juxtaposition they selected, I would want my students to create a visual representation of it. They could find an image or create their own; the source is less important that being able to tie an image that conveys the message to the message itself. This step pushes students to think critically about how to represent the idea they have selected and turn abstract ideas into images that tell a story. If the students can do that, they are one step closer to developing the skills to be able to use juxtaposition effectively in their own work.