I’m a little concerned by the word, “pilot.”

I’m in the midst of ramping up my students for 5 solid weeks of self-directed learning related to climate change. Uncharacteristically, I cleared the proposal with my principal and the science curriculum director before going forward with the plan. I was given “permission” to pilot this program.

Despite all the recent “21st Century Skills” and “self-directed learners” talk around school, the standard-driven CAPT (our state standardized test) reigns supreme. My 9th grade Integrated Science class has a rather extensive list of content standards I’m supposed to cover. I know my 5-week self-directed unit won’t cover as many official standards as 5-weeks spent teaching a traditional curriculum.

I’m attempting to more efficiently use class time by exporting some of the content delivery outside the classroom. I saw a video some time ago about chemistry teachers who did something similar, and was recently reminded of the video by a tweet from Ben Grey.

After playing with several options of how to record & publish the video podcasts (I found Wes Fryer’s recent posts on LectureCasting very helpful), I created a new subdomain (http://sciencecast.benwildeboer.com), recorded video through UStream using CamTwist, then published the podcast to a WordPress blog & uploaded the video to Vimeo as a redundancy backup. I’ve submitted my podcast to iTunes so the video will be viewable on students’ mobile devices¹.

A few observations about the process:

• It took longer to prepare, record, edit, and post than I would like. I know it’ll get faster the more experience I have, but I’m not sure I have the time to do this for every section.
• There were lots of failures. I can’t tell you how many times I had to sit down and work through some issue I was having.
• The end result is pretty boring. Some students said they parts of it funny or interesting, but I think they were just being nice. To be fair, it’d be boring in class, as well, right?

The first episode (The Periodic Table [& valence electrons]) is below. What do you think? Is this worth the effort?

The Periodic Table (and valence electrons) from Mr. Wildeboer on Vimeo.

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1. Update: The podcast has now been approved and is available on iTunes. I’m waiting to hear back from iTunes about its approval.      (back)

I tend to skip through reading your blog posts when I’m busy. If I’m lucky, others of you will post tweets or blog posts pointing me back towards the good stuff I’ve missed¹.

Wes Fryer posted about potential copyright issues with showing 10 full-length films in a semester. I saw it, glanced through the list of films, and moved on. Luckily, Damian Bariexca² did a quick post wondering about potential ethical issues when blogging about your own son or daughter’s teachers. While that’s not an issue very pertinent to my life, it was enough to help me discover a gem lingering in the comments over at Wes’ joint.

Towards the end of Wes’ post, he wonders what Renee Hobbs, who is described as “one of the nation’s leading authorities on media literacy education,” would think about such practices. To my (and seemingly Wes’) surprise, she wrote a thorough post discussing the issue.

Surprisingly to me, it is legal to show full-length films in class, though Dr. Hobbs notes that legality isn’t the same thing as being educationally sound. You should really read her post (here it is again), but she basically says it’s probably more educationally sound to create a clip reel focused on the desired learning objective instead of showing a full film, gives suggestions of how to create clip reels, and also suggestions for how to broach the topic with the teacher.

More interestingly for me, Renee Hobbs drops a link to her paper, “Non-Optimal Uses of of Video in the Classroom,” where she included a “typology of non-optimal video uses.” I recommend reading at least this section of her paper (though the rest is quite good as well), which starts on the page 6 of the pdf document. Here’s a brief overview:

• Typology #1: No clearly identifiable educational purpose.
• Typology #2: No use of pause, rewind, or review.
• Typology #3: Large group viewing experiences give teachers a “break.”
• Typology #4: Teacher mentally disengages during viewing experiences.
• Typology #5: Teacher uses TV viewing as a reward.
• Typology #6: Teacher uses media only as an attention hook.
• Typology #7: Teacher uses video to control behavior.

In my few years of teaching I’ve seen some pretty, um, “interesting” films being shown in the classroom- many of which don’t get beyond typology #1. This is one of those papers I’d love to see passed out to faculty at the beginning of the school year, but I’m not sure I’d have the huevos to do it myself.

Do you use films in your classes? How do you use them?

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Image credit: Hello, My Name is Inigo Montoya by oxygeon; shared with a cc-by-nc license.

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1. Which is one of the reasons I really don’t like Twitter’s new retweet feature. It doesn’t show the retweet if the person being retweeted is someone I follow. I, for one, would like to see when the other people I follow deem posted links and tweets worth resharing. Just sayin’.     (back)
2. Do you believe I spelled that right without looking it up? Score!    (back)

January 12, 2008. My first education-related blog post ever. It takes some hubris¹ to start a blog. Perhaps even more to keep it active.

If I’ve learned anything in the last two years it’s that I don’t know as much as I thought I knew. When I started writing here I figured I was on the cusp of really getting this whole “technology” thing. As I start my terrible twos in this space (and on Twitter), I know now I knew less than I thought I did then.

It continues to amaze me that a) people read things I write, b) they find (some of) it useful, and c) I continue to be amazed about all of this. It’s simple yet strong.

Thanks.

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Image: Cupcake #2 via cafemama, shared via cc-nc-sa

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1. Or, perhaps, ignorance.     (back)

I’ve just completed my Master’s Proposal¹. While the process wasn’t exactly enjoyable, I did enjoy being required to sit down and think through a pretty major student-centered unit from beginning to end.  My hope in designing this unit was to hopefully narrow the divide between how a scientist does science and how we teach students science.

I’ll give you the quick & dirty summary below, but if you’d like to read the entire proposal: Have at it.

Goals

• Make learning about science more like doing science
• Allow students the freedom to follow their passions (within a broad framework)
• Connect students to professionals who actively work or participate in their area of interest
• Foster creative thinking and problem solving skills among students

In the first few weeks of the semester students will be introduced to:

• the ideas behind the project and goals of the project
• tools that will allow them to communicate and collaborate with classmates and outside collaborators
• participate in smaller projects designed to grow independent learning and monitoring skills

The Main Thrust

• Within a general topical framework (in this case: global warming), students will investigate topics and ideas that they find intriguing and interesting.
• While there will be no set groups, students interested in similar topics may choose to investigate these ideas together. If they want to follow different paths later, they can freely dissociate as well.
• Student experimentation, observation, and investigation will be encouraged.
• Students will be expected to take their investigations beyond simple internet research.

Assessment

• Students will meet at minimum twice a week with me to discuss what they’ve learned so far, problems they’ve run into, and future topics of investigation.
• Regular reflections will be expected from each student. These can be in any format.
• 5-minute “What I’ve Done So Far” presentations will be given by each student two weeks and four weeks into the unit.
• A final demonstration of learning will conclude the unit. The demonstration can be done in any format that can be shared online. The emphasis of the demonstration is to show the depth and breadth of the students learning.

I Still Have Questions

• I feel I can accurately assess student learning throughout this project. I’m not sure how to actually give students letter grades.
• I’m worried about kids buying into the whole thing. Perhaps this is just unnecessary worrying, but I’m having nightmares of students just sitting around for 6 weeks twiddling their thumbs. What can I do to buy them in?
• I want to connect kids to “experts.” These “experts” don’t need to all be climate scientists², just people who know or have some experience on the topic. This means you. And your friends. And your colleagues. Participation could range from something like mentoring a student, to a one-time Skype chat, to simply commenting on student work.
• Can you help?

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1. WOOHOO!!     (back)
2. Though if you happen to be a climate scientist, we’d love to have you help out.     (back)

n my traditional cavalier/reckless fashion, I designed a project where students would create videos as the final product. I have two video cameras¹ (a Flip and my point & shoot that shoots video), MovieMaker, three microphones, and a lack of experience with the moving picture medium.

Students got into groups, randomly selected a family of elements, and got busy researching & planning. Other than the typical issues that pop up when freshmen work together in groups² things were going swimmingly. I suggested using PowerPoint as an image editor or stop motion picture creator, but other than that I really didn’t push them in any direction for how they should produce the video. I was pleasantly surprised at the creative mix of puppet shows, live video, claymation, and other ideas that they came up with on their own. Despite the lack of equipment there were very few times when a group had to sit around waiting for a camera.

The trouble starts

Students began to download their video files and attempt to work with the files in MovieMaker. That’s when things got dicey. Just a few of the problems we ran into:

• Student accounts often were not able to download files from external devices. Sometimes it would work for them, sometimes it wouldn’t. Weird.
• Despite the claims on the official MovieMaker website, the program as installed on students computers could only import .WMV files. My video cameras saved files as .AVIs.
• I sent students to Zamzar to convert the video files. Zamzar isn’t always fast. Even better, students aren’t allowed to download any files from online to school computers. When the conversions were finished I had to do all the downloading & distributing of files. I mourn the large amounts of class time that were lost due to all this file jockeying.
• On a couple random days, the students weren’t allowed to save any files into their network drives. Needless to say, that caused some frustration.
• Beyond the problem above, twice during the project the school district’s network drive was too full for anybody to save anything to it.

The irony

As a faculty, we’ve frequently heard from our administration (from assistant principal up to the SuperNintendo himself) that we need to embrace and encourage “21st Century Skills” with our students. As part of the NEASC accreditation process we’re involved in the term “21st Century Skills” also comes up in every other indicator, standard, and student learning expectation.

The end

I probably won’t try another video project this year. I’m pretty skeptical about trying it next year. The sad/frustrating/scary part of it all is that the issues with this project were caused by the lack of support from the administration and institution for a creative project that embraced “21st Century Skills.” The problem didn’t arise from poor project design³, a lack of student ability/skill, or a lack of resources. The problem arose solely as the result of an overly restrictive network and a lack of vision from those who control those restrictions.

The solution?

• Trust students with the network.
• Trust teachers with the network.
• Think about what these “21st Century Skills” that are harped upon actually mean for how students and teachers will need to use the network. Adjust network restrictions accordingly.

Despite all the issues some pretty great videos came out of it. Check out a quick selection below:

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Creative-Commons image via P.C. Is2dent’s Flickr stream

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1. I did encourage any students with cameras that took video to bring them in. A few did.     (back)
2. i.e. “Johnny stole my [noun]!” “I didn’t take your [noun], you’re crazy!” “MR. W!!!”  [you get this too, right?]      (back)
3. Truthfully, it’s very hard for me to judge the effectiveness of the project because the end result has been so overshadowed by all the technical issues.     (back)

I haven’t had nearly as much time to think or write about my Master’s Project as I’d like. However, a couple quick links to people who seem to be thinking along similar lines:

1. Scott Meech at Tech & Learning

Scott describes 5 steps toward using technology as an environment for learning (and identifies popular and his own picks for tools to aid in each step):

1. Researching
2. Reading
3. Archiving
4. Reflecting
5. Participating

He goes into more detail and it’s worth the read¹, but these steps fit nicely with the three general steps I have in mind for students while working as self-directed learning in the science classroom:

1. Selection (choosing learning goals, identifying resources to help meet those goals, content selection)
2. Performance (working towards learning goals & mastery of content)
3. Assessment (primarily self- & peer-assessments)
4. Repeat

This process is surrounded by Monitoring, or self-assessing ones progress, identifying weaknesses, and focusing on strengths. I feel Scott’s ideas flesh out how technology might interface with my ideas here. Details are still pretty fuzzy, but my neurons are firing happily when I think about it- telling me it must be on the right path.

2. David Warlick: A Few Shifts I See Happening

The venerable Mr. Warlick lays this down:

Shifts in Education Not that we stop doing one and replace it with the other.  This is not a dicomedy
F r o m		T o
• Classroom/Workshop Learning (time/place-based)		Network Learning
• Institution Dependent Learning		Independent (self-directed) Learning
• Literacy		Learning Literacy
• Lifelong Learning Skills		Learning Lifestyle

Right now I’m on solidly the left, frustrated because I want to work my way more to the right, but not able to make much progress because of time and commitment constraints. If I could only take a month sabbatical or two to really hash these things out…

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1. Scott also provides a link to a presentation he gave recently that relates to all this. I haven’t had a chance to sit down and check it out yet (I will), but I already recommend it. I’m sure it’s worth it. Also check out his blog. (back)

Yesterday’s “21st Century Skills” PD session marked milestone of sorts. While there has been much talk about using computers and technology in our classrooms, the conversations among colleagues yesterday had a different tone than anything I had previously been privy to.

About 15 people came to the session I helped facilitate. I was glad the participants came ready to think about new ways of engaging students and discuss the challenges and obstacles that stand in the way.

Among the positives:

• Discussion on how our school’s filtration policies are preventing us from moving forward
• Discussion on the futility of trying to ban cell phones
• Teachers sharing anecdotes about students planning and organizing school events using facebook
• Brainstorming ways that technology can benefit our students and the challenges that come with them
• Getting to share some resources with each other (I shared Dean Shareski & Jamie Raeburn Weir).

I know there’s still a long way to go with lots of obstacles to overcome, but I feel like we’ve finally started to have these important conversations. Let’s hope we continue to move forward as a school and staff from here.

Special thanks to Dean Shareski (visit his blog) and Jamie Raeburn Weir (visit her blog) for providing the 60 second shout-outs. I believe the participants were quite impressed.

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cc licensed flickr photo shared by pfly

Our district has been throwing around the term “21st century skills” an awful lot lately. What’s more distressing is no one really is making any attempt to identify what that means (if anything at all). My vice-principal sent out an email saying he was planning a one hour professional development session to go over what that means. I mentioned in passing that’s an area of particular interest for me¹. So, now I’m co-presenting.

I’d love to have some of you share how you utilize technology in support of powerful pedagogy in your classrooms or schools. To do that, I’m going to steal a page from Dean Shareski who borrowed the format from Alan Levine².

So, if you could submit a brief (~1 minute) video to me simply explaining how you use technology to take teaching and learning to the next level, I’d love to share it with some staff members who are just getting going on this technological journey.

If you could send the files to my email (ben [dot] wildeboer [at] gmail [dot] com) in whatever format is easiest for you, I’ll share your videos with the participants and I’ll share them online in some format (if you’re okay with that).

If making a quick video clip isn’t your thing, please light up the comments with your thoughts on this topic.

I hope to provide some teachers with examples of real educators using technology to take their students’ learning to a better place. Thanks in advance!

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cc licensed flickr photo shared by db*photography
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1. Not so much the whole “21st century skill” bit. I don’t like the term and how loosely it’s thrown around. I think of it more as, “Good teaching using available tools” But anyway…     (back)
2. Thanks! I really appreciate it!  Check out their finished products (they’re great): Alan Levine’s and Dean Shareski’s (back)

Up until a week and a half ago, I had really good attendance in all my classes. Lately there’s been about 10-15% of students out sick. While it’s certainly not a swine flu epidemic it’s a trend that seems to be pretty likely to increase over the next month or so. There are schools somewhat nearby¹ who have shut down for a few days because over 40% of the students were out with the swine flu.

The problem

With our 10-15% absence rate, I’ve been receiving a lot more requests from parents for the work their kids are missing. I’ve been noticing that I’m spending a decent chunk of my planning time just getting together whatever classwork I can for the absentees. I greatly value my planning time for…well…planning. I don’t like sacrificing it for non-planning related activities.

The solution

I have a class wiki where I post a weekly calendar. I also use it as a jump-off point for any online assignments or projects. I did not post every handout for several reasons: (a) it takes extra time, (b) it creates more clutter in an already hard to navigate Wikispaces file manager, (c) the vast majority of students don’t use (or perhaps don’t need to use) the additional resource.

However, a couple things have changed the last couple of weeks. As mentioned earlier, I’ve found myself spending a lot of time emailing parents of sick students and putting together handouts for them. Secondly, I’ve (perhaps a little belatedly) discovered the ease with which Google Docs lets you upload and share PDF documents.

The process

1. Whenever I print a handout or prepare a slide deck for my classes, I also save it as a PDF.
2. Upload the PDF to Google Docs

   

3. Share the pdf document so anyone with a link can view it.
4. Copy & paste the document’s URL & link to it from my class wiki.
5. Relax as the email requests for class handouts can be answered with a quick, “The handouts you need are all available on the class wiki.²“
6. Bask in the parents amazement at technology these days.

Here’s an example of a handout and a slide deck uploaded to Google Docs as PDFs in case you’d like to see what they look like.

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1. Holy cow. That article has more than a couple spelling/grammatical errors.     (back)
2. Of course I give a little more instruction than that. Also, when parents request to pick up the handouts in person, I also oblige. I realize not everyone has the internets at home.     (back)

The scientific method doesn’t exactly whip students into an excited frenzy. However, it’s the basis for modern science and it’s what differentiates science from pseudoscience. That being said, students more likely than not use the process all the time outside of school without even realizing.

After having students design an experiment to test which brand of toilet paper is the strongest when wet and going over the basics of the scientific method (view the presentation here), I show them this video and ask them to watch for the player’s use of the scientific method:

I know that may be copyrighted content¹, but it’s a great example of the scientific method.

Define a problem: The player wants to get beyond this level to eventually save the lovely Princess Toadstool. This big baby stands in the way. The research question here is pretty obvious: “How can I defeat the baby dino-plant?”

Observation: The player brings knowledge of the game so far into the duel with this large dino-plant boss. For example, the player knows Mario’s spin move often hurts the bad guys. Also that shooting bad guys with “stars” and jumping on top of bad guys often hurts them. The player also is observing the dino-plant boss for signs of how to beat it as well as for watching out for how it will try to attack Mario.

Hypothesis & Experiment: The player comes up with multiple hypotheses. Notice the spin move attack and the firing of  “stars” at the boss. Hypothesis: A spin move will hurt the boss. Experiment: Try out a spin move against the boss.

Analyze & Conclude: Did the spin move work? No, it didn’t.

ReHypothesize & ReExperiment: The player tries out several hypotheses before hitting on one that showed results. Even then the situations keeps changing so the player has to continually make observations and hypotheses.

This probably isn’t the most elegant method for introducing the scientific method, but it does seem to grab their attention². I think it also helps students realize the scientific method isn’t just an Ivory Tower scientific exercise.

It is practical. They’ve used it.

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1. Dear Nintendo, Inc.: I’m essentially advertising your game as being science-y and fun. Thanks for not suing me.     (back)
2. Pretty amazing to think that Mario is much older than they are. He’s nearing his 29th birthday (Donkey Kong was released in 1981). My students are turning 14 (most are born in 1995 or so).     (back)