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DONE! (Well...kinda)

I have just finished writing my Master's project proposal. It's been an experience. Since I've known I'll be moving out of state (circa November), I've been trying to finish all the classes I can to avoid the horrors of transferring graduate-level credits. Since January I've taken 10 credits, including my weenie 1 credit I get for the completion of my project proposal. Needless to say, I haven't had to worry about how to spend all my free time the last few months.

Below is a word cloud for my Master's project via Wordle. Care to guess the topic?

Wordle- Master\'s Project Proposal

Thanks to Terry and Kevin for bringing Wordle to my attention via Twitter.

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That uncomfortable place

I've just wrapped up a class in which I was required to participate in online threaded discussions. I was hoping for some good discourse on curriculum theory and development. Instead it turned into a lot of, "Why, yes, I agree with you completely," and "I couldn't have said it better myself." I found myself becoming purposely oppositional in my responses. How can any really good thinking and learning happen if there isn't a healthy dose of differing viewpoints? And, pray tell, was the  response to my opposing viewpoints? Silence. Last time I recall so many people with similar thoughts was 1984¹.

My classmates were just trying to be nice, which is understandable. It can be awkward and uncomfortable to deal with conflict. However, it's that dissonance in opinion where real meaning is made; that hacking it out between differing opinions, that purposeful attempt to sway people with differing views while they try to sway you.

Recently, in response to a new "top edublogs" list posted on a well-read blog, Dan Meyer and Darren Draper have expressed differing opinions on (perceived) motivations for blogging, what constitutes quality in a blog, and even "proper" Twitter use. I've found this disagreement extremely interesting to follow. I subscribe to both their blogs and find them both to be excellent at starting good conversations through their posts. They both create dissonance and then ask for their audience to weigh in with their opinions. While Dan tends to stir the pot² and Darren tends to ask quite nicely, they're both doing essentially the same thing.

It's been enjoyable to see these two heavyweights (they're 23 & 35 on the best edublogs list of all time, after all) discuss whose method is superior. While I don't think they're going to change each other's mind, they're laying some excellent framework for the edubloggers of the future. These types of public disagreements are important- perhaps necessary³- for hashing out what exactly it is to blog about educational matters. Think of it as a modern, blogging version of the Continental Congress.

Anyone care to disagree?

¹ "Why, yes, Big Brother certainly is a great leader!"
² or "[Dan's] just shaking the bee’s nest while covered in powdered sugar, a big ol’ grin on [his] face and [a] buddy taping the whole thing for some sort of amateur Jackass production."
³ As long as you jerkfaces don't turn it into nastiness and namecalling.
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When the hugeness hits me

I'm a pretty laid back dude. I don't get too worked up about major life changes. It's not that I don't appreciate the hugeness of the changes, it's just that I'm okay with change, and look forward to the new opportunities that result. I'm currently in the middle of some pretty huge life changes (i.e. moving from Michigan to Connecticut). However, I haven't had much time to reflect on their hugeness due to my crazy grad classes and end of the year school craziness among other things.

Today I received my first batch of exam projects from my 1st hour, and set right to grading them during my 2nd hour prep period. The first exam I opened looked like this:

Exam Cover

Needless to say, this looked like a pretty good exam. I was excited to go through it. Then I got to the first page (as seen below):

Exam1

The hugeness of the changes going on in my life became a little more real to me after reading that.

I'm going to miss this place. 🙁

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Career numbers

My attempt at a sentimental "goodbye" to my students at Whitmore Lake:

My career stats

(I had students guess what each stat was for)

8

The number of different courses I've taught here.

8 courses

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34

The number of teachers I've worked alongside for the past 6 years.

34 teacher names

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822

The number of students I've had in my classes.

822 Smiling Faces

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1062

The number of school days I've taught.

1062 Days

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749

Miles away my new school is from Whitmore Lake High School.

Around the lake 163 times

Which is equal to running around Whitmore Lake 163 times.

From WL to CT

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0.18%

The percentage of my career to date I have left at Whitmore Lake

0.18% Chart

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At this point I launched into a sentimental moment of which I'll save you the details. I really will miss this job. I'll miss this school. I'll miss the staff. I'll miss the community. I'll miss the students. I wouldn't be the teacher I am without the opportunities and challenges this position has given me. I will always look back at this position fondly. It served as a personal proving ground, a testing ground for new ideas, and a sounding board for concerns. I've made some excellent friends that I'll miss horribly and it's helped me successfully transition from newbie to knowledgeable.

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Image credits (all via Flickr):
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Signs of success

A snippet from a conversation I had with a student this morning:

Student: "This project is long."

Me: "That's why I gave you so many days in class to work on it. I wanted you to have time to make it excellent."

Student: "Yeah, but this project is taking longer than when we just used PowerPoint. Then we'd just put the information on the slide. Now we have to put it in to something. It's a lot harder."

If you haven't been following along, students are creating artifacts of their knowledge as their final exam (see previous posts). the student chose to create a textbook that covers all the information we've covered throughout the trimester.  I banned students from using PowerPoint since they were mainly just filling the slides up with text and totally missing the point of presentation software (they're not presenting, they're weren't creating graphic-based slides, etc.). That decision seems to have been a good one. I've seen many projects-in-progress that I'm sincerely excited to get a chance to look over, which hasn't always been the case in the past.

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Thoughts from Buckminster Fuller

R. Buckminster Fuller“If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top . . . that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver, but this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday’s fortuitous contrivings.”  - R. Buckminster Fuller

Reluctance to change has been in my (limited) experience one of the biggest hurdles to improving teaching and learning. It's not that people can't change. It's that they hold on to past practices while throwing in little bits of the new stuff. The result is that the new bits aren't utilized to their full transformative potential. Instead, the new bits are forced into the old mold, whether or not it makes sense for them to be there.

Several examples sprung to my mind as I read Bucky's quote.

  • Using laptops solely for word processing
  • Using presentation software (read: PowerPoint & Keynote) for overly text-y purposes
  • Using a blog or wiki just as another way to complete homework

While my thoughts tended to be focused on the implementation of technology into classrooms, the same ideas certainly could apply to non-tech related school issues. How often do we (as educators) turn to sound research when making curricular or structural decisions? Is it unrealistic for teachers to keep an eye on the literature?

Quote via The New Yorker via Treehugger
Image by sbisson via Flickr
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Final Exam Projects- Day 4

I'll try to keep posting on the progress of the projects as I go. If you haven't already, check out the summary of what was happening on Day 2. Students are now set on what they're doing and how they're going to do it. Now it's just a matter of getting their projects done.

I gave this brief motivational speech at the beginning of each hour:

Here's how much time you have left to complete this final exam project (this is for my 1st hour class- their scheduled exam time is on Monday, so we won't meet on Tuesday or Wednesday)

You know what my expectations are for these projects. My expectations aren't Ridonculous, but they are high. It's okay to have a ridonculous project, but just an average one? I think not.

This is how much your final exam projects contribute to your overall trimester grade. It's not a joke, it's a big part of your trimester. That being said, it's up to you to create a successful project that meets the expectations I've communicated. You know what to do, it's up to you to do it.

If you don't, you'll be:

(Digging your own grave)

However, this project also provides an opportunity for you to:

(Climb the stairway to heaven)

I give this presentation because at this point in the project, they don't really need much of me. I've communicated my expectations for this project, they're familiar with the format (from earlier projects), and it's now just a matter of getting it done. I feel it's important for the students to realize that utilizing their time wisely is an important part of creating a successful project, but at this point I'm not going to go around whacking them upside the head if they choose to not use their time wisely.

Image Credits
Calendar, Expectations, & 20% images: Me. Feel free to use them
Laborer by CarbonNYC
John Foreman - 1696 by Neil101
Stairway to Heaven by Steffe
The Heavens Open by Young Einstein (angels added by author)
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"Fun Facts"

I've taken to adding in "fun facts" to my class. I'm not sure if I got this idea from Dan Meyer in the first place, or if I stumbled upon it independently and then had my habit reinforced by his enthusiasm for a little fun unbound from the "standard" curriculum. They

Pro-crast-i-na-tion: I've seen all of my students do one of these at some point. I've done most, especially the "imaginary computer games with your furniture."

Kung Fu Bear : I used it as a pep talk for my students while they were working on a presentation project. When you go to the zoo to see a bear, it's pretty impressive. Bears usually are just lying around at the zoo, so it doesn't take long to get over the impressiveness and move on. However, this bear decided he was going to take his game to the next level (here's when I started the video). He wanted people to sit up and pay attention to him. People come from all over to see Kung-Fu Bear. People will watch him for hours. He's mastered his game. I then told students I didn't want their presentations to just meet the bare (hardee-har-har) minimums. Don't just be a lazy bear. Be a Kung-Fu Bear!

21 Accents: Some classes loved it, others hated it. I was badgered by one class to play it multiple times spanning through the end of that week. In another class, I was asked to turn it off about 15 seconds in and never play it again. It's amazing how different the personalities of my classes are this year.

I Love the World (The Earth is Just Awesome): I posted on this earlier. The class that hated the 21 Accents video loved this one. Wonder if there's some psychological reasoning behind that...hmm... My other classes enjoyed it, but didn't constantly demand to see it over and over and over and over...

666: I got the information for this from a RadioLab show (RadioLab totally blows my mind). Want to grab every student's undivided attention in a class (yep, even the ones who haven't earned a single credit since 3rd grade)? Throw up a 5 ft. x 5 ft. 666 on your projection screen- the room will almost assuredly fall eerily quiet. Here's the story I told 'em about their favorite numbers: It turns out the oldest known manuscript of the book of Revelations says the "number of the beast" is actually 616. Interestingly enough, this is the area code for much of west Michigan (where I spent my undergrad years). I've embedded the section of the show below where it tells the full story. Or you can visit the RadioLab episode site.

I'll try to update you with more good finds as I come across them.

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Final Exam Projects- Day 2

I've made the switch. This year I've been using a cumulative project in lieu of a traditional written test, and at this point I believe that the projects are a better indicator of student knowledge than the old examinations.

Students have just started working on their final projects for the 3rd Trimester. So far, I'm impressed. Day 1 is usually always a bit of a waste. Students aren't sure what they want to do or how to start so they end up doing lots of email checking, Google Image labeling, Impossible Quiz taking, and other things that are probably violating their AUP's. Day 2 is when the action happens (for most). They figure out what format they're going to use for their exam, and start to frame how they're going to include the required information into that format. About 25% of the projects I've seen from students so far look like they're going to be great. I don't mean simply deserving of an "A." I mean they look like they'll be shiny monuments to mountains of knowledge!

A couple things I've learned to do as I've done more of these cumulative projects:

  • Push for more than just bulleted points of information. It's dull to read, it's dull to write, it's just dull.
  • Demand diagrams, graphs, graphic organizers, and media-rich projects. These are more interesting than text, and they generally demonstrate a student's understanding of a topic more clearly.
  • Require projects to show the student's understanding of how the material covered in the class is interconnected. We covered volcanoes & plate tectonics this trimester. I want them to show me how they relate.

If you'd like to see the project description and rubric for the 3rd Trimester final exam, visit my school homepage. There are links to the rubric and a brief explanation of what is expected. Let me know what you think. What would you add? How might it be structured differently?