Teaching to reach every single student

I was fortunate enough to give a presentation to some education graduate students last week about my work with blogs and wikis and podcasts.

After the presentation, I received a great email from the professor. In it, she offered a great definition of teachers:

I believe that great teachers imagine and create possibilities for students to become both the critics of and producers of new knowledge where students actively use knowledge they’ve learned to create, build,
design, express, etc. In so doing, they create new forms of expression and interaction.

As I have been reporting here, I have been working hard with my 7th and 8th grade students this year (for the first time) using blogs and podcasts. I plan on completing Will Richardson’s trinity by working with wikis in the next marking period.

My students have loved, loved, loved using blogs and creating podcasts, and their results with each have been extraordinary. Using the blog work as evidence, I can see that every single student’s writing has improved over the course of the year. Other teachers had told me to expect this, but it is nonetheless humbling.

By the way, I don’t think it is the “blog” that does it, I think it is the chance to do so much writing, and so much writing in public, and so much writing in public with a real audience that makes the difference.

The podcasts have opened up a different world in my classroom. While blogs are a community tool, we write alone. I have had my students author podcasts as a group project in order to review for an upcoming test. They decided on a topic and/or subtopic within this unit (Reproduction and Development this time), they worked as a group to decide on a format (lecture, skit, video). They then wrote the script, recorded, and edited their podcasts (with some help from me).

I devoted a few class periods for this work and marveled at the level of engagement I saw in the students. Each student was actively involved and invested in the outcome. And they really learned their material.

Given all this success, I have been asked to do some presentations to teacher and administration groups, which has caused me to wonder (and to try to explain) just what is happening. Since, I am a visual person, I had to put together a diagram:

I think that these tools (blogs, wiki, and podcasts) give unprecedented ability for students to author and collaborate on their work. And this collaboration can take place, easily, in or out of the classroom. And since this is happening in a public space, there is the opportunity for authentic interaction with people beyond the school walls.

I have come to believe it is the opportunity to author that matters to the students and to their learning, not the tools themselves. And since the the number of possible tools is expanding daily, I am very much looking forward to what kinds of student authoring we will see next.

It is great to think and write about the impact of internet technologies like blogs, wikis, and podcasts on students’ actively (and creatively) participating in/authoring their educational experiences. And it is great to see how other teachers are making use of these technologies in ways that make me say, “I wish I’d thought of that.”

But then it’s good, at least every now and then, to take and break and play, which is what I have been doing. I have been playing with some very cool online tools. And, needless to say they have a lot to do with all that noble, important stuff in the first paragraph.

So, here’s a little tool through the sandbox (at present).

First, there’s Gliffy, which is an online outlining tool like Inspiration. You can create diagrams using shapes and connectors, just like you’d expect, and you have plenty of templates to choose from. Once you edit the drawing and get it just so, you can dowload it in jpeg, svg, and png formats. From a usability perspective, the interface is very friendly and useful (see screenshot). Better still, you can email collaborators (or potential collaborators) who can then work with you on the drawing. This is what makes it great for me, the part about collaboration.

Continuing with the collaboration theme is Zoho, which is a suite of standard office (small and big “O”) applications like a word processor, spreadsheet application, and presentation creator. Zoho also has other tools, like a notebook, project manager, outliner — even chat, wikis, and meeting spaces. And they all seem to be free.

So, with these tools, I imagine an easy to follow workflow. Students (or teachers) are working on projects together requiring words, images, and diagrams. Maybe even a slideshow. We can all work on the same documents in online collaboration and then share our results with whoever.

Next, there’s Picnik. It’s an online photo editor with lots of neat features. Of course, you can crop, resize, correct exposures, and even apply some special effects. You can upload photos or get direct access to Flickr Photostreams, Picasa Web Albums, even Webcams. The neatest feature for me is the interface, which is fun and friendly, with lots of cool, widgety touches. Imagine editing for everyone, you might say.

So, imagine this workflow. I am on my way somewhere and witness something cool, say a duck driving a car. I whip out my cellphone and snap a picture. Then, I instantly upload the photo to my Flickr account and realize with a little tweaking I could win a Pulitzer. So, I open it in Picnik, make some adjustments, which saves it back to my Flickr account, from which I can post it to my blog and share it with the world.

In fact, I am imagining this workflow for a school wide (maybe a district wide) project to mark Earth Day this year. My idea is to have the students and teachers take pictures of the natural world around them. They can then upload them to my Flickr account. I can tweak them if needed, and in no time, we can have an album to share with our take on Earth Day 2007.

I’ll report back on how it goes.

Blogged with Flock

I am in the middle (well I will be in the middle once Spring Break ends) of another round of podcasting with my middle school science students. This time, we are working together to prepare review materials to close out our unit on Reproduction and Development.

Some highlights (for now): I have a group preparing a video podcast which is an interpretive dance illustrating the human female reproduction system; another group is doing some hand animation for a video podcast on the human male reproductive system; and another group preparing a rap celebrating asexual reproduction.

In the middle of all this comes this article from the San Luis Opispo Times, describing a course in a local school teaching podcasting:

They’ll develop a variety of skills while working with new technology. “Public speaking is involved, audio editing, script writing, organization and presentation,” Bissell said. “They’ll be introducing background sounds like they do on NPR sometimes, to make it a little bit more exciting, and using background music, too.” After the students create their podcasts, they will upload them to the school’s Web site for downloading by the general public. Bissell has several ideas that he wants to suggest to the class, including an interview with the oldest person in their family, tutorials on how to repair or construct something, and a video of their favorite hobby. San Luis Obispo Tribune | 04/01/2007 | Atascadero High curriculum: Reading, writing and podcasting

The thing that excites me the most about this is what happens next. What worlds open up for the students now that they have this set of tools? How do they choose to explore and document their world(s)? And how will they share those explorations with th erest of us?