The Three P's

Last year I wrote a post on the Six C’s of 21st century learning, an idea that I was going to apply to my classes in designing lessons, units, and my overall curricula. I find putting a framework over the learning process and involving students in shaping and understanding that process to work very well to increase student engagement and proficiency. I have continued to experiment with considerable success and moving forward I have identified another set of themes that I would like to use in addition (and imposed on top of) the Six C’s.

I am terming this set the 3 P’s – Personalization, Project-Based Learning, and Portfolio Assessment. Personalization is key to reaching every student in the 21st century classroom. Personalization takes the ideas of individualization and differentiation to the next level with new techniques and new technologies. A recent article in THE Journal addresses the primary themes of personalization and is worth a close reading. It is only through the true personalization of learning that we can hope to reach every student, tap into their natural abilities and life experiences, and challenge them to grow beyond what they are and reach their fullest potential.

Project-based learning is the strongest methodology to achieve the personalization for each learner and impart the 21st century skills that students need. Let me clarify that I mean "project-based" in the broadest sense of the term. In my own classes, I employ a variety of techniques that could be classified as project, problem, inquiry, or challenge-based. Each builds upon constructivist and connectivist ideas that I've discussed before on this blog. Each makes the student the center of learning and requires of them the types of skills needed for dynamic and changing world.

I include portfolio assessment as one of the 3 P's since it is becoming the essential tool for authentic and innovative assessment. Portfolios allow students to see their work develop over time, to reflect on what they have done, to see how they can improve their work, and to connect their work across classes and content areas. Portfolios when digital years ago and are now going mobile with various formats available for smartphones, tablets and laptops.

I'm making a concerted effort in all of my classes to increasing incorporate aspects of the 3 P's. I've increased my use of project-based learning over the past several years until it makes up the basis of the pedagogy I use in my classes, this year I have begun experimenting with students developing their own digital portfolios for deeper assessment and self-reflection, and I continue to strive to tap into my students passions, interests, experiences and needs to personalize their learning opportunities.

Please let me know your thoughts about the 3 P's. Comments welcomed.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad 2

Going to the Extremes

I've recently been reevaluating and examing the way I teach content in my class as well as across the curriculum in my department and at my school. I've come to the conclusion that in many classes (including my own), teachers are guilty of presenting muddled and uninsteresting content due to the problem of breadth versus depth. Teachers have long faced the problem of the amount of content that they have to teach along with how in depth they can go into that content. This problem is especially true in Social Studies classes where the problem of how much history to teach (or how much of the timeline to cover) and how do you then go into more in the deeper and stimulating events, people, and stories that make history interesting. To try to deal with this, most teachers try for some kind of "middle path" combining beadth and depth. Unfortunately, in trying to do this, most teachers don't do a very good job over covering the overall material OR getting deeper into the content.

As an alternative, I suggest that instead of going for the middle and thus teaching in a muddled way, we "go the extremes" and do both well. In planning the content to be learned throughout the course of the school year, teachers should look for ways to break down their lessons, projects, activiities, and units to breadth activities and depth activities and do each well and separately (as opposed to muddled together and poorly as most of us do now). In a history class, this would involve a unit that would have a lesson or series of lessons that would give the broad overview of the major themes of a time period, followed by various activities such as primary source analysis, discussion groups, and historical investigation projects that would get in-depth with the material in select ways determined by either the teacher or student choice to support the broader themes. I've have been experimenting with this in my classes this year and I will discuss more details of it's successes and failure in future posts.

I have also come to the conclusion that this type of thinking can inform us with other issues as well. In paticular, I am brought back to my current thoughts on technology integration into the classroom. For years, middle-of-the-road desktop computers in classrooms and labs were the norms for schools. They were better than nothing, but they suffered from the same type of "middle path" problem as in content that the computers offered often more than was needed for student computering on a daily basis, but often didn't offer what was needed for more high-end functions like video editiing and graphic design. A rethink of device type and deployment is needed, one that ideally "goes to the extremes." For everyday student and teacher use, I am convinced that devices like the iPad far better than middle-of-the-road desktop computers in their personalization, battery life, portability, especially if they are deployed in a 1:1 program. iPads also continue to prove that along with being great media content consumption devices, they are also becoming powerful content creation devices for everyday document, presentation, video, and audio production. This frees up both funding and space for schools to invest in a small number of high end desktops or laptops on a cart for doing advanced video editing, graphic work or programing. This is "moving to the extremes" of educational technology could have considerable advantages, particularly when paired with the same strategy in pedagogy discussed above.

In pedagogy and technology, despite the instinct to think otherwise, going to the extremes could prove very powerful.  Please let me know your thoughts.

The iPad as Primary Educational Computer (intro)

So, list me amongst the converted.

A few months back when discussions began across the educational community and in my own school about the merits of using the iPad as a primary computing device for studetns in a 1:1 program, I'll admit I was more than a bit skeptical if it was the best way to go. Now, I am an Apple fan myself (I've owned several iPods, I'm on my second iPhone, and I bought a Macbook Air this past spring) but, having worked in a limited way with the iPad, I wasn't convinced it was the best solution for education. Even though many had made a case over the past year or so that the device was made for more than just media consumption, I still found many factors lacking and concerning.

Despite my concerns, I was observing at other schools and reading on blogs and twitter feeds the merits of the iPad. Also, with a limited test deployment at my school, I've seen the fabulous ways that students interact with the device. So, I've challenged myself over the coming weeks and months to take a hard look at the iPad as a serious (and perhaps "game-changing," even though I hate using that term) device for education and how it can be seemlessly integrated into an educational program that involves student inquiry, research and collaboration.

I am writing this post on my iPad, and in follow up posts I will document my explorations (both myself and with my students) on using the iPad in various ways in the educational setting.

Stay tuned.

Doing the "Interactive Flip" with VoiceThread.

As mentioned earlier in this blog, I have been experimenting with incorporating Project-Based Learning into my teaching.  In particular, I have had my students using Web 2.0 tools such a Glogster, VoiceThread, Google Apps, and Jaycut.  The problem I kept having was a matter of time.  Being a history teacher, and seeing the importance of building a narrative, I wasn't ready to completely do away with basic lectures and discussions while moving to more projects in the classroom, even though I want my students to discover more of their learning for themselves.  So, what was often happening is I would spend a couple of days lecturing on a topic and, in-between, giving students time to work on their projects.  Usually, this wasn't enough, so they would have to finish their projects at home.  Often they would have questions, encounter technical difficulties, and they would end up emailing me at 11:30 with these issues.  This was frustrating for them and me.

Then, about 6 weeks ago, I came across several articles talking about Reverse Intruction.  In this technique, developed by chemistry teacher Karl Fisch, a teacher records their lectures for the students to watch at home.  This gives them their "basic" level of understanding.  Then in-class, students have more time to do the more complicated, deeper work of the class.  I found this to be a wonderful idea that could be applied to almost any area of study.  The only problem I saw with this was the limited amount of interactivity that students had with just watching the video of a lecture.  My solution, was the use of a resource I had been using with my students: VoiceThread.  VoiceThread, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, is an online service that allows you to take presentations, video, pictures, and documents, and place them online and comment on them interactively.  I find this to be a more interactive version of Reverse Instruction (an interactive "Folmer Flip" as opposed to the ground-breeaking "Fisch Flip" of innovator Karl Fisch).  So, I now take the presentations that I had been using for lectures in class and place them on VoiceThread.  I then make comments using my webcam to turn it into a 15-20 minutes lecture that students can watch and have some simple questions to answer at the end (I use Edline for this, but you could also do it with something like Google Forms)  The nice thing about the VoiceThread is that students can make their own comments on the presentation, ask questions, draw on the slides, even interact with their classmates.  I can go back and check on these and add new information for clarification (I also place the presentations on Google Docs for students to review and print out later).  This then leaves class time to do more work on projects, analyze documents, or have deeper discussions that would have been taken up with the lecture.  In this way, my students and I are interacting on a deeper level with more differentiated and personalized learning.  Also, using VoiceThread for this is very easy since it is entirely web-based.  All the teacher needs is a mic or webcam (or you could type you comments, like many students do, but this is less engaging).

This is still an very early experiment, but the students have been giving me very positive feedback thus far and all indications show they are learning more.  Below are some examples of VoiceThreads I've done with this method.  Please share any information or feedback in your comments!

You've Heard of the 3R's, How About The 6C's?

I've been thinking and reading a lot this summer about different learning theories and how they affect pedagogy.  My three favorites are constructivism, communal constructivism, and connectivism.  Aspects of each of these three theories really inform my teaching and should be the basis for any attempt of innovative teaching in the 21st century context.  So, what does that mean for pedagogy and how do we apply it?  Certainly, we have all heard of the 3R's (reading, writing and arithmetic).  While these should form the basis of any good educational skillset, we know that they are not enough in the context of the needs of 21st century learners and what the theories mentioned above propose.  Therefore, I have developed my own framework that I hope to employ this school year in the development of my lessons, my teaching, and assessment of my students.

I call this the "6C's" or the "C-6 Framework."  The 6C's are "Choice, Construction, Connection, Collaboration, Creation, and Consideration."  Here is what each of these mean:

1. Choice - Learners will have the opportunity to choose what, how, and when to learn.
2. Construction - Learners will conduct research and inquiry to construct their own understanding of the world around them.
3. Connection - Learners will discover and build the connections between ideas, events, and people in different times and places.
4. Collaboration - Learners will develop the skills to effectively collaborate with their facilitators and peers.
5. Creation - Learners will strive to become producers of new knowledge using their skills and imagination to create new understanding.
6. Consideration - Learners will reflect and consider what they have learned, how they learned it, and how they can improve their learning in the future.

I'm not proposing that any of this is particularly new or radical.  For we are only "standing on the shoulders of giants" when it comes to learning theory and its practice in the classroom.  But, I find this a useful framework to remind myself of where are focus should be.  I have developed it with the social studies classroom in mind, but a simple variation in some of the language of each explanation could work in any and all subject matter.  I plan on sharing this framework with my students and parents in setting the proper tone in what I hope to develop in my students this school year.

Smartphones Make Smart Learners

Yes, it has been a while since I have posted to my blog.  End of the school year, a trip to Japan with my students, some graduate classes, and a few relaxing weeks later, I am ready to start putting some of my ideas out into the ether again.  I had originally intended this post to be about some of the things I've been working on for the upcoming school year (I will post on that later this week), but todays Edchat on Twitter got me thinking in a new direction.

The discussion focused on the use of smartphones in the classroom.  There were many views on how to best implement such programs, the benefits and drawbacks, and how curriculum would need to be adapted.  Some really great discussions developed during the hour over these issues and more and it was awesome to see educators thinking about, discussing, and debating their craft.  As a result, I also came across some great resources at http://cellularlearning.org/, http://www.cellphonesinlearning.com/ and http://chrismayoh.blogspot.com/.

Now, I come to my personal situation.  Last year, I allowed a limited number of students to use their smartphones, iPhones, and iPod Touches (wifi-enabled) to do research work in our class.  For this, we usually go to the lab or use the class set of wifi-enabled netbooks.  But, the lab isn't always available and we only have about a dozen netbooks (getting a few more this year), so we needed more ways of connecting online.  This was generally pretty successful.  Getting the right to use their mobile devices in the classroom (something they are not usually allowed to do during school hours) gave students a sense of empowerment and responsibility.  As far as I could tell, no one abused the privilege by texting their friends or visiting inappropriate sites (things they likely do anyway when teachers aren't looking).  The students were treated as adults, and they became better learners as a result.

This year I am planning on challenging my school to rethink mobile device use in the classroom.  This needs to involve a reevaluation of our phone and mobile device policy.  Also, it needs to involve teachers who are willing to pilot the use of such devices in the classroom (I plan on expanding my use of it, but one voice can get drowned out pretty easily).  I will post more on this effort as it develops in the coming weeks.  These devices are here, and they are here to stay.  We should learn to make use of their enormous educational potential instead of treating them like a dangerous and unwelcome item.

Students' Collaborative Videos

I realized today that it had been a while since I had posted.  The main reason for this is I have been working closely with my students finishing their collaborative projects.  With my class or seniors, they finished their presentations and posted them to VoiceThread with some great results (more on that in my next post.)  For my sophomores, they completed their collaborative video project on 19th century ideas.  They used Ning and Google Docs to research and plan a video.  They then created them and posted them to the Ning to share with the other students (who could comment and rate them).  You can see some of the best examples below.  I then had them complete an online assessment and evaulutation of the project using the Google Forms feature in Google Docs.  Here is the form here.  Hope you enjoy the vids!


Find more videos like this on Mr. Folmer's Honors WorldCiv 2.0



Find more videos like this on Mr. Folmer's Honors WorldCiv 2.0


Find more videos like this on Mr. Folmer's Honors WorldCiv 2.0