EduBlog Insights

Harley is one of my favorite bloggers. He puts a lot of joy in classrooms and really gets kids actively engaged in learning. Recently he posted about the process of making maple syrup for a group of fifth graders in Georgia. He had read some of the analogies that the fifth graders were creating and he incorporated that into his post. What great reinforcement for these kids! They got to think and apply their learning in such a fun way and many of them tossed analogies back to Harley. Harley’s first post brought 53 comments from the students and his second post now has 41 comments! I’m betting we will see even more comments. Plus many of the students went on to create their own posts as they excitely shared all that they were learning. Wow! Talk about connections!

I love blogging with kids! I love the connections, the joy, and the thinking that abounds. Just think of all the neuroscience that is getting applied here:

Making it relevant….

Harley made the lesson personally interesting and motivating to the kids.

Giving them a break….

Blogging like this gives kids a break from the normal routine and it was a pleasurable activity that reduced stress and let them experience novelty.

Creating positive associations……

Kids developed associations by practicing creating analogies with a positively reinforcing strategy. (See Fifth Grade Webwriters Are #1)

And the best one, allowing independent discovery learning! These kids will no doubt remember and understand this experience becaue they had a part in figuring it out for themselves. There were choices of places to go to learn and they got to use their imaginations in the process.

Harley is not only a great blogger but has the makings of a neuroscientist too! Thanks Harley for putting all that joy into learning.

I also owe a tremendous thank you to Lani whom I had the good fortune to meet through a comment on one of my classroom blogs back in 2005. We have collaborated and learned much since that time and she personally has put a lot of joy into my learning and reflecting. Lani truly makes a difference in the lives of many….

Judy Willis wrote an article on “The Neuroscience of Joyful Education” that begins with this quote:

Brain research tells us that when the fun stops, learning often stops too.

This should be posted in every classroom. She goes on to say that “A common theme in brain research is that superior cognitive inpiut to the executive function networks is more likely when stress is low and learning experiences are relevant to students.” Now I have to ask how stress free are our classrooms in which count downs to testing and focus on testing is the top priority - the end all, be all? Judy Willis points out that classrooms need to promote novelty, eliminate stress, and build pleasurable associations linked with learning. She says plan for the ideal emotional atmosphere by making it relevant, giving them a break, creating positive associations, and guiding students to learn how to prioritize information, and allow independent discovery learning.

All this got me thinking about joy in the classroom and how much joy I have seen blogging in the classroom with kids. I’m thinking in particular of the J. H. House kids as I have spent most of my time blogging with them. My next post is going to feature one of my favorite bloggers who has put a lot of joy in a few classrooms over the past few days.

What a treat! I was sinking as I thought more about the damage high-stakes testing is doing to our schools so it was so uplifting to read Sara Kajder’s article, The Book Trailer: Engaging Teens Through Technologies in this month’s issue of Educational Leadership.

It tells the story of students creating a two-minute video using still images, transitions and special effects (generated with MovieMaker or iMovie software), voiceovers, and a soundtrack. Students present the central characters, themes, or issues of the book visually and through written and voiceover narration. All trailers have to include the title of the book, the author’s name, and a presentation that is both authentic to the text and that works to “hook” readers. I also require students to submit their trailers with a piece of writing that explores the choices they made, with an analysis of the book that shows that they made decisions on the basis of the text, and not just by using the aspects of technology that would best captivate an audience.

Sara goes on to say that….

But technology is not the goal. Student writers and readers are at the center of our instruction. And we, as mindful teachers, must thoughtfully and deliberately prepare all of our students for success by critically exploring the new technological tools and then using the ones that can help us and our students to powerfully convey what we think and know.

I can’t think of a more exciting time to teach, as we’re immersed in new possibilities for working with words and with one another. When we teach creatively with emergent tools in mind, we stand a better chance of engaging reluctant students by giving what we teach real meaning. Each day is an invitation to examine, play, invent, reinvent, and join in the conversation.

Read the whole article. I’ve posted previously about Sara here and here.

In the March issue of Educational Leadership, Sharon L. Nichols and David C. Berliner published the article, “Testing the joy out of Learning.”

They note that school cultures dominated by high-stakes tests are creating more and more reluctant learners.

What has all this testing achieved? Five years after NCLB was enacted, here is no convincing evidence that student learning has increased in any significant way on tests other than the states’ own tests. On measures such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), no reliable increases in scores have occurred, nor have achievement gaps between students of higher and lower socioeconomic classes narrowed.

In contrast, a wealth of documentation indicates
that the unintended and largely negative effects of high-stakes testing are pervasive and a cause for concern (see Jones, Jones, & Hargrove, 2003; Orfield & Kornhaber, 2001). In our own research, we have documented hundreds of cases in which high-stakes testing has harmed teaching and learning (Nichols & Berliner, 2007). For example, high-stakes testing has been associated with suspicious forms of data manipulation, as well as outright cheating. The tests undermine teacher-student relationships, lead to a narrowing of the curriculum, demoralize teachers, and bore students.

Research has not fully examined the impact of this
test-dominated school environment on students’ attitudes and dispositions toward learning. But we suspect that for most students, schooling is less joyful than it was; and for reluctant learners, schooling is worse than ever.

Also alarming is the increasing abundance of pep rallies ice cream socials, and I think signs like the one I posted about earlier today that clearly deliver the message that testing is the primary focus for learning.

I’ve said it before but I’m going to repeat it again…..high-stakes testing continues to be our biggest obstacle for needed change in education.

I saw this sign on the way to a school earlier this week. I guess this is what you call a “sign of the times.” I was telling a fellow teacher about this sign and she told me that she knew of other schools who had begun the count down on the first day of school. Hmmmm, I find the sign truly depressing.

I’d rather see a sign with this quote from William Butler Yeats:

“Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.”

At the beginning of this year I gave a technology survey to a nearby high school class. One of the questions I asked was “When using a website for educational purposes do you have a method for evaluating if the information is reliable, valid, accurate, worthwihile to use? If you do have a method, be as specific as you can. Think of questions you might ask yourself or steps you take.” Here are their answers:

• I just read it.
• When I look at info, I believe it is true unless it is farfetched/ludicrous.
• Don’t have a method.
• No
• Yes, look for author, updates
• No, I take it as it goes.
• When using a website for information, I look for sources cited and a clear author. I also make sure that I use multiple sources to verify information.
• The date or domain
• I really don’t have a method.
• You can check the same information on many sites and compare the information.
• I ask myself if it sounds reasonable & if I read the same information from many websites.
• no
• I check to see if the writer has minimal errors in the article as well as making sure that it is a website ending in edu, net, org.
• I don’t really have a method.
• I look for an author or publisher and a date.
• I check multiple websites to confirm.
• No.
• (1) If it’s well known. (2) When last it has been updated.
• Does it have an alternative source? Is it credible?
• No
• I check to see what kind of website it is. Example - .com, .org, .gov, .net

Depressing, isn’t it?I imagine many of you would find similar answers in nearby classes. I’d say we’re not getting the job done and we are really doing our students a disservice by not teaching them. Julie Coiro has a nice handout, Critical evaluation on the Internet: What’s missing in the text? What’s missing in our instruction? from the IRA 2007. Pass it along….

I had the pleasure to meet Jill Castek and Lisa Zawilinski at TRLD this year. They gave an excellent presentation entitled “Instructing Students in the New Literacies of Online Reading Comprehension.” Both of these ladies are members of the New Literacies Research Team at the University of Connecticut. Their excellent handout is on the TRLD site. They went into a lot of detail talking about ‘Internet Reciprocal Teaching’ which is an instructional model being developed to instruct students in online reading comprehension in classroom settings. Their research is done in a very participatory way. They actively partner with teachers in order to develop these skills and strategies with them in the classroom environment. They believe this is a flexible way to look at pedagogy. It is not a series of step-by-step concrete lessons. They look at a wide variety of content areas - reading, writing, listening, speaking, and content areas. There are three phases

• Teacher led stage - teacher models strategies and the discussion process
• Collaborative stage- teachers and students interact to support strategy development
• Reciprocal & Inquiry stage - students apply strategies by facilitating student-led discusssion during authentic reading events based on student -direct inquiry projects.

View video clips showing student-led Internet Reciprocal Teaching groups.

Check out the blogs they have built with the students:

Wildcat Class Blog

Wildcat Student Blogs

Idea Exchange

Nierlich Students

Also, take note of the wiki they have built with their students:

Nierlich Class

The pictures below will show some of their slides and you can see how they used instant messaging to clarify assignments with the kids through the process. They said this really worked great with the quiet students. They ranked sites as to their relevancy and the students were really active in this process. They have to scaffold within each stage- a scaffolding with strategies. They turn the job of introducing new strategies to students - groups of experts who will teach their peers. Again as Leu noted in his keynote, many of the weaker offline readers were quite strong online.

It was a great session led by two dynamic educator researchers. Take the time to browse through their site- lots of relevant and worthwhile information there.