Multi-faceted Refractions

Jonah Howland
English Department
Urban School of San Francisco

[Live Blogged - please ignore mispellings and awkward wording]
Was a skeptic, but now sees many more advantages than the problems that they had.

Skeptical that students are not as different, maybe more changes in media.

Students practice acquire knowledge and make sense of it, just the media has changed. Subject is the same. Geometry, Languages, History have been around for a long time. Enterprise of teaching and learning remains the same.

The online written conference
Has used for five or six years.

The Hub and Spoke Humanities Class
Most of learning is transacted to inward, radial, teacher very much in the center.
Teachers model, prompt, tease, interrogate, and direct traffic
Good enough for Socarates
Students as acolyte.

Builds rigor and accountability.
Safe and contrived, like fishisng a stocked pond with a guide

Other problems occasioned by the conventional architecture
Primary on quickness, extemporaneity
Solution - group projects
problem - accountability and balance of effort

Schism between the relative informality and structuredless verbal schange and what is expected of students in writing
solution - in-class writing, journal writing
problems - futher entrenches hub and spoke structure
generates mounds of material for teacher’s one-on-on assessment and response

Solution - Online Written Conference

Example (American Romantism) - need to slow down, observe, and reflect and respond. Facilitating goal.

Record an observation. Read and respond to all classmates in the group. Rethink and rewrite their own piece. Want to have conversations of information not discussed in class and interests them. Make connection between seemingly disparate parts.

Advantages
Primacy on reflective staying power, appetite, and insight
Students are accountable to one another in the building of an end-product
A kind of intermediate practice in composition - neither discussion nor essay writing but helpful practice for the latter.
Standards for strong work are set and communicated through the exchange.
Teacher’s function - combination of Adam Smith and Alan Greenspan

Allows for development of their own voice.
When students need guidance, teacher can give

Uses First Class - Use of conferences
Has course expectation - all online.

Similar to threaded discussion or forums at various other products.

Asking student to take risks with help from their peers.

Showed examples of student work.

Howard views the conversation as little as possible and as much as necessary. Will look at the paper turned in at the end.

Does build in time to bring in important threads brought up by the students. almost every week.

Big books hard to teach with demands of students. But use conference as a support group to help students get through the book.

An espirit de corpes that is built between groups.

Challenges and complications:
Timeliness and accountability to each other - ease of access is helpful.
Works best organically, it should generate its own momentum
Setting and maintaining reasonable expectations
Hard to summon authenticity, light social engineering is helpful [ seprarating friends to create mixed groups of grade level and ability
Monitoring if you make it too much of your job. Have to find balance

Key - What are the Learning Goals?
This is the key to success in all aspects at the Urban School

has given domain evidence of provocation.
Clear informed, purposeful writing
Grasp of larger meanings and implications of the essential questions and concerns of the material
an openness to the ideas, concerns and needs of others

Advocacy
A less teacher-centric classroom. Was in-class and individual, now a third
Student testimony tends to favor this activity, but is a lot of work
Richness and range of inquiry in formal essays and projects is greater
Authenticity of learning and propriety ethic
A democratizing and metastasizing experience

Useful axioms
Play with the prospects - try it out, see how it works
Attend to the effects as well as the affects
Student feedback is telling
Keep your eyes on the learning goals while making adjustments to your pedagogy.

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[Live blogged using note taking capabilities of the new tablet. Really excuse the spelling errors and awkward phrasing]

Alice Bryant

Harpeth Hall School

 

Presentation (old school)

 

Has done presentation

in Photo Story

 

Has created a PowerPoint

 

 

Has attended Internet

for Libraries

 

Rutgers presentation

and research. she will shave.

 

Has.

 

Past

 

-students go

through.

 

 

Present

Now work with teachers

 

 

 

Future

 

Student Focus

 

Main focus.

 

Meet the needs of our students.

 

 

old model -Create a

web quest. Librarian

 

did work, handed

off and didn’t get

 

to interact with

 

students or teachers

 

huge gap with

 

many problems.

Not a baby sitter.

 

Now just teach

students and teachers.

 

More than a single

 

perspective.

Authentic assignments

allow for greater learning

 

 

Use a constructivist

approach

knowledge building

 

 

 

Reflection is critical

 

Need to develop an

 

assessment cycle

 

as part of collaboration.

Rutgers asks, Do they

learn anything? -Ross-todd

 

 

two kinds of students

Additive

Integrative

 

Working transformative’s

More kids additive than

integrative (reflect, assess, monitor, and guide)

 

Showed example How to change

%ography to Bio Poem put on board then forgot

 

Tried it again, with

guiding questions.

Created a Bio poem

lots of description

retained more

Shared

Goals

Vision

Trust

Respect

Assessment

Reflection

 

 

 

What is different now?

Time

Respect-knowledge

A Team approach

 

 

Acknowledge don’t know everything

Collaboration

 

-Meet the person

where they are at

 

-Develop relationships

 

-Take the Time

 

-stress skill Development

 

-use Technology to help Integrate

 

Not much work with

 

web 2.0

 

5th grade -Biomes project

Ecology project

States Projects

 

take something from

nature. Find web site

use Noodde tools for

citation.

Then work on photo story

 

 

6th Grade Geography Project

AGirl Named Desire

Created powerpoint

challenging books

information. Use

 

Follett Destiny

 

library resources/

Web resources from card

catalog.

 

Noodle tools changing

 

on July 25th

 

 

 

7th Grade.

Used one note to

organize. Can

Share notes with others

 

 

Us -Japanese Gardens

 

Read Samara’s Garden

 

Most made Gardens

 

Had to defend garden design.

 

Make connections with “public library

 

 

Important to create relationships

 

 Note taking and text recognition did a reasonable job. Once I get mine and will have more experience, it will be a better experience.

 

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In the next session that I am going to sit, Laptops, Libraries, and Collaboration, I am going to run the new tablet pc I am using through its paces. I am going to handwrite my notes, the old fashioned way, and then post them after I convert them to text.

How cool will that be?

Jim Heynderickx

What age do you start a laptop program? Jane Healy suggested 7th grade, since are ready to make a better leap to symbolic understanding.

Classroom size? Early results suggest 15.

What type of Demographics is best? Do laptops address digital divide issues for all students?

Does it level the playing field? if so, then want to have a great opportunity?

Early adopters are girls sections

What type of campus would be best for this brand new school? Early adopter in rural setting to support remote learning experiences.

What type of funding would you have in the new school of the future? May not be able to answer until other decisions are made.

What type of School Workspaces would you want? Laptop represents a virtual workspace that does not limit spaces.

What type of classroom design, what type of furniture? Don’t want it to be comfortable in the classroom. Would they be more home like, business like, or school like?
It would be nice to have choices for different environments. Would be helpful. Not enough research to deal with ergonomic issues. A school has built ergo-nomic educational.

What is in the classrooms? Outlets, projectors, SMARTBoards, scanners, cameras, printers.
Some schools do not allow adapters, and have a charge during the course of the day. Reduce cable clutter. Wireless projectors with IP. Cleaning supplies for keyboards and screens. Should there be external mice and keyboards.

Does a laptop school have a media center, or in classrooms.

How does the library change? What would be the role of the librarian? What kind of support would there be.

XThink for tablets - mathematical equation building.

Kids today are different. (Referenced two new Time magazine articles.)

Evidence is emerging that screens are not for passive dysfunction. Students are native and wired differently. We are immigrants, we speak digital as a second language. We retain some kind of an accent.

Children’s brains are chemically and neurologically different. They process in parallel, not sequential like us.

Used to be assumption that by age of 3, we all had fixed memory and intellegence. What you had, you were stuck with.

Long standing assumptions are changing with research over last 3 years. Highly adaptive and malliable brain. This is huge. Brain reorganizing and restructuring based upon inputs and intensity of the inputs.

IQ raises and falls based upon the simulation we are exposed to. There is neuroplasticity, brain is creating new thinking patterns throughout our lives. It doesn’t do it by itself, requires intensive, progressively more intense, over an extended period of time.

Watching TV over several hours a day, 7 days a week, will reprogram the brain’s wiring. The impact of technology, via social networking and gaming. Now games have moved from solo experiences to networked experiences. Students pay to play (Everquest, WOW) to compete against each other. Xbox and PS3 are trying to develop this.

Brain is like a tree, early, a flury of growth. The pruning keeps fresh. Use it or lose it. Pruning, not raging hormones make teenagers what they are.

Mylian boost transmission speeds in the brain and bandwidth. If only doing one thing (academics, arts, athletics) these are the ones most developed. Argument for teaching the whole child and having regular exposure to these experiences, including technology, is crucial.

Students have greater visual processing, doing it differently.

Referenced the Human Brian Project. Neuroinformatics. Using FMRIs, researchers can research which paths are used in brain.

How different parts of the brain do simple tasks and processes information. Done more in past two years than previous 100 years.

Scientific American - The Teen Brain. (need to review)

If take different generations do same task, different pathways are used. For many tasks, different pathways, especially in visual cortex, 15% larger in the last 20 years.

Game takes 40 hours to master. Visual processing increase with 10 hours of gameplay.

3M Study- 100 photographs, digital natives will remember 90%, we would remember 60%, dinosaurs (text and audio) will only remember 10%

Eye processes images 60000x faster than text. Visual 30%, touch 8%, hearing 3%.

Eyes of students move differently, Immigrants -1/3 down and 1/3 in, the goldn mean, with a z curve, left to right.

Natives - bottom, then the sides, the the upper left hand side of the page (new layout). Unless motivated, will ignore lower right if motivated. What is the impact to the teaching of reading.

Immigrants - black on white background. Colors are not.
Natives - Blood Red, Lime Green, then burnt orange. Black least favorite.

87% of students are not auditory or text learning. Because of digital bombardment, they are digital kinestetic learners. Most exams are based on text and vocabulary.

Prensky - when reaches 21, will have played 10,000 hours of games, 20,000 hours of tv, 250,000 text or emails. These are not experiences that we have had.

How will this impact students learning? Less than 9000 hours of school, 4000 hours of reading, most of it unengaged. What need to acknowledge, think and process differently.

With younger children (teens, tweens, and younger) there is an acceleration in this process between these groups. Will help explain why they do what they do and differences in generations. Almost nothing is being applied in classrooms today.

What are the implications for schools. Talking and teaching is not the correct model. Need more inductive and constructivist methods.

Four items that need to be done:
1. New information must connect new idea to what they know, otherwise will only stay with student for 10 seconds.

2. Previous knowledge and experience defines what they learn, where they learn, and why the learn. Most school work does not interest the students. Good at real-life examples, may have problems with theoretical. Learning is personal to learner, not hte teacher.

3. Learners have to be given repeated, differentiated learning experiences. Have to practice and exposure to materials, from different perspectives and in different contexts.

4. Have to have consistent feedback and need reinforcement. Has to tell what is doing right, and then what can be done to improve.

Information without context is only like having one side of the velco. Can only occur when can make significant connections. Edgar Dales’s learning cone. After two weeks, 10 % of what read, 20% of hear, 50% of hear and see, 70% of discussion, 90% if teach to someone else, immediate application of that skill in a real-world or simulated experience. Not that ADD or ADHD, not interested and tuning us out.

Not short for interest, but the way we teach and learn.

Don’t understand how different students are. Not learners for the way the space has been built and the way we learned to teach. Who has learning problem? Not the kids.

50% of population is under 25 year old. What percentage of teachers are under 25? Part of the problem we are facing. Slow and dumb down interactions with teachers.

If we want kids to be successful, need to go beyond theory towards application. No way that we will be able to go back to basics.

Have to get involved, twit, blog, podcast, check out mySpace, faceBook, etc.

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