A Light in the Darkness

Much is written about the dangers of mixing teenagers and social media. Rightly so. With the area of their brain with is responsible for judgement a good five to ten years shy of being fully developed, teens are fully capable of making mistakes. Some of these are errors in judgement, they have failed to look ahead to the consequences of their actions. And when this lack of good judgement mixes with social media, the implications are instantaneous and far-reaching. We know the stories. They are not pretty.

But what happens when they do think ahead, when they do use good judgement? Well, here is where the picture brightens considerably. Across the country, and the world, teenagers have used the power of social media to create movements for good. The YouTube video A Sincere Compliment is just one example of how one person, in this case teenager Jeremiah Anthony, used the power of Twitter to spread compliments. Well, the idea took off and soon hundreds of people were tweeting compliments using the @westhighbros idea. 

We don’t tend to hear much about these things. Good news travels slowly, while bad news is like a wildfire. Perhaps we need to actively consider the positive power of social media. Perhaps our time is better spent considering and promoting positive messages through such avenues as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Perhaps in so doing we can create a more collaborative, less competitive culture which celebrates cooperation and the ability to compromise. 

As educators we can use this powerful medium as a force for good, a light in the darkness.

Now where did I put that portfolio?

If you've been around the education playground for any amount of time you have heard of portfolios. I’ll go out on a limb here and say you have probably even used them (that is, your students have used them). 

And if you’ve been around long enough, you remember them as giant three-ring notebooks full of REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF. Those notebooks were lovingly assembled, with a great deal of care and thought, and then promptly stuffed in a closet somewhere and forgotten about. Or, even worse, brought home by your children as a sacred artifact forever documenting 4th grade.

Well, this ain’t your old portfolio grandpa! Today’s portfolios are live documents. Web 2.0 technologies enable real-time editing, real-time feedback, and real-time collaboration. This leap into the e-portfolio means that students can not only reflect on their learning, just as they did before, but can also manage their learning.

When students can go to websites which can correct their math homework, they are managing their learning. When students can post their work, perhaps as a YouTube video, then they learn from the nearly instant feedback they can get from a worldwide audience. When students can take notes, design lessons, collaborate using shared documents, then they are managing their learning in ways never before possible.

This move to the world stage, to immediate feedback, to the ability to revise, can enable our students to become students of the world. They can engage with a wider audience, interacting with people from all over the world, with the possibility of authentic learning through authentic experiences, and all without leaving their desk.

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane! Nope, that’s where I put that portfolio.

Taking My Ball and Going Home

The ability to collaborate is not unique to humans. Ants do it. Whales do it. Gorillas, chimps, and monkeys do it. In fact, examples of collaboration can be found across the animal kingdom. And often survial in some communities depends on collaboration.

So there is ample evidence to suggest that collaboration is an important skill, something to value highly. It is incumbent upon educators to help students develop that skill, for students’ future survival in the workplace, and, potentially, for our very survival on the planet.

 In 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn, Bellanca said, “Cooperative learning groups provide an arena in which students develop the interpersonal and small-group skills needed to work effectively with diverse schoolmates. These interpersonal skills enable students to engage in discussions in which they share and solve personal problems. As a result, students’ resilience and ability to cope with adversity and stress tend to increase.” (2010) Students who work collaboratively learn a variety of transferable skills which they can then take into the workplace, into relationships, and into their families. 

Educators can help students by integrating collaboration into the classroom workflow. By integrating collaborative elements into class projects, students will practice such skills as communication, problem-solving, resolving conflicts, leadership, and compromise. Students who master these skills will be more productive and find more opportunities in the work world which increasingly demands them of their workers.

Sources:

Bellanca, James A. (2010-04-19). 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn (Leading Edge) (Kindle Locations 3865-3866). Ingram Distribution. Kindle Edition. 

Image source:

Flikr user: simpleinsomnia. URL: https://www.flickr.com/photos/simpleinsomnia/11962336974/in/photolist-ipytp-eSdFF7-je572d-7Tguwg-5tksJn-6sc2q7-94Jz7j-66zHqA-8pSgC4-4X8DN5-6EX47g-wMgYa-5Vh8Wi-6tu3Yj-wMjpK-eRqb3-4X4nfF-wMj8x-gE1DKV-4X8FZ3-6dZT9R-cXehgu-6NXRZP-t3crL-4cPmgA-742f79-eRqFT-dsGLh7-7R3iP3-9TpAGG-26zNWL-eRqtt-wMh7E-gpGNig-4X4oia-9WyQpU-5UhLxe-4bbhLd-4bb619-4b77m8-4bb8uN-4b76V4-4tVtFF-5SvT3A-4b7766-cWEVp-xpuKg-5TEGm4-5oj5zf-wMiok

Flipping Out

Way back in 2004, Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams, two teachers in Colorado, came up with the idea of flipping their classrooms. It wasn’t a yoga class where students stood on their heads, but instead they decided to record their lectures, have students watch them before class, then spend class time helping students understand the content. Though this certainly wasn’t a brand new concept, as distance learning, in many shapes and forms, had been in place for over 100 years, it was a change in approach which had many advantages for teachers and students. 

But what really made this a fresh idea was that ordinary teachers, using commonly available digital tools, could now create and post simple videos for anyone to watch. Now, just as Web 2.0 democratized content creation for the masses, all teachers could feel empowered to deliver their content in new ways. And this ran the risk of engaging students in a medium they were powerless to resist- video! Yes, YouTube has created a generation of video zombies, and now teachers can further enable that movement. And as cruel as it may sound, students may be entrapped into learning something while they helplessly watch yet another YouTube video.

Clever.

But wait there’s more. With the addition of nifty screen capturing tools, teachers can also create content, such as a Keynote presentation, on their computers, and then discuss that presentation while annotating it, all the while thrilling their students by having their faces embedded live in the video. It sends chills down the spine.

Picture this- hordes of students mesmerized by teacher videos, each one packed full of delicious content, and with each teacher providing expert guidance, along with having her or his smiling face gracing the screen. It is almost too good to be true. But it gets even better. Now, the students show up in the classroom, completely engaged and immersed in the day’s topic, and ready to get to work demonstrating their understanding of the day’s work. It’s a beautiful thing. The only thing left is to cue the inspiring theme music. Oh wait, you can add that to the video too!

Valuing Creativity

If necessity is the mother of invention, then creativity is the father. Without creativity we languish, there is no more advance of culture, no more scientific progress, nothing to inspire. Being creative is one of my most deeply held values, far outweighing practicality or financial success.

So one of my frustrations with our current American education system is there is so little time for creative lesson planning. Now I’m not saying we can’t be creative in planning our lessons- we can. And I’m not saying we can’t have students being creative- we can. I’m simply saying we don’t value the time it takes to be creative enough to plan that time into a teacher’s day. The best education systems in the world do this. We don’t.

And that is ironic considering Gardner’s contention, in Five Minds for the Future, that perhaps Americans are creative enough and don’t need to focus on creativity in the classroom, where cultures such as China, who value uniformity over creativity, need to encourage creativity. It isn’t as though Gardner doesn’t believe in the value of creativity. On the contrary, he believes it so important he named it as one of the five minds we need to develop for future success. But he believes that mastery of a domain must precede creativity, and thus American students should focus on that first.

However, later in his book he writes about how the minds of young adults, from adolescence through early twenties, are naturally the most creative. And these are the students we work with. Thus it hardly seems wise to ignore their creative potential in an attempt to best prepare them for a future whose very success may depend on their ability to be creative.

In education, perhaps the use and creation of video is part of the answer. Assignments such as creating a simple video help us think both creatively and critically about how to present ideas. Clearly today’s youth are quite comfortable with video, to create and consume it. This may be one of our best mediums to consider when marrying the creative and the process of mastery.

Credits:
 Gardner, Howard. Five Minds for the Future. Boston, Mass.: Harvard Business School, 2007. Print. 

I Want My MTV

OK be honest, you started humming the song didn't you! Well, maybe just the older folks among us, but there really is a point here. The video revolution has been around for quite a while. So why does it still seem new in education?

Perhaps it is because change in education tends to happen slowly. Much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth has occurred because of this, but this may not be a bad thing. Or is it? Other fields seem to be more adaptable to innovation, and particularly when it comes to all things technological.

For example, some years ago I had knee surgery. The doctor did not have to slice a big hole in my knee and start digging around to find the part he needed to fix. Instead he made a small incision and inserted a tube into my knee, found the torn meniscus, and snipped it. Not only was my recovery faster, but I got some really cool pictures of the inside of my knee, complete with arthritis!

OK, I wasn't happy about the arthritis, but the use of video to greatly advance surgical procedures is fantastic. Now, has the change in use of video in education been just as fantastic? In some classrooms, it may be just that.

Some teachers, using a flipped classroom model, teach class content through video which students watch outside of class. Students then come to class ready to work with the information and the teacher is able to guide them along, since she is not stuck at the front of the room lecturing. Other classrooms use video as supplementary to the topic, giving a boost of information which can be viewed either in class or outside of it. Other teachers have students create video, making them active and creative, and enabling them to use tools they are mostly quite familiar with. 

YouTube, TED Talks, and many other video-based tools, have allowed countless new ways of approaching teaching and learning. The students are ready. Are we?

Feet on the ground, head in the iCloud

iCloud is Apple's latest attempt at cloud computing, and this time they got it right. 

iCloud is now like several products wrapped into one. To take full advantage of it, you should turn on all the iCloud stuff in iOS. To do that go to Settings: iCloud. There you should turn on Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Safari (very important), Notes, Passbook, Keychain, Photos, Documents and Data, and MOST IMPORTANT- Find My iPhone. 

I'll just mention a couple of things here, as some are pretty obvious.

If you use iCloud with Safari, it will sync all your bookmarks automatically between all your devices. Add a bookmark on your iPad, it shows up on your desktop and your iPhone. Fantastic. But even better, you can access any open tab from any device on any other device! Just go to the iCloud icon and it has a list of all open tabs. Very nice.

Photos is important because you get all the pics you take with your iPhone or iPad automatically aded to iCloud. And you can create shared albums in the cloud which can be viewed by others.

Documents and Data allows you to keep your Pages, Keynote, and Numbers docs in iCloud rather than on your desktop. I've got all my assignments from my entire Master's program at Wilkes in iCloud. I can start a doc at work on my Macbook, come home and open on my iMac, or even on my iPad. Docs and Data also allows other iOS apps to use iCloud to store data. I pay an extra $25 a year to go from the free 5GB storage to 25GB, so I don't have to worry about limits.

So how do you access iCloud? Go to iCloud.com. Use your Apple ID and password to login. There you can access your Mail (assuming you use the Mail app on either OS or iOS), Contacts, Calendar, Notes, and Reminders. You can also access all your Pages, Keynote, and Numbers documents there. And, perhaps most important, you can use iCloud.com to find a lost or stolen OS or iOS device. It can find and track any device you have "Find My iPhone" turned on on. 

iCloud is free, unless you want to add the extra storage. All you need is your free Apple ID, and it works best on a Mac running OS 10.9 and iOS 7.