SLOs for a Real Education

Really interesting podcast (first in what is hopefully going to be a series) from Michael Wesch. I'm still processing what I think about the entire podcast (there were certainly parts that made me uncomfortable, which probably means it's something I need to think about more), but I wanted to pull out this quote about what real Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) should look like (about 6:53 mark):

And we have to help them achieve all this within a bureaucratic structure that demands that we frame our goals in a few neat bullet points at the top of our syllabus in a section called: Student Learning Outcomes, often called SLOs. I've never been satisfied with these, they never reflect the complexity or necessity of a real education. If I were to write SLOs for a real education, they might be something like this:

Students will be able to:

1. Ask questions that burn in their soul and take them farther than they ever thought possible.
2. Open themselves up to others and new experiences, to challenge their taken-for-granted assumptions.
3. Cross rivers of doubt and conquer mountains of fear to set themselves free.

I think this very nicely identifies the tension between the SLOs we are supposed to write (and achieve) and the ones that really matter. I know there are many that will read the above and completely dismiss them as late-night-college ramblings (which, indeed, they are), but I think we need to take the time to reexamine our "taken-for-granted assumptions".

Yes, there are more specific, down-to-earth learning outcomes for our courses that I think should be part of the discussion, but I think very few of those should be (or even can be) standardized for all students. These "late-night college ramblings", however, are the types of outcomes that I can support being a requirement (or at least a worthy goal) for all of our students.

So I wonder why it is that we shy away from discussions around outcomes such as these, and obsess over measuring how our students do on discrete, isolated skills that very few of them will ever need to actually use. Perhaps it's because we are afraid of what we will discover. As Wesch says (about 49:50 mark):

You can't just think your way into a new way of living; you have to live your way into a new way of thinking.

This I Believe Goes Global: 2011 Edition

Anne Smith has a post up on her blog about this year's "This I Believe" project. Read her post for all the details, but here are the highlights:

1. Once again Anne Smith and Maura Moritz will be having their students write their "This I Believe" essays, then record themselves reading them, and post both the essay and the podcast to the wiki.
   
   
2. They are looking for classes who'd like to participate to team up with their classes. Those students would also write and record their own "This I Believe" essays, then the students would read, listen and provide constructive feedback to each other's essays. (Adults can participate, too.)
   
   
3. In addition, we're happy to facilitate additional classes if there's enough interest - we'll try to match up classes based on class size, grade level, and approximate completion date.

There's much more detail on Anne's blog but, if you're interested, check out the wiki and then fill out the Google Form.

This I Believe Goes Global

[cross-posted on Learning and Laptops - the "I" in this post is Anne Smith]

For the past two years, I have had my classes write their versions of National Public Radio’s “This I Believe” segment. I was introduced to this idea by a colleague and have been always impressed by what my students hold as their personal values and beliefs. Writing these essays has allowed for them to do something they don’t get to do all that often at school - express their heartfelt beliefs. After writing the essays the first year, we submitted them to NPR, but we also decided to podcast them ourselves – no need to wait to see if NPR might choose to broadcast them. The writing was good at expressing their values, but once their voice was added to their written expression, WOW, it simply transformed that personal essay. Instead of the words simply being words, the words conveyed deeply held emotions. Now, this is the standard.

Previous class examples:

Period 2 06-07
Period 5 06-07
Period 3 06-07
Period 2 07-08
Period 5 07-08
Period 3 07-08

We are approaching that time of year, when I am going to start the kids on this writing adventure, but this year I wanted to add a little twist with the help of you out there in the blog-o-sphere. I want “This I Believe” to go global. I want my students to benefit not only from knowing what their peers believe, or what the other AHS classes believe, but to hear and see what the world values. What do kids elsewhere in the U.S. believe in? What do kids elsewhere in the world believe in? What do some of the learned professionals that I know believe in? I want my students to walk away from this experience realizing the power they have as professional writers as well as connecting to other teenagers and adults from around the world. I want to see them exchange ideas, foster relationships, and appreciate the variety of perspectives.

So, how do we accomplish this? Karl Fisch, of course, is willing to be my master facilitator. He has set up a wiki (still a work in progress) that will provide the guidelines for the classes to follow. I am making Maura Moritz’s classes join us in this experience, too, so there will be four classes (ninth grade, 14 and 15 years old) from AHS writing and podcasting their essays: Moritz 3, Moritz 4, Smith 2, and Smith 5. We are hoping to attract at least three other classes from around the world, one each to pair up with each of our four classes. If we get more than four classes that are interested, then we will try to pair up any additional classes with another class somewhere in the world. If your class(es) are interested, email Karl with some basic information (your name, school name, location, grade level(s)/ages, how many classes, and time frame that you’d like to do this) so we can setup those partnerships. (Our thinking is that pairing one class with one class will keep this from becoming too overwhelming for the students, although of course anyone can read/listen/comment to any of the essays on any of the wiki pages).

We will create a wiki page for each set of paired classes and each student will upload their written essay as well as their podcast (the podcast can either be uploaded directly to the wiki, or you can use a variety of other services for that and then link to them). Each pair of classes will be in charge of their own wiki page and we’ll use the discussion tabs on each page to give feedback to the students. If you are an adult interested in writing a piece yourself, simply add them to the “adults” page on the wiki. I am hoping to get some notable edubloggers as well as my superintendent, CIO, and others to participate. It would also be helpful to include a brief bio so the kids can know who they are reading about.

Obviously you don’t have to do this with us or on our wiki, you can create your own. But we thought it might be interesting and helpful to have one wiki that aggregated all these essays/podcasts, one place that students (and others) could visit to learn about beliefs all over the world.

Wondering where to start? NPR has a number of education friendly links to help you along the process:

For Educators
For Students
Essay writing tips
How to contribute an essay to NPR

Timeline: For our classes we are going to start writing our essays, November 6th with a final due date of November 14th. The following week they will begin podcasting their essays. The paired classes don’t have to match this timeline exactly (although that would be great), but we’re hoping they can have theirs completed by the first week of December so that the students can start commenting on each other’s essays/podcasts.

But for other pairings you can set whatever time frame works best for you – that’s the beauty of the wiki, it’s a living document with no “end” to the assignment (although that’s why we need you to include your time frame when you email us so that we can try to match folks up). We would really appreciate any feedback (now or as this progresses) to make this an experience that is truly relevant and meaningful for these kids.

Update on AHS Chemistry Podcasts - Physics, Too!

Just a quick post to update you on Brian Hatak's AHS Chemistry Podcasts that I blogged about previously. Some of the technological issues have begun to get ironed out and overall things are going well. That's not to say that there aren't a lot of improvements to be made - there are, but things are going well enough that now Jeff Smith, an AP Physics teacher, is doing the same thing.

Brian also asked his students to provide some feedback on how things are going, which we'll use to hopefully make improvements. Brian also wrote an article that will be appearing soon in ISTE's Learning & Leading with Technology magazine, so look for that in the near future.

AHS Chemistry Podcasts

I first ran across the idea of podcasting Chemistry lectures about three years ago. Jean-Claude Bradley at Drexel University posted this:

A new way to teach. Having an archive of lectures available gives me a lot of added flexibility. This term I have assigned the archived lectures (podcasts and screencasts) and instead of lectures I run workshops during class time. I have the chance to interact one on one with every student who needs help with the specific problems that they have. I can use other modalities such as watch them play games or build molecular models from kits. In other words, I can be a teacher again, instead of a parakeet.

He also has a wiki with some links to his own and other university lectures that are podcasted.

I'm pretty sure I shared that with the folks in my staff development at some point and probably commented on how at least some university professors were trying to take advantage of some of the new technologies. And I recall a conversation with some folks where I mentioned this and talked about how it allowed the professor to offload the necessary (but routine) parts of his chemistry class so that he could get to the "good stuff" in class; the really interesting parts of Chemistry that he thought would grab the students' attention, but he often never had time for because he had to spend it on delivering the basics. And, as he blogged about, he wasn't worried so much about the attendance factor:

Attendance. It seems strange to me almost every article or comment on lecture podcasting assumes that a decreasing attendance is obviously a negative outcome. As educators we should be focusing on education, not counting bodies. If students are doing just as well and not attending class then that tells me that my multimedia channel is effective. This is exactly what I have observed in my online optional classes (using podcasting and screencasting), where attendance dropped to 10-20% by the last lecture.

Now flash forward to last year when Brian Hatak, one of the teachers at our school, came to me and said he had heard about these high school chemistry teachers in Woodland Park, Colorado podcasting their chemistry lectures and was wondering if we could do that. After some lengthy discussions about both the technology and the pedagogy, Brian decided to give it a shot this year:

Podcasts. Yes, chemistry podcasts.

For the past few years, I have felt frustrated with how my classroom was working. I would ask the students to read and they would act like they did, and perhaps some of them did, and then I would lecture over the material on the next class day. It seemed that the students were learning that they did not have to read since I would be covering the exact material in class. Then they would struggle on the homework problems and ask in class and earn average grades on the tests.

However, I felt as though I was doing a lot more of the problems then the students were. So, I started looking for a way to fix this.

Much like Jean-Claude Bradley at Drexel, Brian decided to try to offload the, umm, sometimes less than exciting (for some students) - but still very necessary - chemistry lecture/information delivery to outside of class. He found that he could "deliver" the necessary information in a relatively compact and cogent form via video podcast/screencast. He could take his time (and this does take some time up front) to fine tune it to make sure he hit all the points he wanted to, yet still take much less time than he used to in class (he's hoping most of the videos will be between 5 and 15 minutes, although a few will undoubtedly be longer). And, the students could watch it - or parts of it - multiple times if they needed to. Instead of frantically writing down notes in class and then later looking at them and understanding step 1 and step 3 but not having any idea of how he got from step 1 to step 3, they now could watch, pause, reflect, and re-watch until they felt pretty comfortable with the material. And, of course, they could come back to it as often as they needed to when they needed to review.

Previously Brian had been frustrated - like most teachers - with never having enough time in class. He felt like by the time he got done "covering" the material he didn't have enough time left to effectively answer student questions. He'd send them off to do homework on their own where he wasn't around to help them when they got stuck, and then feel frustrated when he'd have to go over it all again in the next class period. (Note: I think both Brian and I agree that it's not always a bad thing to struggle, but if the material is so difficult that students get frustrated and then give up - and lose their interest in Chemistry - then that's a bad thing.) So Brian decided to try to do almost the exact opposite of what he'd been doing before - have them do the lecture as homework and use class time to work with the students (much like Jean-Claude Bradley at Drexel appears to be doing). He could use class time to work with students in small groups or one-one-one, and also hopefully give him the time to explore some of the more interesting aspects of Chemistry. (Note: Our chemistry classes meet three times a week for 58 minutes on MWF, and then they have a two-hour lab once a week on either Tuesday or Thursday.)

Now, we just started school about two weeks ago, so we don't have any definitive results to share yet, but I think this shows a lot of promise. I've embedded one podcast below, but you can also visit Brian's TeacherTube channel to see all of them. He's just getting started, so still getting the hang of how to do this, but I think it's a good start.



As he progresses through the school year, Brian's also going to ask students to record some of their lab work and how they work out problems and share that out with the other students. He's really hoping to develop a community of learners, all helping each other - and future Chemistry students - learn the material.

I thought this was blogworthy in and of itself, but the story gets just a little bit better. Before the school year even began, Brian received an email from Ben, one of our students that was going to be in Brian's class. Ben had discovered what Brian had already uploaded:

I am personally very excited about the way you have decided to use technology to fundamentally change the way you run your class. The way you perceived an issue and saw how technology could be used to effectively address it is a prime example of how the expertise of teachers is key to effectively integrating technology into a class.

The screencasts you have a created are available on teachertube, which is a convenient way to view them. However, I thought that it would be even more convenient if your screencast was also a podcast. For this reason, I used several tools to turn the videos you post on teachertube into an iTunes subscribable podcast.

At this url, I have created a blog where the videos are reposted. It is the process of reposting that syndicates them into an XML format iTunes or other video podcast readers can understand. They are also available for download individually in a format that can be transferred to an iPod or viewed with Quicktime. The "PODCAST HELP PAGE" link on the sidebar goes to a website I quickly assembled that describes how to subscribe in iTunes, download episodes, or even view online with an iPhone or iPod Touch.

One of the reasons I am sending you this email is to make sure that this is acceptable to you. The screencasts are your intellectual property, after all. If it is acceptable, hopefully this will become a valuable way to access the content.

Well. Okay. Did I mention that it was still summer when this email came in?

Brian shared this with me and I suggested he email Ben so that Ben could teach us exactly how he was doing this (I was curious how he was getting the mp4 to be part of the RSS feed from Blogger so that iTunes would pick up on it) and so that Brian could give him the original mp4's so that Ben didn't have to convert them. Ben emailed us back with the details, and we are going to hopefully meet sometime next week to see what other ideas we might be able to brainstorm to make this work more effectively for the students. Ben has also given Brian rights to the blog so that he can post directly.

So give Brian some feedback on his post if you have suggestions (plus you can read about how he's having students use their cell phones instead of purchasing clickers). I'm also hoping Brian will blog soon about how he's modified a Wii to create a homemade - and much less expensive - whiteboard. As for me, I need to go mess up Ben's transcript so that he never graduates. At least he's only a Junior . . .

Even More This I Believe Podcasts

Now Maura's ninth graders have posted their This I Believe podcasts. As always, constructive comments on their podcasts are welcome (please comment on Maura's post, not this one).

More This I Believe Podcasts

Anne's ninth graders have posted their This I Believe podcasts (links to the text are below the Odeo player) - Period 2 and Period 5. As always, constructive comments are welcome.

If you want to hear more, visit last year's post.

20 To Watch

Well, since Scott outed me, I suppose I should link to the NSBA’s “20 to Watch.”

This is certainly a nice honor, but like the article in the paper the other day, it feels a little strange. Since most of what I do is simply write about what other folks are doing, either in my building or elsewhere, I’m not sure I’m real comfortable being the one singled out. So, if you’re a teacher in my school, or if you’re someone who I’ve written about previously, consider yourself “one of many to watch.”

And congrats to the other folks on the list, especially Scott and Gary Stager, the two other folks that I "know."

Update 10-24-07: NSBA has added podcasts for a few folks. They interviewed us over the phone and then edited them way down. Here's mine (or direct mp3 file 3 minutes, 2.75 MB) - not as bad as I feared.

NECC Reflection #4: Podcast Of Our Session

I suppose I should reflect a little bit on the session we presented at NECC. I talked about this a little in a previous post, that we decided the night before to scrap our original plan and only "present" for 30 minutes, then have 30 minutes of conversation. It seemed to work well, and reinforced what we’ve seen in our staff development efforts at our school – that we learn the most from each other, from the conversations.

Well, it turns out that Kristin Hokanson recorded our session and then kindly uploaded it to the web, so I had a chance to listen to it. The audio quality is pretty good – I was the only one miked, but all of our voices came through pretty well and there are only 2 or 3 questions from the audience that you can’t hear very well. If you’re really interested, you can listen to it online (55 minutes) or download it (mp3, 50 MB).

If you do decide to listen to it, keep a couple of things in mind. First, there are five of us presenting. The order that we appear on the podcast is: Me (I’m miked, so you might want to turn the volume up a little after my initial part is over), then Anne Smith (Language Arts teacher), then Brad Meyer (Social Studies teacher), then Barbara Stahlhut (Math teacher), and then Brian Hatak (Science teacher). After that we are all interspersed, but hopefully you can figure out who’s who.

Second, the podcast starts two or three minutes into our session, so you miss the intro. I think it’s important to know that part before listening to the podcast, so here’s the quick version. We talked about scrapping our plans the night before and leaving more time for conversation as I mentioned above, and we let the audience know that we were counting on them to come through.

Then we talked about why we were offering this session. At NECC 2006 (which was the first any of us had attended), as well as at other conferences, we had all had the experience of seeing some amazing presenters. And while we usually came away with some good ideas, we also came away thinking, "We have no idea how they got there, or how we could get there ourselves." So it was great to get ideas, but we felt like we rarely saw a path we could follow to help our school move forward. So we wanted to give a presentation from the perspective of a school that had gone "this far" (picture me holding my thumb and forefinger about 2 inches apart) along the path. We felt like we could share some approaches that had worked for us in staff development, as well as some classroom examples of the changes we’ve made, and perhaps help others figure out how to chart their own path, to help them see how they could "get there themselves."

It’s always hard to tell (for me, anyway) exactly how well a presentation goes, but from the comments we received we appear to have at least partially succeeded (and only a few folks left before the end, which is a pretty good sign considering we had the 3:30 to 4:30 slot and the room was pretty full). I think what I like most as I listen to our presentation is that you can really hear our passion come through. Thanks Anne, Brad, Barbara and Brian – both for the presentation and for all that you do day in and day out for the teachers and students at our school.

More Poetry Podcasts

Previously I blogged about Anne's classes posting podcasts of their poetry, and now Maura's classes have posted as well. Head over and take a listen to Period 1 or Period 6 and give them some constructive feedback.

Rhyme Time Podcasts

To update this earlier post, each student has now chosen the favorite poem that they've written and podcasted it. Please head over to this post on Learning and Laptops, listen to a few, and then give them some constructive criticism in the comments.

Podcasting En Español - El Día de San Valentín y A.P.

We talked a little bit about podcasting with Cohort 2 last Tuesday. Jenny gets the award for quickest to implement a technology she just learned about – she started with her students that afternoon. This wasn’t a case of, “Ooh, cool new technology, let’s use it.” She had a purpose, and asked the students what they thought. Several volunteered, and now she has two sets of podcasts up.

In second and third year Spanish:

Students in 2nd and 3rd year Spanish classes wrote poems, odes, or letters to someone or something that they love and presented them in class on Valentine's Day.

And in A.P. Spanish: (also check out the AP Spanish blog )

When my class found out about this task last week, they were nervous to say the least. They had to read a paragraph, then listen to a minute long excerpt (all full of challenging vocabulary), and then present orally for two minutes comparing/contrasting/relating to the two sources. Here is the product of their first formal oral presentation.

This was their first attempt at this, so we’ll get better at the technical aspects. So, if you speak Spanish and have a moment, please stop by and give them some constructive criticism.