Citations Are Out Of Style

In addition to occasionally aiding and abetting torture, the American Psychological Association is perhaps best known in schools for the APA Style Guide, which is frequently used when writing about topics in the social and behavioral sciences. My high school uses the Modern Language Association's Handbook instead as the go-to source for writing research papers. Both guides are well-researched, thoughtful, and very helpful to students in the entire writing process. In my experience, however, they are most often the topic of conversation when it comes to using the proper formatting when citing your sources. Over the years many a student has spent countless hours trying to get the correct spacing, punctuation, and abbreviations/underlining/italics/etc. correct so that their paper wouldn't get returned to them all marked up in red ink (often without benefit of even getting feedback on the actual content of the paper). Thankfully, today we have many electronic resources like EasyBib that allow students to accomplish this task much more easily and much more accurately. We need to stop.

No, I'm not saying we should stop using tools like EasyBib. As long as we have APA or MLA-type requirements, then students should definitely take advantage of the tools to accomplish those requirements quickly and accurately. What I'm saying is that we need to stop using APA or MLA citation requirements altogether. That doesn't mean that I think students shouldn't cite their sources; they definitely should. What I'm suggesting is that both APA and MLA citations are legacy artifacts that are no longer the best way to accomplish the primary objectives of citation:

to uphold intellectual honesty (or avoiding plagiarism),^[1] to attribute prior or unoriginal work and ideas to the correct sources, to allow the reader to determine independently whether the referenced material supports the author's argument in the claimed way, and to help the reader gauge the strength and validity of the material the author has used.^[2](emphasis mine)

I'm curious. I wonder how many of the high school teachers (who I'm focusing on here, but it applies equally at other levels) have actually tracked down the original source of a citation on one of their student's papers? (Your time in graduate school doesn't count, I'm talking the day-to-day grading and feedback you give to your students.) I'm going to hazard a guess that it's not very often (if ever), and that the overall percentage of citations you have actually used to "determine independently whether the referenced material supports the author's argument in the claimed way" (in other words, read the entirety of the relevant section of the original source and reflect on it's relevance and applicability) is in the low single digits.

I suspect, instead, that the majority of a teacher's time is spent evaluating and providing feedback on the writing of the student (which it should be), and then the time spent on the citations is mainly on the formatting (which is not the purpose of citations). It's a prime example of "style over substance." I completely understand why the formatting requirements exist, by standardizing on and requiring precision in the formatting of the citations, we can ensure that the correct information is provided so that - should we want to - we can track down the source. But if we don't ever track down the source, what's the point?

So what's the alternative to APA or MLA? I think it's pretty simple and relatively obvious: it's the hyperlink. The vast majority of content today is available online, either the full text (or full images, audio, video, etc.), or a link to purchase the content in print form. Surely if the full content is online it makes more sense to link to the actual content so that the reader can investigate for themselves as opposed to a print citation that would require the reader to purchase or find the printed copy of the material. If the full content is not online, linking to where you can acquire that content seems to me to be much more useful than the print citation as well.

But what about sources that are not online, say out-of-print books? Well, first, I would question the "relevance of the work to the topic of discussion" if it's not available online. If a source is old enough that it doesn't exist online, and no one thinks it's important enough to make it available online even for purchase, then how relevant is it? What are the chances that the reader is going to be able track down this out-of-print, not-available-to-order online work, in order to accomplish the purposes of citation? In the rare case that a piece of material like this is relevant, we could have a simple, old-style citation, but I have to think this would be very rare.

What are the downsides to this system? I see two major complications. First, if you are linking to content online it is not always easy to identify the exact section (page, etc.) that you might be referencing (for instance, for a quote). Web "pages" often don't have "pages," they just scroll. And if you link to a way to acquire the material (say, to Amazon), then you run the risk that different copies ordered from that same link might be formatted differently, thereby changing the "page" the specific content you're referencing is on.

I think this is worth some discussion in the academic community, but I see several possible ways to address this. First, if the full content is online, the point is somewhat moot. If you are trying to find the exact quotation, you simply have to search the content. If the full content is not online and you are linking to a way to acquire the material, then perhaps we could come up with a brief citation protocol that could identify the relevant section of the material so that it could be easily found if anyone were to actually track it down in print. (Suggestion for publishers: figure out a system of both relative and absolute reference inside your published works to address this very issue.)

The second complication is a bit more challenging. As we all know, links sometimes change or disappear. I think this problem can really be divided into two scenarios, one of which is the most realistic one for most of us, which essentially makes the problem moot, and one of which is still very real but surmountable. The more realistic scenario, the one that the vast majority of students and teachers in high school will face, is that those citations are only going to be accessed for a very short time period. I don't know what the typical length of time for writing a high school paper is, but I would imagine it is less than six weeks from start to finish. A very high percentage of links that a student would use are still going to be valid six weeks later and students could confirm those links (and update if necessary) just before submitting their paper. The chances of those links becoming incorrect in the time it should take the teacher to assess the paper is very, very small.

For the rare occasions (at least in high school, but certainly not so rare as students get older) that you need your citations to be long-lived, then the possibility of links becoming outdated is most likely proportional to the age of the citation. (The older your citation, the more likely it becomes that the link becomes outdated.) Again, I think the academic community should discuss this, but I see several possible solutions, including tools that capture the web page at the time of the citation (Diigo, for one, or even just screenshots) or including a brief reference along with the link that would allow a dedicated reader to track down the material. (Suggestion for Amazon: figure out a way to make your links long-lived, so that even as things change existing links would still connect the user to an archive that shows them the relevant information.)

Is such a system perfect? Probably not, although I imagine if folks smarter than me started working on it it could be made pretty darn good. But, if our goal with citations is actually to further learning, to allow the reader to not only verify where we got our material but to explore further, then links are clearly superior to APA or MLA-type citations.

Just ask yourself, when is the last time you clicked on a link to learn more? When is the last time you tracked down the printed copy of an APA or MLA citation? Which system is more conducive to learning?

What's the Best Way to Provide Feedback on a Paper?

So, my last post has generated some really great conversation in the comments. No easy answers, but lots to think about. As a result of one of those comments, I thought it might be good to solicit ideas from you guys on some of the ways you provide feedback for students on written work (in this case, thinking about the typical English paper, but it doesn't have to be). (Turnitin apparently does a nice job of facilitating that feedback and I don't have any angst over that part of the service :-).

Again, same caveat as on the last post, I'm not a Language Arts teacher and I do not claim to have any special pedagogical insight into providing feedback on papers. Let's also agree to stipulate that one-on-one conferences with each student to go over their writing is better than anything we're going to submit here.

But, given that it's next to impossible in most schools to have the time to do those one-to-one conferences with every student with every piece of writing, there is a need to provide some kind of feedback that's asynchronous. That's what I'd love to have you address in the comments: what strategies, tools and techniques have you used to best accomplish this?

So, from my non-Language-Arts-teacher perspective, my initial thought of the best way to provide feedback would look like this. The teacher reviews the student's writing on an iPad or similar tablet. This allows them to directly annotate on the written work just like they previously have on a written/printed document. But as they read through and annotate, they record a screencast that allows them to also record their verbal feedback, explaining the annotations and giving them more depth.

To me, that seems like it provides all the functionality of annotations (on either a written/printed piece or an electronic piece submitted somewhere like Turnitin) while also providing some (not all) of the benefits of a writing conference with the student. It also wouldn't take any more time than the traditional grading/annotating of a paper. (Okay, it would take a bit more time to encode and then upload the video for the student to review, but I don't see that as a huge time commitment. I could be wrong.)

So, Language Arts folks, what ways have you found to do this well? What about my proposed solution above doesn't work for you (or how would you improve it)? Would love to hear your thoughts.

Why I Wouldn't Turnitin

I am not a Language Arts teacher, nor do I play one on TV. I do not have 3-5 distinct Language Arts preps, a student load of between 120 and 220 each semester, or the number of papers to grade that comes with that student load. I am not trained in how best to help students learn Language Arts, nor am I steeped in all the Language Arts standards and habits of mind that we'd like our students to develop.

Now that I've thoroughly destroyed any credibility I might have to talk about this issue, I'd ask you to continue reading anyway.

My school is probably going to adopt Turnitin next year. If you're not familiar with this, it's a service that allows you to have your students submit their writing to Turnitin where it is rapidly checked against their massive database of other student work to check for plagiarism. It also helps teachers and peers provide feedback. From their About page:

Turnitin is used by more than 10,000 institutions in 135 countries to manage the submission, tracking and evaluation of student papers online.

I have not used Turnitin, so I can't comment on how well it does what it purports to do, but I've heard that it does a good job and is pretty user-friendly for both teachers and students.

I wouldn't use it.

I have several concerns about the use of Turnitin, but I'll focus on just two here. First, by contracting with Turnitin, you're basically agreeing to submit your students' work to a large corporation so that they can use that work to make money. The more folks that use Turnitin, and the more student work that is submitted, the more valuable it becomes for Turnitin. You're allowing (actually, enabling) a corporation to monetize the intellectual property of your students.

Now, I realize this argument will seem rather esoteric to many folks. They'll suggest that elevating our students' work to "intellectual property" is a bit of a stretch, and that the goal of using Turnitin is to actually help the students, and it's okay if people make money along the way. Both of those may have some validity, but I'd ask you to think about this scenario. How would you feel if your school district took some of your work as a teacher and then sold it, and kept the profits? (By the way, they probably can do that since it's work product, but my question is how would you feel.) It's essentially the same thing for our students, except they didn't have a choice (you did when you accepted this job), nor do they get paid for their time (you get paid for your work, even if you wouldn't get the proceeds from the sale of your work product). I find it somewhat ironic that we are attempting to teach our students that copying is wrong by copying and sharing their work with someone who will profit from it.

Second, and this is the bigger issue for me, is the assumption of guilt. By using Turnitin we're essentially saying to our students, "you are guilty until proven innocent . . . by Turnitin." We don't trust you, we assume you're going to cheat, and in order to deter that we're going to submit everything you do under the assumption that you are cheating.

Now, last time I checked, one of the basic principles of our country is the presumption of innocence; the assumption that you are innocent until proven guilty. Not only that, but there has to be probable cause to pursue the matter to determine your guilt. What kind of message does it send to our students when we flip that on its head?

I get why Language Arts teachers would want to use this product. I get the overwhelming workload and the frustration of dealing with student plagiarism. If I was a Language Arts teacher I might even swallow my concerns and use Turnitin myself. But I'm not, and that's the beauty of this post, I can at least attempt to evaluate the use of Turnitin from a big-picture perspective without the annoying reality I would face as a Language Arts classroom teacher. And, evaluated on the "rightness" of using it, it's no contest - don't do it.

So how would I address the issue of plagiarism? I don't know, at least not to any level of detail. I think there are certainly some partial solutions that can help, such as not giving standard assignments with standard prompts that are easy to plagiarize, or having students complete writing tasks in class. But I realize those only go so far, but I think it would be worth our time to flesh out that list and perhaps we could come up with a more complete list that might - on the whole - be a better alternative to Turnitin.

I can foresee some folks asking question like, "But don't you value Literature? And don't you value writing?" And my answer is that I very much value Literature, and I very much value writing. Do I value writing about Literature? Not so much. That doesn't mean I think writing about Literature is necessarily bad, not at all, as long as that's what you want and choose to do. But I do think that forced, mandatory writing about Literature that is assigned to you that you then turn in for a grade is perhaps not the best way to help students become better writers or lovers of Literature.

A serious question for Language Arts teachers: When is the last time you wrote a paper about a work of Literature? And, no, graduate school doesn't count. You don't get to justify doing something to your students in school because someone else did something to you in school. I'd even ask a follow-up question, when is the last time you wrote anything longer and more involved than an email? If (school) writing is so important, so critical to our students, that we would spend some of our budget on a service that assumes our students are guilty until proven innocent, then I think you need to show the writing you do in your life.

I know many of the folks reading this will be able to do that, because if you're reading my blog then there's a better-than-average chance that you're a blogger yourself. But I wonder what percentage of Language Arts teachers write anything significant on a regular basis? And of those that do, I wonder how much of that writing resembles the writing they are asking their students to do and then submit to Turnitin? I wonder how many Language Arts Departments - all the teachers in the department combined - have written even as much as I alone have in the last eight or so years on this blog? That's not to say there's anything special about me for writing on this blog, but that is suggesting that they should put their (school district) money where their writing is.

I think writing is more important than ever. But I think the most important writing done today doesn't look very much like school writing.

• Important writing is done because you want to accomplish a task, you want to change something. School writing is often done just to get a rather dubious grade.
  
• Important writing is done for an authentic audience, for an audience that cares about and needs what you are writing about; it's meant to be shared. School writing is done for an audience of one, and that one usually has to read between 30 and 200 other pieces of inauthentic writing at the same time. It's rarely shared.
  
• Important writing is often (although not always) done collaboratively. School writing is rarely done collaboratively.
  
• Important writing today frequently uses hyperlinks that allow you to actually click through and read the source material, and we frequently do. School writing frequently uses citations in MLA or APA format, where we seemingly care more about the appropriate placement of punctuation then we do about the usefulness, relevance, and importance of the source material. Rarely in school writing does anyone actually read the source material.
  
• Important writing is difficult to plagiarize, because you have something to say, and it's yours. School writing is often easy to plagiarize, because you may not have anything to say, and it's not really yours.

There's one more interesting piece to this (assuming you've found any of this interesting), and that's the fact that my daughter will be a ninth grader at my school next year. Some folks are undoubtedly wondering whether we will "opt her out" of Turnitin. The answer is probably not, just like we haven't opted her out of standardized testing. But what we will do is give her the choice of whether to opt-out, just like we have with standardized testing. (So far she's chosen not to opt-out of standardized testing, because she doesn't want to be "different." Oh, how apropos, not opting-out of standardized testing because you don't want to be different.) If she should decide that she does want to opt-out of Turnitin (unlikely as that is), we will support her.

Does this mean that I think Language Arts teachers who use Turnitin are "bad" or "evil"? Not at all; as I said, I can see where it would be helpful to them in dealing with the realities of their classroom situations. But it does mean that I wish we would question the realities of our classroom situations and perhaps, just perhaps, spend our time and energy on changing those situations instead of using a flawed and ultimately harmful tool.

---

For an interesting discussion of copyright and other issues related to Turnitin, this article from the Florida Law Review (pdf) is very interesting (and lengthy).

Student-Directed American Literature: We Need Your Help

One of my Language Arts teachers is wanting to try something a little bit different in his American Literature classes second semester. These are mostly juniors (16 and 17 year olds) and this is our “regular” junior year English class. Jeff (the teacher) would love some help from you guys in terms of resources and/or ideas. Here’s the basic idea:

In order to allow students to more passionately investigate topics that have meaning to them and to make learning more student-directed, I want to develop a collaborative project with my American Lit (juniors) class where they investigate a larger topic on their own.

Some of the topics I’m considering are:

What is…

love?

happiness?

the American Dream?

truly living?

hope?

freedom?

good/bad?

reality?

success?

truth?

beauty?

(open topic, but needs to be approved by me)

We will read The Great Gatsby as a class because I believe it’s an important work in American Lit and Gatsby covers the thematic topics I’m wishing to use. Then, they will need to read other works (i.e. novels, short stories, non-fiction books, essays, blogs), watch films/videos, look at art, and examine other disciplines in order to find cross-curricular connections to their topic (could include art, music, history, philosophy, science, psychology, whatever). What they read, watch, and examine will be largely self-directed because I want them to follow their interests. And, while I hope that they’ll look into more modern ideas that may not be on a district approved list, I will still provide a list of more traditional, district-approved American Lit texts and readings.  

I envision meeting with students frequently (both inside of and outside of class) to discuss their learning and in what direction they are planning to go. As I am wanting students to find additional material related to their topic, I will ask for some level of parent permission so that I may offer suggestions of readings, films, music, and art that are not limited to works that have been “approved” by the district. Throughout the semester, I will have checkpoints at least every six weeks to ensure the students are working toward understanding. For literature, they will need to read at least 1 additional book (fiction or nonfiction), and 3 articles/essays/short stories. Then, they will incorporate at least 2 different disciplines (art, music, philosophy, etc…) in addition to literature. This investigation of a topic will all come together in a final project that will show what they have learned through this process. This will be open-ended so as not to limit thinking, but I can imagine original films, essays, creative writing, original songs, prezis, constructing something (virtual or actual), building web pages, music videos, computer apps, etc...

Here is where I really need help. What are some resources that can help students find books/articles/films/art/etc that will relate to their particular topic?

So, if you have suggestions for Jeff, either in terms of additional ideas or especially in terms of resources for students, please either leave a comment or email me. Thanks in advance for your help.

Discussing Little Brother with Cory Doctorow: Take Two

Anne Smith and Maura Moritz's students will once again be discussing Little Brother with author and blogger Cory Doctorow. A different set of students had this opportunity two years ago and it was a great experience (see that post for more details on the bigger picture of the unit), so we're really looking forward to this.

If you're available at 8:30 am Mountain Time on Tuesday, January 31st, feel free to join us in the live stream or the live blog. Mr. Doctorow will be responding to our students' questions live via Skype from London (the stream will be a not-so-great quality webcam-based ustream, but you should at least be able to get an idea what it looks like and hear fairly well), and the live blog is a place for our students to backchannel while the Skype session is occurring. If you do join us in the live blog, we simply ask that you use your real name and make constructive contributions to the conversation.

Update 1-31-12
Here are a few pictures from today and the embedded ustream archive.

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.

Just Write Poorly. In Public. Every Day.

Seth Godin has some advice about writing:

The reason we don't get talker's block is that we're in the habit of talking without a lot of concern for whether or not our inane blather will come back to haunt us. Talk is cheap. Talk is ephemeral. Talk can be easily denied.

We talk poorly and then, eventually (or sometimes), we talk smart. We get better at talking precisely because we talk. We see what works and what doesn't, and if we're insightful, do more of what works. How can one get talker's block after all this practice?

Writer's block isn't hard to cure.

Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can write better.

I believe that everyone should write in public. Get a blog. Or use Squidoo or Tumblr or a microblogging site. Use an alias if you like. Turn off comments, certainly--you don't need more criticism, you need more writing.

Do it every day. Every single day. Not a diary, not fiction, but analysis. Clear, crisp, honest writing about what you see in the world. Or want to see. Or teach (in writing). Tell us how to do something.

So, are you having your students write every day? In public? I know I'm not (although I'm starting to have them write a bit).

I think we're often overly concerned about the quality of our students' writing, and whether it's "good enough" to share. Now, to be clear, I think our students should be concerned with the quality of their writing, and should strive to get better at communicating their thoughts. But if we let the worry about what others will think get in the way of having our students write more, and for a larger audience, then we're doing them a disservice out of fear.

This begs the question, of course, about how much our teachers are writing. Particularly our Language Arts teachers, but really all of our teachers. If it's so important for our students to write, how come we're not modeling it?

Do you write every day? In public? Why or why not?

Daniel Pink Live Blog (May 9, 2011)

Below is the live blog for our students' conversation with Daniel Pink on Monday, May 9th, from approximately 8:25 am - 10:30 am Mountain Time, and you can also view the ustream.

A Whole New Mind: Join Us For Year Four

Once again this year students in Anne Smith and Maura Moritz's English 9 Honors classes will be reading Daniel Pink's A Whole New Mind and discussing it with each other, with many of you, and with Daniel Pink himself (read about previous years' experiences). Students will be holding in-class fishbowl discussions and live blogging chapters four through nine (Design, Story, Sympathy, Empathy and Meaning).

The process will be very similar to previous years, but there are a few variations on our end. This year students will also be reading excerpts of Drive, watching and evaluating some TED Talks, and then their culminating activity will be giving a 5-minute Pecha Kucha style TED-like talk answering the question What Matters? for their final exam.

We are again asking other folks from our learning networks to participate as the students discuss specific chapters of the book. We hope to broaden their perspectives by extending their Personal Learning Networks to include thoughtful folks, both locally and from around the world. Like previous years, an inner circle of students will be having a face-to-face discussion, and the outer circle of students can periodically join the inner circle but will also be live-blogging. (If you want a refresher, here are some links to help explain the process and see the students' work.) We will again be using Ustream to broadcast the inner circle discussion out to remote participants, parents and other interested folks, and CoverItLive for the live blogging.

We would love to have some of you join us as well. This wiki lists the dates and times along with which chapters will be discussed on which dates (note that due to time constraints we’ll be combining the Empathy and Play chapters). If you are interested in participating, please do the following:

• Re-read (if you wish) A Whole New Mind, or simply review the chapter(s) you'll be blogging with the students.
  
  
• Visit the wiki and add yourself to the appropriate date(s) and time(s). You may add yourself to any spot, even if someone is already signed up, but it would be great if we could fill all the open slots first if possible. Also please add your "participant biography" at the bottom of the page. To keep the live blogging manageable, we'd like to have a maximum of three folks sign up for each slot (although everyone is welcome to observe the live blogging).
  
  
• On the day and time you've signed up, tune in to our ustream channel and to the appropriate blog post (linked from the wiki - as we get closer to each live blog date the period number will link to the live blog post).

We're really excited about this opportunity for our students and want to make the most of it. We really hope that you'll join us and add your thoughts to our conversation.

Looking for Some Help from Ireland

Lauren Lee, a fabulous Language Arts teacher at my high school, is looking for some help from someone in Ireland:

I'm hoping to begin another collaborative adventure as I start James Joyce's The Dubliners with my junior-senior college preparatory course. In a perfect world, I would love to collaborate with a class in Ireland who is also engaged in the same text but, realizing that might be an unachievable aspiration, my hope is to connect with someone who is from Dublin and is familiar with the text. The city of Dublin is such a prominent character in Joyce's works and I would love the students to get the perspective of someone who knows both the city and the text and might be willing to Skype into my class. Any takers?

If you're interested, leave Lauren a comment on her blog or contact me.

Wikileaks, the TSA, and Ninth Graders: Want to Participate?

Hey, have you noticed anything in the news lately about some kind of leaking wiki? Or perhaps new and improved procedures at your favorite airport? Have you ever wondered if perhaps you could relate that to literature, and if perhaps high school students might have an opinion about these things?

Well, wonder no more. Anne Smith and Maura Moritz's classes will be discussing safety versus security in the context of Fahrenheit 451, 1984 and Little Brother:

We invite you to participate in a wonderful learning conversation with our ninth grade honors classes on February 3, 2011. After studying the world of dystopian fiction through classics such as Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, George Orwell’s 1984 and the modern response, Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother, our students will engage in an intense discussion as their final project. We are inviting you to participate to help our students examine how these works play an enormous part in their world today through such relevant issues as Homeland Security, government censorship, information leaks, and safety versus security, to name just a few.

Our students will participate in a fishbowl discussion with live blogging and we will Ustream out the fishbowl discussion live so that you can hear the in-class discussion while participating in the live blogging.

So, head over to the post to learn more, or head over to the wiki to sign up to participate. We'd love to have you be part of this learning experience for (and with) our students.

Open Letter on Behalf of the NWP

(Note: This is not my post, but rather a re-post of Zac Chase's post. Feel free to repost or send to your representative.)

The Gist:

• The current draft of the federal budget cuts direct funding for the National Writing Project.
• The NWP has been one of the few extremely successful examples of a nationally-networked effort to improve K-12 writing for 36 years.
• We must communicate with Congress to change the budget.

The Whole Story:

Dear Rep. Fattah, Sen. Casey and Sen. Specter:

I write to you on behalf of the National Writing Project. More precisely, I write to you on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of students and teachers the program has transformed over its 36 years.

Under the budget proposed by President Obama, national funding for the NWP would be cut. In a Feb. 1 press release from the U.S. Department of Education, the NWP was lumped in with 5 other projects losing funding because the DOE claims they “duplicate local or state programs or have not had a significant measurable impact.”

As the NWP is unique as a networked writing instruction program with 200+ local sites serving all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, I am left to believe Sec. Duncan is claiming the NWP falls under the category of not having a “significant measurable impact.”

This too is untrue.

A 1987 longitudinal study on the effects of the NWP by Kathy Krendl and Julie Dodd found participating third through twelfth graders showed an increase “in interest in learning about writing, in their level of confidence, and in their association of self-esteen with good writing.

Not only that, the study also found a decrease “in students’ feelings of discomfort about completing writing assignments and in their feelings that they do not write well and that writing is difficult.”

In a 2007 study of the NWP’s Local Site Research Initiative, across nine localities students showed significant or non-significant favorable results in all seven categories.

This should not have been surprising considering the DOE’s own data listed the NWP as exceeding its performance targets in 2001. Indeed participants’ ratings across all categories ranged from 95-88 percent reporting positive impact at their follow-up assessment of the program. This went well above the program’s target of 75 percent in each category.

Were this simply an impassioned plea, I would have hesitated to write. The data speaks for itself, the National Writing Project has offered a significant return on investment in its 36 year history. Federal funding for the NWP must be maintained if we are to continue striving to meet the Project’s goal of “a future where every person is an accomplished writer, engaged learner, and active participant in a digital, interconnected world.”

I thank your for your time and attention to this matter. Please, let me know if I can be of any assistance.

Sincerely,

Zachary Chase

English Teacher

Science Leadership Academy

Philadelphia, PA

Cory Doctorow Discussion Ustream Archive

Well, the technology worked fairly well for our Skype discussion with Cory Doctorow today. The audio on Skype wasn't perfect, but we could hear fairly well. And it froze up a couple of times for about 10 seconds, but then started transmitting again. We also lost the ustream once, which is why I've embedded two ustream archives below.

Part 1 (about 17 minutes) is the first part (amazingly enough) of our discussion. We actually start about 3 minutes into the recording, as I hit record before we actually got started just to make sure I didn't forget. Then Part 2 is obviously the remaining portion (about 41 minutes). We probably lost about a minute in between those two recordings. Given the audio issues on Skype, it's a little hard to hear on the ustream as well, but I think you can make most of it out.

Overall, I think it was a great experience for our students. Thanks, Cory, for being so willing to give your time and talents to help our students.

Discussing Little Brother with Cory Doctorow

Anne Smith and Maura Moritz's ninth graders are currently finishing up reading Cory Doctorow's Little Brother. Previously they read 1984 and their task is to look at both books and answer the questions:

What have we learned - or what have we not learned - over the past 60 years [from Orwell's time to the present]? What does our future hold for us?

This has been a fascinating unit to observe. Anne and Maura have brought in additional folks to speak to different aspects of each novel. They brought in our Western Civilization teachers to help our students understand what was going on in the 1930's - 1950's that Orwell was reacting to and that influenced 1984.

As they moved on to Little Brother, they invited in different social studies teachers to talk to the students about 9/11 and The Patriot Act. They also invited in myself, Mike Porter (our district's Assistant Director of Instructional Technology), and Ben Horblit (a knowledgeable former student of Anne's who's now a senior) to talk about the technology in Little Brother and its ramifications. Then earlier this week Mike Porter, along with Dan Maas (our district CIO) visited to talk about rights and responsibilities surrounding technology use and school law, which was a very interesting discussion.

Now as they are finishing up Little Brother, the students will have the opportunity to question the author, Cory Doctorow, himself. As you may recall, I blogged last spring that some students who had chosen to read Little Brother on their own contacted him with questions, and that they then ended up with an hour long Skype conversation with Cory. He agreed to Skype again this year, this time with students from all four sections gathered together in our Forum to ask questions and listen.

Cory will be joining us for about an hour again via Skype and, if all the tech goes as planned, you are welcome to watch via ustream. We will be broadcasting from approximately 8:25 - 9:25 am MST (UTC/GMT -7) on Tuesday, February 2nd. Some of the students will also live blog over on Anne's class blog. As always, our focus will be on making the learning happen for our students, so if we have any technical difficulties, the ustream will not be our first priority.

It Was Amazing

Kristin Leclaire (who needs to blog more often) just posted about her 10th graders reading The Kite Runner. I wrote about this last year, but this year she knew about Rob ahead of time so could plan a little better. As Kristin writes:

I explained that our contact, Rob Dodson, had contacted me last year after reading my class blogs, and that he was a military officer stationed in Afghanistan. I had invited him to become a part of our discussion this year, and he immediately accepted the invitation.

Kristin goes on to describe the interaction Rob had with her class, and the effect it had:

For the first time in my teaching of The Kite Runner, students were genuinely, authentically interested in the cultural background of this book.

. . . Ask any of my 4th hour students how they liked The Kite Runner, and their faces actually light up as they respond with an enthusiastic, “It was amazing.” And it was.

Go read her post for more details, and here's one post on her class blog where Rob addresses some student questions.

As I've said many times before, why aren't we doing more things like this?

A Good Day

Anne Smith’s English Literature class recently discussed Act III of Hamlet with Debi Ohayon’s AP class. Not that unusual, perhaps, except that Anne’s class is here at Arapahoe in Centennial, Colorado, and Debi’s class is at The Lovett School in Atlanta, Georgia.

Anne tweeted out that she was looking for classes that might be interested in interacting with her class around Hamlet, and Laura Deisley – who’s the Director of 21st Century Learning at Lovett (great job title, btw) – responded that she knew a teacher that might be interested. Anne’s students are pretty comfortable using the fishbowl with live blogging method of discussing a book, but we wondered if we could make it work with two inner circles, one in Anne’s classroom and one in Debi’s classroom in Atlanta. As Laura writes:

after some traditional back and forth emailing and a Skype conference call, Anne, Karl, Upper School English Department Chair Debi Ohayon and I settled on a collaboration: two joint classroom Skype and live blog sessions on Hamlet.

So, one inner circle of discussers in Anne’s classroom, and an outer circle of live bloggers. One inner circle of discussers in Debi’s classroom, and an outer circle of live bloggers. One Skype connection so the two classes could see (sort of) and hear (most of the time) each other and have an oral discussion. One CoverItLive blog so that the outer circles could discuss via live blogging. While the technology wasn’t perfect (pretty wide shot with the webcams and at times the audio broke up a little, but the students just asked each other to repeat what they said), it worked pretty well (see Anne's post for pictures from her classroom). As Anne writes:

Debi’s students rose to the challenge that the technology and new discussion method presented, and my students didn’t back down when discussing Hamlet with an advanced placement class. Both sides walked away commenting about how great it was to hear different points of view than from the students in their own class.

And, on Laura’s blog, Debi reflects that:

Boy, am I glad my curiosity or sense of duty or both propelled me forward, as it has been a thrill to watch this pilot project become reality, despite the time commitment, logistical challenges, and alterations of my syllabus. The excitement that both my students and I have felt being pioneers as well as participants in a joint classroom experience across the country has been enormous. As Laura suggested, just the concept of kids in the 21st century talking in different time zones about an early 17th century text is intriguing. It's certainly not just about the fun (though it is really fun); the students agree that the Skype/LiveBlog shared classroom has enriched their learning experience. Meredith captured this sentiment today in class during our feedback session when she said, "We got to branch out beyond our own classroom and discuss similar ideas as well as gain insight about other ideas from students we didn't know." Furthermore, Mark said, "It was not only a blast, but a highly intellectual experience that I will always remember." I know many educators fear technology being pushed for the wrong reasons, but I'm quite convinced this was an example of technology enhancing pedagogical goals.

We’re going to do this again on December 9th (over the entire play) and it will be interesting to see if it goes even better. I expect it will, as we’ll probably position the microphones a little better and certainly the students will have more experience under their belts and should be more comfortable with the format.

I think this was not only a valuable experience in terms of students learning about Hamlet, but also because of the sense of community that it engenders. As Debi said:

I'm pretty certain that the something special was a uniquely communal learning environment. Since I also have a personal invested interest in character education, I would be remiss not to note as a bonus what a delight it was to see teenagers from different parts of the country, representing both public and private schools, using literature to discuss timeless, universal moral issues.

Yeah, it was a good day.

Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor . . . Tonsils

Maura Moritz's daughter just had her tonsils out. Being the good Mom that she is, she's staying home with her until she's feeling better. Being the good teacher that she is, she didn't want her class to lose out on valuable instructional time. They were scheduled to do a fishbowl with live blogging over Fahrenheit 451, so what to do?

Well, it's a fishbowl with live blogging. The first thing she can do is participate in the live blog (period 3, period 4). The second thing she can do is Skype into class so that she can see and hear the in-class fishbowl discussion.





Just one more example of how Skype is becoming more and more valuable in a school setting. Tell me again why Skype is blocked by so many school districts?

National Day on Writing: Kylene Beers Leads By Example

Today is the first (hopefully annual) National Day on Writing. It includes the National Gallery of Writing, a live webcast from 9 am to 8 pm EDT, a U.S. Senate Resolution supporting it and, most importantly, lots of writing and smart folks talking about writing.

One of the smartest folks I know talking about writing is Kylene Beers. She’s done a lot of thoughtful work around reading and writing and is currently serving as the President of NCTE. Now, in addition to her tireless efforts to help us all become better readers and writers, Kylene has launched a blog of her own. As she says in her first post:

I’ll be using this space for an on-going conversation about literacy in the twenty-first century.

I really appreciate the fact that Kylene is not only talking the talk, but walking the walk. She is leading by example even though, and I think she would admit this, blogging does not come naturally to her. But see, that’s the thing, I don’t think blogging has to come “naturally” to any of us. It sure didn’t come naturally to me. But what does come naturally to Kylene is the ability to write thoughtfully about these issues, and blogging allows her to not only write about, but learn with, other really smart people thinking and working on literacy. As she says to conclude that first post:

We do write to be heard because it is in listening to one another that we do become a part of a community. Perhaps what this space is really about is community, a community of learners in the twenty-first century. Welcome!

I couldn’t have blogged it better myself.

This I Believe Goes Global - We Want You!

(This post is written by Anne Smith and cross-posted on Learning and Laptops. So the "I" in this post is referring to Anne.)

For the past three 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
Wiki 09-10

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 invite you in the blog-o-sphere to join us again. 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. Maybe you can challenge your principal, your school board members, your local politicians, heck, maybe your entire school. Maybe we can even get our President to write his own “This I Believe.”

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 again, 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, please complete this Google Form with some basic information (your name, your email address, school name, location, grade level(s)/ages, how many classes, number of students in each class, 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 13th for their essay. 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 Thanksgiving 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.

What’s Core?

The Common Core State Standards Initiative is a joint effort by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) in partnership with Achieve, ACT and the College Board. Governors and state commissioners of education from across the country committed to joining a state-led process to develop a common core of state standards in English-language arts and mathematics for grades K-12.

As Tom Hoffman points out, we really need to take a closer look at the draft standards. Why? Here are his Top 10 Reasons:

1. Your state has probably already committed to using them.
2. The federal Department of Education is exerting heavy pressure on states to adopt the Common Standards.
3. An impressive and powerful list of partners and supporters are backing the Common Standards initiative.
4. These "college- and career-ready" standards, if implemented, will become the basis of all subsequent K-12 English Language Arts standards.
5. These standards, if implemented, will become the basis of all subsequent K-12 English Language Arts curriculum and assessments.
6. The results of those assessments will, if implemented, be used to evaluate not just schools and students, but the performance of individual teachers.
7. The creation of data systems to attach test scores to individual teachers is a basic requirement for federal Race to the Top grants and a top priority for the federal Department of Education and other powerful interests.
   
   But . . .
   
   
8. The Common Core State Standards Initiative English Language Arts Standards are not actually English Language Arts standards.
9. The Common Standards for English Language Arts are narrower, lower, and shallower than the Language Arts standards of high performing countries.
10. We are inviting testing companies to determine the future of our schools with virtually no accountability or public input.

Tom expands on these in his post, please go read it now. Tom’s also written many other posts about this (too many to link), so visit his blog and scroll down. Other folks have recently written about this, including Bud Hunt, Chris Lehmann, and David Warlick.

Now, since most if not all of those folks used to teach Language Arts, I’m not sure if I have much to add to their perspective. Instead, let me throw out some questions from a non-Language Arts teacher perspective. As always, I’m just thinking out loud here.

1. What’s Core?
   
   People use different buzzwords – some use core, some use essential learnings, your school or district may use something else, but I think this is a critical question for all of us. Tom is very concerned that these standards are too narrow and shallow and are not reflective of the fact that English Language Arts is a discipline. On the one hand, I agree with him. If you just read the list of standards in isolation, they do appear to be somewhat shallow, and I worry that the following observation from Tom might be accurate:
   

   the obvious interpretation is that they chose to define the standard as "support or challenge assertions" rather than "construct a response or interpretation," as every international example they cited did, because the former is much easier and cheaper to score reliably on a standardized test.

   When I explore the full document (pdf), I do feel a little bit better based on the examples they give, but certainly Tom makes his case that other international standards seem to go much deeper, and that it’s possible these standards are being tailored in a way that makes them easily assessed on a standardized instrument.
   
   But, on the other hand (and yes, I know, I always seem to have a lot of hands on hand), I worry about Tom’s suggestion to add more and more levels of detail into these standards. Because this runs into my own personal dilemma with standards, that in some respects they are too comprehensive, too overwhelming, too restrictive, and perhaps not wholly necessary.
   
   This is a real struggle for me, because I do think that students around the world need many of these skills, and much of this content, yet I can’t help but think that we all are so in love with our content areas that we lose sight of what’s truly essential. I say this from the perspective of a parent of a nine-and-a half-year old who wonders if “literacy criticism” or “the concept of genre” are essential. They may be, I’m not sure. But I can’t help but think of that study a few years back (sorry, can’t find a link at the moment) that indicated it would take something like 26 years to “cover” all the various standards in place at that time (and we have more now). Is this what education – and life – is supposed to be about? It just seems to me that, somehow, some way, what’s essential, what’s really core, should be a much shorter list.
   
   
2. Malleable or Inflexible?
   
   Chris makes a good point about national testing and the resultant depersonalization:
   

   Once there is a national curriculum and a national test, we will see a further blurring of the line between "education" and "training" where kids are given online instruction and online assessment that can be delivered to any student, regardless of geography.
   
   . . . It has the risk of the ultimate deprofessionalization of teachers and depersonalization of education.

   
   And the NCTE’s Definition of 21st Century Literacies state that
   

   These literacies . . . are multiple, dynamic, and malleable.

   So the literacies are malleable, yet standards are fixed and inflexible? We want all kids to flourish and live up to their individual potential, yet we’re going to achieve that by standardization? How do these things coexist?
   
   
3. Necessary, but not Sufficient?
   
   While the full pdf includes more examples that take this into account, the list of standards themselves seem to ignore the current technological world we live in. Only three of the standards (Reading #12 and #13, and Writing #12) seem to even come close to acknowledging that we live in a rapidly changing, technologically enabled, globally connected - and interconnected – world. These standards could’ve been written fifty years ago. That doesn’t make them bad, as many of these abilities are certainly still necessary, but are they sufficient?
   
   These standards don’t seem to address that reading, writing, speaking and listening are all very, very, very (did I mention very?) different in our current world than they were one hundred, fifty, twenty or even ten years ago. Yes, many of the standards apply in our world today, but I still don’t think that fully addresses how we read, write, speak and listen in a read/write, always on, always connected, participatory world.
   
   I think their definition of text is way too narrow, and way too limited. While one would hope that the more complete document would be taken into account, I could easily see the assessments targeted solely at the stripped down standards. Which then would mean instruction would be targeted only at the stripped down standards. Which then would mean our students would be perfectly prepared to graduate high school . . . in 1985.

So, as Bud points out:

The validation committee’s pretty light on language artists.

I would add that the workgroup that developed the standards also seemed to be pretty light on actual practitioners, although testing companies were well represented. In fairness, the NGA points out in the FAQ (pdf) that teachers were consulted:

NGA and CCSSO have asked for and received feedback from national organizations representing educators, such as the National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), and National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). These organizations each brought together groups of teachers to provide specific, constructive feedback on the standards. The feedback was used to inform the public draft of the college- and career-readiness standards. Numerous teacher organizations are also involved with the initiative through the National Policy Forum, which provides a means to share ideas, gather input, and inform the common core state standards initiative.

I would strongly suggest that you take some time to review the standards and some of the thoughtful posts about them, and then provide your feedback. Particularly if you’re a Language Arts teacher, but even if you’re not because, as Tom points out, as they are currently worded all teachers will be responsible – and held accountable – for students meeting these standards. And, as he points out in another post, it appears as though the end goal just might be high school graduation requirements.

Where can you provide some feedback? NCTE has issued a statement and is soliciting feedback, and you can provide feedback directly to the validation committee by October 21st. If you’re a member of NEA or AFT, you might also consider letting them know what you like or dislike about these draft standards.