Finding Authentic Audiences

The best education prof I had in grad school was Dr. Fred Goodman. Once he told us once that if classrooms were open to public audiences, that we'd see teachers with clipboards, stop watches, and whistles; just like football coaches. I could completely relate. I thought how conscious I was of using every second of practice time as a basketball coach and how casually some teachers treated the first two or three weeks of school with "easing students in." We've all had teachers who spent large portions of class time telling us about how they spent the weekend or what they watched on television. Would they do this if the class had to perform under the lights on Friday, night? Probably not.

I think public performance should have a prominent place in best teaching practices. As I've noted in Why Blog?, expressing my opinions in a public forum serves to refine my thinking and even hold my feet to the fire of innovation. I've certainly found in teaching an AP course, that knowing the students' scores will be a matter of public record, has a way of focusing one's mind as a teacher. Last spring, I started to set up online exhibition spaces for some of my students' best work and submit these links to our school's online community newsletter. I joined the "Authentic Audiences" challenge based learning group at the ADE Summer Institute, last July, inspiring the title of this post and allowing me to get others' ideas about this topic. I'm absolutely convinced that schools should be aggressively seeking audiences for students.

But what to do in the mean time? Well, I've decided to drop it in the students' laps. My AP Government challenge based learning project requires them to identify an audience and to create an "authentic medium" for reaching it. Cop out or break through? I'll know in a couple of months and get back to you, then!

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Flickr Creative Commons Photo of the Big House in Ann Arbor by jeffwilcox

Paging All Waivers!

This year I was prepared.

But last time around I introduced WikiSpaces and Google Docs to my students mid-term. My adventures were not without setbacks (see Larry's Adventures in Wikiland), but some of the groups and individuals produced remarkable podcasts, videos, web sites and wikis. So then I decided that I wanted to share, blog about, or just show off their work. Consequently, I was generating ad hoc notifications and permission slips throughout the year.

This summer I whipped up three notification / waivers for my three courses. Check out the one I prepared for American Government (Click for pdf).

The document was made with iWork '09. I used a brochure template and found the banner with a public domain search. The Pages application allowed me to easily match the colors of the banner throughout the document. I thought the coolest feature was my ability to drop the public domain photo of the capitol dome into the background of the document. (A one minute Atomic Learning tutorial taught me this trick). Even a clod like me could produce a slick looking document and publish it as a pdf.

My students' first assignment of the semester was to download this document, get it signed and return it to class.

100% of them have done so, and only one parent declined any of the permissions. Pretty cool.

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Photo is a screen capture of Lit into Film course waiver.

Web Sites from Summer Camp

In my conversations with others at the ADE Summer Institute I learned about some interesting web sites.

*For those of you uncomfortable with YouTube for educational purposes, check out TeacherTube , One of my project teammates, David, is very active in developing video curriculum in Arizona. He heartily endorsed it. The goal of TeacherTube is to to provide an online community for sharing instructional videos in an educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners.

*Kutiman produces the most amazing YouTube music videos that I have ever seen. They are intricate mashups of other videos...usually very amateur artists. The results are utterly fascinating. You can also check out his project at thru-you.com

*Animoto turns still photos into movies quickly and creates beautiful results. Lots of options, even at the free, basic level. Robert, an innovative elementary teacher showed me this one. It's amazing and could be of interest to anyone k-12 for classroom or personal purposes.

*My roommate, Joe is involved with the American Film Institute's Screen Nation, which features the best films and videos from young filmmakers on the web as well video tips and contests. 11-19 years olds can to screennation@afi.com Screen Nation. The site is of great interest to film teachers and students, and Best Buy has been sponsoring a cool 64 page download on basic film techniques.

*Brain Honey was another tip from elementary teachers. It creates curriculum mapping customized to state standards. Most interesting to me was the way that it could allow for individualized learning and intervention. A simple, free site for those consumed with making progress toward state objectives.

Project Based Learning (ADE Institute Reflection #2)

When I posted Larry's Queries a couple of weeks ago, I got some helpful feedback. But one area went unaddressed:

Trickle Down Wikinomics
I teach. . .Advanced Placement U.S. Government. . . . I usually require some kind of project . . . .This time, I was thinking of assigning some wiki projects around different portions of the Constitution. . . . But I am not sure how to utilize this kind of resource with the younger students. Any ideas?

The solution came to me at the ADE Institute where we immersed ourselves in Challenge Based Learning. This concept "applies what is known about the emerging learning styles of high school students and leverages the powerful new technologies that provide new opportunities to learn to provide an authentic learning process that challenges students to make a difference." The challenge begins with a "big idea and "cascades" through a process of
*forming an essential question
*devising a challenge
*asking guiding questions
*exploring activities / resources
*determining and articulating the solution
*taking action by implementing the solution
*reflecting, assessing, and publishing.

Pardon the above jargon, but suffice it to say that this will be a huge change for me because I will be placing open ended projects in my students hands. Instead of predetermining the type of outcome I desire from them (a wiki), I will let them arrive at the solution. I'm excited, because I think they could come up with some great things, but it makes me anxious because I know they and I will be venturing far out of our comfort zones.

At the ADE Summer Institute we formed groups and engaged in a compressed version of cbl. We did not have time to produce the greatest results, but the process itself was intellectually stimulating and gave me an idea of how engaging this type of collaboration can be.

You can expect to hear back from me in a couple of months at launch.

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Photo of Summer Institute cbl Group, by ADE '09, Kenneth Shelton

Building Virtual Audiences for Students

Teachers' Lounge Series, part 4 of 4

Ron and I were talking about podcasting several months ago, and during the course of our conversation he inquired about my course web sites. He expressed an interest in developing a drama department site, and I've been nagged by the thought ever since. My course sites were pretty easy to develop with Apple's iWeb-- It's user friendly and I had several months experience.

I think course web sites are important because 1) They allow a much better view of the class than a mere paper syllabus. 2) People simply expect to get detailed information online these days. I think a 1:1 computing school like mine should put as much well designed information on the Web as possible.

In creative areas like drama this seems particularly desirable. But why should it be on the drama, poetry, or music teacher to design and maintain the site? Shouldn't a school's community resources be used to actively support the efforts of our artistic teachers and students as they try to build their audiences?

As I've argued in "Tooting Your Horn", students respond to performance and since those outside our walls are coming to expect information about us at their fingertips, why not show them the best of ourselves? To illustrate how effective this can be, I've found four different high school sites that I would hold up as examples.

I loved the student art portfolios at the Conestoga H.S. site. It is my impression that the department has taken the initiative to archive its students work this way. Most extraordinarily, it appears that each student has designed her own page with links, so the media itself communicates the message of this department being exceptional.

The Parkview High School drama site is absolutely packed with production photos and slide shows. I would have loved to see some video, but obviously they are exhibiting their students in the next best way. Northampton High School Theater Net appears to be a beautiful work in progress. Simple tools have been used to create an elegant design for a site packed with information. They are beginning a wiki, which contains a very interesting layout. Imagine how such a wiki could accommodate student memories of their experience with a play or club at your school.

The Wooster High School Music Department won't perhaps win any awards for design, but I was blown away by how much actual music I could find there. What is more, the site contains very creative ways to make connections with members and alumni. I loved the "history" page and the way bios of middle school teachers are included on the staff page. The site is dynamic and fun. If I had a young child in the district I would conclude that my child would have a great experience if he or she were part of this program.

I have a couple of reflections before I conclude this topic that I keep pounding like a drum (see vlog/blogs and Staff Development, part 3). First, I'm in two departments which work very hard at our school's open houses to recruit students. Yet, in both we lay out our texts in order exhibit what we are doing. It seems to me that exhibiting our students' accomplishments gives far greater testimony of how we stand out. Secondly, I recently sought waivers from a few parents in order to exhibit their kids' videoes online. One student told me that her dad had balked. Fine, except this same student had been recently featured in our major daily newspaper with photographs, and unlike my exhibit, with full name and personal information. I think both examples indicate that many of us still cling to printed paper as a privileged way to communicate. From here in the trenches this seems irrational and the sooner we take advantage of broadcasting our students' achievements ourselves, the better.

As I postscript, I note that I am interested in starting a Web Design club at our school to help folks like Ron show off the fabulous work that his department does. I envision club members could benefiting from mentoring by alumni and parents in our school's extended community. I already have a prospective partnership with a web design ace-- my friend, Rick (Who will be guest blogging on these pages soon).

But to tell you the truth, I am skeptical about pulling this off. Ambitious projects like these need the support and encouragement of folks throughout entire school. I think we all have to embrace the reality of the communications revolution and make the vey best of it.

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"E.E.D.L.M.V." Exhibition by moi Creative Commons photo courtesy by Simon Pais-Thomas