Rewired Learning Blog

Properly using Wiki in the classroom

    Last week, an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on the use of Wikipedia in the college atmosphere. The high use of Wiki in for college research is not really surprising, and unless there are some great measures curbing the use of Wiki as a research tool, I doubt that this will change much. The argument against the use of Wikipedia is simple and straightforward: anyone can write something on Wikipedia. Where was this dependence on Wikipedia created? Well….simply…in high school.

    Millions of high school students are taking a class in U.S. History right now. Those same students will all be learning about Andrew Jackson and I assume that thousands of students will have to write something on this moderately known president. Google Andrew Johnson; the first entry is Wikipedia while the second one is from the White House. Even more Wiki describes it’s entry on the Google page as the following:

 

“Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the seventh President of the United States (1829–1837). He was military governor of Florida (1821)…”

 

While the next best informative description of the ten on the first Google search page is from the State Library of North Carolina stating:

 

“A brief biography of Andrew Jackson who became a national hero during the War of 1812, was a Congressman, a US Senator, a Judge on the Tennessee Supreme ...

 

The Wiki entry, besides being the first entry, provides more topical information immediately and provides numbers (for those teachers who test on dates). It is much more alluring. All it takes is for a teacher to ask, “When did Andrew Jackson…” and the student knows they need a date and they know that this site has them. What ever worked in high school will be the first thing they will try in college. Why change if success was achieved?

 

    Those that ever did any type of in-depth research at the college level know that while Wiki might have some background, it is not for research. The report does point out that students use it as an intro to the topic which they are researching, just to get background information. Personally, I agree with this use of Wikipedia.

    So where does this leave a high school teacher in preparing students for the future concerning research and the use of Wikipedia? The answer is creating an awareness of Wiki limitations. Here are some easy ideas to create awareness (not suspend or forbid the use) of Wikipedia in the classroom (this also works well for colleges):

 

1)   Purposely use Wikipedia – Have the students copy one or two entries and submit it before the due date of the actual assignment. Now every one can see up front what is on line. On completion of the assignment ask one more question: Are there any differences you discovered between Wiki and the actual research? If there are then you are fostering an awareness of the limitations (omissions or untruths) of the site. Deeper research will not be there but simpler high school and intro topics will be there. Forbidding and disregarding some elements of research does not create awareness, but ignorance.

2)   Create a Wiki page that is fictitious and ask the students to report on the topic – Some will say that the topic does not exist, showing they actually did research. Some will just copy the wiki site. “Punish” them for not realizing what they are doing. This again creates awareness…mean grading is optional.

The New "New" Four Day School Week

    This week is graduation testing in Georgia. For those not familiar with graduation testing…they are simply tests given in 11^th grade that you must pass in order to graduate. There are four tests given (language arts, math, social studies and science) and passing each one is required for graduating high school in Georgia. The tests themselves are not the subject of this but more the time away from classes.

    I have already shown my agreement for many of the ideas written in John Medina’s book Brain Rules, but I want to take one of those ideas a bit further. He writes that repetition is key for learning. Revisiting old material and multiple shorter classes in the day are a few of his ideas to increase learning in the school atmosphere.

    The testing this week makes me think of the frequent breaks we have from class time. The calendar I have is speckled with little colorful squares highlighting days off, breaks and teacher work days. If you add in all days for graduation testing, state course testing, checkpoint tests and midterms/finals, I can make my own visual depiction of a grocery store earring tree.

    As a parent, I see that routine is very important in managing people for performance. Variations and differences in routine are important to keep motivation and interest, but these should be breaks and asides. Schools, and I’m talking about many throughout the nation, are in this frequent “break in routine” philosophy. It actually becomes a small running joke amongst students and teachers that there are so few five day work weeks in the spring.

 

 

    Imagine going to work and being assigned a different task. Not a harder task, but a not quite related task. Think if you worked as a car mechanic and one day you are asked to run the cash register. Not really a bad thing, it is nice to have an occasional interesting day and a break in routine, but that is a break, not a constant habit. The four day “work week” is becoming normal with all the testing and materials on which students need to be checked. The car mechanic example is not bad, but in learning, where repetition is key to memory and understanding, breaks are not beneficial. I have no hard evidence to back this up (since this is mostly an opinion blog), but when 20% of the year is not part of the “regular” learning routine…it becomes another type of routine…one with less instruction.

I like the educational model of the four day work week, and recently many districts are changing to this model to save money. I believe four days can work when done right, but we have to eliminate the average of one school day a week not used for education.

When education is too bright and shiny for education

Recently we had a presentation from a map company since it was our turn in the school system to purchase maps. He offered the traditional, never replaceable pull down maps as well as many other hands-on materials that we have other editions of. Then he presents a new on-line product linked with multiple overlay maps and satellite images.

As someone who writes on the idea of using technology in school, at first I thought it was great. There is a learning curve and there are some limitations on the amount of people that can use it at one time and who can use it, but I am sure that properly done it could be an asset. Here is the problem though: it is almost too cool. Almost too advanced for maps. Maps are flat, colorful, sometimes bumpy and always fairly large. The leap from this to a fully interactive multi-layered item with dozens of features from zooming to labeling is quite dramatic.

Obviously I am not disregarding the whole material at all. I should show that my mantra is to go nearly totally paperless with wireless access points nearly everywhere and classrooms that are flexible because of this. If you take a country boy and put them in the city and tell them there are more opportunities there, what might the reaction be? Some might adjust well, some might freak out and go back to the country and others might just go wild with opportunity. I fear the third one here.

Remember the internet 1.0? from books and libraries to everything immediately all at once. Laws were created, addictions started and online bullying became a phrase in the public schools. Obviously there have been huge benefits from the internet from the point of a tool, but it can be used negatively as well.

Again, I can’t disparage the map system, but it does raise the question: Can technology that is bright and flashy be just a little too bright and flashy in the classroom?

What do you want me to teach you?

Today I gave my classes an outline for the last chpater we are responsible to know before the winter break. The 12 page outline had about 30 blanks in it (primary vocab words from the chapter) and one student asked if we were going to go over the blanks. I am not sure if they were serious or not, but I have not done something like this before because I thought it was too much like hand feeding them information. Now giving them those 30 blanks would be just like giving them an outline and have them not read the book at all, that and with that we take away the motivation to do better.

But...having said that, and having listened and read to ideas about popular branding (Obama bumper stickers) I think that for the first test next semester, I am going to ask my classes what and how they want me to teach. This is obviously contradictory to every teaching and authority idea.  I think it will work. Having others take control of your idea is a good thing. It works in marketing and many educaitonal ideas say it should work here as well (but they dont go quite as drastic) so i'll try it. What is the worst? I'll make an outline of a chapter and give it to them? Maybe worse, but maybe worse might help them. Obvioulsy I'll reply here with some results.

A first step towards social media in the High School classroom (Part 2)

The slides presented to me were excellent. Some students really gave a great effort and a very few gave simple, dull back grounds with one picture, but all got the concept. I'm glad about that, they all got the concept of not being boring. What does this show me? It shows that if they cannot be boring about material, whay should a teacher?

In the future you will see a blog about teachers needing time to create, but what is creation if it is just "planning". I have labeled this blog "Rewired Learning" because not only does teaching need to rewire its ideas, students are literally rewired away from a tv to the internet. While we are trying to keep up with the internet, they are getting into certain levels of social media. Boring has changed. It is easier to be bored, like it or not.Now, every instance you see, has to be not boring. Every Powerpoint slide has to be different. Marketing presentations know this, educators need to know this now. Your 2005 presentations that you love are old and dusty. I have to take the time to redo all of mine.

Where are my students presenations going? They are going to be a review for the midterm in december. Each class will see the montage of the classmates in their period. I feel that they will get great interest out of this and lean the material even better, especially as a review. When I have a full classes slides compiled, I will post them to slideshare and post the link.

Memory while moving: Showing students repetition is needed

As an AP Psychology teacher, I am allowed room to experiment with certain class tasks that in themselves are also part of the curriculum. It happens now that I am in the memory part of the year and my class is getting into small groups and exploring the school with a map and writing questions on what they see. They will trace their route on the map with a highlighter and compose questions like: Is there an exit sign at the end of the hall? What color is the cafeteria door? When I get this info from them I'll give them their own questions back tomorrow and see how much they remember and the reasons they forgot.

After the discussion I'll ask, "If you have to walk or drive by something everyday does it mean that you will remember it?" I'm sure that most will say no because there was no effort in remembering the color to the cafeteria door. It takes active and effortful encoding of material (whether words, phrases or things seen) to properly remember them. The point I am trying to get across to the students is that repetition and effortful studying is key to doing well in the class, not reading something once, taking a few notes, while listening to music and calling that studying. It is easy to tell some one to study, but showing them the results of what repetition does is different. It is quite a bit more interesting and active to remember things while getting out of class and doing something out of the box than plain repetition of facts that a student might turn off to upon first hearing.

Making PowerPoint more effective

    Thinking about what I have mentioned concerning the use of powerpoints, I have created one about making them better, and shared it on SlideShare as well. The seven tips, as you can page through below, are fairly straighforward and to the point. It does mean more work, but the result is a more attentive audience and with more attention comes more retention of the material.

Making Excellent PowerPoints

View more presentations from Chris Jocham.

What prevents businesses from excelling, prevents education from excelling

    I’m going to steal something directly from one of my friends here. His name is Rohit Bhargava and is somewhat of a marketing/social media guru, who has written a book on his profession and is hired to speak with company executives about making their company have a personality. His ideas, along with research and readings about how the body and mind learn made me start this blog. I was shocked to see how similar certain elements of marketing/selling are similar to teaching. He mentions 4 items that can keep a company paralyzed and they are the same ones that paralyze educators:

1)   Success – “What we’re doing is already working”

No class has ever all scored a 100% on everything for the duration of a semester. There is always room for greater success

2)   Uncertainty – “We don’t know what will happen”

Creating new activities that are based on old frameworks still means that we have a predictable outcome but the “dressing” might be different. If you change the text on a PowerPoint from one year to the next, you are changing information but you know how the students will react.

3)   Tradition – “We have always done it this way”

This is possibly the most dangerous for education. Technology and science are revealing new things about learning and new learning techniques but forgoing them for what you used in the past makes you a non-adaptive and non-reflective teacher.

4)   Precedent – “No one else is doing it that way”

This is possibly the most paralyzing of these four. If you don’t risk getting ahead, you will never be in the lead. If you are in the lead and don’t take risks, others will pass you.

    All new lesson plans (and some old) should go through this checklist. Everything does not need to be the most innovative and a plan that is the opposite of these four items might not always be effective either since some lessons endure because they work. This past week I had my students get into groups and write down 50 facts from two American History chapters and create one lie. They were going to exchange their 51 slips of paper with another group to see how fast the other group can find the facts and detect the lie. If I go through the list above I uncover the following:

 

1)   Success – This is my first time teaching US History so I am not quite sure what success will be for me in this course

2)   Uncertainty – I had no clue what would happen and found out most of it blew up in my face because people copied numbers wrong or some other small game changing mistake was made.

3)   Tradition – It was a game for points on an exam which is a traditional manner of playing games in the classroom setting

4)   Precedent -  I have never heard of this game and after asking a few people no one definitely heard of it either

I’m happy with my lesson, even though it blew up a bit, because I saw students interested and trying to fix the problem. I’m going to add a fifth element for education:

 

5)   Confusion – “It is really complicated and there are too many things involved”

If the task is done properly, even if there is a period of understanding, because of the need to familiarize others with the material, they will get to interact and know the material better.

We all became a little confused with which one was a lie, but we discussed the lies and the facts they wrote. Quite a few in class won’t forget that the president following Jacksons second term was Martin Van Buren, and I cant think of a better way to get them to remember it than being unsure about it and figuring it out.

Stress removal and learning: Learning better by not feeling helpless

I have my homepage set to CNN and often go through some of the headline stories to get a gist of what is currently happening in the world. Maybe not the most important events out there, but at least some recent events are reported. Today, sadly, under the “What if” section was a story on dogs helping kids learn. The dog will sit there and just listen as a child reads to them:

 “The philosophy is simple. Children who are just learning to read often feel judged or intimidated by classmates and adults. But reading to a dog isn't so scary. It won't judge, it won't get impatient, it won't laugh or correct if the child makes a mistake. In a nutshell, dogs are simply excellent listeners. And for shy kids or slow readers, that can make all the difference.”

The child has the “power” of teaching the dog and telling them a story. This provides two things to the child; an environment with little outside stress, and they get to be the teacher who knows the most in the relationship. I recalled a book I recently read, Brain Rules, by John Medina, about the brain and its learning processes. I actually ordered this book for my AP Psychology class because it highlighted many principles we learn about through the course. There is a chapter about stress and learning. One specific part defined stress as being helpless, or having a loss of power. The group using dogs to assist in reading conquered these aspects by eliminating the judgment of others (Stress) and allowing them to have control.

This stress of not knowing does not disappear through time. If you are with a group of people that are all talking about football and you have no interest or knowledge of football, do you chime in? No, since you know you cannot add anything to the conversation or at the worst you will say something that will be wrong and be “admonished”.

One school technique is to put people of differing abilities in groups and let them work on a project or activity. What if you are the student that knows or comprehends the least of the group is with high achievers? It is the same thing as the football example above. Even if it is all brand new material, we know that some kids are always the “smart ones” and the intimidation and judgment is still an issue. The teacher has to use specific techniques to solve this or this method is actually furthering the stress and frustration of the slower learner.

What I would like to do, but I have yet to figure out excatally how, is to eliminate all the grades of some students half way through a semester. The ones who cannot do the material will still fail, but there are certain students that give up at that point because they realize that they cannot improve and the stress is one of learned helplessness. Unfortunately there are issues of fairness to other students and the student who worked hard all semester earns the same grade as one who had half their grade eliminated. Those issues are unfortunate since school is for learning and if one learned better with that second chance, teachers would actually be doing their job better by promoting learning not grades.

Emotion and learning fit together perfectly

Yesterday I attended a meeting with other U.S. history teachers from my county. We are part of a federal grant that was initiated to increase the level of knowledge and the styles of teaching U.S. history is presented in our high schools. Our speaker is a professor at Georgia State University and his presentation focused on the constitution and citizenship. Admittedly I was interested in the topic, but I became more and more drawn in to the presentation. I looked at our speaker and I realized why, he loved his topic…or he was a good actor. His eyes widened and subsided, brows arched and furrowed and every non-monotone sentence was accompanied with a positive, engaging demeanor. He did not want to share something with you; he wanted to share something great, or at the least interesting, with you.

    I’m going to point out many times in this blog that new media is one of the ways to go in high school and college education, but the other point of this blog is the personality and biological part of learning. The brain learns better under certain circumstances and one of those is an elevated level of emotion. We remember great vacations and we remember extreme hardships because we link them with extremes of emotion. An average day does not have many extremes of emotion (which is probably good because some of them would have to be bad) so when we hit something that triggers this, we tend to remember the event.

    Recently I’ve read many ideas on how to bring social media to the high school and college classroom and there are some ideas I am trying to develop to use in a public high school setting. This will not mitigate the need to bring forth some emotion in my students. “Wow, cool!” is an emotion and challenges for that are all around. I have yet to see the “Wow, cool!” for learning the Articles of Confederation (what existed right before the U.S. Constitution). I would love to see it. If I could “Wow, cool!” at least once in every class, that means I have their full attention about five minutes before and five minutes after the WC event. A PowerPoint with just words and a speaker talking about them plaintively presents no WC moment, and your chance is gone. Many advertisers know this but not many teachers.