Creating A Wiki To Share Student Work

As I continue working through new projects with my students, I begin asking myself “how do I share these projects with a larger audience?”.  I decided that this week I would research a few of the different ways that educators are sharing their students’ work.  After reading around, I decided that I would start with wikispaces.com.

Check out my wiki.  It took me about one minute to register my account and set up the platform for the my class site.  After registering, I read through some of their help tutorials.  The tutorials proved the site to be well organized and user friendly. I created a home page for the wiki that gives a basic outline for the purpose of the wiki. I then created two side pages.  One page is dedicated to explaining my the Voicethread projects completed in my art history unit.  I also included links to my students’ projects so the readers can see the final products.  The second page I created this morning will host information related to students’ Prezi presentations.  My students are creating these presentations to explain/understand a radio murder mystery we are listening to in class.

Currently, my wiki is serving as a website to post my students work.  I set the site up so that anyone is welcome to view and comment on my students’ work, however, only I can edit the pages. I plan to read more about how other classrooms are using wikis to facilitate collaborative work. As I learn more, I have the ability to open up editing privileges to my students.  For now, I’m hoping this wiki will serve as a way for students to share their work and get feedback on what they are doing.  In the future, I hope that as I read more about wiki’s in classrooms, I will be able to use this site as a collaborative tool for my students.

How are you using wiki’s in your classroom? Do you have any suggestions for a teacher who is new to using wikis?

As always, thanks for your help!

How Do You Quantify “Creativity” In Your Class?

How do you go about quantifying “creativity” or “innovation” for projects?

As I go about trying to make my curriculum more “project-based” I’m running into trouble coming up with ways to assess the students’ work. One of the goals of “project-based learning” seems to be to encourage creativity and innovation in how the students go about their learning. I’m finding it hard to quantify “creativity” and “innovation” in a grade. What is an “A” level of creativity versus a “B” level of creativity? The grading of essays and tests from last year were easily marked “correct” or “incorrect”. Grading becomes more subjective when “creativity” is as important as “having correctly conjugated the verbs”. I find it hard to justify my “A” creativity grade versus an “A-” creativity grade to a parent or a student.

Declaring “creativity” as right or wrong does not make sense. Determining one project to be “more creative” than another project also doesn’t seem like the right way to go about determining the grade. Or is it? We are trying to teach these kids to be “globally competitive” and an employer/consumer will ultimately decide whether “Person A” is more creative than “Person B”. This gets tricky though because what one employer/consumer sees as “creative or innovative” may vary greatly from the opinion of a different employer/consumer.

As a teacher, I feel like objectivity relates closely to the legitimacy of my grading policy. However, objectivity in the job market isn’t reality. How do you encourage creative risk taking? How do you quantify the value of the risk that person has taken? How do you quantify the “creative success” of the risk that someone has taken? Students also differ in abilities in strengths. Can you set up an objective standard for the subjective skill of creativity?

I assume we want students of all abilities to strive towards creative solutions to their problems. To develop a desire for creativity, we also seem to need to allow students of all abilities to taste success. One student’s “A” on a creativity grade might differ greatly from another kid’s “A” on a creativity grade. Grades may also differ depending on the teacher’s opinion on what is “creative” and ultimately what an employer/consumer would think is “creative”. How do you resolve these problems?

If I end up deciding that someone has “gotten an A in creativity” it also does not seem to push them to reach to be more creative the next time around. That said, implying that a student can be “more creative” implies that there is a quantitative amount of “creativity” in a project…

If there was one “A” given in the class with the goal of getting the students motivated to be “the most creative”, then you could see a couple students getting this grade for each project assigned and thus marginalizing the rest of the class.

Bonuses, promotions, sales results, etcetera will quantify “creativity” outside of school. How can we quantify these important skills inside the academic world? How can we motivate students to find “creative solutions”? How are you addressing these issues in your classroom? What suggestions can you share with me? Thanks for your help.

A Prezi Murder Mystery Project

Introduction to the Project:

Over the next couple weeks, my Spanish 5 Honors students will be listening to a radio murder mystery show entitled El Consierto Siniestro.  The mystery is divided up into twelve episodes.  Last year I created comprehension question worksheets with vocabulary lists for each episode.  As we listened to each episode, the students were responsible for creating character descriptions and a giant time line of the events of each episode.  Seeing that the series is a mystery in Spanish, the students need a firm grasp of the order of events in order to grasp the “mystery” aspect of the show.  This year I’m attempting to take the assignment to the “21st Century”.  The students will listen to the episodes in class and try to respond to the comprehension questions as we did last year.  This year, the organization of events and the character description will be organized through a Prezi presentation.  If you haven’t checked out their website, check out out their brief introduction video to see how the program works.  I have not worked with Prezi before.  I first wintessed a Prezi presentation at the MassCUE conference last week at Gillette Stadium.  I was intrigued. We will learn how it works together.

Details:

1) Students will listen to the episodes and respond to the comprehension questions.

2) Students will then create a Prezi “zone” per episode.  They will not be allowed to use text. They will find images that represent the developments of each episodes and try to create a flow in the presentation to communicate the flow of events heard in the radio show.

3) Students will work in groups of three.  One group per episode will present their work so we can review the flow of events as a class.  Each group will have their own Prezi presentation of the whole story, however, they will only be presenting their presentation twice to the class.

4) Students will subscribe to the Prezi Blog  in Google Reader.  With the Voice Thread project we did over the last couple weeks, the students became familiar with Google Applications.  I now want to show them how they can learn more about a topic, or a tool such as Prezi, by following the company’s blog.

5) I will be tweeting about this project as we go. If anyone is interested, please stay tuned to my blog and follow me on twitter at MS348.  Any comments or questions will be greatly appreciated!

Lessons From A Voice Thread Project

Introduction To The Project:

Over the past couple weeks I have been tweeting about a Voice Thread project that my senior Spanish class has undertaken.  We have studied works of Spanish artists such as El Greco, Velazquez, Goya and Picasso. For the big unit project, the students researched a Spanish artist that we had not studied in class. They were then supposed to create a Google Presentation about this artist.  The presentation needed to include information about the life of the artist, the historical context of the artist and details about three works of art by that artist.  The trick of their presentation was not to use more than one bullet note of text per slide.  I wanted them to find the images that could tell the story of the artist.  The students uploaded their images to Voice Thread where they narrated over their slides.  Essentially, they created their own mini documentary.  Last year this project was a poster project.  This year we’re trying to adapt the concepts to the 21st century.

Issues That Came Up:

1) Allowing the Images to Tell the Visual Story

As the students went about creating their google presentations that they loaded up to Voice Thread, one of the big problems that came up was overusing text.  The students bulleted out all of their text on their slides like they have been doing in other projects for their classes.  We discussed that Voice Thread projects are similar to a documentary in that the images themselves can tell the story with help from audio narrations.  The challenge for the students then became find the right images to represent the text they created for their narration.  What images do you select to represent the bibliographical information of Diego Rivera? What images do you select to best visually communicate the ideas of the social conflict in Mexico during the life of José Clemente Orozco? Can your images tell the story without the narration?  This type of thinking seems to incorporate a lot of the Right Brained thinking skills that Daniel Pink talks about in A Whole New Mind.  The images that the students chose were a good starting point, but there is much work to be done.  Their narrations help fill the gaps, but next time I do this project I will stress “good image selection” as a major goal of the project.

2) Question of Pseudonyms vs. Full Real Names Posted to Internet

As we came close to finishing the project, the debate about using pseudonyms or full names for the students came up.  As I asked around my department, I found that folks were not sure as to exactly what school policy might already be in place.  I walked down to my principal’s office and she said that she wasn’t sure what stance the school had officially taken either.  Later in the day, the principal came to my room and showed me that parents had currently signed documents stating that their children’s first names’ could be posted to the internet for educational purposes only.  I then asked if students 18 years old or older could choose for themselves and I’m still waiting to hear on that one.  This seems to be a discussion that needs to happen district wide.  The benefits of a student posting their whole name relates to the benefits of them creating a positive identity for themselves online.  I want my students to post work their proud of so that if a college were to google them, the college would find a wonderful piece of work from school.  I want the kids to have to take responsibility.  I want them to own their identity and market themselves in a positive way.  However, what are the legal obligations that the school has in this situation? What is an appropriate age for students to start doing this?  For now, my students are just using first names. Could the projects done in my class give my students an advantage over other students in the world trying to get into college if those other students have no online identity?

3) IT Issues with Opening Websites and Bandwidth

The basic stance that my district has taken on protecting our network is to block all sites initially and piece by piece start opening up sites that teachers find beneficial to education.  As I was fooling around with Voice Thread in a graduate course that I’m taking on technology in the classroom, I found that we had trouble uploading presentations to Voice Thread when more than 15 people tried to upload presentations at once.  I contacted our district’s IT person. I passed along the sites that needed to be available to my students so we could successfully use Voice Thread’s web site.  I also told him the day that I planned to start my project.  He then unblocked the sites for Voice Thread in our network.  He also switched all document uploads through Voice Thread to a faster connection than typically used in our network.  This allowed all my students to upload documents at once with no problem.  These changes will help any teacher in our district who choose to use Voice Thread in their class.  This all happened within two days.  I learned that it’s important to understand the IT system in your district.  It’s important to understand who to contact to trouble shoot specific tech problems.  Ask the appropriate people the right questions and try to push your district through the evolution to 21st century.

Conclusion:

In addition to teaching my students about google presentations and Voice Thread as great collaboration tools, I taught myself a lot about big tech questions in my district.  I learned trouble shooting tricks.  I discovered some big questions that my district will have to answer. My students enjoyed this project and constantly talk about “how much easier last year would have been if they had known about these skills”.  That said, this project wasn’t about last year, it’s about next year. Will my students and I be able to take the skills from this project and use them to create better products in the future? Will my district be able to learn from this project? What will be my next project?

How Fantasy Football Got Me Interested In 21st Century Skills…

1) What is Fantasy Football?

Fantasy Football is a game played by a group of friends through a sports website such as espn.com or yahoo sports.  Each group of friends forms a league and each member has their own team.  A couple weeks before the actual NFL Football season begins, these folks will get together either at a member’s house, or over the internet, to have a draft.  At the draft, each member is responsible for drafting a team of real life players.  The website the league uses organizes which member gets which real life players.  As the season starts, and real life teams start playing games, the members of the league receive points for the statistics that the real life players accumulate in their real games.  For example, if I drafted Tom Brady on my team, every time Brady throws a touchdown pass, I receive 4 points.  I also receive 1 point for every 25 yards that he passes for.  The first tricky part of the game is the draft; however, the most skilled members are those that can make the adjustments throughout the season.  There is a free agent list with all the un-drafted players.  As injuries occur and un-known players become statistical stars, members have the ability to drop players from their team and pick up the “free agents”.  The goal of the game is to get more points than the other members in your league over the course of the season.

2)The catch

The member who has the best information about the current status and projections of the real life players, has the best chances at making the right decisions in their draft and make the best adjustments throughout the season.  Getting good information, before the other guys in your league, becomes the most important asset to a competitive fantasy sports player.  Last year, if I was the first person to hear that Tom Brady’s injury was going to be season ending, I could have rushed to select Matt Cassel from the “free agent” list before any other members.

3) Fantasy Football and Blogs

Every week during the year I constantly read the blogs of the sports analysts who I think provide the best information pertaining to fantasy football.  Cites such as espn.com, yahoosports.com, cbssports.com, sports illustrated and several more have specific teams of writers/analysts that work on Fantasy Football year round.  Following their blogs puts me one degree of separation closer to the folks in the locker rooms who work with the athletes every day.  I have found specific writers who I like.  I use them to keep me up to date on the NFL, specific teams and players.

4) Fantasy Football and Podcasts

Every day I download and listen to ESPN’s Fantasy Football PodCast hosted by Matthew Berry and Nate Ravitz.  They are two analysts who I listen to and read regularly.  I love to listen to them talk and joke about sports. Their podcast is a great way for me to get the day’s football news, as it specifically pertains to fantasy football, as I drive home from school.  This make me feel like I’m directly connected to the experts I read.  It feels good and it helps me with my league.

5) Fantasy Football and Twitter

I also follow several of the experts that I read on Twitter. Often, during games and leading up to games, people like Matthew Berry will post last minute updates on Twitter.  They won’t have time to write entire articles to upload to the ESPN web site, however, they can relay the important information they got from a conversation that they had behind the scenes at the Pat’s game via Twitter.  An example, a few weeks ago Wes Welker didn’t play for the Pats.  The Patriots didn’t release this information until 20 minutes before game time.  If I had not been following sports writers on Twitter, I might not have known in time to substitute a different player for Welker.  This would have cost me points for last week. The information came out on Twitter before it came out on TV.

CONCLUSION:

There are several other 21st Century Skills that I use when analyzing sports. I have found that these methods are the best way for me to get the best information that I need about a specific subject.  It has proven fast and accurate.  When I first started to learn about 21st century skills, I realized how powerful all of these tools are becoming.  If we can get students to apply these tools to things that they are interested in, the pure power of all these tools will suck them right in.

Why People Are Nervous About Blogging and What To Do About It

As I ask people about blogging, many people have expressed feeling overwhelmed and/or nervous about starting.  What is a blog? What should I blog about? How do I  go about setting up a blog? Well, I have come across some interesting thoughts that might help you understand why people are feeling apprehensive about starting and perhaps some tips for making everything seem manageable.

Has anyone read the book “The Paradox of Choice” by Barry Schwartz? The book states that a basic belief that society has today is that more choice yields more freedom, which in turn yields a greater standard of living.  He goes on to say that this basic belief has created an overwhelming amount of choice that is available to us.  Although the abundance of choice is believed to lead to greater happiness, it has become debilitating.  It has become debilitating to the point that instead of taking advantage of the options/freedom available, people often become paralyzed and fail to take action.

His solution: Schwartz goes on to talk about how “eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives.” Filters are what Schwartz gets to talking about as a great solution to the in-action created by the potentially overwhelming abundance of opportunity.

Five Tips from Schwartz with my take on how it relates to new bloggers:

1. Regret Less - embrace the topics that you choose and don’t worry about what else you could have chosen to say that week. We are all here to learn.

2. Anticipate Adaptation - You will be able to improve your technology skills as you go so don’t think that a mistake early will define you

3. Control Expectations - Don’t expect to be the best blogger the first time you go out there. Setting your initial goals too high will lead to dissatisfaction. Learning to say “it’s good enough” will “simplify decision making and increase satisfaction”… Satisfaction will allow you to want to try again in the future.

4. Curtail Social Comparison - “We evaluate the quality of our experiences by comparing ourselves to others.” Don’t do it! We are all at different levels.  Embrace that as a way to learn from others.

5. Learn to Love Constraints - “Freedom of choice eventually becomes a tyranny of choice.” Don’t let it! Take all that you learn from your online network piece by piece. You do not need to become a master at blogging, twitter, my space, facebook, web design, delicious, diigo, etc all in one week. Start with one.

For those of you interested in this topic, check out his book or this 20 minute speech Schwartz gives on the topic. Perhaps he will give you some ideas as to how to manage your attempt at learning new tech tricks that will facilitate your learning.