Category: student voice

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Relearning Learning-Applying the Long Tail to Learning

From the MIT World website:
In a digitally connected, rapidly evolving world, we must transcend the traditional Cartesian models of learning that prescribe “pouring knowledge into somebody’s head,” says John Seely Brown. We learn through our interactions with others and the world, he says, and there’s no more perfect medium for enabling this than an increasingly open and organized World Wide Web.

Relearning Learning–Applying the Long Tail to Learning



While the wired world may be flat, it now also features “spikes,” interactive communities organized around a wealth of subjects. For kids growing up in a digital world, these unique web resources are becoming central to popular culture, notes Brown. Now, educators must begin to incorporate the features of mash-ups and remixes in learning, to stimulate “creative tinkering and the play of imagination.”

With the avid participation of online users, the distinction between producers and consumers blurs. In the same way, says Brown, knowledge ‘production’ must flow more from ‘amateurs’ – the students, life-long learners, and professionals learning new skills. Brown describes amateur astronomers who observe the sky 24/7, supplementing the work of professionals in critical ways. A website devoted to Boccaccio’s Decameron welcomes both scholars and students, opening up the world of professional humanities research to all.

The challenge of 21st century education will be leveraging the abundant resources of the web – this very long tail of interests – into a “circle of knowledge-building and sharing.” Perhaps, Brown proposes, the formal curriculum of schools will encompass both a minimal core “that gets at the essence of critical thinking,” paired with “passion-based learning,” where kids connect to niche communities on the web, deeply exploring certain subjects. Brown envisions education becoming “an act of re-creation and productive inquiry,” that will form the basis for a new culture of learning.

There are many ideas here that I agree with:

  • deeply exploring subjects instead of the “mile wide, inch thick” curriculum currently popular in the U.S. that seeks to “cover content” rather than inspire students
  • exploring the idea of the “long tail” with enthusiasm for the talents and contributions of amateurs and veterans alike, instead of protecting the kingdom of experts who have control of information, or worse, advocating some kind of “noble savage” ideal that only amateurs have valuable ideas.
  • creative tinkering as a valid learning style instead of the vaunted “scientific method” that seems to exist only in school
  • emphasis on creation and production as a critical part of learning, instead of viewing students as passive recipients of knowledge

It’s a long video, but give it a shot. There is a timeline at the bottom of the page so you can fast forward past the introductions if you like. Enjoy!

Sylvia

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A virtual conversation on the future of education – come one, come all!

Educon 2.0 is this weekend, January 26 & 27. This “un-conference” is being held at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia to discuss the future of education. There are no traditional presentations – the agenda is to create conversations on various topics, and to not be restricted by time or space. No small vision here!

So – here’s your chance. Please join in the conversation!

Not only will there be a free-flowing conversation in the room, each session has access to a Ustream channel and a wiki associated with it. Ustream is an online video streaming site that can broadcast live video feeds. If the technology gods smile on us, we will be ustreaming the conversation live. People can participate by watching online and text chatting their comments, contributions, and virtual rotten tomatoes. I hope to have someone at the session act as the moderator for the ustream chat and bring comments and conversation into the room.

This means that people (you?) can participate in a number of different ways, by suggesting conversation topics ahead of time on the wiki or by viewing the live video stream and chatting as it happens.

Help Wanted
If you will be at Educon 2.0 in person, I need a volunteer (or two) to help monitor the video feed and text chat and be the voice of the virtual attendees. If Ustream doesn’t work, we could try Twitter or Skype to enable virtual attendee participation. We are the first session at the conference, so we get to be the pioneers on the bleeding edge. Fame and fortune await. If you are a session facillitor at a later session, you might want to help out just to see how (or if) it will work for you. You may just want to have a good laugh! Either way, email me at sylvia at genyes.com and I will be eternally grateful.

I’m involved in facilitating two sessions:

Influence without Authority: Finding the Common Ground to Frame Innovation and Change (with Kevin Jarrett)
Session Time: Sat. 10 – 11:30 EST (US Eastern)
Everyone loves conferences. You come, see amazing presentations, meet incredible people, have thought-provoking conversations, and leave inspired. The next day, you’re back at your district. The memories are still fresh, and your Twitter network waits at the ready, but you’re all alone. What do you work on first? Where do you begin? How do you advance your ideas? Facilitate change? Make a difference?This is a conversation about techniques, processes and best practices surrounding change in what some say is one of the most change-resistant organizational environments on the planet – our own public schools.

Wiki: Click here for resources
On Saturday at 10 – 11:30 AM (EST) – Join the uStream video and chat: EduCon Channel 1

What is Student Voice?
Session Time: Sun. 12:30 – 2:00 EST (US Eastern)
Web 2.0 advocates often list “enabling student voice” as one of the reasons to use collaborative tools in the classroom. However, what is “student voice”? It’s obviously not just students talking; it’s something more subtle and complicated than that. It can be looked at as a classroom practice, as a school practice, as impacting the local community and also the larger educational community.

Wiki: Click here to add to the conversation starters
On Sunday at 12:30PM (EST) – Join the uStream video and chat: EduCon Channel 1

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US Teens Confident In Their Inventiveness; Hands-on, Project-based Learning Needed

American teens are confident they can invent solutions to some of the world’s pressing challenges, such as protecting and restoring the natural environment, but more than half feel unprepared for careers in technology and engineering, the Lemelson-MIT Invention Index has found this year. The Lemelson-MIT Invention Index, which gauges Americans’ attitudes toward invention and innovation, also found there is an important need for more project-based learning in high schools.

Survey graphic

This is from the press release from the Lemelson-MIT Program, which celebrates inventors and inventions. The program also supports young people to explore their creativity through invention.

We often see American teens portrayed as self-absorbed slackers determined to skate through school by learning the minimum possible. Most of us who work with kids know this isn’t true, and can cite endless stories of kids who are committed citizens, scholars, and activists. It’s nice to have some research to back that up. It’s especially heartening to hear that students want to have opportunities to learn the tools and skills they know they need to change the world.

The Lemelson-MIT Invention Index found that 59% of American teens believe their high school is NOT preparing them adequately for a career in technology and engineering. Now, this is not just kids who are already interested in an engineering career, this is out of all the survey respondents.

The students also connected their ability to invent to “learning by doing” and project-based learning. It’s not a difficult connection to make, but seems to be a difficult teaching strategy to implement for many schools. It’s one of those, “we know what to do, why aren’t we doing it?” kinds of questions.

But the voices of students are tellling us that project-based learning isn’t just a pedagogical luxury, something to try out only in the most comfortable circumstances. It’s an imperative for the future of the world.

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Don’t blame the kids

David Warlick writes one of the most popular blogs in the education and technology space. He has inspired quite a few educators to take a harder look at technology. David often writes about how students are using technology outside of the classroom in ways that surpass their use inside the classroom.

But today’s blog, Be Very Careful about Student Panels, is a real shame that may do damage in the effort to create opportunities for authentic student voice. Warlick relates an experience where he was hired by a school district in Pennsylvania to keynote a day-long celebration of their new laptop program. After the keynote he moderated a panel of 12 students (four times too many).

The problems began even before the students took the stage. First, three students, “…apparently panicked at the crowd of teachers and fled out a side door.” Next, the remaining nine students didn’t perform as anticipated.

First of all, these were bright kids. They were funny and they were compelling — the kind of students any teacher would love to have in their class. But I could tell pretty early that things weren’t going where we wanted them to. My first question was, “How many of you use IM, text messaging, social networks, video games, etc.” The all raised their hands for IM and text messaging, and most raised their hands for Facebook (MySpace seems to be passe now). Only one, and finally two then three, admitted to playing video games.

I realized that many of the questions that I’d planned were not going to work, because I wanted us to learn what these kids were learning from their outside the classroom information experiences and how they were learning it. Instead, we learned that they all spent all of their time doing homework and considered video games a distraction, and the few minutes they spend with Facebook, they consider to be mindless interactions.

David analyzes the problem:

We had the “A” students who were enrolled in AP classes. These were the kids we don’t have to reach, the kids who do what they’re told and who have learned, from many years in the classroom, to tell us what they think we want to hear.

So, what is David’s solution? Just make sure you prep the kids to repeat your message:

But I know now that you have to be very careful in selecting the kids, and you might even consider holding a pre-meeting with the panelists to orient them to what you’re looking for. You want to get out of the classroom and you want to talk about (learn from) the information experiences that are distracting to them and disrupting to us. We want to learn about those experiences.

This is so wrong on so many levels.

  1. Student voice is not about kids talking. It’s not about having them parrot your message, even if you think your message is “subversive”
  2. Students do have opinions and different life experiences that adults can learn from. But we can’t expect them spill their guts in front of an audience and to trust a stranger who shows up for a few hours and will never be seen again.
  3. This cannot be fixed by simply picking different kids. Sometimes unconventional students will give you a better “show” but isn’t student voice about ALL students? Can’t we learn something from Type A students AND at-risk students?
  4. Student voice comes from action. It’s developed as adults and students work together, build trust and accomplish something real that’s worth sharing with an audience.

Now, a prominent voice in educational technology is warning everyone to “be very careful about student panels” – what a great excuse not to even try.

Kids shine when they share their work, and they get better at it when caring adults work with them to support their project development. They should be praised for real accomplishments and the ability to articulate them, not what happens to fall out their mouths. It’s a failure of adults not to create those conditions EVERY DAY.

Article coverI hope that some of David Warlick’s readers will take the time to read Sharing Student Voice: Students Presenting at Conferences. It’s a 12 page PDF based on decades of experience from Generation YES educators and experts on enabling student voice. You can find it, along with other free resources on the Generation YES website.

In it, there is a special section specifically about student panels. I blogged about that section a while back, because it’s such a misunderstood topic. David, I hope you read it before you attempt your next student panel.

Sylvia

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Web 2.0 – Share the Adventure with Students

Another K12Online 2007 Conference session goes live today – Web 2.0 – Share the Adventure with Students

For many teachers, Web 2.0 tools offer exciting opportunities for students to express themselves and take command of technology that stretches the mind and reaches outside school walls. For some teachers, these tools are like trying to take a drink from a fire hose – endlessly expanding into a bewildering array of choices.

It’s a daunting task to figure out all the options with Web 2.0 tools and choose the “best” one to introduce to students. But why should you have all the fun!? Share your Learning Adventure 2.0 with your students and you will all benefit from the experience.

Web 2.0 – Share the Adventure with Students is available both as a video and audio only podcast on the K12Online 2007 conference site.

 

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Student Speak Up 2007 – Add your voice

It’s that time of year again – time for Speak Up!  The annual event opens this week with online surveys for K-12 students, teachers, parents and new this year – school leaders.  This is the 5th year of the Speak Up, facilitating the inclusion of student voices in national and local discussions on education and technology.

This year’s question themes:  Learning and Teaching with Technology, Web 2.0 in Education, 21st Century Skills, Science Instruction & Global Competitiveness, Emerging Technologies in the Classroom (Gaming, Mobile Devices, Online Learning) and Designing the School of the Future.  Also new this year: the parent survey is available in English and Spanish.

The Speak Up surveys will be open October 15 through December 15 2007. You may register your school or whole district on the site and take the surveys at any time.

The impact of the Speak Up data over the past 5 years has been tremendous. Each participating school or district gets online access to their own aggregated quantitative data with national benchmark data; districts use that data as input for programs and budgets.  National data findings will be released in March 2008. For more information or data from previous years, check the Project Tomorrow site.

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Nonconformist students – allies in educational technology use

Yesterday I posted about the new NSBA report on teen and tween use of online networks for talking about education and creating content. Today, I’d like to review a really interesting part of the report that has gotten less attention – nonconformist students and their use of technology.

Nonconformists — students who step outside of online safety and behavior rules — are on the cutting edge of social networking, with online behaviors and skills that indicate leadership among their peers. About one in five (22 percent) of all students surveyed, and about one in three teens (31 percent), are nonconformists, students who report breaking one or more online safety or behavior rules, such as using inappropriate language, posting inappropriate pictures, sharing personal information with strangers or pretending to be someone they are not.

No surprise here, it’s probably the non-conformist teachers who are also the heaviest users of technology too!

Nonconformists are significantly heavier users of social networking sites than other students, participating in every single type of social networking activity surveyed (28 in all) significantly more frequently than other students both at home and at school — which likely means that they break school rules to do so. For example, 50 percent of non conformists are producers and 38 percent are editors of online content, compared to just 21 percent and 16 percent, respectively, of other students.

These students are more in touch with other people in every way except in person –their own classmates, other friends, teachers, and even their own parents.

These students seem to have an extraordinary set of traditional and 21st century skills, including communication, creativity, collaboration and leadership skills and technology proficiency. Yet they are significantly more likely than other students to have lower grades, which they report as “a mix of Bs and Cs,”or lower, than other students. However, previous research with both parents and children has shown that enhanced Internet access is associated with improvements in grades and school attitudes, including a 2003 survey by Grunwald Associates LLC.

These findings suggest that schools need to find ways to engage nonconformists in more creative activities for academic learning. These students talents are being ignored, when in fact they are:

  • Traditional influentials (students who recommend products frequently and keep up with the latest brands)
  • Networkers (students with unusually large networks of online friends)
  • Organizers (students who organize a lot of group events using their handhelds)
  • Recruiters (students who get a disproportionately large number of other students to visit their favorite sites)
  • Promoters (students who tell their peers about new sites and features online)

So, are these kids your allies or enemies?
These students could be the key to successful school-wide use of technology, providing both expertise and the networking ability to create wider acceptance among their peers. By providing them with a role, graduated responsibility, and an understanding of what the goals are for educational technology, they could be a primary asset, an advance team, and a force for change.

Download the NSBA report – Creating & Connecting: Research and Guidelines on Online Social and Educational Networking (PDF)

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Teens talking about education online

A new study released by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) exploring the online behaviors of U.S. teens and ‘tweens shows that 96 percent of students with online access use social networking technologies.

You can download the 9 page PDF Creating & Connecting: Research and Guidelines on Online Social and Educational Networking from the NSBA website. If you are engaged in any kind of evangelism for online student activities, this report is a goldmine of data. You might be surprised to find out that many schools ARE working towards figuring out policies and practices that work. It’s not so lonely out on the “bleeding edge” of technology knowing that lots of others are out there too.

Students report that one of the most common topics of conversation on the social networking scene is education. Nearly 60 percent of online students report discussing education-related topics such as college or college planning, learning outside of school, and careers. And 50 percent of online students say they talk specifically about schoolwork.

While most schools have rules against social networking activities, almost 70 percent of districts report having student Web site programs, and nearly half report their schools participate in online collaborative projects with other schools and in online pen pal or other international programs. Further, more than a third say their schools and/or students have blogs, either officially or in the context of instruction.

It’s not just all talk
Students report they are engaging in highly creative activities on social networking internet sites including writing, art, and contributing to collaborative online projects whether or not these activities are related to schoolwork. Almost half of students (49 percent) say that they have uploaded pictures they have made or photos they have taken, and more than one in five students (22 percent) report that they have uploaded video they have created.

Students are using technology outside of school to make school relevant to their lives – can we find ways to make sure that technology use inside of school is at least as relevant?

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Ladder of Youth Participation

A great follow-up to our recently published white paper, Sharing Student Voice: Students Presenting at Conferences (More about this resource | Download PDF) is the Ladder of Youth Participation by Roger Hart.

This is nicely described on the Freechild.org website, as a representation of the levels of youth participation in community development activities. In the diagram, the bottom three rungs represent non-participation, while the rest represent increasing levels of participation. This is an important point when planning youth participation in adult events. The hope is that students are not there as mere tokens, but that they are there to give voice to the results of their authentic participation in a real activity, or, to actually participate in an activity with the chance of long-term results.

In the white paper, I describe how how conference participation can be part of the continuous process in which youth action becomes youth voice. It can be a way to climb that ladder. Here’s a sample:

Enabling student voice is more than simply listening to students. While it is tempting to think that the act of students speaking at a conference enables student voice, it is dependent on the students having something authentic to share with the audience. It might be more effective to think of conference presentations as “sharing” student voice, rather than enabling it. (from Sharing Student Voice: Students Presenting at Conferences PDF)

Resources like the Ladder of Youth Participation are tools that can help adults who facilitate student activities think through the choices and practices that they are faced with every day.

Sylvia