Learning Is Messy - Blog

We just got done Skyping with a class of fourth and fifth graders in Louisiana. Their teacher contacted me a few weeks back about making a Skype connection because she had read about us somewhere. The class had never Skyped and they couldn’t think of a way to find other classrooms that did to try it out with so we were their choice.

We showed them a few of the systems we designed and built to live on Mars, and they shared about the State of Louisiana. They told us about alligators, hurricanes and craw fish. They had a live craw fish which they held up to the camera so we could see. One of her students told a personal story of Hurricane Rita, and we shared about the earthquake swarm we have been experiencing the last month (a 3.2 last night BTW). We reveled in hearing their southern accents and “ya’lls”. They were impressed by how many of my students speak 2 languages.

Five minutes before we were supposed to connect, it was announced that technicians had just taken down the network at my school for maintenance. Never fear! My Verizon wireless card was quickly put to use and made the connection until we had the network back about halfway through our meet-up.

It was very low key … just a conversation between 2 groups of students 1,500 miles apart.

I could do this every day, … well or maybe once a week or something just to learn about other places and people. Maybe we should set up a network like that. A wiki where schools could make contact to share about where they live … customs, animals, plants, places, etc. Hmmmm.

Learning is messy!

Parents of a student in my wife’s class took us out to dinner tonight. Dad is an anesthesiologist born in Korea, but his parents moved the family here when he was 5 years old. We had a great talk about education and where this country needs to go ….

But I thought it was especially interesting when he mentioned that after the Korean War, South Korea had to start over again with their education system and they redesigned it … changed it from what it had been.

He agreed with me that maybe we are due to follow suit in this country. Much of America’s infrastructure is in need of modernization and overhaul … especially our school system. A Marshall Plan for our country so to speak.

Learning is messy!

I’ve felt for a long time that teachers are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting for what they believe should and shouldn’t be happening in our schools. I’m not alone in this “feeling” and definitely not the most radical about it, but many feel it’s because people that tend towards education are often idealistic, and were “good little girls and boys” in school that were compliant and adverse to “making waves,” or bringing undo attention to themselves. You know … don’t be controversial.

In Nevada teachers are not allowed by law to strike, so the best we get is binding arbitration.

The other night my wife (also a teacher) and I were bemoaning how many education issues seem to have taken on the “no win” mantra of, “ Well, it’s not going away so we’re just going to have to deal with it.”

My question is why do we just have to deal with it!!??

NCLB – Yes, I know it has major problems, but it’s not going anywhere so you’ll just have to deal with it.”

TESTING – Yes, its done too much, and done poorly, and too often for the wrong reason, and too often generates unusable or poor information, but it’s not going away so you better just deal with it.

Funding – Yes, schools are not funded properly and the wrongheaded perception is that they get more money than they need is prevalent, but legislatures and the public aren’t going to support more funding anytime soon so you better just get used to it.

Teacher empowerment / being in on decisions about how and what we teach – Yes too often the wrong people are involved in making decisions about what happens in our schools, but that’s not going to change anytime soon so you better learn to deal with it.

Access to 21st century learning tools and new ways to approach and monitor learning – Yes, we need to move out of the nineteenth century in our schools, but change is hard and funding is difficult, so just be happy with any new tools you have and any new methods you can clandestinely incorporate into lessons, because these old methods and tools are not going away anytime soon, so just deal with it.

What else is not going away that we should not be “dealing with?”

Who is pushing this idea that we just have to deal with it? And why do so many of us seem to buy that thinking?

Learning is messy!

I’ve mentioned before here that I would be doing a better job overall if instead of being somewhat the “Lone Ranger” in my school district doing project-based learning with access to laptops for every student and many others pieces of technology, there were others involved to network with and plan with and mainly get feedback from.

I get great support from the teachers and others I network with around the country and world, but that’s not the same as having others taking the journey with you that deal with the same parameters and policies you do.

I love what I am doing and we have been getting lots of attention and kudos for what we are doing, but with that comes a sense of responsibility that on the one hand helps motivate you and pump you up, but on the other hand makes it hard to say NO to trying things and taking on everything that comes your way.

Lisa Parisi ranted and unloaded about her recent frustration under the weight of trying to make the case for changing how schools work and being a change agent in her school district.

I’ve had several conversations recently about this very subject including one with Lisa, Kim Cofino, Kevin Honeycutt, and Ginger Lewman on Lisa’s “Teachers are Talking” online show on EdTech Talk. The gist of those conversations is this:

Education needs to change! Schools and teachers need to see the value of trying new ways and incorporating new tools in their classrooms.

You! Yes you! have some experience with doing that … and you are excited and maybe passionate about it and at least somewhat articulate … you’ve had some great successes doing that in fact, so we need you to keep on doing new things and using new tools and innovating in new and innovative ways because so few teachers have access and knowledge and experience with these new ways and tools that you will be a beacon that helps guide them!

BUT! … Don’t screw up! Or you will cause others that don’t even know what tools are out there yet to lose access to those tools because of YOUR one bad experience …

BUT keep using these tools and methods yourself in “cutting edge” ways so that people take note and others will see the value in using them and maybe even try or think about trying themselves …

BUT if you screw up that will be a message to them not to try or someone might get in trouble … 

BUT making these tools available is very valuable to students who will be left behind if they don’t have access and that will be on your neck for not using them and showing others “the way” …

BUT if even one student does something inappropriate that might mean you’re out of a job and other teachers will be blocked from using these powerful tools … 

BUT it will also be on your neck if you have the knowledge, and the tools, and the ability to use them so that your students can be all they can be, and have a chance to make it in this evermore networked world where not having a network is probably going to be a problem, and you choose not to because you are afraid or don’t want to sacrifice the time …

BUT you need to be the example of how to do these things as safely as possible …

BUT remember bad things can happen out there if your kids network with the wrong people … even by accident … and that will be on your back …

BUT you also need to make yourself available to present to other teachers, and administrators, and parents, and media, and the school board, and state administration, and politicians, on your time, usually for free, to give the examples and make the case so others can follow your lead …

BUT you take the chance of alienating people on your own staff and in your own district and called a glory-hog for getting all this attention and creating a stir …
 
BUT if you don’t bring attention to what you are doing then… You get the idea.

Learning is messy!

Wednesday, May 7, 2008, my class, along with 500 other students will be traveling to Mars. We will actually be traveling to a large hall that will accommodate that many people to travel to Mars as best you can without actually leaving the town you live in.

Students will be sharing the systems they have built (water, food, air, communication, recreation, transportation, waste management and temperature control) to survive two years on Mars. In addition they will eat a lunch they each designed for the trip, share spaceships they designed to make the journey and creatures they designed to live on Mars that take the conditions on Mars into account, among other activities.

I am going to make every attempt to Ustream for a half hour or so while students are constructing their habitats. I tried out my wireless card while we were there setting up today to make sure I would get a good signal and it seemed to work well.

Students show up with large pieces of plastic cut to specific sizes and then meet for the first time F2F with 12 other students they know only through email contacts, to build the habitat they will “live” in during the day. Teachers and parents are instructed to walk around and monitor WITH THEIR HANDS IN THEIR POCKETS AND THEIR ADVICE TO THEMSELVES THANK YOU!!! and allow the students to figure out how it all goes together.

Much “messy” learning ensues, and with few exceptions, all have a good time and much is learned.

Here is the link: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/marsopolis-2008-reno,-nevada

Ustreaming will commence about 10:45 or so Pacific Daylight Time … I’ll start when there is something to see. I plan to walk around with my laptop and narrate what is going on and ask students questions and to give feedback on how things are going and what they are learning.

Learning is messy!

    This past fall my fifth graders video-conferenced with Mr. Mayo’s eighth graders in Maryland. He wanted an authentic audience to give his students feed back on some “moral stories” his students had written and produced into 3 minute videos.

    My students, most of whom are second language learners, watched and critiqued them and did their best to articulate what they liked about them and what the message or “moral of the story” was. I jumped at the opportunity to put my students in an uncomfortable position of using English correctly and as articulately as possible. They don’t come across those opportunities very often outside of their comfort zone with their teachers … and these kids were not only strangers, but eighth graders … “big kids.”  

    But why my students almost 3,000 miles away in Nevada? There is an elementary school next door to Mr. Mayo’s school. Why not just make a connection with those students?

    I bet you can figure it out. … That’s right … It’s the coolness factor. Why talk to students next door when you can use cool technology tools to share with students as far away as possible … the further the better … that makes it cooler. As Matthew Tabor noted recently:

   
    Except the coolness factor wasn’t really the reason we were asked to participate. Mr. Mayo was new to this Skype thing and he knew we had experience with it … and at the time he didn’t know of too many other classrooms that did, so he contacted us.

    But the telling part came towards the end of our conference when he shared that they had tried to set up a time with the elementary school next door, but because of their schedules they hadn’t been able to find a time they could coordinate. It was easier to meet with us BECAUSE of the time difference and our flexibility than it was with the students next door …  and both classrooms’ students learned from the experience.

    Lisa Parisi’s 5th graders on Long Island are deep into a writing project with us right now. Lisa’s students also have better English grammar skills than my students and come from not only another area of the country, but a different culture too. Because my students had to truly collaborate with hers in writing their stories they had to learn vocabulary and usage that really stretched them (and Lisa’s kids often had to find the right words to explain the meaning to mine).

     Now because this is THEIR story too, they WANT to understand the vocabulary and subtle and not so subtle meanings behind the words and phrases. Since they will be reading these stories orally to their classmates and practice proper pronunciation and fluency in speaking, they will have had experiences with reading, vocabulary, comprehension, oral expression, all aspects of writing and more … and were (and are) highly motivated to do so.

    To be fair I could easily have linked up here locally and paid $80 for a field trip bus and visited my wife’s school and done the same thing live with students there face to face … but we met numerous times … and it was free … doing the same locally to meet face to face would have cost hundreds of dollars … Hmmm.

    Lisa and I, and I ‘m sure at least a few of the other 12 teachers involved with this project, have written about our experiences and made other teachers aware of the whys and wherefores of our project. I wonder if other teachers smarter than us will see a much different, even more valuable use of video-conferencing and online applications such as Google Docs?

    I just finished teaching a class here in the Reno area to teachers about using technology and field trips to augment writing instruction. They even had the privilege of having Lisa “Skype” into class to help explain our project and demonstrate video-conferencing. Each piece I showed them and had them dabble in … Flickr, wikis, blogs and so on dazzled them and piqued their interest.

    But something was different about this group’s reaction to the technology. They loved it, but they saw something else more important. The tools they saw were the easy part. The tools have been made easy to use, ubiquitous. The questions they started asking were about how do you make the connections with all the different people your students work with? “How do you do THAT!?” They saw the value of making connections all over the world without having to charter a bus or a plane (although I would rather do that … “Buddy Can You Spare A Dime?”).

    I guess it has become “The Network” that is important.

Learning is messy!

Tags: Ed-tech, Skype, Lisa Parisi, Matthew Tabor, Mr. Mayo

Got this in an email today … couldn’t resist:

Male or Female?    You might not have known this, but, a lot of non-living
objects are gender specific, actually either male or female.  Here are some
examples:

FREEZER BAGS  -  Male
They hold everything in, but you can see right through them.

PHOTOCOPIERS  -  Female
Once turned off, it takes a while to warm them up again.
They are an effective reproductive device if the right buttons are pushed,
but can also wreak havoc if you push the wrong Buttons.

TIRES  -  Male
They go bald easily and are often over inflated.

HOT AIR BALLOONS  -  Male
To get them to go anywhere, you have to light a fire under their butts.

SPONGES  -  Female
They are soft, squeezable and retain water.

WEB PAGES  -  Female
They are constantly being looked at and frequently getting hit on.

TRAINS  -  Male
They always use the same old lines for picking up people.

EGG TIMERS  -  Female
Over time, all the weight shifts to the bottom.

HAMMERS  -  Male
In the last 5,000 years, they’ve hardly changed at all, and are occasionally
handy to have around.

THE REMOTE CONTROL  -  Female.

Ha!  You probably thought it would be male, but consider this:

*   It easily gives a man pleasure.

*   He’d be lost without it.

*   And, while he doesn’t always know which buttons to push, he just
keeps trying.

Think it is interesting how several edubloggers have again been disconnecting from the network because of the feeling of “network/technology overload” and the feeling of needing a break (which I understand completely) or not really taking a break but coincidently not blogging because of feeling overloaded. The latter example is constantly thrust upon me (and I’m sure many of you) just because of the nature of being a teacher.

However, when things slow down around my teaching job that is when I yearn to be part of the network … all that pent up… seeing what is going on and being discussed and not having the time to be part of it finally getting a chance to be unleashed. I’ve actually noticed now that I often DON’T blog or comment on certain topics just because I know I won’t have time to deal adequately with comments or blowback that beg for a response from me. It’s kind of a self imposed censorship really.

Learning is messy!

Seismograph - University of Nevada, Reno, 11:45PM last night

Reported to be a 5.0 quake

UPDATE: Quake now said to have been 4.7 … cracked some house walls in northwest Reno, busted some sprinkler pipes, busted the flume used to bring lumber down to Reno from Lake Tahoe in the 1800’s … now used to bring water to the Chalk Bluff Water Treatment plant.

We’ve had numerous earthquakes in the Reno, Nevada, area this week. Mainly a cluster of them in the northeastern part of town. Most of course are 2.0 on the Richter Scale or less, which means few even feel them, to some in the 4.0 range which are good jolts. Right after watching the local news coverage about them last night the strongest one yet hit at 11:40PM - a 5.0. Shook for 3 to 5 seconds at our house and you could hear windows rattle some. Haven’t heard yet whether there was any damage anywhere … wouldn’t be surprised to see stores with stuff spilled on the floor from shelves though.

My wife and I lived in the San Francisco area during the 1989 quake during the World Series between the Giants and A’s. I was in the East Bay and got shaken really well, but my wife was on the 38th floor of an office building in downtown San Francisco. Power went out. No elevators. Had to walk down 38 flights of stairs. The engineers later told them the building tipped 6 feet in each direction during the quake, which is what they are designed to do to absorb the movement.

Earthquakes are messy!

Tags: earthquake, Reno, Nevada

Unfinished creature designed to live on Mars

One aspect of “messy” learning that not everyone gets are the disconnects … the misconceptions and fuzzy thinking that were really not the target of your plan that come up or become apparent as students work. Today as part of getting ready to take a trip to Mars, students were asked to demonstrate their learning about the conditions and composition of Mars by designing a creature that could survive there based on what is available to eat and drink and breathe and the weather conditions … you get the point.

When I explained the project the other day I pointed out several posters we have up around the room that display photos of Mars. One photo is very high quality and it really shows the color of the Martian surface. There are several others available for reference, along with searches for photos students did on their laptops. I stressed that when it came time to color their drawings they needed to pay attention to coloring the ground and sky accurately. The creatures were mostly being designed well, students have to be able to explain the design of every part of their creature … how does that mouth, nose, appendage, whatever help the creature survive on Mars?

As students were getting to the coloring-in stage I noted over and over how students were NOT choosing accurate colors. I would stop the class, show them a drawing and ask them if the sky or ground color was accurate. They would note it was not, I would then demonstrate again, how to try colors and mix colors on scrap paper that you could hold up to a photo to check for tone and shade and then color in your background as close to the real colors as possible. Students would nod their heads in understanding … AND I would get the usual questions from unsure students not willing to make a judgement on their own … but instead of giving them my opinion I would send them over to check for themselves. Many made poor decisions. 

Is this a good color match? The student thought so.

It finally became apparent that this approach was not working, so we stopped everyone and took 10 minutes to really talk about what they weren’t understanding. “Well we’ve learned that the surface of Mars is red and I used a red pencil so shouldn’t that be right?” questioned a student … several students nodded their agreement. So I took their drawings over to the photo and asked them if the colors seemed the same (see photo). They would get puzzled expressions and say no, and you could tell they just couldn’t get why that didn’t work. Red is red after all.

I quickly grabbed a few drawings that were a better match and asked the struggling students (more than half the class) what was different. They noted mixed colors, different shadings and so on. I quickly made sure no one threw out their drawings … I showed them how to cut them out of the “flawed” background, paste it on a new paper and continue. As they worked, these puzzled students became excited students, and I was continually approached by artists showing me how much better a match their colors were and that lead to them being re-excited about their drawing because they could see it was a more accurate depiction. Now if you think this was terrible on my part … “art should be done for art sake and who are you to decide the correct colors” … I would often agree. However, this was art for science sake, the problem solving and thinking was the point.

Learning is messy!