Category Archives: Literacy

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Are We Safer In The Dark? – REDUX

In light of today’s Dopey… I mean DOPA legislation I’m resurecting a recent post:

You have a toddler at home. The street in front of your house could be dangerous. They could get hit by a car or picked up by a stranger. You’ve seen news stories about it on TV… in the paper … kids injured and kidnapped and killed in the street. Maybe it would be safer to not tell them about the street. Put a wall up outside so they can’t see it from the house – if they don’t know about it they won’t go near it you reason. At first it’s easy. They’re young and you keep them distracted from the street with toys and games and stories.

As they get older they see and hear about “the street “ on TV shows and from playmates. You continue to not talk about it or teach them about it – just avoid it…they’ll be safer. They begin to notice the street when you go places in your car, they even see other kids riding their bikes and sometimes playing games in the street. You explain that our family doesn’t do that or talk about that… we just don’t do the street… and you turn up the radio or put a DVD in the car player and distract them. They’re safer if we just avoid it and stay away from it. You’ve even talked to other parents that feel the same and heard talking heads on TV – some that are supposed to be “experts” that seem to agree with your tactic … stay away… stay away. The talking heads even have stories about what has happened to some that have ventured into the street. You are reassured in your decision.

You were right all along. The street could be a dangerous place. But Tommy’s mom didn’t know that your child had never been in or around the street before when he came over to play … was unaware of the dangers. The kids just went out to ride their bikes in the driveway. She said your child didn’t seem to know where the driveway ended and the street began. She had told them to stay on the driveway … only ride where it’s safe … but he didn’t seem to know what the danger even was. Like a flash he was in the street and the car just came along … he didn’t even seem to know to get out of the way, or what to do … or what might happen … or how to make a good decision about the street. You were right… it was dangerous… we should have done a better job of keeping him away.

Does this have implications for Flickr, Myspace, Classroom blogging? …. Are we safer in the dark?

Learning is messy!

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Being Different Is A Solution, Not A Problem!

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Another example of our “Messy” learning. Being Different Is A Solution, Not A Problem! is a 60 second Public Service Announcement we made for our local PBS station KNPB.

Each group of four students designed a scene in the video after we brainstormed ideas as a class. The ending scene we designed as a whole class. We had Being Different Isn’t A Problem! as our working title, but several students voiced an opinion that it “didn’t sound right.” We spent almost 45 minutes haggling over ideas until one student … a usually quiet, shy student raised their hand and suggested the title we used. It was an amazing moment. He gave his suggestion, I wrote it on the board, the class read and re-read it to themselves and the haggling was over.

5 minutes later I was climbing a ladder onto the roof as they wrote the title in colored chalk on the playground. They love that down angle shot – they put it in every video they design (see the Don’t Laugh At Me video) – I think they also like seeing me struggle with the ladder and climb up there (since they’re not allowed to climb on the roof). 3 takes later we were ready to edit our final draft.

Learning is Messy!

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Are We Safer In The Dark?

You have a toddler at home. The street in front of your house could be dangerous. They could get hit by a car or picked up by a stranger. You’ve seen news stories about it on TV… in the paper … kids injured and kidnapped and killed in the street. Maybe it would be safer to not tell them about the street. Put a wall up outside so they can’t see it from the house – if they don’t know about it they won’t go near it you reason. At first it’s easy. They’re young and you keep them distracted from the street with toys and games and stories.

As they get older they see and hear about “the street “ on TV shows and from playmates. You continue to not talk about it or teach them about it – just avoid it…they’ll be safer. They begin to notice the street when you go places in your car, they even see other kids riding their bikes and sometimes playing games in the street. You explain that our family doesn’t do that or talk about that… we just don’t do the street… and you turn up the radio or put a DVD in the car player and distract them. They’re safer if we just avoid it and stay away from it. You’ve even talked to other parents that feel the same and heard talking heads on TV – some that are supposed to be “experts” that seem to agree with your tactic … stay away… stay away. The talking heads even have stories about what has happened to some that have ventured into the street. You are reassured in your decision.

You were right all along. The street could be a dangerous place. But Tommy’s mom didn’t know that your child had never been in or around the street before when he came over to play … was unaware of the dangers. The kids just went out to ride their bikes in the driveway. She said your child didn’t seem to know where the driveway ended and the street began. She had told them to stay on the driveway … only ride where it’s safe … but he didn’t seem to know what the danger even was. Like a flash he was in the street and the car just came along … he didn’t even seem to know to get out of the way, or what to do … or what might happen … or how to make a good decision about the street. You were right… it was dangerous… we should have done a better job of keeping him away.

Does this have implications for Flickr, Myspace, Classroom blogging? …. Are we safer in the dark?

Learning is messy!

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Marsopolis – Design A creature to live on Mars

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View the video of our Mars Creatures discussed below.

After going over some of the basics on space travel, facts about the solar system, and some lessons on the unimaginable distances in space – one of the first activities I have students do is designing a creature to live on Mars. Students learned about Mars’s weather, composition and we saw downloadable video from NASA on the conditions on Mars. One video even shows the dust devils on Mars – unlike Earth’s dust devils, Mars’s can get miles high and 200 yards wide.

Next I lead them in a brainstorming session on what and how a creature could eat and drink on Mars, how would a creature move around on Mars (all the time having them think about creatures on Earth and how they do that), survive the cold temperatures, winds, thin air made of carbon dioxide, and so on.

Then students get a sheet of drawing paper and draw different mouths, legs, arms, eyes, noses…whatever their creature will need. Students pick the parts that fit conditions on Mars the best and then make a rough draft drawing of their creature. When done they get larger pieces of paper to draw their final draft and include the background that fits where their creature lives on Mars. They visited many of the plethora of Mars web sites available in cycer-space while they drew and picked backgrounds.

To design their creatures students have to think about feet that may have to hold on in high winds, eyes that may have to see in the dark (nocturnal Mars creatures were designed by several students), mouths that crunch solid rock or ice, or vacuum up dust – fur or blubber or feathers or ??? to stay warm – you get the idea. They have to think about the conditions and resources in a new way – think out of the box. Note that they are fairly early on in the whole Marsopolis process – I wish we had time, I’d love to redo this activity at the end as part of their assessment to see what they have learned.

I shot some video of them in action available on the “Learning is Messy” web site – I got examples of most of the steps – I may add shots of their finished creatures this week. Next step is more research, communicating with their team members at other schools and initial design of the systems they need to survive on Mars.

Learning is Messy!

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Response to: Is Experimentation Ethical?

Doug Johnson over at The Blue Skunk Blog made me write this post in response to this:

Questions that come from the dark side of the force…

  • Why should a teacher be given any more latitude to be “creative” with a computer than an accountant? Why should a teacher not be required to use district adopted software, much as they are required to use district adopted reading series or textbooks?
  • Should a teacher experiment rather using established best practices? (A medical doctor who “experiments” on his patients would be considered unethical – that job is for specially trained research scientists.)

I am especially interested in the last question. So much of what is being written about in the educational blogosphere (at least what I read) promotes the experimental use of technology with students. At what point do we need to ask ourselves is this healthy for students?

These are not “experimental” practices. They are tried and true, research based, best practices and techniques used with new media, technology and applications. It’s research (librarians should like that), quantifying data, brainstorming, gathering and organizing data, synthesizing information, designing a method for dissemination, editing and more.

The leverage comes in many forms, but include: being able to print pictures from primary sources (could we cut pictures from your books or periodicals?) and change the size and crop out unnecessary, distracting areas and enhance others. It’s being able to ask questions from experts here-to-for that were very hard to access (email, blog requests, ask-the expert sections on many web pages). Instead of writing a report and delivering it in a report folder that the student and the teacher and maybe the student’s family will see and learn from and so who really cares, students can deliver in a web page/blog, Wiki, slide show, digital video and more – and have the report become an international resource instead of a folder in a drawer (which just might mean we are more motivated to polish and rework and rethink and revisit and polish some more and even update at a later date – I can just see someone pulling their old report folder on the Revolutionary War out of their drawer and updating it).

The experimental part comes in having to think out of the box (we wouldn’t want that!) to think about which media or application or venue should be used or not used or is appropriate to use (you mean think about, discuss and debate ethics and best use?). One of the best parts is that when things go wrong it is often an opportunity to problem solve and learn from mistakes and learn to deal with mistakes (unthinkable) in a relatively safe environment when you’re not going to get fired from your job.

Why should teachers be creative? Hmmm, boy that’s tough. Think about your best, most memorable learning experiences in school. Come on really think. Did you list reading groups or working a sheet of math problems or doing a state report? You may have thought of one of those, but if you did it was probably because the teacher had you do that in a creative way! Most likely however, you thought of a project or field trip or activity or science experiment.

Blogging is akin to journal writing (journal writing is a big waste of time?).

Doctors would be liable if they “experimented” on their patients – but I guarantee that no two doctors do the same procedure exactly the same way (except of course for the most absolutely critical parts). I’ve had doctors try new approaches and methods on me a few times – and I’m Ok, and I’m Ok, and I’m OK. Teachers may use the district adopted textbook or reading series – but use it the same? – excuse me I’m still recovering from my laughing fit – and of course I can see your point. When teachers use the district adopted textbook or series they are always successful and teachers that try new ways usually fail. (Sorry, I’m bent over laughing again – or at least trying not to cry).

Student motivation is one of the keys to teaching and learning. New approaches are often intriguing. Many students are not served well by traditional methods, but there are many examples of unreachable, unmotivated students being caught up in a new approach.

Communication is intriguing – and blogging and Wikis and publishing and presentation applications are all about communicating.

I’ve gone on long enough – I’ll ask others to add to and enrich my thinking and comments (dang! there I’m pointing out an advantage to blogging again – I hope no one notices this publicly published post). : )

Learning is messy!

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Learning Is Messy – A Modest Beginning

There’s a lot more to do, but at least I finally got some of our “Messy” work archived on our Learning is Messy web site. I have a backlog of video work to add as yet – 4 more geology videos – several Community Service / Public Service announcements and some recent projects, and I hope to get most of it up in the next week or so (maybe sooner!).

We used to have an award winning web site we designed for a local animal sanctuary/zoo called Animal Ark, but it was more than showing its age so we took it down 3 weeks ago. It had 21 student made web pages about each of the animals made with a free web based software called Filamentality. Its a fill-in-the-blank and make your own web page format. They even house your page for you which is very exciting for many students and teachers that don’t have FTP knowledge or access – but you can also page source your page, capture the coding and house it on your own web site. Some of my students were asked to come testify in front of the Nevada State Assembly Education Committee about their experience.

The committee wanted to know how using technology had effected their education (this was in 1998). It was a hoot. We didn’t have internet access in the chamber, so I downloaded several of the pages on a friend’s laptop and we projected them up on a blank wall. My 2 students explained the process they went through and all the writing and editing and research they had done – and showed their pages. They got several questions and they handled them fantastically. The highlight was when they explained that they had done this all on their own, “Mr. Crosby wouldn’t help us at all… we had to figure out everything ourselves!” Which brought the house down … from the mouths of babes! : )

Check out the videos and come back when we’ve put more up. We are working on several videos now and a few other projects between now and the end of the school year.

Learning is messy!

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An Important Part of the “New Story”

Let’s face it, one of the biggest obstacles for elementary school teachers to overcome to feel safe teaching and doing much outside of language and math instruction, is the notion that students have to have mastered those subjects to be successful in school and in life. Many teachers don’t feel that they have permission to do anything else as long as their students lag behind in those important subjects. Many feel their professionalism is at risk if they do more, and at many schools teachers are under the thumb of administration to not go outside language and math except where other subjects can be covered by reading about them, and writing keyword summaries about them, and other similar activities.

Teachers want what’s best for their students, and the predominate thinking now is that this focused language and math instruction is what is best – especially for struggling students and second language students. If you observe in classrooms where this kind of focused teaching is going on, you see very good stuff happening. You don’t see techniques or lessons that make you think, “This is bad teaching,” or “This is bad technique.” In fact you come away impressed because it is effective, good teaching. In primary grades especially, test scores are often very good or on the rise, which fuels the belief that this is the right path.

OK, what’s the point? The point is that the fly in the ointment is that science and social studies and art, PE, and REAL project based work and learning are part of literacy and being literate. You can’t leave them out and expect literacy to come into full bloom any more than leaving out phonics or vocabulary or fluency or comprehension skills. Those subjects and all they entail are actually part of learning to read and do math because they are the schemas and substance that makes language and math make sense. You can make great strides temporarily without them, but at some point (about 4th grade from my experience) students hit the schema and analyzing context wall (and a few other walls too) without the knowledge of the real world and the understanding of accomplishments and defeats and what they mean and are like to experience.

Students that have never played sports or participated in hard physical work like running can’t imagine how great or difficult the feat the character in the story just managed is. They don’t understand the joy of winning, or the frustration of losing, or the feeling of trying your best, or many other experiences involved. If you never made the flour/salt relief map of the country or state, or put the soda can that you have boiling on the hotplate upside down in cold water and watch and hear as it collapses under the weight of our atmosphere, how do you appreciate or relate to things like that that happen in books? On a less academic note – it’s just too antiseptic and boring and wrong without those experiences and some common experiences that help relate everything.

This isn’t a choice between doing science and the other subjects and experiences and learning to read and do math. You can’t do one without the others. And here’s the really bad news … it is probably going to cost more to do a good job of it. Because to do it you can’t cut the time spent on those great literacy lessons mentioned earlier, we’ll have to add time to the year and possibly the day (like most of the rest of the world already does) and that will cost more. We will need to provide the learning tools needed to leverage and magnify and present that knowledge, technology, which students need to master if the U.S. is going to compete in this “Flat-World” anyways – and that will also be a money investment – as will the physical education and sports programs we should put back into elementary schools and all schools nationwide. This would be just about the best money our country ever spent.

Learning should be messy, not antiseptic.

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Sticklebacks, Diatomite, and a Whole ‘Lotta’ Learning

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At the same time we are working on our trip to Mars (see below) we are making a digital video about stickleback fish fossils. About 35 miles east of Reno is a tiny town called Hazen, Nevada. Hazen is one of those places you miss on the highway if you blink while going through. We took a trip there in November (90 sixth graders) to a diatomite mine. Diatomite is used in filter systems (diatomaceous earth) and scrubbing cleansers – it’s really the shells of diatoms. These prehistoric dried lake beds that 9 million years ago were down near sea level but now sit above 4,000 feet are literally full of stickleback fish fossils. There are so many fossils that we were only there for about an hour and all 90 sixth graders came back with 3 to 15 fossils. The lakebed is pure white and when you first spy it you would swear some freak snowstorm dropped about 4 feet of snow just there.

The students scrambled off the bus and after a required safety speech from a mine employee about rattlesnakes (I’ve been here about 10 times and never seen one) and getting lost … they did just that. They become lost in their fishing trip. More than 80% of these students receive free lunch and a group in the back of the bus asked me if we were going to pass through Las Vegas on the way (Las Vegas is well over 300 miles south of here) so watching them picking up hunks of diatomite and splitting the layers with a butter knife was awe inspiring. Students constantly run up to you smiling broadly to show you their “catch”. I took turns with various students in shooting video of the goings-on. One student found an especially good specimen that split to show both sides of the same fish. We put it back together and shot video of a student demonstrating how to find fossils – of course the second rock they picked up split to reveal its treasure.

Since we got back we have done research on stickleback fish and fossils, but we also got involved in test prep and all that that entails so just last week we finally got back to brainstorming the scenes that each group will be responsible for in our video – What is a fossil? – What is a 3 spine stickleback? – What is diatomite? – What is a diatom? Etc. When done we will edit it and voila! We have gotten feedback and assistance from biologists at Stanford via email questions (they bring classes to this same mine during the summer so they were blown away that we were making this video). Several years ago the University of Nevada, Reno Geology Department scanned some of our fossils with their scanning electron microscope (it will magnify images up to 300,000 times!) and we will include some of those images in our video – way cool stuff! (Note the photos in my Flickr account displayed on this same web page)

And most importantly it is one of the messiest field studies we do. Little flakes and powdered white diatomite are everywhere – in shoes, pants, pockets, the buses (which we spend 30 minutes cleaning out when we get back) and our classroom. Now let’s hope that the stain of learning doesn’t wash out as easily as the diatomite!

Learning is messy!

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Just Do Reading and Math?

The New York Times reported today that schools have been cutting back on science, social studies, art, PE, and other subjects to push reading and math.

Like where have these people been? This is just coming to light? They don’t mention technology and field trips directly, but I’m guessing (not really guessing – I know this for sure) that tech literacy is one of the victims of this push for “literacy.”

I understand if to many this seems a no-brainer – students that are not literate in language and math should focus on those subjects. How can you succeed in life, in society and in the work world without being literate in those subjects, and with few exceptions I understand this thinking,,, and mostly I agree with it.

Where I diverge is here. You cannot produce literate students if you cut them off from the rest of the curriculum and experiences. You cannot produce students that will compete in an information rich, science rich, global view rich society if you cut them off from those subjects from an early age. If you want to give them more time in reading and math I don’t disagree. Add days to the school year and some time to the school day for those students – I’m fine with that. Most students that are that far below grade level in reading and math are also usually not students that are engaging in activities during the summer that enhance their learning and schema and understanding of the world. My own students mostly fit that description and they usually spend their summers watching their younger brothers and sisters (4th – 6th graders providing day care for 1 to 8 year olds) and their highlights usually involve trips to the supermarket. They are thrilled when school starts in the fall and they can do something besides watch TV. Spending more time in school would be a good thing.

Most of the students I have that are not doing well in reading by upper elementary are missing the vocabulary, schema and knowledge of the real world that would allow them to make sense of what they read. They generally have phonics down pat, but sounding out a word only works if the word is in your vocabulary and schema. Books are only interesting to read if you understand why something is interesting or exciting or sad or not. Otherwise you are just reading words – how long would you last reading words that did not relate meaning? – although you might be feeling that way while reading this – : ) . So by cutting the subjects and field experiences that contain and convey that meaning and are paramount to obtaining schema and information we are actually stifling their reading and possibly subjugating them to only the lowest level jobs. Is that what school and this country are supposed to be about?

In my class of 31 sixth graders only 4 have access to the internet, and none of those use it for much more that emailing relatives in other countries. I’ve pointed out in earlier posts how many of my students think there are sharks in Lake Tahoe (30 minutes from here) and ask questions like, “Is Florida in Nevada? Is France in Nevada? And have no idea how we get electricity, water or how most things are made or come from. How will they fill in those enormous gaps if they continue to focus on JUST reading and math.

On the other hand, every time,… every single time I have these same students go on a field trip and/or integrate technology and engage in gathering and thinking about and processing and presenting information in science or art or whatever, they start asking questions. Questions like: What does this mean? How do you do this? How can I find out more? Can you explain this to us? AND, “Hey we just learned that…”… and “Did you know that…?”… and “Look at this!!!” and “Can we go here? And students are mostly excited and motivated and willing to do more and learn more. I bet if we take them there maybe they will make the push we are looking for to change how we do school. Or at least help drive that change.

Learning is messy!

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Learning Is Messy

“Messy” learning is:
Maybe not being sure where to start or how to start.
Trying and failing and trying again.
Frustration, focus, idea, arguing, agreeing,
experimenting, glue, paint, string, cardboard, scissors,
what else could we use? not quite, better, worse, adjust,
analyze, communicate, synthesize, mistakes, inquiry,
research, that won’t work… or maybe it will,
asking questions, getting answers,
What tools could we use? How can we find out? OUCH!
How can I help? How can we help? WHOOPS!
Let’s try this, How did you do that?
How will we show what we learned?
How much time is left? I can’t do this!
Can’t I work on this alone?
We did it!

What else makes learning messy?