Category Archives: Cooperative Learning

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Response To: Powerful Beyond Measure

Miguel Guhlin posted a great piece today Powerful Beyond Measure that is a must read. In it he states:

“The words of Isaiah, as Bonhoeffer shared them, are, “He who believes does not flee.” The words strike home as I reflect on education today. For those who can, have fled schools. They have fled our schools and abandoned their colleagues, the children, and moved on to greener pastures. And, who can blame them that they chose to take advantage of the active exit strategy to deal with slow death?”

Those who can have also fled to within themselves, their classrooms – quietly doing what they’re told. Many teachers take on the good little girl or boy persona that they learned as students – it’s how they got their positive strokes, how they were acknowledged – by being good, not rocking the boat. They want to do what’s best for their students, but too many can’t or won’t make that decision on their own. So now in a time that they are being told that what is best is accountability (per NCLB) they fall back on being good little boys and girls – not entirely because they agree with the method, but because they haven’t thought about or discussed what might be better and they wouldn’t be “good” then and that is scary. What if I’m not considered good? When your pay isn’t acknowledging your work then having your work acknowledged is what you hang onto. Not being considered good for any reason then is scary.

This might sound too strong, but it is a similar reaction to terrorism or what Bonhoeffer witnessed in Nazi Germany – don’t rock the boat and draw attention to yourself. Don’t have a public opinion about anything because that might come back and be used against you.

What are the examples many teachers have to follow? Are they being in-serviced and trained and encouraged to use problem-based/project-based learning? Not in my experience – so why would they even think about going that way if they don’t understand or know it? When they read headlines like last weeks – “Computers May Not Boost Student Achievement” – Why would they find themselves pondering changing paths?

The early adopters of project-based. Educational technology driven learning are like those that Bonhoefer saw disappear early on in the Nazis rise to power when they questioned things. They saw the power of changing paths but were swept out of the way as an impediment to progress. Wasn’t NCLB promoted that way? I know, invoking Nazism as an example almost always goes too far – no one is disappearing in the same sense as what happened under the Nazis – but that sense of being swept aside professionally is a very scary line to cross.

Learning is messy!

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Project Learning – Assessment On The Run

This is the hard part about project-based learning for many people. The very best part, the most exciting learning – the “Magic” of project-based learning is often what just happens spontaneously – the messy part. Yes, you go through the standards and design your project to fit standards – all the standards you need it to address. However, what you learn to look forward to… AND be just a bit anxious about is what you don’t plan.

The issues that spring up between members of a group that you, and they, have to work through. The days that don’t go well lend themselves to discussion about what that was like and how to make it go more smoothly. The great days are even more important to discuss – note with students how fast time went by because they were SO on task. Have students share HOW they discussed things – usually positively – you’ll hear them comment about the student they were at odds with before and how they WERE able to put issues aside and get along and have a great time getting things done that they are excited about and proud of – this is key because you can remind them of that experience and even quote back to them what they said the next time things aren’t going well. You can stop the class for 15 seconds and have them reflect on whether or not time is going by quickly and they feel that “feeling” they felt before – that often gets an antsy class back on track. THAT feeling is like a narcotic…I’m not kidding … kids will remember that and try to achieve it again. Yeah, it doesn’t work every time, but it works often.

There are times that things get ugly. Sometimes, real ugly. Anger, frustration, silliness – students that want to just give up…they don’t care anymore. That never happens in real life …right? Meeting a deadline or producing a play or any other real life project never gets frustrating and adults never blow-up at one another or get into disagreements, right? (How did your wedding planning go?) But aren’t those also the times you end up finally getting something done that you and those you are working with end up the most proud about, and talk about the hard times and how you fought through them? How many students have done much REAL project-based work? From my experience, usually very little to none, so no wonder they are inexperienced and rough.

When things go well, which happens more the more often and the more practiced kids get at dealing with each other. They start to notice strengths and weaknesses of the kids in their group… and one of the great experiences for you the teacher is how you hear them start talking to each other… “You’re better at doing that than I am and while you’re doing that I’ll work on this for you.” “Wow you really did a nice job on that, how did you do that!?” Sometimes they get more done in an hour than they usually get done in a whole day. Students are FOCUSED that usually can’t seem to focus.

As a teacher you have to observe and take notes – written when you can, mental notes otherwise. You have to note the gaps in student understanding and ability – that’s assessment – assessment on the run. Sometimes you find yourself gathering a student, a group, sometimes the whole class, on the spur of the moment to deal with an obvious confusion or total misconception or gap or something you noticed one group just learned that you want them to share with the class. You need to note as many neat things you saw individual students do as you can, including that Tommy didn’t get mad at anybody for a whole hour today, did anyone else notice that? The more you do that, the more the magic happens.

The other big assessment piece I do at the end of each work period is that the students self assess themselves. I have a form that asks them questions about what they personally did that period and they end up assigning themselves a grade and explain why that is the grade they deserve.

Students in my class learn however, that the biggest part of their grade is based on how they worked together in their group. The whole group is getting a D or F if EVERYONE isn’t on task. If one student is off task the rest of the group MUST work in a positive way to find out why they are off track, make sure they know and understand all the tasks they need to accomplish and which ones they are counting on them to get done. If they have done that, and can explain to me that they have done that, and this person in their group is still fooling around or off task, then I get involved with that student and remove them from the group and usually the classroom at that point (this rarely happens if a class is well trained). Note that we have role played how that looks as a class and in groups so everyone knows their roles and how to do that.

Well this has turned into a longer post than I planned, so I’ll continue it at another time.

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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Marsopolis – Real, Messy Learning

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My class got started this week on a 7 week project we will participate in with almost 500 other students from 9 schools in my district from 4th to 8th grade. We call the project Marsopolis. The students will work together to design the systems needed to survive on Mars (air, water, food, waste, communication, recreation, transportation and temperature control). Each 4 student group in my class is actually part of a 16 member team, but their other team members are at 3 other schools. The have to communicate via email and FAX (I’d like to use blogs starting next year too).

Yesterday each group started designing spaceships incorporating every system to get them started thinking and dealing with the problems they will face. Next week I will have each student design a creature to live on Mars taking into account the environmental conditions and resources available. Then they have to explain each part of their creature and how they survive 200 mile an hour winds, cold temperatures and every other condition on the planet.

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As I observed my students today I saw that messy learning I covet so much. Students that don’t always get along, sharing ideas, asking questions, asking if it was OK to look something up (what a concept!) focusing on their work and with smiles on their faces yet. We ended the activity by taking a “tour” of each group’s spaceship design and commenting on cool, interesting or “I wish we’d thought of that” design ideas. This is really an evaluation piece because you really see what the students don’t know much about or haven’t thought much about. I always get pumped when we do this kind of work and I can’t wait to see the excitement, frustrations, realizations, mistakes, and the students learning to deal with all of it constructively.

I’ll keep you posted!

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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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New Story? Or New Experience?

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The “New Story” hasn’t caught on because it is not a new story – it’s not even a tech story or a web 2.0 story. The New Story doesn’t catch on because it is not a story you can hear or read about and really understand. To understand it you have to work with a class of students that you really know. You know who knows how to do “traditional school”, who gets traditional work done, who doesn’t. Who is motivated and who isn’t. Who is outgoing and who is shy – even painfully shy. Who is in control and who is out of control – even spooky out of control. Who likes to please and who could care less.

Next you have to do things differently. You have to empower students in group decision making and social skills. Allow students to do work that brings out the hidden talents in the room – from artwork, creative writing, problem solving, “making things” and tearing them apart and putting them back together, etc. You have to teach them how to find and think about information and then give them permission to show what they know in various ways and “their way” at least sometimes. Then you have to come up with an idea for a project – as real world and community service based as possible is what I feel is best. Then turn them loose in cooperative groups to do it.

What happens next is often magic. Students who are out of control are not out of control (at least for longer than they usually are). Students that are shy might not be shy today – and might even blow your socks off with a flurry of outspokenness or leadership. Your unmotivated students might still be, but some will be among the most motivated in class. Those that know how “to do” traditional school (old school) might be lost – and might be watching or listening to a usually unmotivated or out of control or bullied student to find out how the heck to do THIS. Students that never get excited will FIND YOU and constantly report to you what they found or learned or did or didn’t do (even though you didn’t ask them to). Students will ask you or other students how to do something they don’t know how to do because they HAVE to know how to do THIS. And your classroom becomes a bee hive – there is a palpable buzz of activity and learning – what you became a teacher to experience.

But if you are an outsider observing in that room… And you don’t know THESE kids… then you might see a glimmer of the magic… but you don’t experience the magic or get the magic. You don’t know that when Molly is berating her group for getting off task and they listen to her… that all year she has been that dirty, quiet, strange girl that no one really pays much attention to unless they are making fun of her, but now her group is following her lead…amazing. Or that Darrel who… “he never does anything” has just spent the last 30 minutes helping a group member paint their dirt “Mars Red” because then they are going glue it down on the bottom of the greenhouse he designed and he needs that kids help. If you don’t know these kids you miss that (and many other things) and so you miss the value and the point.

You can’t plan for all the good things that are happening, you can just design projects that meet certain standards knowing that a whole bunch more are going to be met along the way… and some things are going to happen that aren’t standards but you know are just good things. Things that a well rounded person needs to know about – but doing nothing but small reading groups and keyword summaries and circle-seat-center and reading about science and social studies and art in reading groups but almost never doing them – aren’t going to be learned.

So where’s the tech? It’s there. It’s how much of the research was done. It’s how some questions were asked and some answers were received. It’s how product was produced and edited and questioned and talked about with peers and experts from anywhere. AND it’s how the work was presented and shared and discussed and questioned and tweaked and archived and copied and more – much more.

But if you don’t know those kids – you just might not get the whole story. That’s what we have to overcome to spread the word and activate change. We have to get more people to experience THAT.

Learning is messy!

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Schools Need To Change – But When?

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The edublogosphere has been pleading for an answer to how long it will take to make significant change in how schools do school.
From the time I started teaching 25 years ago there has been talk about schools needing to change – so this isn’t exactly new ground.

First I think the initial jump onto the tech-driving-school-change bandwagon fell on its face very hard. “If it’s done with tech it must be valuable learning!” attitude put many people off – especially when it was so obviously not true. This was followed years later by the “if they made a Powerpoint presentation about it they must be experts on the subject as well as world class programmers and problem solvers!” era – as well as the “They made a web page so they must have learned a ton!” stage and the…well you get the point.

Not long ago I sat through a Powerpoint presentation about Abraham Lincoln that the teacher had chosen out of all the presentations her class had made because it was the best. I asked the three student designers about what they had learned about Lincoln and it became painfully obvious that the answer was not much. They had cut-and-pasted images and facts from the internet and scanned some parts from books without much thought. The fact that they could cut-and-paste and scan was very impressive to the teacher and the students’ parents – they didn’t know how to do that – so this was very high level work to them – how could they help but not learn the content? The same will be true of blogs, wikis, video, and anything else we want to run at students if we don’t use the correct approach. The good news is I think we know that approach now and have embraced it – more on that later.

Second, when schools have tried to change that hasn’t always gone well either. I’ve had conversations with people that were supposedly mad as hell that schools were still doing things the way they did when they were in school. But as soon as you start making suggestions about what kinds of changes to make you find that they really don’t want much change.

The message becomes very clear – “Schools are a travesty – schools need to change fundamentally how they do things, as long as when you’re done changing them schools are pretty much the same as they were when I went to school!” Why? Because anyone that was successful as a student had learned how “to do” school – and the easiest way for them to tell if their child and their school are doing the job is if they see things they are familiar with and can help with. That is going to be a difficult wall to break through.

The point is this. The examples stated above point out that the problem was not Powerpoint or any other presentation – the problem was that tech was the content instead of Lincoln – therefore students ended up not understanding the power of either. When students design their work to teach or provoke meaningful discussion that’s when the content is leveraged by the tech, which is when those of us that have witnessed it happen get so excited and “tingly” about it. I agree with Will Richardson when he says:

“Not only can we ask our students to teach back what they know to a potentially large audience, it’s not a contrived audience, because the people who learn from it are motivated to do so. They will self-select it. And in doing so, there is the potential for connection and community building that can extend the learning that occurs in the classroom.
Ironically, this is especially true, I think, with the more multimedia technologies that we talk about. Podcasts, vidcasts, screencasts all give students the opportunity to take what they have learned and turn it into teachable content. That’s what I hear when I listen to Bob Sprankle’s or Tony Vincent’s kids. That’s what I sense with the Wheaton Academy vidcasts. And that’s why I am so intrigued with screencasting as a new medium for students to use to teach.
That’s an interesting shift I think. Instead of being focused on how well our students can test on the material, what if we focused on how well they can teach it?”

Read in the entire post –
http://www.weblogg-ed.com/2006/03/12#a4817

We hear we should be telling the story – but maybe we shouldn’t be telling the stories ourselves but our students should – with high quality, thoughtful, thought provoking content, lessons and messages. Then change will sell itself, we will be beating them off with a stick.