PBL: My WOW Moment of the Day!

Today was a particularly hectic, maddening day for me.  Senior grades were due at 9 am this morning, I taught three back to back classes with a meeting during second break, and my seniors had their Paper 1 and Paper 2 IB Biology exams at 1:00.  It was one of those days.  I am so anxious and distracted while my students are taking exams.  I just want to take it for them.  I would do really well on them and it would sure make the two years leading up to exams so much easier on me as a teacher. AHHHHH!!!

The seniors started wandering in at the beginning of my lunch period (causing me to miss our teacher appreciation lunch) in a last minute desperate attempt to close the loop on two years of learning after what I am sure was a sleepless night despite the fact that I ordered them all to bed at midnight.  "Lunch" ended at 12:10, and my grade 10 students filed in to continue their work on their independent projects that they have been working on for the past couple of weeks.  I had to make a choice, and I chose my seniors who were heading off to their high stakes exams in about half an hour.  So I told my 10th graders to continue their work in their groups and then proceeded to shut the sliding glass doors so that I could focus and calm my frantic seniors while walking them through as many troublesome topics and testing tips as we could manage in that short amount of time.  In fact, I was so focused on them, that I didn't notice the work that was going on outside of my classroom. 

As a teacher, this was one of those moments that you never forget.  While hugging my seniors goodbye hoping that some of my knowledge and confidence would rub off onto them, I looked out to find my entire 10th grade class reviewing the cell membrane as one cohesive group.  Three of the students took the initiative to grab some whiteboard markers and lead the rest of them through a review of the topics that they are required to know for their independent projects.  Amazed and shell-shocked, I went outside and joined them, but not as their teacher. At this moment, I was an admirer, impressed by the fact that each and every one of them had made good decisions about their learning independent of my supervision.  They could have just as easily been playing games, chatting on Facebook, setting fire to each other and countless other things that I would rather not think about.  It was so fulfilling to join a discussion with a group of students that were prepared and determined to explore these concepts at a deeper level.  At the end of the day, if all they walk away from this project with are the skills of collaboration and taking personal responsibility for their learning, I would consider this a huge success.  Fortunately, most of them will also understand the mechanisms of cell membrane regulation and be able to apply them to specific functions of the human body such as lactose intolerance, Parkinson's disease, how endorphins work, starvation, why asthmatics need inhalers, weight loss and many other interesting topics.  I truly look forward to learning from their presentations at the end of the project.

After school today, one of the students posted the pics from class to our Facebook group via Dropbox!  ​

Looks pretty productive to me!  ​

At 3:30, the first wave of my SL students returned to my class to report back on their exams.  The first words out of there mouths were, "You are like magic! The two topics that you predicted and reviewed with us at lunch were essays on the test! Thank God we went over gene transfer!  We nailed it!"   ​

I would call this a WIN-WIN! I have to say that I am most proud of my 10th graders.  I am so thankful that I work with students who are committed to their learning and motivated ​enough to engage without having to have someone looking over their shoulders monitoring their every move.  I am also thankful that they didn't start any fires.  I think a little celebration is in order. 

Dropping the F-bomb in Class Part 1: Why?

A couple of years ago, I saw a student post the solution to a math problem that he had worked out on Facebook.  Several of his classmates were tagged on the post.  When I asked a student in my class about it, she told me that they were all struggling to solve this problem, so he shared his solution with the class. 

When I saw the student's post, a few questions popped into my mind:  

1. How many of the students in that class actually understood this problem, or more importantly the problem solving strategy after seeing this post on Facebook?   
2. If this teacher does grade homework, how many of these students will own up to their confusion and how many of them will pretend to understand for the sake of the grade?    
3. How long will it take this teacher to discover that his students have not mastered this concept/skill? 
   

What were the first thoughts that went through your mind?  If your initial response to the post was that social media should not be allowed in schools because it encourages and/or facilitates cheating, you might be teaching in the wrong century.  We typically use technology to facilitate practices that are already in place. It is incredibly naive to think that students weren't coming together and sharing these solutions on paper long before Facebook arrived on the scene.  I know that I did.  This is the main reason that I stopped grading homework. Homework grades are as unreliable as effort grades when attempting to measure a student's mastery of standards in your classroom.  If the homework you assign is not meaningful and you don't have 100% student buy-in, some of your students will do whatever it takes to get the grade.  It is next to impossible to trace the source of the homework effort and certainly not worth the time that it will take to do so.  Facebook is simply another medium, and one with endless possibilities and benefits for learning.   Let's face it, social media is our new reality.  It is time for us to embrace it or be left behind.  At least this is how I see it so... Rather than trying to change something that was out of my control, I decided to embrace Facebook and leverage the benefits of these exchanges for some "just in time" teaching opportunities.  The next day I created Facebook groups for all of my classes as a space for them to have these discussions about homework.  The only difference was that I would be able to formatively assess my students understanding "just in time" to teach my class the next day.  

Two years later, Facebook has become my go-to "LMS".  I  could actually write a book about the benefits of using Facebook groups in your class coupled with strategies for teachers to leverage these benefits.  However, since this is just a blog post, I will leave you with my top three reasons for using Facebook Groups in my classes:   

1)  Students are constantly checking Facebook at school, at home and on the go via their smart phones.  Every time someone posts in the group, all of the members receive a message alert, and who can resist that? FB groups now have a feature that tells you which members have seen the post.  As a result, I use FB to post assignments, resources, and discussions.  This allows me to adjust and modify plans on the go as well.  The example below was an assignment that I created in response to an awesome discussion my students were having about AIDS in my FB group.  I completely changed my lesson plan the following day to allow them to continue their learning on this topic.  If I hadn't witnessed the conversation that they were having, I would have moved on without leveraging this opportunity. 

2)  Students don't normally work on their homework until it is past my "bedtime".  Before Facebook, a student would get stuck and then send me an e-mail.  If I didn't respond immediately, they would give up and show up to class with an incomplete assignment, unprepared to build on their learning.  Let's face it, e-mail is unreliable.  Students check it less and less, and the responsibility of responding is yours and yours alone.  With Facebook, students can post questions to the group, and other students can respond (immediately), thereby increasing the chance that they will sort out their issues prior to class.  Another benefit of this is that if several students respond incorrectly, I will know this before class the following day and be able alter my plan accordingly.  This helps to minimize the gaps that get created in learning due to time lapses between learning, assessments, and grading of assessments, which consequently alleviates some of the frustration and motivation issues that accompany this disconnect between teaching and learning. 

Student requesting help for her lab write-up.  ​

Notice the time difference between the post and the first response.  ​

3)  Facebook syncs with Dropbox and most social media apps (Flipboard etc.).  You can also upload files from your computer like presentations from class.  Because of this, I can share articles and discoveries to extend their learning beyond the curriculum.  Students do the same.  After modeling this practice for a couple of months, my Facebook group became a place for students to share and discuss their own personal finds relevant to class discussions etc. One example of how I use this extend my class beyond the 85 minute period is described at the end of my post, 21st Century Magic 8 Ball.  Facebook has helped me to transfer the responsibility of learning to the students.

This is handy for revision, or when students are absent especially when away on school trips etc. 

A student posted his own review flash cards to share with the class.  ​

Again, student initiated post to share with classmates.  ​

By now I hope that I have convinced some of you to embrace social media in your classrooms.  For those of you who are ready to take the leap, my next post in the series will be about how to set up secure, private, unsearchable groups on Facebook WITHOUT being friends with your students.  For those of you still on the fence, stay tuned for my follow up post on busting the myths about Facebook groups in the classroom.  In the meantime, if your only barriers are policies set by the administration or school district, feel free to share this post with them to begin a dialogue. Let's see if we can't change their minds! 

Student Learning: A 21st Century Sci-Fi E-book

Remember when? This pic showed up in my Facebook feed this morning and it sent waves of terrifying flashbacks through me.  Incidentally, my mother was a school librarian, so you can imagine.  My heart started to race, my eyes opened wide...well maybe that was the coffee.  Either way, this is the form of "Googling" that I grew up with.  In fact, I immediately Googled card catalog images... and wished that I hadn't...back to the photo.  The reference card the girl in the picture picks up will most likely lead her to a book or research article with outdated information based on research carried out in a similar fashion. There will be no rapid connections made pointing her in new directions without opening a new drawer and sifting through a stream of unrelated or outdated resource references.  When I think about how I access information today, it doesn't even compare.  Imagine if the girl in the photo found out that within a couple of minutes, she could sift through endless volumes of current, relevant information, and contact experts across the globe to learn the information that she seeks without ever leaving her computer or picking up her land line phone.  At best it would be the makings of a great sci-fi tale, a Farenheit 451 or 1984 if you will.  Though this futuristic account of card catalogs would be frightening indeed, imagine if the situation were reversed and the sci-fi novel told a decidedly harrier tale, the disappearance of the Internet as we know it and a return to card catalogs and geographical isolation.   

This made me think about how we structure learning for our students.  ​In my last post about problem finders, I talked about Ewan McIntosh's design thinking school, NoTosh.  In his blog post about problem finders, Ewan states, " Teachers, for too long, have actually been doing the richest work of learning for their students. Teachers find problems, frame them and the resources young people can use to solve them. Young people get a sliver of learning from coming up with ideas, based on some basic principles upon which the teacher has briefed them, and the teacher then comes back on the scene to run the whole feedback procedure." 

Now I am going to make the assumption that all of you reading this blog exist on the tech savvy side of the learning continuum.  You are after all reading blogs on the Internet, and some of you were directed here from some form of social media or RSS feed.  As a teacher, do you define your own problems or does someone else find them for you?  Does someone else supply you with your resources for learning or do you discover them on your own? 

When asked why we do so much of the legwork for our students in terms of finding and framing problems and identifying resources, we usually respond that we don't have enough time, or they aren't good at it.  If that is the case, then isn't that the one skill that we SHOULD be teaching our students ?  As teachers, we need to reprogram our card catalog habits.  I propose that we write our own sci-fi novel; one where students are empowered to discover, research, and solve problems through prototyping using their special powers of information fluency and critical thinking.  

SPOILER ALERT:  In the end, these superheroes reverse global warming, cure cancer along with a host of terrifying diseases, bring peace to the Middle East, and force Justin Bieber and boy bands into obsolescence.  Well at least that is what would happen if I was the author. 

On that note, it is spring break and I am going to give this disappearing Internet fantasy a go! ​

LKWHQ: 21st Century Backwards Learning in Biology

Photo credit:  http://bit.ly/WwBGVw

​We are all familiar with the good old KWL chart otherwise known by my students as "Kills Will to Live" if I use it too often.  As teachers, we use it to activate prior knowledge in our students as they prepare to learn new material.  Recently there has been an upgrade to this chart to include the use of 21st Century Skills such as information fluency .  Allow me to introduce KWHL or if you are really serious, KWHLAQ!  Go big or go home! 

What do we know?  What do we want to learn?  How will we find out? What have I learned?  What action will I take?  What new questions do I have? 

​In science, KWHLAQ is a good outline of design labs and some projects, but it can easily be applied across other disciplines as well.  In fact the 10th graders at my school do a research project on controversial issues in history that culminates in an action based on their findings. This would be a perfect graphic organizer for this type of project.  We have recently been looking for ways to infuse information fluency deliberately into what we do on a regular basis.  This chart would be helpful for this purpose.  At the very minimum, we all need to be making the shift from KWL to KWHL, while at the same time looking for opportunities to add the action component wherever possible.  For a description of how this fits with PYP, check out this post incidentally written by the elementary school tech coordinator at ASB, Maggie Hos-McGrane.  Teach Thought, one of my go to blogs, also wrote a post about KWHL that you should check out.

I would like to propose two other models:  The first model I call LKWHAQ.  A backwards by design for scientific research intended to help students understand the scientific process better by studying what those who have come before them have done.     ​

The topic for class today:  Sickle Cell Anemia. 

Prior to class, students will preview a web documentary about the research led by Linus Pauling on Sickle Cell Anemia. 

Step 1 (L):  What do we know today about (insert topic) that we LEARNED from their collective research?  ​

At the beginning of class, we will go over what we know about Sickle Cell Anemia with regards to the specific mutation, the mode of transmission, and the impact of malaria on the allele frequency of this disease.  I will then give students an article published in 1949 by Linus Pauling.  

Step 2 (K):  ​Students will then summarize what they KNEW in 1949 and how they arrived at these conclusions.  (Note that this paper was published four years before the structure of DNA was discovered by Watson and Crick. This is yet another rabbit hole you could enter.)

Step 3 (W): ​I will then provide them with a second somewhat controversial article with racist undertones characteristic of the social climate at the time entitled, Data Pertaining to the Population Dynamics of Sickle Cell Disease (truly a fascinating read if you know the background and understand the science):  Students will then identify what the researchers WANTED TO LEARN?  ​We will also discuss their hypothesis before digesting the data. 

Step 4 (H):  HOW DID THEY LEARN?  This is a perfect place to address this question as electrophoresis technology had just entered the scene a couple of years prior to this research.  Students will then discover how they gathered and analyzed their data. ​What were their challenges and limitations?  We will also look at the bibliography to identify the research that formed their baseline knowledge.

Step 5 (A): We will then summarize and evaluate their conclusions based on what we know now about this disease.  Are they moving in the right direction?  What pieces are still missing?  What would they need to do to arrive at the conclusions that shaped our understanding of sickle cell anemia today?  What technology is needed?  I will introduce a third article entitled Population Dynamics of the Sickle Cell Trait in the Black Caribs of British Honduras, Central America.  With this we will discuss additional research done based on the findings of earlier research.  Their ACTION component. 

Step 6 (Q): Since our research brought us up to the early sixties, we will IDENTIFY THE QUESTIONS  that still remained based on our current knowledge and match this knowledge to the introduction of new technologies that would enable us to advance our learning on this subject. 

This type of exploration is perfect for topics like genetics.  Let's face it, today, we can find almost anything on the Internet.  By starting with what we know today and then tracking the progress of the research that brought us to these conclusions, my students will have the opportunity to observe science in its purest form and track the formation of ideas and concepts that we "know to be true" today.  They will  discover how the technology available at the time of research determined (limited) the extent of our knowledge, and then ponder the potential impact that future discoveries will have on our current knowledge base.  They will also be able to discover how the social and political climate can influence the research conducted bringing about bias as a limiting factor. 

At the very least, this is a much more interesting than simply memorizing the fact that a single base substitution mutation causes valine to replace glutamic acid in the beta chain of hemoglobin resulting in the sickling of cells in low oxygen pressure conditions.  Sometimes keeping it simple is just not the way to go.  ​

This post is already too long, so I will leave you with a teaser for my second proposed KWL adaptation.  This morning I watched a very provocative TEDxLondon talk called the Problem Finders.  Check it out and see if you can guess my new acronym.