Collaboration For the Win! Bringing "Big Kid" Science to KG

Kindergarten students figuring out the microscope!

Guest co-writer:  Tiffany Hill @tifftado

The time has come to close the loop on the collaborative project between my 11th grade IB biology class and Tiffany Hill's kindergarten class.  Back in February, Tiffany and I discovered that my 11th grade biology students and her kindergarten students were studying similar topics.  My students were learning about cellular respiration in yeast and her students were planning on baking bread as a culminating activity for their unit on wheat (see video below).  Talk about coincidence!  We decided that it would be great if my students could create a video to teach her kids about how yeast contributed to the rising of bread through a couple of science demos, and then ask them for help on a science experiment that they could engage in while baking their bread.  Incidentally, this also tied in with their upcoming measurement and visualizing data units in KG. 

In a previous post, Going Back to Kindergarten, ​I talked about this project from our end in the "big school".  Today, Tiffany sent me her class's video response to our project.  I happened to get the e-mail right before my 11th grade biology class today, so without previewing it, I shared all of this five year old yummy goodness with my class.  They LOVED it...too much...in fact they all whined for about 10 minutes about how they want to go back to kindergarten.  To be completely honest, so do I, and not just because they get donuts for snack time!  The video below explains our project from KG's perspective.

​My favorite quotes: 

"​Dump it in there, BOYFRIEND" (I don't think that would fly with my 11th graders)

"Are we gonna draw it on the paper because that's what real scienstists do...(in case you didn't hear me) REAL SCIENSTISTS DO THAT!"  ​

Collaborating with Rory on this project was such an awesome learning experience for my students and myself.  It was excellent timing that our classes happened to be doing units with such easy connections. Thank goodness for WWW (Women, Wine, and Wednesdays...not necessarily in that order) for allowing us to make these connections!  Having the big kids ask KG students for help made them feel really special and it set a natural purpose for their inquiry.  This project was the perfect fit not only to our PYP Unit of Inquiry, "How we Organize Ourselves", but also to our math units of measurement and data collection.   When I reflect upon the way I taught this exact same sequence of explorations last year and compare it to this year I am over the moon at how this one day allowed for so much exposure and  knowledge growth. The integration of technology was a huge plus as well.  I am very excited to repeat this project next year and I look forward to inviting my colleagues to be on board!

- Tiffany Hill ​-

This project was so successful on both fronts that we are definitely planning to expand it to include both sections of biology and all of the KG next year.  Thanks to technology,  even if our units don't align in the future, my students can prepare the video in advance so that it will be ready for kindergarten when they need it!  Win - Win!  Tiffany, if you are reading this, next year, we expect to at least get some bread and maybe some chocolate donuts out of this for all of our hard work!   ​

One of these kids is not so interested in putting the bread in the cupboard to rise. Yummmmmm  donuts!

Crowdsourcing and the Boston Manhunt: Lessons for Educators

It is quite strange living on the other side of the world when tragic events like the Boston Marathon attacks occur back at home.  The first time I was in this situation was in 2001 on September 11th.  I was teaching a class in Caracas, Venezuela when our counselor showed up to let me know that she needed to remove a student from my class whose father might have been in the towers.  At the time I had no idea what she was talking about.  There was no Facebook, there was no Twitter.  The most current information we could access came from a news broadcast of CNN that was occasionally blocked by the Venezuelan government and replaced by one of Chavez's long-winded "chats".  Needless to say, CNN was not being broadcast in my classroom while I was teaching, so I was essentially in the dark. 

Fast forward 12 years to this past week.  Chavez is no more, and social media has completely changed the way people communicate with each other on a global scale.  Last night I attended the opening night of our school musical, "Oliver".  While waiting for it to start, I was reading the #bostonmanhunt Twitter updates on my iPhone via Flipboard.  When I read that they had caught up to the SUV and had a house surrounded, I mentioned this to my friend and a parent sitting in my row as they were also reading updates on their phones. My friend had been reading the New York Times and promptly realized that if he wanted instant updates he would have to switch to Twitter.  What ensued was a discussion of mixed messages gleaned from our separate Twitter feeds regarding the origins of the Tsarnaev's.  Did they ever live in Chechnya or were they from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, or Turkey?  Wait... maybe they have always lived in the states.  Did they rob a 7-11 or not?  And on and on it went.  The conversation reminded me of an article I had read about the New York post that morning, and a similar misguided virtual manhunt on Reddit. 

NPR said it best in a tweet: ​

.@nprinskeep reminds us we are collecting dots, not connecting dots as this story unfolds. We really can't know the full story today.

— NPR News (@nprnews) April 19, 2013

This morning I read something that connected the dots to education for me resulting in this post.  ​In his blog, Adam Gopnik of the New Yorker wrote: 

The incomparable A. J. Liebling wrote once that there are three kinds of journalists: the reporter, who says what he’s seen; the interpretive reporter, who says what he thinks is the meaning of what he’s seen; and the expert, who says what he thinks is the meaning of what he hasn’t seen. The first two—reporters and interpretive reporters—have been largely undermined by economics and incuriosity. But the third category never stops growing. We are now a nation of experts, with millions of people who know the meaning of everything that they haven’t actually experienced. ​

In an earlier post of mine, ​Old Habits Don't Seem to Die, I broached this very same issue as it pertains to education.  You see the problem is that we are still educating our kids to become "experts" in our content areas rather than knowledgeable networkers or people capable of collecting, outsourcing and connecting dots. In this age of social media and crowdsourcing, why are we not shifting the paradigm to produce knowledgeable networkers instead of knowledgeable workers?  This morning I read a  disturbing post from an IT Director and AP outside of Chicago.  His tweet that accompanied this post said "Facebook vs. Education - Who wins?".  Though he makes some good points and offers some good strategies, his first piece of advice to educators is to block Facebook in schools.  This is not the answer. In my classroom this competition between Facebook and Education does not exist. The key is to make your class more engaging than Facebook for your students.  To do this, you need to become a facilitator of learning rather than a delivery service for content. Then educate your students on how to use social media safely for learning, design activities that utilize social media tools in your classroom, and transform social media platforms into tools for knowledgeable networking so that your students will be better prepared for their future.  If you want to explore this further, check out my post, Dropping the F-bomb in Class:  Why?.

If the crowdsourcing efforts of the Boston manhunt are any indication, it is clear that education will lose to social media if you make it a competition.  It is also apparent that many of the crowdsourcers involved in this effort mistakenly saw themselves more as journalistic experts than the first two types.  These individuals need to learn how to collect dots before connecting them.  They also need to learn that sometimes it is not their role to connect the dots.  It is our job as educators to teach them these skills.  It is time for us  to switch our focus from producing experts to producing more knowledgeable networkers. We must  join forces, educate ourselves on the powers of social media both good and bad and then teach our children ​to use the tools responsibly and effectively. 

My thoughts are with the people in Boston right now as they begin their healing process.  ​Over the next few days my feed will be flooded with stories of those who were personally impacted by this tragedy along with posts attempting to understand the motivation of these two men.  We will read these together as a nation, no a world, attempting to connect the dots that may not be ours to connect. 

Why Tweet? A How-to Guide from a Self-Proclaimed Tweep

This past weekend, my school held a 1:1 Learning Institute for our new staff cohort for the year 2013-2014.  The purpose was to help prepare them for 21st Century Teaching and Learning in a 1:1 laptop (BYOD) environment.  My contribution to the institute was a presentation on Do-It-Yourself Professional Development with Twitter.  Imagine cramming all of the yummy goodness of Twitter PD into 25 minutes... Not possible.  I could literally run an entire institute on the benefits of Twitter for PD and it would still feel inadequate. Instead, I shared this how-to doc including links to numerous blog posts and great resources that I have found via...wait for it... Twitter, of course.  For me, Twitter is like the gateway drug to PD euphoria.  It opens up so many possibilities that you didn't even know existed.  Who doesn't want that?  

The way I see it, people tend to fall into three groups where Twitter is concerned. 

​Where do you see yourself?  I would imagine that most people fall into groups 1 or 2. If you see yourself in group 3, my question to you is what are you doing to help your colleagues engage in this form of professional development?  I know it is cliche, but a chain is only as strong a its weakest link.  Time to spread the word and strengthen the chain!  Besides, there is always more that we can learn as educators.  This doc has something for everyone thanks to my virtual PLN.  I encourage you to take a look and dig a little deeper into the powers of the Twittersphere! 

If you are a member of group 1, my advice is to take a look at the Twitter for Educators: A Beginners Guide.  This is a great place to start.  For those of you who are in group 2, you should start to read up on hashtags and Twitter chats.  Mastery of these will definitely bring you to the next level.  For those of you in group 3, expand your PLN, and bring those who work closest to you into the fold so that you can up your game as a department, a school, or a district.  There are links with tips and tricks for everyone on this doc.  ​So take a few minutes to check them out!

Last night I participated in a live chat about #ntchat (new teacher chat) lead by Lisa Dabbs and her team of moderators on Classroom 2.0 live.  The archive to the chat can be found here.  Lisa is the founder and moderator of #ntchat, and I have to give a shout out to her for a job well done.  I grabbed some screenshots of her presentation (so credit to Lisa). 

In her presentation she asks why should we connect? Her response was to build a PLN (Passionate Learning Network according to Lisa... LOVE IT) to provide you with the support and collaboration necessary to help you grow as an educator.  If you are not convinced after reading some of the resources on the doc, you should join one of the Twitter chats to see what they have to offer.  My favorites are #sbgchat, #satchat, #satchatwc, #rechat, #edchat, and #ntchat (regardless of whether you are a new teacher or not).  At the end of her presentation, Lisa left us with this quote, "Replace fear of the unknown with curiosity."  Time to get curious! 

I hope to see some of you there!  Look for @roryaileen.

Dropping the F-bomb in Class Part 2: How?

The real F-bomb associated with using Facebook in class is Fear. 

• Fear that you have to be friends with your students
• Fear that they will see the stuff that you post on your personal page
  
• Fear that you will see the things that they post on their personal page
  

image credit: bit.ly/17k2bC8

Essentially teachers FEAR that their privacy and the privacy of their students will be invaded, and they will suffer the  consequences that come with that especially if you are teaching in the US.  The reality, however is that these are not rational fears if you understand and know how to set up your Facebook groups properly.  

Today, all of our students are using social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as their main form of communication.  This can be incredibly dangerous because no one is teaching their adolescent brains how to carry out this discourse responsibly.  Parents, for the most part are not participating on these platforms, and for those that do, they are blissfully unaware of their children's activities and level of vulnerability.  Teachers frequently want to draw the line in the sand and avoid this level of intimacy with students, claiming it is not their responsibility. I am not one of these teachers.  If all of the adults in our students' lives avoid engaging with students on this level, who is looking out for them? I care too much about my students to leave something this important to the uninformed (parents and peers) to guide my students on responsible use of a technology tool that has the potential to have such a huge impact on their future.  I am an educator and my job is to educate and protect my students from their own ignorance until they are mature enough to handle that responsibility on their own and truly understand the consequences of their actions.

Facebook groups are actually more private than most of the platforms offered at your school for student collaboration.  The first thing you should do with your students is show them how to set their privacy settings so that the members of the group (read your teacher) will only be able to see what they want them to see if they are not friends with them on Facebook.  Have your students open up their FB pages and click on the padlock in the upper right hand corner of their page.  They then need to click on "who can see my stuff?".  This will unfold the menu below. 

They should make sure that they have the who can see my future posts designated as friends only.  At this point they might need to go back through previous posts/ pics and change the privacy settings on those individually.  This is something every student should do anyway as I suspect the majority of them have not been smart about their FB usage.  There is a new feature that allows you to see how others view your page.  I would recommend that all of your students do this so that they know what a college recruiter, employer, teacher, parent, or friend can see when they look at their page.    

Since your students are most likely friends with all of the people in your class, the FB group will not change their current vulnerability.  By ensuring that they simply select only friends can view future posts, you are protecting yourself from having to see something that might pop up on your homepage.  Here is a good comprehensive article that you can share with your students about privacy settings.

If you are still uncomfortable about students seeing what you post on your page, then create a separate account just for school.  This however defeats the purpose of having all of your traffic going to one place, as you will have to log into a separate account to retrieve your messages.   

Now for setting up the group.  There are several ways that you can do this.  If you don't want to friend your students, then you need to designate one person (a friend, child, colleague etc.) who is already your Facebook friend to set up the group.  You can delete them immediately after creating your group.   

Step 1: Create Group

Step 1: In the left hand column of your home page  select create group. 
This will bring you to the setup page.  Here you need to name your group, choose one friend to create the group, and then choose your privacy setting.  If you choose secret, no one will be able to find or join your group, so I recommend that you start with closed.  Now click create!

They will then give you the opportunity to choose an icon for your group and you are done.  Once on your group page you need to set it up.  The first thing you should do is click on the wheel and select "edit group settings", which will take you to the settings page (see pic to the left).

Edit group settings

Until everyone joins the group, you want to keep your settings as closed or open.  Once all members have joined, you need to go back and switch it to secret.  Most of the steps are self-explanatory, but you will need to create a URL for your group.  It might take some time transfer from the temporary numerical URL you were assigned.  This is the URL that you will use to share with your students, so you should do this in advance of class by at least an hour to be on the safe side. 

Now it is time to share with your students.  The best way to do this is to have them check their privacy settings at the beginning of class and then share the URL.  You can write it on the board, e-mail it etc.  Have them request membership to the group and then you, as the administrator, will have to click on the check mark next to their request to accept them.  Once all of your students have joined, you can change your privacy settings to secret and get started.  You can also delete members or change roles etc. by clicking on the number of members (2 members in example pic).  This will take you to your members page.  You then click on the wheel below the member's icon and you have the choice to either make admin or delete from group. 

Now you should be ready to go!  Check out my previous post for some great ways to use Facebook groups in your classroom.  By the way, I created a test group so that I could collect screenshots for this post.  See if you can find it!  It is called Biororztest and here is the link! I have the group set to secret, so happy searching!