Dear committee...

"Thank you very much for your continuing support of the Social Media Committee. We have now had 2 meetings which were very productive, I feel. At the recent meeting on Friday 27 October, we generated, sorted, connected and elaborated our conclusions from the first meeting, and as a result, we have an idea-web with which to move forward. Our ideas came from other schools' policy exemplars; our existing digital citizenship agreement (DCA); and our own reflections and research. These were sorted and connected into themes."

in search of a good thinking routine

 The weekend before our second meeting, as luck would have it, I attended a seminar given at our school by Ron Ritchhart and learned a new Thinking Routine which matched closely the goals our committee had for expressing our thoughts: Generate, Sort, Connect, Elaborate.

Our new Director of Educational Technology, John Mikton, who is responsible for the social media committee, has given me some freedom to organise the activities with him. As the pictures show, we have so far held two meetings in which students, teachers and administrators explored other school's ideas and our own unique situation. By the end of the process, we shall have met six times. The UbD planner with goals and evidence are here.

And here is a summary of the activities:

"In preparation for the third meeting, we all will reflect and research the different types of phrasing in the Policy exemplars from other schools in this folder or in any other examples we find. This will help us to establish the tone and style of the policy we will develop."

We are building up a collection of policies from a variety of schools and other institutions here at Diigo.

"Also, in preparation for the third meeting, a Draft Team sub-committee will meet to review the themes emerging from the idea-web. This team will propose to the full committee a framework for the draft policy which we will discuss on 14 November."

In the UbD template, I have summarised what I would like the participants to have learned by the end of the process.

Explain	the important features of a social media policy
Interpret	everyday behaviours with social media in terms of benefits or concerns
Apply	experiences of personal social media use to recommendations for the community
Perspective	of which behaviours with social media are positive for the school community and which are not
Empathize	with those who struggle with social media (through ignorance, misuse, overuse etc)
Self-knowledge	of personal strategies which emphasise the benefits and minimise the harmful effects of social media use

"As I said in the meeting, I would be interested to meet each committee member to record a short audio or video interview about your learning experience in the committee. I'd like to meet you in your place of work if possible. Please let me know if you have an appropriate moment for this discussion (10 minutes)."

Here are the questions I shall use to establish how the members of the committee have come to understand the process of implementing a social media roadmap.

"Thank you for your support. We have made a lot of progress and benefited very much so far from your variety of knowledge and perspectives. I'm looking forward to achieving our goal together in the coming meetings."

The roadmap is not the road

[caption id="attachment_251" align="alignleft" width="168"] Further on up the road[/caption]

"At the end of nine or ten nights he realized, with a certain bitterness, that he could expect nothing from those students who accepted his teaching passively, but he could of those who sometimes risked a reasonable contradiction." (JL Borges in Labyrinths)

My students are working on their most important project in the IB Theory of Knowledge course - the final externally assessed essay. They must choose one title from six, such as #6 below.

The titles beg some questions (what could 'robust' mean in this context?). I tell them to try to explain their ideas to friends or family and if they can't make themselves clear, it's probably because they haven't properly got their head around it yet.

I had the same experience, of failing to communicate my ideas, when telling my colleagues what I was going to do for my Course 5 project for CoETaIL.

It took a little while for me to realise it, but their incomprehension is explained by the fact that I had not myself figured it out properly. As this post sets out, I was hoping to use our school's pilot project for the new LMS as a medium to apply my CoETaIL learnings. In practice though, as we implement the program, there are too many unknowns in the early stages. Initially, the teachers will be dealing with practical considerations and these don't lend themselves to my plan to apply, before Christmas, George Couros' ideas for Today's Classroom. Thankfully, another idea was waiting in the wings.

 

[caption id="attachment_249" align="aligncenter" width="550"] Imagine, aged 17, having to answer this question in 1500 words![/caption]

 

During Course 2, my collaborative project with Stephen in Milan and Valerie in Zurich was to plan a roadmap towards implementing social media guidelines in our respective schools. At the time, the eventual implementation was hypothetical, but the school where I work is now feeling a pressing need for guidelines for using social media. A committee has been formed and I have some freedom to influence how it goes about its work. This is not an orthodox teaching project, but I have found that I can fit it easily into the UbD template if I assume that the travellers along the road are on a learning journey. Instead of lessons, we shall have meetings; we will demonstrate that we have learned about social media within our community by proposing guidelines and inviting feedback; ultimately, our achievement will be assessed by its acceptance (or otherwise) by the school management.



This brings me back to "robust knowledge". In the context of the quotation, I think it is knowledge which is not easily gainsaid. The title is suggesting that in order for a community to know something, the knowledge must be tested to ensure it is robust. There will be areas on which the group has consensus and these can form a basis; but without the challenge of a disagreement, the knowledge will not be required to defend itself against criticism. I'm sorry, that's the convoluted way we are expected to talk in ToK, as if knowledge were a commodity and we agree what it is.

The challenge for the committee, therefore, is to make sure that it tests its proposals for using social media at school. There is a strong human tendency to seek consensus and to avoid disagreement because it feels like conflict. We must make sure that we do not fall into that pothole. The approach we have planned for the first committee meeting next Tuesday is to ask participants (who are students, teachers and managers) to use techniques which generate a multiplicity of ideas (more than we need) so that to formulate the guidelines, we must decide which ideas are the best ones. Between the meetings, we shall continue to research, curate and debate.

The project rubric applied

We shall communicate our guidelines with Visual Literacy strategies appropriate to the different constituencies of our community. (My Course 3 post: A Great and Vibrant Language)

By gratefully acknowledging the sources of our inspiration (at least five will be considered in the first meeting), Copyright will be respected. (C2: I Finally Renounce my Life of Crime)

The project is fulfilling an Authentic need and its Assessment will be whether it is fit for its purpose.

I have long been inspired by the ISTE Technology Standards. In this case, the Citizen category for students and educators are particularly relevant (C1: Taxonomy Domine)

• 
  

  "Educators inspire students to positively contribute to and responsibly participate in the digital world." (ISTE, 2017)

  
  


• 
  

  "Students recognize the rights, responsibilities and opportunities of living, learning and working in an interconnected digital world, and they act and model in ways that are safe, legal and ethical." (ISTE, 2016)

  
  

Although this will be a committee meeting, we shall need skills of Classroom Management.

The committee will be put in Active Learning situations in which members generate their own ideas and reflect on their experiences of social media.

It is important that the Use of Technology is not gratuitous. Most of the activities in our committee will encourage face-to-face communication; the dialogue and curation, which will continue between meetings, will be facilitated by technology. (C4: What the 1 to 1 classroom has taught me)

We shall be successful if robust guidelines emerge from our consensus and our disagreements.

Catalysts for understanding

If you watched the video, you now know that the Earth spins because it formed from rotating dust and nothing has stopped it so it just keeps on going. It's got nothing to do with forces, centrifugal or otherwise, nor does gravity make the Earth spin. Many former students of Physics can spout Newton's First Law of Motion, but Derek Muller's videos go beyond mere repetition of knowledge and, by first focusing on misconceptions, achieve greater understanding.

"The idea of understanding is surely distinct from the idea of knowing something." Wiggins and McTighe, Understanding by Design 2nd edition (p36)

More than just a manager

In 2018, all of the teachers in our school will be using a new learning management system (LMS). My ed-tech coach colleague and I have a full year in which to help our Upper School faculty, alongside their existing workloads, to become comfortable with the system. As a first step, we have envisaged a pilot of volunteers which will begin in August 2017. My hope for this LMS, with its myriad capabilities, is that it will not simply manage the learning, but that it will be a catalyst for change. More than simply acquiring new routines, we will explore the potential of the LMS for improving our students' learning.

We call it One to World

For nearly one year now, all of our students have brought a laptop to school every day. The learning curve has been steep, since most teachers and students had never worked in a 1 to 1 environment before. But the education has not changed very much, if at all. This is not to say that the computers are unused, rather that there isn't a strong culture of innovation. Don't get me wrong: no-one is suffering. As ever, Good Teachers + Good Students = Learning. Having gone down the road of computer-enabled learning, however, I think we should be better exploring technology's possibilities.

What should our teachers be able to do?

"The challenge is to focus first on the desired learnings from which appropriate teaching will logically follow." (p14)

The teachers will learn how to use the LMS and will know what the school wants them to do with it. Is that all? Surely there must also be understanding of how the system can support learning.

"To understand is to have done it in the right way, often reflected in being able to explain why a particular skill, approach, or body of knowledge is or is not appropriate in a particular situation" (p39).

Our teachers are not short on professional knowledge nor understanding; but many aren't familiar enough with how educational technology could help their students learn better. Our goal will therefore be to relate the mechanical processes of the new LMS to powerful educational concepts; in particular, concepts which can be enhanced by computers in the classroom.

And what might these concepts be?

[caption id="attachment_69" align="alignleft" width="300"] Image: Craig Badura[/caption]

George Couros has provided an excellent schema for how today's classroom could look. Crucially, although few of the ideas have a direct line to technology, they all can be enhanced by it.

When the Physics class used a wiki to comment constructively on each other's Energy projects; when my IB ToK students could submit any 'creative digital document' to demonstrate their understanding of Cultures; when Grade 6 students could see their Online Habits survey responses accumulate in real-time; on all of these occasions, I revelled in examples of Couros' ideas made concrete by technology.

A greater success, however, would be if they can use that knowledge gained in one situation and apply it to others.

"Understanding is about transfer... we can create new knowledge and arrive at further understandings if we have learned with understanding some key ideas and strategies" (p40)

How will we know what the teachers have learned?

What will be the evidence of learning? I'm not sure I know yet. The LMS has been purchased, but I haven't got my hands dirty with it so far. This one has a great reputation in schools. I do know that I want to use Couros' 'Today's Classroom' as part of the teachers' learning experience. There will be evidence of their Voice as they Reflect on the outcomes of their Self Assessment. I hope there will be evidence they have Thought Critically about the Problems they might solve and evidence they Chose to Innovate and to Connect with other learners.

What will be their learning experiences?

In UBD, this is the third and final stage of deciding, and since my knowledge of the evidence is incomplete due to inexperience with this LMS, I shall be developing the activities, with my coach colleague, at the start of the next school year.

On my CoETaIL projects page, I have embedded the UBD template. Being live, it will reflect the project at whichever time you read it. As I write, only the Desired Results are known, including:

Understand how new ideas (eg Couros’ ‘today’s classroom’) can be supported by the new LMS

More than knowledge, understanding will be my main criterion of success. The teaching will aim at understanding and I shall seek ways to gather evidence of:

"conceptions: that is, meanings that are general ... Without this conceptualizing, nothing is gained that can be carried over to the better understanding of new experiences" John Dewey, How we Think, 1933, p153

Social Learning - it's what the Internet is for (CoETaIL blog tour)

“Is this the latest version of Windows movie maker?” Freddie asks me in class. “What is the population of Luxembourg?” Marie wants to know. “TWIF” I tell each of them. They know what I mean; they’ve heard it before.

[caption id="attachment_226" align="aligncenter" width="300"] made on festisite.com[/caption]

In answer to questions like these, others say sarcastically: “Just let me Google that for you“. The point is that the reliable and accurate answers to these questions are available to anyone in almost an instant. We no longer have to ask the teacher. TWIF stands for: That’s What the Internet is For. Just twif it, I tell the kids. And they get it.

New technology has changed our relationship with knowledge itself. Our students have access to every resource. No wonder some argue that teachers will become redundant. And yet…

…every school I have worked in looks quite like the one I went to during the industrial revolution (well, Leeds in the 1970s). Grades, tests, insular subjects, content-focused teachers. Of course, there are pockets of creativity, but they don’t add up to a bag of innovation. It’s really difficult to change things; even difficult to imagine what it would look like if they were changed on a grand scale.

There is always more than one way of looking at things.

You might sign up for CoETaIL because you’re interested in the challenges of education and change. From the start, you are immersed in many of the best ideas about teaching and learning. You join a community which is speaking the same language and asking similar questions. But you will not come away with simple answers.

In course 1, we jump right in and investigate models of educational technology. Personally, I believe that SAMR is a useful model, but it is frequently misappropriated. My PLN suggested one I prefer which I wrote about on my CoETaIL blog (Way of the SAMR eye). Making a case is an excellent way to rehearse your understanding. And the comments from the colleagues you are learning with will make you think again: they don’t necessarily agree with you.

If the education we want for our children is critical, creative and collaborative, then our learning must be like that too. Most questions aren’t googleable; instead, they lead to deeper thought and open up possibilities rather than closing them down. Most solutions are improved by the clash and compromise of difficult conversations.

CoETaIL walks this talk. You can question assumptions, express doubts, try out some new ideas, not alone but with fellow learners. If we believe our students should learn socially, then we must too.

A great and vibrant language

getting the message across

"Mir hunn eng flott a lieweg Sprooch a mir kënnen zu Recht houfreg drop sinn"

"We have a great and vibrant language and we can rightly be proud"

(Claude Meisch, Luxembourg's education minister on schreiwen.lu and through Google Translate)

The linguistic ability of the people of Luxembourg is remarkable. Not only do many communicate fluently in French, German, English and frequently in other languages as well, but none of those is their native language. Now the government is taking measures to ensure that Luxembourgish remains strong. One of their weapons is a campaign of infographics such as this video which reassures speakers that there is often more than one acceptable spelling for words.

so what exactly is an infographic?

Our Middle School students are learning to use infographics and I have been seeking a definition which makes clear to them and their teachers what is unique about this form of communication.

The name suggests that it is a:

"visual representation of information or data" (Google Search definition)

But a photo or diagram might serve that purpose and there is more to good infographics which:

"present large amounts of data meaningfully" (Kathy Schrock in this video)

So it does something that ordinary text or an image on its own can not.

Could it even do this?

"Convey a message in such a way that context, meaning and understanding are transcended to the observer in a manner not previously experienced" (Anders Ross on instantshift.com)

[caption id="attachment_142" align="alignright" width="255"] Hot Butter Studio[/caption]

It is important that an infographic does something different from a mere poster or an essay, because otherwise why would you go to the trouble? Data is a particular mode of expressing information objectively and a good infographic will answer particular questions better than other media.

After I have explained to my students what I think an infographic is, I show them this one (right) which uses only eight words to say it better than I could in five minutes of verbosity.

I suggest that the students think of types of information in four categories:

• 
  

  facts

  
  


• 
  

  statistics

  
  


• 
  

  location

  
  


• 
  

  time and date

  
  

I show them examples, both good and bad, of different ways of displaying information depending on its category including:

• 
  

  images, icons, illustrations

  
  


• 
  

  graphs and charts

  
  


• 
  

  maps

  
  


• 
  

  timelines and processes

  
  

[caption id="attachment_144" align="alignleft" width="428"] CoETaIL graduate Reid Wilson knocks it out of the park[/caption]

We observe, however, that most infographics combine more than one type of information and display.

In the examples I show to the students, we recognise some of the rules of design such as CARP. On the one hand, we understand that these are very helpful in terms of serving the audience, but on the other, we agree that they are not laws and are frequently broken with impunity by people who understand them.

As their educational technology coach, I want to help our teachers to guide the students to make the best infographic they can. My colleague and I have adapted an existing rubric which we have been using, but for some time, I have wanted to develop new guidelines to help students to do their best work.

While most excellent infographics combine text and image, they are neither simply a colourful essay, nor just a descriptive picture. They are more than either of those.

how do i make an excellent infographic?

Rubrics are very hard to get right. The style I prefer has a small number of categories which overlap as little as possible. The IB Theory of Knowledge course assesses student work using 'global impression marking' which recognises that a rubric

"is not a checklist, ...levels of performance are not discrete... and there are always exceptions".

In other words, however comprehensive the rubric, in the end the professional judgement of a teacher is the final arbiter. For this reason, I prefer to keep them short and spend my time on giving written feedback alongside the grade.

For an infographic rubric, I am considering three domains which cover the facts (INFO); the visuals (GRAPHICS); and how they work together to present the message (INFOGRAPHIC). I have often worked with four-point achievement scales which I find give sufficient levels (and an even number forces a judgement, preventing one from sitting comfortably on the fence).

For extra inspiration, the best resource on infographics rubrics is this one where a teacher had her classes brainstorm characteristics of their favourite infographics and the hive-mind came up with a comprehensive list which I have borrowed liberally from to create my own rubric.

does the rubric work?

Last week, I was on the London Underground and saw this very attractive infographic (right). Interestingly there are no sources given for the information nor the images. I found the artist's website (it took him five weeks to draw the infographic - with a mouse). The information could be regarded as common knowledge and not requiring sources, but the presentation is exceptionally good. It passed every criterion on my rubric.

 

Three challenges to my literacy

Could this week's reading help me find solutions to three questions which are related to my teaching for next week?

• Are photos of famous artists' paintings protected by copyright?


• A 1981 thriller about a Russian agent who becomes US president - is it really Donald Trump's favourite novel?


• What would be a good poster campaign to encourage students to exchange screen time for face-to-face?

Respectively, these questions challenge my Information, Media and Visual literacy skills.

INFORMATION LITERACY

[caption id="attachment_128" align="alignright" width="300"] Image and rule of thirds by SW[/caption]

In my classroom there is a collection of several hundred art postcards which I have collected from around the world over the years. I used them last week with my Grade 11 Theory of Knowledge class. We are considering The Arts as a way of gaining knowledge and I had asked the students about the different ways in which one might appreciate art. In groups, they discussed randomly selected images (aesthetic, representational, didactic or expressive was the schema I proposed). Usually, the pictures fell into more than one category.

The cards mostly have copyright notices which has led me to wonder what restrictions there are for me to use them in published works such as this blog or the teaching materials I post online. Does the copyright apply to the photo of the painting or the picture itself (which is only ever available as a photograph, of course)?

When I type 'Picasso' into Pixabay, no paintings are returned, presumably because he died less than 70 years ago. Yet Google images offers many results which are apparently 'labelled for reuse'. It seems that the advice I must give my students is to dig deeper since you may not have permission even if the website says you do.

MEDIA LITERACY

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="229"] Alternative fact or fiction? hilobrow.com[/caption]

In his Theory of Everything podcast recently, Benjamen Walker reveals the 1981 novel 'The Twentieth Day of January' and makes a number of startling claims:

• It describes an East Coast outsider populist who becomes US president


• The Soviets blackmail the candidate with clandestine photos


• They also influence the election (in the novel!)


• Trump has been promoting rapprochement with Russia since he befriended a KGB agent in the 1980s


• He has been telling people for years it's his favourite thriller

This week I shall be supporting our librarian in a session with High School teachers on research skills. We want to help them to model critical thinking skills for their students. I plan to play to the teachers a short extract of Walker's podcast and challenge them to investigate the facts (particularly: has the president really read the book?). We will ask them to tell us how they would go about verifying the claims and share with them SDSU's advice ("Are any conclusions offered? If so, based on what evidence?"... "What are the perspectives, opinions, assumptions and biases?"). I do not know the answers, but I am reading the book.

You may be familiar with the hoax websites Tree Octopus and Mankato beloved of information literacy teachers down the years. I don't think we need them any more to illustrate that not everything online is what it seems.

VISUAL LITERACY

During the Christmas vacation, as suggested in an earlier blogpost, I disconnected myself from the Internet. One of the effects was that I read more books than I would have. I am back online now, but I have learned that to be happiest I need to push the digital world a little further away from me. My solution is that my devices spend most of their time on my work desk while in our living room I read paper books and magazines.

[caption id="attachment_127" align="alignright" width="207"] Could you be a bit more tech-positive? Image by SW[/caption]

I am not alone in my conclusion that one must strive for a healthy balance between the digital and analogue worlds. Last week I spotted a number of posters around the corridors of our school (example on the right). I don't know who, students or teachers, put them up but they don't reflect an official school policy. In any case, it is not a message that I think will promote responsible use of technology.

"Noticing the construction of a message helps one become a more critical, questioning reader and viewer" (Hobbs)

Rather than charge in and criticise the posters, however, I feel I can achieve more through the educational process. With my colleague facilitator, I am developing a course for Grade 6 students called 'Get Set' which is designed to prepare them to function well in our 1-to-1 laptop classroom environment. For our next unit, we will discuss how to achieve a healthy approach to screen-time.

We will discuss posters such as this one and consider critically the message it implies. The students will prepare an information campaign. What are the behaviours we desire? Should we instill attitudes by education or coercion? Can we use techniques of visual communication to influence the school community to use technology responsibly?

These literacies are not as new as we might think since, in essence, they boil down to a refusal to take things at face value. Whether we are dealing with intellectual property theft, conspiracy theories or technophobia, the prime need is that we learn to think critically.