Generation G: Clicking Our Brains Out

Next time you’re with your students, look around.  How many of them have smartphones in their hands? In a lot of classrooms, the answer will be all of them. Every teen has the web in his or her pocket. And it’s not so easy to unplug.

We are almost physically attached to our technology at this point. When you ask a student put his phone away, watch how truly difficult it is for him to separate himself from his device. We may all be just one step away from M.T. Anderson’s chip-in-brain version of the future in his novel Feed.

This profound attachment is the reason I’ve been raving about using technology and social media in the classroom for the past year—my students are part of the Google Generation.  They prefer learning by Googling, and I’m meeting them online in hopes ofreaching them. Teachers were once the Keepers of the Knowledge, but that is no longer the case.  I mean, compared to the knowledge the Internet holds, I’m an idiot.  I do not know one iota of what can be searched via Google.  With one click, students can learn more about Frankenstein than I know, and I’ve been teaching it for thirteen years.  As scary as this capability may be, it’s a wake-up call about my methods of instruction.

The answers to many of our questions are no longer hard to find. Generation G takes an instant-gratification approach to knowledge (along with everything else). We are one click away from any information we want. You need to know what Mary Shelley writes about the creature’s origins in Frankenstein? Click.  Page sixty. Want to know what Einstein discovered? Click. Want to know if a butterfly can change its colors? Click.  Want to know the answers to Ms. Morrell’s homework assignment? Click.

Right now you’re thinking, I know how to solve this problem. Ask your students to complete higher-order thinking questions! Pose analysis and synthesis questions that can’t be insta-Googled.

Of course, we should always have been aiming for the top of the pyramid anyway. But Gen-G takes a different approach to even complex problems. Thanks to iChat, Facebook, and Skype, almost no assignment is completed by individual effort. Generation G has all their contacts just one click away. Why waste time when someone else probably already has the answer or info? These kids instinctively form cooperative groups. The Internet has fostered the collective hive-mind.

I went through a few old notebooks last week. What I couldn’t help but notice was the degree to which my students’ assignments from 2000 differed from this year’s work.  Perhaps a portion of that growth has to be attributed to my becoming a more seasoned teacher, but I also believe a large part of that change is prompted by the universe of knowledge at my students’ fingertips.

There are drawbacks to the collective, of course. To extend the hive analogy, we need to be aware of dominant “queen bees” disseminating their ideas to less inquisitive members of the group.

We also need to train our students to be discriminating consumers of knowledge. More and more we are battling the very deeply ingrained belief that information published on the web is true or valid—or even useful. Our students who view their smartphones as very nearly a physical appendage tend to believe what they hear, see, and read online. And more and more, the web is filled with misinformation. We need to go beyond teaching them about our subjects; we need to teach them to navigate Googleland with a discerning eye.

And that’s the number one reason why we need to bring technology and social media into our classrooms. They are already using it. You can’t uncast that die. Today, it is part of our job to help Generation G to navigate the labyrinthine world of the web. To go beyond “Google it” so that each student can harness this incredible tool to really understand the lessons we are teaching.

A Special Thanks to Jennifer Howard.

Adaptation of the Species: iBooks Author in the Classroom

I once overheard a colleague state that textbooks are outdated; that flat images on paper are going the way of the dinosaur—extinct. 

Okay, so admittedly, that educator was me, and perhaps the statement is a bit premature, as many students do not yet own laptops or tablets.  But the revolution is coming! I’ve got my “end of the world as we know it” sign ready to display, and R.E.M singing in my head.

 Our students need interactive textbooks with images and words that can be manipulated, books that encourage them to be active participants in their own education.  Just think what Google has done for homework help.  If you can name a subject, chances are that somewhere on the internet is a website or even a tutor to help. Students can Facebook, Tweet, or Skype with anyone, anywhere. This new generation is permanently connected to media, growing up with their digital devices as additional appendages.  Even preschoolers are now learning on tablets. If there is any doubt, just take a look at the new Disney’s AppMATes  or Mattel’s Apptivity.—these new apps allow partnered toys to be moved about on the face of the iPad while the app interacts with those toys.

So, the question is:  shouldn’t our textbooks allow the same interaction with content? 

With iBooks Author and iPad, educators are able to create their own textbooks for their courses, to make those books interactive by adding pictures, graphs, links to websites and activities; we can add lecture files and videos, even reading checks and quizzes at the end of each section. For the first time, a teacher can step away from what the textbook companies think her students need and explore what she knows her students need.  And perhaps the most impressive feature—iBooks Author and the iBooks app are FREE. 

In August, I had my first experience with iBooks Author.  I co-authored an iBook for a conference-- #Reaching the Tweeps- The Role of Social Media in Education.  As with any new endeavor, I worried about the difficulty of using the iBooks Author software, but it is much like Pages or Microsoft Word.  With just a few clicks, teachers are able to copy, paste, and insert from documents that they’ve already made and load everything into an iBook template. Pictures, videos, and audio clips can also be added with a few swipes of the mouse.  Author software is so intuitive, your inserted passages and objects will be automatically positioned for you.  The end result will be a professional ebook.

Use iBooks Author to publish your own course materials:
1. curate a variety of content—websites, documents, pdfs, pictures, sound clips, or videos

2. share your content with students, parents, and co-workers for free—even publishing with a password requirement

3. embed interactive models for students to turn, twist, spin, and manipulate

4. include links for any websites—e-magazines, e-newspapers, online quizzes, and games

5. content can be made available anywhere for students on-the-go

6. publish quickly and easily, and update your book after it is published

While iBooks Author is a great tool for teachers to create content, it is also an excellent way for students to publish their own work.  For example, one of my classes is currently writing a novel.  Each student is composing one chapter of a fictional story. We will be publishing this work as an iBook when we’ve finished, and to say that my class is excited is an understatement! The quality of work that is being produced is far superior to assignments I’ve received in the past. Why? Because their story will be published—officially “purchasable” by others as an ebook.  It gives their effort meaning; their hard work, reward.

Use iBooks Author for student publications:

1. 1.     Your students can create an iBook of their coursework and publish it as a portfolio or final project.
2. 2.     Your students can collaborate to create study guides for other students.
3. 3.     Your students can publish a literary or arts magazine for your school with no publication costs.
4. 4.     Your students can work together to create their own novel or anthology of original short stories.

As with any new software or device, there are drawbacks. Your students must have iPads to view the books; the iTunes processing time can vary (our #Reaching the Tweeps ebook took less than 24 hours), and your content must be original or royalty free.

For my own courses, it is the juggling of online vidoes, Youtube clips, ancillary reading, newspaper and magazine articles, art, and other media and text that creates confusion in class.  As I work on my iBook for next year – to use as the “textbook” for the course—I begin to realize that my students will be able to locate everything in one place.  The balancing act will be a bit easier. 

Isn’t that what technology is really meant to do: make our lives easier and better organized? I’ve spoken with a lot of people who disdain ebooks and iBooks—vowing that the paper versions will always be their choice. But as a teacher today, I know I need to reach my students where they live.

And many of them have never even stepped foot inside a library.

The “I” in T-E-A-M: Social Media and Collaboration

I’m a cheerleader.  Maybe no longer literally, with the pleated skirt and standing back tuck, but my innate desire to encourage and get people excited is definitely still part of my every day life.  And maybe this is exactly what education needs more of—a sense of teamwork and the desire to cheer each other on. 

All educators know that our field is an especially isolated one, specifically in the cases of collaboration and sharing best practices. Let’s be honest, most of us are stuck in a classroom for eight hours a day with barely enough time to grab that needed cup of coffee, let alone have a thirty-minute conversation with a colleague about a new project we’ve tried.  And yet, collaboration is the base of the pyramid for education, and sadly, when it comes to T-E-A-M, we are the “I”s.

Buildings, class schedules, and schools disconnect us. Most of us work alone, and our focus is very narrow, usually restricted to our own discipline or even the grade we teach. This limited focus does not benefit our students—we are preparing them to live in an extraordinarily fast-paced, global world; they need to learn how disciplines interconnect and how to communicate effectively with those whose focus is different from their own. We need to model collaboration and communication for our students--we need to work together as a team.

Social media allows us to communicate, to become that team. We watch others implement new ideas, succeed or fail, and we can learn from their mistakes. A touch of a few buttons and we can find a million new ways to use the iPad in the classroom or Twitter in Social Studies.The possibilities for shared curricula are endless.

 What better way for us as educators to share best practices than in an asynchronous environment, a global community of professionals? We are able to make connections while at home, before school, across time zones, and or even during summer vacation.

In the last year, I have learned more from social media websites like Twitter, Edudemic, Edutopia, and EdSocialMedia than I have from any professional development meeting I’ve ever attended. Whether it’s following #edchat and #isedchat on Twitter, cruising EdSocialMedia for new articles, or reading the Edudemic magazine on my iPad, I’ve spent countless hours, outside of my normal school day, connecting with other teachers—and wanting to do it.  Social media is collaboration that works! It’s something that we can cheer about.

The web is filled with places for teachers to share materials.  One of my favorite sites is Teachers Pay Teachers.  Not only can you sell your lesson plans and activities, making a little extra money on the side, but you can also browse thousands of amazing lessons.  Classroom 2.0 is another great social networking site where teachers blog about their subject area and favorite teaching tools.  Whether you are looking for activities for an ELL class or wanting book recommendations for your course, Classroom 2.0 probably has an article about it.  For English teachers, Jim Burke’s Ning community is an excellent place to find articles relating to your discipline.  There are also Teachers Teaching Teachers, TeachAde, The Apple, NextGenTeachers, TeachersLingo, PBS Teachers Connect, and Tapped In, and if you’re reading this article, you’re probably already familiar with the incredible EdSocialMedia.

As social networking continues to flourish, these sites for teachers will only continue to spring up, allowing for traditional professional development to transcend the classroom, and give us what we want so badly for our students, a school without walls. 

 I saw a shirt once that said that “all women are created equal and then some become cheerleaders.” Maybe this holds true for education as well— all teachers are created equal and then a few become cheerleaders.  I propose that we all join the pep squad. Get out your pompons, your megaphone, and your laptop.  Let’s lead other educators into and onto the field. Let’s use social media to promote great teaching ideas, to encourage education reform, and to celebrate each others’ successes. Let’s be those cheerleaders, leading education into the twenty-first century.

Not with a Bang, but a Whimper: The End of Print?

We live in a virtual world, maybe not entirely, but more so than any generation before. 

In fact, as I celebrate the third day of my summer vacation, I find myself staring longingly at my computer, which I am trying (and failing) to ignore.  The lure of all that information is almost too strong; I want to know; I want to interact; I want to connect. 

What happened to me?  I used to spend my summers with a paperback in my hand at the beach, but I seem to have been replaced by a crazy virtual avatar, whose only desire is to consume information and make connections digitally. I even prefer my Nook and iPad devices to actual paperbacks.

It seems that I no longer need to have the tactile experience of turning paper pages; instead, I am perfectly content swiping a screen to advance to the next section.  I never thought in a million years, I’d prefer that…never.  So, as I sat by the pool yesterday reading on a digital device, I asked myself whether this was the year to move to digital books in the classroom?

The majority of my students have laptops, iPads, iPhones, Kindles, or Nooks, and this past year was the first in which multiple students in each class were using their iPads to read assigned novels.  At first, I resisted; I explained that they needed to be able to write in their books, annotate passages, etc.  Then, while reading Feed by MT Anderson (for those who have experienced this haunting novel, you will find this ironic), I asked a class to find passages that relate to the downfall of education.  I expected this activity to take ten or fifteen minutes, as it had in the past; however, as my paperback students were hurriedly flipping pages and re-reading passages, a student exclaimed, “I’ve found nine references to education.”  I was shocked.  How was it possible for her to find that many reference in less than two minutes?  There was no way it was possible.

Then, it hit me…she was using an iPad.  She’d simply typed the word “education” into the search box on her digital Kindle book, and—voila—instant access to numerous passages on that particular subject. 

This was an enlightening experience for me; it was the first time I realized that reading a digital book might have more advantages.  You can highlight in different colors without carrying around those pesky markers, bookmark specific pages and never lose them, type (legible) notes on any page, and most importantly, search a book for specific words or phrases.  This is a literature teacher’s dream.

But digital reading also has a few drawbacks: requirement of internet service to download books, possibility of a device breaking or running out of battery power, and in the case of one frustrated student, the difficulty for some of the less tech-savvy to learn the ins and outs of the device.

Maybe I should wait on the switch.  It wasn’t that many years ago that I read Fahrenheit 451 and nearly wept over the loss of thousands of important books burned in the fires.  With my students, I discussed the likelihood of this ever happening, and we agreed that there was little to no chance of books ever being rendered useless, and yet here I sit a short eight years later questioning whether to make the move to digital media. Is this just metaphorical book burning?

I look at my bookshelf and I think of how beautiful and fragile my 1840 copy of Ivanhoe is or how worn my copies of the first few Harry Potter novels are or even how filled with notes my copy of Frankenstein is and I ask myself how long it’s been since I last cracked them open.  The answer lies in the dust… a long time.

Maybe what Bradbury was warning us about is happening, but instead of a bonfire filled with paper, we’re just giving up our books, trading them for something that seems the same, but isn’t, not quite. Our books will be gone--not with a bang, but a whimper.

Virtual Reports on Real Books: Goodreads.com and Book Reports in the Digital Age

Most of us remember the first book we fell in love with, the first story to take us on a journey out of our world and into someone else’s. 

I’ve taught English for many years now, and it seems that as the years pass, less of my students are reading outside of their courses.  Almost none of my current juniors and seniors are reading for pleasure.  They might read to learn information or because they have to, but nowadays students turn to films, games, the internet, and television for their escape.

A few years ago, I began assigning a project to my juniors.  The basics: choose an American book, read it with a partner, discuss it, and present it to your classmates, enticing them to want to read it.  Sounds like an old-fashioned book report, right? So it is.  The conundrum for most of my reluctant readers was in book choice. What to read? Who to read?  The easy thing for me to do was to simply tell them about a few books and give them a list of choices.

Last year, I discovered that Goodreads.com was another excellent way for students to explore, discover, and select books that interest them. 

I still remember walking up and down the long musty-smelling rows of books at my school library and basing my choice on cover art. Man, how things have changed.  Now, you only need to hop online to surf new book releases. In fact, many new books have their own preview video!  This is a new age—a digital one.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still okay to talk to students about books, but like the saying goes- show don’t tell. The greater impact comes in showing them.  Enter, Goodreads.com.  Now, this website isn’t new; in fact, many of you may have been using it for years.  However, I’ve discovered a few interesting facts about the site, and one amazing way to utilize it in the classroom, particularly for English and History.

WHY TEACHERS WANT TO USE GOODREADS IN THE CLASSROOM:

1. Goodreads.com is free!

2.  It has over seven million subscribers; this means that there are millions of book reviews to help students choose the right material.

3.  It allows teachers to model independent reading!

4. Teachers can follow their students and can get emails daily or weekly with updates from their students regarding books rated or marked to-read, read, reading.

5. Teachers can create “groups” and set those groups to public, private, restricted, or even secret.

6. Teachers can begin discussions in their “Group,” to which students can reply.

7. Teachers can use the site as a way for students to evaluate course reading selections.

WHY STUDENTS ARE INTERESTED IN USING GOODREADS:

1. Goodreads is an asynchronous environment where students can discuss or read about literature on their own time, at their own pace, and in any location.

2.  Students can create anonymous profiles.

3. Students learn to write for a specific audience.

4. It allows users to select books to add to their bookshelf; to choose “read, reading, or to-read” statuses for books; to set goals for the year and to track their progress; to write reviews for any book; to follow favorite authors who are also members on the site; and to even self-publish their own work.

5. Students are able to read about a book before starting it.

Book reports, or as I sneakily call them “novel workshops,” still have value, as does reading for pleasure, and using a social networking site such as Goodreads makes the selection process less painful and the reading more enjoyable!

Prezi: Reinventing the Wheel

It’s a small world.  And thanks to technology, it’s smaller than ever.  Whether it’s connecting between campuses, cross-country, internationally, or simply outside of normal school hours, students are interacting and sharing information at an unparalleled rate. The classroom no longer has walls, and learning no longer only takes place between bells.

Social media is an amazing first step in cultivating the classroom without walls, and Prezi is a fantastic social media tool.

For years, I’ve searched for the perfect presentation program—one that allows me to quickly put together an introduction to a unit for my students, but also something that was, unlike PowerPoint, dynamic.  I wanted a program that would allow me to connect with my students outside of our classroom.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate PowerPoint, I just find it strangely complicated and difficult to make interesting or interactive. For group projects, you are limited to one person working at a time, and often, the file is too big to email. And forget doing a project quickly; it sometimes takes hours to upload pictures, link videos, or create slide transitions.

Like many other educators, I’ve waited for something new to wow me, and finally, this summer, another teacher mentioned Prezi.

I even liked the name…Prezi. It sounds modern, hip, Apple-esque.  And it is all of those things.  I still remember the reaction I had the first time I viewed a prezi; my jaw dropped.  I couldn’t believe how incredibly visual and seamless it was!  In fact, it’s the first presentation software I’ve used that caters to the visual / kinesthetic learner.

Not only does Prezi look amazing, but it is a cloud-based presentation tool!  That means that you never have to email another file to your students; you can simply direct them to the website (if you make your Prezi public); in fact, you will be able to watch the file on any computer or tablet anywhere.  Another perk of cloud-based presentations is that your prezi is saved somewhere other than your computer’s hard drive, clearing up much-needed space and protecting you against accidental deletion.

Perhaps the most valuable feature of Prezi is that it allows students to interact with lessons on their own time, in their own space, while fostering the collaboration that we all like to see.  The “meeting” option allows up to ten people to login and work on the same presentation—even at the same time.

At the private college prep school where I teach, we currently have over a hundred boarding students who live in a dorm off campus.  It is often difficult for these students to work on projects with our day students, and as I like to assign a variety of cooperative learning projects and assignments, I’ve been very frustrated with PowerPoint.

Our school, like many others, faces a new challenge—providing web-based networking tools to our students and instructors.  Prezi is an answer to that challenge.  For example, just last week, my juniors were working on literary criticism projects.  Most of the groups were made up of both day and boarding students, and Prezi made it possible for them to all meet online and build their presentations without even being in the same building!


Key features of the software:
1.     It’s free for educators, as long as you have an email address that includes your school or district name.
2.     It’s free for your students to use (there is a free non-education version available as well).
3.     It looks crisp and modern; it emphasizes the visual.
4.     It uses a zooming tool (which awes your students).
5.     There are no complicated menus, just one wheel of options (I call it the “Wheel of Awesome”).
6.     Every single addition of text, picture, video, or object can be done in less than two or three clicks.  (For the designers out there, you can go five or six clicks to specialize your prezi.)
7.     You can import your old PowerPoint files.
8.     You can change the path (order of “slides”) your prezi takes at any time.
9.     You can make your prezi public and share it with the world or make it private for a select audience.
10. Youtube videos can be inserted by copying and pasting the address.
11.   You never have to leave the prezi to open another window, unlike PowerPoint.
12.  Your students can find your prezi by typing your name into the search bar of the website!

Before you race to type “prezi.com” into your browser, I have a few suggestions
1.     Forget everything you learned using PowerPoint.  (It only confused me when using the software.)
2.     If you want to add text, just click anywhere on the screen.
3.     Mac users zoom in and out using the two-finger scroll method.  Click and drag to move the screen around.  I had a rough first few minutes trying to learn this!
4.     If you want to change, move, manipulate, rotate, or re-size text on the screen, click on it once until the Wheel of Awesome pops up and use the menu on the wheel.


As we begin to change our curriculum and delivery to meet our digital-native students’ needs, Prezi will impress where other presentation software falls short!   It will promote differentiation, cooperative learning, lesson sharing, and social networking.  Not only will students and teachers be able to build their own dynamic presentations, which they can share with the Prezi community, but they will also be able to use others’ prezis as teaching and learning tools.

Essential Teaching Protocols for 21st Century Learning

In this blog post for Meritas, I discuss how I incorporate the four essential protocols.  

 I spent a semester of college staring at a William Butler Yeats quote that my professor proudly posted on her bulletin board:  “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting a fire.”  

Of course, I grasped the basic meaning of the phrase and thought I understood its significance, but it took me years to fully realize exactly why those few words were so important to her.

Never did I imagine how vital they would become to me as well.

In my twelve years of teaching, I’ve come to understand that education is not instructing students what to think; it is about showing them how to think.  It will never be about filling their minds with facts, but about instilling a thirst for knowledge. 

At Meritas, our approach to “the lighting of a fire” is demonstrated through our four essential teaching protocols:

·              Essential Questions

·              New Vocabulary

·              Differentiation

·              High-Order Assessment

It is through use of these protocols that teachers are able to remove the focus on memorization and allow our lessons to come to life.  As a result, our students truly interact with and understand the material.

The following outlines some of the ways I incorporate the Meritas teaching protocols into my classroom:

Essential questions

I begin each unit by writing my essential questions on the board, and as the class progresses through the material, students are expected to continually respond to these questions, which have no yes or no, right or wrong, answers. 

Recently, in a study of non-fiction graphic novels, students were asked to consider how historical events affect the individual and to apply their answers to our reading of Maus and Persepolis.  Another question I posted invited them to reflect on how the medium might change the impact of the story or, as in the case of Maus, the validity.   

It is my hope that my essential questions will encourage students to apply what they are reading/studying to their everyday lives, to other classes, or to our study of literature as a whole.   

One way that I assess each learner’s comprehension of the essential questions is by use of an “exit ticket” at the end of class.  I do this by using Socrative, a free iTunes/android app, which students download onto their smartphones or use on their computers.   The exit ticket asks three questions: 1. How well did you understand today’s material?  2.  What did you learn today?   3. Can you answer the essential question on the board?

The exit ticket requires a couple of minutes to complete, and it discloses how well my learners understood what we covered that day.  Exit tickets are a terrific way to evaluate whether my students are grasping the essential questions, understanding the vocabulary, and benefitting from differentiated instruction.

New vocabulary

While there are many ways to teach vocabulary, I prefer teaching it in context with each lesson.

 One way in which I incorporate the vocabulary of literary devices and rhetorical strategies is by separating students into small groups and having them race to find as many examples as possible in a text. With this form of assessment, students are not cramming to remember vocabulary words, which they will forget the minute the quiz leaves their hands; instead, they are utilizing the words, interacting with them.

Many students struggle with new vocabulary, particularly those who are kinesthetic or visual learners. I often work with these students one-on-one or in small groups.  A simple technique that works wonders is to teach students how to create a visual representation of the word. Teaching students to create their own mnemonic devices helps them to move past the memorizing/knowledge acquisition phase faster and more successfully, so that they can move on to the higher orders of thinking. This is also a helpful differentiation strategy. 

Differentiation

I firmly believe that most teachers differentiate, even when they are unaware of it; I attempt to make it a visible part of my courses because not only does differentiation help with student engagement, it also aids in retention of material.  There are a variety of options for differentiating English, from using a side-by-side translation of a difficult text to requiring rewrites of particularly complicated passages.

A recent example of differentiation in my classroom is a Twitter assignment I created. Each student chose a character from Hamlet, created a twitter account, and then tweeted as that character throughout the play. It is one of the most successful assignments of my career, particularly in terms of student engagement.  All four of my English IV classes, with all levels from standard and ESOL to honors, were able to interact on Twitter, and this forum allowed my students to write at their own level and pace, with more advanced learners employing a variety of rhetorical strategies.  You can read more about this assignment by visiting http://www.edsocialmedia.com/2012/03/to-tweet-or-not-to-tweet/.

High-order assessment

Most assignments given in my classes require some form of analysis, synthesis, evaluation, or creativity.  One of my favorite methods for assessing student comprehension of a text is by assigning a reaction paper. These writing assignments are primarily based on higher order reasoning, but must include textual evidence to support any idea that the student introduces.  I find that requiring quotes from the original text forces each learner to once again interact with the book or essay.   

Another of my favorite activities involves student-teaching components, where I ask my students to take turns presenting sections of an assigned novel.  At the end of their short presentation, they must lead their class in a discussion of two higher order reasoning questions (which they can find on the flip chart in my room).  By the end of the first semester, the students have many of the questions from the chart memorized! 

In conclusion, Meritas’s four essential protocols are not foreign concepts to most teachers. Perhaps we’ve not used the same vocabulary to describe these procedures in the past, but by giving us a “common language” for learning, Meritas is fostering an environment that will truly benefit each student.