Collaboration and Building Community
An
essential question to consider: How can you use these tools and
techniques to promote collaboration and build community culture in your
classroom?
A constant challenge in working in a small alternative school is the intersection of small class sizes and problems with attendance that make collaboration and group difficult to sustain. Often I have barely enough students to divide into groups and then when groups get form, almost invariably, someone is absent and the group project turns into an independent project.
It occurs to me that one way I might try to approach this is by doing some sort of asynchronous collaboration, but often, when students return from absences, I am so focused on "catching them up" that I feel like the projects get more in the way of progress than helping the kids move forward.
Right now, I am working with the kids in my Junior English class on doing storyboarding. We are reading the novel MONSTER and I have ask the kids to write a screenplay about a day in their lives. Perhaps I could turn this screenplay idea into a collaborative project where students take it in turn to storyboard our experience in reading the book. I just purchased a one year license for the website www.storyboardthat.com. My objective with the site is to get kids over the hump of writing by reducing the writing they need to do initially by letting them use visuals for the setting. But the idea is that we then use the visuals they have created as a starting point for describing the setting.
In terms of organizing writing, Howland and Jonassen (2012) talk about using tools to organize ideas with concept maps, but concept maps have never been a tool that works for me, and I find it difficult to explain the usefulness of a tool that I don't personally use or find useful in organizing my ideas. The kinds of visual concept maps that they show in the book actually further confuse me in terms of developing a process.
Both John Montooth and I took a class almost 11 years ago taught by George Gutheridge who developed this system of writing for kids that struggle. That system of writing has a particular structure associated with it that really works for our students. It starts with a thematic statement (referred to as an enthymeme by Gutheridge) and then they move to what Gutheridge refers to as an organic outline (https://agsdwriting.wikispaces.com/9b.+Sample+Enthymemes+and+Organic+Outlines). It is a simple tool, but one that works for me, because it is intuitive to me and I can explain it fully.
Things like Wordles, I think, can be useful in getting people to reflect on their writing, but most of the time we are struggling to get kids to simply write a few paragraphs, and when that is the struggle, some of these more reflective apps are of little use.
Modeling with Technology
In terms of the modeling referred to by Howland and Jonassen (2012) in chapter eight, the thing that I am heavily engaged in this year is getting student to model financial problems in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. I am teaching a class in Personal Finance and we are transferring simple mathematical concepts used in personal finance and business into spreadsheets that kids can use to make financial decisions. We are in the very beginning of learning to use spreadsheet, but I am encouraging kids to learn to set up the calculations for the practice problems in spreadsheet format so they see that some of the tedious parts of doing calculations can be set aside once the initial spreadsheets are made for doing the calculations.
Gutheridge, G. (2017) AGSD Writing. Retrieved from https://agsdwriting.wikispaces.com/
Howland, J. L., & Jonassen, D. & Marra, R. M. (2012). Writing with Technology. In Meaningful Learning with Technology (160-190). Boston: Pearson.
Howland, J. L., & Jonassen, D. & Marra, R. M. (2012). Designing with Technologies. In Meaningful Learning with Technology (191-206). Boston: Pearson.
A constant challenge in working in a small alternative school is the intersection of small class sizes and problems with attendance that make collaboration and group difficult to sustain. Often I have barely enough students to divide into groups and then when groups get form, almost invariably, someone is absent and the group project turns into an independent project.
It occurs to me that one way I might try to approach this is by doing some sort of asynchronous collaboration, but often, when students return from absences, I am so focused on "catching them up" that I feel like the projects get more in the way of progress than helping the kids move forward.
Right now, I am working with the kids in my Junior English class on doing storyboarding. We are reading the novel MONSTER and I have ask the kids to write a screenplay about a day in their lives. Perhaps I could turn this screenplay idea into a collaborative project where students take it in turn to storyboard our experience in reading the book. I just purchased a one year license for the website www.storyboardthat.com. My objective with the site is to get kids over the hump of writing by reducing the writing they need to do initially by letting them use visuals for the setting. But the idea is that we then use the visuals they have created as a starting point for describing the setting.
In terms of organizing writing, Howland and Jonassen (2012) talk about using tools to organize ideas with concept maps, but concept maps have never been a tool that works for me, and I find it difficult to explain the usefulness of a tool that I don't personally use or find useful in organizing my ideas. The kinds of visual concept maps that they show in the book actually further confuse me in terms of developing a process.
Both John Montooth and I took a class almost 11 years ago taught by George Gutheridge who developed this system of writing for kids that struggle. That system of writing has a particular structure associated with it that really works for our students. It starts with a thematic statement (referred to as an enthymeme by Gutheridge) and then they move to what Gutheridge refers to as an organic outline (https://agsdwriting.wikispaces.com/9b.+Sample+Enthymemes+and+Organic+Outlines). It is a simple tool, but one that works for me, because it is intuitive to me and I can explain it fully.
Things like Wordles, I think, can be useful in getting people to reflect on their writing, but most of the time we are struggling to get kids to simply write a few paragraphs, and when that is the struggle, some of these more reflective apps are of little use.
Modeling with Technology
In terms of the modeling referred to by Howland and Jonassen (2012) in chapter eight, the thing that I am heavily engaged in this year is getting student to model financial problems in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel. I am teaching a class in Personal Finance and we are transferring simple mathematical concepts used in personal finance and business into spreadsheets that kids can use to make financial decisions. We are in the very beginning of learning to use spreadsheet, but I am encouraging kids to learn to set up the calculations for the practice problems in spreadsheet format so they see that some of the tedious parts of doing calculations can be set aside once the initial spreadsheets are made for doing the calculations.
Gutheridge, G. (2017) AGSD Writing. Retrieved from https://agsdwriting.wikispaces.com/
Howland, J. L., & Jonassen, D. & Marra, R. M. (2012). Writing with Technology. In Meaningful Learning with Technology (160-190). Boston: Pearson.
Howland, J. L., & Jonassen, D. & Marra, R. M. (2012). Designing with Technologies. In Meaningful Learning with Technology (191-206). Boston: Pearson.
Hi Bill!
ReplyDeleteI totally hear you on the difficulties of facilitating group projects and peer reviews due to absence. I have fought with that for years. I have had some success with asynchronous group projects. I'd love to try a digital storyboard. That sounds cool. That 'enthymeme' business is useful too. I've worked with some similar methods a little over the course of my involvement with Writing Project. My favorite was a 'Starbucks Cup Enthymeme Adventure.' I'm going to be thinking for the rest of the day about how to take those Starbucks enthymemes into the digital age.
I understand where you're coming from on the reflective part as well. My high schoolers were mostly pretty good about free writing or a little creative writing for their blogs, but when we did research papers, sometimes it was like squeezing blood from a stone. I also found myself adjusting reflective tool plans until we could get together enough to reflect on. I tried working on sample research papers first, making them play the role of reviewer and give feedback to the anonymous writer of the samples with track changes before doing their own. I like to think that helped increase their writing idea flow and metacognitive engagement along the way, but I'm not sure it was super effective. :-)
I think your spreadsheet example is a perfect one to characterize good modeling with digital tech. My students now are pre-service teachers from a variety of content areas. I am totally suggesting this to my math newbies!
Thanks for a great post!
Over the years I've tried a lot of different ways of what I think of as brain dumping, and many of them fall into the concept of the mind map (in the app realm, I'm thinking of things like Popplet, or for OS X, XMind, or the multiplatform Freemind). The only advantage I've seen to representing data in a mind map vs. the outline is that the graphical representation of the hierarchy in a mind map can [perhaps, if you know the program well] be manipulated around easier. The position of the content can be moved around so as to not make one thing more important than another — in an outline inherently the top most things have more weight. Oftentimes though I think the time spent learning the tool for students gets in the way and isn't terribly transferrable. I would see more value in mind mapping being driven by the teacher in order to introduce a unit or as a collaborative knowledge building tool.
ReplyDeleteI like the enthymeme approach with topic up as demonstrated; I'll give that a shot sometime.
The long and short of it for me: whatever helps students get their thoughts down and help organize them later.
Hi Bill,
ReplyDeleteI hear your struggles from the alternative/correspondence school world. We have had a few successes in collaboration for our alternative/correspondence school program. One success that I had this summer, in teaching a class of one student-so take it with a grain of salt, was to allow that student to select his/her own collaborative community for his/her blogging and fiction writing experience. After some research, this student decided on posting in an online fan fiction writing community. He/she had to take screenshots of interactions and his/her parents had to give permission for the student to be a part of this online community. Though the student didn't spend his/her entire experience posting in the community, he/she became a confident blogger and learned how to be a member of such communities. Yes, there is a line between helping students find their people (those who share the same interests) and protecting them from creepers, poor choices, and the struggle of impulse control...but ultimately, when students can't rely on their peers to help them come better collaborators and community members, reaching beyond their community can help. However, thinking about the community and population you work with, it may be better suited for specific students as part of the ILP but not for whole groups of students.
Another success we had has been with our evening math tutoring sessions. A small group of parents and students formed a "no tears" Algebra learning co-op and they meet in the evenings with a math tutor at our space. This week our high school homeschool/correspondence teacher video conferenced in one of our statewide students to the local group and tutor to collaboratively discuss challenges with classmates, get tutoring support from the tutor, and just get some face time with the homeschool/correspondence teacher. It was very well received by all participants. This could be another option as well, that when students can't come to school, maybe they can connect via video conferencing from home. I recognize that internet service is very expensive in Dillingham, so while video conferencing may not work, group instant messaging might work. Google group chats might be an easy and informal way to get students talking school even when they aren't at school. I know this is the group of kiddos that never feels like they belong but using technology tools may be an avenue for helping them feel like they are a part of something more.
I recognize that you've been doing this for awhile and probably have gone through all of the suggestions I've shared in multiple iterations. You're an innovator and you know your students and this population of kiddos so well.
Oh! Thanks for sharing the WikiSpace on George's writing method! I've been chatting it up down here in Kodiak but without resources I haven't been able to really successfully explain it.
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