Disrupting Gen Z

Earlier this week one of my students said something that stopped me in my tracks. He remarked:

"I want to be able to learn how to drive myself someday."

It was more a lament than a remark.

My daughter learning to drive stick.
Yes, we drive old-school in our house!

Let me put his lament in context. In his class, Digital Literacy, we have been doing a lot of design thinking work focused on solving the problems of social media (discussed in three parts starting here). As we await feedback on our prototypes, we engaged in an Applied Digital Skills exercise from Google focused on the role of technology in current events. This student chose to focus his study on self-driving cars and the impact they will have on teenage drivers.

He examined issues of driving safety including distracted and impaired driving as well as the implications of self-driving cars on the insurance industry. Then he stopped what he was doing when, out loud, he wondered: "Will we even need to get our license anymore?" And after a pause, came his lament; something he has aspired to do, a suburban teenage rite of passage, may someday (someday soon?) become a thing of the past, no longer something to which he and his peers will aspire. The class was a little sad at that prospect. And I was a little giddy.

Why? Because there it was, the perfect example of technological innovation as a disruptive force and it was an example that resonated deeply with my students. And, as a disruption that hasn't yet occurred but is one they can anticipate, they feel the tug of resentment over how technology will change their lives. For that moment, we understood each other across the gap of a generation.

This student's epiphany prompted a very interesting and organic dialogue. We talked about the difference between the manual transmission cars that I learned to drive -- and still drive today -- and automatic transmissions. About why a driver might prefer one or the other. About how an automatic was a luxury when I was learning to drive. And designers have continued to improve on the automatic design with the development of the continuously variable transmission. Only the student who is a fan of race car driving even knew what a manual transmission is. Some students shared the self-driving features of their parents cars like warnings when drifting out of lane, alarms that indicate another car in the driver's blind spot, auto parallel parking features, etc. And talked about whether they trust that technology and how it feels when it is operating.

As excited as they got talking about the coolness factor of these features that are becoming standard on new cars, my self-driving car researcher said again: "I still really want to get my license." And they all got quiet again.

Today he presented his research, and having come to the realization that the self-driving car will not be ubiquitous before he is of driving age, his mind was put at ease and the discussion he facilitated for the class focused more on how the auto insurance industry and legislation will have to respond to this automotive innovation. His presentation was followed by another student whose research focused on robotic disruption in the labor force. Given their brief engagement with the potential loss of licensing privileges, the class embarked on a discussion during that presentation that had more potency than it might have otherwise. It was definitely an unanticipated way in which a student found the personal relevance of his learning and it helped the class develop empathy with people that they otherwise might not have considered as carefully.

Students solving problems of social media, part 3

FutureDesignSchool.com

Thanks for following this design thinking journey!

In case you missed parts one or two, my students are tackling problems they have identified with social media while preserving the benefits they experience from engaging in those platforms. We replicated a social media dialogue during the problem definition and ideation phases. Blog posts about parts one and two explore these processes in detail.

Now, the students have completed their prototypes and are seeking user feedback. The students had a few options for how to proceed with building their prototype. They could use cardboard and other basic supplies from our makerspace to build a 3D object. They could use paper templates to design or redesign and app. Or, they could storyboard the experience of their solution in action by drawing the sequences on post-its and creating a short video. I used the slides inserted below to show models of what they were doing and facilitate discussion of the prototyping process.



Here are some of the prototypes in the process of being built.

Now that they have finished building their prototypes, it is time for user testing! The students met one-on-one with members of our school community to watch how those people interacted with their prototypes, and they were able to interview those users about their reactions to the proposed solution both in terms of the viability of the concept and its appeal.

In order to solicit a broader spectrum of perspectives, each of the students uploaded their design to a Google Form which they used to ask key questions about their design. Then I added each Form to a Padlet that indexes each of their "How might we..." questions with their Google Form for collecting feedback. The students and I shared the padlet through our social media networks in order to reach a wider audience of social media users and increase the perspectives provided in the feedback. We welcome any comments you would like to offer about the viability and appeal of their designs. You can visit the padlet (also embedded below), and please feel free to share with your students and encourage them to provide feedback as well! Thank you!

Mind over Matter: Overcoming Learning Obstacles by Building Habits of Mind

creative commons; john hain on Pixabay

Educators and students all bring particular habits of mind with them when they enter their schools and classrooms. And under the pressure of data crunching and competition for high scores, some of those habits -- developed over an educational lifetime -- become self-sabotaging. As a public high school Social Studies teacher, I had long recognized patterns in student behavior that were concerning: self-put downs, approval-seeking, and excuse making, to name a few. It was not until I read the work of Art Costa and Bena Kallick about Habits of Mind, that I began to understand those expressions and behaviors as being the manifestation of patterns of thinking. What I was observing was the consequence of counterproductive (even destructive) habits of mind. So I let go of content and set out to improve the ways my students thought about and understood learning, each other, and themselves.

Now, I realized that I was facing institutional and cultural and even legislative obstacles. And it was clear that my students were invested in extrinsic measures of achievement, satisfaction, and even happiness. So I adopted a two-prong approach:

1. Remove, as much as was possible, the extrinsic measurements; and
2. Provide daily practice and reinforcement of new ways of thinking about learning, each other, and ourselves until those ways of thinking became new habits of mind.

Then, I predicted, the external metrics could be returned with minimized deleterious impact because students would have a new paradigm for understanding achievement, and this focus on continued growth would translate into improved scores when compared to those external metrics.

Step one: I stopped giving grades (for as long as was institutionally possible).

We just stopped using the word. When students stop using that word and learn to substitute so many more specific and meaningful terms and phrases, conversations about teaching and learning become so much more honest and effective. Instead of: “Why did I get this grade?” students began asking, “How can I write better quotation blends?” Even better, was when they started turning to each other and asking for feedback on what they were trying to do and understand! 

Step two: We focused on habits of mind, not patterns of behavior.

To do this, we needed new vocabulary and ways of connecting that vocabulary to our work and our interactions. As a framework for learning and applying this new vocabulary, I built this rubric based on the sixteen habits of mind. Note that the headings of each column have song titles, not points or edu-speak like “Exceeds Standard”. Anywhere an external or summative metric could be removed or replaced it was. Student focus was continually directed to an examination of their habits of mind. When the rubric was introduced at the start of the school year, students were assigned to groups and each group was given a chapter from Denise Clark Pope's Doing School. Working together, the groups examined the habits of mind of the student they were assigned and decided where the student about whom they read would be starting on the rubric. They had to use specific evidence from the students words, actions, and interactions to justify their assessment. My high achieving students from relatively privileged backgrounds were reading about other high-achieving students and identifying with their stresses and learned behaviors for surviving their school experiences.

Now that they had practice with the new vocabulary and had applied it in a safe way to other students, it was time for my students to self-examine and decide where they were starting. For this step they journaled about their past school experiences and talked with other members of the class they thought knew them well. Once they had identified their origin on the rubric, each student wrote a goal and a specific action plan for the first marking period. Together, we reviewed their goals and plans and I offered feedback. The action plan was very hard for most of the students to write. They struggled to get past statements like: I will try harder, I will get my work done on time, etc. A huge point of growth was when they could see that one vague goal statement is not the action plan for achieving another goal. Eventually they learned to write action plans that included steps like: I will visit the humanities help center each Monday to review my primary source annotations, I will reserve 8-8:30PM as reading time every weeknight, I will complete essay drafts one day before the due date in order to have a partner give me feedback before I submit it, I will not speak in a group conversation until the quietest member of the group has contributed, etc.

Just as they did with the student they examined in Pope’s book, the students had to curate evidence of their own growth and achievement. At the mid-quarter we met to review progress and the accumulated evidence and revise their goals and strategies as necessary. And this was key, I didn’t want students setting goals they knew they could achieve. That’s not a goal, it’s a given. It was also important to acknowledge when a strategy wasn’t working or a goal was not going to be obtainable… yet. At the end of the quarter, students wrote self-evaluations and had to present three pieces of evidence to justify each claim they made about their habits of mind development. All of this thinking about thinking and learning and the evidence was accumulated in a web portfolio.

We repeated this process each quarter and then met one-on-one at the end of the year when it was time to restore the external metrics of grades. To prepare for this conversation, each student converted their web portfolio into an exploration of their growth that we reviewed together in our meeting. What did we find? Because students continued to:

1. set goals;
2. reflect and evaluate their work and habits;
3. set new goals and modify their work, habits and effort accordingly;

they all realized increasing success and achievement throughout the year. In other words, all assessments were formative. Thus, when it came to determining grades, rather than penalizing a student who began the year as “a believer” on the rubric and ended the year with “nothing compared to him/her” by averaging a lower earlier grade with a later higher one, the students were evaluated according to mastery and achievement and their grade was an authentic reflection of their progress made and growth consistently demonstrated. Best of all, they carried these new, positive, practiced and ingrained habits of into all of their other work and relationships. Constructive habits of mind are essential to overcoming obstacles, making progress, and being fulfilled by the process regardless of the product.

Costa, Arthur L and Bena Kallick. Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind: 16 Essential Characteristics for Success, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2008.

Students solving problems of social media, part 2

In case you missed part one of this posting series, in it I described the design thinking process we used to define "social media", identify the pros or benefits of it as well as the cons or detriments. Then each student chose one "pro" to preserve and one "con" to fix when crafting their "How might we..." questions. You can read about the specifics of each step and see pictures in the part one post.

Here is how this process is unfolding.

Once the students each had a "How might we..." (HMW) question they were ready for the next design thinking step: ideation. On two occasions earlier this year, we used Crazy 8's, and for this experience I wanted to expose them to a new brainstorming technique. I chose a round robin approach because that process would continue emulating social media posting, which is the focus of our problem solving.

We started out with blank paper covering the table. Each student wrote their HMW question across the bottom of the paper at their spot at the table. Then, they began to draw what a solution to their problem might look like. They could use a combination of words and graphics to convey their vision. We spent 15 minutes drawing ideas, and the room was silent almost the whole time. At one point, one student said, "I'm not sure..." and then trailed off. I responded by saying: "Try drawing what it would like if your problem didn't exist."

After 15 minutes we rotated seats. I asked the students to review the idea captured on the paper in front of them and then add to it. I said they could add clarifying questions about elements they were not sure if they understood, they could add ideas in the form or words and more drawings. The only thing they couldn't do was cross anything off the page. Once an idea was written or drawn, it was there to stay -- just like social media. The only thing I did allow students to cross out, was something they had written, there was not erasing other people's thoughts. And, we were all working in pen or marker so even cross outs left a trail. In this way, our pen and paper process emulated social media posting. We stayed at our new seats for several minutes to give each student ample time to reflect and contribute before rotating again.

With six students at a table, the mid-point of the exercise was after the third rotation. At this point we stopped to reflect on the process. I directed the students to talk about what they were doing and how that compared with their typical role or conduct in class. I asked them not to talk about the ideas on the paper, just to talk about what they were doing, how they felt or what they thought about the process. I was struck when my student who is most anxious about contributing to class discussions said that she had time to thoroughly consider her ideas and write them carefully so that they would make sense. She remarked that when she tries to talk in class she gets wrapped up in her thoughts and can't articulate her ideas clearly. But with this process she had a lot to say. How cool?! And a happy by-product that I didn't anticipate.

We continued rotating seats and adding ideas until everyone returned to their original spot. We ended class with students sharing with the group how their idea was evolving and collecting for themselves follow up questions they want to ask the group during the next class.

And the focus of the next class is: prototyping!

Once again, stay tuned for more about how my students are using design thinking to solve the problems of social media!

Link to Part Three!

VR Big Takeaway? Empathy!

When I think about Google, I tend to really be focusing on Google for Education. Last year I learned about a different team, Google’s Trust & Safety group. First, I was struck by the seriousness with which Google considers the online conduct and interaction of all of its users. Consider the comments section in a YouTube video, the Trust & Safety group works on policies and technical mechanisms for trying to maintain civil and constructive dialogue within that platform. They may not use the term digital citizenship to describe their focus, yet, in essence, that is their mission: supporting positive and productive digital interaction, globally. And I thought just trying to do it in my school was a daunting mission!

Last year, the Trust & Safety group brought their work to schools in the form of a virtual reality anti-cyberbullying curriculum. Partnering with the media production group, Harmony Labs, researcher Dr. Dorothy Espelage, and others, the team unpacked some important research:

Furthermore, they learned that more than half of bullying incidents stop when a peer intervenes which lead them to the curricular objective of empowering bystanders to intervene in bullying situations. And, they chose virtual reality as the means of delivering the program they developed because VR provides a private, immersive experience. Participants do not have to be concerned about how they are being perceived by their peers which results in sincere and thoughtful engagement in the content.

With that introduction to the program I jumped onboard with a class of ninth grade students. With a little advanced planning, implementation was easy! I do not have access to a class set of Daydream viewers and Pixel 2 devices so we substituted our Google cardboards and the students’ smartphones. I asked (and reminded) them to bring their own headphones so they each could listen to the videos without disturbing each other. The curriculum guide that Google provides is easy to follow with thorough teacher directions and talking points. I could easily modify it to meet the experience level of my students. Here is a quick schedule of what we did:

Day 1: I posted this Google Classroom announcement: For the next week you will need daily access to smartphone and headphones. Please let me know if you would like me to provide you a device. (For those students I had iPods in our library they could borrow). If you do not already have it, please install the YouTube app.

Day 2: I made this in class announcement and posted it as a Google Classroom reminder: please bring your phones and headphones to class tomorrow with the YouTube app already installed.

Day 3: The lessons began with a quick discussion of “what is virtual reality?” Then we followed the instructions in the curriculum guide for the first video lesson which included immersing in the 360° video experience. Students watched the 8 minute long video twice. The first time, the students watched on their own. The second time, I divided the class into three groups and assigned each group a character or group of characters on which to focus as they watched. Then we dove into a deeper conversation about the content.

Full disclosure: I was nervous. I was so concerned that this would just be one more forced conversation on a topic they didn’t want to discuss where a couple of students say what the teacher wants to hear just to get the lesson over with while the rest of the class stares into space and disengages entirely. Spoiler alert: the exact opposite is what happened, and I was amazed!

In small groups the students engaged with each other in a thoughtful discussion of what they had experienced, virtually. They discussed whether they thought the scenario was realistic, they considered the authenticity of the characters, they commented on identifying with certain characters based on their past experiences. When we reconvened as a whole class to talk some more they started to share experiences and talk to each other about how those real situations unfolded and what they could be doing about it. One student said, “It doesn’t end like that. We aren’t going to be friends in the end. We can’t be. When something like this happens, your friend group shifts. I want these programs to help us with that.” Lots of students added their agreement to that comment. Another student said, “Just like Kacie in the VR, sometimes you are bullied because of something you have done. And if I did what she did, and was bullied, I’m not going to tell an adult what I did so I’m not going to get help. I need someone else I can talk to for help.” Finally, another golden comment from a student: “I once did exactly what this told us to do: I told a safe adult and that person didn’t help me. So I’m not going to tell an adult again.”

Whoa. On the surface, this may sound like the experience missed the mark, but it didn’t at all. Look at all of the important information it exposed: Students want us to understand (empathize with) their experience so we can help them accurately. Students want and need peer support, so we need to train peers to help peers. And, students want us to be equipped to help them and many of us might need training to do that well.

Days 4 and 5: We continued with the two remaining VR experiences following the curriculum guide outline. Then I asked students to compare the VR lessons with other digital citizenship and bullying lessons they have experienced. They were in 100% agreement that this experience was different in a meaningful way. Here is how one student explained it: “We were there. I mean, you couldn’t avoid what was happening because we were in the scene. I had to admit what was happening was real.” When I pushed them to comment on why that mattered, another student said, “I felt bad about what was happening to someone so I wanted it to stop.” And that is the magic of this experience: it helps build empathy. VR is more than bells and whistles when it is used to quite literally help students walk in someone else’s shoes!

Days 6 and 7: I am fortunate to have a 360° camera so the final exercise for the students was to create their own VR video which we loaded to our library YouTube channel. Just as with the curricular videos, the student-created ones can be launched in the YouTube app and watched with a Google cardboard for an immersive experience. I gave students one day to examine how a 360° video is different from a traditional one and plan their script for a one minute video. The next day, five student groups each filmed their videos. This might be the fastest video project I have ever facilitated!

Day 8: We took out the cardboards, phones, and headphones one more time so they could watch each others videos and provide feedback. The students were able, in their own voices, to explore what cyberbullying looks and feels like in their own peer groups and begin the process of starting a conversation in our school.

Of course this curriculum is not a one-stop, surefire solution to a problem we all face in our schools and communities. It did start a conversation among my students that had more depth and buy-in than anything else I have experienced with students on this topic. And it all comes back to how the virtual reality helped them develop empathy.

To Story Is Human

Note: This post was generously cross-posted by EducateLLC.

I would like to tell you a story. It is about my son when he was in fourth grade.

By the time Zach reached fourth grade he said he hated school. This wasn’t entirely true. All evidence suggested he loved gym, recess, lunch in the cafeteria, and the bus ride to and from school. Unfortunately, by fourth grade he didn’t like reading or writing or much of the academic side of school. These likes and dislikes were well-known by his teacher by the point in the year that the first round of report cards were issued and it was time to launch the annual penny book project. For this project Zach had to find a one penny minted during each year of his life, he had to attach that penny to a piece of paper and on that paper write a story from that year of his life. Then, he was to assemble all the pages into his penny book. You might be able to imagine my parental response to learning about this project! How was I going to get him to do this?

Thankfully, Zach’s teacher was as interested in Zach’s happiness and success as I was. I presented her with an idea: Zach would create a different project, he would meet all of her curricular objectives, we would document all of his work so she could see that everything was authentically his, and he would submit it on time. She agreed.

So Zach set out to collect pennies. He reminisced with all of our photo albums to find the perfect story from each year of his life. He digitized on our printer/scanner all of the photos that were important to each story. He took a video camera and interviewed anyone he could find about their memories of those stories. Then, he collected all of his ideas into a storyboard which he used as a guide to create a digital movie of his life. He showed each penny, he narrated the stories in his voice, he chose the soundtrack, and made a final screen of rolling credits. I don’t think he was ever been so proud of any school project. This was in 2007.

When Zach brought his project CD and his box of pictures, pennies, and storyboards to school, the teacher played his video for the class. Then she called me to say she cried. “He had this in him all this time,” she said. His teacher asked if I would come to the school and show her how to make a movie like that. I politely declined, and suggested that Zach would be happy to show her anytime!

Telling our stories is so important. It is a very human thing to do. Cave drawings are the stories of our very early ancestors. The printing press enabled the widespread distribution of stories. Some cultures have traditions of oral telling of stories passed through generations. The scientific development of photography in the mid-1800s with the daguerreotype resulted in widespread making of tin types so people could leave them as calling cards when they visited one another’s homes. Business cards, school pictures, home movies. The list goes on of all the myriad ways we make ourselves known and build connections with other people, document our existence, tell our story. Technology may change, but our need to know and understand one another, build common ground, and work out differences is eternal. And we do that through our stories.

Social media platforms know how much this matters to us. They enable us to combine our pictures and words into the stories of our important moments. We and our students have been using social media to tell our stories ever since we subscribed to those platforms. The actual story format started in 2013 with SnapChat stories and other services have followed suit including Instagram in 2016 and Facebook in 2017. Those aren’t the only ways we tell stories; Skype has highlights and YouTube allows us to create reels.

When it comes to engaging our students in sharing their stories, the possible formats are endless! Within the Google Apps realm students can write and illustrate interactive stories in Slides, Docs, Sites, Draw, Maps or Tour Creator. They can record themselves and publish to YouTube where channels and playlists host videos students make and others they curate.

Beyond gSuite, students can tell video stories in Flipgrid, they can annotate visual stories in ThingLink, and they can publish ongoing stories as podcasts. And when we consider the possibilities for synchronous and asynchronous interaction, students can share stories in Twitter chats, in private Facebook groups, and in Google+ communities. Building an audience for their stories by publishing them not only validates the importance of their experiences, it fosters interaction with new people which expands their horizons and their learning community and allows for authentic, embedded lessons in discourse and digital interactions.

Solving the Problems of Social Media, Part 1

This week we began a new unit in the Digital Literacy class that I am teaching; I called the unit, "Social: the new media". I curated a playlist of videos on YouTube for creating flipped lessons and giving students opportunities to explore sub-topics of interest to them. I consulted the lessons and ideas published by the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), Google's Applied Digital Skills, and the Sift from the News Literacy Project. Clearly I had lots of stuff I could ask the students to do, but I was owning it and that didn't feel right.

So I put everything to the side, cleared off my desk, and got blank paper and some sharpies. I started to think about problems with social media. Not because I want to make a case for my students that social media is rotting their brains and they need to do something healthier with their time. Frankly, that would be quite hypocritical of me! Instead, we are setting out to solve the problems. To the right is my lesson plan for the first two days.

Here is how it worked in practice.

First, I covered tables with paper, piled a bunch of sharpies and markers in the middle, and let each student claim a spot as s/he arrived. In the center of each table I had written this:

The lesson on the first day unfolded in four phases.

Phase 1: Defining

Round 1: write your definition of social media on the table where you are sitting.

Round 2: rotate clockwise, read what you find, and add to or amend it. Do not cross out or cover anything you find.

Phase 2: Pros

Round 3: rotate again, read what you find, make a list of the "pros" of social media. What are the benefits?

Round 4a: rotate, and, once again, read what you find and add to the list without covering or removing anything you find already there.

Phase 3: Cons

Round 4b: now start a list of "cons" when you think about social media. What are the drawbacks or detriments?

Round 5: rotate one last time, and now you are back where you started. Read what you find. Add anything you want. And then, circle the pro that matters most to you and the con that most bothers you.

Before moving to the next phase we discussed the process we had just used and how it mimics social media posting and commenting. We considered why I asked them to only respond to previous comments and be sure to not write over or cross any out. We also talked about how or whether they filtered what they wrote because it was on the table where I could see it and it felt "permanent" doing it with Sharpies. A little nod to digital citizenship.

Phase 4: How Might We

Round 6: Write your "how might we" question. How might we preserve (your pro) while fixing (your con)?

Here is what a table looked like at the end of the lesson:

And here are some of their How Might We questions:

• HMW preserve a way to connect and share ideas while fixing a false sense of success?
• HMW preserve the connection between others while fixing the distribution of hate?
• HMW preserve the freedom of being able to share what we want and being able to connect with others while fixing the consumption of time it takes?
• HMW preserve social media's ability to connect us with varied communities while fixing the way it encourages dangerous comparisons?
• HMW preserve connecting with friends while fixing the spreading of hate and false information?

Day 2 was all about growing empathy with social media users other than ourselves. The students started this process by thinking about someone they know who has experienced the social media problem they are addressing. They listed all they know about that person: what they do, what they say about themselves and about social media, etc. Then, they wrote three open-ended questions they could ask that person to learn more about that person's experiences with social media. And then they conducted interviews. Some students called people on the phone and discussed their topic that way while taking notes on what their subject said. Others went to other parts of the school to find people. Others sent emails.

At the end of the class, they all came back to our classroom to review their interview notes. They highlighted anything that their subject(s) said that was interesting, enlightening or new information that they didn't already know about the person.

Later this week, they will refine their HMW questions to more accurately reflect the needs of the people they interviewed and we will begin the ideation process. Stay tuned to learn about the brainstorming techniques we use and the ideas that the students will begin to prototype.

Remember all of the resources that I collected in preparation for teaching this unit? They now will become relevant as the students begin to research possible solutions to the problem they are tackling and they will have a vested interest in reading, watching, and unpacking the resources I curated for them. This learning process, over which the students have agency, is much more meaningful and empowering than any teacher-directed instruction I could have created. I can't wait to see what they create!

Here is Part 2: Ideation

When we talking about embedding something into existing curricula what do we mean?

When I describe something as embedded I mean that the content instruction or skill practice does not require a break from our regularly scheduled programming

What sometimes happens instead is that add-on lessons are developed by one team and handed to classroom teachers to deliver. The classroom teachers interrupt their planned unit to deliver a stand-alone lesson and then resume regular programming. Or, a member of the outside team -- perhaps a library media specialist or a tech integrator -- visits the class and interrupts the ongoing instruction and experience to insert the stand-alone lesson and then leaves.

This is not embedded instruction.

For the additional content to be embedded certain things have to happen first. Either the outside team has to understand the classroom curricula, content and standards (as well as their own) in order to enhance the learning experience with their own content and skills. Or, and better yet, the outside team (let's say a library media specialist) and the content team can co-plan the embedded experience. And, in a real ideal scenario, they also co-facilitate it.

I recently had the opportunity to collaborate with a new member of my PLN, Lauren Jones (@mrsjonesfhs), who is a high school English teacher on the west coast of the U.S. I am a library media specialist on the U.S. east coast. We are members of the same cohort in an EdTechTeam teacher leader course. We collaborated through a Google Hangout and Google Docs to create a lesson as part of her unit on satire in which students would also be examining and practicing good habits of online conduct. Notice that nowhere in the lesson materials do we use the phrase "digital citizenship" yet throughout the satire lesson students are reflecting on different people's online conduct and practicing digital interaction with their classmates.

This series of slides outlines the lesson step-by-step:




And here is a Google Form with questions to gather insight into the students' thinking and learning;

Lauren is excited to use this lesson with her students and has shared it with her colleagues. They may implement this lesson on their own or in collaboration with their school's library media and tech integration faculty. What is exciting to me is how authentic the students' digital citizenship experience will be!

Five lessons for teachers from a field hockey team

As you may know from a previous post, my daughter has begun her first year in college. She is a member of her university's field hockey team and this post is all about a recent team event and all the lessons I am deriving from her experience for my teaching.

Last Thursday was "team date night." Unlike team bonding events which include the whole team and are usually on campus, date night is for small groups of a few team members to head off campus together. Here is how date night unfolded:

My daughter and two of her teammates (one a sophomore and the other a junior) were assigned to go on their date. They were paired because they all play mid-field.

Lesson 1: When I, as the teacher, form groups, I should let the students know why I put them together. What is the value of their combined efforts to the anticipated product or collaboration goal? What strength or vision do I see in them, combined?

The first stop on their date was at the Dollar Tree to stock up on supplies for the tradition of decorating in the locker room. Then they went to a gourmet frozen yogurt shop to hangout, bond, and do their homework. That's right. The captains assigned homework.

Lesson 2: Admittedly, I struggle with this one since I don't believe in homework (which is another post entirely). So here are a couple of questions: was it really homework? Am I calling it homework because they had to do it without adult or leader supervision? It may be more like classwork in that it was assigned to be accomplished at a specific time as established by the team. That they were doing it together means it wasn't an isolated and isolating task; and I think it is important to understand the nature of the assignment, too. It wasn't unsupported repetition of a skill or something they were supposed to learn during organized practices.

Their task, while out on their date, was to come up with three ways the team could improve their pregame, locker room experience. Friday (the next day) the team had a pre-practice meeting scheduled during which each "date team" was to present their ideas to the whole team.

Lesson 3: Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose (have they been reading Dan Pink?!) They were being asked to contribute to a goal that mattered to all them, both individually and collectively. Everyone had a reason to be invested and feel a measure of safety when brainstorming ideas. Each "date team" had complete autonomy in how and where to accomplish the task. They had complete license to be creative in their own ways. They were aware of the unique perspective they could bring to their ideation process because they knew why they had been paired with each other.

While they were eating yogurt and brainstorming their ideas, they received a Snapchat message from the captains. "Please send pictures of where you are and what you are doing."

Lesson 4: Accountability and celebration. I was so interested in this and pressed my daughter for more information. "It wasn't that they didn't trust us," she said. "When we checked in, they sent us back a 'good job!' message." The captains let the team members know they were interested in how they were doing -- not just what they were doing. And the dates were excited to share their process and progress. It was a celebration. And the documenting of it allowed for fun reporting back at the team meeting on Friday.

While on their dates, they also received a message instructing them to watch their step when they returned to their dorm rooms. Here is why: the captains were part of the fun, too! Outside of each players room was a muffin tin liner with an egg cracked in it. Next to the egg cup was a note that said: "Let's Yolk Mt. Holyoke" (their opponent in that weekend's game). Sending the team off campus meant they could distribute their items without being caught. I asked my daughter what everyone did with the eggs, and she said, "I don't know about everyone, but one of my friends walked right to the dorm kitchen, scrambled it, and ate it!"

Lesson 5: Be an active participant! Anything I ask my students to do, I should be doing myself.

My daughter has joined a wonderful community: one that is challenging, accepting, supportive, and creative. They focus on the individual, the collective and the relationships that bind and bond them. I want my students' families to know that same is true about their children in my class!

Empowered by design thinking

As the new school year begins, I have a concern. I am not concerned about the new course I am teaching or the new students I will soon meet. I am not concerned about inclement weather and the forecast for a snowy winter interfering with our learning mojo.

I’m concerned about buzzwords.

More specifically, I am concerned that a tenet of learning, a foundational principle for how I understand my role as an educator, will be reduced to a buzzword. What is that word?

Design Thinking.

OK, that is two words. And those two words represent the mindset from which I approach planning, collaborating, teaching, relationship-building, and my ongoing learning. Being an educator with this mindset helps me embrace and empower what I value most in my colleagues, students, and myself: creative possibilities.

When I was a social studies teacher working with students in an American Government course we would discuss what makes us human. As we set about to examine how and why the founding generation established our systems of government, we wondered: what sets us apart from the kingdom of animals co-existing in prides, packs, gaggles, herds or any other animal collective? Students had all sorts of thoughts about what makes us human, what defines our humanity. Some of those ideas were dark, like cruelty. But most were breathtakingly optimistic.

To be human, they decided, was to be curious. Not the kind of curiosity that killed the cat. Instead, unbridled wonderment. To be human is to have an imaginative capacity that inspires others to join together in pursuit of ambitious quests, to persevere against odds and obstacles, to new frontiers of exploration, discovery, and action. Why do humans do this? Because as we benefit from the very nature of those who preceded us, we are bound to serve a greater good, to meet challenges with solutions, to make a bright future for those who come next.

And that, in a nutshell, is design thinking. Design thinkers see problems as opportunities. Constraints only fuel more unusual and untried solutions. Design thinkers have empathy for the many different points of view surrounding the problem they are trying to solve. They design, prototype, and redesign to create a more perfect solution, to improve the lives of people in their schools and communities small and large.

The best part of design thinking is that anyone can do it. Anyone.

Building this capacity in ourselves, in our colleagues, and in our students is an essential component of future-ready skill development. When Google plans for the evolution of its products and the development of new ones, they think about and empathize with what they call “the next billion users”. They aren’t planning for now, they are planning for a future they can only imagine. Consider, for a moment, who those next billion users are and what their experiences have been. Think, for example, about vocabulary we use for which they have no context, words that are meaningless to them. Words like: clockwise, desktop computer, MP3 player, pay phone, gasoline-powered engine, and more. How is their navigation of the world via a handheld device that gives them access to all the world’s information, organized and made useful, an essential component to how they will learn, communicate, and contribute?

Now consider the issues and challenges that face the next billion users’ local and global communities. As their educators, we have accepted the challenge of equipping them with the skills and habits of mind they will need to jump into the void and tackle those challenges. They will suffer defeat. Some of their setbacks will be heartbreaking. And they will be resilient. They will persevere in tearing down obstacles. They will push limits and defy odds. They have no choice. The world needs them.

Remember the best part of design thinking? Anyone can do it. I was so fortunate to take a deep dive into the processes of discovery, interpretation, ideation, experimentation, and evolution that underpin the design thinking process when I worked with and learned from the Future Design School at the Google Innovator Academy. Learning to think this way, to fall in love with problems and see every challenge as an opportunity, and then to apply my energy to the steps inherent in designing solutions has transformed how I work with students and my colleagues from how I plan lessons to how I facilitate meetings and write curriculum.

In fact, one of the latest resources created by the Future Design School is a curriculum series for elementary, middle, and upper grades. The grade specific, modular programs are mapped to relevant standards and can be implemented across disciplines; the carefully crafted curricula keep student interests at the forefront. Each course contains: videos, assessment, slide decks, a robust, teacher's guide, handouts to deliver exceptional learning experiences for all students. They are a tremendously supportive resource for educators experienced in design thinking and those just getting started with this approach. Create a classroom culture that empowers students to solve-real world problems!

What will you empower your students to do?

Playing the Long Game

This year I am playing a long game when it comes to building partnerships with my colleagues and expanding design thinking pedagogy. I had an opportunity to offer a PD spark to the faculty at my school and chose to focus on the question of how might we shift how we think about what we do so that we are teaching the students in the room, so that we are acutely in tune with who they are?

We began with a brainstorm in AnswerGarden of the best possible outcomes of "group work". Here is the word cloud they created:

Next I asked my colleagues to turn and talk about the obstacles that interfere with students achieving those outcomes. When I asked them to share with the whole group, here is what they said:

• "they don't get along"
• "indifference"
• "they change topics rather than staying on one topic and delving into that"
• "they socialize"

At this point I invited my colleagues to go on a journey with a group of students. We watched a video of students engaged in group work. While watching, I asked my colleagues to look for instances of the positive outcomes being achieved, interference by any of the obstacles, and any unanticipated outcomes or occurrences. I explained that as the students in the video were working, things get a little heated. I promised to do my best to hit pause before the expletives started flying.

Thanks to Micah Shippee there is a clean version of this video with subtitles, so if you choose to use this with students you don't have to worry about the language.

Embedded here is the video version that I showed by colleagues. I stopped it at 1:38.

Now, full disclosure: I would have avoided all profanity if I had stopped at 1:37. I purposely used the explicit version and let it play until the first bleepable word before hitting pause. I did that for two reasons:

1. the dropping of the f-bomb is an indication of a change in tactic
2. it got a laugh from a room full of teachers who had just sat through an hour of blood-borne pathogens and other required training

After the video I asked if they agreed it was group work. They did. And we talked about all of the successful elements ( with evidence drawn from what they could see and hear) and how the obstacles emerged and, in some cases, were overcome. And then we wondered together about how to make our classrooms the kind of environments that promote that kind of collaboration. What we discussed is summarized in this slide:

The next day I surreptitiously delivered a small maker kit to each department's work room. Each kit had the same craft materials and one piece of a little bit. They looked like this:

 Each kit was accompanied by this note: 

 The Science department has already submitted their animal! When all submissions have been received, I will display them in Library with a sheet of paper listing the directions for the project, anyone passing through the library will be invited to post stickers on the sheet corresponding to their favorite animal or the one they think best represents the department that created it. They will be invited to write feedback on a post-it and leave it with the animal. Based on those votes, I will announce "the winner". That department will receive the "Leeroy Jenkins Collaboration Award" -- a costume warrior helmet.

They will be able to proudly display the helmet in their workroom for the rest of the month. While in possession of the helmet, they can decorate, adorn or build it out in anyway they see fit. At the start of next month, I will announce a new challenge. The winner of that challenge will be the new keeper of the helmet, and so on. My goal: together we learn to make, we have fun, we practice pedagogy, we take safe risks, we celebrate each other's creativity, and we build a culture of innovation. It is only Day 2 of this long game. Stay tuned for updates!

Off-to-college packing list

In the spirit of the content of this post, I am attempting to author it entirely from my pixel 2 phone! And because I struggle to type on a phone, I'm using voice tools.

My daughter will be leaving for her freshman year in college in about 10 days. Needless to say, we have been busy preparing everything she might need to bring with her. As we have been perusing the back-to-school shelves in various stores, something dawned on me. Most of what I packed to take with me to my freshman year in college back in 1986, has been replaced for my daughter, in 2018, by her smartphone.

Some of these things that she does not need to pack are obvious. She doesn't need a touch-tone landline. Nor does she need a flashlight, or an address book, or envelopes and stamps. Some of the things she doesn't need are a bit nostalgic. For instance, she doesn't need a push pin cork board or a white board to hang on her dorm door. Who will stop by to write a message on her door when they can just send her a Snapchat?

The more I thought about what she didn't need, the list became more and more interesting. Is there really any use any longer in your dorm room for a television or a calculator? She has never owned a stereo so she won't bring that. And her headphones no longer keep her tethered to her music source. She doesn't need a checkbook or even a physical credit card or debit card. Ostensibly, she could Google pay or Apple pay her way through any necessary transactions. She certainly doesn't need a printer. Go paperless. And, I can imagine the day when she wouldn't even need a laptop.

Now the question arises, what does she need that I would never have thought of bringing with me because, in all likelihood, it didn't even exist? Likely, a bunch of portable chargers. And a complement of cords and different adapters to be sure that all of her devices can charge on the fly. It is on those devices that she will access the services to which the she subscribes and the databases her university provides, because she won't have magazines delivered to her mailbox and will have less need (any need?) for textbooks. Do college students even have mailboxes anymore?

So the question that I am now asking not just as a parent but as an educator is this: how are her professors and her university prepared to engage with her in this learning journey because she is not, and really never has, lived in an analog world? And when we engage with our K-12 students, how are we preparing them for their unknown future? How will we nurture the habits of mind of innovation, problem solving, entrepreneurship? How will we contribute to the development of empathetic, global citizens? How will we encourage and cultivate the flexible thinking necessary to adapt to and thrive in this rapidly changing world? (Please share your thoughts in response to these questions in the comments!)