The Social Media Infused Classroom: Mediated Messages 2.0

I have written a few times about my experiences as a member of the Certified Google Innovator #SWE17 cohort and the ongoing learning as part of #GoogleEI . The focus of my application to the Innovator Academy (and the ongoing thread of my work with students and my colleagues) is the development of media literacy. The importance of media literacy can not be understated. Nor can the value of social media as a teaching, learning, and publishing tool.

In the latest iteration of my Innovator project, Mediated Messages, I have added a section on lesson ideas and launched a Facebook group for building a collaborative community dedicated to expanding our capacities for media literacy instruction. Social media is a multi-faceted education tool; it can be used for personalizing instruction, as a research resource, to foster global engagement, and to provide authentic digital citizenship practice. Here are examples of it being used or practiced in each of these contexts.

For Personalizing
In this previous blog post I wrote about my collaboration with an English teacher creating The Selfie Project. Ultimately, as a corollary to their study of Transcendentalism, the students used the makerspace to create 3D representations of self (we called it, "Yourself, in tangible relief"). The project started with an examination of all of the ways a student's identity can be explored, including through playlists, social media, school pictures, the contents of their bedrooms, and their school data. The lesson steps are here and this is a gallery of pictures of the students and their work

For Research
Understanding "Journalistic Truth" and the impact of digital media on our sources of information is essential to student development of savvy research skills. The journalistic truth slides outline a two-period lesson I co-delivered with an English teacher to the students in the non-fiction writing class.

Finding experts and research or non-profit foundations on social media is another excellent way for students to collect valuable insight and potential interview subjects to inform their inquiry.

For Global Engagement
An educator with a global PLN has the resources to connect students with adults and other students around the world for a sharing of culture and point-of-view. Exposure and interaction builds empathy and collaboration. My favorite experience using social media as a teaching tool happened when I was a social studies teacher working with a group of American Studies students. We were studying the cold war and I happened to have a Tweep who is an educator living in eastern Germany. She joined my class for a twitter chat about life in eastern Germany behind the wall and after the wall came down. We were scheduled to chat for 30 minutes and ended up chatting for the entirety of a 70 minute block period. During that time a few of her teacher colleagues joined the conversation as did her daughter who was a student at university. Now my students had both adults and a peer with whom to share perspectives. Several of my students and Ines' daughter began following each other on Instagram, too. The conversation began as a discussion of cold war life and evolved into a discussion of how do we each learn about the other. It was a rich exchange that far exceeded my expectations when Ines and I were planning it!

Teachers at my school haven't yet warmed to Twitter but they are enjoying Flipgrid in closed, classroom-based exercises. Expanding their grids to include participation outside of our school will be a first step building PLNs.

As anyone in the Google Innovator program knows, my cohort, my coach, and my mentor are unparalleled in their support of my work and the counsel they provide. And it's all happening via social media and Google Hangouts.

For Digital Citizenship Practice
I have an on-going collaboration with the teacher of our school's Digital Literacy course. Together we have launched a class Twitter account that the students use to post reflections on lessons and units and provide insights and guidance about good habits of online conduct. To launch this account we had students use Canva to design channel art. We loaded each of their submissions into a Google Form which we pushed to them in Classroom. Students then voted for their favorite design and that was uploaded to Twitter. Then I taught a brief lesson on Hashtags & the Anatomy of a Tweet. The conclusion of the lesson was each student drafting what the first class tweet should be. Again, we shared the submissions with the class and they chose which would be used as our introduction to the Twitterverse.

A Social Media Think Tank for your students is another way to engage them with social media in the context of your course material; here is an elevator pitch you can use with your students.

And that's not all!

My interest in educational use of social media preceded my acceptance into the Innovator Program and new opportunities to continue my learning in this realm have emerged because of the connections I made there. Here are some of the other irons I have in the fire at the moment:

At ISTE18 I will be co-presenting on using social media in the college search and application processes. From building a brand to researching schools to writing the college essay, there are so many ways students can powerfully use social media.

Public libraries in my area are interested in hosting seminars about media savvy and I have a couple happening this month.

My book is about to be released! I co-authored News Literacy: the keys to combating fake news with my friend and fellow librarian, Michelle Luhtala. It will hit the stands in May 2018! I am very excited about the companion video workshops that are being released in conjunction with the book. Those lessons include outreach into social media communities so that the learning is ongoing.

If it isn't personalized, can it really be inquiry?

When given the opportunity to write a research paper about any topic that interests them, many students become overwhelmed by the task of deciding what to research. Many librarians recommendation is to survey topic collections in the databases and pick something interesting. I say this because a member of our state's librarian listserv asked for suggestions about getting started with topic selection and I was the only participant who didn't recommend the databases. Maybe this is because I am new to librarianship. But I just don't start there. Ever.

When out to dinner with a group of people from librarian world while attending the AASL conference back in November, an interesting question arose that none of us could answer. Several people grabbed their phones to start searching for the information and I offhandedly commented that I was fairly certain none of them were searching their databases. And they weren't.

Databases are fabulous resources. Access to them is not universal or forever. And, until a student knows how to manipulate a search, databases are horribly impersonal and sterile. Students should learn how useful databases are and how to use them well, but unless they are a future librarian, starting there is a big turnoff. If we want students to enthusiastically -- or at least willingly -- engage in the hard work that is research then we need to meet them where they are, embrace it, and use it to hook them. This isn't pandering; it's personalizing.

Start with their playlists, their favorite books, their video streams, their social media feeds. Look for the threads that show possible lines of inquiry. Whom do they follow who isn't an actual acquaintance? Why do they follow? What about that person, group, or organization intrigues them? Choose a topic or idea. It will be broad. Too big for a typical research project, and now we start to narrow it.


To give them practice I choose a current event with long roots for them to work as a class to narrow. Recently, I used "protest movements" and I explain how recent protests have captured my attention and in some I have been a participant so I am using my experiences as an opportunity to select a topic. The class divides into four groups. I then do a Google image search for protest movements and ask them to just look at the images and, by themselves, consider what looks familiar and what is new. While they are looking and thinking, I give each group a large piece of chart paper or a white board. Across the top I have written one of these categories: events and issues, time periods and dates, people and organizations, places and landmarks. I give them 90 seconds to work as a group and list as much as they can about protest movements that fits the category they have been assigned. At the end of 90 minutes, they put their markers down and rotate. Same group, new topic, 90 seconds on the clock, GO! We do this until each group works on brainstorming for each category.

When they finish -- which means they return to their original table -- they compile all of the ideas on the chart paper into a Google Doc that looks like this:

Then I highlight looking for threads. In this example the thread I was using was "students" and this large topic allows for many different threads. In fact, in one class they realized that even if every student in the class started with protest movements as their original topic, once they narrowed their focus, they would still be researching 25 discrete topics. I wouldn't suggest dictating to a class that they all research about protest movements because it removes student agency from the process and therefore undermines personalization. That being said, I do work with teachers who do assign the umbrella topic.

The thread provides the first narrowing of the topic. From "protest movements" we derived a more focused topic: How schools and colleges responded to student activism in the 1960s. Then we examined that topic for points that were still general and the students were able to ask questions such as: Activism about what? And, which schools? So our final topic became:

This exercise was just the model. We completed the exercise as a class in about 25 minutes. That meant they had another 25 minutes to try this protocol with their proposed topics so I provided them an organizer in a Google Doc pushed to them through Classroom.

As they worked, the classroom teacher and I circulated helping them expand their thinking and answering questions about the images that emerged from their Google search. Ten minutes into working, I stopped the class to share my observations. I told them that I noticed some students were plowing through lists and generating lots of ideas to consider. Other students were stuck, their organizers mostly blank. I hypothesized for them that the reason some were blank was because they weren't really interested in the topic, and that if that was the case, this research paper was going to be a painful experience. Some of them snickered and nodded in ascent. I told them now was the time to choose something that really mattered and that if they really didn't have any ideas they should take out their phones, get on Instagram, and raise their hand so one of us could chat with them. And they got back to work.

By the end of class, each student had chosen a topic -- each student had agency over that topic and how it was focused. Real inquiry can now happen because they will be exploring something that matters to them, not something a teacher told them matters. This week, among other things, we will work on generating a research question, another element of personalizing the research process, so that each student is seeking the insight s/he craves about his/her unique topic. They do this by listing everything they think they know about their topic and then turn each of those statements into a question. For example:

What I already think I know:	Phrased as a question:
Upheaval on college campuses during Vietnam War	How did universities respond to student activism? Do universities tolerate student activism? Did students organize across universities? Did employers hold students’ activism against them?

It is key that they be coached to ask authentic questions, not questions that lead to a predetermined answer. In other words, stay open to ideas and avoid seeking bias confirmation. As they turn what they think they know into questions, they begin to realize two things: 1) they may not be sure about everything they think (or not know as much as they think they do), and 2) some of their questions will be easily answered (closed) and others are open to interpretation (open). They can then group closed questions with the open questions they help to answer. They are starting to organize their thinking and plot a line of inquiry. Of course they will revise and update this plan as they go, but with a starting point and a plan they can be more purposeful in their searching.

Finally, we get to the databases! We will also learn how to search Google like a database by using advanced search and how to search social media for field experts.

Thanks for reading. If you have other strategies and tips for personalizing inquiry I would love to hear them!

Big Takeaways from #AASL17

I have returned from three days communing with my library peeps and tweeps at the AASL conference in Phoenix carrying a (way too pricey) book of the new AASL standards, a little schwag, some signed picture books, a couple of Google docs of notes, lots of links to presentations, and a timeline of tweets highlighting the sessions I attended.

On Saturday I had an opportunity for a lengthy conversation with my friend and colleague Michelle Luhtala about news literacy. If you are an attendee of Michelle's edWeb webinars then you know this is an important topic to us both that we frequently discuss on and off the air! This private conversation was a warm-up to our presentation, delivered along with our other friends and colleagues Joyce Valenza and Shannon Miller, about helping students develop the research skills that are critical in the digital information age. You can access our slides and join our padlet community to continue the conversation and research curation around this topic.

We arrived in Phoenix on Thursday with a presentation outline ready to be delivered on Saturday. In the interim, we spent some intense time both in and out of conference sessions examining the newly released and much anticipated standards. This release necessitated a revisiting of our presentation which we were pleased to discover aligned with the shared foundations. Given our focus on research, we emphasized "Inquiry" and "Curate," and, as happens with most standards, found that the others (Include, Collaborate, Explore and Engage) were infused throughout our conversation because of the natural interweaving through the domains (Think, Create, Share, Grow). I took this coincidence as validation of both the development of solid inquiry models in our respective districts and thoughtfully developed standards that reflect the needs of learners and educators striving to be critical thinkers in the digital information age.

The Inquiry Model that informs my instruction has five phases. Each phase is a step in the process from topic selection to final product, and each step is infused with opportunities for students to collaborate and reflect.

Step 1: Wonder - Topic Identification & Question Formulation

What do I...

• wonder about? (curiosity)
• wish I could change? (problem solve)
• wish I understood better? (critical thinking)

How can I...

• generate possible questions?
• provide innovative solutions to authentic problems?
• pose a clear, well-developed research question?

Question Generation Protocols

• Question Stems
• Question Formulation Technique (QFT) - good visuals for Q-Focus from Retronaut
• Solving a public problem (Social Studies C3)
• Asking Questions and Defining Problems (NGSS)

Collaboration

• Have I solicited feedback from other people about the scope of my questions?
• Have I discussed or brainstormed about my topic or the problem I am trying to solve with other people studying a similar or related topic?

Reflection and Metacognition

• Regarding Time Management
• Have I planned backwards from the due date to give myself progress check points along the way?
• How do I schedule my homework?
• How can I fit regular work sessions into my plan?
• Would work days in class be helpful to me or are they not productive time?
• How can I capitalize on meeting, conferencing, and collaboration in order to get the input or inspiration that will help me?

Step 2: Curate: Locate All Relevant Media

Where will I:

• gather background information and begin my investigation?
• locate information from multiple and differentiated quality sources?

How can I:

• “tweak” my search terms as needed?
• find a range of sources in various types of media to be sure I am including a wide range of perspectives?

Finding What You Need

Accumulate Good Search Terms

• Start with Wikipedia
• Imagine your dream source: what words would be in it?
• Already found a good source? What new keywords does it contain for you?
• What are synonyms for the keywords you already have?

School and Local Resources

• Destiny
• Our Databases
• ResearchITCT
• Interlibrary Loan
• Wilton Library Association

Make Google Do Your Heavy Lifting

• Site searching
• Search by Filetype
• Go back in time
• Use Advanced search for truncation, wildcard, and Boolean operators
• Google Scholar
• Google Books

Extending Your Search

• Move past reference sources into scholarly and primary using Advanced search functions
• Mine the citations from a good source you have already found
• Search by author; who is an authority on your subject? Who is the author of good sources you have already consulted?
• Stop searching… can you interview an expert?
• HASHTAGS! What advocacy organizations, interest groups, think tanks or other agencies address your topic? What hashtags are associated with the topic? Start trolling social media!

Collaboration

• If I am trying to solve a problem through my research, have I identified and interviewed stakeholders who represent a range of perspectives on or experiences with the problem I am addressing?
• Have I asked someone to challenge my conclusions and help me expose how my own biases might interfere with my research?

Reflection and Metacognition

• About Reading & Note Making Strategies:
• How is the content reading going?
• Have I learned anything (content or process) from my secondary source reading and primary document examinations?
• How have my presuppositions been challenged?
• Am I allowing my preconceptions to be challenged?
• Are my views changing?
• When I read HOW did I read?
• Do I print out the documents or read them on line?
• What did I do to prepare to read them? how did I know what to look for or focus on?
• If I printed them out, did I have paper to make notes one while and after I read?
• If I read them on line, did I copy them into a file where I could annotate such as Google Docs?
• If I highlight is it just to keep my eyes focused on the page? How do I know what to highlight?
• What do I write down? what questions do I ask? what do I write about when I finish reading?
• If the document is long, do I read it in sections? What do I do at the end of each section?

Step 3: Explore the Information Superhighway: Evaluating Sources

How can I:

• assess the authority, accuracy, relevance and purpose of my sources?
• organize my notes and know that my consideration of perspectives is thorough?
• include multiple and informed perspectives?

The Information Superhighway

• School Library Journal: A News Literacy Toolkit for a “Post-truth” World
• NPR: Fake or Real?  How to Self-check the News and Get the Facts
• EasyBib’s Web evaluation tool
• CRAAP Test
• ESCAPE from Newseum

Thinking Like a Fact-Checker

• First Draft News
• Snopes
• TruthOrFiction
• Urban Legends (About.com)
• Hoax-Slayer
• 7 vital browser plugins for news-gathering and verification

Reverse Image Searching

• 13 online tools that help to verify the authenticity of a photo (StopFake.org)
• How to verify images like a pro with Google Earth (First Draft News)
• Breaking News Consumer's Handbook (WNYC)
• Educator’s Guide: Types of Online Fakes (Verification Handbook)

Citing Your Sources

• Noodletools
• OWL Purdue

Collaboration

• What changes have I made in response to feedback from other people? How did I undertake those changes? How did they improve my work?
• Is there any perspective I have yet to consult? Who can help me access this point-of-view?

Reflection Questions about Critical Thinking:

• What are the major content/critical thinking/writing issues that I have been confronted with in this project?
• How well do I understand the content/substance of what I have been thinking about for this project?
• What is my plan or strategy to address issues I am encountering with this project? Is this plan similar to the plans I have used in the past? How, and why, did I know these steps would work? Is my plan working?
• What do I think my main goals should be as a thinker given what you have experienced so far in this class? Why are these my goals?
• What is my criteria for quality work? What areas of the rubrics are still unclear to me? How am I attempting to reach clarity about these areas?
• What was the most important thing I have learned about yourself as a thinker so far?

Step 4: Create an Argument: Applying Learning

How can I:

• select and effectively use tools to organize myself?
• synthesize what I have learned from my research?
• create an arguable thesis?

Tools & Techniques:

For Your Thesis:

• Thesis Generator: Ashford University
• Thesis creator
• Thesis builder

For Citations, Note Organizing and Outlining:

• Noodletools

For Outlining, Webbing & Other Planning Strategies:

• Storyboarding
• Storybird
• Adobe Spark
• Google Draw
• Canva
• Sketchnoting
• Mind-mapping
• Mindomo

Collaboration:

• From whom did I solicit feedback on my thesis and/or my outline? Why?
• What feedback did I incorporate? How did it improve my plan?

Reflection:

• How might my opinions have had an impact on whether or not I stayed open to conflicting information?
• How did I check myself to be sure I held my bias loosely?

Step 5: Communicate, Share & Grow

When deciding how to share what I have learned, how will I consider my:

• audience?
• message?
• purpose?

And create a product that meets all of these needs?

How can I take informed action?

Things to Consider:

• Whom am I trying to reach (who is my audience)?
• How do those people most frequently access information? Why?
• What is the best media for conveying my evidence and conclusions? Consider:
• Do I need photographs or other artist renderings?
• Do I need data visualization?
• Are voices, music, or other auditory files important to understanding my message?
• Is there a need for video footage?
• How much text do I have? Does it require hyperlinks or interactivity?
• How will my product reach my audience?
• Will it live on a website?
• Post to a video sharing forum like YouTube?
• Be delivered via email?
• Exist in printed form?
• Be performed or delivered to a live audience?
• Something else?
• How will the talents of my team combine to create a successful product or presentation?

 Frankly, as much as the announcement of the new AASL standards validated and encouraged this research process as a model for working with high school students, the keynote address by Google Education Evangelist from Hell's Kitchen, Jamie Casap, inspired the bulk of my tweets as well as the metacognitive food for thought that nourished me through lots of sessions and late nights in Phoenix.

I work with high school students so I don't think I have ever asked a student what s/he wants to be when s/he grows up. But, I have certainly asked, "what will you do after graduation?" or "what do you want to study?" Still, Jamie's question: "what problem do you want to solve?" not only by-passes the issue that we have no idea what jobs will even be possible for our students when they "grow up;" it also infuses students with empathy and agency. I know if there are two qualities I hope my teenagers have or develop it is empathy and agency!

And so, I return to our inquiry model and ask: at every stage, are students developing empathy and agency? Will they graduate from four years working with these protocols prepared to engage with other people's point of views, able to gather (with fidelity) the insight and opinions of stakeholders, and apply themselves to solving the problems in their communities in the interest of improving the educational, socioeconomic, political or environmental  conditions of their day?

As long as I can keep answering yes to those questions, then I know I am on the right path.

Big Takeaways on Personalizing Instruction through Use of Technology

As the year comes to an end, I am reflecting on how I worked to personalize instruction through the use of

Photo taken while visiting colleges
with my daughter

technology as an instructional tool.

Technology for Demonstration of Mastery:

In working with an English teacher on her op-ed unit for her sophomore classes we discussed and planned ways for students to select topics that are meaningful and interesting to them. This unit is key for enabling each student to focus on a personal topic of interest or concern. Furthermore, we planned for digital writing, informed by Troy Hicks' book, Crafting Digital Writing, so that students would be creating for an audience beyond the teacher and include multimedia extensions of the their writing to expand the discussion of the issue they selected.

Technology and Media Information Influences:

With another member of the English department, we planned a unit that focused on student exposure to media and advertising through various outlets -- print and digital. We guided the students to choose an aspect of their lives and American society and examine the influence that media has on it. This unit enabled students to practice their research skills and apply them to an aspect of their own lives particularly influenced by technology and digital media. Together we watched and discussed advertisements for the products of companies like Apple and analyzed how those ads changed over decades in response to current events, societal concerns, and target audiences.

Technology Tools for Feedback and Formative Assessment:

For all classes, whether they were working on the junior research paper or other research-based projects, we streamlined the feedback loop for the steps of the research process. When students were brainstorming topic ideas, they submitted these ideas and the reason why those topics were interesting to a Google Form. This allowed me to review their ideas, use the Google Sheet that held the Form responses to provide feedback, and pose questions to help the students refine their topic selection when I visited class. The classroom teachers also began adding their feedback to the Google Sheet when they realized the utility of the sheet for tracking feedback and the students' revised thinking. The next step was for the students to add a draft of their research questions to the Sheet so I could provide feedback on their question development. Entries into the sheet were followed by a class session where I co-taught with the classroom teacher. Working one-on-one with students in class helped to ensure that students were choosing fruitful and manageable topics. As the research projects evolved, I joined the classes for multiple days dedicated to source location and provided instruction on citations and works cited. We developed a research journal as a Google Doc to help students organize their sources, notes, questions, citations, and thinking about their topic. These journals were excellent formative assessment opportunities for the classroom teacher and I to give students feedback on the depth of their questions and sources, gaps in their thinking or understanding, and next steps in the process.

Tech Tools for Conveying Information:

Second semester we built a rich MLA 8 citation website. After our first semester frustrations with Noodle Tools and EasyBib, we agreed that students would be better served by learning to build their citations from scratch. Doing so pushes them to thoroughly examine the scope and quality of their sources of information and become savvier consumers of information. Teachers in the Social Studies and English departments value accurate citation protocols and several of them supported our initiative by granting us class time to work one-on-one with students and recognized the value of the students' increased access to educator (librarian and content teacher) support and feedback in class. 

The Google Site includes a slideshow that steps students through the citation building process, an infographic illustrating the nine elements of an MLA 8 citation, a video showing how to create a hanging indent, copious models of works cited pages and citations, and a form for receiving librarian feedback on works cited and warnings about most common student errors. This site continues to be a work in progress as we refine the resources and streamline individualized student feedback.

Our Google Form for submitting final works cited for feedback before submitting the product of their research to their classroom teacher gave us insight into the most common errors that students were making so we could supplement the resources in the MLA 8 Citation Google Site that we created during second semester. The data we collected showed a dramatic difference in the quality of works cited being submitted by students who had received library instruction as opposed to those who worked only with their classroom teacher. The average score out of 5 for students receiving library instruction was a 3.34; those who did not receive this instruction scored an average of 2.33.

The Value of the (Virtual) Library:
My use of forms to collect individualized information from students on their stages in the research process and provide feedback combined with one-on-one in-class instruction and the library texting service were key elements differentiating library instruction. Teachers benefited by having me provide feedback to their students throughout the research process which essentially means I shared their grading load. Students benefited by having increased access to educator support and copious feedback to help them refine their work. At a time when districts are eliminating library media specialists and our profession is being maligned, my first year in this role is evidence of how vital information literacy skills are and necessary a library media specialist is to this skill development.

Supplement: Anonymous Feedback from Our Colleagues:

Thank you for all of your help with the research process. Having never taught this before, I would have been lost without your help! I greatly appreciate every lesson and helping hand you gave to me and my students during this process. Additionally, you both have such a knowledge of a range of books, and it helped open the variety of books I could offer for book groups!

 Additionally, you both have such a knowledge of a range of books, and it helped open the variety of books I could offer for book groups!

Library services are crucial to the mission of the social studies department. I would love it if there were quizzes for the most frequently used videos so that we can ensure students understand and access the information.

The opportunity to work together with library staff is invaluable to my teaching

I believe the Media specialists are all knowledgeable and collaborate with both each other and the teachers. It has been a pleasure working with them this year.

It was a great unit -- I appreciated the support and the help on this inquiry based learning!

The planning stage went very smoothly as my library/media collaborator was attuned to my specific goals and even to my work style. The lesson she planned was focused directly on the needs of my particular students at that particular stage of our unit.

With the failing implementation of MLA8 by easybib, working with the librarians on building a citation from scratch was important.

The question generator was awesome Help with MLA 8 citations was absolutely excellent! Teacher and students ALL benefited immensely from the face-to-face interactions with incredibly knowledgeable librarians.

There are so many skills students need to learn to be effective researchers that it is easy for them to be overwhelmed. By presenting kids with tools they can use to ensure the validity of their sources, the collaboration allowed me to focus my instruction on the reading skills necessary to master the research essay task.

having librarians in the class room during the start of the jr research project, assisting with research question tweaking and thesis development was incredibly helpful

I found it effective to have multiple perspectives on research questions, thesis statements and citations.

I like the op-ed format to create a dialogue in writing.

Yes, we chose new texts for the speech unit, which were excellent!!! And your help on MLA 8 with both the freshman speeches and the junior research paper were invaluable!

Keep listening to individual teachers and customizing your presentation so it dovetails with the individual teacher's experience and eccentricities.

Teaching students to understand bias

Students frequently ask: can you help me find a source that's not biased? When they ask that question we know what they mean, what it shows us the students need to learn is that 1) there are degrees of bias and 2) everyone has bias, so 3) there is no such thing as unbiased. Instead, we need to teach students to recognize what a text creator's bias is and how or whether that bias negates the usefulness of that source for the student's purpose.

Today we worked with a class of grade 11 students doing research for an in-depth research paper. The focus of the class unit is on the relationship between socioeconomic status and educational experience so this topic will frame the research questions the students are seeking to answer. To facilitate the students' resource selection and understanding of the impact of bias on source credibility we worked with the class unpacking an editorial from the "Room for Debate" section of the New York Times in response to the question: "Is School Reform Hopeless?"

We scaffolded this exercise to help students begin to understand their own biases on this topic and how their bias will influence how they understand what they read and how they convey what they ultimately write. We selected one of the editorials and provided the students just the conclusion to that text. We selectively removed words from the paragraph and asked students to replace the blanks with whatever word they each thought would best convey the meaning of the paragraph. When they completed this exercise individually, we asked them to work with 2 or 3 other students in the class to compile their words on one document and compare how they each completed the paragraph and how their choice of words changed the meaning of the paragraph. The pictures below are of the excerpted paragraph with the students' words on post-it notes.

Here is an example of a phrase with blanks to be filled:

...too many are climbing stairwells with broken handrails and missing steps, tripping and falling as they ________ to keep up, while others are _________ up on elevators...

In one group students said:

• struggling to keep up, while others racing up
• trying to keep up, while others rising up
• attempting to keep up, while others moving up

The students were able to see that racing implies competition, rising implies progress and maybe increase in status, while moving is more passive. They were surprised that none of those were the words that the author used but they couldn't think of another word to use.

The actual sentence is: "...too many are climbing stairwells with broken handrails and missing steps, tripping and falling as they work to keep up, while others are zooming up on elevators..."

Certainly working implies a conscious sense of purpose and purposefulness to the effort that is not reflected in struggle, try or attempt. Work may also imply a degree of success and ability absent in those other terms. Zooming also has a very different connotation than the words the students chose, particularly in contrast to working. So, we asked students to compare their bias with that of the author and consider how differing opinions might influence their assessment of the source's credibility.

For the next phase of this exercise, we provided the students with the rest of the editorial where we had highlighted words or phrases and added questions to invite students to discuss the writer's choice of word and how those words affected the meaning of her editorial.

Here is an example paragraph:

"In addition to attending to these basic survival needs, schools have to attract experienced teachers and leaders with the right sensibilities and training to educate youth from diverse social and cultural backgrounds. Successful school districts also enhance youth development through extracurricular activities and additional enrichment. When families cannot afford costly after-school programs, personal tutors and experiential summer vacations, effective school-communities invest in programs to offset these opportunity gaps." 

Here are the questions we posed corresponding to each of the highlighted phrases:

1. What does this phrase imply? (basic survival needs)
2. What do you think these are? (right sensibilities)
3. How is this different than education? (youth development)
4. What other gaps have you heard of? (opportunity gaps)

As they shared their conclusions and questions the students raised questions like: what does equity mean? One student said it meant equality. At that point, we directed the class to the Allsides Dictionary. Here is how Allsides describes their dictionary:

Click to see how Allsides defines equity and the cartoon they use to distinguish "equity" from "equality". We think this resource is incredibly valuable to students as they learn to navigate the information they encounter and develop information literacy -- particularly in the face of fake news!

Carter, Prudence L. “Poor Schools Need to Encompass More Than Instruction to Succeed.” The Opinion Pages: Room for Debate, New York Times, 14 Sept. 2016, www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/09/14/is-school-reform-hopeless/poor-schools-need-to-encompass-more-than-instruction-to-succeed.

Using Question Stems to Spark Inquiry

As I am working with students on research exercises I am working to find ways to help them with the development of their research questions. The scope of their research and the means by which they explore what they learn are all products of a well-crafted research question. I am observing that students can ask very narrow questions that begin with "what" and very broad questions that begin with "why." Without prompting, they get stuck here: too narrow or too broad. To help them expand their inquiry strategies I have begun using these question stems to push their thinking:

Which?  This stem helps you to collect information to make an informed choice. For example: Which Twentieth Century president did the most to promote civil rights?

How? When you seek to understand problems and perspectives, weigh options, and propose solutions, try starting your question with this stem. For example: How should we solve the problem of water pollution in Long Island Sound?

What if? Your question can change history! Use the knowledge you have to pose a hypothesis and consider options. For example: What if the Apollo 13 Astronauts had not survived?

Should?  A question can invite self or community examination. Using this stem, you can make a moral or practical decision based on evidence. For example: Should we clone humans?

Why? Understand and explain relationships to get to the essence of a complicated issue. For example: Why do people engage in human trafficking?

I like these stems because students can decide on the purpose of their inquiry and use the stem best suited to that end. They also are versatile and can be used in any discipline. What is really key, is they push students away from bias confirmation, from the tendency to ask questions to which they believe they already know the right answer. By using these stems and asking many questions about the same topic, they are pushed to think critically about the subject of their research and remain open to a range of evidence and perspectives before developing their thesis.

Here are examples of the stems being used all about the Civil War:

• Which Civil War general was the best military strategist?
• How did King Cotton affect the Confederacy’s waging of war?
• What if General Lee had better intelligence at Gettysburg?
• Should Confederate symbols be used in official state flags and logos today?
• Why did Great Britain favor the South during the Civil War?

And here are literary examples focused on Shakespeare's plays:

• Which of the characters in Henry IV has the most relevance for today’s politicians?
• How does Hal’s ascension to the throne affect perceptions of his father’s coup?
• What if Brutus had made the final funeral oration in Julius Caesar?
• Should Hamlet have minded his own business?
• Why does Shakespeare use so many references to the natural and unnatural in Macbeth?

I have used these this year with grade 11 students researching the relationship between socioeconomic class and opportunity in modern America. These stems helped the students focus their topics under the umbrella of the unit essential question.

Today I will use them with grade 10 students. Their essential question is "What should be America's response to the current refugee crisis?" Imagine the research possibilities with each of these stems: Which country has a fair, enforceable policy in this current refugee crisis? How does US response to Syrian refugees compare with US response to Holocaust / Bosnia / Vietnam refugees? What if the US reinstated quotas like those of the 1920s? Should the UN establish and monitor camps for the refugees? Why did the French respond to the Calais Jungle as they did? Using these question stems, the students can focus their research on the aspect of this issue that is most interesting to them, and the teacher can engage with the students about content that the student has chosen so the curricular experience is personalized. Ultimately the students will be writing Op-Ed pieces and they range of issues and perspectives considered will read to rich classroom discussion and mean the teacher is not reading twenty five identical papers. A win-win exercise!

Mapping Global Climate Change Has Begun

A few weeks ago I described a project that I was co-planning with a science teacher for her grade 9 earth science students. Today we began! When they arrived in the library they were already assigned to groups of three and given a country that, in most cases, they had previously studied in their social studies class. We used their double lab period to introduce the project and get started on research. In a nutshell, here is a the project:

In small groups you will examine the climate of countries in different environments. You will then predict what might happen to the climate of a particular country as the earth continues to warm. All of your research, insight, evidence, and citations will be presented as a layer on a class Google My Map.

My colleague wisely reminded the class of their predisposition to jump to the final product without embracing the vital steps of research necessary to inform that product. So we began by giving the students a short (less than 2 page) overview reading on indicators of climate change and impact projections. We instructed them to read and annotate what they thought was important.

No one annotated.

When the chatter began, and they said they were done reading, I asked them to review the reading one section at a time. The sub-heading for the first section was: "Increasing Temperatures." I asked students to share something in that section that prompted them to ask a question about the geographical region they were about to study. First they blinked, then they stared at their computer screens hoping that avoiding eye contact would end this part of the exercise.

I kept pushing: "when you read about rising temperatures what does it make you wonder about your country or region?" Finally, a student who is studying India asked, "what happens to people already living in really cramped conditions when it gets hotter? won't they suffer?" And then, a student started to answer that question. Now, I'm not in the habit of stopping a student from contributing, but I did. I said, you are making statements but this phase of our work is about asking questions. What happens at the beginning of research when you make statements instead of asking questions? They figured this out right away: statements lead to bias confirmation; questions allow you to see and incorporate information that surprises and challenges you. Statements rehash what you already think you know; questions enable you to learn something new.

We returned to the overview reading and students began asking questions about their assigned region based on the information in the reading. They annotated the reading with their questions and shared with the class. Then I said, what's next? How will you find more information about your region? The reading is a global overview, now you need to focus geographically. They knew it was time for keywords. I suggested they work in their groups to make a list of 25 keywords, and when they had that many they had to ask me or their science teacher to review the list and give them the thumbs up to begin searching the databases and collected websites. They were aghast! TWENTY-five words?! Yes, I said. And next year I will ask you for 75!

By the time class ended, they had made their lists, gotten approval to proceed with research and were given the expectation that each member of the group will have completed reading, citing and note-taking from at least one source before we reconvene. When they have examined multiple sources each, they will share their notes and organize them in this table:

Ultimately their goal is to make predictions about their region, so we will give them these formulas to help guide that synthesis of their information:

Finally, they will display their questions, research, citations, and predictions on a layer of a Google MyMap and write or screencast a reflection on the future of global climate predictions by comparing the information in their map layer with their classmates. I will share more when we get to that stage!

Inquiry Update: Refining the Questions and Keywords

In my last post I wrote about our preparation for using the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) designed by the Right Question Institute to inspire and focus high school juniors for writing their research papers. They are writing this paper at the conclusion of reading The Great Gatsby; the unit essential question is: how does socioeconomic status affect opportunity in modern America? When I wrote my last post, we were collecting and reviewing possible artifacts to serve as a Q-focus for the classes. Ultimately, we chose to provide several and allow the students to choose which focus to use and with which students to work. Their Q-focus options were:

• the strategic school profile for a nearby high school that is very different than our school
• an expired green card
• a birth certificate in both English and Spanish issued in Mexico
• a photograph of five members of the St. Louis Rams entering the stadium with their hands up
• a data visualization of household income gap by race
• another data table about education levels among married black women
• data about health care access by race adjusted for income

We used these slides to explain the QFT protocol. They were projected around the room while students worked so they could refer to the directions as their groups collaborated on each task. As students sorted and rewrote their closed and open questions, they collected their questions on a pair of slides dedicated to their group's Q-focus. Here is an example from one of the four classes that used this process. All of this was completed just before the Thanksgiving long weekend. Today we returned to school and the students in all four classes working with us on this research paper submitted the current draft of their research question for us to review. Their questions address a vast array of current sociopolitical issues. Certainly they still need refinement, but students are beginning to narrow their focus to a topic of interest that is potent in the U.S. today. Here is a selection of the (unedited) questions the students are asking:

• How does affirmative action impact minorities? 
• Does gender affect a persons income? Why do blacks have a lower income than whites/ does race affect a persons income?
• How does race and wealth impact the type and level of education you can receive 
• How does geographical setting affect health care accessibility for adults?
• How might a persons socioeconomic status directly affect their access to quality healthcare?
• How can racial bias in the judicial system affect the way a case is treated?
• How does poverty impact the learning and culture of a school body as a whole in terms of absences, disciplinary actions, and Free or Reduced Lunch (FRL)?
• How has the Affordable Care Act impacted people with lower socioeconomical [sic] status?
• How does the justice system affect imprisonment of the lowest social classes?
• What causes the tremendous inequality in educational oppurtunity [sic] in America?
• Why are crime rates higher amongst the lower class?
• How does ones socioeconomic status affect the severity of their mental health?
• How does income inequality affect rates of incarceration for different social classes?
• How heavily does education influence the likelyhood [sic] of achieving a stable, lucrative career?
• How does race effect the odds of immigrants achieving well paying stable careers?
• "How do the living conditions and locations of adolescents contribute to their level of education?"
• How has the war on drugs affected people's ability to rise from poverty?
• How does the constant factor of social class diversity affect the quality of education in a child's lifetime?
• Why is the education gap in America growing? and how can we close the gap and have an equal education standard across the US?
• Why are there a lot of college drop outs
• How do the economic circumstances of ones birth dictate their potential, as opposed their talent and hard work?
• How does social class affect parenting?
• Does race affect the amount of college dropouts?
• How do financial issues lead to high dropout rates in college?

Clearly these questions still need refinement. We are pleased that students have started to branch their thinking into aspects of American society and historical issues that they were not able to consider before we introduced the QFT to them. Our next step is to help students begin generating keywords for searching our databases and print collection for information about their topic. We believe that once they start listing terms relevant to their question, they will begin to see the possibilities for refining and focusing their questions to better fit the constraints of a five page paper.

That is tomorrow's plan. We are going to ask them to examine the entire list of collected questions from the four participating classes and copy into a document any of the questions that they think explores the topic they are trying to research. Then the students will begin compiling a list of key terms that are related to their topic and their questions. We will provide them instruction on the value of key terms including how to use them in searches:

• Boolean Logic (and, or, not)
• Truncation and Wildcards (*, ?)

Then we will ask the students to resume compiling their lists and then revising their questions, ultimately choosing one question to sustain their research. Stay tuned to see how this unfolds.

For those of you interested in updates on the research project using Google My Maps, we are getting ready to introduce it so more on that will be coming soon, too!

Inquiry: Framing Research Questions & the QFT

Two new teachers approached us and began the conversation by saying: "We remembered how you
said that you are willing to help with anything we are doing in class."

"YES!" we said in response. "That is what we do! How can we help?"

So we are preparing to work with four classes of juniors who are embarking on a research paper. This paper is a common assessment for the junior English classes so this is a pilot for an approach we could replicate in other classes. We were asked to help with narrowing topics, developing research questions, locating and annotating sources, accurate citations,... this is what we do!

The course Essential Question that will guide the focus of the students' research is: How does social class impact opportunity in modern American society? The students have already been asked to identify subtopics that can be explored in the context of this question. They have identified: Education, Immigration, Marriage, Health Care, and Ethnicity

We decided that the QFT (Question Formulation Technique) outlined in Make Just One Change by the Right Question Institute was the perfect avenue for both topic focusing and question refinement. During our Professional Learning day at the beginning of the month one of the workshops faculty members could attend was about inquiry and how to use the QFT so this is a perfect application of that learning!

We will remind the students that research requires lots of questions, all different types of questions. Essentially, all research (regardless of the form of the final product) is the process of asking questions, finding answers, asking new questions, finding new answers, and so on until you reach a satisfying, defensible, unique understanding.

Here are the steps they will take:

1. Start by exploring your Q-Focus (more on this in a bit)

• Ask as many questions as you can
• Don’t stop to discuss or judge or answer
• Write each question as it was stated
• Change any statements into questions

2. Now improve your questions

• Sort your Q’s into two categories:
  closed-ended
  open-ended
• Rewrite a closed question to be open-ended. 
• Then rewrite an open question to be closed.

3. Prioritize

• Select your top THREE questions that your group thinks best explore the topic of your research.
• Share these questions with the class

The key to the whole process is a well-selected Qfocus. For each of the sub-topics identified by the classes, we are brainstorming and discussing the most appropriate Qfocus. We need things that the students can understand, that will challenge their thinking and assumptions, that will inspire divergent thinking. Here is what we are considering:

• Education: PSAT scores from an anonymous student
• Immigration: a foreign birth certificate, a green card
• Marriage: we are still discussing this one (please share ideas if you have any!)
• Health Care: data on health care access disparity
• Ethnicity: this cartoon about white privilege or Peggy McIntosh's checklist

By working through the QFT protocol, students will be able to narrow the focus of their research, determine their guiding research question, and identify the sub-questions it will be necessary for them to answer in order to develop a thesis about their main question.

Next steps: working with the students to find, vet, and annotate sources! Stay tuned!