I started with this article: “National Security Inc.” On page 10, the article describes the work of Ken Pohill, an employee of General Dynamics, a defense contractor serving multiple roles in the United States intelligence community. Ken is watching a “white truck moving across his computer monitor” – and “the truck [is] in Afghanistan.”

To do this, he clicked his computer mouse. Up popped a picture of the truck driver’s house, with notes about visitors. Another click. Up popped infrared video of the vehicle. Click: Analysis of an object thrown from the driver’s side. Click: U-2 imagery. Click: A history of the truck’s movement. Click. A Google Earth map of friendly forces. Click: A chat box with everyone else following the truck, too.

I may be horribly naive, but I was astounded.

How do we teach this at school? How do we help students translate their affinity for technology and proficiency with certain tools into the skills needs to synthesize those tools – or to create new ones – for gathering, analyzing, and producing content? For self-expression? How do we provide rich problem sets for student work? How do we help them prepare for the development, implementation, and use of tool sets that provide for synchronous human and mechanized observation, collection, correlation, and evaluation?

And how do we do this in the humanities? In schools and classes as we know them? As we imagine them?

This project – this repository of journalistic and democratic investigation – has convinced me like never before that we need to provide digital equity.

Students deserve to know what’s possible for them; they also deserve to know what their government, its competitors, and private industry can do in terms of observing their habits and controlling the information that reaches them.

Part of preserving our checks and balances is knowing what needs to be checked and balanced.

I see this one kid working a computer with a USB keyboard tethered to it. He has a browser open to the information he has to learn. He has composing software open in another window. He has his notes with my feedback on them in front of him on a piece of paper. He’s using everything he sees to write some fairly chilling music about Kristallnacht.

I see another kid working on a game about smashing through the Berlin Wall. He has his programming and drawing windows open. He has image searches running on Berlin, East German soldiers, and 3D models of sledgehammers. He has another window open showing him feedback from his classmates on earlier drafts of the game, posted on a private network.

I see a third kid skipping between tabs to watch video, read news reports, look up players’ stats, and blog on the sport he loves.

I remember these kids and I think: Is it enough? What am I teaching them? Am I teaching them how to think? To produce? To consume? To create or to re-arrange? Am I teaching them for today’s world or their own?

I remember these kids and I ask myself: How can we help our peers get access to the technology we are so fortunate to have? How can we approximate a set-up like Ken’s for students and their learning? For their passions?

I know General Dynamics values Ken Pohill for his ability to analyze and synthesize what he sees, but what he sees, while orchestrated by humans, is entirely mediated by technology. I also know that Ken works with other people onsite, but I imagine that they talk a lot about what they see on their screens. Somewhere else other people are talking about how to orchestrate it even better with new technology.

How do we help kids see the world as it happens? How do we help them see the code behind our world? The people behind the code? How do we help kids see themselves using these tools for the kind of greater good that obviates defense?

How do we use authentic, germane, realtime data and commentary about learning to analyze our teaching?

Look at Ken. Now back at standardized tests. Now back at Ken.

Why are we teaching as if anything ends?

My map this year will look more course-specific than last year’s meta-map, which I think is still a useful model for project-based work. Here’s an early draft of this year’s map:

I’m mapping more granularly – at least in terms of structures and opportunities, if not content – in response to what worked this year in stations, pacing, and independent work. I’m also mapping to ensure that student learning moves flexibly and organically back and forth, inside and outside the classroom, physically and virtually, in service to students’ passions and in service to others.

Here are three constraints I’m using:

1. In terms of content, I plan to “cover” the state language arts and civics & economics curricula through direct instruction and blended learning modules that I create and then replace with subsequent student work. I will negotiate with students the particular standards each wants to master in a unit so long as she produces excellent work that demonstrates her learning. I would rather students leave the class as experts on what interests them about citizenship than as students with a superficial knowledge of sentence structure and/or our government’s org chart. Therefore, to help students master their chosen content more strategically, here’s the first useful constraint I want to use: “spaced learning.”

2. In terms of self-directed learning, I plan to protect at least 20% of class time for students’ self-directed learning. I love this line from the RSA animation of Dan Pink’s Drive talk: “you probably want to do something interesting…let me get out of your way!” Pink talks about the Australian software firm Atlassian and it’s quarterly employee autonomy days. Employees get to work on what they want for a day so long as they share out their work at the end in a celebration. The company benefits from its employees’ creativity in tackling nagging software bugs and proposing new products. I’ve seen this work in the classroom. I’ve seen a kid make a Scratch game about a jet-pack-wearing space panda that shoots palm trees from its butt to fight aliens turn the same skills he used in learning that game into a series of animations explaining the Cold War, ICBMs, and MAD. I never would have seen those content-specific short films without giving over class time to SPACE PANDA 2010. Other kids made similar transfers; this was not an isolated case. Kids will bring the skills they learn through self-directed learning to the content we are tasked to cover. Bet on it. Call it what you will: Google Time, Atlassian Days, self-directed learning. It’ my second useful constraint.

3. Because we know that timely feedback helps classroom relationships, increases student achievement, and helps curtail downtime, I will attempt to be in all places at all times via Edmodo. I’d like increase my capacity to give feedback during class time as I move between stations or groups. My kids have experience with Edmodo on their computers and iPods. If I’m working with a group and can’t make it across the room to answer a question that’s been shouted out, perhaps I can find the time to post a quick reply to a quick question or give an ETA and suggest a independent next step without engaging in disruptive cross-room conversation. Regardless, the big idea here is not to manage my classroom’s noise level, but to reward students’ investment in their work by improving the timeliness of my feedback and by providing students with a back-channel for helping one another and for giving feedback on the class. I also want to establish a daily community meeting time to make sure we work together on improving class for everyone based on our feedback about it. So my third useful constraint is better coaching and better communication make for better learning.

I will also remove arbitrary restraints on student democracy, community, and learning by abandoning traditional grading, trivial standards, and sending “problem” children out of my room to be “solved” by someone outside our own relationships.

What am I missing? What doesn’t best serve students and their learning? What boundaries on the map should I redraw?

An audience member said “curriculum needs to drive technology.” I asked what should drive curriculum. Dan Fink responded in good humor.

Dan’s response evoked some energy for me, so I want to paste my reply to him here; I think it’s a statement worth taking accountability for, and I don’t want to give the impression that I’m willing to let it sit on Mary Beth’s blog, but not my own.

I hear you, and I’m grinning, but I’m not convinced we can’t get away with greater flexibility and student choice. I think we self-limit here.

There are compromises we can make in how we choose to use class time. Google time is a possibility (say 20%). Negotiating state curriculum with students is a possibility (you give me three standards, and we’ll get you a blog and a trip/Skype call to the aquarium for or action research). Subverting the state curriculum is a possibility (A People’s Textbook of Algebra, anyone?). Ignoring the state curriculum is a possibility (gulp).

I feel keenly the conflict between my vocation as an educator to help others learn and my occupation as a public school teacher to cover state curriculum in such a manner that students recall it for an end of course test. I have positive evaluations, but my test scores have dropped since I stopped obsessively teaching to the state test. People walk through my classroom a few times a year and offer me a few complimentary generalities about what they see. Then, at the end of the year, people talk to me about all kinds of numbers in great specificity. I am confused in so many ways by this, but remain convinced that leaving public education to escape this confusion is self-serving. I recognize why I get talked to about numbers and I acknowledge the effective job people do in working with them – I value their efforts on our kids’ behalf and their work with me to push my teaching. I am lucky to be so supported in my work by my division.

My point: if we’re willing to dwell in ambiguity and take year-end commentary on our tests scores as feedback from adults with different priorities rather than as judgment from our betters – our approvers, our gatekeepers, even our mentors – then during the year we have a lot of wiggle room in covering “the” curriculum.

I worry that the easy answer is an easy target for our complaints and thus helps us be complacent in sitting in judgment without acting in accordance with what we know about learning, child development, and human motivation.

Yours,
C

I would add that there are fantastic administrators out there ready to partner with teachers and students in negotiating curriculum and establishing more targeted power standards embedded in powerful project- and service-based learning. I won’t name anyone in particular as I don’t want to suggest that this post speaks for him or her, but such administrators know who they are, and so do their teachers.

I do seem to remember a process where you people ask me questions and I give you answers, and then I ask you questions and you give me answers, and that’s the way we find out things. I think I read that in a manual somewhere.

-Dr. Heywood Floyd, 2010: The Year We Make Contact

The best thing I ever did for my teaching was to stop teaching.

Before I get into that, here’s a quick to-do list for next year.

1. Organize better for self-directed learning. I shifted my work with students into a more democratic, self-directed space midway through the year in an attempt to improve our relationships, to meet students’ learning needs, and to let students’ natural curiosity and creativity take over our time together. However, I wasn’t prepared to capture as much of the work as I should have. I’ll play around with a bunch of models and combinations this summer and be ready for students to pick ways to archive and reflect on their work this fall.

2. Learn more outside the school. We worked with several partners this year – with local instructional coaches (like @bethcosta6 and @tborash) and community partners, as well as with PLN tweeps like @crudbasher, @engltchrleo, and @kperry. However, we did so somewhat haphazardly thanks to snow-days and other hiccups in pacing. I’d like to work with my school to set aside specific time each week for each students to do, learn, and/or make something outside of school. I have in mind “electives” with a blacksmith, a master carpenter, a green roof nursery, a nursing home, and a musician. That covers maybe 3/5 of us according to numbers and interests. I need to do more legwork in soliciting ideas from students and lining up expert tutors this summer.

3. Bring in the parents. I know a few parents are happy that I’ve developed better relationships with their children. I know a few parents are happy that I’ve implemented self-directed learning. I know a few parents are always going to ask about grades. I know a few parents wonder what the hell I’m doing. I need to set up parent education nights – several of them, repeating and then spiraling – to try and share the big picture of teaching and learning to which I ascribe. I need to explain how a nascent democratic, self-directed classroom looks in a public school and how it promotes and tracks deep and authentic student learning. I need to explain how our class might be different from others, but also how every class here is alike in its determination to serve our students and rehabilitate their notions of learning and what school can be.

Back to teaching better by not teaching.

Here’s an embarrassing story. I’m so glad that this kid stuck with me. Note my sterling use of Choice Theory in August. Crikey.

August: Here’s your work. Hey, look, its on a computer. Let’s go. Hey. Come on. Do something. It’s right there. Wiggle the mouse. Come on. Click. CLICK! What? Come on. Get your foot down. Okay, okay. Now get your foot out of the drawer. Please. Out of the drawer. Let’s go. Come on. Can I help you? Can you tell me why you’re choosing not to work right now? You have to work to be here. Come on. You don’t have to go. You just have to choose to work. I’ll help. Hey – FOOT! DRAWER! If you won’t talk to me, go make a plan…

…December: Blah blah blah work blah blah choice blah help blah WHAT? I’m sorry, but you can’t say “this is [frakking bullpoop]” and stay in class. Go make a plan.

February: Okay. So we’re going to try something new. It’s called self-directed learning. You’re going to make a plan to learn about whatever you want. You’re going to make something to show me what you learned. You can make whatever you want. The idea is to read and write about something you love, and to make something with what you read and write. You tell me when to check in with you. I want you to do something you like at school. You do have to direct yourself to learn – it’s not do whatever you want time; it’s self-directed learning time. A blog? Sure. Basketball? Sure. What are you going to do? Write about the games? Okay. Can I leave you comments? Great. FOOT!

March: Can I see what you wrote? Okay. Let’s talk about organization. Like when you switch from one game to another, start a new paragraph so I can see I should think about a new game.

April: Great headline. Can we talk some more? Great. I wrote about elaboration in your comments last night. Elaboration just means details. Like when you predict who will win the playoffs, you give me your idea, but you don’t tell me why. If you tell me why – if you can give me some stats or reasons for your prediction – then you’re adding detail or elaboration. Okay? Okay. Try it.

May: A report? On what? Three-point shooters? Okay. Are you willing to research? Can you come up with questions? Sure I can help. How many questions do you think would give you enough detail to write a paragraph about each player? Three? Okay. Try it.

June: No, seriously. We have to do this before the end of the year. Please put your blog away. Yeah, I know, it’s [frakking bullpoop], but here we are. Save your draft. Let’s go. Thank you. I’ll get you back to it as soon as possible.

Here’s the student’s first post from March, after he got his blog set up:

Minnesota Timberwolves are on there 16 losing streak.

Here’s one of his inquiry posts from May:

Nate Robinson is one of the best dunkers in the NBA. He plays for the celtics now but near the begining of the year he played for the Knicks he is so awesome at dunking it is amazing. Once he dunked over yow ming he is really tall. He entered the dunk contest three times. He won the dunk contest three times. That is really good. He helped his team a lot when he was on the Knicks but when he was on the celtics he’s not that good now. He dose not play that much anymore but he is a good dunker.

Lebron James is one of the best dunkers in the NBA he can jump from really far and can do some awesome tricks in the air. Lebron James helps his team a lot he is like the best player on that team and he is like the best player in the league. Lebron James is a bad sport though and last year this guy named shannon Brown entered the dunk contest that is why he didn’t enter he was going to but then he punked out because he was scared. But he is good at basketball.

Andrey iguodala is a awesome basketball player and a dunker he should join the dunk contest then people will se his skills. He has got some real serious jumps he can dunk over just about anybody thats why i think he is such a good dunker. He helped his team a lot over the years. He plays for the 76ixer’s they are ok but not that good they did not make it to the play-off’s 

Dwight Howard plays for the magic that team is really good they are still in the playoffs. Dwight Howard has only entered the dunk contest once but he won he finished it with this dunk called the superman it was awesome he put on a cape and then got the basketball and started running and then he jumped in the air so high up in the air that he through the basketball strait down in to the hoop it was awesome i did not get to se it but i still herd about it on ESPN he won the whole entire thing with that. He is a big man. I told my brother about that and i said why did he win he did not even dunk it and my brother said the whole reason that he won is because the fact that he was high enough to throw the ball in to the hoop in the air. It was amazing for guy that tall and big to jump that high.

Jr Smith is one of the best dunkers in the NBA he so good at dunking and three point shots. He should enter a dunk contest thats how good he is at dunking he would might even win the whole thing if he try’s his very best in the dunk contest. He plays for the nuggets that team is okay but they are not the best team in the league. He helps his team a lot by how good his dunks are and by how good he is at three point shooting in the game. He will not let the nuggets down in the next playoffs i just know that he wont let them him down.

This is great progress, but, look, I know there’s work to be done. I know several students who accomplished more with me in a shorter amount of time in a traditional classroom. But I also know that there are kids out there like this basketball blogger who don’t have a shot at feeling safe, acknowledged, or valued in the traditional classroom. And I know it’s not the kid’s fault. It was mine. For all the other kids like this one in my first eight and half years of teaching, the fault was mine. I am sorry.

Sometimes you have to stop teaching because no amount of it will fix a broken relationship or make up for one where there isn’t one.

Sometimes you have to let go of yourself to hold a kid up.

Sometime you have to turn your back on what you were taught in order to learn what’s right. You have to turn your back on what you know to do what you believe. You have to turn your back on your past to change a kid’s future. You have to stop investing your salary in test scores and gamble it all away on finding ways to make learning matter. You have to stop measuring yourself by your best students’ scores and start measuring yourself by what you’re keeping all of them from for the love of a stratified society.

You can’t give up kids to the system and still be the one who won’t let them down.

When we wonder if kids are losing something vital to human relationships because of technology, I wonder if sometimes we don’t understand what the kids are doing, don’t want to value what the kids are doing, or haven’t modeled for them how to build human relationships with technology that is equal parts techno-enriched solipsism and socially-vibrant communications satellite. However, I’m not worried. Kid share their technology and media; their electronics don’t silo them.

I’m reading a lot about #artsed, as well, thinking about students’ opportunities for artistic expression and production in the upcoming year 3 of our arts-infused charter. There’s no doubt that the gifts students use and receive through the arts help them learn, know themselves, and navigate the world. I’ve become especially interested in music across the curriculum thanks to GarageBand, Korg Nano Key USB keyboards, and different iterations of the soundtrack project, thanks in large part to Marco Torres and the possibilities he and his students share with teachers around the world.

ReadWriteThink has a good description of what an autobiographical soundtrack project could be. In our classes, we use the project to study history, and we allow ourselves the option of composing our own music in GarageBand to match the tone and mood of the events we study. For example, this year one student put together a particularly haunting and driving song for Kristallnacht punctuated by percussion and sound effects arranged chaotically throughout the piece. It was scary. The student could also explain what each sound effect was supposed to be as he acoustically imagined the terror of the Nazis demolishing Jewish lives.

For any soundtrack project, I ask students to research the who, when, where, and so-what of any event they want to include. Typically, I teach a brief overview of a time period or major event and ask students to become experts on 3-10 parts of the event, depending on its weight in history, weight in the curriculum, and complexity.

Then I ask students to assemble a playlist of songs that fit the events and to write liner-notes explaining how the tone and/or lyrics of the songs connect to the events.

With those guidelines providing us with some constraint, students riff on the rest of the project.

Perhaps next steps include making our own music videos and burning DVDs and sharing those songs online. And sharing our glogs. Maybe even starting a class music blog, like largehearted boy, related to our content.

Certainly, in the past, it was also fun to make playlists and create album art for novels. It would be fun to do so again.

All of this brings me back to the idea I had walking out of the building today: kids’ theme music.

I think about the transformative power of music, especially in preparing us to take on challenges and celebrate successes.

I remember getting all twitchy with adrenaline as Thunderstruck played in the last minutes of ice-cleaning time before Whalers’ games (yeah, I know – the Whalers; deal). I remember Brass Bonanza playing after every Whalers’ goal. I remember listening to Survivor, Alice in Chains, and Kenny Rogers in the locker room before every high school football game. I sing in the car on the way to work (Glee soundtrack; deal). I play Aimee Mann and Bat for Lashes and Beastie Boys and Michael Franti and Gnarls Barkley and the Flobots and the Old 97’s and even the occasional Floyd (missed’em at Foxboro) or Rush (saw’em at Worcester) tune to get psyched when I feel a step behind. Who doesn’t feel the lift from singing the solo to “Deathly” or “Comfortably Numb?” Who doesn’t feel like a WWF superstar walking into the building with earbuds firmly in place?

Okay, probably several people. But they just need the right music.

And so do our kids.

Let’s ask them to write some kick-ass songs for themselves. Let’s ask them to compose something in GarageBand or I Am T-Pain or Audacity – something they can play or sing or hum like latter-day Trogdor-singing Strong Bads when they enter the room. Let’s help them put together a soundtrack of their learning lives so that entering the classroom is a celebration and affirmation. Let’s take all the time they want to write something that makes them feel good about walking around our shared schools, from class to class, from opportunity to opportunity to shine on like learning diamonds.

Let’s make sure students have access to their theme music whenever they want it.

And let’s have two rules for the music, two rules for school: it’s yours and it makes you happy.

That’s a tall order for underfunded schools facing an extension of federal policies that mandate educational obsolescence. Regardless, it’s the vision of school I want for my students, children, colleagues, and me.

That being said, even looking into the future I want, I still dwell on obsolesence.

First, I need to let go of the idea that differentiating school for students means designing and implementing 100+ curricula a day, or controlling 100+ students.

I need to think of differentiation as a systems problem. How do I, as a teacher, enable and give feedback on the self-directed workflow of 100+ colleagues a day – as a kind of information officer rather than a manager?

I’m addicted to reinventing the wheel. I don’t enjoy or feel successful teaching with other people’s lessons. I love bringing new media and tools into the classroom, but I just don’t feel like I’m doing what I want to do unless I’m delivering novel instruction around them.

I may need to get over this quickly. To accomplish what I want to accomplish I will need to accept a lot of help teaching thing I can’t teach. I need to become that colleague and stop trying to manage. I need to think about systems that will let me contribute connections, metaphors, and feedback to students and colleagues. I need to network my work and classroom much more than I do now, and find the room in my system to do it in a transparent way that contributes to our shared work.

So, I know what I want, even if I don’t know how to do it. Back to obsolesence: what I want, I think, is a new kind of PLC that functions like a project-based unit and includes students, teachers, and either non-teaching programmers or hybrid teacher-programmers.

The New PLC, click to enlarge

I think of school as an app store for learning. I think of students shopping for apps that inspire them to learn. I think of teachers as co-learners and customers at the same store, shopping for apps that network their classrooms to their communities and the world through service, project-based learning, and social media. I think of app-developers as reciprocal customers at the same store learning about students, teachers, and their experiences. Information and its manipulation are the store’s currency. I think of a school division as a brand name and of its schools as the brand’s flagship stores.

To create, market, and distribute a useful product you need a trusted brand, a space – F2F or virtual – to house its products. You need students, teachers, and programmers in the same space, and you need to think of them learning dynamically like sliders on spectra of content, learning, programming, and user experience. There needs to be shared ownership of learning and an easy interchange of roles and positions on those spectra so students and teachers make sound decisions about product purchases, and programmers make sound products.

School divisions should bring app development in house. In fact, divisions should make it the focus of classroom work shared in new PLCs made up of students, teachers, and programmers. Get the kids involved in self-assessment of their work with the apps. Get teachers thinking about how to deliver students’ learning and work to the world, rather than about how to deliver content to students. Get programers embedded in their audiences.

How can this work?

Are programmers much more expensive than teachers? Can schools reconcile the different ways programmers and teachers move up the pay scale and get promotions? How much would need to be spent to develop a cadre of hybrid teacher-programmers, clearing-houses of customizable apps (or do we have them already?), networks of divisions sharing resources, and budgetary and instructional structures to enable students to self-assemble drag-and-drop curricula? How many teacher-programmer pairs or hybrids do you need per how many students? Can you restructure school to group students by self-identified interests? Can you do this for part of a school day with part of a school? Can you charter this? Can your charter an app development high school that creates the apps for an elementary school?

Can ed schools train teachers to develop apps? Can ed schools be convinced that programming is a noble part of teaching?

Could you better retain Gen Y teacher-programmers than teachers due to the project-based nature of app development?

Can school systems pay hybrid teacher-programmers a hybrid salary? Can communities be convinced to support programmers as a necessary part of quality schooling? Can communities be convinced to pay teachers programmers’ salaries?

Can communities be convinced that sharing responsibility for curriculum and learning with students isn’t lazy teaching or a waste of money?

Can schools find new roles and partners for students and teachers?

LittleBigPlanet is a platformer.  A platformer is a game made up of levels that require  players to pass obstacles using timing, accuracy and  leaping.  Most Super Mario Bros games are platformers.  LittleBigPlanet provides players with a suite of level construction tools and the ability to upload player-created levels to the PlayStation Network (PSN) for other owners of the game to play.  Since the game’s release in 2008, players have uploaded over 2 million user-generated levels.

Two million isn’t a big number compared to, say, 400 million: the number of Facebook users worldwide.  Two million isn’t a big number compared to, say, 32 million: the number of PlayStation 3 owners worldwide (both figures found here).  However, LittleBigPlanet encourages player creativity and modding in ways collection games like Farm Life and proprietary hardware like the PS3 do not.  There are very few games that offer as robust and attractive a set of tools as LittleBigPlanet does for creating such varied levels.  To wit, check out these two user-generated levels. Everything in them was assembled by players from the tools and behaviors included in the game’s level design suite.

Museum levels in Little Big Planet typically show off the art and machines players have made for use in their other levels.  The PlayStation Eye, a peripheral camera for the PS3, also lets users take pictures of themselves or their own and-drawn art for use in museums-as-photo-albums.  The museums collect and share the resources with other players. Inside the museums players can use capture tools to grab images.  The museum’s creators can also make their displayed objects and machines available to visitors either as prize-bubbles in the museum or as rewards earned at the end of the level for visiting the museum.

So far, we’ve imagine making a level of captioned sculptures and art that provide the unit’s information, interspersed with short gameplay episodes that are meant to capture the points of view of people involved in the war in different ways.  As the girls move through the tutorials, and as I back out of the project, I’m really eager to see what they make to share their learning.  I’ll defnitely tweet out whatever safe account name we come up with when we’re finished so you can find the level on the PSN, and we’ll record a play-through video and post it online somehow.

I don’t know that every piece of authentic work will change the world, but I think this one might open up some students’ eyes to the possibilities of school and interdisciplinary work in gaming.  Even if we’re not changing the world, I’m eager to see what we learn by making our own little one. We should get a developers’ diary up on a blog so they girls can share their learning and ask for input about what to include in terms of content & gameplay, too.

What other tools are your students using to create “museums” of learning?  How much control do your student shave over those tools? How interactive are the finished products?  What do you think of investing class time into gaming for learning? How could we be doing this better?

PS: I am kind of falling for STEM – science, technology, engineering, and math learning. I would love to teach geometry, concepts like frequency and proportion, or simple machines using LittleBigPlanet. Anyone using off the shelf video games and/or consoles in STEM classrooms?  If you are, please comment below to share your work and/or provide a link to it!

Results of our strategizing were mixed with only half the groups improving from last week to this week. At this point I’m wishing I had taken a research-design course sometime in the past decade so I could present you with better conclusions from my too-small-a-sample action study. Regardless, here goes.

Group 1 stayed at 10:1. Group 1’s goal was “to not die a lot,” and their strategies included, “work together, not leave people behind, not trash talk, go fast…[and] not jump big jumps.” We need to write more specific goals next week – I’m not sure of the group thinks 10 lives per level is a little or a lot. However, the group did follow its strategies.

Repeat champs group 2 improved from 2:1 to 1:1. Group 2’s strategy was “beat 8 levels…lose less than 10 lives.” The group’s strategies were “bubble, [save] lives, and speed.” I don’t know either, but it worked. Group 2’s most effective strategy is to play levels it knows from past experience rather than to attempt brand new levels. I wonder why they didn’t list it.

Group 3 decided on these goals: “not to hit, or push people off ledges [and] not to leave people behind.” To meet its goals, the group adopted these strategies: “work together, share shrumes [sic & middle school], be nice.” The group followed its strategies and wound up turing in its best performance to date. Since the group began by spending 50 lives per level last month, I call this significant progress in teamwork.

Group 4 spent the same amount of lives per level this week as last despite meeting its goal and following its strategies. The group tried all new levels – the highest levels unlocked in the game so far, and I think it’s likely that this is what kept their ratio from decreasing. They spent their time sight-reading the levels like gaming musicians. However, as I said, they met their goal – “not killing or eating each other” – and they used their strategies – “not yelling and not telling each other that you suck[...] everybody agree on a level, don’t give attitude [and] don’t force people to do stuff that they don’t want to do.”

Group 5 wanted “to beat as many levels as possible.” That’s too nebulous a goal for us to measure and we need to work on setting more specific and attainable goals for our work together. Group 5 wound up with a higher lives lost to levels won ratio this week than last; however, group 5 did beat 2 levels after beating only 1 1/2 each of the previous 3 contests. Group 5’s strategies were “bubble up, try not to argue, help each other [and] try not to be competitive.” By my observation, the group used it’s strategies, but may or may not have reached it’s goal. We need to debrief next week.

Group 6 tried “to win as many levels as possible without losing any lives.” The group wound up spending 16 lives per level, and so it did not meet its goal. The group’s strategies were “try not to yell at each other, practice outside of school, try not to be jerks [and] wait for each other.” In this group, a student got a little bit bossy with the other group members. While this didn’t constitute yelling, it did frustrate the other players. I wonder if all group embers have the same conception of “yelling” or “jerks,” or if they could set a more attainable goal for the next contest with more positive steps to take in terms of pro-social behaviors and effective game-play.

I might change up the rules next week and require all groups to sight-read a series of levels unlocked and selected by me. I’m curious about whether or not groups will change their strategies to play brand new levels rather than levels they’ve seen before.

Look for student responses to these results next week after our debriefing. Please suggest any questions you’d like me to ask them or any games we could use to develop and transfer our soft skills in the classroom.

Or, really, do we? If we had a social network (or better used our existing Edmodo network) or virtual day set up, couldn’t student teams compete with one another on a FaceBook game? On a prompt or menu of activities left as a message on our class Google Voice line? I have to sit down and make a contingency plan for the next snow day, publish it, and distribute it to students, and I need to design it so we somehow have at least the opportunity to keep our classwork and cooperation rolling.

In contrast to the slide in cooperation several groups evidenced while playing together last Friday, students’ individual analyses of their group’s growth in cooperation continue to improve in quality – you know, qualitatively speaking. Here are some of our debriefing questions and students’ answers to them:

Wii by swannman

Question 1: How do you know your group’s cooperation has improved since we first started playing?

• “We have completed more levels.”
• “People are calmer.”
• “We are learning from each other.”
• “Now I enjoy playing with my group.”
• “We know what to do and say.”
• “We have a strategy.”
• “We won every time.”

Question 2: What have you learned about cooperation so far?

• “That you can’t yell at other players.”
• “Cooperation makes things go better.”
• “You need a lot of it to do work.”
• “You need a leader, but not everyone can be a leader.”
• “It’s not that hard and it helps you get further.”
• “It’s fun and frustrating to work together.”

Ambiguity rears it’s ugly head in schoolwork. Awesome.

Question 3: What is a strength that your group has that helps group members cooperate?

• “Confidence.”
• “We stay on task.”
• “We are nerds.”
• “Talking.”
• “Speed and communication.”

Question 4: What is an area of cooperation in which your group can improve?

• “Not cuss.”
• “Friendship.”
• “Helping one another.”
• “Strategy.”
• “Nerdiness.”

What else can we do to make school be a place where students feel confident, stay on-task, feel good about being nerds, and participate as equal partners in communication for learning?

I think it’s probably time to hand the small-group gaming commentary off to student guest bloggers or else have students create their own blogs ASAP so they can share their learning directly with you. I’m a bit behind the times this year on the student blogging front; this could be the impetus for getting back into the swing of it.

I’m thinking about bringing in Kodu Game Lab and Little Big Planet to add a game/level-creation tier to project menus. For example, a student could create a level in Little Big Planet with platforming metaphors for the major events of the 1930s (can’t you see a series of rising platforms filled with prize bubbles representing the Roaring Twenties before the Great Depression drops the bottom out of the level?), or use Kodu Game Lab to write a game with branching paths that simultaneously summarizes a story and speculates on its what-ifs (Pac-man vs. The Maze Runner mash-up?).   I hope, too, that the co-op levels of “Game 3,” a.k.a “BattleBlock Theater,” will offer opportunities for teamwork and reflection like New Super Mario Bros. Wii that can compete with the slapstick lure of its other modes. I suppose that where the learning design comes into play.

Day 223 - Learning to use computers by LShave

Here is today’s leading #edchat question:

How does the internet change the role of content and prior knowledge?

It doesn’t. Kids still need a personal stake in both to create meaning.  While everyone can learn content and has prior-knowledge, school-valued content and prior knowledge remain commodities that some have and some do not.  I would further argue that how kids access that information outside school has changed a lot more than classroom practice inside school. Think about the types of information students pursue on their own time in accordance with their own interests. They know where to go and what to search for regarding their passions, hobbies, interests, and fads.  I think kids are used to learning at a faster pace outside of school than inside.  The relevance of what students are learning and their specialization in search tools speeds up the pace of learning for them. Because we still insist on a curriculum being a curriculum and a school year being a school year (and a $14.95 unit is a $14.95 unit, and a mini-lesson is 5-15 minutes, dammit!), we educators often keep ourselves from re-imagining learning through personal, rather than curricular, connections at a different pace. It’s like when Vger DMed Earth and it took an outsider like Spock to realize humanity’s “child” was on Twitter, not email.  See scene 175.  I mean, obviously. K1RK GOT PWNED, NOOB! FAIL! I was totally ROFL.

At school, however, most students are still told what to research and how to research it. They’re told what to learn and how to learn it (Question: in paragraph 3, is the underlined phrase ROFL figurative or literal, and how does the reader know?). Choice of browser, search tool, and/or subject can sometimes cloak schoolwork in relevancy, but I don’t see many teachers, myself included, radically changing classroom practice specifically in response to the amount of information and access points provided by the Internet and associated instructional technology. I still struggle to balance inquiry and test prep in making design decisions.

Then again, while I encourage students to Google it whenever possible, I’ve never been a fan or practitioner of the research project. Teachers who have incorporated the Internet into research projects, what’s worked for you and your students? How have new opportunities to find information changed the way you teach students how to gather, analyze, and use it? How has the Internet changed student research habits?

I wonder if a next step isn’t to elevate the search to an art form complete with peer critique. How much more would students learn about the what and the how if we ran conversational search seminars? What if students brought stuck or failed searches to the table and then talked or messaged with one another about the best ways to find relevant information? What if we crowd-sourced both the relevance and the rigor of search lessons to students and their relationships?

I don’t think technology has changed to role of content or background knowledge in learning, but I think it continues to change how we collect information and what we do with it. How else should I look at the question, PLN? How do you think the role of content and prior knowledge have, indeed, changed? Has access given them a new primacy? Has standardized testing? Or is the purpose of instructional technology to package content and prior knowledge for quicker assimilation into more rigorous work?

How do we get better at helping students learn how and why? How do we take advantage the ways that technology speeds up the what? How do we involve students in all this content and prior knowledge?  The questions remain the same.

Disclaimer: I still want my giant iPhone.

(Answer: figurative or literal – either way the question is illogical.)