The Myth of Classroom Discussion

“Class discussion on…” How many times have you written that on a lesson plan? Here’s another question: how many of those sessions are truly “discussions”? In real situations I know of no discussions that include one person directing questions to a large group of people who raise hands, competing to be the first to answer. True class discussions are rare. I have seen it done well by a few teachers in my school. The class is organized in a big circle, and more often than not, the teacher is outside of that circle, merely moderating. Discussion skills take practice too. If you circle the wagons and expect kids (at any age) to conduct a scholarly discussion on their own, you may be disappointed. While this scenario is closer to “discussion,” two problems still exist. First, only those who are socially assertive participate, and second, due to the competition to be fast, responses are often half-baked and brief.

So what’s the solution? Cooperative groups can encourage a higher participation rate—it’s hard to hide in a group of three. The problem is that often some great ideas are lost within the group and not shared with the whole class.

Enter discussion boards.

OK, discussion boards arent as sexy and new as some other applications discussion boards hold many advantages over class conversations. Since they are asynchronous, participants have time to respond; there is no pressure to “compete” with other students to answer quickly. Another advantage of asynchronous communication is that it often results in more thoughtful, thorough responses. A study done in 2006 revealed that asynchronous writing produced richer, morwe thoughtful responses than did synchronous writing (Mobrito). Also, because of the permanence, participants can read and reread posts to avoid misinterpretation.

Because of their egalitarian nature, discussion boards allow opportunity or all students. I was always pleasantly surprised to see some very thoughtful responses from students normally “quiet” in the classroom. Perhaps those students were not as vocal, or they preferred to have time to process the ideas to formulate insightful responses. Either way, the discussion board encourages thoughtful participation from everyone.

Using discussion boards allow teachers to assess social skills as well as the content. Give students a set of protocols for posting on discussion boards. Make sure when responding that they acknowledge the previous response and if they disagree, that they criticize the idea, not the person. It’s also a good idea that students are aware that they are to post using standard English; this isn’t a chat room (LOL).

Some teachers may argue that they don’t have the time to post, review, and respond to discussion board. True, if discussion boards are added on to an existing curriculum, time becomes very limited. Consider this: perhaps the discussion boards are replacing some other activities that are more teacher centered. Perhaps you can “selectively abandon” some other activities. (Translation: lose the worksheets).
Once you set up the discussion board the teacher include a few other structures to ensure success. First, you must determine your role in the discussion. Will you participate? Are you starting all threads and letting them respond? Will you assign student moderators for discussions? Ideally, the more students “own” the discussion, the more authentic, but you may need to be a presence at least in the beginning. Next you must determine the topics of discussion. Make sure that the focus is on open-ended questions that encourage debate, dissention, and controversy; the idea is to encourage students to support answers, and listen to dissenting opinions.

Equitable participation is often another caveat. One solution is to break down the discussions into smaller groups, that way each person is responsible for a larger percentage of the discussion. Another possibility is to require minimum posts for “credit.” While I am loath to do this, I did find the need to tell students to “start at least one new thread” and “post at least three responses.” While this is admittedly, a bit artificial, it was a good way to get students started. Ideally, the discussion leads to meaning that will be required for another project; the motivation stems from the idea that “I need this discussion board to learn X.”
If you are not sure where to start, many web applications contain discussion boards. Ning, Moodle, and Wikispaces each has discussion board capabilities.

Many forward-thinking educators preach the need to develop more student-centered classrooms. To do so, students need to “own” the learning and have the opportunity to use take advantage of learning spaces outside of the classroom walls. Purposeful use of discussion boards is one way to achieve this.

Four Faces

Disclaimer: This post has nothing to do with technology.


Three years ago I was a sophomore English teacher. The significance is that for the first time in my career there are no students in the halls who know me as their current of former teacher. While I love my current position there is a bit of sadness in this thought. So last week, when I walked down the main hall I smiled when I noticed that in the pictures of the “2010 Seniors of the Year” the visage of a former student was smiling back at me. Josh was named the Speech and Communications Senior of the Year: no small task in a school with ten state speech championships in the last eleven years. I knew he was a talented speaker, and was a joy to have in class, and I must admit, my chest swelled a bit knowing that I was his sophomore English teacher. Then I came back to reality when I remembered that we were blessed with Jan Heiteen, one of the top speech coaches in the nation.

My eyes scanned the pictures until they met another familiar face; Casey was named top PE student. I remember Casey’s happy, hard-working demeanor as well as the accolades she received as a top cross country runner. But this wasn’t sports…it was P.E. Often times, athletes have a blasé attitude towards P.E.; their physical exertion was saved for their sport, not P.E. class. Yet here was Casey, recognized for her leadership and exemplary behavior. The same behavior she exhibited in my class--every day.

I scanned another row, and…what do you know. Roxana: “Student of the Year” for Family and Consumer Science. Like Casey and Josh, Roxana was also a “pleasure to have in class” (How’s that for a cliché). I did some work with Roxana’s senior Intro to Teaching class last year. It was rewarding to see her blossom into a poised, articulate, enthusiastic teaching candidate (She is thankfully majoring in elementary education now), after knowing her as an effervescent sophomore.

Wow Three of my students were “seniors of the year” unless…

There was Amanda. Shy, hard-working Amanda, named Special Services Student of the Year. My thoughts went back to seventh period sophomore “Skills” (always hated that term) three years ago. Amanda: always making eye contact, always pen in hand, always careful notes, always smiling when I said good bye at the end of the period.

Four. I had four students on the board. No small feat considering we have over 3,000 students, and nearly thirty English teachers. As I walked down the hall, my pride was tempered with two thoughts. First, while all receiving good grades, none of them were necessarily the best writers I had in class. Second, Could it be that perhaps I was the one who was fortunate to have them?

Please do not think that the purpose of this post is to gloat over something that, frankly, I didn’t earn. The point is this: we teachers, especially in the fragmented world of high schools, often look at our students through the lens of our discipline.After all, I wasn’t teaching honors sophomore English. I had two sections of “regular” and two of “Skills.” We have to remember, though, that an “average” math student might be a brilliant writer; a struggling history student might be an accomplished cellist. And the list goes on.

Josh, Casey, Roxana, and Amanda were part of the “last class” I taught, and I was fortunate to have these special kids. My only regret is that it took pictures on a wall for me to realize how talented and truly remarkable these kids are. We all need to keep that in minds with all of our students.

Bulging Pockets

Like most edubloggers, this post is sort of a “back-to-school” one. However, instead of offering a motivational charge, I would like to share with you an account of a very encouraging day I had last week.

Last Wednesday morning I led the annual new teacher training. I am allotted three hours to get new teachers up and running on our system at school. You know, logins, email, grade book…essentials, but not necessarily translating to student achievement. This year I decided to get through the mechanics as quickly as possible, and use our remaining time to work with teachers on how to develop a more student-centered classroom, and how to use some of our available applications to change the way our kids learn. The morning was the most successful session we’d had. Their eyes widened and their enthusiasm rose when they realized this wouldn’t be a “how to” tech session. Instead, once the group opened up, it became a sharing of ideas which would result in actual change. I was also pleased to see that many of these “new” teachers were quite adept at many of the applications we used. My confidence swelled when a show of hands revealed that many of them already had Google accounts, used social bookmarking, and some were already blogging. And the best news yet? Not all of them were fresh out of college. The age of the “new” teachers ranged from early twenties to, well, as old as I am. So much for “Digital Natives.”

After the meeting I was stopped by my associate principal. He was wondering if I could help staff with Learning Teams. Two years back, we adopted the DuFour model of a Professional Learning Community. He had said that teachers were frustrated with the limited time they had in meeting face to face with Learning Teams, and needed to know how to create some new “learning spaces” (HIS term) to allow access and promote a more 24-7 chance to work on sharing ideas and creating common assessments. He wanted to know if I could teach the staff how to utilize applications such as existing tools in our content management system as well as Google Docs, Forms, and Moderator. Hmm, a chance to do systemic training? Count me in.

Later that day, I met with a journalism teacher who, wanted to do what was best for her students, and develop a paperless, online school newspaper. She started with “I can’t, in good conscience, teach journalism in an archaic form.” She told me what she wanted, and we worked together to develop a way that her student staff could develop the school newspaper completely on line, including podcasts, and the ability to have the rest of the school comment on articles… all within our existing content management system.

This day just kept getting better and better.

Before I left, I decided to check my email. I saw a message from a teacher, previously on the technophobic side. She wanted to take all of the Effective Reading classes, put them in a group together that would allow them to write book reviews which other students could read, comment, and decide themselves whether they too wanted to read those books. She never mentioned the word “blog” but it didn’t matter. These kids would be writing for an authentic audience and purpose and would be responding, sharing and critiquing on line.

Someone pinch me.

Please understand that my purpose is not to brag about the teachers in my school; I am sure you have these same “pockets” of teachers who are doing great activities with their kids. The point is this: the pockets are bulging. I no longer have the same handful of trailblazers asking for assistance. These are the teachers who usually don’t seek me out for ideas. And what’s better, I no longer have as many people approaching me with a tool and asking me how to use it. Instead they have a vision, or design of a new idea, and are asking me how to do it. The ISTE NETS standards discuss “Systemic Change.” And while we are not there yet, we are nearing the Tipping Point of such change. Here’s to a great school year for all of us.

Pecha Kucha or Digital Storytelling?

If you know me at all, you know about my love affair with the process of Digital Storytelling as a means to create community and to give students an authentic voice to share experiences and life lessons. The idea of developing a personal narrative and adding images, voice, and soundtrack and then recording it in a “permanent” form has developed into one of the most engaging activities for students (and others) to do.

While conducting a workshop on DST last year, I had a teacher who was rather ambivalent about the whole DST concept.  While he embraced the idea of melding words and images, he would have preferred an activity that incorporated a “live” presentation; he wanted to make sure that teachers did not substitute a Digital Storytelling assignment for a speech. I couldn’t agree more. There is no substitute for a live performance; an entire set of skills and learning targets come into play with any public speaking. I had told him that DST would “replace” something like a written narrative, not a live speech.  But the more I thought about it, he had a point. Could there be another possibility that was as engaging as DST yet live (And no, I am not referring to a speech with never-ending, bulleted list Powerpoint slides)?

Then I heard about Pecha Kucha (Pronounced: puCHA kuCHA).  First conceived as a Japanese bar game, (like Karaoke) the Pecha Kucha concept is deceptively simple: twenty consecutive images, each displayed to the audience for twenty seconds while the speaker presents live to the audience. For more information on Pecha Kucha and a sample from me (sort of) please go to my Digital Storytelling page.  Actually, the inception of Digital Storytelling by Dana Atchley and Joe Lambert stemmed from live performances anyway!

Last year at a conference in Illinois, I was asked to try my hand at Pecha Kucha. As a Digital Storyteller, I must say that the experience was quite a departure for me. The live concept was both exhilarating and a bit intimidating. I mean, in DST if something didn’t sound right or my timing was off, I could re record. But with Pecha Kucha, I was out there.  On the other hand, it was much more engaging for me the performer. I could respond to the audience and “ad lib” when appropriate. I performed it twice live and expectedly, each performance had its own subtle uniqueness.

True, there is not the “polished” feel of a Digital Story, but what it lacked in polish; it excelled in spontaneity and audience interaction.  What I found interesting was how the audience’s attention went back and forth between the screen and me, as if watching a tennis match. At times, they needed to watch the image while listening to my voice and at particular animated moments the attention was all on me. The other new sensation was that clock ticking in the back of my head. Pacing and development of ideas were always on my mind, and the question always loomed, “Is it going to change…now?”

So where does this all fit for teachers? Is there a place for it in my classroom? Can kids do it? Does it need to be 20 images? First I think there can be a situation for students doing Pecha Kucha, or at least a form of it.  Instead of a six-minute plus performance, maybe try ten images. I do like the twenty-second intervals; anything less does not allow for much development on the part of narration. The other point is that when assessing, I believe there needs to be a certain allowance for spontaneity. To me, a speaker engaging with the audience, for the sake of speaking in a “polished” manner should be rewarded. But maybe you feel think otherwise.

So your question may be “Which one should I have kids do?”  My answer would be both. You can NEVER have too much student creation.

More Than Just a Spark

August is rapidly approaching, which means more of our thoughts turn to the upcoming school year. For me, that means lots of staff development planning. In a three-week period I will lead a Digital Storytelling workshop, a Blackboard seminar, a new-teacher training day, and a “Technology for PLC’s" session.
I do have one more workshop that has been occupying a great deal of my time and efforts. In three weeks I will be leading a District-Wide Administrator’s Academy on the topic of Web 2.0 Tools for Educational Leadership. The audience will be all District and Building-level administrators, department chairs, and lead teachers.

Whoa.

Needless to say, I am thrilled with this opportunity, yet I also know the importance of this day. I must admit, that I did not want the focus to be on “tools” but at the same time, many administrators “don’t know what they don’t know,” so an “awareness” might be a good starting point for all of us. Like your district, we have a wide variety of “tech” abilities, and the last thing I want to do is leave some of those folks in the dust…especially considering the influence they have.

In developing the plan for the day, I have come up with a dozen ideas for creating powerful staff development sessions. Here they are:

Build on prior knowledge: Develop a system that allows participants to share and discuss what they already know prior to the first session. In the spring, I set up discussion groups who followed a handful of blogs of innovative educators, and had them comment on what they read. I must admit, priming the pump took a while; I discovered that several of the people had never read blogs and were apprehensive about putting their comments “out there.” In the last two weeks, with the encouragement of others, the discussion boards have really been picking up steam, and will give us lots to discuss next month.

Know your audience: In my case, I will be working with all of the district leaders. Since the focus is on modeling best practices, many of more examples need to be “administrative” rather than “classroom.” Also, since participants have such a wide range of abilities and prior use, I need to rely on the “power users” to help the novices to create a “differentiated” learning environment.

Start with home-grown best practices: Like all districts, we too have pockets of some great innovative teaching and leading going on “right here in River City.” What better way to model this innovation than to showcase our own innovative leaders. Two byproducts result. First, it draws attention to those who are doing great things, and second, it adds credence to what we are trying to accomplish, and anticipates the skeptics who think we can’t do it here.

Walk the walk…Go paperless: One of the criticisms I hear about using any sort of content management system is that “kids don’t use it.” The answer is twofold. First, design lessons that are more inquiry driven and less “drill and kill.” The purpose of Moodle or Ning is not just to have a place to put worksheets. Inquiry-driven experiences better lend themselves to a paperless environment. Second, make sure the ONLY place to get information is in the content management system…in other words, don’t give a paper option. Keeping this in mind, your staff development sessions should be paperless as well. NO HANDOUTS. Hopefully, you’ll avoid the situation I had. I was running a session entitled “The Paperless Classroom” and had a teacher ask me for the handout for the session. Seriously.

Root it in sound pedagogy: Make sure the delivery of the staff development session reflects the pedagogy and vision of your district. Our District requires all teachers to be trained in Cooperative Learning (Johnsons and Kagan), Assessment Literacy (Stiggins), and CRISS Strategies. Needless to say our workshop will infuse Positive Interdependence, Formative Assessment, and require the use of several graphic organizers during instruction.

Empathize: Many educators have been doing great work for many years, and may question “why change now?” In some respects, they may have many strong arguments. Also, there will be feelings of uncertainty, which leads to fear and rejection of new ideas. Rule of thumb: NEVER start with technology. Instead, begin with a product, or a skill, and work backwards to show how it can be done. A traditional teacher may use lit circles. Show a product of students creating a set of “Cliff Notes” for that book collaboratively. THEN introduce the concept of a wiki. Understand that those people have a great deal to offer, and using that expertise to bridge the gap can go a long way.

Embrace the “leaders”: By “Leaders,” I don’t mean formal leaders. In every educational culture there are those whom others follow. They may be the more vocal or most experienced members of a faculty. If you can showcase work by those people, you are well on your way to create a tipping pint for the whole faculty. Here’s an idea: if you have teachers who are embracing your ideas and also happen to be active in union leadership, definitely showcase their work.

Talk less: As an Instructional Tech Coordinator, the whole school knows where I’m coming from before I speak. Sure, I will introduce ideas, but the more I have others present work, and the more I get them to discuss, question, and practice ideas, the more successful the day will be. I am invited to present at department meetings during the year to demonstrate tools and ideas. . I have learned that the most successful meetings occur when all I do is introduce other department members and let them demonstrate. My role is then to answer questions.

Inspire, don’t preach: We have all seen many videos that focus on how education has to change. However, the in-your-face, we’re-hurting-kids videos seem to do more harm than good. Instead focus on positive approaches that make people what to change. Will Richardson started with this great video a kid created, and his sole purpose was to solicit help on how to build a fire with a bow drill. Another one shows how a guy dancing on his own illustrates how a movement attracts followers. Both are non threatening to the viewer and inspire instead of wave a finger.

Make ‘em laugh: We all learn better when we’re happy, right? When my group is learning how to podcast, my intention is to give them lines from movies, and allow them to do a dramatic reading to share with others. Let’s face it, for the workshop, the content isn’t the issue, it’s learning how to use the tool. Right now I’m thinking lines from Animal House, Airplane, Caddy Shack, Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, and Dirty Harry… Am I showing my age?

Build in follow up: Yes, in my opinion, the last is the most important. We have all endured the “one and done” method of staff development. And we all know how meaningless it becomes. My District is making a commitment to transform our students’ education. I couldn’t be happier. We have already built in time during department meetings, institute days, and planning time to further explore thes ideas that will be introduced. Ongoing, formal and informal transformation is vital.

I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to these opportunities. But one of the first things I learned in my new position is that I can’t do it alone. I can ignite, answer questions, and bring people together. With the help of those people we can continue the exciting journey of doing what’s best for our kids.

Assessing Collaborative Writing

Tools like Google Docs and a variety of wikis have spawned an explosion of collaborative writing possibilities for students. However, too often teachers are puzzled and dismayed when the results are less than expected. Questions I often hear from teachers are “How do I know all kids are working?”  “How do I keep them from cutting and pasting?” In other words, “How do I assess collaborative writing?” Keep in mind that “wikis” and “collaborative writing” are not synonymous. The former is a tool, and the latter is a process. Many teachers have used wikis for massive collaborative data collection with the entire class participating in a single purpose; while this is a valuable process, it is not collaborative writing. Here are a few tips to ensure success in a true collaborative process

Create an Authentic Audience and Purpose Too often, we as teachers ask students to write or create for no other reason than to have them prove that they can master the skill. The teacher is the only audience. Why not create an activity that other students need to succeed in the course? In an English class, have small groups read Lord of the Flies, and each group read the book through a particular “lens” (Social Darwinism, Biblical Allusions, Freudian Psychology) and publish their interpretations for the rest of the class to read and analyze. A math class could take the same concept solve a particular kind of problem and share their findings. I got this idea from Darren Kuropatwa, who calls it his “Wiki Solutions Manual.”  A French class could study regions of France and share those results. The idea is that someone other than the teacher will read the product, and more importantly will rely upon it for success. Also, students become “experts” in a particular field.

Form Small Groups For a collaborative writing task, I would recommend no more than four members per group, with the ideal number being three. The Johnsons and Spencer Kagan are two of the leading experts in Cooperative Learning, and both stress the importance of matching group size to the task. The first reason is that the larger the group, the more complicated the communication becomes. Simply adding one person to a pair triples the lines of communication. The second reason is that the smaller the group, the greater the individual accountability. It’s much easier to “hide” in a group of six than in a group of three.

Develop Precise Learning Targets Prior to the activity, develop a set of specific, measureable learning targets and share them with the students. Ideally you want to have students help develop these as well as the rubric you will use to assess the project. Rick Stiggins has done groundbreaking work in developing learning targets.

Assign SPECIFIC Roles When students are faced with a collaborative task, often their solution is to “divide and conquer.” “Linda, you write the first part, Thomas, you do the second, and I’ll do the third,” is usually what transpires. Unfortunately, Linda often never even reads parts two or three. Instead of a collaborative writing experience, we have a patchwork of individual ideas. Instead of a “quilt” we want a uniform “blanket.” During the first draft, it’s ok to parse out these segments, but to achieve uniform writing, and to expose all students to the entire document, assign revision roles that permeate the entire document. After the draft (and your subsequent comments) Linda can revise the entire document for support, Thomas for organization, and the third student for mechanics. Then the next time around you can assign “format” roles such as “images,” “hyperlinks” and “citations.” The key is that ALL students are responsible for the ENTIRE paper. You can assess students individually that way as well.

Offer Frequent Formative Assessment Stiggins also is an advocate for continual Formative Assessment (Assessment FOR Learning). Begin by setting target dates for steps in the process of the collaborative writing experience. As each date approaches, monitor the progress of the documents and offer suggestions for improvement. Make sure to offer suggestions ONLY on what is being measured for that segment. In other words, you should refrain from noting spelling errors during a brainstorming phase.

Consider Assessing More Than Just Writing As a former English teacher, my emphasis, of course was on evaluating the writing. However, even the NCTE recognizes “text” as more than just words. Consider images as being a requirement for the document. Using hyperlinks correctly can also be a valuable addition. Even embedding video or podcasts may be used to make the project multi dimensional, and as a result, more engaging. Also, this affords a great opportunity to teach ethical use of material and proper citation.

Be a Teacher All wiki tools have a History function, and some can even break down the “lines modified” by users to determine who added what to the document. While these can be handy as a guideline, I recommend that you avoid using these numbers as gospel. If students think you are looking at only the results on the history, two negative byproducts may result. First students will fight over who enters what so they get “credit” for writing it. Second, students will enter the editing mode of the document and leave without making changes, or merely add and delete a period. To discourage this, you need to schedule regular meeting times during class for kids to discuss, face to face, their progress. During that time, you need to be carefully observing their progress to make sure kids are on task. You can keep track of those kids who offer ideas in the process, but may not be doing the typing. Stress to your class that you will not be “nit picking” about who wrote what line, but are more interested in the entire product. The Johnsons offer many suggestions to ensure Individual Accountability. 

Plainly stated, Collaborative Writing is difficult work. Assessing it can be just as hard. These tips can help raise standards as well as make the assessment task more manageable. 

Ten Burning Questions

Lee Kolbert's Blog is subtitled "Ask lots of questions."  And, true, most educators today know it's all about asking good questions.  So I decided to walk the walk, AND encourage you to participate.

The last week or so, several questions have been simmering in my head. I have been observing  instances that make me wonder "why?"  I would like to share those questions with you and allow for a more interactive discussion.

http://tinyurl.com/burningquestions


Yes, after becoming a Google Certified Teacher I am making use of my new fave tool: Moderator.


Please click the link, check out the questions, my responses, respond on your own, add more, vote, whatever.