Classroom: 2010 Annual Review (1 of 4)

[This post is the first in a series of four looking back at my classroom in 2010.]


A week ago yesterday was the was the first day back to school in Halifax, VA for high schoolers, and Monday was the first day of spring semester college classes (albeit abbreviated by the weather).  I've got a 'New in 2011' post planned for later this month, but before we're too far into the year that is I wanted to take a quick look back at the year that was.

The format (and this exercise itself) is inspired by Chris Guillebeau's excellent Annual Review from his Art of Non Conformity blog.  Even broken into four parts, this is MUCH more brief than he practices, but I focus on his two fundamental questions, and also generalize as much as possible between my secondary and post-secondary classes.

What Went Well?

• Google Based Solutions - Google Docs and Google Blogger have been an overwhelming success.  They are free, fast, ubiquitous, and functional and they make it possible for me and my students to do more and better work.  There are an intimidating number of free and paid options out there, but Google works for me and for my students.  They've provided solutions to the challenges of teaching paperless, too!
  
  I used Blogger to create simple and functional weblogs for every course (links to my college courses) where I could communicate with my students, post office hours, share interesting content, and easily link to course documents.  It is not as participatory as some closed CMS options, but most students have found it useful and functional.   (Daniel Pink even posted to a student presentation about his work on our Creative Thinking blog!)  It does require a bit of time to train students to look there, though.
  
  
  Same goes for Google Docs.  I was already moving nearly everything to the cloud in my own work habits (poor Pages is so rarely launched now!) but making, accessing, and distributing items has rarely been easier.  I don't fight the minimalist design aesthetic Docs imposes (which can border on the anaemic; if you like lots of pictures and fun stuff in your communications with students you will have some massaging to do), but for drafting and sharing assignments (including quizzes) easily and quickly Docs is hard to beat.  Students have told me (once they get the hang of it) that they enjoy the freedom from MS Word and Powerpoint and the ability to get at their files from school, home, and even grandma's house.  They can also use it for storage to upload files of nearly any format.  I like the commenting features as well where I (and my co-teacher) can easily leave feedback much richer than either of us could on a printed page.
  
  
• Field Trips - I am a BIG fan of field trips.  I think they help contextualize the world for students who all too often study it in a remarkably bare and antiseptic institution.  Since the very first semester when I began teaching, field trips have been a regular feature of my classes.  We are fortunate to enjoy the generous support of local sponsors for our classes, so we have been able to take students to Richmond, VA each semester for a First Friday, a night each month when galleries and museums coordinate openings and receptions.  While in town we tour VCU's art program, the VMFA, several of the galleries on Broad and Main Sts, and always eat at Five Guys Burgers & Fries.  We took our biggest group yet last fall with students from 3 different classes.
  
  
  
  In 2010 we also stretched our vision big time and took a small team of high school and college students to New York City for a design trip.  I envisioned the trip as a way for students interested in creative careers to tour a modern mecca for creative professionals seeing museums, art shows, creative firms and honest-to-god, out-in-the-wild working creative people.  That trip was a huge success –we met the editorial staff at Core77, had a workshop at the 5th avenue Apple store, visited MOMA, saw the Armory show, and enjoyed a movie and pizza in Times Square– and I am happy that we will repeat it this year.

• Co-Teaching - Because I teach in a sort of nebulous world between the public school system and the community college system, I was joined in my high school classes in 2010 by a co-teacher from the public school system.  I was intimidated to invite another instructor into the classroom to share lesson plans and authority with me (wouldn't you be?), but that partnership has worked very well and even grown into a friendship.  Roy and I have settled into an easy partnership sharing grading responsibilities, project design, and instructional duties.  His background in the printing industry complements everything we cover in graphics and the students and I benefit greatly from his 12 years teaching in the public school system.  He's not one to rest on his laurels though, and has quickly explored and adopted new technology (now an admitted Apple fanboy!) and teaches me new stuff as often as the students.
  
  
  In the classroom, that partnership has been invaluable in maintaining a positive attitude (it's nice to not feel alone with 21 students!), allowed us to expand the program (two blocks now), and improved the ability to serve students in and out of the classroom.  I'd even like to expand this collaborative approach to other classes in the program I administrate, and as I understand it, there's precedent way back to the roots of our inspiration in the Bauhaus where classes were regularly outfitted with two instructors, one a theory guy and the other a craftsman.

• Creativity in the Classroom - I frequently say that the mission of the program I both teach in and administrate is to develop creative and sustainable human capital for our region, and I believe our focus on creativity makes a significant difference in the lives of our students.  Students in my classes (and those taught by my program's faculty) have several opportunities in class to express and explore their inherently creative nature, something which I hear (and see) has pretty much been drilled out of a generation or two of America's future leaders (to our peril).
  Every class I teach has an ART or HUM prefix, so of course creativity plays a central role in coursework.  Students use divergent and convergent thinking to arrive at their own unique solution to a project's challenge, e.g. 'Illustrate a personally meaningful quotation using Typography and Color' or 'Remix pre-existing movie footage to create a trailer that changes the context of the movie (say, from comedy to horror).'  Because there is no definitive 'right' answer to many of the projects presented to students, there is opportunity to challenge high-achievers and give a voice to previously marginal performers.  Two very good things come out of these types of projects:
  
  
  • For students used to taking state-sponsored Standards of Learning tests and constantly pressured to know "this is going to be on the test," coursework that requires them to make an argument, explore something unique or express an idea is a refreshing challenge.  Artistic and design thinking wrestles with ambiguity in a way no SOL can (If only life had questions whose every answer was known!) and additionally fosters personal growth (what do I think? how do I say that?), social development (what will others think? how do they tell me?) and analytical ability (why does/doesn't this work?).
    
    
  • I see students every semester who are labeled by the school system as "at risk" or "IEP," "weird" by their peers, or, even worse, "stupid" by themselves.  These same students are also very clearly bright!  I am happy to tell them this in class and to challenge them with a different kind of schoolwork which makes sense to them and speaks to their own particular style of learning.  When students who have written themselves off or who look at school and education as something merely to be endured text me links to art they've seen, email articles they read and found interesting, or share work they're proud of via Facebook links on my wall --that demonstrates engagement and resonance with the material!

So there's a quick review of what I think went well in 2010.  Stay tuned for the next 2010 Annual Review post (2 of 4) on What Did Not Go Well.


Meanwhile, what went well in your classroom last year?  Please share your comments!

~MrC

HOW: Failure, Oliver Sacks and "The Mind's Eye"

Listened to an interesting interview with The Mind's Eye author and neurologist Oliver Sacks on "Empathy as a Path to Insight" from Harvard Business Review's IdeaCast series.  As pertains to the classroom, what got me was this line:

"...I learn by seeing what happens when things go wrong.  It's very difficult to learn when everything goes right."

If you also learn that way –and many people do– it prompts a question for educators: do you design your lessons for what to do when everything goes right, or do you design for failure recognizing that failure is a teaching moment?  How can you create moments of controlled/uncontrolled (but always safe) failure for your students?  Should you?

cloudy sky and broken lamppost outside walmart
© 2010 ben capozzi

Some of my best teaching moments happened when something didn't work the way students thought it would.  If troubleshooting is par for the course in much of the ambiguous world of modern work and life –and it seems to be– how best can we bring that into the classroom?  While most of what I teach are technical subjects (computer graphics, multimedia) where if something can go wrong it will, I think creative failures can be built into any course and subject.  Are you designing your teaching activity around failure and the opportunities it presents, or around a series of artificial and unambiguous best-case scenarios?

Listen to the interview here.

~mrc

WHY: Students and the NOW Habit

This week, Jason Fitzpatrick at Lifehacker posted a nice summary of Neil Fiore's 2007 book The Now Habit.  Reading with my educator hat on –instead of my productivity aspirant one– I thought about how some of this may be playing out in the classroom, and how it can help shape educator thinking and time management in the classroom.  First some background.

mr c's time this am
© 2010 ben capozzi

Fiore's unique contribution, says Fitzpatrick, is "revolutionary for being the first mainstream procrastination self-help book that focused on helping procrastinators deal with the psychological reasons behind procrastination [emphasis mine] and skipped the lectures on discipline and motivation."  For those for whom "just do it," just doesn't do it, this book may be for you.

I've read a few chapters of the book, and much of what Fiore (Ph.D. in Psychology) puts forward resonates.  Consider his definition of procrastination:

• a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision

 And the three main motivations for why people procrastinate:

• as an indirect method of resisting pressure from authorities

• as a method of lessening fear of failure by providing an excuse for a disappointing, less than perfect performance

• as a defense mechanism against fear of success by keeping us from doing our best

And one additional insight:

Non procrastinators think of procrastinators as lazy and careless, but the reality is that most procrastinators care way too much.  They worry that the work they do isn't good enough (so they put off doing it so they have an excuse for not meeting their own unreasonable expectations).  They worry that the worst possible thing will happen if they don't get their act together...[and are paralyzed by the pressure]

The rest of Fitzpatrick's summary goes into strategies for overcoming procrastination and warrants a read, which may motivate you to read Fiore's original as well.  But I wonder if and how this plays out in the classroom?

close up of a cy twombly painting at the vmfa
© 2010 ben capozzi

Every instructor has known students who dawdle, habitually turn in late work, and/or who do not perform to their potential.  Some may chalk this up to lack of engagement with the material or a crippled attention span, but could these be symptoms demonstrating a reaction to the anxiety of schoolwork?  Consider the high-stakes testing everyone bemoans and the relentless emphasis on something as abstract as a letter grade to indicate the breadth and depth of learning and understanding.  Add to this the tumult of social drama, teen angst, cognitive dissonance, and bodies chemically awash in hormones (and factory foods), and you have an army of impediments arrayed against young people.

Despite these obstacles, or perhaps in some cases because of them, many students still find their way and manage to succeed (both as our myopic and impoverished standardized system defines success and achievement, and beyond to an even greater standard), but student performance as a whole, whether compared to international competitors or against our own ideal calculus, seems to consistently disappoint.  Both adults and kids.  So what can be done?

several large ceramic totems by jun kaneko at the vmfa
© 2010 bencapozzi

Time Management plays a prominent role in Fiore's prescription, which wisely devotes significant attention to tracking and analyzing how we spend our time, plus scheduling healthy play and other beneficial coping strategies.  In the context of the classroom and as pertains to procrastination as an anxious reaction in students, I think a few things educators could try:

1. More Assignments - This may sound counter-intuitive, but one thing from my artistic practice for which I am particularly grateful is the emphasis on generating a large body of work rather than a few precious pieces.  With so many drawings, paintings, sketches, and studies generated over the course of a semester, there is less pressure for each activity to be perfect and more room for each to be what it should be –a learning opportunity.   Skill development takes time and practice.  How often do your students get to practice what they're learning, and how richly do they practice it?  By which I mean how varied and how stimulating; do they discuss challenges as a group? collaboratively solve?  imaginatively share findings?  provide counsel peer to peer?
2. Richer Assessments - Perhaps I'm prejudiced as an art student, but I am a big fan of portfolios to demonstrate learning and understanding.  Consider a collection of research, reflection, journal entries, artwork, stories, discussion, self-generated study guides, multimedia presentations and more as a better reflection of deep engagement with a subject and richer understanding.
3. Assisted Time Management - Be transparent about the structure of class time with your students, explaining the day's agenda so they can see how you budget the allotted time to get things done in class, and try out frequent, low-pressure, timed activities (great opportunities for practice and small group discussion).

What role do you think procrastination plays in student performance?  What are your ideas for managing anxiety in the classroom and creating optimal conditions for student learning, growth, and success?

~mrc

HOW: New Features in Google Docs

I'm not sure why Google Docs is telling me there are new features today (can't find any), but still, if you're not using Google Docs I urge you to give 'em a try.  It's basically like having MS Word, Powerpoint and Excel in your browser.  For free.  Everywhere you have an internet connection.  I'm a Mac guy, and I've even left behind the iWork suite for Docs!  Docs makes my beloved Apple's cloud-based iWork beta seem hopelessly klugey in comparison, though I do use Keynote for presentations when I need to "wow."

I use Docs aggressively both inside and outside of class for work and personal projects.  They've become pretty integral to the way I create and manage text files and in-class presentations.  I've also been pleased to hear many students say this is now how they write papers and create school documents.  What pleases me about this is that it's free and functional and makes collaboration (sharing and commenting) easy for both students and instructors.  Technology!  Facilitating human endeavor!  Yes!

You can find a new features list here.  And the two videos below provide a nice overview.

WHY: Principals of Technology

Nope, not a title typo.  Several posts and a video (above) came across my PLN last week on how different K-12 principals are reacting to the presence of everyday digital things in the classroom (things folks use outside school like cell phones, ipods and Facebook; not smartboards, projectors and locker checks).  Some are alarmed by the potential of these things to adversely affect the "real work" of school.  Others are engaging with how best to incorporate these things.  There's also a Boston Globe article on yet another high school principal.

I'm pretty pro-technology in the classroom and among students, and a few lines from that piece in the Globe jumped out at me:

• "...leaving behind 'the idea that people can only be educated between 7 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.’'"
• "...Adopting technology is a necessity, Conti said, 'like heat, electricity, air-conditioning. I think of it as a utility, not anything new or special.’'" [reminds me of Carr in The Big Switch]
• “If they want to cheat, they’re going to cheat’’ [reminds me of Steve Jobs on music piracy as a behavior problem, not a technology one]
• "When students graduate, Larkin said, 'if they only know people in Burlington, we didn’t do our job.'" [on Skype]

My experience has been that the more School seems to diverge from students' perception of "the real world" the more relevance (= "attention points") School loses.

I do my best to make sure this doesn't happen to those learners I work with every day, and challenge other educators to do the same with a generation that we desperately need to be smart, thoughtful, and imaginative.  I would ask teachers to ask themselves if they are contributing to the cognitive dissonance through their lesson plans and attitudes, or are they helping students do the great bridging work of synthesis and meaning-making?

~mrc

HOW: Twitter in the Classroom

Nice video posted by Mark Barnes over at Learn It In 5 on how to set up Twitter accounts for students.  Particular attention is given to the privacy settings for those for whom teaching minors is an issue.  Barnes is pretty passionate about opening Twitter up to all students, and you'll find more to read on his site about that topic.

I'm trying Today's Meet this semester for a backchannel in both secondary and post-secondary classes I teach, but have not committed students to using social media.  I appreciate the tips for adjusting privacy settings and setting Twitter handles, and will reference this piece in the future if I decide to.

~mrc

TECH: Phone.io for Class

The ever-awesome @rmbyrne has really got me intrigued with his enthusiasm for a service called drop.io, basically an online dropbox (but different from the equally-awesome DropBox), and while I'm still going through all the generous info and techniques he's posted, I couldn't resist trying for myself the related phone.io service.

With phone.io, it sounds like I can set up a voicemail box on any of my course websites and then call in to leave messages for my students.  Not individually, but for the class as a whole, so if I'm on the road and see something they should all check out, or (worst case) have an emergency, I can make one phone call that will live in one easily accessible place for every student to hear.

I'm trying it out below in a test drop.  (*Home internet issues are making work difficult today!)

Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

This is not a substitution for mass emailing or posting to the course weblog, but I like that, if this work as I hope it does, it's a neat solution for last-minute change of plans, sharing on the fly, and, as Byrne points out in his own use scenario, making sure students don't have that whole "the substitute teacher didn't tell us that!" excuse; with this, I can conveniently leave explicit instructions in writing and audio.

I'll keep you posted.

~mrc

UPDATE–
Or do I need to install a widget that reads the RSS for the latest phone drops to be updated on the site?  Going to try embedding the RSS feed of this drop in a Gadget on the blog sidebar.


UPDATE 2–
Yup, that did it.  Not sure if this is the best practice as recommended, but it works for me.  If I come across an improved method, I'll share.  As of right now, though, I have a setup where I can call a phone number and leave a voice message for any of my classes.  I'll need to create custom phone numbers for each class, and as far as I can tell, I have no control over the extension for each number (which is basically one more random password to remember) but I'm going to experiment with this this fall.  


Other ideas for using phone.io in the classroom?