Clay Modeling: Lessons from the Keynote Address

We are facing an educational landscape which is about to be formed by student demand.--Clay Shirky, Keynote Address, Blackboard World 13

“Boy, did we make a mistake.  We did not listen to our students,” Howard, a Stats professor at a local university told me.  “We thought our Blended Learning and online courses were popular because of the use of technology, but our surveys did not reflect this idea.  We assumed that students of online courses were commuters who were working from home.  When we checked the login times and places of these students, we realized that they were doing their work in the early afternoon, even though the classes were scheduled in the morning, and they were working from their dorms.  When we changed the class times to afternoon, the students flocked to them.  The data showed us that students didn’t want to think about statistics courses in the morning, and we didn’t fill their needs in a face to face class, so they used what they could to get the learning they wanted.”

Clay Shirky's words have been whirling through my mind.  My first takeaway from his address was to remind myself that students DO want to learn.  In a sad time where many school districts are limiting class choices due to financial constraints, students are still looking for ways to educate themselves.  Many high school students are signing up for Advanced Placement, Post-Secondary Option, Dual Credit, and Language courses on their own, and these classes aren't always connected to their schools.  I've come to see that my role as a Blended Learning Teacher is to help them accomplish these goals by training them to "learn to learn."  My primary purpose is to teach them to take responsibility for their own learning because they may need to pave a "road less traveled" in the journey to their education.  I want to empower my students on their journey, and so I make a resolution:  I will listen to my students.

 

 



 

 

 

I will let them show me how they want to learn.  I will remember that I am not always the potter, rather I may sometimes be the clay.

 

 

 



 

Stephani Itibrout

Blended Learning Rhetoric and Composition

@itibrout

BbWorld Keynote Reminds Us to Challenge the Status Quo

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300"] BbWorld Blogger[/caption]

 

Welcome to BbWorld Keynote

Entering a BbWorld keynote is an amazing experience. The energy is contagious and you know that you are in store for an incredible experience. With over 50 countries represented at BbWorld the number of networking opportunities is mind boggling. This is my first foray as a BbWorld VIP Blogger. Tweeting and meeting the other bloggers makes me feel like I’m at a class reunion where only the cool kids are invited.

Key takeaways from Clay Shirky

Clay Shirky takes the stage and promises not to be the guy who tells you how to do your job when he’s never done your job. Score +1 for Clay!

Education is collaborative - having a conversation and carrying on. We produce and publish to start a conversation which leads to more learning. If what we are producing and requiring students to produce does not spark a conversation and continued inquiry, then does it really have value?

Clay draws laughter when he reminds the audience that many of them may be too young to recognize the Napster logo. While the moment was funny, it reminds me that technology is rapidly changing the landscape of our world. As education professionals we have to change and adapt to the world in which our students live. This means embracing new technology, showing relevance the content that we teach, helping students identify and embrace their passion, trying new pedagogies, and NOT teaching to the test!

The world is full of people who have challenged the system and found their own solutions to problems that they discovered. Are we preparing students to discover problems and solve them creatively or are we relying on the traditional structure of our educational systems and the government mandates to dictate what happens in our classrooms? I can almost guarantee that you chose to be an educational professional because you wanted to inspire students, not assess the hell out of them. Find your passion and get back to it before you lose your soul.

Clay reminds that audience that “there is no way that things have always been that we can rely on to know what to do next.” We have to be creative and and use our prior knowledge to help us recognize contemporary problems and devise new solutions.

We are facing an educational landscape that is about to be changed by student demand. We have to make our classrooms, both face-to-face and digital, places that encourage authentic and engaging learning. We need to encourage students to ask questions, discover their passions and create authentic content that leads to continued conversations.

Thoughts during Jay Bhatt Welcome

Jay Bhatt reminds audience that the core of Bb is learning and teaching. The BbWorld hashtag goes wild with comments reminding audience that Jay has not yet joined Twitter. There are so many education professionals that have connected and grown through Twitter and it becomes increasingly difficult for them to listen to education professionals who are not embracing the medium. Since Blackboard is a corporation that is in the business of education their leader should connect with his clientele where they are, including Twitter.

Stacy Hawthorne

@MedinaTech

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Twit or Tweet: Using Twitter to Engage Students

Psst.  There are a few things you need to know about me.  I'm giving you some personal info, so let's just keep this between you and me, ok?  Here we go:

I don't own a cell phone.

I just got into Twitter about three months ago.

I know; it's ridiculous.  I am the source of much ribbing among my friends.  I have to have a "texting secretary" whenever people want to communicate with me.   I was probably the only person at the Ohio eTech Conference who didn't have a phone or Twitter account, and my Administrator of Instructional Technology made a point of shaming me each time we presented at a conference.  Twitter-shaming.  What has the world come to?

I see the light now.  Twitter allows me to connect with people I admire in my profession.  It allows me to see into the thoughts of colleagues, researchers, innovators, and influences in education.  It also allows me to make connections in the running community so I can learn from runners I admire and so I can promote my running blog.



Today I saw the 2:00 presentation Twitter: Micro-blogging to Increase Engagement, and I am eager to take my tweets to the next level with my students.  I intend to use the ideas of Cheryl Boncuore (@cherylbonc) and Aurora Dawn Reinke (@AuroraReinke) to engage my Blended Learning Rhetoric and Composition students in their research of colleges and career choices.  How exciting will it be for my students to connect with a professional in a field they are considering?

There are problems to consider.  How will I make sure to keep my students safe in the TwitterVerse?  I keep my blogs gated through Blackboard, but I can't control what students do through Twitter; I can only control what they choose to show me.  Hashtags are a great way for me to think about monitoring and assessing what they do  for my class.

My takeaway from this session is that Twitter can work for my Blended Students, and eventually I can extend its use to my younger f2f students.  I am getting with the program; rather than be a Twit, I choose to Tweet.

 



 

Stephani Itibrout

Blended Rhetoric and Composition

@Itibrout

Don't Tell Me What to Do: Using Templates to Improve Course Design

How do you balance standardization of templates with freedom of expression in teaching?

Certain administrators, supervisors, and bosses have told me that I am a challenge.  Why?  Well, it may be that just about every conversation I have with a "boss" begins or ends with me saying, "Don't tell me what to do."  Even if I WANT to do whatever someone requests of me, I want it to be completely my idea and my decision.  It is no wonder that my mother laughed her butt off when I complained about my son's newly applied "assertion of his independence" because she has been waiting all her life for this payback.

My resistance to standardization of templates kicks in when I think that it might inhibit my creativity.  Even if I grit my teeth and agree to a template, I want it to be a template that I designed, and herein lies a huge problem.  I am the Queen of Control Freaks, but I am not naive enough to believe that I am the only control freak in my district.



How deep should we go with templates?  Building-specific?  Department-specific?  Course specific?  I have seen some good course designs in classes at my school, but their layouts do not reflect the way I think or teach.  For example, some teachers organize their content by standards, and they train their students to think about the course that way, too.  It works for them, but it doesn't work for me.  Some teachers like to group their content thematically--what do they lose when someone forces them to convert to organizing by standards?

 

On the other hand, what about the students and parents who try to navigate our LMS?  As a mother, I know how frustrating inconsistency of webpages and online lessons can be.  I want my audience to be able to easily navigate my class lessons in Blackboard.  Does this mean that I should make my class page look like every other page?  Does this mean that I should separate my content into  standards, themes, or genre?  Where is the balance between ease, consistency, and freedom of expression in teaching?

This is just the tip of the iceberg.  My takeaway from the pre-conference session Using Templates to Improve Course Design really gave me a lot to contemplate.  See what I did there?

 

Stephani Itibrout

English Teacher, Blended Learning

Follow me on Twitter: @itibrout

True Grit: What My Blended Learning Students Taught Me

Nancy (not her real name) was a star student in my Blended Rhetoric and Composition class.  She did EVERYTHING I told her to do, she made as many attempts as necessary to achieve mastery on every assignment,  and she tested into Honors English at her college of choice.  This story is not about her.

This story is about Sam (not HIS real name either) because through him, and other students like him, I found my focus in this blended class.

Initially, I thought I was going to teach students how to analyze rhetoric and persuasion so they could see the forces that manipulate them in their lives.  I thought I would inspire them with a comparison between modern and “old school” literary and informative text.  I thought I would help them to see that reflection, especially in written form,  is one of the most valuable tools in learning.  I did accomplish these goals (to some extent), but Sam helped me to see that the most important lessons my Blended Learning classroom could teach were “grit” and independence.

My passive-aggressive boxing match with Sam started very early in the school year.

Am I Homer Simpson or Bugs Bunny in this fight?

I say passive-aggressive because most of our conflict was through email, posts to the class discussion board, or his mother.  He was a shy boy, and he was used to flying under the radar.  He was also used to his mother solving his problems for him.  After reading several lengthy explanations from Sam’s mom about his inability to submit his work on time or at all, I decided to have it out with him.

Me:  Sam, why is your mom emailing me and calling me?  Why aren’t you talking to me?

Sam: I don’t know.  I thought you wanted to know why I couldn’t do the assignment on time.  

Me:  We are going to establish some guidelines right now:  First, you are seventeen.  You are almost an adult.  Next year in college your mom will NOT be permitted to talk to your professors about your work, so we are going to break both of you of this habit right now.  When you have a problem, I want you to contact me in any way you want--email, discussion board, phone, video--but YOU have to do it.  Only you can be responsible for your work.  

Second, I don’t care about deadlines.  I care about mastery.  I want you to do EVERY assignment, and I want you to really learn from every assignment, and it doesn’t matter how many tries you attempt or when you get it done, but you will get it done, and you will know you are finished when you hit the mastery column in the rubric.

This is me when I'm laying down the law in class. Word.

Ok, this part about deadlines was quite a departure from the way I usually operate.  I often stress deadlines, telling students that they are an important part of the “real world,” and I penalize students for not meeting my deadlines.  My frustration with Sam led me to change this policy for the whole class.  It was as if the Standards-gods had smacked me upside the head, and I finally saw the light.  Why should I penalize a student for wanting to re-do a blog five times?  Don’t I teach students that writing is recursive, and we are never truly finished with a project?  Don’t I want my students to WANT to achieve mastery, even if it means more work for all of us?  Why should anyone accept only achieving about 70% of a standard if the student can do better?  Maybe I can train the students to WANT to do better if I could eliminate the constraint of time.

I have been listening to interviews on NPR in which “experts” are saying that the most important determinant in a child’s future success is not testing or grades, but “grit,” that is, determination, drive, and the will to do whatever hard work it takes to accomplish a goal.  I have always followed this philosophy (instilled in me by my own “expert,” my father), and I started to see that by emphasizing mastery outside of deadlines, I was teaching my students grit.

 I'll be reading this book very soon.

For the students’ final exam, I gave them an article about “grit,” called “Mastery is  Pain,” and I asked them to respond to it by defining grit and pinpointing where they might have shown grit this year.  This was Sam’s response:

The term “grit” means perseverance and passion for long term goals. Everyone has goals in their life, but sometimes people have the hardest times achieving those goals. Whenever people have a bump in the road, they throw in the towel and give up. I have to admit sometimes this was the case for me, but sometimes I’ve had grit, and achieved my goals.

School hasn’t always been the simplest thing for me, and has created some stress over the years.Yet this Rhetoric and Composition class has really taught me some skills that will later help me in my life. The way this class was set up really forced us to be an individual and responsible for our actions.Time-management was a skill that I really learned to value through the process of this class. With everything going on outside of class, it made it really hard to meet the deadlines when the papers were due.

I know that in college time management will probably be an even bigger issue, and this class has taught me how to focus in and use all the hours in the day to complete a paper.

Other students had similar responses:

Since we did not have to come to class every day, this required us to get things done on our own time, without that constant push from a teacher. At first I found this extremely difficult and struggled a lot. Nearing the end of the year, I started managing my time better and getting things done when they needed to be done and on time without the midnight deadline rush. I also have learned organization during this course. We practiced this through various projects that had to be organized on our own with different types of media, and saved successfully where we would be responsible for it.

Lastly, this came from a student like Sam, who struggled all year with deadlines and mastery:

Over the course of this year this class has given me many skills not just academically but also outside of school and the classroom. Building projects online that the whole world can see like the video and our blogs has given me confidence in myself to not be scared of what people think. This class has given me the confidence to go out and talk and not be worried about what I am saying, I am no longer worried about sharing my opinion whether it be what everyone else thinks or whether it might offend others, this class has given me that confidence. However this class has also taught me that there is something I need a lot of work at, and that is time management, throughout the year I had struggled with this aspect, and I know if I do not get that in check it is really going to bite me in the butt next year.

In conclusion, this class is still a work-in-progress, but isn’t every class?  My students helped me to realize that sometimes I have to let go of something (timelines) in order to get something better (mastery, grit).

This is me when I'm trying to let go of deadlines.

I intend to use this lesson to my benefit and keep working on my goals for my students, no matter how many attempts it takes, until I can achieve mastery.



Stephani Itibrout

Rhetoric and Composition

@itibrout

Wanna See a Movie? How to Conduct a Meaningful Discussion about a Movie while WATCHING the Movie

 

 

I don’t particularly like to show movies in class.  I never feel that I have the time.  I do realize, however, that movies have an important place in instruction; after all, movies are now a part of the Common Core.  In my AP Literature and Composition classes and in my Blended Learning Rhetoric and Composition class I alternate clips from Branagh’s and Zeffirelli’s versions of Hamlet to illustrate how literary critique affects the interpretation of Shakespeare’s themes.  Students can compare both directors’ versions of Ophelia, Hamlet’s madness, and of course the final fight scene. The problem I have had with this lesson is that unless the students and I talk over the actors, or unless I constantly stop and restart the scene, there is little opportunity for me to guide a discussion of what we are watching.  This year, through experimentation with my Blended Learning Rhetoric and Composition class, I discovered Today’s Meet.

 

Todaysmeet.com is a back channel discussion board (a bit like Twitter) that allows students to post from their mobile devices or computers.  The advantages of using Todaysmeet.com are the following:

1.  Students can post their thoughts in real time.  They don’t have to wait for me to stop the movie.

2.  I can archive all the posts and use them in a follow-up discussion (or the students can use the archived notes in a paper).

3.  Students post in a safe environment, which I consider the most important point.  I can create a different back channel for each class if I think students will feel more secure sharing their ideas with just their classmates, or I can combine classes if I feel that students will benefit from reviewing their peers’ messages.

 

Each day of my Dueling Hamlets lesson I start by reminding students to log into the back channel.  I provide the url on the board, and I also Chirp the link to any students who use an Apple device. (See the Apple App Store for this cute, free method of sending links, pictures, and notes to a large group of people all at once.)  When the movie starts, I can monitor the discussion from my iPad, and I can guide it by sending leading questions:  Does Hamlet love Ophelia?  Does Ophelia love Hamlet?  Notice the frame of this version; what is most important about this movie?  Sometimes I allow the students to take on characters’ identifications when they post, and I get little gems such as these:

 

Yorick:  Hey, put down my skull.  Everybody, he really didn’t kiss me that much.

 

Ophelia:  You want ME to go to a NUNNERY?  How about you go BACK TO COLLEGE?!

 

Sometimes I find more treasure than I ever thought I could:

Student A:  Why is Hamlet clowning around like that?  Laertes is the better fighter.  It seems like a stupid thing to do.

Student B:  I was reading about ancient Samurai warriors and how they used to purposely mock and humiliate their opponents in order to make them lose focus.  Do you think Zeffirelli wants Hamlet to do that?

 

Are you kidding me?!?!  Student B was a quiet kid in my class who seldom felt comfortable sharing any of his opinions with his peers.  With one comment on the back channel, he managed to blow away the whole class, and he never would have shared his opinion if I would have made him wait for the end of the scene.  The affirmations he received after his post really showed me that students were better able to appreciate this sort of interaction because they perceive it as risk-free.  Even better were the arguments that students had about each interpretation.  Because they were able to debate in real-time, they didn’t have to remember specific lines from the scene to share later.  Their opinions were passionate but respectful, and my favorite part was when they challenged each other to support those opinions.

 

My discovery of Todaysmeet.com really solved a problem that I have had for years.  I can now show a clip or a movie and know that the students are engaged.  My next step will be to open a back channel during student speeches and my own lectures.

 Stephani Itibrout

Rhetoric and Composition

Follow me on Twitter @itibrout

Blackboard will want me to be a BbWorld VIP blogger!

I am the kid in the candy store when it comes to BbWorld; I want to experience everything.  When you are the kid in the candy store, you are not cynical about anything, even the lemon drops.

I will show you the same wonder as I describe my experiences; I will make you laugh, cry, and possibly crave lemon drops.

 

 

 

 

I might even bust a few moves:

This isn't me, but it could be!!

 

 

Stephani Itibrout

Blended Learning English Teacher

@itibrout