In Pursuit of Purpose

Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on…public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace.

-Howard Rheingold

I need to take a moment and focus my efforts here.  It is now I need to think and take stock of all that I have attempted to do.  I have created a very nice-looking blog, a blog with the following three purposes:

1–to give my students a forum for creating thought-provoking, inspiring pieces of writing for a genuine critical audience.

2–to give my students the opportunity to BE the genuine critical audience in order for them to gain an appreciation for the contributions that many people are making to this world.

3–to create a community bound by a common sense of purpose.

So what have I accomplished?  Well, aside from the basic set-up, much of my efforts have been focused on building an audience for my student’s work and attempting to woo other teachers into interacting with us as both audience members and contributors.  I really wanted the genuine, public discussion Howard Rheingold referred to as being essential to the development of web of relationships that define online communities.  I felt that, if my students felt ties to this online community, they might feel a desire to contribute to it in the form of thought-provoking writing and acts of social responsibility.

Building an audience for yet another blog has not been an easy task.  I chronicled many of my attempts to rally an audience in my post “Finding an Audience; Building a Community“.  After all of my efforts, is there really any evidence that the community is starting to develop?

The answer is…yes! (thankfully…)  Our community is small–a glimmer, perhaps, of what it may become with time–but it is growing beyond our classroom walls.  And many of my students are definitely aiding this process voluntarily.  How do I know this?  Well, for a start, the evidence is within the blog itself.

Comments: Friends, Family and Beyond

What does it show when someone voluntarily leaves a comment or question on a blog post?  I have decided to sort the comments left on my class blog by way of author, intended recipient of the comment, and apparent intent.  I used Webspiration as my sorting platform and created a set of codes to help me based on line colour, thickness, fill colour and shape of the bubbles.  Here is my coding structure:

Figure 1:

I decided to sort and code comments left on the main page of the blog separately from those that were left on student project pages.  I hypothesized that they would be quite different, and I was correct, as you will see later.

The Front Page:

The front page of my blog, Hope Future Now, is a page where I feature the writing of one or two student writers per week.  To make it to the front page, students needed to have really discovered their voice on a particular issue and have an interesting perspective to offer.  I select pieces that I think will generate some discussion.  They are not necessarily polished.  Errors in basic mechanics are only a problem if they impede communication of their ideas.

Since September, there have been 31 comments left on various posts.  I first sorted them based on whether or not the author was a student or an adult and to whom their comment was directed.  Based on this sorting, I discovered that the vast majority of comments (29 ) were written by adults.  These adults were largely commenting on student writing (26 ).  Three of the comments left by adults were addressed specifically to me.  Only two students left comments on the front page.  These students were not from my class and they were commenting on student writing.

I was most interested in the intent of the comments.  I created the following coding for comment intent:

On the front page, the majority of comments left by both adults and students (28), either praised the writing (5) or thoughts/actions of the student (15) or both (8).  At the outset of this study, I completely expected these types of comments because, after all, the front page is a showcase of interesting writing about thoughts and actions of students.  So why not simply praise?  In my mind, however, these types of comments are nice, but not are not powerful evidence of the development of a community of common purpose.  To me, the comments needed to extend beyond simple praise and needed to contain evidence that the commenter was moved to share their own ideas about the topics and/or engage in a sort of discourse about them.  I developed two separate codes for these types of comment:

In all, I found that 9 of the commenters wrote of their personal interest in the ideas posed by the students.  Three of the commenters posed questions or generated comments implying that a response is desired.  One of the three was directed at one of my students, and the other two were specifically directed to me.

All of these comments are evidence that a community of common purpose is developing on a couple of different levels.  One level is “person to person” where individuals share interests and values (see figure 2 for samples).  Another level is “professional to professional” where individuals share ideas and pose questions (see figure 3 for samples).

Figure 2: (sharing of interests and values)

Figure 3: (discourse or response expected)

Phase 2:  Student Project Pages

I hypothesized that the comments left on these pages would be quite different than the ones left on the front page for several reasons.  The first, and biggest, reason is that these projects are constant “works in progress”.  Second, they are written “behind the scenes”.  There are 30 student pages, with links to each one in a large group.  Finally, the student pages were given code names to make them feel anonymous.  In all, not very inviting to the outside user.  Therefore, I felt that only “insiders” (those specifically aware of the identity of the writer with a specific interest in finding that page) would be leaving comments.

I coded the comments using the same structure as the front page (see figure 1).  Fewer people commented on these pages (22 comments in total).   Seven of the comments were left by students.  Sixteen were left by adults.  All of the comments were directed at the students and their writing/ideas.

As many of posts in the student project area are “works in progress”, it is no surprise that many of the comments had the purpose of providing critical feedback.  This stands in contrast with the comments left on the front page, where none of the comments offered critical feedback.  It is also no surprise that most of the comments offering feedback were left by me!  One of the critical feedback comments was left by a student (see figure 4), which I did find surprising, as I had not instructed the students to leave one another comments in any way.  This one comment is evidence that the student is interested in the writing and ideas of others.  It is also evidence that the student feels he or she has the ability to affect the writing of others in a positive way.  Thus, it is evidence–albeit one small piece–that a community of writers is starting to emerge.

Most of the comments left by adults simply praised the work of the student.  I also predicted this.  I felt that parents might take a look at their own child’s blog and feel compelled to offer positive commentary, which they did.  The remaining “adult generated” comments were left by a single educator who painstakingly read through every student project page and left thoughtful commentary that not only praised student work, but also engaged them in a sharing of ideas and interests (see figure 5).  This was a complete surprise, because it simply takes so much time!  To me, this is evidence of this educator’s interest in encouraging and engaging my students in real discourse about their ideas.  If only more people would invest the thought and time into this type of commentary!

Figure 4:

Figure 5:

But does it even matter?  Well, one small comment left voluntarily by one of my students in response to comments that she received certainly seems like evidence that, indeed, it does matter:

This little comment is the first piece of evidence of a student engaging specifically with her audience in response to commentary.  It is yet another tantalizing piece of evidence that this blog is becoming a community.

Now for the SURVEYS!

Yes, I did create surveys.  Triangulation, right?  These always seem so boring to me, but master’s studies always seem to be so full of them!  Anyway, turns out they are useful and they are helpful in my quest to discover the signs of an emerging community.

In order to accomplish this, I created two surveys using Sharepoint–one for parents, and one for students.  My questions for the students focused on the type of (or absense of ) voluntary work from home, whom they have voluntarily shared their blog with, whom they would like to comment on their blog, and what motivates them.  My questions for the parents focused on their voluntary reading and commenting on our class blog.  I felt it was important to not require students to work on their blog from home because I really wanted to get a sense for how meaningful this project was for students.  If students and parents are compelled to check, work on or comment on the blog from home in a completely voluntary fashion, then it shows that they are engaged by the project and perhaps feel ties to the emerging community.

Student Survey Results:

I was quite surprised to discover that majority of students (26 out of 27 who responded to the survey) have voluntarily shared their blog with individuals outside of the classroom.  Twenty three of the students have shared their blogs with parents, seven have shared them with other relatives, and ten have shared their blogs with friends.  To me, this is definitely evidence that students are proud enough of their work that they want others to see it, and it is evidence that the blog is reaching others beyond the classroom walls.

I was also quite surprised that students were voluntarily adding writing to their blogs (6), making comments (3), reading the work of others (6), checking for comments (9), and checking the front page (8) from home.  There were only 5 students who had not done any work from home.  For me, this was completely unexpected.  Over the past 3 months, I had no sense at all that the kids were choosing to work on the blog from home!  This is definitely evidence that these students are invested in the project and are interested to see if others are reading their work.

Finally, I discovered that the majority of students (25 out of 27) wanted others to comment on their blogs.  Twenty-four students desired commentary by parents, friends and relatives.  They also desired commentary from other students (22), and adults who show interest in their work (10).  Interestingly, only 6 students wanted the teacher (me) to comment.  This shows that the wider community really matters. In fact, it specifically shows that more kids want the wider community (which includes friends, relatives, and interested adults and peers) to comment on the work than their teacher!  Apparently, it takes a village to educate a child.

Parent Survey Results:

I would like to say that the parents read and made comments in a purely voluntary fashion, but in reality, I pestered them every week.  Now, there was no requirement to read and comment on the blogs, but I certainly put a lot of pressure on them.  They needed to know that their voice mattered!  I don’t apologize for my actions; however, you must consider that the involvement of the parents was not truly voluntary, as it was with the students.   I also pestered the parents to respond to my survey.  In the end, only 15 parents responded (out of a possible 30).  I was not really surprised at the lack of parent participation, as it has been a challenge to get them to comment on the blog every week.  Plus, they are likely sick of my pestering and may choose to ignore me as a form of protest!

According to the data, 3 parents check the front page of the blog every time there is new writing posted, 6 occasionally check it, 5 rarely check it and 1 did not check it at all.  More parents are interested in checking their own child’s project page (11 out of 15).  Most (9 out of 15) have not shared their child’s page with anyone else.  This data shows that many of the parents have an interest in their child’s work, but are not necessarily interested in the community of common purpose.  However, many parents (11 out of 15) have either left comments or are interested in doing so (but not sure how to go about it).  Now, this survey data does not tell the whole story of parent involvement.  Many parents have posted comments on the front page (10, to be specific).  Interestingly, all of the parent comments submitted were about posts written by other children, not their own.  This is evidence that the parents are interested in being a part of a community that supports and engages all children, not just their own.

In conclusion, the student survey showed that the students are engaging in work on a voluntary basis and are interested in comments from an audience wider than that of the classroom teacher.   The parent survey, on its own, does not match up with actual participation (in the form of comments) in the blog community.  However, it does speak to the need for illuminating the parents on just how much their children feel that parent voices matter!

Final Data:  Student Writing

Now, the analysis in this section is going to be much less extensive.  Nearly every piece of writing that has been written on the blog has either been commissioned or required by me.  Plus, I have given the students their topics in nearly all cases.  Without them, most students do not know what to write about!

Thankfully, this is not always the case.  Plus lately, this pattern is changing.  At the beginning of this project, I commissioned Miranda to write about her work as a volunteer.  She did so on her own time.  I posted up her writing and she ended up receiving many supportive and engaging comments on her post, Volunteer Spirit.  Interestingly, after the success of her first post, Miranda voluntarily wrote another post on the Terry Fox run.  I see this as evidence that Miranda was motivated to voluntarily contribute to the blog as a result of the interest that people took in her first piece of writing.

Plus, while reading through my student posts, I came across the following introduction that one of my students had written:

Lets take some time to remember. Do you have family members in your famliy that fought in the war?

Hi to people who are reading this. You all know Remembrance day right?  Well that’s what this is about.

To me, this is also evidence that my student felt that he/she was writing for an audience wider than simply that of the classroom teacher.

Finally, my student’s have started participating in a project where, as a class, we are raising funds that will help us purchase small gifts for gift baskets that will be distributed to women and their children in the Tri-Cities who are homeless or nearly homeless.  This past week, I invited two guest speakers to discuss the project with my kids.  During the discussion, many of my students spontaneously came up with wonderful ideas for how they could individually contribute to the project in an on-going way throughout the school year.  The following day, many students asked me if they could write about their ideas on their blogs.

This is the first time that students have not asked me for writing ideas.  It is evidence that they understand the purpose of the blog (to chronicle making a difference) and that they are motivated to contribute their ideas.  It tells me, very clearly, that students need to have more experiences where they are choosing ways to personally make a difference.  When they are connected personally to their ideas, they are more willing to share them.  This is, ultimately, what I want for my students.  I want to empower them to make a difference in the world and I want them to share their efforts with an interested, supportive community through writing.

I have a lot of work yet to do on this project, but I certainly feel that the work so far has been productive.  The data, from comments, to surveys, to student writing, all has been very affirming for me.  A couple of weeks ago, I was concerned that there was really no evidence of community after all of my efforts trying to rally one.  I was quite convinced that I had chosen the wrong project for this type of study.  However, now that I have had a chance to really look at all of my data, I really feel a renewed sense of hope that a community really is starting to develop, even if it is still just a glimmer.  I believe that I focused too much of my effort in looking outside of my classroom for a community members and a critical audience.  I really need to encourage my students to read and comment on the work of their peers.  Of course, the reading needs to be interesting and the ideas, as I stated before, need to come from individual students, not from me.  If the rest of the world would like to contribute as well, all the better!  We are just not going to sit around and wait for them.

There is something incredible that happens when you know for sure that some voluntary stranger is moved to comment on something that you have written.  I know this first hand.  I was so thrilled when I received my first comments on this blog.  I had put a lot of thought and effort into my first few articles.  I read, found relevant supporting research and quotes, and composed some of my most insightful writing on a topic for which I have great passion.  It consumed a great deal of my off-time.  I have never voluntarily put that much effort into writing before in my life.  Why?  Because I knew people were reading my work.  I didn’t even know them.  They left me wonderful, validating comments.

The time, unfortunately, came when this great effort went unrewarded.  I wrote the first part of a beautiful recounting of the “My Hero” project.  No one read it.  Or if they did, I was completely unaware.  This left me incredibly demoralized.  All of a sudden, I had no energy left for the standard I had set for myself.  I stopped blogging for months.

Seem silly?  I couldn’t help it.  I am an emotional person with very little spare time.  I needed to feel like I had an audience in order to write.  As a teacher, I found this experience to be very eye-opening.  How many of my students would be motivated to write if only they had an authentic audience for their work?  How many found writing to be difficult or even pointless because they were not writing for anyone or any purpose except school?

With “Hope Future Now”–my class blog–I wanted to guarantee an audience for my student’s work.  But securing such an audience and developing a following for a blog is not such an easy thing to do.

I first asked the parents to be our temporary critical audience.  I knew this one would wear thin very quickly.  However, I felt that we needed people to leave comments on our first bits of writing to give us some momentum.  This worked well for our first three posts.  After that, getting parents to comment was akin to pulling teeth.  A new strategy was needed quickly!

I decided to ask my administrator to forward an email I had written explaining my project to all elementary school administrators in the district.  I thought that I was definitely going to get some interested classroom teachers involved that way.  It resulted in me being invited to present my project at the district one-to-one laptop project.  There, I made an eloquent plea for involvement in our project.  Teachers seemed interested, although perhaps slightly overwhelmed.  It has been well over three weeks since my presentation.  James McConville, our district technology coordinator, wrote about the project on his blog (Education Technology Ramblings).  It made me feel hopeful.  But in the end, none of the teachers involved have made any attempt to connect with the project.  Yet.

Next, I tried asking well-connected district staff to plug my blog and perhaps bring it to the attention of other eager teachers in the district.  They gave it a shot.  A few emails were sent back and forth.  In the end….nothing.

It must simply be that people are busy.  Anyone who is into this sort of Web 2.0 stuff is busily attempting to get their own projects off of the ground, and anyone who is not must simply feel that the barriers to entry are simply too great for them to even start.  I still have hope that other teachers in my district will see that this project is designed to attract both bloggers and non-bloggers.  You simply need to be able to read and write using a computer. And you have to care about social responsibility.  But who doesn’t these days?

It really hasn’t been a complete failure, though.  I actually have not been totally honest.  I have made connections with another teacher in the district who is also looking for an audience for her student’s work.  This connection came through my graduate studies.  She is also conducting a field study on blogging, and thus, we both knew we could serve the needs of the other.  Several of her students commented on one of my student’s posts.  My students commented on work of her students.  It is just a beginning, and it seems like the connection was a bit of a cheat, but I’ll take it!

I also borrowed an idea from an article in the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (Oct 2007) by Shelbie Witte.  In it, she writes about an online writing project (the “talkback project”) where student writing and feedback activities were set up between middle school students and a class of pre-service teachers.  I liked the idea of mining eager students teachers for a potential audience for my student’s work.  I felt they might be highly motivated to explore a project like mine not only as an example of interesting teaching and learning, but also as a potential project for themselves to try once they entered the classroom.  That opens up the further possibility that they might rally their classes to get involved in the project and thus, get us a whole lot more exposure.  I pursued this idea and have had some success.  Here is an excerpt from a response I received:

We would love to be part of this, and have our student teachers respond! We have a new group of student teachers in our LifeWork Module starting the second week of January which has a specific focus on Social Responsibility and Social Justice – what a perfect way to connect them with students and begin to explore SR/SJ issues together.

So!  Looks like this might be a perfect connection!  I just need to wait until second term to see how we might follow through.

I have also attempted to contact individual teachers outside of our district.  Their are many teachers who have class blogs, so I thought I would drop a couple of them a line!  One such teacher is from W.H. Day School in Bradford, Ontario.  Her class is involved in a range of projects that my class also participated in.  Specifically, they created a documentary for the “My Hero Film Festival” and won second place.  I also entered two of my student films into the festival (we won first place and honourable mention in the Elementary category).  I thought that I would attempt to contact this teacher through her classroom blog by leaving a comment:

I was just searching the My Hero website when I came across a wonderful video which I believe was created by your class. My student, Miranda, won for her video on “Ruth Foster”. Sarah won honourable mention for her film, “Fin Donnelly”. Seems like your class and my class have some things in common. We also have a blog. We started it earlier this year. We would be honoured if you took a look and even submitted some writing so that we might post it. Our blog is http://hopefuturenow.edublogs.org/
We are just getting started, but we would like this to turn into a place where children throughout the world can share their stories, poems and artwork about making the world a better place. We’d love to hear from you!

I have not heard back from the teacher or her students, but I might!  Another connection I have explored came about through the Kiva community, of which I am a member.  My class has made thousands of dollars in loans and our project information is posted on the Kiva website.  Other Kiva lenders can leave one another messages.  A teacher from South Carolina left a message for me and we began a correspondence.  Our classes attempted a Skype conversation last year (it was unsuccessful due to her class’ internet speed).  I dropped her a note about our blog project, although have not yet had a response back:

The year got away from me last year, although I have not forgotten the connection our classes tried to make! I just wanted to let you know that I have developed a social responsibility blog that perhaps you would like to contribute to. Your students can submit writing to the blog (by attaching work in an email) or comment on some of my student’s writing. It might be a nice way for us to maintain a connection and cheer each other on in our social responsibility work!

I am always thinking of new possibilities for connections!  The next step I would like to take in promoting our blog is to invite members of iEARN (international education and resource network) to participate.  This is my Christmas project.  Perhaps then we will really start to see some action!

-Jen

Last we left off, I had just set up my classroom blog, Hope Future Now.  I had big dreams of it becoming a community of socially responsible young bloggers from around the world.  My students would be at the center of it all, both as authors and peer reviewers.

This has not yet occurred.  At this point, I am posting up new student writing framed by my own personal commentary every week.  I am constantly emailing people and begging them to leave comments on the posts.  This is annoying, but completely necessary.  The kids really live for the comments.  I have even aggressively pursued input from other classes.  I presented at our districts one-to-one laptop learning team in hopes of making connections.  Nothing yet.  However, this takes time.  I know that.

In order to keep my kids connected with the project, I decided to create student blogs.  My vision for these student blogs is that they will become the space in which they chronicle their own personal attempts to make a difference in a very tangible way.  I have hopes that they will seek mentorship with real community heros, volunteer with various community organizations and participate in fundraising activities.  I also hope that it will create the motivation and empowerment that David Huffaker in “Spinning Yarns Around a Digital Fire” (2004) suggested comes from the self efficacy students experience when they are able to exercise creative control, share feeling and ideas, and collaborate with others.

How did I set blogs up for such a young group of writers?  This was actually quite easy to do, although it took quite a bit of thinking to balance the need to protect young students from over-exposure in a public, online environment with the need to give students ownership of the projects.  When researching the idea, I read an article on blogging entitled, “Writing With Blogs and the Talkback Project” (Shelbie Witte, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 2007).  Some of the issues in this project certainly gave me pause.  Witte, at one point, was forced to abandon blog writing when her administrator became uncomfortable after an anonymous student mentioned his/her neighbourhood in one of the posts.  Should I let my students use their first names?  Should they be able to state where they are from?  How about their ages?  It all seemed a little crazy, although there is something so special about knowing that a real child of a definable age wrote something amazing.  I personally have a hard time respond to an anonymous author, and I really want people to respond to the kids’ writing.

In the end, I let the parents decide.  Some are allowing their students to use first names, some are not.   I personally took measures to ensure safety as well, however.  These included making myself the administrator and comment filter for all of the students blogs.  I also created standardized usernames for each of the blogs to help sustain a certain amount of anonymity.  In order to give the kids ownership of their blogs, I set a temporary administrator password and allowed them to use it for one computer block.  They chose their own themes and widgets.  Later, I gave each of them author privileges and allowed them to set a personal password for their sites.

So far, so good.  The kids are learning to write effectively for an authentic audience and also learning to leave constructive, appropriate comments.  The only trouble is that the audience is a little too hidden at the moment.  Not enough people are responding to the blogs (even after all of my begging) and the kids simply have to trust that a genuinely interested, enthusiastic audience is reading their wonderful work.

Even though my dream of a worldwide community of young writers is not yet a reality, I have not abandoned it in a fit of cynical disillusionment.  On the contrary!  I often find myself so excited by the notion that the dreams are so DOABLE that I can barely stand it.  It tries the patience, to be sure.  All of this will take time, but I’m willing to persevere.

I know that there are thousands of classroom blogs out there.  I’m not sure if mine is really different, or if I just think it is.

I recently read an article in the Reading Teacher (May 2009)  on HOT (Higher Order Thinking) Blogging by Lisa Zawilinski.  According to Zawilinski (2009):

As online readers gather information to solve a problem, they frequently analyze information, critically evaluate, synthesize across multiple texts and communicate with others using instant messaging, e-mail, blogs, wikis, or other communication vehicles.

This is very much in line with higher order thinking skills we are encouraged to teach in Language Arts programs.  She goes on to identify various types of blogs and their potential, from classroom news blogs, to showcase blogs, to reflective blogs, to literature response blogs. The blog that I have developed doesn’t quite fit into any of those categories, although certainly involves elements of all of those.

Another couple of articles I read in preparation for this field study were both written by David Huffaker.  In “Spinning Yarns Around the Digital Fire”, Huffaker (2004) discusses the potential of many online media applications including blogs to provide students with a positive place for them to “to share ideas and feelings, discuss issues and projects, ask and answer each other’s questions, and promote a pro-social spirit”.  He argues that when students are able given creative control in these environments and are able to explore and collaborate with others, motivation increases (largely due to the increase in self-efficacy).  This is certainly interesting to keep in mind, as I would certainly like their motivation to write to be high.  However, I am putting a definite twist on the traditional blog that I would like to explore in the duration of this field study.

In “The Educated Blogger: Using Weblogs to Promote literacy in the Classroom”, Huffaker (2005) states that:

In the classroom, students can have a personal space to read and write alongside a communal one, where ideas are shared, questions are asked and answered, and social cohesion is developed.

Again, one of the goals of my blog is certainly to create social cohesion through a community of common purpose.  However, I hope to create this cohesion in a slightly different fashion than usual, as my students will not have their own individual pages.

Hope Future Now (the title of my blog) is a peer-review publishing blog and an emerging social network of students who are (or who would like to) make a difference in this world.  At this stage, it is less about reading comprehension and more about comprehending elements of great writing and social responsibility.  It will feature writing on broad social responsibility themes chosen by my students.  This writing might come from within our classroom, but it will hopefully, over time, come from outside sources.  The job of my students is to learn to provide valuable feedback and commentary.  It begs the question “What is great writing?” and hopefully will lead to greater metacognition of their own writing.

The process is simple.  I created an email address specifically for the project and posted it on the page Submit Your Writing.  Criteria are outlined on this page as well.   So, in order to participate, you do not have to be a blogger.  You simply have to know how to use email.  The beauty of this for other educators is that there is no whole class commitment unless you want to do this, and really, where else are you going to find a guaranteed, interested, critical audience for student work?  I’m sure that there are many educators out there who have students they need to motivate or recognize for their efforts.  And why not let peers review their student’s work?

The feedback will comes at two levels:

Level One:  Feedback for learning. If the writing is not ready to be published, my students will provide feedback that is specific and thoughtful in order to bring the writing to a state of readiness.

Level Two: Feedback on accomplishment.  This will come in the form of blog comments.  It is the “pat on the back” phase…congratulating the young writer for their efforts to make a difference and for their inspirational writing.

Finally, it is my hope that the theme of the blog–social responsibility–will create a sense of common purpose within this community of young writers.  I would love my students to feel as though making a difference is both a common and welcome responsibility.  It could become an amazing resource for anyone looking for inspiring true stories of the “kids these days”.

Jen

Look around the habitable world: how few know their own good, or knowing it, pursue.   -Juvenal, Satires

During the summer following my first experience with Kiva in my classroom, I was searching for a way to extend and deepen what I had begun through Kiva, namely a continued connection between my classroom and the world.  Kiva was wonderful for providing the stories and faces of real people whom my students could help through microlending (for a complete discussion of this project, see Math Made Compelling: The Kiva Renaissance).  I felt that it was time to explore the possibility of contacting and perhaps even collaborating with students in other parts of the world.  I wanted them to feel intensely connected to the world and excited to be in that place.  I wanted (and continue to want) my students to feel that reaching out to others is not only doable, but completely logical and a source of great joy.

iEARN and My Hero

To be honest, when I first set out looking for a way to collaborate with other classrooms around the world, I had no idea what to look for.  I dipped into the vast waters of Google and just began searching around.  It was pretty fruitless at the start.  At the time, I also happened to be preparing for a Language Arts focus on Heroes, so I also was looking for information to allow my students to study a wide range of heroes and their characteristics.  Very quickly, I was drawn to a Californian based site called My Hero that allows students to post stories of their heroes online.  I was intrigued by the possibility of my students creating their own projects and was also very impressed by the vast bank of hero projects and videos created by others.

In a rather circuitous way, I ended up watching a video about a young, recovering child soldier named Mohamed Sidibay from Sierra Leone.  A class from Ontario had created the video and had contacted Mohamed through an organization called iEARN (International Education and Resource Network).

Eureka!

It was exactly what I was looking for.  The iEARN website contained a mind-boggling list of teachers, projects and professional development from around the world, all centered around creating opportunities for collaboration between teachers and classrooms.  Amazingly, the organization celebrated its twentieth anniversary this past year!  I couldn’t believe that it had existed so long and that I had never heard of it.  I felt so behind the times!  In another crazy coincidence, iEARN was advertising a project in collaboration with My Hero.  They were looking for teachers willing to join a team of other teachers and classes from around the globe in an exchange of information about heroes and a final sharing of student work posted on the My Hero website.  I couldn’t believe my luck!

Signing Up

I was so excited to be a part of the project, that I felt like I had received a major award when I received confirmation of acceptance onto one of the teams.  On my team were teachers from Romania, Russia, Iraq, Slovenia and the United States.  We were given a group email address and quickly began to exchange information ourselves and our schools.  Next came class surveys, which we eagerly filled out and shared.  We also created “Welcome Packages” which were basically collections of small artifacts that demonstrate what it is to be a kid from your home country.  My students rounded up stamps, dried leaves, stickers, pebbles, drawings, coins and anything else we could fit into the envelopes.  We popped them into the mail (after spending over $30 in postage) and waited.

Looking Within

“Global education…is a voyage along two complimentary pathways.  While the journey outwards leads to students to discover the world in which they live, the journey inwards heightens their understanding of themselves and their potential.  Both journeys constitute a necessary preparation for personal fulfillment and social responsibility in an interdependent and rapidly changing world.” (In the Global Classroom, Graham Pike and David Selby, 1999)

Meanwhile, the kids were fully immersed in the language of heroism.  We started our study by looking at the characteristics of heroism such as courage, empathy, perseverance and inspiration.  We took the time to analyze our responses to social issues at school in the light of each of these characteristics.  We wrote poetry and prose about these issues.  Learning the vocabulary of heroism not only gave my students a more developed means to analyze those whom we identify as heroes, but also a means to understand that acting heroically is at the heart of our own humanity.  Giving students the language to express this allows them to consciously access this.  This behaviour–to persevere, to put others first, to inspire, to have empathy and courage–should never be accidental.  It should be fostered and celebrated.

Analysis and Evaluation:

I had found novels and short stories on various real heroes such as Iqbal Masih, Sadako, Helen Keller, Martin Luther King and Ruby Bridges.  I also organized links to short videos and readings online.  The students chose books and reinforced concepts by completing further readings in web format or by watching videos online.  When they felt that they understood a hero well enough, they engaged in some thoughtful analysis of their hero.  They answered questions such as, “If you are an innocent victim, are you instantly a hero?”, “Is death an important part of being a hero?” and “Is this person definitely a hero?  How do you know?”.  The depth many of my students could achieve was astounding at times.  Allowing students to read, view and research until they were ready to write about their heroes was very successful.  I wished, at times, that I had more than a 1:3 ratio of laptops to students, but how could I complain?  The organization was a little tricky at the start of a session, but ten minutes in, the class was utterly focused and engaged.

Team Connections:

My students needed me to update them on the latest email updates from our team members.  I printed off any photos or writings sent by other classes and posted them on a bulletin board, but I was not terribly satisfied with this.  There had to be a way for the kids to engage in discussion with one another.

I suggested to our team on a regular basis that I was eager to attempt to set up a protected discussion board where students could respond directly to one another.  I also said that I would be willing to try out Skype to contact another class, if they could manage it.  I had never done it before, but it couldn’t hurt to try!  A class from New Jersey had the technology to manage a Skype discussion.  It took us about a week to coordinate times and find one another on Skype and then we gave it a go.  It was incredibly cool and worked very well.  I set my MacBook up so that the built-in webcam was pointed at my students and I had a projector set perpendicular to it so the kids could see the other class easily.  The best part was hearing the “phone” ring while my kids waited in anticipation.  The first “hello” was probably the most exciting word spoken all term!  It was the day before the election in the States, so many of my students questions were about Obama vs McCain.  The kids in New Jersey were exploding with debate and excitement.  It was a pretty neat time.

Full of Potential…However…

I kept pressing the communication agenda, but most were not able or really that interested in pursuing a more meaningful connection between the classes.  I really felt like my kids were out of the loop, unable to receive or provide meaningful feedback from others.  All writing exchanged was on a one way path, which was such a shame.  My students, however, were not entirely aware of what they were missing.  They asked regularly about whether we had received any Welcome Packages from the other team members or whether we were going to have a Skype conversation with any other classes.  In the end, we never did have any other Skype conversations.  The teacher from New Jersey continued to be interested, but was too busy to follow through.  We ended up receiving two Welcome Packages out of ten, which was a bit of a disappointment as well.  The “Reaching Out” part of the project seemed to be a failure when it started out with so much potential!

Fortunately, this is not the way the project ended.  My students still had their main research projects to come, and they were definitely not a failure.  In Part Two, I will discuss the approach I took to the projects and some very surprising connections we made when my students reached out to their heroes!  Part two was, by far, the most exciting part of this project.

Jen

“Building a thought-filled curriculum serves the larger agenda of building a more thought-filled world–an interdependent learning community where people continually search for ways to care for one another, learn together, and grow towards greater intelligence.  We must deepen student thinking to hasten the arrival of a world community…” (Arthur L. Costa, “The Thought-Filled Curriculm”, Educational Leadership, 2008)

When you have to worry about covering all of the hundreds of learning objectives prescribed in mandated curricula, how is it possible to change the world?  Especially when there is barely enough time to dedicate to all that you have to teach!  Following your heart and connecting your students to amazing people and stories the world over seems like a luxury, perhaps even an abdication of responsibility.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.  My experience using Kiva in my classroom has changed the way I “cover the curriculum”.  It is been an amazing, meaningful context for the learning of significant objectives, particularly in Math.

“To engage students in learning, we must begin by bringing out the imaginative and emotional features of the content, whether in mathematics, science, or any other curriculum area.  Everything in the curriculum is human knowledge–a product of human hopes, fears, and passions.  If we want to make that knowledge engaging to students, we have to show it in the context of the hopes, fears and passions from which is has grown and in which it finds a living meaning.” (Kieran Egan and Gillian Judson, “Of Whales and Wonder”, Educational Leadership 2008)

The “living context” I chose were entrepreneurs from around the developing world, whose business plans and profiles are featured on the microloan website, Kiva.  For a more in depth discussion of what Kiva is and how it impacted my classroom in the first year I used it, see my recent post, “Math Made Compelling: Phase 1 of the Kiva Project“.

When I first had the opportunity to use Kiva in my classroom, I witnessed a perseverance and enthusiasm for understanding and working with numbers that I have never experienced before.  My students were helping people all over the world through Kiva.  They were choosing who to help all by themselves.  The only hitch was that they had to justify their decisions using some pretty complicated numbers.  Life expectancy.  AIDS prevalence rates.  Literacy Rates.  GDP per capita.

Is this really grade 4 and 5 stuff?? I thought it was a bit of a stretch, at first, especially given that most kids don’t learn about these human statistics until middle or high school.  However, the more I studied them, the more I realized that a huge range of numeracy skills are embedded in each of these statistics.

Let’s start with GDP per capita! This statistic is now basic in my class.  Basic in terms of understanding the power that people in various countries have to maintain the health and happiness of themselves and their families, but also basic in terms of number concept.  GDP per capita (which of course is an average annual per person “income”) ranges from hundreds of dollars ($188 for people in Zimbabwe, for example) to tens of thousands of dollars ($40,200 for people living in Canada).  In the grade 4 curriculum, students are expected to demonstrate understanding of numbers up to 10,000 in a variety of ways.  These ways include reading, writing, ordering, comparing, and representing.  It was quite simple for me to have my students find, order, compare, read and write GDP per capita numbers from a range of countries.  The purpose of doing so was explicit and reasonable to my students.  By knowing the GDP per capita of a country and by comparing this amount to what we have in our own country, you have a way of understanding the desperate conditions under which many people in the world live.  This makes it easy to justify helping someone who happens to live in that country.  We mapped, graphed, and explained GDP per capita.  We added up the cost of our Christmas gifts to show how easily we surpassed what many people make in a year.   We solved problems that required us to calculate differences, to determine “per day” or “per month” amounts, and to use words such as double, triple and quadruple.  It was astounding to see how even my most reluctant math students tackled these number activities with gusto.  It was so meaningful and so purposeful.

AIDS and Population Statistics:

I group these two statistical categories together because it is hard to understand the significance of AIDS numbers without knowing the size of the population that they impact.  For example, it is very difficult to tell if 220,000 adults living with AIDS in Swaziland is a particularly significant number until you know that their entire population is only 1,128,814.  My grade 5’s worked with AIDS and population numbers quite extensively.  Many individuals asking for loans through Kiva were impacted by AIDS.  We have made loans to widows and grandmothers looking after their own children and sometimes even the children of deceased loved ones.  My students know to research and write about the impact of AIDS on the country of their loan recipients.  It helps them better understand their needs and feel more confident that their loan is helping the world’s most vulnerable people.

Why just the Grade 5’s? I chose to use AIDS and population statistics as a meaningful context in which to read, write, sort, describe and analyse numbers in the hundreds of thousands and millions, which are significant Grade 5 learning objectives.  My students had very emotional reactions to these numbers.  The nature of the disease and how it is transmitted spurred grand debates about rules–such as cultural rules against sexual activity in Middle Eastern countries–versus education of youth about the risks they face.  Through study of the numbers, they discovered that the latter was not nearly as effective at stopping the spread of AIDS, although many of my students passionately defended the need for people to be able to make decisions for themselves, even though their choices may be poor.  It, indeed, was a very compelling issue.  Admittedly, it dealt with a topic that is not part of the scope and sequence of health education for Grade 5’s.  Nonetheless, I felt quite comfortable leading the discussion and felt that it served to emotionally connect my students to the numbers, something that can be quite difficult to achieve in Mathematics.

Lessons of Literacy Rates:

Literacy rates are not only windows into the differences in basic education levels of people from country to country, but also a measurement of personal empowerment and opportunity.  In Canada, literacy rates are 99% for both males and females.  After examining countries with the lowest GDP per capita, my students noticed two things.  1- That literacy rates were often very low compared to Canada.   For example, in Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and Senegal, the literacy rates are 28%, 37.1% and 42% successively.   2- That female literacy rates were almost always lower than male literacy rates.  Sometimes those differences were very significant.  For example, in Afghanistan, the literacy rate for females is 12.6% compared to 43.1% for males.  In an article entitled, “The Dangers of Teaching Girls in Afghanistan” in The Guardian, Janet Swinney wrote:

“In 2004, The World Bank found that a one year increase in the schooling attainment of all adult females in a country is associated with an increase in GDP per capita for around US$700 per annum.  It also found that education enables women to deveop the skills and the confidence to become active in their communities and to participate in the political process.”

Thus, lower female literacy rates are an incredibly important indicator of the empowerment and opportunities for women.  My students often choose to loan to women for this reason.  Again, knowing literacy rates helps them feel confident that they are empowering and providing opportunity for those who are considered to be less than equal in their own countries.  It is true that literacy rates are expressed as percentages, which are numbers that my students are not supposed to learn until Grade 6.  However, the statistic is far too valuable keep from them simply because is expressed in percent form.  Besides, the more students are exposed to numbers in meaningful contexts, the more fluency they will obtain.  Exposure to these numbers will serve a foundation for deeper study of these numbers in the future, much the same way that exposure to money values in a young life provides a foundation for understanding decimals and decimal fractions.

Life Expectancy:  Pulling It All Together…

Life Expectancy is the final statistic that I exposed my students to this year.  I chose to leave it until the end, not because it is a complicated statistic to understand, but because it can possibly be explained through careful analysis of GDP per capita, AIDS numbers and Literacy Rates.  At the most basic level, it is evidence for how well people are able to meet their basic needs…the ones that translate into longer, healthier lives.  At a more complex level, it is the result of a complicated web of factors.  My grade 5’s embarked in an analysis of Life Expectancy data a couple of months ago.  The looked for correlations not only with AIDS, literacy and GDP per capita, but also with war and risk of infectious diseases.  There were no easy answers, although there were lots of questions and debate (all carried out on a class discussion board).  It was an engaging and eye-opening activity, not just for the kids, but for me as well.

This year, my eyes were fully open to the opportunities for not only emotionally engaging my students in the “cold” world of mathematics, but for effectively covering learning objectives as well.  Kiva was the turning point for me, and it has truly developed into a Renaissance in my classroom.  I now find myself actively seeking engaging, relevant and emotional contexts for all of my teaching (and learning) in Math.  It is hard for me to accept anything else when I have witnessed first hand, just how powerful and effective a meaningful context can be.  I will continue to chronicle these contexts as time goes on.  Believe me…once you give them a go, you’ll never turn back!

Jen

“A focus on real-world issues can alter the entire culture of a school or school system.  It enables students and teachers to experience the “meatiness” of the direct study of reality.  It’s unfailingly relevant.  It shows respect for students, who become more than mere candidates for the next higher grade.  It levels the playing field by not privileging those with superior symbol manipulation skills. It disregards the arbitrary, artificial boundaries of the academic disciplines.  It’s easily applicable to the wider world.  And it shifts the emphasis from cover-the-material memory work to a full range of thinking skills” (Marion Brady, “Cover the Material-Or Teach Students to think”, Educational Leadership, 2008)

Did you realize that if you lived in Sierra Leone that you would make $700 per year?  That is only $1.92 per day.  That wouldn’t buy you much, right? Of course that IS only an average.  Does that mean there are people who make less?  Are there rich people there too?

Did you realize that in Swaziland there are 220,000 people living with HIV/AIDS?  That’s a lot right?  Hang on…in the States there are 950,000 people living with HIV/AIDS.  Who has the bigger problem?  What if I told you that Swaziland has an AIDS prevalence rate of 38.8%?  The States has a prevalence rate of 0.6%…

While we’re on this topic, what if I told you that Sub Saharan Africa has 22,000,000 people living with AIDS and that North Africa and the Middle East have 380,000 people living with AIDS combined?  Why would there be such a huge difference between Sub-Saharan and North Africa?  And why would they lump North Africa in with the Middle East?

Lets Look at some numbers from a recent article entitled “The Dangers of Teaching Girls in Afghanistan” (guardian.co.uk)

According to the United Nations, the country now has a record 5.7 million children in education, but only 35% of these are girls and the figure is not increasing. An estimated 1.2 million girls are missing out on schooling. In some provinces, girls’ enrolment may be as low as 1%. A third of state schools are reserved for boys, and there are not enough female teachers. In a country where the literacy rate for women aged 15–24 years is only 14%, compared with a rate of 51% for men in the same age group, this is a desperate situation.

What kind of numeracy skills does it take to understand this paragraph?  What kinds of interesting problems and issues could be researched, figured out and argued about?

And why is this stuff worth figuring out?

Certainly these are real world issues.  As an adult I find these issues not only intriguing, but shocking.  I react with great emotion when I am faced with them.  I feel compelled to tell others about them, to see what they think, to gauge their reactions…

But what about kids?  They don’t have enough math or enough world experience to really get these issues…but what if they had a reason to face them, to figure them out, to connect with them?  What if they were faced with making a decision that could really make a difference in this world if only they were equiped with the right skills?  What if they were to meet a person or make contact with a person who actually lived through these problems?  What if they built connections to people and places outside of the four classroom walls?  Would they have a reason for understanding the stories that numbers tell then?  Would they find this stuff compelling too?

Yes!

I have witnessed this phenomenon first hand over the course of this and the past school year.  It is the first time that I have ever felt like I have understood what it means to turn my students into numerate individuals.  They have had many reasons to learn these complex, interesting numbers in many contexts.  They have individually made loans to entrepreneurs in the developing world through Kiva.org and had to justify their decisions.  They corresponded with and met individuals who have worked with people in Africa and even on the streets of our own cities.  They have engaged in fund raising projects of their own design.  They have even had reason to work with statistics from the First and Second World War.  Homelessness.  Internet Safety.

The Numbers Are Out There…and so is the opportunity for kids to make deep, emotional connections.

Over the next few weeks, I will be chronicling projects and problems that serve as natural media for understanding stories that numbers tell.  This understanding represents numeracy in its truest form.  Plus, a range of curricular objectives, particularly those related to Number, Number Operations, and Statistics and Probability from grades 4 to 8 are explicitly covered.  It has been amazing to feel such purpose in my math program.  I hope that, by sharing these experiences, you will feel inspired try some ideas of your own.

Jen

My husband and I heard about the microloan website, Kiva, in the spring of 2007.  It was (and still is) an incredible concept: individuals entrepreneurs in need of money to begin (or further) businesses in the developing world connect with lenders with both the means and desire to help out.  Potential lenders review the stories and business plans of these entrepreneurs and make loans as small as $25 dollars interest free.  The money is paid back according to payment terms laid out in the profile.  When the money is paid back, lenders have the option to lend again, or retrieve their credit and invest it elsewhere.  When I heard about it, I knew that it would be an amazing vehicle for teaching all kinds of concepts related to Math, Social Studies, Reading, Writing and Social Responsibility.  Imaging the kids making and justifying their own loans!  It was certainly worth a try, so I set about creating my own Kiva account.

Getting Started: Setting up an account with Kiva was not difficult to do, although I had to accept that if I wanted to do this in my classroom, that I would have to use my own credit card to provide the money for the loans.  For me, it was worth the risk.  I loved the Kiva concept and was willing to make loans myself anyway.  Plus, I really wanted to give it a go in my own classroom.  My principal was also willing to do the accounting on the school side for me and set up a Kiva account for funds raised by my class.  Whenever I added credit to the Kiva account, I submitted a receipt to the school and was quickly reimbursed.

Fund Raising Efforts: Our first fund raising efforts for Kiva (December 2007) were accomplished as a class.  I came up with the idea of a “math-a-thon”.  The kids would raise the money by being pledged per math sheet accurately completed during a two and a half hour math marathon.  It was a very efficient fund raiser!  We raised $1150 in that short time.  The kids worked really hard, although did not “enjoy” it.  They were utterly exhausted by the end of the session.  I was happy to have the funds, although decided that I needed to use a different method!   They needed to have more imput and as much connection and control of the fund raising effort possible.  Why?  Ultimately, I want the kids to think that doing this kind of stuff is both worthwhile and within their own power.

Decisions Made and Justified (Phase 1)- In the first year, I introduced my students to a range of statistics from GDP per capita and population below the poverty line, to infant mortality and literacy rates.  I dealt with it all at the same time and had them pouring over pretty skookum data sheets, looking for the most needy countries in the world.  Pretty overwhelming stuff, although amazingly, they accepted this unflinchingly.  In very short order, they were scanning business profiles, family stories and country statistics of the Kiva entrepreneurs.  They individually made their decisions and I made loans for them on the spot ($25 each).  They then put together a little writing project with photos of the entrepreneur they helped for display. The kids were very proud of their efforts.  We were lucky to be featured 3 times in local newspapers, invited to guest host a Student Leadership Conference in Maple Ridge, and present our efforts to the Board.

Reflections on the First Year-This was an incredibly powerful project, even though it was really very experimental.  I definitely recognized, and to a certain extent, used the project as a vehicle to cover outcomes in math, reading and writing.  It was a little loose, however.  I taught far too many statistics which were used in a limited way in their decision making.  I had not developed any rubrics for assessment.  The kids had one shot at making a loan on their own.  Their reflections on the experience were limited to group conversations and a film that we made for our day at the Student Leadership Conference.  It was all very cool, but needed a ton of refining and expanding!

This year, I have dealt with many of the issues from the first year.  It is truly a huge part of our classroom culture.  In my next entry, I will start to explain some of the more powerful numeracy components of Kiva Project this year.

Until next time…

Jen

I have been teaching for 10 years and for 10 years I have both encouraged and KILLED reading in my classroom.  Comprehension tasks, vocabulary development, journals, oral discussions, group projects, dramas, reports, reviews…I could go on.  I have never been completely satisfied with any of them because, at the end of the day, the students have been focused on the TASK and the reading gets lost somehow.  What is the true POINT of all of these things?  Here is really what I want for my students:

• To connect with their books and drive to figure them out, even when parts don’t make sense.
• To engage in thinking about what they are reading willingly.
• To learn something new about life and its possibilities by uncovering exciting connections.
• To savor the written word.
• To develop a desire for writing, too.

Very few (if any) of these goals were achieved through traditional means.  I was responsibly covering curriculum, providing feedback and evaluating my students based on their products, but I was not turning them into readers.  They were not buzzing about books.  They exhibited no perseverance.  They completed the book and the tasks.  I constantly tried to light their fires and bring to light interesting issues and connection in oral discussions.  I created really interesting questions and writing tasks.  I integrated reading themes with other areas of the curriculum.  Only a handful of students (the ones who enjoyed reading anyway) ever really caught on.

Technology to the Rescue?-

Prior to Christmas this year, I started teaching my students how to use discussion boards.  I have my own classroom Share Point site (password protected) and discussion boards are an interesting, easy to use feature.  At the start, we used them to discuss interesting topics such as Internet Safety, to display and explain art of World War 1, and to even post up individual progress on fund raising efforts.  They were taught appropriate language and allowed to practice both from home and at school.  I considered that they might be an interesting tool to use in conjunction with reading.  I was too afraid to give this a go at first, even though I had the technology to facilitate this (10 MacBooks, to be exact).

The Context- I had a very good selection of novels in groups of various sizes.  They were certainly compelling books, from The Giver and Holes, to Ryan and Jimmy and Iqbal.  I wanted the students to be able to read at their own pace and to be able to choose which books they wanted to move on to.  I didn’t want to just ask them questions or get them to complete a journal or book report to make sure that they were actually connecting with their novels, otherwise I would end up with a focus on completing tasks again.  And reading would be work and therefore, a chore.  So what to do?

“The reality that knowledge rather than being found in books and in lectures or on the Internet, is actually constructed in collaborations among learners.  It is when technology supports the jerky, jagged, and looping lines of shared discovery that it fulfills its own evolutionary promise.” Brown, J.S.  & Duguid, P. (2002) The Social Life of Information

Enter Discussion Boards-I thought perhaps that I would create a discussion where all of the kids could discuss all of their novels, relating them to other books and answering questions based on theme.  At the last minute, I decided that I couldn’t manage this.  How would I provide feedback?  How could I keep track of different threads of the discussion?  Would they get it?  I opted for single novel discussions which would occur in the classroom on the laptops.  It wouldn’t matter what part of the novel my kids were at, because we would be discussing broader issues. I also decided that I needed to be a part of the discussions, because the kids would need me to model responses and provide direction and feedback.  So I grabbed a my laptop, sat in the middle of the floor and began to participate.

Unexpected Benefits-Have you ever tried to lead a small group, oral discussion while others are working on other tasks?  I have.  Constant interruptions make the process very difficult.  Plus the talking, no matter how quiet, leads to disruption of the rest of the group.  I have had the kids manage discussion on their own, but I really want depth in a discussion and I never know if I am getting it.  ANYWAY, quite unexpectedly, I found that written online discussions eliminate all of these issues.  I still am interrupted, but it is no big deal.  I set aside my computer, assist the student in need, and the discussion goes on without me.  They don’t need me there as leader.  I am only a participant, although I definitely see myself as a guide.  Interestingly, my students ask as many questions as they answer.  I always start off with 3 or 4 good questions.  By the end of a discussion,  I have 10 – 15 questions going, all added by the kids.

The Importance of Questions-

If you don’t ask the right questions, you are not going to have an interesting discussion.  I have met many people who are concerned about discussion boards and ask the following question:  “What if the kids copy one another?”  I have been with two separate groups of teachers and this was the first question asked in BOTH groups.  Um…don’t ask questions that require one correct answer.  Problem eliminated.  Great questions are going to be interesting, compelling, and controversial.  You want to get them wrangling over the issues!  Then they have a reason to read what others think.  That is key: discussion boards are as much about reading, connecting and thinking as they are about writing.  Plus, I have found that the kids start to post their own questions that are just as good.  Why?  Because they want people to respond.  If they don’t ask good questions, they won’t get answered.  Period.

Issues of Time and Place- I find that I fit a relatively good discussion in the space of a 40 minute reading block.  It is hard to stop them, because I always find the group on the brink of a break through.  So what to do?  Well, I do two things.  One is to show the entire group how the discussion went.  We read it over as a class and do some analysis.  This is great, because the kids who have not read the book find this quite a teaser.  They are desperate to read the book, because they want to know for themselves what is going on.  They want to have an opinion too.  Plus, I get to expose some of the key issues and show off some of the more interesting bits of the discussion.  It allows the participants to see that there is a big picture.  The other step I take is to take some of the more interesting questions generated by the kids and carry them over into the next discussion of the novel.

“Making meaning is not just an individual operation. Learning is a reciprocal process; the individual influences the group’s thinking, and the group influences the individual’s thinking” (Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001; Vygotsky, 1978)

Draw Backs?? There are some.  Unequal written participation is one.  Some kids are right in there and offer lots of insights, points, counterpoints and questions.  Others are like ghosts, making the odd, fleeting entry here or there.  How much are they actually participating?  Are they reading what others have to say?  WHAT TO DO??  Well, my thought is that I need to get everyone to write about the whole experience in some clever way.  Perhaps they need to write about the most interesting points in the discussion and what it made them think about.  I am going to be playing around with this idea over the coming months and I’ll let you know how it goes!

Jen

I didn’t really want to start off with introductions.  I’d much rather get right to it.  However, I will give you some sense of who I am…but after I let you know the point of this blog.

THE POINT: I am always coming up with new material in my class.  I have great difficulty repeating lessons because I always believe that there is a better way.  This blog will document the pursuit of that “better way”.  Some stuff will be awesome and different, some will awful, but still different.   My goals are lofty.  I want to find life-changing, life-defining, life-affirming purpose in everything I do.  I would like to share what I find with you.

NOW FOR INTRODUCTIONS: I am a teacher at a small elementary school in Anmore, British Columbia, Canada.  My name is Jennifer…actually Jen….Whiffin.  The kids I teach are in grade 4 and 5.  They are my project.  I would like them to be on the lookout for their purpose in this world as well.  If that is too much to expect, then I like to think that I am offering them a lot of meaty “consider the following” moments to add to their life portfolios.  I want them to have a lot of happy options to choose from when they start to crave this choice.

I am also a mom of two young kids (4 and 2).  Motherhood certainly defines me as well.  It has given me a very humble edge because I do not have many answers when it comes to parenthood.  I step lightly on the path of raising my kids.  I’m not sure what effect my actions have, so I am pretty delicate in this area.  For whatever reason, I am much more bold when it comes to teaching.  I carry a machete and hack away at the undergrowth!  O boldly and bravely I pursue my treasure!  I guess my own children ARE my treasure and I feel like they are with me on the path.  I stop, look, and listen much more often as a mother.  Ideally, I would like to merge the two together somehow…

Anyway, time to shut up about me.  Time is precious and more of me will surface as I add to this blog.  My first posts will be some catch up, to warn you.   A couple of big projects that I have been working on have been GOLD and you need to know about them.  Oh…yes…it’s true that they involve the use of technology.  I am excited to share them with you.

I wish you great joy and minimal boredom!

Jen