Matt Miller from Ditch that Textbook has many terrific Google Slides templates that he offers for free. Not to be outdone, Ryan O'Donnell is ridiculously creative with Google Slides. I love how both of these fellas take a slidedeck tool and make it so much more.
Speaking of Google Slides, I'm psyched about two relatively new features. I dig the new closed caption feature. Using this and Loom or Screencastify let's me record the captions for later viewers. It also will really help the hearing impaired and ESL students as well.
Last year I blogged about Knightlab's impressive storytelling tools. Several of these tools are used by commercial media outlets, but I was excited by their potential use in the classroom.
I recently gave an assignment about the Silk Road to my 9th grade world history students to tie our study of Ancient China and Ancient India together. Inspired by this resource by the Field Museum, I had my students assume the persona of a real or fictional character from the heyday of the Silk Road and then write a diary- based on research- that incorporated facts about the Silk Road while also telling a good story.
Here's one fine example by a student of mine. She was quite proud of it and she should be. We spent some time talking about how to make the story itself interesting. I think she pulled it off. StoryMap truly was the perfect tool for the assignment. Years ago, when I taught Art Spiegelman's Maus, I had the students trace Vladek's travels across Poland before and during the Holocaust. Again, StoryMap would have been perfect for such an assignment.
This weekend, I learned that technology is ruining just about everything. For starters, I learned that kids are more fragile and more prone to anxiety and even suicide because of technology. Do you think trigger warnings are silly? You can blame technology. Jon Haidt points to the advent of the iPhone in 2007 as a primary cause of fragile, anxious teens and college students. While always skeptical of any argument that points to a single cause, I found the article persuasive. I also saw Haidt the other night on a rerun Bill Maher's HBO show where he makes this same point amidst a broader conversation. This post on Medium offers a deeper look into his work.
The iPhone came out in 2007. Remember what happened in 2008? Might economic insecurity and the now broken implicit promise of a better future have anything to do with increasingly anxious teens?
Later, I read in the NYTimes that schools catering to the kids of the rich and powerful are REMOVING technology from their classrooms. Meanwhile poor kids in poor schools are even becoming addicted! to technology. Pointing out that ubiquitous technology is a huge experiment on children, Chris Anderson, the former editor of Wired magazine notes, “The digital divide was about access to technology, and now that everyone has access, the new digital divide is limiting access to technology.” The digital divide has reversed itself?
Okay, technology is hurting rich kids and now hurting poor kids. That's bad enough, right? Then I was reminded that social media has blown up the world. Facebook and other social media platforms made millions off of alt-right provacatours and Russian bots and allowing these reactionaries to poison politics around the world. This is true. Facebook in particular has much to answer for in Myanmar and the slaughter of the Rohingya people.
Look, all snark aside. These are real problems. Tech has helped make teens more stressed, the poor even more disadvantaged and the world less safe. True. True. True Yet there is enormous danger in any single narrative. Much as political theorist, Samuel Huntington's, Clash of Civilizations thesis has some salience but is an absurdly broad (and scary) generalization to describe a complicated world, I argue that our scapegoating of technology is overblown. There are many, many reasons why our young people are more anxious and why our planet is "falling apart" and why poorer kids struggle in school.
These challenges should humble and awe us. The broad scope of history also tells us that we've messed up mightily without technology. That too should humble and awe us and put things into much needed perspective. The Khmer Rouge, Nazis, Maoists and totalitarians of all stripes wreaked havoc in the 20th century. Want some good news? Let Nicholas Kristof tell you why 2017 was the best year in human history. He wrote:
A smaller share of the world’s people were hungry, impoverished or illiterate than at any time before. A smaller proportion of children died than ever before. The proportion disfigured by leprosy, blinded by diseases like trachoma or suffering from other ailments also fell. … Every day, the number of people around the world living in extreme poverty (less than about $2 a day) goes down by 217,000, according to calculations by Max Roser, an Oxford University economist who runs a website called Our World in Data. Every day, 325,000 more people gain access to electricity. And 300,000 more gain access to clean drinking water.
Might technology have anything to do with this? Let me add that I'm more than leary- and even a bit offended- when people talk about addictions to technology. There's no such thing. The science is inconclusive at best, but I'm clear where I stand. Addiction is a neurological phenomenon- the result of complex molecular changes that take place in the brain after repeated exposure to the addictive substance- drugs or alcohol. Sure, video games light up the same receptors, but at a factor of three hundred-fold less than do drugs and alcohol. Alcoholism and drug addiction kill. Alcoholism alone kills thousands upon thousands. The opioid crisis is devastating communities across the country. Truly, how many have died from video games? I'll wager the answer is zero. So let's be careful about throwing around the word "addiction." Is technology habit forming? Yes. Can it be damaging? Of course. Should we be careful? Absolutely. But let's stop the alarmism. We don't say a depressed person is "addicted to bed".
As my colleague Alex Pearson puts it, we are in an age of "darting attention". I know that I spend too much time looking at screens and have harder time staying with a book than I before. Global multinational corporations made billions and looked away as others used their platforms to manipulate us. Poor, overstretched schools have naively looked to tech as a panacea but have largely used it to replicate drill and rote learning- only now with screens.
I'm not blind to the problems technology poses. There have been many unforeseen consequences to the widespread adoption in the industrialized world of digital technology, smartphones and social media.
But be very careful of a single story. We have real problems to solve.
I first learned about flippity at a Rick Kiker presentation. It was a nice little flashcard maker that used google spreadsheet to create the said flashcards. It seemed like a nice tool, but nothing earth-shattering.
Recently, my colleague let me know that Flippity had made all sorts of enhancements to their sheet based apps. I used the scavenger hunt tool to make an activity for my students. \
Here's Jennifer Shafer giving a tutorial on how it works.
I'm going to use it to make my own Breakout.edu style game in the future.
I am charged with teaching the ancient Indian Manusmriti, the Laws of Manu handed down sometime around 200 bce. These laws helped solidify patriarchy and the caste system of Hindu society. I can always provoke a bit of outrage in my students as they read the laws from primary source, but it's, well.... let's say it can be dry.
To spice up this lesson, I wanted my students to engage more actively with the laws. It is easy for them to express enlightened disgust at the servile status of women that these laws imposed. I wanted them to try to see what the writer of these laws was attempting to accomplish as he set these laws in place. I wanted them to be able to criticize and defend. To contextualize. To understand the concept of dharma and its place in samsara.
I think the activity moved the depth of thinking from DOK-1 to DOK-2 and -3 as it forced kids to take a different perspective. "How could you?" "And what is the reason?" are practically embedded into the lesson. It forces students to do a bit of research and to contextualize the lesson. They also had fun doing it- and engaging kids is always half the battle. Several kids asked, "Can we do this again?" A victory! This is dry stuff for many 15 year olds.
After reading the laws and having a preliminary discussion about them, I asked the students to use this SMS composer tool to create a text exchange between themselves and Manu- the ruler to whom these laws are, by custom, attributed. They composed text exchanges and then shared these exchanges on this Padlet wall.
I'm teaching a months long world religions unit. It is difficult. I want to do justice to these important belief systems yet also have students think about them critically. I can't proselytize, nor should I. Yet, as we break religions down into just their practices and beliefs, we do little to capture what adherents get out of their practice. Okay, okay, many people dutifully attend religious services only out of a sense of duty to family or heritage. But many others find deep meaning. And that's what is so hard to teach.
Religion is multi-sensory. I happen to be Catholic- a disaffected and deeply upset Catholic, but Catholic nonetheless. On reason I remain one is because Catholics at their best worship with all five senses. There's sublime (and sometimes ridiculously awful) music. There's art, incense, bread and wine and kneeling, standing, sitting and processing. Jews also worship with all 5 senses. So do the adherents of many other faiths. We mainly teach and learn with two senses. Perhaps this is one reason why it's so hard to teach about religion. There's a lived experience aspect to religion that mere words can't capture.
Yet, what's really tricky in teaching about religion is that religion itself, as Ken Wilber points out, has always performed two important but very different functions. For millennia, religion has allowed humans- through stories and rituals- to make sense of the world, our role upon it, to understand suffering and to explain death. This is the religion we attempt to teach in our world religion units- the religion that bolsters the self and society. But there's another aspect of religion that we don't even begin to explain. The great insight/ triumph achieved by mystics across faith traditions is religion that transcends the self instead of reinforcing the self. It's the genius of Gandhi and Francis of Assisi and Buddha and Hildegard. Something happened to these people. Yet, today, we're just as likely to call them crazy.
I teach in a school born of a religious tradition. William James called George Fox, the founder of this tradition, a spiritual genius. William James suggested that we study religion through those individuals who "have a genius for religion." We don't talk much Fox's genius nor of anyone else's, really. Perhaps I should take William James up on his suggestion. But I know I can't. Because it isn't "history". And that's crux of the pickle in which I find myself.
Not every lesson is a homerun and that's okay. I hit a solid line drive up the middle with this lesson that I share below. Kids learned content, tech tools, and had fun doing it. I share this with my readers because I reference three tech tools.
Canva
BigHistory
Google Slides
I am using the Big History Project to supplement my World History course this fall. Big History has been valuable in letting me "set the stage". (To see a broad overview of Big History, click here.) My course kicks off with a study of ancient religions, but it was the agrarian revolution that created the milieu in which religions would be born and I used Big History materials to teach a lesson on how agriculture started in the fertile crescent and both spread and developed independently across the globe.
After a short lecture, I had students read and watch videos about the discovery and development of agriculture across the world. To demonstrate learning, I had the students create menus as if they were opening a restaurant specializing in "first foods". Students used Canva to create their menus. It took all of about 20 minutes for most students to complete the task. I like to think that this activity allowed for a "stickier" lesson. I'm the first to admit that the assignment challenged students and DOK level 2- not the deepest level of thinking. But they liked the task, they learned about Canva and had to show their learning in a creative way. I think the lesson is a keeper.
(BTW, I used the ever flexible Google Slides to make the presentation below- the first page of this is courtesy of the amazing Template Palooza created by Ryan O'Donnell - which is chock full of fantastic templates for student and teacher use.)
Student led conferences aren't new, but they seem to be gaining steam. I've taken some tentative steps in this direction as I invite students to parent conferences. But this is a baby-step and I likely can't go further without institutional support.
I'm interested in what the research says about student led conferences. Are they effective? Why should schools adopt them?
Some research suggests that parents don't particularly find traditional parent-teacher conferences all that useful and instead find them to be stressful and time-consuming. But I digress.
The most thorough review I could find of student led conferences was this Dutch study of 130 10th grade students. (There was a separate control group of students who did not lead conferences, but only attended teacher led conferences.) The students who led conferences prepared for these conferences by creating learning portfolios to present at the conferences. In contrast, students who attended teacher led conferences did nothing in preparation.
There were some intriguing results. Before diving into them, I want to note that these results don't measure "soft skills" nor do they examine any of the other alleged but seemingly obvious benefits of slcs such as student agency, ownership, and having students parents and teachers all on the same page (literally and figuratively). Instead, these results look at student achievement the subjects of math, Dutch and English. Interestingly, it seems that math scores improved more than the language subject scores for students who led conferences. Boys received a greater benefit than girls. And low achieving students, boys in particular, saw the greatest improvement when contrasted with the control group.
I don't think the study fully accounts for the variable that is the portfolio. Indeed, how important a role does the preparation for the conference- the building of a personal learning portfolio- play in the success? The metacognitive process of portfolio building would seem to have benefits whether or not it was created for a conference.
I'm not surprised that the low-achieving students saw the most improvement. One reason of course is that high-achieving students have less room to improve. There is a cap to highest scores. Yet, I can't help but thinking that student led conferences encourage (okay force) disaffected and disengaged students to participate in their schooling.
This ain't my first go around. It's my 28th. The arc of this teacher's career has had distinct phases. I put them this way.
1) Survival- first year
2) Settling In- years 2-4
3) Hitting a Stride- mastering of craft -5-15
4) Unease- Is this all there is? 16-22
5) Reinventing oneself- Finding meaning and new challenges in the work. 22- 'til now.
6) A second stride.
7) The final lap.
Okay, I guessed about the final two steps because I've not really experienced them yet. Maybe there are more than what I list here. Still, this has been my journey thus far. I was clueless at the start of my career and did things that were just stupid; I survived and had good mentors. Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou, Doug Ross. As I learned my craft - praxis- and about my craft- theory, I became a fine teacher. That third stage lasted a good 10 years for me. By my late thirties I wondered about my career path. Teaching is hard in that it doesn't offer much in the way for advancement outside of administrative work. And so, my groove became a rut and I felt stuck, truly stuck.
In some ways, I'll never be the teacher I was at age 33 again. Nor do I really want to be. I was dynamic in ways I am no longer dynamic. I can still "bring it" sometimes- but I did WAY too much talking- and really couldn't do it now even if I tried- I don't have the energy. It was an "Alex show". I performed and was perceived by many as being superb at what I did. My ego and sense of self were much too wrapped up in being the "best" teacher; I intentionally cultivated a following.
That time in my career ended years ago. I was good. I was dynamic, creative, I knew my pedagogy and was popular with kids. I was zealous in pursuit of changing my school in more progressive ways. But this teaching was also so narcissistic- I was much too wrapped up in self- and I think it damaged me.
Today, I still want to bring and share my gifts with my students. Influenced by Parker Palmer, Richard Rohr and others, I've come to know joy and contentment. I want a healthy connectedness with my students. I want to share knowledge and push them to learn and experience on their own. Of course I want kids to like me and my class. They're not going to learn without feeling some level of appreciation and connection towards me. Ego still has a healthy place in all of this. But I've made ego deflation a central part of my meditative practice these past 7 years. I no longer desire to be "the best" at anything. I want meaning and joy.
While this meditation admittedly rambles about- I'm quite sure I'm not alone in experiencing an arc such as the one I describe above. A teaching career can be difficult to navigate- those heady days in which I hit my stride were such a rush! But where do you go with it? It's a dead end, but it is such a seductive dead end. I see some colleagues- young, dynamic, smart and popular- headed perhaps on my path. I hope they come out the other side feeling at ease and okay. Burn-out is an equally likely outcome.
I'm close to being an empty nester. 4 of my 5 kids are now off to college. I'll always be dad, but the job of dad is close to being done for me. I'm almost 50 and figure I have about a third of my career left. A little euphoria akin to what I felt in my salad days of teaching will be always be nice, but I will want it to be tempered with wisdom and detachment. I look forward to that second stride.
