Caging the Mockingbird

Whether physical, virtual or systemic, when you attempt to move forward, or to move in new directions, you are bound to bump up against obstacles. As an advocate for making school more relevant for learners of all ages, I'm feeling a like a bird stuck in a shrinking cage.

Case in Point
This semester, a colleague of mine took a leap of faith to introduce a collaborative project to his English students. Students were grouped and assigned rotating roles that involve writing, drawing, recording, designing, and leading. The multi-week project is focused on the novel 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and has resulted in the development of group websites at Wix.com. While you can see some of the work students completed in the early days, network access to the site has now been blocked.

After reading Chris Kennedy's How to Stop Good Ideas Getting Shot Down, I have come to realize that many of John Kotter's 'blocks to good ideas' are serving as barriers the use of technology in my school:

Fear Mongering: "The website puts the security of the network is at risk."

Death by Delay: "If you review your unfiltering request with your principal, and your principal makes a recommendation to program council, and program council approves the use of the site, then a communication to ICT will allow us to consider whether or not we can provide access."

Confusion: "Facebook is the problem. If they do this, then that, while visiting that URL, then students would be able to access their Facebook accounts through the site."

Do those making the decision to modify filtering policies even consider the ramifications? Working to engage in his students in this rich project-based learning experience, my colleague ensured that student roles addressed expectations in reading, writing and media. He had to ensure his classroom could accommodate a range of production team roles; had to book computer lab time, and had to find a way to assess the differentiated contributions of participants. More than that, he had to take a huge risk attempting a project he'd never done before.

It's been three school days since access to Wix has been blocked. If things change, I'll add an update in the comments below. In the meantime, I have no idea what to suggest for the lessons lost, or yet to come. Should we encourage the students to work at home on these tasks? Do we complete the tasks offline? Dare we re-invent the project?

Maybe it's just not worth trying to be a mockingbird?

"Please take out your pencils and notebooks and copy this note from the board... There will be a test on this material next week."

The PBL Cohort at Learning 2.011

If we're serious about leading educators in order to leverage technology in ways that are innovative and engaging, then it falls to us to model appropriate lessons in our work with teachers. The adoption of a cohort model is one of the innovations at Learning 2.011 that confirmed for me that we would be in for a memorable learning experience. Cohorts emerged as participants highlighted their preferences upon registration. My cohort consisted of 22 teachers eager to explore project-based learning.

As an advocate of both project-based learning and experiential learning, it was with great anticipation that I prepared to lead the PBL Cohort. While I was prepared to lead the group to develop a collaborative publication, I didn't anticipate that it would be such a challenge to decide upon a culminating project. Although I've worked on a number of large group projects in my own professional learning, I could never have guessed how wonderfully engaging our PBL product and workflow would be.

Thursday evening, cohort meeting #1:
After the official opening of the conference, our cohort had an opportunity to gather in what would later become our classroom and media centre. We used this time to meet one another, and to discover the learning styles, hobbies, and tech literacies of fellow group members. Our cohort had a high number of athletes, and a wide range of skills that included drawing, writing, video-editing, audio-recording, directing and more.

Friday morning, cohort meeting #2:
Participants knew ahead of time that this session would be used to share personal profiles on our cohort blog, http://lrn2pbl.posterous.com. Since this site was intended to be an artifact of our learning, participants had to be briefed on the many ways they might contribute to our public learning space. Individuals were invited to post by 1] sending an email to the blog address; 2] bookmarking a site with the cohort hashtag; 3] sending a tweet along with the cohort hashtag; 4] posting a photo or video to Flickr using the cohort hashtag.

We used the latter half of the session to brainstorm a potential project towards which we might apply our varied skills. Five potential topics and themes were suggested, but when each of four sub-groups was asked to highlight one preferred topic, we ended up with four very different ideas. I left the session assuming we would be creating and publishing an e-book on project-based learning, but I had no idea of what the book would be about! This made me more than a bit nervous, knowing we had to hit the ground running on Saturday.

Friday afternoon, cohort meeting #3:
In this second working session, we attempted to nail down a focus for our pending e-book. To me, the most interesting of the five options, was "World with PBL; World without PBL". Although none of the groups gravitated to this topic at the previous session, I suggested that in my head I heard a movie trailer voiceover guy when I read the topic "In a world where project-based learning...".

Suddenly the mood of the room shifted, and more than a few participants agreed that making a movie based on this theme, would be a good way to leverage the talent in the room. After brainstorming roles that included writers, prop managers, equipment technicians, location scouts, video-editors, sound mixers, directors, and actors, cohort participants self-selected roles and dove into preparations for the next day's shoot.

Saturday morning, cohort meeting #4:
After a short briefing, I found myself on the sidelines as teams set to work. In no time, groups dove into their roles simultaneously taking care of set decoration, camera set-up, soundtrack development, rehearsal and filming. Completed media was imported by our video-editing team during scene changeovers. Members of the writing team used this time to brief the director and actors in preparation for the next scene.



Saturday afternoon, cohort meeting #5:
Our final session together, began with the screening of the first draft of our film. When some of the footage appeared out of order, we realized the value in having one of the writers work directly with the video-editing team. After a quick shuffle of clips, the group brainstormed titles that would help clarify the intended message of the piece. The synchronization of the soundtrack and export of the final film was completed while remaining members of the group participated debriefed the experience.



The completion of a project like this is highly rewarding to the participants which may be why members of my cohort commonly showed up well in advance of each session. With each participant having a distinct role to play, there is evidence of each person's contribution in the final product. I hope my 'production team' enjoyed the experience as much as I enjoyed facilitating this cohort. It was certainly a memorable way to teach and learn about project-based learning.

Student Success: Surviving vs Thriving

As a teacher responsible for Student Success in my high school, I've grown fatigued with dealing from the fallout from one-size-fits-all educational approaches. Specifically, I find myself sharing the frustration of my students as they make every effort to avoid completing work they see as irrelevant.

In the past year, I've spent most of my time at school in supporting students who don't do homework; who are disengaged from school; who don't like to write; and who are too challenged with distractions of the day, to demonstrate an interest in lessons designed by their teachers.

This year, I've been more proactive in working with teachers to develop learning experiences that are more closely tailored to the interests and abilities of my clients. Here are a few examples of the work I'll be doing in coming days and weeks, that I hope will lead students to become active participants in their own learning.

Case 1: "I don't do writing..."
For a student who needs one more language credit, but who finds it painful to put pencil to paper, we're pursuing an independent project. In the next few weeks, I hope to scaffold the work of 'Trevor' who is designing a high school to meet the needs of unique students.

Using Smart Ideas concept mapping software to scaffold the writing, 'Trevor' will be designing a whole new high school experience. This work grew out of a small writing assignment, and although it's been a struggle to get rolling, I've promised to share this student's work with a real world audience. If the project gains traction, you're likely to hear and see more about it in this space.

Case 2: "I can't sit in a desk..."
Like many teens, 'Jake' needs to be physically active in order to survive the school day. While our board's alternative education focuses on career skills and co-op, the remote site that hosts the program is inaccessible to this student. In order to develop a unique program to suit his needs, I'll be hosting a meeting of the special education department, the guidance department, the co-op department, and our school administration, to design a pilot learning experience that may one day be made available to other students at our school.

The plan is to cluster a few accessible courses, and to design rich cross-curricular projects that will lead 'Jake' to demonstrate the achievement of the interdisciplinary course expectations. Ideally, we'll twin this project work with a co-op experience, and will provide access to multimedia tools and training so that 'Jake' can document his experience.

Case 3: "This class is a challenge..."
One of our grade 10 language classes has a disproportionate number of special needs students who chafe at the rigors of reading and writing. In completing the course and in preparating for the provincial literacy test, students are required to respond to a wide variety of 'media texts', so why not engage students in creating their own media texts?

After consulting with the teacher and department head about movie-making and podcasting, we've settled on a few performance tasks that will allow students to play the roles of advertising executives, multimedia engineers, and movie-makers. What's more, students will have choice in the roles they'll play, and the best of their work will be seen by an online audience.

While many of my Student Success colleagues around the province may find themselves working in triage, I'm trying to be proactive in helping teachers to create academic challenges that are compelling and relevant. I'm hopeful that my job will gradually become one of enriching the high school experience, rather than surviving it.

Photo credits: br1dotcom, vancouverfilmschool, Proctor Archives

From Me to We

From Networked Learning in a Networked World (courtesy of Weblogg-ed) "The problem of the edublogasphere (and actually the whole blogasphere) in the context of learning is that people in the sphere do not - at least often - form any groups (an entity of individuals with an objective)."

It seems to me that formalized 'group network learning' and 'online collaboration' only happen when something is a stake. A larger purpose or project is needed as a focus to draw people together.

I've experienced this reality in more than one way:

1] In working with students and mentors with David Neils at Telementor.org, one of the realities that came to light was that mentor-protege relationships are most effective when a project acts as the focus for the interactions. Diverse experiences and ideas necessarily contended with one another, and constructed with one another.

2] In leading teachers through an online course, focus questions were indispensable in launching meaningful discussions. Our online work was narrowly focused. Questions that encourage variable viewpoints are not always easy to come by. (Individual bloggers often align with like minds, missing out on such challenging interactions.)

3] In collaborating to develop common approaches to lead teachers to the use of e-learning tools in Ontario, my regional colleagues and I found great traction in developing sharable resources through Wiki documents. Our online work had a clear purpose.

Each of these online interactions was meaningful because something was at stake, amplifying motivation for all participants.

When Will Richardson shares "My learning has a general focus and direction, to be sure, but it’s trajectory is determined by whatever is in my aggregator or on my screen at the moment."

This thought affirms for me my discovery that independent learning and exploration through chosen feeds/channels is effective for creative tangential discovery; but not for 'product'ivity. For a product to result, a team has to come together with a common goal (be it a conference, presentation, paper, resource...).

'Individual network learning' may not be an oxymoron... it may simply be the way individual online voices seek content from their networks: downloading for incentive to upload. (e.g., the Blogger whose livliehood depends on individual posts/presentations; the student trying to complete a research paper.)

'Group network learning' on the other hand, has many contributing via upload, so that in the end, the group has something worth sharing with the world via downloading! (e.g., The Future of Learning in a Networked World conference; Open Source software development; Wikipedia).



My four year old at his first soccer game had the wisdom to network before moving towards a common 'goal'. I wonder how many of the individual voices in the blogosphere are yearning like I am, for collaborative projects in which to vest their mutual interests... Project-Based Learning anyone?!