Beyond School

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• Good warmer for World History unit and/or for Animal Farm or V for Vendetta?  By Naomi Wolf
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SFETT’s iCan Film Festival de Cine

• Marco Torres’ San Fernando HS student galleries, annually, since 2001 or so.
   - post by cburell

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Barbara at Dare to Dream, whose Photo-a-Day for Schools Flickr project found the flesh [spirit] willing but the body weak for me (sorry again, Barbara), asked this question to me in a recent post.

How can we encourage exploration and following interests with our students and still hold them to some kind of timeline? Clay, you are building a text with your students so how do you handle the time line?

My answer to her there became the most thorough description of my history class’ first wiki textbook project, “A Broken World: WW I to WW II,” that I decided to post my comment to her here. So here it is:

The wiki textbook project has not been difficult to manage at all, so far (but at the same time, it’s not a very student-centered project–the only choice students got was to choose which chapter of WWI to WWII history to turn into a textbook chapter). All students have drafted their re-write of the textbook chapter (paraphrasing skills, reading comprehension, writing), added multimedia (using del.icio.us searches, rss searches, etc–research skills), made a presentation (normally Powerpoint, but that’s fine, and they’re improving impressively at that, possibly because their slideshows are published for real audiences on the wiki), then given, with their partners, lectures to the class using their Powerpoints (speaking skills). I film the lectures, capture them in iMovie immediately after, and upload them to Google Video daily.

To keep the other students learning from these student-taught classes (rather than zoning out), they are quizzed each class on the content from the prior class’ lectures. (And yes, I do some post-mortem teacher lecturing after each student lecture to clarify points and model the “presentation as storytelling” approach I’m pushing them to learn. That is filmed and posted on the wiki too, which has interesting applications for semester exam reviews, next year’s classes, and general uses for world audiences as well.)

Finally, students self-assess their embedded lectures with a rubric my English dept colleagues made, and write goals for improvement for their follow-up lecture. They post these metacognitive skills-reflections on the discussion tab of their wiki page.

They’ll do the whole process again in a “Cold War” wiki textbook, and be graded for their lectures that time as an oral test grade (this first round is just a quiz grade for the lectures).

So the wiki textbook project is really traditional in terms of content, but offers a legacy product for future students with multimedia offerings a paper textbook obviously can’t offer.

Above all, my objectives for this project (like all my projects, really) are about literacy: reading, writing, speaking, listening, researching.

And collaborating.

Did I answer your question about time management? I get about 2 chapter lectures per 85 minute class from my students (though the over-achievers are going overboard, which is good and bad). The schedule fits what we’re doing.

I can’t imagine getting anything done, though, in a 55 minute class [Barbara's school's schedule]. Why?

* * *

For a look at one exemplary lecture, check out these two students’ lecture on the causes of World War I. Great Powerpoint, impressively clear and interesting lecture. Not bad for a ninth grader! (And we can’t wait to compare this to lectures we film when they’re seniors.)

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Phuket sunset
Originally uploaded by rosswebsdale.

Nothing like an illness to clear your head. Mine taught me a lesson in balance. I’ve been so fascinated by the possibilities of our sci-fi educational reality that I’ve forgotten to take care of myself well.

It’s also a good time for silence in other ways. Things are slowing down, getting calmer. Thank Goodness.

Chris in Honolulu, Michele in Denver, and I are wrapping up our first 1001 Flat World Tales workshop (more on that when the student publishers choose the first stories for the “blook” in a few weeks).

The World War I to World War II online wiki textbook my history students are making is coming along nicely, and since they are lecturing for at least 75% of each class session, I’m more of a coach than a teacher (you can see their lectures on the wiki, since we filmed and embedded them–come back next month to see them try again with a second lecture, and we’ll see how this improves their presentation and speaking skills).

The endless 1:1 planning meetings with my admin are also winding down, and I’m waiting, with everyone else, to hear what the business department and owner finally decide. (Which gives me time to catch up on my grading.) Bless them for having the sense to include a teacher in these discussions.

The student blogging Grail still evades but still beckons. Let it. I can’t push the river.

And I’ve taken a break from my RSS subscriptions, from reading edublogs (at least reading so many), and from constantly holding my laptop to hold other things instead. Things like books, and EunJeong’s hand.

It’s nice to be reading again: Harvard historian of religion Elaine Pagel’s Adam, Eve, and the Serpent is a fascinating look at the culture wars between pre-Church Christians concerning sexuality, the body, and gender politics. It’s my second Pagels this year. During Chusok (the Korean Thanksgiving, Buddhist/Taoist style) I read her Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, along with ex-minister and New Testament Greek professor Tom Harpur’s The Pagan Christ: Is Blind Faith Killing Christianity?, and learned how much closer to Buddhism and other advanced viewpoints early Christianity was, before Roman Imperial politics put an end to all of that. So Adam, Eve, and the Serpent continues this jag for me. I’ve got Pagel’s The Origin of Satan, another historical study of early Christian thought and politics, waiting after that. It all fascinates me. I wish I knew more Christians–any, actually–who it fascinates as well. All the amazing discoveries we’ve made about Christian history due to the Nag Hammadi Texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other pre-Catholic writings burned by the victorious Roman Church, yet nobody reads them. (Or even bothers to consciously read their Bible, for that matter.) It’s a shame. “The Christianity that was, but is no more” is a Christianity far superior to the current brand, in my book. (DaVinci Code fans, there’s more history there than pop churches are comfortable to admit. Again: fascinating.)

But enough of unsolicited book recommendations.

I’m really just writing to say that I’m off to Thailand for a nine-day Spring Break. No computers, no students, no “Mr. B.” Just a guy with a backpack full of books and a snorkel, looking forward to reconnecting to more elemental things.

See you on the flip-side.

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I just visited “Rambling Reflections,” a classroom teacher’s blog from New Zealand, and thought it worth passing on.

Why? Because it’s anything but “rambling,” from what I saw, and full of terse, reflective quotes and thoughts, and useful tools for geeky teachers like us.

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