Beyond School

[This is Part 4 in a series. Click here for Part 1, here for Part 2, and here for Part 3. Part 5 is a 5-minute video invitation to global teens that lays out the simple steps to making this happen by Earth Day 2008. Please simply forward this to high school students in your area. It doesn't require teachers or classrooms (though part 4 argues it could be a powerful Understanding by Design thematic year in all classroom disciplines).]

Dana Huff at huffenglish motivated me to dust off my unread copy of Grant Wiggins’ and Jay McTighe’s Understanding by Design (UbD) (and here). I’ve read the intro and first two chapters, and Dana’s reflections on them on her blog (she’s also set up a wiki for anybody to join her–I’ll be there eventually), and the ideas in it are playing in the background of my thoughts as I do other things.

The essential concept of UbD is understanding. The authors illustrate how students can “learn” math without “understanding” it through the example of a math question which asked, “How many buses does the army need to transport 1,128 soldiers if each bus holds 36 soldiers?” One third of students tested answered, “31 remainder 12″ (Schoenfeld, cited in Wiggins and McTighe, UbD, first ed., p. 2). Those students had “learned” division without understanding it. Because the right answer is 32, in the real world — unless you want the “remainder 12″ (who seem to be anything but real soldiers to these students) to walk.

UbD then goes on to outline a cross-curricular unit based on the theme of “apples” which is a hilarious example of what they later term “hands-on, minds-off” project-based learning. In their English lesson, the students read Johnny Appleseed, and write and illustrate a story about apples; in their art lesson, they make a hallway collage of leaves they collected from apple trees; they sing songs about apples in music; they classify apples in science; they do math to convert an applesauce recipe that feeds two so that it will feed fifty (pp. 1-2).

Wiggins and McTighe rightly credit the teachers of this apple unit for trying to make interdisciplinary connections, but go on to point out that, unfortunately, there’s not much worth understanding here (my bluntness, not theirs). If I were Bart Simpson in that classroom, I’d ask Ms. Crabapple, “Who gives a damn about Johnny Appleseed, man?”

I look forward to more time with UbD in the coming weeks. But I’m reading it with an eye toward a blind spot in their book (so far, anyway — and maybe the 2d edition remedies this) that only edtech geeks would notice: there’s no attention paid to how digital literacies can promote the types of understanding and unit design they so brilliantly advocate.

Later, I read Patrick Higgins’ latest post on Chalkdust (Patrick’s one of my favorite bloggers, if you couldn’t tell). It discusses his campaign to get classroom teachers on board for the 1:1 laptop move his school is making (I hope I’m getting this right) next year. Since I’m tech coordinator/part-time AP Lit teacher for my high school next year, as it rolls out its own 1:1 program, I’m reading Patrick closely these days.

I left a comment on Patrick’s post that, I later realized, was shot through with the ideas of UbD. I’m sharing parts of that comment here, because it adds curricular, instructional, digital literacies, UbD elements to the “Community Service 2.o: global teen concerts against global warming” project I’m so actively hawking on this blog lately. (I’ve got to come up with a name for that. Any suggestions?)

Here’s the comment:

I’m pushing my admin to buy into a school wide HS theme to start the year: “The Year of Global Warming.”

I’ve already asked math, statistics, economics, and English teachers to mull the idea, over the summer, of devoting a 2.0 activity or project related to the theme from their different disciplines (clearly Global Warming is a magnet for science, health, math, economics, history, multimedia, and persuasive writing applications–even foreign languages could jump in with PSA’s in their FL).

Every teacher said they would.

We’ll post the digital products on a Global Warming consciousness-raising AND concert-promoting website for a community service 2.0 music festival project for next May [update: I'm thinking Earth Day is the obvious date--April 19 is the Saturday of Earth Day week next year].

I’m excited.

I am excited. Think about it: Global warming is relevant to our students; they want to do something about it. It’s relevant to us, our children, and grandchildren too. It’s relevant to animals, orphans, widows, the poor, the environment, and every other cause you can think of.

And it is a “magnet” for project-based learning across the curriculum that, because it is relevant to students, will be “minds-on” activity promoting “understanding.” Examples:

• Our AP Statistics teacher told me he could see a million applications for his class. He was concerned about a digital project eating into his “coverage time” before the AP exam–evidence that half the battle for tech coordinators is battling the misconception that a digital project has to be huge, when it obviously could be as small as a podcasted Skype interview with a professor or other expert about whatever topic is being studied. But then he saw a possibility: our AP exams are over about three weeks before school is, leaving AP teachers at odds for something to do with that time. He was open to the idea of students making multimedia charts and graphics of statistical analyses of various energy-reducing approaches to reducing carbon emissions at home, school, and the workplace, which would be real products embedded on the “Rock for Global Cooling” website’s “Things You Should Know” or “Steps You Can Take” page. (Patrick’s site turned me on to a cool little graphics 2.0 site called Swivel that I’m embedding here as an example. Very cool for it’s interactive charts and graphs:

–picture that in an AP Statistics student’s hands, applied to global warming, and published on a real-world project website.

• Our AP Economics teacher is a very socially conscious young man who was very interested in this “more than Johnny Appleseed” unit idea. Podcast interviews with “green economists”? He wasn’t worried about coverage. He’s in.
• Our American Literature teacher, a technophobe willing to change, said yes. “It might be something we can apply our Native American literature unit to,” she said. And she found out this year, when she assigned a free-choice presentation project to her students, that she didn’t need to teach digital storytelling to her students. Many of them just did it without asking. So she’s in.
• Another math teacher I asked — also the student council advisor, who in that capacity too I invited to contribute to the “Year of Global Warming” project (”Year of Global Cooling”?) — said she was game.
  
• I’ll find a way, I hope, to get my AP Literature students on board.
• I haven’t asked the science, music, art, PE, and drama teachers yet. I had all these conversations on the last day of school, as teachers were packing up their classrooms for the summer, and I couldn’t get to everybody.
  

Here’s the thing: Our school is aware that our rollout of the 1:1 program in the high school in August will be under the microscope. Parents will not be happy if their kids are just using them as word processors and Google machines — and they shouldn’t be. Teachers are nervous because they’re not trained to teach this way, are not edublogging edtech geeks like some of us, but — want ideas so they don’t get flack from parents.

Added bonus: they — as I hope is true for you, dear reader, as well –are authentically concerned about this issue, and do guiltily wish they could take action on it. So this “Year of Global Cooling” (I’m starting to like that title) theme is an umbrella under which authentic 2.0 projects can be carried out, the school can more successfully launch its 1:1 program, and the teachers can feel good about making a difference in the classroom.

All that’s lacking — except, so far, from Kevin in Massachusetts (Kevin, who the heck are you, anyway? We should talk on Skype and get to know each other a bit) — are the thousand other points of light to join in this project.

If this were a flat classroom — flat schools — project, the classroom 2.0 naysayers would soon enough have some evidence to chew on to the contrary. But that means we need you.

(Or maybe the students will do it without the adults, I keep reminding myself, in the worst case scenario. Another disturbing reason for the silence in response to this idea is that I changed my RSS feed settings to feedburner, and I’m wondering if my posts are even going out to my old subscribers. Could somebody out there let me know?)

The last piece needed for this project to take off also worries me: administrative support. It’s funny how people in my own school get a faraway look in their eyes when I try to share this vision, say the easy supportive comment, but don’t take the crucial step of asking, “How can I support this?”

Clearly, no “Year of Global Cooling,” no grand inter-disciplinary authentic project 2.0, no successful 1:1 launch as I’m suggesting here, is going to happen if my school’s owner, director, and principal don’t back it.

Since I only had the idea two days before school let out, the timing was horrible for pitching the idea to them. So there’s still hope there. I guess I’ll find out in August, before school starts. I’d like them to say yes to a school assembly on the first day that announces this year-long theme with all the fanfare it so direly deserves.

And . . . I’ll close with these just-in pieces of evidence: in reply to my invitation to students to take the lead on this. Patrick N., age 15, wrote, in its entirety, this email:

I’m in. This is truly the most amazing project I have heard of in years. And I mean that.

Just being asked to be a part of this project is an honour and privilege.

Patrick N.

And Kyongmin, same age, wrote this:

mr. burell i really want to help out on this concert
but i am not sure how to start this…
do u want me to just spread the word and the idea to my friends
in other countries or actually get band in Seattle (where i’m going) and
make a concert…
i’m not really clear on this idea…
can you explain a bit more?
thank you~

I’ve invited Kyongmin to ask for clarification in a Skype conversation, so we can podcast the discussion for other students with questions about all this.

Patrick just came to Korea from New Zealand, so I’m sure he can spread the hope in that direction, and get students on board there. (And check out Patrick’s Yahoo Project digital story here. It’s quite beautiful — and created by him and his girlfriend, I think.)

They want to help. They want to learn. They need collaborators from your area. So I want you to help.

Please?