Beyond School

Carolyn Foote wrote this week about the new Pew study on the effects of technology on teen writing. An article about the study in eSchool News (free subscription – well worth it – required) pulls out a few details that for me, at least, suggest some weird thinking. The “news” that

[t]eens who communicate frequently with their friends, and those who own more technology tools such as computers or cell phones, do not write more often for school or for themselves than less communicative and less gadget-rich teens

seems hardly news at all, doesn’t it? Is it me, or does it imply that some people think that The Vast Percentage of Teens Who, Like the Vast Percentage of Adults, Do Not Enjoy Writing will suddenly, because somebody plops a laptop, tablet, or cellphone in their hands, have some Road to Damascus experience that magically converts them to the Cult of Writing?

That implication seems embedded in the “finding” above, and it’s about as silly as expecting people to all become economists when they’re given their first checkbook.

If you go into a 1:1 program with fantasies that all students are going to become writers because of it, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Nothing makes a writer but the self-compelled need to write. And that’s a limited commodity now as always.

The eSchool news article continues with this further bit of non-”news,” which this time, though still making me chuckle, also quickens my pulse and gets my dander up a bit:

Teen bloggers, however, write more frequently both online and offline, the study says.

–check that language out, that loopy logic: “Teen bloggers,” we’re told, are teens who write frequently “both online and offline.” I’m no expert, now, but why are we calling teens who write a lot, with and without blogs, “bloggers”?

Any of you adult bloggers out there, are you with me in wanting to correct people who call you a “blogger” – some person who “makes blogs,” apparently, like a designer makes designs and a reporter makes reports – by telling them: “Actually, I’m a freaking writer. I just publish my own writing online on a blog. I don’t buy those daily word-counts on my blog at Wal-Mart. I write them.” Such sloppy language!

(Note that I didn’t say “good writer.” Mediocre and bad writers fill the ranks of bloggers as much as they do of newpapers, magazines, and books.)

It’s been a pet peeve of mine for a long time, this word “blogging.” The label cheapens the practice. Writing bloggers are writers, photo-bloggers are photographers, podcast-bloggers are audio producers, vloggers are video artists, etc, in teenhood as it is in adulthood.

So let’s revise that last excerpt for clarity:

Teen writers, however, write more frequently both online and offline.

Talk about a report from Captain Obvious. Give any writer a journal and pen, s/he’ll scribble away. Give him or her a blog, s/he’ll type away. There’s no mystery here.

Things get weirder here:

Forty-seven percent of teen bloggers write outside of school for personal reasons several times a week or more, compared with 33 percent of teens without blogs.

What, exactly, does that unidentified fifty-three percent of “teen bloggers” who do not “write outside of school for personal reasons” actually write on their blogs, then? Wait — hold it – I think I’m getting a whiff of something. Do you smell it?

Bad air! Bad air! It’s a homework blog! Another moronic oxymoron brought to you by Schooliness, Inc. Let’s cross this 53% off the Book of Writing, and focus on that lovely, remaining 47% who blog write on blogs, not because schools make them, but because they’re writers. Breathe in the perfume, folks – we’re in the rose-garden now of flowering young writers.

They’re the ones I want to teach - because they’re the ones who probably want to be taught about ways to improve their writing.

There. I said it: I’m an elitist as an English teacher.

I’m not a democrat when it comes to teaching writing. Just as Thomas Jefferson believed that all people are born equal, but natural differences create a “natural aristocracy” – one having nothing to do with money and everything to do with spirit (and I mean that naturally) – I believe the same is true in the classroom. A rich kid can’t pay me to want to help him become a better writer if he doesn’t show me, through the evidence of steady, self-impelled production, he has a writer in him. A working-class kid who does have a writer in her – who can point to hundreds of blog posts or journal pages having nothing to do with homework – will find not only my door open during lunch and after school, but also my Skype and Twitter at home. As I said in a comment on Carolyn’s blog, it’s

the bloggers mentioned in the survey above . . . who interest me, . . those who have the will to write, the seed of a writer, in them.

Those “kids” aren’t mere students. They’re writers.

Let’s keep looking at that Pew Garden, and try to find the prize roses. I think I see them hidden in this statistic:

Sixty-five percent of teen bloggers believe that writing is essential to later success in life.

Pop Quiz: Who are the “teen bloggers” who are the true writers?

a. the 65% of “teen bloggers” who “believe writing is essential to later success in life”

b. the 35% of “teen bloggers” who do not believe this.

If you answered “a,” I give you a zero.

To me, the answer is “b.” Because it implies that these young writers are writing not, as most of the consumerism-drugged “school is for money” customers in our classrooms do (and as the students in answer “a” seem to do), “to get a better GPA, go to a better college, get a better job, so I can buy a better house, car, and handbag.” This 35% in “b” wins my vote. They’re the prize roses. They write for the pleasure in the present, not the payoff in the future. [Update: Freshman Arthus trumps me in his comment. He gets an A+, I get a B.]

They’re writers.

A Revised Position Statement on Classroom Blogging, Two Years into the Fray:

And this brings me to the latest position-statement in my evolving views, after two years of experimenting with it in the classroom, of the value and place of blogging to teach writing in schools:

It should only be required in an elective “advanced blogging” class. But we need a better word than that tuneless aural trainwreck of a word, “blah – geeng.”

“Advanced writing,” though I’ve restricted this article to writers because the Pew study does the same, is no better a title, because “blogging” invites the natural talkers and interviewers, singers and raconteurs through podcasting; the natural symbolic and visual communicators through photo and computer graphic, fine arts and video blogging. So “advanced digital communication,” then?

You tell me. But I think you see what I mean, don’t you? Simply a workshop of the thirsty, the hungry to improve – the natural aristocracy of self-expression and communication.

Over the door I would post a big sign:

ROSES ONLY. NO STUDENTS ALLOWED.

Then we’d set to working – making perfume.

Images:

• De Petale, by Christiane Michaud
• untitled, by rosemary*
• rose for you…, by Lyubov

Relevant posts:

• 21st Century Education: Thinking Creatively by Anthony Chivetta, Students 2.0
• Dialogue with a New Student Blogger on the Question of Classroom Blogging

I’ve been up all night catching up on my reading, which these days means feed-reading, more than anything.

Two that struck a chord:

1. That LearnerBlogosphere Idea

Sylvia Martinez on the red-hot GenYES blog writes several posts about getting teens to use Web 2.0 independently – like we adult edubloggers do – to develop their literacy skills in ways that classrooms typically cannot match.

One reason I love Sylvia’s posts is that she references reports and data that I don’t have the will or temperament to seek out, but which speak almost always to my own priorities as an educator. A case in point: the goal of creating a “LearnerTalk” (but that sounds schooly) of student edubloggers to give us teachers lessons on how our Classroom 2.0 attempts measure up. Sylvia writes that this is already happening spontaneously, which encourages me to seek ways to harness and shepherd that trend into this arena. Here’s Sylvia:

Students report that one of the most common topics of conversation on the social networking scene is education. Nearly 60 percent of online students report discussing education-related topics such as college or college planning, learning outside of school, and careers. And 50 percent of online students say they talk specifically about schoolwork. (Read her “Web 2.0 – share the adventure with students” post as well)

Does anybody else read into this that the students are stuck, like we adults are, in their own separate echo-chamber? And that combining the student and teacher discourses in one truly universal “edublogosphere” has the potential to steer our shared enterprise into fertile territory sooner than the current “parallel echo-chambers” situation we seem to have right now?

Scott McCleod’s offer to host a “LearnerTalk” type thing a month or so ago has not been forgotten.* Life and work have been too fast to focus on generating interest in that. Last week, before we began our week-long Chusok holiday, I pitched blogging to my Web 2.0 activity club, and many of my students seemed to get a glimmer from that sermon of the power of real-world blogging. I think a few will bite.

2. The War on Teaching Bad Writing

Anybody who’s taught high school English should know why most students hate to write in schools. It’s because they’re taught to write badly.

If I assigned any of you to write about ideas that aren’t self-selected, in forms that aren’t self-expressive, for an over-worked audience of one that puts two or three words, random red hieroglyphs, and a permanently-branded number into a ledger that threatens to determine your fate, face it: you would learn to hate writing (and school) too.

Like Sylvia, Jeff Wasserman of When the Hurly-Burly’s Done shares some hard data and classroom anecdotes to help us teachers of real writing wage the war against teachers of the poisonously schooly 5-Paragraph Essay [*jeers and hisses*]. I replied to Jeff’s post,

Jeff, this makes me want to make my AP Lit class Ning public. We’re having forum discussions about Organic Form v. Mechanical (5PE and all that garbage).

I’ve been making them write timed essays without outlining, trusting that an organic form will come from simply responding to the prompt and writing from there.

I modeled it for them by writing an old AP Lit exam essay about a poem, under timed conditions, in a screencast here, for what it’s worth. Interesting to be able to let them into my interior writer’s monologue as I read, annotate, and write a response, recording voiceover all the while, to the same exercise they did.

My best student responded to watching it by saying, among other things, “I didn’t think you could make a one-sentence paragraph in the body of an essay.”

One last tidbit: I took an AP Lit workshop from UCLA this summer – a waste of time, mostly – but got this from the College Board/APL celebrity who taught it: AP Lit exam graders appreciate organic form, “as long as it has a beginning, middle, and end.”

I like that: beginning, middle, end. None of this “introductory paragraph, body, conclusion paragraph” drivel.

Then, instead of sleeping as I’d intended, my mind shifted into overdrive. Sylvia’s and Jeff’s post led to these fantasies of how we can teach real writing (based on real reading in this “infinite book” we call the internet) with web 2.0:

First, students would write self-directed blogs. No homework assignments allowed in terms of subject matter, though standards of style and conventions would be set;

Second, assessment would be based on readership, comments, subscriptions, visitor stats, Technorati authority ranking (with safeguards against fraudulent links, which are easy enough to spot), self-assessment, and other non-authoritarian, teacher-gives-grades assessment styles. (And yes, as usual, it’s the institutional but otherwise counter-educational imperative to grade everything that presents the biggest obstacle to this approach to learning.)

–Wait, you say. That’s not fair. Some students who are not blessed with verbal intelligence will not attract subscribers, visitors, comments, and so forth. But not so fast: the art of compensation with other intelligences is so much more possible on blogs. Not a great writer? Then compensate by communicating through images (see Diane Cordell’s blog), podcasts (see Wes Fryer), films (see Marco Torres and Mabry Middle School), graphic novels and comic strips (see ToonDo). Carve out a niche doing Google Earth productions (see Google Lit Trips) as your blog’s specialty. Find some skill you have, or some passion you want to extend, and adapt your blog to exploit that.

Really: What form of multiple intelligences does blogging exclude?

Third, grades would be weighted toward the end of the year or term, to allow for experiment, dead ends, learning – through – failure, and other writerly discoveries afforded by real-world blogging. (I’m more and more fascinated by the fact that my own blogging has been a real-world case of what we call “project-based learning” in school, and more and more convinced it’s the way to engage young writers to naturally want to hone their skills and excel.)

I shouldn’t have tried to write this right now. Too tired. But these holidays are short, and I love them for allowing this type of reflection.

–

*I’ll probably just buy the domain and host it alongside the Project Global Cooling site anyway, since I’m already adminstering WordPress MU for my school – and soon will train students to administer these sites themselves. It’s so hard to let go of the reins and give them to the young, and so easy to forget that they’re more than capable. But I will ask Scott to boost, support, read, seed, reply

Photo credits:
Writing by oskay
Borg Drones by Dunechaser
Bible 2.0 by jeff w brooktree
Looking by eskimoblood
Fusion Festival 2005 by Udo Herzog

This TED Talk [update: about "Redefining the Dictionary"] is a must-watch for 20th Century Students (there are more of them than we realize) who are as reactionary as their parents about Why 2.0:

And Graham Wegner’s presentation about Personal Learning Environments makes great use of metaphors to sketch out the bewildering shape of our attempts to transform Learning 2.0. I found his critiques of e-portfolio’s particularly interesting: too much work for teachers, not enough audience for students. In Shanghai recently, I was asking about the value of online student work without actual (as opposed to theoretically possible) audiences. (Non-Aussies and Kiwis, are you grokking my drumbeat about the value of Antipodean perspectives on education yet?)

My last post failed to mention in its title that student reflections (only in response to the first of six questions) on the 1001 Flat World Tales flat classroom project were posted at the bottom. So now you know: they’re there. (Barbara, I’d promised this to you, and will post the rest–Hawaii’s and Seoul’s–within the next few days.)

More soon, including the website with the selected stories for publication on the “blook,” as well as the literal book publication through Lulu.com.

Visual Tour: 20 Things You Won’t Like About Windows Vista Annotated

1. Little originality, sometimes with a loss of elegance

Everywhere you look, Microsoft has copied things that Apple has offered for quite some time in OS X. The User Account Control features, especially with the Vista Standard log-in, look a lot like Apple’s user interface design. Too bad Microsoft doesn’t let you lock and unlock things (leaving those settings permanent) the way Apple does. More than 15 years later, Microsoft is still following Apple in operating system design and bundled materials. With some notable exceptions (including IE7+, where it copied Mozilla, and the Windows Sidebar, where it bests Apple, Google and everyone in user-interface design), Microsoft is belaboring the point by reinventing the wheel, often with an overall reduction in productivity and usability.

I have no problem with Microsoft copying Apple’s or any other company’s best interface designs. We all win when that happens, and I wish Apple would steal the best things Microsoft does right back. What’s really strange is when a company lifts good ideas and makes them worse, not better.

• Note: Reduced productivity.
  – post by cburell

Visual Tour: 20 Things You Won’t Like About Windows Vista Annotated

Visual Tour: 20 Things You Won’t Like About Windows Vista Annotated

Visual Tour: 20 Things You Won’t Like About Windows Vista Annotated

• Vista compared to Mac OS X Leopard.
  – post by cburell

Technology Review: Uninspiring Vista Annotated

• MIT reviewer becomes ex-Windows lover because of Vista, switches to Mac.
  – post by cburell

Technology Review: Uninspiring Vista Annotated

Jethro Carr Annotated

• This is the conclusion. The arguments are clearly laid out in the full article.
  – post by cburell

Coyote Blog: The Next Milestone In Killing Fair Use Annotated

• Vista interferes with multimedia production with invasive features. Sounds like a nightmare.

  Explanation: We will be downloading and editing free, “public domain” historical audio and video to edit. Vista might decide not to function if it thinks we are violating copyright. This article explains it.

  Invasiveness is one of Windows’ biggest problems for teachers and students. It forces upgrades and restarts computers. It constantly pops up with some demand when you’re working. Apple OS X doesn’t do this. You can focus on Macs. They don’t invade.
  – post by cburell

cac.ophony: Aristotle and Powerpoint Annotated

• Anthony’s comments about lending narrative structure and “juice” to Powerpoints is just what my students need to hear. I’ve been coaching them on their oral presentation skills, and trying to get them not just to transmit information, but to find the “wow” in the subject they’re presenting so that the audience enjoys it. Aristotle to the rescue?
  – post by cburell

Writing Strategies (6Traits pdf’s)

• Some very nice 6 Traits writing rubrics here that include activities for each trait. Very handy for writing workshops and the 1001 Flat World Tales especially, since classes around the world could use the warmers and activities on the 1001writers blog to see each others’ moves. (Right now we share 6 Traits rubrics, but not exercises and warm-ups. This might remedy that.)

  – post by cburell

Literacy is All: Homework Debate Heats Up, Again Annotated

• What a pleasure it was to stumble upon this blog today. I love the concluding lines, and, if you read Pat’s entire post, the evidence she musters to call for less homework for our students.
  – post by cburell

Confession: I’m behind in my unit planning for history. I’m doing too much administrative stuff to stay abreast of my course-work.

But an interesting thing just happened. Faced with a history class in 2 hours and no unit plan for World War I to World War II, I found myself setting up a new Wikispace–”A Broken World“–and designing a project for a student-created online textbook, complete with embedded student video lectures and Skypecast interviews with academic experts–and it took me all of 30 minutes.

I really think that this project will be self-sustaining for the next three weeks or so, requiring little further planning for me.

I also think the students will learn much more, and enjoy that learning more as well, than if I had created discrete lessons for the whole unit.

This is only my third or fourth wiki project. The French Revolution Wikipedia and Ant Farm Diaries was, judging by student feedback, a success–but an imperfect and exhausting one for us all. The 1000 Flat World Tales creative writing workshop for my English class has also been engaging for students and teachers, but again, high-maintenance (we’re working those bugs out, though).

But this online textbook wiki? It seems like a new plateau in simplicity and design. I hope I’m not deceived. Take a snoop and tell me what you think–and steal at will (though be a nice thief and let me know how things go, and any improvements you make).

1-to-1 Computing :: A Measure of Success : February 2007 : THE Journal Annotated

(Thanks, Karl!)

Here’s Karl’s html text for “Did You Know…?” Links below. This piggybacks on the “The Machine is Us/ing Us” text v. multimedia comparison of my last post.

Here’s Karl’s text:

Text for Did You Know Presentation

Several folks have asked for just the text of the Did You Know presentation. You can find it below. The original presentation (http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2006/08/did-you-know.html) includes slides at the beginning that are specific to my school. (You can also find sources for the information and the original context of the presentation there.)

Scott McLeod’s Remix (http://scottmcleod.typepad.com/dangerouslyirrelevant/2007/01/gone_fischin.html) removes AHS-specific slides and adds one MySpace slide. There are also various other remixes on the web that have different slides (typically specific to local schools/states/countries).

1. Did You Know . . .

2. AHS has 249 new computers this fall.

3. 212 of them are from grants.

4. AHS has 33 new LCD projectors this fall.

5. 33 of them from grants.

6. AHS has a wireless network running right now (802.11 a/b/g).

7. District wireless devices have full access to the network (Internet, file servers, and printing).

8. Anybody’s 802.11 a/b/g device has access to the Internet (but not file servers or printers).
   

*Scott’s version starts here.

9. Did you know . . .

10. Sometimes size does matter.

11. If you’re one in a million in China . . .

12. There are 1,300 people just like you.

13. In India, there are 1,100 people just like you.

14. The 25% of the population in China with the highest IQ’s . . .

15. Is greater than the total population of North America.

16. In India, it’s the top 28%.

17. Translation for teachers: They have more honors kids than we have kids.

18. Did you know . . .

19. China will soon become the number one English speaking country in the world.

20. If you took every single job in the U.S. today and shipped it to China . . .

21. China would still have a labor surplus.

22. During the course of this 8 minute presentation . . .

23. 60 babies will be born in the U.S.
    244 babies will be born in China.
    351 babies will be born in India.

24. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that today’s learner will have 10-14 jobs . . .

25. By the age of 38.

26. According to the U.S. Department of Labor . . .

27. 1 out of 4 workers today is working for a company they have been employed by for less than one year.

28. More than 1 out of 2 are working for a company they have worked for for less than five years.

29. According to former Secretary of Education Richard Riley . . .

30. The top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 didn’t exist in 2004.

31. We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist . . .

32. Using technologies that haven’t been invented . . .

33. In order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.

34. Name this country . . .

35. Richest in the World
    Largest Military
    Center of world business and finance
    Strongest education system
    World center of innovation and invention
    Currency the world standard of value
    Highest standard of living

36. England.

37. In 1900.

38. Did you know . . .

39. The U.S. is 20^th in the world in broadband Internet penetration.
    (Luxembourg just passed us.)

40. In 2002 alone Nintendo invested more than $140 million in research and development.

41. The U.S. Federal Government spent less than half as much on Research and Innovation in Education.

42. 1 out of every 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met online.

43. There are over 100 million registered users of MySpace.(August 2006)
    *Scott updated to 106 million for September 2006 and added this slide:
    If MySpace were a country, it would be the 11th-largest in the world (between Japan and Mexico)*

44. The average MySpace page is visited 30 times a day.

45. Did you know . . .

46. We are living in exponential times.

47. There are over 2.7 billion searches performed on Google each month.

48. To whom were these questions addressed B.G.?
    (Before Google)

49. The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the population of the planet.

50. There are about 540,000 words in the English language . . .

51. About 5 times as many as during Shakespeare’s time.

52. More than 3,000 new books are published . . .

53. Daily.

54. It’s estimated that a week’s worth of New York Times . . .

55. Contains more information than a person was likely to come across in a lifetime in the 18^th century.

56. It’s estimated that 1.5 exabytes (that’s 1.5 x 10¹⁸) of unique new information will be generated worldwide this year.

57. That’s estimated to be more than in the previous 5,000 years.

58. The amount of new technical information is doubling every 2 years.

59. That means for a student starting a four-year technical or college degree . . .

60. Half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.

61. It’s predicted to double every 72 hours by 2010.

62. Third generation fiber optics has recently been separately tested by NEC and Alcatel . . .

63. That pushes 10 trillion bits per second down one strand of fiber.

64. That’s 1,900 CDs or 150 million simultaneous phone calls every second.

65. It’s currently tripling about every 6 months and is expected to do so for at least the next 20 years.

66. The fiber is already there, they’re just improving the switches on the ends. Which means the marginal cost of these improvements is effectively $0.

67. Predictions are that e-paper will be cheaper than real paper.

68. 47 million laptops were shipped worldwide last year.

69. The $100 laptop project is expecting to ship between 50 and 100 million laptops a year to children in underdeveloped countries.

70. Predictions are that by 2013 a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computation capability of the Human Brain . . .

71. By 2023, a $1,000 computer will exceed the capabilities of the Human Brain . . .

72. First grader Abby will be just 23 years old and beginning her (first) career . . .

73. And while technical predictions farther out than about 15 years are hard to do . . .

74. Predictions are that by 2049 a $1,000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the human race.

75. What does it all mean?

76. Shift Happens.

77. Now you know . . .

The Fischbowl: http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com

Fischbowl Presentations: http://www.lps.k12.co.us/schools/arapahoe/fisch/fischbowlpresentations.htm

~~~~~~~Now let’s compare to Scott McLeod’s remix of Karl’s work:

As promised, the anonymous student feedback on the just-concluded French Revolution “Ant Farm Diaries” Wiki / writing to learn project.

I can’t say I see much different from the non-anonymous feedback posted earlier.

The difference from the reflections at the beginning of the project do sound different, though. The learners have changed their tunes since then. And to me, there’s an important lesson there for other teachers considering implementing these new practices in their classrooms. It’s this:

Don’t let students talk you out of something they know nothing about. They’ll complain at first. They’ll be uncomfortable. They won’t see the big picture. They won’t see much at all. They’re addicted to their routines as much as we were. So–don’t listen to them too much at this stage. They’ll only ask you to be a traditional teacher.

But the whole point is to move beyond that teaching so they can learn more. So refuse to be the teacher they want you to be; instead, be the classroom leader they need. Don’t let them lead you backwards.

But do listen to them once you’ve finished your first voyage. Do that After Action Review.

Here are mine, all 12. More proof that kids are pretty smart at 15, and can enjoy learning and ask for more. Emphasis added, but nothing deleted (okay, I didn’t include one reflection so poorly written it didn’t communicate):

Learner #1

First of all, I would like to say that the ant farm diary project was something that was very sensational and creative. I really liked it, especially because we did something totally new and interesting. I’ll now be going into some detailed feedbacks.

GOOD

Creating the ant farm diary, like a said before, was a magnificent idea, because we got to engage in a more perspective point of view of the person we each had to become. Therefore, we were becoming experts on our social status, at least. Also, we had a chance to include other characters in our diaries, which made us learn about them too. Again, this was something that deviated us from normal, usual lectures, and it really did let us have some fun!

IMPROVEMENTS REQUIRED

Okay, I believe that many people said this so many times already, but I really agree with them, so I’ve got to say this once more. People just weren’t giving clear, detailed feedbacks. Sometimes, I got the feeling that they didn’t even read our diaries properly before commenting on them. It really showed when they told me to ‘add this and that’ to my diary when they were ‘already there’. I wish they could have spent more time reading other people’s diaries and also leave some detailed, helpful feedbacks, instead of just saying ‘nice job, I enjoyed it!’

Furthermore, I think that we should have had more time to revise and fully write our diaries. First of all, I don’t think we had enough time to go over the topic, and I also believe that we could have written more diaries – five weren’t enough for us to really grasp the whole concept of the revolution – this could have been a good idea.

We also could have added some more varieties to our project, such as having one particular event, and making people from different social status write about it from their own point of view. This really could have helped us learn how different social classes during those times differentiated from one another.

MAYBE NOT THIS…

I don’t really have much to say in this column. I really loved this project, and I would be happy to do another one like this.

However, one thing I’d like to add is this. I think we relied too much on writing ant farm diaries, rather than really learning about the revolution itself. Although we did have reading materials and some lecture classes, people seriously varied a lot in the amount of effort they put into this project. I believe that some people still does not know much about the revolution, because it kind of shows in their diaries. I’m just saying that we could have left some room for other activities…

Mr. B’s Response:
I agree about the pace: too fast. It’s a conflict built in to having to cover so much material in limited time.

Another point: it’s an unfortunate fact that all students are not created equal. Some work harder, write better, read better, and learn better. (But all can grow, which is the point of education.)

How much everybody learned will come out when I get past grading the diaries and move on to the traditional essay test you all took. Unfortunately, there will probably be the usual span of grades from alpha to foxtrot That’s the reality in any type of classroom, traditional or modern….

Learner #2

Something to keep:

well…. What I liked about doing Ant Farm Dairy was that I was able to thoroughly look into history of French Revolution. Just by imagining my self being in that time and write diaries about it, made me understand more about the history. Also since the diary was done in wikis, I was able to edit pictures and change any errors, which would be too difficult to do in hand written assignments.

Something to improve:

I think interacting with characters weren’t as successful as it was expected. For students I think, was hard to blend other characters in as the story of their diaries progress. Also commentings or feedback needs improvement since some people don’t get lot of comments as they are expected to have.

Something to reject:

Frankly I can not really think of anything to reject. Some difficulties I had with this “Ant Farm Diary” just needs improvement, that’s all. ^^

Learner #3

I’ll just point out the bits I think needs changing.

Interaction: I thought the whole ant farm idea would be an entertaining read as a final product, however i don’t think it is worth all the extra effort put into it. The diaries are awesome, but not the interaction…..

Feedback: Much of my feedback was pretty useless to me, and sometimes I didn’t even get the feedback from people!! I just think this bit of the Diary work needs some tuning up…

Learner #4
what’s good(3)
- There’s no doubt this wiki projects have not only given many chances to improve my writing skills but also put the facts into my head strongly. Also, the discussions we do in class has been better than just normal lectures. We surely do think more about what the answer is if we were to answer. Feedbacks. We surely do want to get better, and also, we would be learning to listen to others’ advice.

what to improve(3)
- may be do something other than writing based works? Of course, writing plays a vital role in our life, for we need to show our opinions. But this is world history. I believe and hope there are more varieties of learning world history. It is important to learn to find these varieties by ourselves, but experiencing some of it in class wouldn’t be bad.
- this is a trivial thing, but the discussions could have some supplements. I would recommend using random selection to choose people to participate not that I’m a student(because I personally don’t like it either…)but as I’m an criticizer at this moment. This gives an effect that makes students brain and eyes open altogether.
- well, and group working should be done more carefully. I think we mostly did group works because the work we had to do was so big in quantity that we had break it up. But doing group works in ways to be more cooperative and working on team works would be more helpful. I can’t think of anything specific about this “team work” right now, but I somehow wish to have somethings added.

things to let go(1)
- we should let go of the silence in class. make more opportunities(opinion asking questions) probably.

I hope there weren’t any too strong words in here.

Besides AAR, I’m still curious about why teachers teach “specific” stuff in history if they know it wouldn’t help very much later on.

Learner #5

The feedback I got from other students were quite helpful because they made both positive and negative comments so that I could consider making some positive changes.

Writing the diaries required a lot of reading and understanding and took me a long time to do. But I thought it was a great way to learn history and was interesting and not boring at all. It was much better than just writing dry facts… The interacting part was more complicated to do but was good because it made the stories more alive and gave them more action.

Since I like the variety of things, I do like this history class and hope it will continue that way.

Learner #6
Good: It was a new experience for me since I was used to textbooks and writing on paper. I liked the fact that I could edit my work. Most of the time, I end up using so much white out that I start over several times. I hate wasting paper. I also liked the fact that I could read what other people were writing about. At times I wasn’t sure if I was doing it correctly but I could read other classmate’s work and compare.
I also liked that you gave us time in class to work because writing 500+ words every night is not easy.

Improve: Definitely the feedback needs work. “It was good” is not feedback and it didn’t help at all. At least pick out the grammar mistakes.. because I saw TONS of grammar mistakes and everyone’s feedback was “I liked your story”.
I don’t think you gave us enough time. It was hard for me to write all the diaries by next class. Reading takes me a while and even longer to understand what it says. I can’t just skim through it, so it would have been nicer if you have us more time to finish the assignment.

Get rid of: Interacting with others. It was so hard to put them in my diary. I didn’t know how to talk with them. Most of the time it was really pointless. I understood their lifestyle better by reading the Lectures more than by reading other people’s diaries.

Overall, I like this kind of work. I like the being creative / imaginative thing. It was fun, but I just think that 500+ words was a lot. After reading all the lectures and writing the diaries and then hearing your “lecture”, I felt that I knew all the information for the essay and I understood everything.. I didn’t just memorize facts.

Mr. B’s response:
I agree with most of what you say. I’m seeing a lot as I grade that will help me make an improved “2.0″ version next time around.

Thanks for the effort on this. It’s noted.

Learner #7

I like using the wiki’s. They are easy to use and they are much faster to do because my typing is faster than handwriting. It wasn’t very difficult to use and because we didn’t run into much problems, it was better to use than just paper and pencil. I liked having an “online textbook” where we had what we needed to know on the website.We didn’t have to bring any textbooks home and we could get the reading where ever there was a computer with internet. It was very convenient for me.

Something that i think we should change is reading and using the textbook these days. We can’t annotate, we have to carry a big book home, and we can’t access it as much as we can when we were doing online textbooks. Also, during the ant-farm diaries, although I had fun with it, I don’t think it was fair to hurt another person or another person’s property permanently because the other person had to change their idea just because of one person’s decision. I noticed that people were burning other people’s houses for fun rather than for the assignment (I did it myself) and it made the assignment seem more like a joke than students doing an assignment. I think we should get rid of the idea of giving students the power to give permanent damage to other students. Overall, it was better than I expected. The permanent damage to other students were not really that bad and it went nearly perfect. I wouldn’t mind doing the same assignment for the industrial revolution.

I think we should do more wiki assignments. Its much better than doing some section review with a paper and a pencil to forget for the rest of the unit. I liked having our own space to do almost anything we want on a whole page. It gave us a lot of freedom to put more and more stuff.

Mr. B’s Response:
This is very good feedback–thank you.

There is an Industrial Rev ant farm project already made by another teacher (Mr. Spivey and I made up the French Rev one ourselves).

I’ll give it a look. Maybe a shorter version, because I really want you all to experience actually writing a history of something you’re interested in.

Thanks for the input! And for teaching me about the problem with destruction of other characters’ property. The assignment DID specify not to do anything for mere silliness, so people will see points off if they ignored that.

Learner #8:
Good

• selecting word choices, grammar, spellings have improved(our writing skills have improved)
• we get to compare our work with others, kind of competing. (it’s good to compete with others. I read other people’s AAR and I saw someone’s opinion that said showing the grade was bad. But I disagree. If he or she had worked hard on the project, the person would’ve gotten a good grade. I know that this point of view usually comes from the people who got a good grade. But let’s think about this. If the person had worked hard on it and got a satisfiable grade would the person complain about it? No. I worked hard on the project, not only to get a good grade but also I knew that people will see how good(like my writing skills, how hard I worked) I am as a student. So showing the grade doesn’t really matter I think.
• we didn’t have to write it on a piece of paper which would have taken a long time

Bad

• Our class became perplexed(some got mad) when you just gave instructions for a certain task and not the goal of doing it. For example, at the very first time we summarized “The origin of the French Revolution” in class. You just said to summarized it and eventually you deleted the whole thing at the end. (I don’t remember this event clearly because it was long time ago)
• You sometimes require too much work from us, as someone have mentioned in previous AAR. I remember when you told us to write 2 diaries until the next class. It was too much. I know that you push kids( I don’t mean that it’s bad) but I think it’s not a good idea to do something like this.
• The feedback didn’t really help. Everybody just said “Nice work” “Good job” There was no criticism.

Mr. B’s Response:
Now here’s my response:
1. Sorry about the unclear instructions on that summary thing. “Learning is messy.” I’ll try to do better. (But you all did overcome it.)
2. 2 diaries for hw too much: got it. Now I know.
3. Feeback will be reflected in grade. Why didn’t any students mention this as it was going on? That’s one of MY frustrations with students at this school. All year I’ve been saying “communicate, speak,” etc. Not a word. Please do your part to maximize your learning experiences too!

Learner #9:
Good

well, what I really think was good was that it was NEW, and it was fun to be able to think like a person during the French Revolution and write a diary as if I was actually going through one of the famous historical events. something good was that we had a lecture at the end. In the beginning, I thought I liked the old way better, but after actually going through the French Revolution myself and learning it again I changed my mind because I realized that this way works.

Improvements TT

First of all, I didn’t like the fact that we had to use computer the whole class and write on it… I don’t think using computer itself is not cool, I just think that maybe we could decrease the amount of time we use computer in class. And the homeworks… it was too much… I was dreading everynight to write those wiki diaries…

Disappear!!

um… not much of what should go… but maybe making the character contact with different characters from EACH estate should go away… I couldn’t possibly make the story flow with so many other characters in my diary, so I just used one..sobsobsob…

Mr. B’s Response:

Thanks for the great feedback. I agree with everything you said and will make those changes next time

I really appreciate the thought you put into this. Thanks again.

Learner #10:
Good

- Each of us had a character had fun creating its characteristics. This project was very creative and good idea for students to have fun and study the history. It made us to require historical facts because without reading history, we were not able write the diaries.

- It was a good idea to use “ant farm.” It was very interesting to put other characters in my diaries and see how the other characters described my character. We linked the others’ diaries so that we could travel the ant farm.

- I felt natural and easy because the writings were diaries. It was easy to show the character’s inner most feelings and express her personality.

Improvements

- We had too little time to do this project. Two diaries in one class were too much for us. Maybe we could make it one diary per class.

- It would have been more fun if we had more connections to other characters before we wrote the diaries. Like, we should have divided the class into 3 or 4 for one diary and make up a main event that includes all of the members in each group. That way we could meet everyone and have common events in the diaries. The audience would be more interested to see how characters connected.

- I wanted to be different characters. I especially wanted to be the executioner or the lower classes so it would be better if we could have change roles.

Bad

- The comments weren’t so much helpful. People weren’t criticizing and giving advice. Instead, they just said “good job” or “keep it up!” I mean, it is good to encourage other people’s work but there is no point if they don’t criticize what others are doing.

- I thought that there should be more foreigners if it was required to meet at least one foreigner for everyone’s dairy. People started to put British journalist everywhere because of the requirement.

- The time of events went too fast in only 5 diaries. My diary skips 20 years. Maybe this project is good to do part of the French Revolution.

Mr. B’s Response:
I like this especially (and everything else you said–thanks for the great feedback )

- It would have been more fun if we had more connections to other characters before we wrote the diaries. Like, we should have divided the class into 3 or 4 for one diary and make up a main event that includes all of the members in each group. That way we could meet everyone and have common events in the diaries. The audience would be more interesting to see how characters connected.

- I wanted to be different characters. I especially wanted to be the executioner or the lower classes so it would be better if we could have change roles.

Learner #11:

Something that was good

• We were able to edit our writings whenever we wanted to edit.
• Our homework was written down clearly

Something that could be improved

• Proper feedbacks (sometimes there are short meaningless ones)
• Whenever teacher writes the grade in reply, everybody can see my grade.

Something that should go

• So far nothing should go, but we need a little changes

Mr. B’s Response:
Right on all points.

The “public” feedback was a decision I made to wake up those who didn’t put enough effort (or time management) into the assignment. I won’t always do that.

So was this a good way to do history, if those improvements were made? Did it help you to learn the FR and feel it, instead of just memorize? Was it better or worse compared to traditional class-work?

Learner #12:

GOOD

This was a very different type of homework for me. It was a great way of learning about the events of the French Revolution because it wasn’t just a boring homework reading the text book.

I had to use my imaginations and had to research a lot about the events in order to write a diary with my character. So writing the Antfarm diaries was a very fun and effective.

IMPROVE

However, it took very long to write two diaries for the next lesson. To research all the information and the facts was time-consuming and a hard task. Writing the diaries was a great way of learning about the French Revolution and not forgetting about it. However, it took a long time. I think next time we could write one diary of about 500-600 words. This would make us take more time in the research and understand the event, rather than rush through the information so that we could finish the homework.

BAD

I was only one character throughout the French Revolution unit. This was good in a way, because I was able imagine all the events as though I was that person. However, I only thought from the third estate’s view point. It would have been more challenging and interesting if we could be about four characters, each from the different estates and a foreigner. This way we could learn about all these three characters and their view of the French Revolution.

Mr. B’s Response:
I hear you. Great points I won’t forget next time.
——-

Postscript: There you have it. I wish I had more time to reflect, but I’m a very busy teacher. The bold print emphasis I added to each student’s feedback is as much time as I can give (and actually speaks volumes that I don’t need to spell out, I hope). I’ll leave it to the non-teachers to mine it in more formal theorizing (and please let me know if you do so I can read it!).