Entrepreneurial Teaching

Last week I put up a new display in my classroom called “Courageous Women in American History”.  With the help of our Copy Center, I printed six 11×17 pictures of women from American history.  Pretty standard, right?  Well, I decided that rather than simply picturing these amazing women, I would also added a QR code to each piece of paper.

QR codes, or quick response codes, allow you to embed text, URLs, phone numbers or SMS messages into an image like the one above.  So now if my students look at these women they can (potentially) get more information by scanning the QR code.  My QR codes forward them to a very basic site that I created using our school’s Google Apps suite.  I could have even simplified this project and had the QR code forward students to the Wikipedia page for each woman.

To be frank, my expectations for student engagement in this project are pretty low.  I’m sure that I will have a few students scan the bar code out of sheer curiosity, but I’m not expecting a huge rush of students eager to learn more about Jane Addams or Sojourner Truth.  I am okay with that because, in principle, I like the idea of having a more interactive classroom.  Moreover, QR code usage is simple, so the ability to embed interactive content into public displays is easy enough to be worth the effort.  If I simply put a text URL on each of the posters, student engagement would be around zero percent.  With the QR codes, however, I can at least pique the interest of a small cohort of students.

Resources used:
QR code generator
Google Sites to design Courageous Women in American History

Teenagers + technology = success.  Sounds appealing to the techies among us, but we’ve learned its not that easy.  Yet it is an assumption that many of us make, a trap that can easily snare the technophile educator.  In our excitement for technology and cutting edge, we may forget that, even in the realm of technology, diverse learning styles and competencies exist.

I enjoy exploring new technology.  If I cannot figure out how to do something, I am much more likely to wade through a new technology in search of the answer than immediately ask Google.  For me this is not just about learning a new technology … it is also, well, fun.  As a high school student, my teachers would offer painful step-by-step lessons on how to complete different tasks in Clarisworks or Netscape.  There was, to my frustration, no shortage of wrath for students moving ahead too quickly.  A premature click on “ok” was akin to putting us on the brink of World War III, a la Matthew Broderick in War Games.  Fast forward to classrooms today and there are many students feel the exact same way.  Yet there remain students who feel overwhelmed by this type of exploration and prefer a more methodical approach.  Even for today’s “digital natives”, many appreciate the step-by-step instruction.

I am hardly suggesting we avoid technology in the classroom, but just reminding us (including myself!) that differentiation exists within technology just as it does in math or history.  Nor am I suggesting that we never make students try different ways of learning technology, even if it is outside of their learning “comfort zone”.  However, the more latitude we give for different learning styles, the more likely students will embrace technology and master the skills they need.  Students are not “digital natives” – they are learners.

Here is an excerpt from a recent post of mine on the EdSocialMedia blog…

Or at least that’s the unsubstantiated claim put forth in a recent US News & World Report article. According to Terry Wood of St. Mary’s Ryken (MD), there has been a “dramatic decline” in the writing abilities of her students “due to Tweeting, Facebook, and texting.” What strikes me as unfortunate, if not irresponsible, about this statement is the causal link Ms. Wood draws between social media and a decline in writing abilities (See: Correlation does not imply causation). Using only anecdotal evidence, she states (as fact) that social media is making our students terrible writers.

Check out the rest…

I really hate to admit this, but all of my 2009 and 2010 lessons sit on two separate network drives at school. They are neatly organized by unit and easily accessible from our network drives.   When 2011 starts, I could theoretically choose what I want to carry over from the previous year and copy into a new folder.  At the end of this school year I finally decided to abandon this antiquated system.  There are two main reasons I starting thinking about a change.  First, in order for me to compare what I did in 2009 with 2010, I actually have to open up both documents in new windows.  Then I have to move from window to window to catch the differences.  Another struggle with this system is that it makes it harder for me to reflect on changes.  My reflections a) usually come at night and b) are fleeting.  In all honesty, sometimes the extra 3-5 minutes it takes to load up Citrix and access the network is just enough of a barrier to prevent me from going back into my lesson and adding my reflection.

Both of these problems led me to a decision:  I will move my lesson planning into the cloud.  For 2011, I am going to use Google Docs to plan lessons, write lecture notes, and store materials.  I believe that Google Docs will allow me to take care of both of the aforementioned problems.  First, I can simply overwrite my lessons year after year (or day after day), keeping them in one file, yet always having the ability to revert to something I did years ago.  Additionally, I can use this same “see revision history” function to review changed made year-to-year or comments added after I implemented a lesson.  Even better, I will have access to my lessons at my fingertips.  I am always logged into Gmail (at school, home, mobile), making my work much more accessible than through good ole Citrix.

There are a few drawbacks to this approach.  The first of which is collaboration.  Yes, it is easy to collaborate on Google Docs, but most of my colleagues are much more comfortable reviewing documents through the network drive and Microsoft Word.  That said, it might be easier to share documents with substitutes, who do not have access/knowledge to get in and out of our shared folders.  In addition, for both substitutes and colleagues, Google solved the problem of not having a Google account with its recent sharing updates.  Another drawback is the fact that I am without my content if the internet goes down.  With everything in the cloud, if there is an internet outage, I would not be able to access my content.  That said, this also could happen (and does) with our network drives.  Third, I am beholden to Google as a safe repository of my work.  If the company goes rogue, I am in deep trouble if I have not been backing up my items regularly.

These changes are important to me because I believe one principle of great teaching is lesson reflection and improvement.  Ideally, some reflection occurs within 24 hours of a lesson and then again at the end of a unit.  During class, unintended teaching opportunities arise that we hadn’t anticipated.  Capturing these insights is much more likely with reflection. In reflecting, we can take advantage of those unintended opportunities that arose during class.  By reviewing a lesson after a summative assessment, we have more perspective on how our formative work helped/hindered objective mastery.  Unfortunately, this is a time-consuming task and often gets pushed to the bottom of our to do list as it is important, but it is not urgent.  I think moving my lessons to the cloud will not make time for reflection suddenly appear, but it may eliminate some of the barriers making it harder to do.

I just posted a blog examining the evolution of the term “digital native” in education over at edSocialMedia.

“I become apprehensive when I hear people tell me about how our students are all “digital natives.”  My hesitation stems from the fact that some educators have twisted this buzzword beyond its original definition into a dangerous catchall.  For some, the phrase is used to define our students as a monolithic group of tech gurus.  At best, I think this tends to obfuscate students’ dearth of practical technological skills, and at worst, it leads to a conception that all students are technologically savvy.”

Be sure to read the rest of this post and check out what else is going on over at edSocialMedia.