More Twitter variation ...

Today's lesson made what I thought was a now familiar use of Twitter, but the evidence of outcome was fascinating. Our current topic is the price taker model of trade, a cool variation on the old supply and demand market model. I had taught the model the old fashioned way in the previous class. Hattie calls it direct instruction, and apparently it works (who knew??? .. <engage sarcasm circuits>).

The lesson went like this. The boys were handed a small square of blank scrap paper on which they first drew the basic model. I then gave them a scenario, and required them to draw the impact of the scenario on the market, and then tweet the outcomes on three variables. The diagrams were reasonably well done (but they were after all scratch sketch diagrams), and about half the boys got the answers correct. We went over the analysis (this wasn't a 'closed question' situation, slightly deeper thinking was required).

I then set the boys a more complex exercise requiring deeper thinking, but following the same format. Now most boys got their analysis correct.

Finally I set them a third problem that included a cunningly set trap. Every boy (in both classes) got the answers correct. How do I know? They were tweeting their answers. Did any of them copy the answers of others? Possibly, that's something I couldn't control for in this setting.

Finally they had to pair and share something new that each had learned, and then tweet their learning.

Here was one tweet:

This was the consequence of an increase in productivity for a small price taking nation that improves its own productivity. This boy had completed an important piece of relational thinking (I think) within the context of the SOLO framework.

On reflection I should have pushed for an additional deeper question that looked at wider connections and flow on effects, but given the lack of 'mastery' of the model at the start of the class, I was happy with the progress that we'd made.

The use of Twitter appeared to engage the boys, and support and affirm their thinking. Of course I can't prove any of that, but the Twitter responses gave me some data on the levels of competence that we had achieved by the end of the lesson.

Twitter and that pedagogy again ..

I reprised last week's Twitter lesson today. The question was a little more challenging than last time - and the boys' economics was well and truly tested.

The immediacy of the individual feedback was effective, and the learning that occurred for them as each boy heard my feedback to others in the class seemed to be significant. I have no data to prove the efficacy of this approach, even though it sits well alongside the Hattie data about feedback. I was however able to watch them modify their answers and tweet new solutions.

What was also interesting was the evolution of willingness to take risks with possible answers. I hadn't quite registered that in my thinking before.

Twitter, student engagement, and feedback

It started out as a lesson on interest rates and exchange rates. It ended up as a lesson on interest rates and exchange rates, but the path through the lesson wasn't what I'd planned.

I posed two questions to the class, one a closed question, and the other a question demanding an explanation. It was a spur of the moment decision, as you do sometimes in teaching when your instinct says that you should try something, and I asked the boys to open up their Twitter app (either the Twitter web page, or Tweetdeck, as it turns out). They answered the closed question with a tweet, a warm up for Twitter as much as anything else, and then they had to Tweet the explanation of what they had just tweeted. The tweets were streamed live onto the whiteboard at the front of thew class (yes I still have a whiteboard at the front of the class, and yes the boys still sit at desks, in chairs - I'm so old fashioned..).

Here are a couple of tweets. I haven't shown the whole image as I wanted to make sure that I anonymised the tweets, so I had to screen shot to avoid each boy's name.

As the individual tweets appeared on the screen I gave each boy feedback on his response. The feedback was in the form of additional questions that might prompt them to edit and improve their tweets, which many did (just a touch of the old socratic questioning here, based largely on pushing boys through the SOLO thinking framework).We then repeated the exercise with an additional question.

Normally I'd have run a class discussion. Despite my practised skills in running class discussion, I would not have managed to get an individual explanation/answer from every boy. I asked them to put their hands up if they would have worked to stay under my radar in a class discussion - over half the hands went up.

What happened here? I managed to engage every boy in the class. What's more, I'd managed to give every boy individual feedback on his answer.

Hattie says:

"The aim is to provide feedback that is 'just in time', just for me', just for where I am in my learning process"

(Hattie, J 'Visible learning for teachers, maximising impact on learning', Page 122)

The feedback I'd given related to exactly where each boy's tweet suggested he was in his understanding of the issue at hand.

This felt like a 'pretty good day at the office'.