Improving the learning with Web2.0 tools

Improving the learning with Web2.0 tools 

The teaching profession is filled with good people, well intentioned people, people who want the best for the students that sit in front of them. These are people who would often almost literally give the shirts off their backs for their students.

Yet these are also all too often people who fill their daily working lives with practice based upon little more than mythology. Challenge it and the response is all too often that wonderful professional 'put down' - 'well of course it works, and you'd need to be pretty stupid to think otherwise.'

That observation leads to more than a touch of nervousness when I start to describe the impact of what we might call 'Web2.0' tools in the classroom. In between those bouts of Senior Management 'stuff' that fill my day, I teach two Level 2 Economics classes, and over the past 5 years I have progressively brought several new tools into the class repertoire. The focus of the work has been on developing students' ability to think critically, and to express that thinking in writing. It is no coincidence that the three external Level 2 Economics standards now count towards UE literacy (writing) in NCEA terms,  a commentary on the reasoning and writing expectations of these standards.

I now have a well established pattern of development through the year. Running in amongst the more traditional 'direct instruction' I begin by developing students' ability to reason and write with the use of online discussion forums. I moderate these carefully, giving every student detailed feedback on their posts (perhaps one of the more powerful differentiation tools?) before setting them to the process of constructing and deconstructing argument with each other.

As students develop confidence in their ability to argue, and to record those arguments in writing, I then transition them to more formal writing using GoogleDocs. I create a writing structure using the SOLO framework, ensuring that their written work closely matches the expectations of the NCEA standards and assessments. Each piece of work receives detailed feedback from me in writing.

While content tends to be developed through more than traditional direct instruction, I often use GoogleForms to elicit responses to content related questions. I gather this data under 'test' conditions. This provides a rich array of thinking, not all of which is correct. Students then take this response data (which I have shared back with them) and in groups co-construct the correct answers to a range of questions that help them to develop their understanding of subject content. Throughout all of this classes are engaged with the use of Twitter both inside and outside the class.

I am also teaching specific writing techniques (in particular the Statement, Explanation, eXample/evidence structure with which our English colleagues are enamoured).

Finally, because our external assessment system still requires students to sit examinations in which they write their answers using traditional pen and paper, I then start on the final transition to answering questions on paper.

What have I found? I can hear the voices (quite rightly) calling 'where's your data?' I have no reliable, authentic, replicable data on the outcomes.  I have some observations to make.

Consistent with international research (Goldberg et al), students in my classes right more and write better than they ever did before. Whereas 10 years ago on paper they might have written a paragraph of 5 lines, now they will write anything between 15 and 30 lines in explanation (mostly - there are ALWAYS exceptions). The reasoning is clearer (in general) and the examination results improved. The students are now more often writing responses  that I would classify as Relational and Extended Abstract as they respond to questions. A class taught without these approaches over the same period saw reasonably static results.

This year for the first time I ran an NCEA internal assessment using GoogleDocs. The results were dramatically different. The overall pass rate went from 55/75% to 94%. There is almost no evidence of collaboration (the task had to be completed independently). The answers were fuller in nature, the reasoning clearer and more accurate with most students. I have clear evidence of metacognitive thinking. As I supervised one of the 'in class' sessions of this assessment I watched over the shoulders of students as they used the comments function to pose questions of themselves on what they had written, ready for review later before they submit their work. Interestingly (perhaps??) this was not something I'd 'taught' them to do.

I see great engagement amongst students with both the class work, and the subject. The use of Twitter has been enlightening as students pose questions, offer answers to questions (both in and out of class), and tweet interesting resource material to me and the class. I run a unique class hashtag for each class.

Is any of this conclusive? NO!!! Is this any better than the mythologising of which I accused too many colleagues at the start of this post? Probably not.

It is quite possible that the results have nothing whatsoever to do with the technology. What is needed is some quality research. I'm a numbers man, I need quantitative data. I have little other than probably meaningless word and line counts (there are the NCEA achievement stats for both internals and externals), but I am not bold enough to try to suggest cause and effect yet. That's next year's Teaching as Inquiry project.

References

1. Goldberg A, Russell M, and Cook A "Meta Analysis: Writing with computers 1992-2002", Technology and Assessment Study Collaborative, Boston College.
2. Hattie J "Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning", Routledge, 2012

GoogleDocs assessment and risktaking

This year it fell to me to set and mark our large Level 2 Economics internal assessment. Normally I've had a colleague do this while I set and mark all of the formative assessment for external standards covered by the course. It seemed like a fair split of workload with which we were both comfortable.

The Level 2 Economics course is arguably a course in logic and philosophy as much as it is about economics. The external standards all count for UE literacy credits in writing which signals very clearly the writing expectations that students must meet.

In writing this year's assessment I decided to change things significantly by assessing online using Google Docs and an assignment format rather than an in class paper based written test. I was prompted in part by observation of colleagues' evolutions of assessment format, and also by our previous Moderation report which suggested that an assignment format might produce better outcomes for the students.

So here am I sitting supervising the boys in class as they work on their assessments. I was very nervous going into the exercise - this is a brand new experience for me, and quite a risk, but risk taking is something that we need much more of in education. My perception of risk is heightened by the fact that I lose some control over the process, that I hand control of more of the process over to the students. That's hard - as teachers most of us are at the very least closet control freaks at heart. However I have put in place a strong positive culture of working and thinking, I have emphasised the need for each boy to produce his own work. We have discussed the implications of using other people's work, both acknowledged and unacknowledged. And I have technical processes at hand to help where I suspect that collusion etc may have occurred. There does come a point at which we need to set our learners free and let them fly. They need to 'show their mettle'.

The intensity, the concentration, the output, are all truly prodigious. As with all of the formative writing that the classes had completed previously, the volume of writing appears to be significantly more than we would have seen in the past on paper. The quality will be judged when I mark the work next week of course.

GoogleDocs and the development of thinking and wriitng

One of our school curriculum goals over the past three years has been the development of staff skills in the use of critical literacies (including deeper thinking and analysis, critical questioning, and writing) with the aim of improving NCEA performances. My subject area is economics. In my classes I have been working to develop tools that promote a better standard of analysis and writing from students.

My approach has encompassed three strategies:

1. Creating a writing scaffold based upon best advice from my English teaching colleagues on how to structure a paragraph, using the S.E.X.  (Statement, Explanation, eXample) framework
2. Applying the SOLO framework to enhance the quality of student thinking and analysis.
3. The use of GoogleDocs as the writing tool.
4. Providing improved feedback to students (according to Hattie, feedback has a high effect size in terms of its impact on learning ("Visible learning for teachers: Maximising impact on learning", John Hattie, P255) ).

As the three external economics standards at Level 2 now count for UE literacy, it seemed natural that good writing should be an imperative of the development of thinking in economics.

Philosophically, I believe that NCEA as an assessment framework is fundamentally about thinking (which is not to say that every subject area has got that right with every standard). I also believe that thinking cannot take place in the absence of knowledge (although I was challenged in this idea at the recent Edutech conference. Is it 'knowledge' of 'knowing' that is the new imperative?). So the development of students' ability to reason within the knowledge framework of economics seems to me to be my 'main game'.

Research suggests that we write more when we write electronically, and we write better (for and example of the research see "Meta-analysis: Writing with computers 1992-2002", Goldberg, Russell and Cook, December 2002).

Many of my colleagues and I had noted the minimalist imperative that has pervaded teenage boys' writing. In addition my own hand writing has always been at best deplorable, and so when marking their work my feedback was both minimal in volume, and at best difficult to read. I therefore felt that if I could get boys writing electronically I was likely to see better writing from them. I also believed that I was more likely to give them more effective feedback, feedback that they could tread and act upon.

My first step was to set up an electronic task structure that used the SOLO framework. I created a series of appropriate questions that evolved through the year as students built their base knowledge. These were physically structured into a table format.

These questions were set up in a master document that I created in GoogleDocs. The table allowed students to structure their answer using our paragraph structure, and also provided a dedicated space in which I could write feedback.

As the subject of economics is a 'high user' of graphical models (and the GoogleDocs draw tools are not yet as sophisticated as I would like) I provided a series of diagram/model templates that students could use. They are required to copy/paste the appropriate template into their answer, and then reference it in their writing.

The tasks are then arranged in course order, with headings that are set into a table of contents at the start of the document. The document also starts off with a simple reminder of how the SOLO framework works, and an exemplar on how it is used.

Finally I shared the document with all students in my classes using the Hapara 'Teacher Dashboard'.

The results have been very positive. Boys write more, and they write more effectively/coherently.

Here is a snapshot of some writing:

I also give more and better feedback, much more akin to 'coaching' (in the spirit of best practice with formative assessment there are no grades allocated for this work):

Conclusions:

1. Student thinking and writing has improved.
2. The quality and quantity of my feedback has improved.
3. Overall NCEA grades have improved
4. Student engagement in their writing seems to have improved (I have NO empirical evidence to support this by the way, simply that age old, but much over rated, teacher 'feeling').
5. I have no means of determining whether the use of GoogleDocs has been the major contributor or not.

Overall however, in the absence of valid replicable research data, I would still find it hard to abandon this tool as an effective means of developing improved student thinking and writing.

Google Add-ons .. wow!!!

Today a good colleague introduced me to a new Google Add-on - 'Texthelp - Study Skills'. I showed the tool to two classes today, and frankly they were wowed.

Here's the problem that has been looking for this solution. As a laptop school our students now mostly take notes most of the time mostly on their laptops.. you get the idea. Our concerns have included their ability to keep their work organised, and to retrieve that work and use it purposefully when revising.

So they have notes that they may have taken in GoogleDocs, or Word (mostly), and then there are those articles that we have distributed via our learning management system Moodle as pdfs.

I showed the boys how to:

• Import a pdf into their Google Drive and convert into a Google Doc. Of course the tool can be used directly with their own notes if they have used Google Docs to take notes in the first place, no conversion required.
• Highlight using the Add-on "Texthelp - Study Skills"

• Collate their highlights into a summary document using the Add-on
• Finally (and this isn't the Add-on) to write their own summary/synthesis of their highlights in order to cement their learning.

What a great way to engage students with text. Interestingly I was attending some staff PD this afternoon, and grabbed an online journal article to support the topic we were discussing. My first response was to import it into my Google Drive, covert it, and start annotating using this tool. Great.

'Anticipatory reading guides' and literacy development

Twenty-first century technology is making communication ever easier as it connects us around the globe. The fact that we are capable of communicating more easily does not however mean that communication itself becomes easier. Good communication has always (and most probably always will) demanded the skills to decode for meaning, and to express meaning and deep thinking.

The NZ national curriculum identifies five key competencies:

·       thinking

·       using language, symbols, and texts

·       managing self

·       relating to others

·       participating and contributing

“Using language symbols and text “is a nice ‘eduspeke’ way of talking about communication, and we probably most commonly associate the first two with our academic work, although all are important as the bases for those behaviours that generate success.

The KCs are intended to underpin our work in all areas of the curriculum, and this in itself makes us all teachers of literacy in some way shape or form, albeit that individual subject literacies might vary across learning areas.

In those subjects that are text rich the traditional skills of reading and writing are brought into relief and coupled with the emphasis on critical thinking conversation easily transitions to the term critical literacy (although the exponents of ‘critical literacy’ would no doubt take me to task for too lose a use of the term).

My basic ‘thesis’ when it comes to literacy concepts is that secondary teachers in New Zealand have not traditionally been trained as teachers of their subject literacies. It is in my opinion one of many fundamental flaws in our pre-service teacher education. I am no exception to this claim, and so have had to work hard to up skill myself. I’ve had to become the learner; that’s refreshing.

My first attempts at improving student literacy came from the development of more effective writing scaffolds and tools.

More recently I have shifted my focus to promoting reading for meaning. While completing a ‘Secondary literacy’ course run by UC Ed+ several years ago I became acquainted with a nice tool called the ‘Before and after’ grid that promotes reading for meaning.

The grid looks like this:

Before reading Place an X under either Agree or Disagree, reflecting your pre-reading opinion on each statement.

After reading Place an X under either Agree or Disagree, reflecting your reading opinion on each statement. Find the evidence from the reading to support your view after reading. Copy and paste the evidence into the right hand column

Agree	Disagree	Statement	Agree	Disagree	Supporting evidence
		1.
		2.
		3.
		4.
		5.
		6.

(Blogger formatting limitations have confounded me here, but you can find the grid on the TKI page).

The process is as follows:
1. Select the reading that you intend to use. 2. Identify a series of statements that relate to the reading. These are pasted into the ‘Statement’ column. Where appropriate (and it may not always be so) use the SOLO framework to ensure that you cover both the surface and deeper thinking that comes form the article. Don’t just seek regurgitation of fact. 3. Before allowing the students to read the material that you have selected, ask the students to read the statements, and then decide whether they agree or disagree with the statements. Check the appropriate column on the left hand side of the table. When I do this in class time (usually it is done at home) I ask them to complete this part in silence so tat their response represents what THEY currently think as individuals. 4. Now have the students read the resource material. They must then decide whether they still agree or disagree with the statements that you made. They mark their new thinking in one of the two columns on the right hand side. They must also identify the evidence in the article that supports their view. This evidence is written in to the ‘Supporting evidence’ column on the right. 5. Ask students to highlight those rows where they have changed their minds as a result of reading the resource material These rows essentially represent ‘new learning’ for the students.

Now this is NOT an original resource. I have blatantly copied it from the one supplied at the Secondary Literacy course. I have found the grid presented as an ‘Anticipatory reading guide', on TKI.

I have now added an additional element. In a box below the reading I pose a question based on the reading, and ask the students to answer that question. They are encouraged to use evidence from the article to support their answer. This tests their learning/understanding from the reading.

My early work with this tool was undertaken on paper. However it was a very simple exercise to adapt this to a Google Docs format. The tables were easily drawn into Google Docs, and it has been a simple matter to paste suitably attributed reading material into the same doc. It became a matter of doing a ‘copy and paste’ when finding the supporting evidence, but that is of little import as they must have read the evidence in order to understand whether or not it supports their decision. The Google tool gave me the opportunity to give more detailed feedback to students on the Google Doc.

I developed a document that contained a series of these tasks, with a ‘Table of Contents’ at the beginning, so students can easily go to the task I want them to complete. Topics are now introduced using the 'Before and after reading' grid, and I use the approach to help students to dig more deeply into readings on more complex topics, especially what I would call 'real world' readings written by experts in the chosen topic.

The use of the Google Docs tool means that I get better written responses where I pose the final question to test understanding. I also seem to get better reading responses as students read the material more carefully and thoughtfully. Obviously I can't claim that the use of eLearning tools has done this, but it's interesting speculation isn't it.

Constructing learning...

How often are laptops nothing more than $1000 pencils as schools move to their much lauded 1:1 programmes?

In our own school 1:1 programme we have been working hard to make sure that we focus on the learning not the hardware, and that we look at moving as quickly through the Substitution and Augmentation phases to the Modification and Redefinition phases of the SAMR model.

We have more and more staff using Google Forms as a mechanism for helping students to collaborate and construct knowledge, and as we were sitting in another planning team meeting discussing our own 'next steps' in our programme of development I recalled a very simple technique used by Alan November in a Master Class I attend with him in Brisbane earlier this year at the K12 Edtech conference.

Alan asked three members of the audience to each contribute to a shared Google Doc, each recording different aspects of his presentation from the day. With over 300 people (I think) in the Master Class it was impracticable to have everyone editing the document, but the document was shared with us all so that we each took away our own record of the day's proceedings.

This technique can quite easily be adapted for use in a school classroom, and with a slight tweak gains power over  simple record. Here's how I plan to do it next year.

The students will be allocated to a group of three. They will create and share a Google Doc focused on a specific class topic. The Google Doc will have two columns. The left column will be a 'record' of the content. In the right hand column they will record their key understandings of the content. This is where they will note 'aha' moments, or maybe their reinterpretation of the content in a way that makes sense to them. They might record their own examples that help them to make sense of the content.

Why?

1. They are working collaboratively to make good notes, and with the right group partners they can model note taking ideas, and effectively coach each other in this skill.
2. The collaborate in creating good notes
3. They share understandings of the material with their own examples and 'aha' moments
4. They have a record stored in Google Docs that is not easily lost and, putting it into their subject folder created by Teacher dashboard, their material is kept safe and easily accessible
5. As their teacher I can look at their notes and add helpful feedback in a way that is more difficult (but of course NOT impossible) with the traditional large A4 folder

Now this is not Higher Order Thinking at its best, and you could argue that it is still effectively Augmentation, but it does take us beyond the $1000 pencil in a way that focuses on collaboration and co-construction of knowledge.

I'm going to try it anyway.

Google simplifies the 'flip'

Checking out the Google Blog, I see that they have literally just made some changes to Google Forms that make the flipped classroom so much more accessible and useful.

Users can now embed video into a Google Form.

It  becomes much more practicable to follow the Professor Eric Mazur methodology of getting students to preview content AND do something useful/meaningful with it.

Responses can be collected analysed to look for common misconceptions, or  shared easily with students the next day to encourage co-construction of knowledge.

VERY powerful. Well done Google.

Challenges of the laptop environment in schools

The first full year of our own 1:1 laptop programme is fast approaching. Our 'soft start' (as we like to term it) has meant that mobile devices of one sort or another have crept into the hands of approximately a third of our boys' hands on any one 'average' day. Of course these devices range from iPods to smart phones, iPads and laptops, and uses range from distraction to what I would describe as nicely rounded construction of learning using the Google suite of tools.

One of the earliest uses that boys have taken up is simple note taking. I heard a delightful phrase at a conference last month in which laptops were described as little more than $1000 pencils in some schools, and I'd be worried is this was the limit of use in our case. I'm glad to be able to report that that doesn't look to be the case, although it is still something that a number of boys have simply gravitated towards of their own volition.

This has presented an interesting problem. In our experience a significant obstacle for boys in their learning is that they are often (NOT universally I hasten to add) not well organised. They have traditionally kept an A4 arch file for each subject with pages kept inside the folder - sometimes. The pages are filed according to topics - sometimes. The pages remain in the file - sometimes. You get the picture. Consequently we have tended to stress organisation for the boys, guiding them in how to organise their learning materials so that they can readily access them when they need to revise.

The problem that we are already seeing with boys is this. They may start by taking some notes, or completing some work on paper. They might then open a MSWord (or equivalent) document and record some work. They might then complete some work on Google Docs, so now they have work in at least three different places, one of which isn't even electronic. This is shaping up to be an organisational nightmare. As adults we'd struggle to keep  a track of things. How will the adolescent boy brain cope with this fragmentation of learning resources?

We've been talking about this. Here's a possible solution: ePortfolios. In New Zealand the most likely tool is Mahara. If boys could put all of their electronic documents into their ePortfolio, and then use our copier technology to scan paper activities, resources etc (although it begs the question of why activities would be in paper form) then it may just be possible to give boys the tools to organise their work, with the added advantage that once it's there, it won't get lost, unlike the pieces of paper that occasionally populate their arch files.

At least with this solution, we are back to the status quo, it reverts to the same organisational problem we have now, with an electronic tool replacing a paper one.

I'd love to get other perspectives on the problem.

Constructing learning the 'Google' way ..

I could never claim to have been a 'constructivist' when it comes to learning. 'Teach at 'em' was the way I'd been taught, the way I'd been taught to teach, and the way I've always done it. In his book 'Visible Learning'  Hattie talks about the quality of 'direct instruction' as having a high effect size, and so it seems reasonable to assume that I should just keep on 'teaching at 'em' as I've always done.

However I'm always open minded when it comes to anything that might improve the learning of the students in front of me, and my enthusiasm for eLearning has offered some interesting opportunities for improving student engagement and learning

At a recent elearning Seminar I found myself quite excited by a demonstration from a young teacher from Dunedin on how she was using Google Forms to engage her students, so I decided to give this a go.

As a revision and extension task I created 5 questions structured around the SOLO framework. The questions ranged from Uni/Multi-structural, to Extended Abstract. That is, from simple recall, to deeper critical thinking.

I created a Google Form with these questions, and set a link to the form on our Intranet. The class then opened the form in class and, working in silence as if in a test, they individually answered the 5 questions to the best of their ability (the silence thing is important).

Once they had finished, I then took the results and shared them with the class as a spreadsheet.

The boys were put into groups of three, and were then required to set up a Google Doc in which they had to construct a group 'model answer' for the 5 questions. As input they had the collective class responses, and any web or text resources they chose. The Google Doc had to be shared with the other group members, and with me as their teacher.

This is where the test-like completion of the initial responses was important. It meant that it was likely that many of the answers would contain inaccuracies, and so individually and collectively they had to critically analyse this data, looking for errors as well as correct answers.

Several really interesting things happened. They began (without any direct instruction from me) to use the Google Docs tool to 'collaborate' in constructing the correct answers. They worked on this material for one class period, and then completed it that evening. To varying degrees they began to use colour to distinguish each member's contribution. They used the comments function to offer ideas, and question each others' contributions. The comments began to create a dialogue between group members.

Then as we went over their answers as a whole class, boys began to edit their work, correcting as we went.

The level of engagement appeared to be huge. The learning appeared to be huge. Do I have any quantitative data to back up these claims? No. Do I have any qualitative data? Certainly their feedback at the end of the exercise was overwhelmingly positive. Perhaps next time I'll make sure that I have an 'exit survey' prepared in which the class evaluates the exercise.

Fascinating!!!