I structured this Discovery Education Board to give new life to the epitome of respectful discourse…the debate!
A debate embodies the respectful mind because it asks a student to stand in the same room as another with whom they disagree and to remain civil while explaining why the other student is wrong. This is a skill not easily achieved. Even famous individuals 'lose their cool' and stoop to a personal insult during a debate. Gardner (2007) gives this advice, "Members of a group should be encouraged to ask questions of one another, to weigh the pros and cons of alternatives, to advocate positions other than their own." In that passage, Gardner was not referring directly to the forum of debate, but it could well have been. Gardner states the role of the teacher as one who draws attention to the other connotations of goodness. I interpret this also as to draw attention to the goodness of other points of view. That is similar to the role of moderator of a debate of which the teacher must play in the classroom. Though both camps may hit hard and defend their points of view, it is a skilled moderator that reminds all involved of the value of the process and asks one camp to acknowledge the logic of an argument from the other camp. So, the debate reigns supreme in its power as a tool to shape students as respectful and ethical young people. Over all, I prefer the Discover Education Board to Glogster EDU for the main reason that it is quicker to load. Glogster is getting a bit old these days and I'm not sure it is receiving the support it needs to work as a Web 2.0 tool for education. DE's Board Builder is intuitive and made creating my board on systems of measurement quite easy. Being so close to the end of the school year, I will not be able to use my new media-infused experience, but I will be sure to pull it up for next year's crop of 9th graders. I can't wait to see the lively, respectful debate of students for years to come! Reference Gardner, Howard. (2007). Five Minds for the Future. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press.
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Thefutureofeducation.com. (2014, January 16). Julie Lindsay & Vicki Davis on “Flattening Classrooms. [Video
File]. Retrieved April 12, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVZuwIhjQvA As I reflected on Julie Lindsay & Vicki Davis on "Flattening Classrooms", I saw the theme of respect and integrity in using technology. Vicki's projects where students collaborate with other students around the world are impressive. I can't claim to be even close to her in the use of technology, but I do share her interest in teaching students to be respectful and ethical in all that they do. I have to small examples of things I do with my students that demonstrate this. I started using what I would call a motto in my classroom with my students. The motto is, "above all else, maintain your integrity." I say it a lot and my students know that I care about it. I say it before they work with those they might not have much experience with (when I do not allow them to choose their group members). I say it before they take a quiz or test as a reason for not being tempted to cheat. I say it before student presentations to remind them what an important role being an audience to their peers is. Another small example of something I've implemented is part of a fun lesson I do in my Earth science classes. I like to remind students how the scientific process works by trying to convince them that the Earth is flat. I provide evidence for why they should believe it, some of which is ridiculous. After they view my presentation, I ask the students to choose one piece of evidence to counter. They can do some research of their own and argue using logic and diagrams. While they counter my evidence and supply their own, I remind them that even though my interpretation of facts may be worthy of ridicule, that I am not. I ask that they always remember to attack ideas and not those who hold them. Sometimes I will sample discussion threads in the "Flat Earth vs Round Earth" Facebook group and ask students to read it. I ask students to identify examples of criticism that is useful and respectful and that which is divisive and rude. This is very important to me as civil discussion is a cornerstone of our democracy and our system of education. A logical next step for me might be to partner my classes with students in other classes or schools to carry out a scientific debate. I could ask the classes to defend opposing theories for a phenomenon. This would be an authentic way to maintain integrity in a digital forum, asking students to carry out a debate where ideas are attacked and not people. Gardner states that respect for other should permeate our lives (2007). As teachers we spend more time with a child than they will spend with their own parents, and this makes it even more crucial for teachers to help students develop a respectful mind. Reference Gardner, Howard. (2007). Five Minds for the Future. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press. This week's assignment to create a Spotlight on Strategies was designed to improve student-to-student feedback in the classroom. This strategy was chosen based on my encountering "plussing" in an Edutopia.org article by Larry Ferlazzo (2015).
Carol Dweck, famous for her growth vs fixed mindset research, understands that positivity and praise are not the only things necessary in good feedback. In fact, praise can have negative consequences by motivating students to not look bad instead of learning (Mueller & Dweck, 1998). As teachers we must always improve our capacity to give useful and beneficial feedback. My personal experience in class has been that when students are asked to provide feedback to their peers, they also require the same lessons. I wished to there were some easy-to-learn templates for how to incorporate plussing into their system of feedback. That was my challenge this week; I needed to apply this creative tool in a packaged way that would be easy to teach to students. Robert Kelly (2016) alludes to the rules of plussing in this passage of his book: "The only thing group member are permitted to do during the idea exchange is to add to another member's idea[…]" Each time I saw plussing referenced, the “yes, and…” method followed. By saying “yes, and…” or “what if…” instead of “yes, but…” we accept the idea and then seek to improve on its faults without drawing useless unneeded attention to the faults. Plussing principles such as the "yes, and…" method of feedback are also staples of improvisational performances. In a New York Times article, Peter Sims explains that brain scans differ between musicians asked to be judged and when playing a jazz improvisation (Tugend, 2013). Jazz is the quintessential form of creation. I think we can all take something from improvisation by adding plussing to our repertoire of classroom strategies. References Ferlazzo, L. (2015, March 25). Strategies for helping students motivate themselves. Retrieved April 09, 2017, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/strategies-helping-students-motivate-themselves-larry-ferlazzo Kelly, R. (2016). Creative Development: Transforming Education through Design Thinking, Innovation, and Invention. Canada: Brush Education Inc. Mueller, C. M., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(1), 33-52. doi:10.1037//0022-3514.75.1.33 Tugend, A. (2013). You’ve been doing a fantastic job. Just one thing ... Retrieved April 09, 2017, from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/06/your-money/how-to-give-effective-feedback-both-positive-and-negative.html I had time in my 5th block 9th grade Earth science class to have an interesting discussion about creativity and technology. I decided this class for this as we were about to begin a timeline assignment which required them to be creative in a few ways. So, I decided to frame the discussion on creativity around the timeline.
I started by asking the whole class how they would make a timeline creatively. One student said to draw it and to add color. Another student argued that creativity shouldn't be a big part of projects because she isn't artistic. Others nodded or made a gesture showing that they agreed. So I asked students to raise their hands if they saw themselves as creative. Very few did so; students were very hesitant to make this claim about themselves. I assured the students that the extent of my evaluation of their artistic talents would be based on whether information in the timeline is neat and uncluttered. I redirected the conversation to dig a little deeper into the idea of creativity. I indicated that they would need to use an analogy or metaphor for their timeline. I gave them an example by spreading my arms open wide and explaining that if my 'wingspan' were all of geologic time, the dinosaur era would fit within my left palm and all of human history would be taken away by the single stroke of a nail file. I told the students that they must use a metaphor (and they couldn't use mine). I asked again how they could use creativity to create their timeline. A lot of students gave examples of metaphors they were thinking of (a tree, a soccer field, a skeleton). I was not that surprised that students focused much more on how to be creative with the metaphor. No one mentioned that the process of working out the math of the timeline as a creative process, even though there are several ways to solve that problem. My next questions were about incorporating technology into their timelines. Some students suggested using items of technology like build a timeline out of a computer. I asked if students could use their laptops to make the timeline. A student suggested Word, hesitantly. That's about as far as they took it. My last question asked them was if they could have any technologies to help them make their timelines, what would they pick. One student volunteered Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset. This got a lot of wide eyed looks and excitement. Another student suggested being able to do it in the metal lab in the tech ed department. I thought this was an interesting suggestion. I am encouraged that 9th grade students in my classroom can be pushed to think of creativity as being more than just pretty or artistic. They demonstrated some novel ways to approach a timeline creatively, though they were not aware this is what they were doing. This tells me that creativity education is something that my students may benefit from and enjoy. |
AuthorScience teacher for 6 years. Life-long learner and problem-solver. Copyright
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