The Paradigm Paintbrush

I wanted to describe an exciting moment that occurred two days ago in Statistics class. I was able to create (or rather, facilitate is a better word) a remarkable “learning moment” that utilized the power of the internet, my Statistics Facebook course page, and really let the students dig into a problem and THINK. In my opinion, the availability of the technology in my classroom contributed to the learning in that class – and the moment turned into something even bigger and better than I expected!

For background, I have decided to use the Facebook “Group” structure to setup my course pages this year – and I am experiencing significant student buy-in, interaction, and participation. I’m even getting some parent buy-in! I was a bit unsure abuot using Facebook, but after attending EARCOS last spring (which I will discuss again in this post), I became convinced that there is no reason to “poo poo” the existing technology and be anti-Facebook for educational purposes just because it is Facebook. Call Facebook what you will, but its Group structure, I have learned, is a great way to setup class communication portals (“e-learning environments,” if you will), and the students use it seamlessly in their daily online behavior.

In any event, on to the particular story…

Every year I teach a concept called “Time Plots.” One particular example shows a time plot of the wholesale price of oranges, using something called the “Orange Price Index” which is similar to a cost price index in that it uses an averaged base value from 1982-1984 to show increase or decrease in price over time from that base. In any event, you can see the example below – time is on the x-axis, orange price is on the y-axis.

The example concludes with this question,

“Can you discover what happened in 1999?”

I’ve always briefly paused here (in previous years I taught the class) and just let an open discussion go forth with students musing on what could have been the cause. But we never really concretely answered the question – because I never was sure myself. This year, just about 30 minutes before the class, I became determined, and began intensely studying the plot. Suddenly, I noticed something interesting that I had never caught before – the “spike” that occurs begins almost immediately in 1999. In other words – the event (whatever it was) appears to have occurred BEFORE 1999. I had never considered that in putting my search terms into Google. Sure enough, adjusting my search terms for 1998 I rather quickly found that a devastating freeze effected the California Central Valley in late 1998 (beginning December 21, 1998 to be precise). I found several articles detailing the event, and discussing how this impacted orange prices nationwide (and even worldwide). I had found the “smoking gun.”

So right before class started I put this on the Facebook course page:

Extra Credit Challenge! Study time plot on page 32. Research on the internet (or any other resource you choose) and post here to Facebook the specific answer to this question: What caused orange prices to spike in 1999?

We hadn’t even taught the concept yet – but as the students came into class and fired up their computers, they (by habit) went to the Facebook course page to see what we were doing for the day. Immediately several students started researching the problem. It was interesting to “prime” the lesson in that way and get students engaged in a learning “riddle” before we had even begun. I told them that the first person to post to the Facebook course page the correct answer would win extra credit on the Chapter 1 exam.

I taught the lesson and concluded it with the orange price-time plot. The students were quite excited, I could see it in their eyes. Thus began a contest (some had continued searching throughout the lecture) to see who could be the first to find the answer. Several posted replies and weren’t quite right. It was utterly fascinating, the atmosphere of discovery that was going on and how buzzed with excitement the students were. They were analyzing a particular point on a graph, and trying to fill in the missing events that told the story of that graph, but it was turning into much more than that.

What I loved about this moment is the different discoveries students were making. One student dug into climatology – and discovered that 1997-1998 had been an El Nino year. He asked me if that was the event – El Nino. While he wasn’t precisely correct, we later found evidence to support that El Nino was in part suspected to be the reason for the wild weather during the winter of 1998-1999 and thus contributed to the unusual freeze in California that December. We all learned something new! As well, this same student’s father is in the juice industry – and this young man was so engaged by the riddle that he wanted to call his father to see if his father knew what might have happened in the juice industry in 1998-1999. I would have totally supported that inquiry! He found a way to broaden his learning – and if that resource was an “expert in the field” – all the better!!

This reminds me of a workshop I attended at EARCOS last spring. In it, the presenter (Technology Coordinator at International School Bangkok, Jeff Utecht) had us break into groups and do an activity he does with his teachers and students – he gave us a tiny bit of information about SOMETHING – and then set us free for only 5 minutes to do whatever we needed to do to study that issue. At the end of the 5 minutes we had to have emailed him a detailed paragraph describing our particular “thing” with some cryptic questions to answer. In my group’s case – it was 4 capital letters, which we quickly learned was a stock ticker symbol. We produced a report explaining what the stock quote was, and our cryptic question was to recommend a buy or sell order (it was an obscure stock from China). Another group had this odd photo – and they discovered it was a microscopic photo of some sort of disease that afflicts wheat in the mid-west of the U.S. etc…. I think the Jeff included this as an example of “reverse instruction” or “flipping the classroom” or something like that – where you have a small riddle, and you are set free to use whatever resources you choose to educate yourself on the topic. In other words, finding the content is the main game – this is then inquiry-based learning versus having me stand up there and lecture to them. This quote from Jeff’s presentation sums it up, I think:

“Class time should be used to take content and put it into context.”

About 5 minutes before Statistics class ended on Tuseday, one student finally figured out the orange price spike riddle – he found an article from a newspaper describing the California freeze of late 1998. Interestingly, the article he found was completely different than the ones I had found. Other students had similar enlightening moments (I haven’t described all of them here), overall contributing to the learning atmosphere – and we all learned something about the orange industry!! With a little bit of economics (supply and demand) thrown in…

If you’d like to see the exchange that occurred during this activity, here’s the Facebook page:

http://on.fb.me/lriley_stats

What an amazing moment! It was quite fascinating!

I’m teaching a unit in my Middle School Computers course right now on WordPress and Animoto. And – voila – we bring them together by embedding a finished video from Animoto and displaying it in WordPress:

How did I do this? It’s a bit tricky embedding an Animoto video in WordPress – the embed code provided by Animoto won’t by default work in WordPress.com. Here’s how:

1. Go to this webpage: http://vodpod.com/wordpress
2. Drag the bookmarklet “Post to Vodpod” to your bookmarks toolbar (using Firefox browser).
3. Log in to your Animoto account and choose the video you want.
4. Click the “Post to Vodpod” button while your video is playing. Yes, this doesn’t seem to quite work. But there’s a workaround.
5. Go to the Animoto embed code provided for your video. Copy it.
6. Vodpod will show no preview of your video – this means it didn’t work. But, it gives you the option to manually paste the embed code. Paste Animoto’s embed code into the Vodpod box provided. Click preview and you should now see your Animoto video playing in the little Vodpod preview box.
7. Fill out the information to the right in the Vodpod preview box – blog URL, blog login, blog title, etc – and any text you want to publish in the body of the blog post.
8. Click “Publish.”

And there you have it! Animoto into WordPress.

It has been a fantastic summer and the new school year is now less than a week away. I don’t always feel ready – I’m not gonna lie – but this year I do and I honestly am quite excited to jump in. My role at my school is evolving more and more toward tech. This year I am teaching 3 tech classes and 1 math class. I have officially moved into the computer lab and it is now where Mr. Riley lives!

I get to “pilot” the introduction of two new tech classes this year – C++ Programming and Robotics. C++ starts off right away – so I have been doing a lot of preparing this summer! Robotics gets launched in January, and I already have quite a few ideas as to the direction of the course.

And I have extraordinary news, at least for me – I submitted a paper to the Literacy Research Association (LRA) way back in February all about using Digital Stories in the mathematics classroom to engage learning, particularly for English Language Learners. My paper is here. I found out while vacationing in New Zealand that it was accepted and that I will be presenting this topic at the LRAs annual national conference! I am excited beyond belief – this is the first time I have been selected to present something at a conference and I think the whole thing – presenting, attending the conference, meeting people, etc – will be a tremendous experience for me. The conference is in December in Florida – months away – but I already need to begin thinking about my content!

Here’s to the new school year and lots of exciting things ahead!

The Calabi Yau Manifold, representing "multiple" dimensions

Last year I did a “story project” in my grade 6 Math and grade 7 Pre-Algebra classes, where I started with a mathematical concept, and then had the students launch from this concept into their imaginations and write a story. Last year’s project started with the concept of ellipses and extended into a small amount of “weird” physics with String Theory and Dark Matter, although this material was of course only covered on a very limited basis. With my grade 6, I was able to work out a cross-curricular session with the grade 6 science teacher, and we showed a video discussing Dark Matter and various “traveling in space” concepts, as well as had an ellipse construction laboratory in the science lab. This worked very well and helped these students with ideas for their stories.

Overall this story project was very fun and I think quite successful for the students, so I’ve been thinking for some time what I could do this year. Several months ago, when a couple of my students got excited in a “side conversation” about the idea of multiple dimensions (beyond our regular three spatial and one time), I decided it would be interesting to do something with dimensions.

In the last week I’ve begun investing a lot of time in developing this project, and I am quite excited.

To introduce the idea of dimensions and begin to challenge the students to think further, I am going to start with the famous novel Flatland. I found a fascinating lesson plan here that I think has many good ideas – though a bit advanced for my eighth graders, it gave me enough thoughts to organize in my mind a good “pre-read” and “post-read” discussion in order to engage the class. Of course, in this case, it will not be a pre READ but instead a pre-WATCH. I will hope to show the 2007 animated short of Flatland to give basically the Cliff’s Notes version. Otherwise, I think having the students read all the way through Flatland – like reading a Dicken’s novel – would be too difficult. I’ve watched this film (about 30 minutes long) and it is quite good, in my view.

Next, I will plan to show a series of videos developed by some mathematicians, available here. The series is entitled “Dimensions – A Walk Through Mathematics” and it attempts, in a series of around 15 minutes “chapters,” to gradually get the viewer “familiar” with multiple dimensions.

Then, I will conduct a similar exploration in a discussion with the students – similar to what this professor has done here. In this way, I will lead the students toward the fourth dimension. Then, I will let them launch into their imaginations. I haven’t developed the specific requirements for the story yet, but I think it will be a bit more open-ended than simply “write me a sequel to Flatland in which you visit the fourth dimension.” These students are very creative and I want to give them lee-way to develop the story as they see fit – even if they want to do something like imagine the 11th dimensional “brane” of our universe and consider parallel universes in other branes, just to put something “wild” out there.

In talking with our art teacher, I’ve discovered some fascinating connections to art with math and multiple dimensions. Apparently artists have been playing around with all these dimensional type things – the fourth dimension, dissolving form, layering light, etc. – for quite some time now. They have explored these concepts even before they began to seriously analyzed by physicists and mathematicians.  So (if I can get educated enough on the topic) I may also challenge the students to generate some art, with their representation of something “multi-dimensional.”

I also might challenge the students to generate a Digital Story – yet another medium that may really allow them to visually express this idea of “dimensions.” Of course, Digital Storytelling is one of my little pet projects, so I have a natural interest in such an option.

I’m excited with the direction this project is taking!

Today I assigned my latest Digital Storytelling project to my Middle School computers class. I have been somewhat “apprehensive” to try this idea of challenging them to truly begin to work to make their videos “legal.” As I have evolved my understanding and instruction of Digital Storytelling, I have gone through various phases. In the beginning, I was just happy to see the students create something. But as I realized that this new medium of the Digital Story is one of the “in” things right now and is “buzzworthy” – and as the classes themselves became more popular and achieved their own (albeit small) sort of buzz just at our small school – I’ve begun to gather more knowledge so that I’m doing this right. If these videos are being shown publicly, and set as examples, I need to teach the kids to do them right. One area of knowledge is this whole idea of inserting legal music and images into the videos.

I learned a bit more about how to do that at the recent EARCOS conference. So today I directed the students to a couple sites. I advised that they visit this site for music:

https://creativecommons.org/legalmusicforvideos

And this site for legal images (clicking on the “Creative Commons” filter once a search has been done):

http://compfight.com/

I was excited to see the students really digging into both sites and making an earnest effort to figure out how to use them – and getting excited with the music and images they were finding. This is in turn exciting to me. It means that their final products should be hopefully legal.

I’ve still got some studying to do to educate myself about this whole Creative Commons idea, but I’ve been playing around with it the last few days and have learned a bit already.  There are different types of licenses available, and one can stamp their work with the license they feel is most appropriate. For example, I just stamped all my future Flickr photos with the “Attribution Creative Commons” license, which (to the best of my understanding) means that others are free to distribute and adapt my work, as long as they give attribution. Still don’t quite know what attribution means, but I’ll research it further. Does that mean they have to say “this picture was originally taken by Lance Riley” somewhere on their use of the photo? Not sure…

I plan to hone this course even further next year…I’ve discovered that if I build SOMEWHAT of a box of expectations, the students actually want that and overall it improves the quality of the learning experience and the quality of their finished products. I think I will require MORE academic and current events type videos next year, and try to reduce the number of pop culture videos. If given the open-ended choice, the students seem to want to do pop culture all the time, but they can also produce some pretty impressive, more original stories when required. As well, I think I will really try to drive home more the “7 Elements of Digital Storytelling” and work hard on developing a usable rubric that will really allow me to assess their Digital Stories across those 7 elements.

And then…maybe by next year, if I can grow this program in quality and legality, we will do something AWESOME like submit videos to the EARCOS Asia Film Festival (another great discovery I made at the EARCOS 2011 Teacher’s Conference). It is too late for this year, but I would be excited beyond belief if I can just get a group of students together to ATTEND the festival (held in Shanghai) – and even more excited (of course) if the students submitted videos and they were accepted for the festival.

Thoughts for the future…

I am so energized and excited by my experiences over the last few days here at the EARCOS 2011 Teacher’s Conference that I had to write about it! I must say – before I totally launch into vacation mode – these last few days have been truly extraordinary. My greatest expectations have been exceeded and this has honestly, truly been one of the greatest professional development experiences of my life. I have been impressed at every turn. It is really remarkable to be in such an environment – an impressive group of fellow educators, all positive and carrying forth a “culture of abundance” on education and life in general. Being around such a dynamic, motivated, intelligent group of individuals these last 3 days has been an immensely rewarding process.

I’ve got a ton of thoughts buzzing around inside my head, and I attended a number of workshops on a variety of different topics – but perhaps I’ll relate a bit of my thoughts on technology. I attended several workshops by Jeff Utecht, the Technology Coordinator at International School Bangkok. He is a dynamic, impressive individual with a great energy, and he really gave me a lot to think about with regard to technology but particularly with regard to the seamless, immersive use of technology in the classroom – and the way in which he facilitates this role as Technology Coordinator. He works across the entire school, with all grade levels and content areas, and goes into classes to help teachers engage the educational process using technology. He has some great ideas and positive thoughts about ALL technology – for example, the idea that we shouldn’t yell at the students for using their cell phones – we should certainly focus their appropriate use of these devices in the classroom, but come up with ways to take advantage of the technology that is already a huge, integral part of these students’ lives – and use it to engage their education. He really has the right approach. I learned so many new website tools (a big list is here) and larger educational ideas (such as “reverse instruction;” examples are here), and I won’t fill up the page here with all that, but suffice it to say that my brain is percolating with all these new ideas and I am undergoing a synthesis process right now thinking about how all this can be utilized at my school (American School in Taichung) in the upcoming span of time.

I like thinking (for myself) about how all this relates to the role of  a Technology Coordinator in an international school, as I have an opportunity to move into the role in the future. As I “prepare” for that progression, I really look forward to thinking about how, in the role of Technology Coordinator, to put some of the ideas from this conference into action. This has also gotten me excited for future professional growth. I realize how awesome these conferences can be – and I want to go to more! I saw that Jeff Utecht (mentioned in the previous paragraph) also is a member of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), an organization that I have looked into before – and an organization that appears to be right up my alley. I suspect it would be a very good idea  for me to join ISTE and I would LOVE to attend one of their conferences – perhaps in summer 2012. Another thing I learned  is how important Google can be to educators. Jeff discussed several new ideas that take advantage of Google and its tools for use in the educational arena. Through additional research in thinking about the potential for Google, I learned that Google (as part of its Google for Educators) has an annual conference called “Google Teacher Academy” – where teachers are selected to attend, and at the end, after the training, become a “Google Certified Teacher.”  So perhaps that is another angle I could consider in my professional progression toward Technology Coordinator. One final thought is an actual “Certificate of Educational Technology.” Jeff Utecht, in collaboration with the State University of New York in Buffalo, teaches a 5 course programs that leads to a “Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy.” The link is here. Another possible area of professional development.

I started the last day of the conference early yesterday morning by running in a 5K race in a pouring down tropical rainstorm with 70 other teachers. It was so much fun. Another guy and myself literally raced to the finish (fully sprinting) trying to beat each other, each with huge smiles on our faces. Debbie my wife was at the finish line cheering me on. Such a fun experience! And by the way – though I must confess I am certainly biased on this upcoming point – I will say that part of the “awesomeness” of the last few days has been Debbie – she was selected to deliver a workshop here at EARCOS this year and did so on Thursday with great success; I believe the attendees got a lot out her well-organized content. Well done!

In conclusion, I will say this: One of the workshops I attended was yet another illuminating, outstanding one by Derek Pugh on the “plasticity” of the brain and how renewed research has shown that neuron and dendrite growth is not static – so we can say now with empirical certainty that leading a stimulated life can literally build (and rebuild) the brain, throughout the lifelong learning process. These last few days have been so rewarding and stimulating, that I am picturing the inside of my brain and the little “trees” of my dendrites – and I’m imagining them active and growing. That’s an exciting thought!!