13-Second Story: Genji Wants to Ride

The past two weeks I've been trying to decide what tools to use for my digital storytelling assignment.  I've had experience with Animoto and Xtranormal; both are really fun.  I was intrigued about the possibilitities of Popcorn Maker, which gave me an idea of a task.

I looked through the videos on my cell phone--I have quite a few of my adorable dog, Genji. (He is quite the animated talker.) I discovered that I needed to upload the video to a web-based host, so I created a Vimeo account. Uploading a 13-second video through Explorer took more than a day--a very frustrating task. When I checked the next day, the video was still processing, so I deleted it and tried again using Safari, and within the hour, I had and email stating the video was ready.

The next step was uploading the Vimeo into Popcorn Maker--a snap.  I also found it rather easy to add the speech bubbles as pop ups.  I invite you to take a look at my story (I couldn't embed because I haven't created a YouTube account.)  The sound quality is bad--probably because I used my phone to record.  However, I'm pleased with the bubbles; Genji said that I translated his barks correctly.

I'm interested in how digital storytelling tools can be used to go beyond narrative.  It might be interesting to explore ways to use Popcorn Maker as an analysis tool.  For example, students could perhaps upload a speech and use the pop-ups to analyze the rhetorical strategies.  Or perhaps they could upload a music video or movie clip and add historical context details.  Please leave a comment with your ideas!

It isn't crabgrass after all #etmooc

This is my mother's spider plant that has lived for years in her sunroom.  Born with a green thumb, my mom gives it care, but it pretty much is self-sustaining, despite the occasional nibbles from Lily the cat.

Before starting my blog on "rhizomatic learning," I wanted to find the perfect pic to accompany my blog.  I googled "spider plant" to see if it was a rhizome; to my delight it is.

The spider plant reminds me of my experience so far with #etmooc.  When I look at the global map of connections,  I see our instructors as the home plant and all the "spiders" represent the learning generated by all of the participants.

I'll admit that sitting in on Dave Cormier's webinar on rhizomatic learning set my wheels to spinning.  While I could grasp the general concept of introducing an idea and letting people run with it,  I had a difficult time seeing the application in K-12 classrooms.  I envisioned the Bing commercial about information overload--haphazard searches that are loosely connected, straying from the original focus.  Part of the webinar discussion included the tension between "going wide versus going deep,"  which made me jump to the idea of crabgrass.  Yes, I know it's not a rhisome, (I googled it) but if you have ever had the experience of trying to pull up this infernal weed, it seems to go on forever.  Back-breaking work. I could just see students headed off in all directions learning as weeds rather than as rhisomes.

Fortunately, I participated in the Twitter chat.  Dave provided a sample syllabus, which clarified how this type of learning works with adults.  I still wasn't sold.  How can we balance this form of personalized learning with the demands of curriculum standards such as the Common Core State Standards? I then meet Heidi Siwak in the chat, and she provides me with an example from her 7th graders in her blog post, "X-Box and the War of 1812."  (I'll admit that I went off on a crabgrass moment, asking colleagues who won the War of 1812.) When I read about how Siwak directed her students to a LiveBinder with a multitude of resources on the war, I began to see the connection to personalized learning.  Students could choose the way they wanted to learn about the war--through articles, docmentaries, and various websites.  I also came to see how personalized learning contributes to collaborative learning when students came back together to share what they learned and generated an authentic question for discussion and study: "How come the Americans and the British both believe they won the war?" My spider plantlet has sprung thanks to Dave and Heidi.

Rhizomatic learning is just like anything else when we are teaching.  We need to scaffold the opportunities for students to explore like the assignmet Heidi describes and gradually release them to explore in the world that Dave illustrates.

Jumping in the Open Water--#ETMOOC

My dad said that he learned to swim when my grandfather threw him in the Cape Fear River.  No life jacket. No walking in a little at the time.  Sink or swim.  That's certainly the opposite of how I learned to swim.  I remember clinging to my dad in the pool, screaming at him not to let me go.  I wanted to swim so I could play with my friends, but I was also very afraid.  Finally, my mom enrolled me in lessons at the Y.  I didn't dare scream.  I methodically learned to swim--at least well enough to pass the required swim test at UNC.

There's something to be said for the sink or swim method.  Cautious tip-toeing can consume a lot of time that could be spent on the deep end.  It also allows more time for you to consider all the things that could go wrong.  Being thrown into the water puts survival in your control--certainly terrifying at first, but empowering when you realize you control the speed and direction.  When you get tired, float.

I've joined the #etmooc, a massive open online course about educational technology.  I feel like I've been thrown in the middle of a lake, basically treading water.  I feel pretty comfortable in the webinars and following along on Twitter.  But connecting with others is proving to be the challenge.  For example, at the time of this writing, there are 1,469 blog entries on the #etmooc blog hub.  But I'm starting to swim.

Here's what I hope to learn from participating in this MOOC:

• Tools to empower students to take charge of their learning
• How technology can be an effective tool for personalized learning
• How to address/teach digital citizenship

Here's to staying afloat!

Not knowing whether to laugh or cry

A friend of mine shared the following YouTube video posted by 8th grade teacher R. N. Gutierrez:

I hooted and cackled. We've all probably heard (if not actually said), "When in doubt, choose C."  Use the process of elimination to select between A, B, C, and D.  And how many times have we had our students write about school uniforms and cell phone use? Guilty as charged. 

And as satire is supposed to do, it got me to thinking. Just this week, I received a request for a test-prep book for the new End-of-Course test aligned with the CCSS. How did we get here?  Some like Calkins, Ehrenworth, and Lehman in Pathways to the Common Core, assert that high-stakes testing as part of NCLB has led to flatlined NAEP scores because we have dissected reading into discrete skills, with comprehension taking a hit. Writing instruction became formulaic with a focus on writing for a test rather than writing to think and share.

Then come the Common Core State Standards with its "promise" to prepare all students for college and career.  I like the ELA standards with their clear learning progressions from kindergarten to the College and Career Anchor standards.  But as the Brookings Institute concludes in "The 2012 Brown Center Report on Education":

Despite all the money and effort devoted to developing the Common Core State Standards--not to mention the simmering controversy over their adoption in several states--the study foresees little to no impact on student learning.  That conclusion is based on analyzing  states' past experience with standards and examining several years of scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). p. 5
 

This conclusion is not at all surprising.  Standards and curriculum alone will not impact student learning, rather how the two are enacted does. Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed to accountability and testing. I find the sample test items from Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium much better than what we've been using the last decade. I am opposed to tests being the be-all end-all of education. If our focus remains on test preparation rather than college and career preparation, (and likely it will as scores are now tied to teacher evaluation), we will stay mired in the process of teaching students how to "choose C" rather than how to think, communicate, collaborate, create.

The teacher creates the conditions for student learning, not policy makers. I am an educator because I am hopeful.  I believe in the power of public education to help students learn to live a good life.  I choose teachers and their students.  I just hope policy makers choose them, too.