Sustainably Digital

I’ve done it. I probably made up my mind awhile ago to do it, but I (somewhat hastily) went ahead with it just recently. That’s right! I moved to self-hosting. There are lots of reasons for the move, but I do thank edublogs for their help and support getting into this blogging business.

You can find me and my posts at http://blog.benwildeboer.com. If you subscribe via email you may need to update your subscription to stay current with new posts. RSS Subscribers should be switched over automatically. The RSS feed is http://feeds2.feedburner.com/SustainablyDigital in case you don’t subscribe now but would like to.

See you there!!

I’ve been busy working on a small project for the last several weeks. Initially it started as a way to easily share the resources I’ve been using in my class with other teachers in my building. It quickly morphed into something more. As long as I was organizing things in this manner, why not just publish it all online?

I believe education related materials should open and available to use by anybody who has a use for them. Materials that are locked behind stringent copyright regulations or locked up on a teacher’s hard drive aren’t always able to be used by students, educators, parents, or others in ways that they may like.  If someone finds what I’ve created useful I want them to be able to use it in whatever manner they find it the most useful. Alec Couros has done a lot of thinking about what open teaching is all about, and I’ve come to take many of his ideas a challenge to think about how I choose to control the materials that I create (see his recent posts: Visualizing Open/Networked Teaching and it Revisited). The way I control media- and mentor that to my students- should reflect the values that I hold.

A timid step

Towards becoming an “open/networked teacher,” I’ve decided to release my curriculum resources to the internets. Curriculum Science is a wiki I’ve set up where I’ll be posting all my handouts, presentations, and projects under a GNU Free Documentation License (hat tip to Dan Meyer who planted seeds he posted his full geometry curriculum). Though it won’t matter to many people, I’ve also aligned them with the Connecticut standards for 9th grade Integrated Science. It’s a work in progress that will be updated as I make my way through this semester’s curriculum. Not all the material I would categorize as “my best stuff,” but it is “my real stuff.”

A little help

I don’t have this whole teaching/technology thing figured out. I’ve spent a lot of time considering how to be the most effective teacher possible, but that requires constantly revisiting what it is that I’m doing and how it is that I’m doing it. A few things I’d enjoy hearing my readers thoughts on:

• Is the GNU Free Documentation License the way to go for this? Would a Creative Commons license be a better match? I’m a little fuzzy on the specific definitions of the various licenses.
• If you have ideas for how to get at the content in a more effective manner than I’ve done in my curriculum please let me know. Lately I’ve been feeling that my ideas for new materials have been stale and not as effective as I’d like.
• If you use or remix anything I’ve created it’d make me happy to hear back on what you thought of it or how you changed it.

The Resources

Curriculum Science

I’ve heard of people using the revision histories of Wikipedia articles to study how thoughts and ideas about a topic have changed over time. However, for practical use in a high school science class featuring underclassmen, this has always seemed like it would be pretty labor intensive and wouldn’t have the best time to learning ratio compared to other activities. 

A better, quicker, more basic activity:

1. Find a graphic on Wikimedia Commons that illustrates concepts undergoing new discoveries and/or refinements (i.e. Trans-Neptunian Objects)
2. Scroll through the graphics in chronological order.
3. Observe how our knowledge on the subject has changed over time.

I’m not sure I have the readership to pull this off as effectively as Dan has, but I’ve been thinking about this one for awhile and suddenly found a great example of it literally in my front yard¹.

Just to clarify: Those are the snowbanks flanking both sides of the driveway. When I shovel I throw equal amounts of snow on both sides of the driveway. See Dan’s original post for the instructions and leave your ideas in the comments. View high quality images of the snow banks here and here.

UPDATE: To clarify further, when I was finished shoveling, both snow banks were basically the same size and shape. Two days later, when these pictures were taken, they weren’t.
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UPDATE 2: See comments below for more explanation. The additional picture below might help guide the discussion about why the right snow bank has melted significantly more towards talking about the position of the Sun and the tilt of the Earth.

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¹ It seems like I’ve been using Dan’s ideas a lot here lately. I swear I’m not cyberstalking- good ideas are good ideas. When I saw the snowbanks I couldn’t NOT play along with the meme.

A big thank you to all of you who voted on my classes’ element cards. In general I would say the project was a success. The front of the cards were generally decorated, though the backs of the cards were usually pretty lacking despite my appeals to make both sides visually appealing.

If you missed my earlier post where I explained the project please visit. I’ve also updated that post to include links to files of the handout I give students.

2nd Block

1st place: Plutonium

2nd Place: Carbon

3rd Place: Fluorine

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3rd Block

1st place: Neon

2nd place: Aluminum

3rd place: Sulfur

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4th Block

1st place: Potassium

2nd place: Calcium

3rd place: Tin

Now I just need to do this for a few more years until I get a complete set of element cards.

This isn’t one of those super-tech-integrative activities people swoon over- but it’s one I enjoy (and if you just want to vote on the cards and not read this, scroll down to the bottom).

After going over the basics of the atom and the periodic table, each student selects a different element off the periodic table. When doing this with multiple classes I don’t let any two students use the same element (I’ve never had over 117 students do this in the same semester).

There’s often some grumbling they so-and-so couldn’t get the element that sounds like their name (Samarium is picked by a significant number of students named Sam), and always the fun of having male knuckleheads always select Holmium, Thullium, and Platinum (Holmium’s symbol = Ho; Thullium’s atomic number = 69; Platinum for the bling, natch), but all in all they seem to enjoy getting their “own” element.

I used to do this project every year mainly to reinforce effective online search techniques, and didn’t do it when I moved covering atoms and the periodic table later in the semester- after we’d already gone over effective internet research techniques. The project isn’t super-rigorous on the science end. I give the students a list of information to find for their element, they find it and design the front and back of their cards. Half the grade for this assignment is in the design. I thought of making design worth less, but all this talk of visual literacy floating through the intertubes made me think it’s worth that much. If they can’t display the information so it’s easy to find and read, then the information is worth less.

As a result, I always have had classes vote on the best designed cards from each class to earn a few bonus points for the winners. Typically I’ll have my 3rd period vote on my 2nd period’s cards and vice versa. This year I figured I’d up the ante a bit by using one of those fancy online polling sites for the vote and invite anyone who’d like to vote to do so. So, you’re invited!

Each class has it’s own poll, so feel free to vote in all three polls: The polls are now closed.

• First Block (this is the poll I posted to Twitter. If you’ve already voted you can skip it)
• Second Block
• Third Block

I used PollAuthority.com (as recommended by @Dsalvucci via Twitter), as it was the only site I could find where I could have images used as answers in the polls. I had a little trouble getting the poll to work properly the first time around, but overall the poll creation process was pretty easy. It turns out that once the poll is finished and saved you are unable to further edit the poll, which is what I was trying to do. Once I figured out that issue things went swimmingly.

Thanks for voting! I’ll give an update this weekend or early next week when voting is completed.

UPDATE: I’ve closed the polls and tallied the result. I’ve posted the winners in a more recent post. In addition, here are the handouts I give to my students for this project:

• Element Trading Cards
  •  Word document (.doc)
  • .pdf file

I’ve taken Dan up on his Annual Report Contest this year. Luckily I’m just dorky enough to keep track of a few data sets of interest to me. I was also lucky to have a snow day today- otherwise these would probably not be complete. If they’re a little hard to read click on them to view the full sized image.

UPDATE: I added a few of my observations/reflections in the comments. Check ‘em out.

There you have it: 2008 in four slides. Feel free to make any inferences about my year from any of the data above. It’d be interesting to hear how clearly (or not) the data communicates aspects of the year. I’ll point out a few things I found interesting in the comments in a couple days. Also, feel free to critique the design and such. I can take it.

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Image Credits:

State Theater by william_couch (background for Movies)
This Pump has CLEARLY been on fire in the past by Jym Ferrier (background for Gasoline)

I haven’t posted for 25 days. Yes, the holidays played a decent part of that hiatus, but it’s also been the result of the binge of artifacts I had students create just before winter break. In short, I was so excited to break away from the traditional teaching style that I probably stretched myself too thin.

I previously taught at a small high school in Michigan. If you were in 10th grade at Whitmore Lake High School, you had Mr. Wildeboer for Earth & Physical Science. I was the only teacher who taught Earth/Physical Science since it was introduced in 2002¹ (my first year). This situation meant that I was solely responsible for the content of that class. I developed all of its lessons, projects, labs, and activities myself.

I was given the freedom to experiment, create projects, swap out exams for cumulative projects, cut back on breadth and focus on depth, and do pretty much whatever I felt would be best for the students. Freedom to do what I personally saw as best was the advantage of being a “lonely” teacher. The disadvantage was that I never really had anyone to work through ideas and struggles with. Sure, I could talk to other teachers who could provide valuable feedback, but it’s something different entirely to collaborate closely with another teacher while developing lessons or other curricular materials.

This year there are three other teachers who have the same classes I do. When I was hired, I was quite excited at the prospect of being able to collaborate with other teachers. I knew that might mean I wouldn’t have the same degree of freedom as I had enjoyed previously, but I figured I could live with the trade. I didn’t start the year working with the other teachers very well (several old posts explain why), but that was more the fault of Central Office than anything. As time when on however, I found we weren’t working together as closely as I would’ve liked. At lunches and meetings we’d talk about what we were currently on, where we were going next, and what supplies we each needed. Unfortunately, that was about it. We shared a little back and forth, but I wasn’t thrilled with the worksheets being sent my way. I would take some time to tweak them, then use my own presentations (which were shared, though I don’t have reliable intel that they were ever used outside my room).

I tried to replicate what the other teachers were doing as best as I could while only making design and other minor changes to improve the quality (IMHO) of what I was setting down in front of students. This was frustrating. In hindsight it seems foolish.  I provided what I consider sub-par curriculum materials to my students because I wanted to stay at the exact pace of the other teachers. I did this even though we really weren’t collaborating with each other, and looking back, I realize that I was really replicating was teaching style². No wonder I was frustrated. What I was doing was trying to do was suppress the style I had developed over several years of practice, research, and experimentation. It was foolish of me, and I now regret it.

Coming soon: What happened when I decided to stop worrying about keeping up…

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¹ Interestingly enough, due to changes in the state curriculum, the school decided to switch up the science curriculum starting the year after I left. The class I taught was replaced with something different- meaning the class started and ended with my tenure.

² I don’t mean to suggest here that the other teachers were ineffective. I have a certain reperatoire of activities and projects that have proven to be effective and mesh well with my personality. I’m happier when I teach within my personality, and happy teaching leads to happier students.

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Image Credits:

Power Law of Participation by Ross Mayfield
Streeter Seidell, Comedian by Zach Klein

I sat down to grade my students’ chemical reaction primer artifacts this weekend. It didn’t take me long to realize that as a class we weren’t done with these projects yet. Clearly I hadn’t built in the necessary support for the project’s format. I seemed to do pretty well supporting the information (as described previously), but I made a few fatal errors:

1. These freshmen have next to no experience citing sources. I required in-text citations and a bibliography. We went over this on day 1, but not too much more than simple reminders since then. Many students did either a bibliography or did in-text citations, but not both.
2. Many students gave Google, Yahoo, or Ask.com URLs as their sources for information or images. Again, we went over this on day 1, but with little prior knowledge of citing internet sources it’s an easy mistake to make.
3. I emphasized strongly that their artifacts should include lots of images related to chemical reactions. I didn’t make it clear enough that those pictures needed to match up with the content being described. I can’t tell you how many times I had pictures of chemical reactions with no explanation of what reaction it was or why it belonged in that spot.
4. I didn’t include a review and rewrite of their projects on the schedule. Especially the first time around, they really needed it.

Rookie mistakes, all of them. All easy enough to anticipate. Heck, I’ve even included reviews and rewrites in similar projects I’ve done. What was I thinking? Today, I created time for a review and rewrite. I graded the hell out of their artifacts knowing that I would give them time to fix them up.

I was pretty worried about class today. I was handing back rubrics with some very low grades on a project that was worth as much as a full-on test. I was very careful in how I opened the discussion on doing rewrites so as not to cause frustration, despair, or anxiety over the grades on the rubrics I was passing back. Here’s what I did:

• Created a positive (perhaps inspirational?) environment. I’ve been sharing short (~1 minute-ish) and fun videos with my classes all year. I usually don’t start class with them, but I wanted to set a positive tone right up front. What better way than with 40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes?
• Explained myself honestly. Because this was the first time they’ve done anything like this, their perception of what their finished artifact should look like is different than my perception- and that’s okay. I told them it’s my fault that I didn’t do a better job explaining my high, even ridonculous expectations (went back to an old slide to illustrate), and that I should’ve scheduled a review and rewrite from the very start.
• Ensured them the grade on the rubric wasn’t binding. Once I decided to allow students to revise their artifacts, I toyed with the idea of not going through their artifacts and just explain to the class as a whole the issues I was seeing. I avoided another rookie mistake by diligently going through each student’s artifact and grading it like I would if the grade would really count. I wanted each of them to see what specific things were lacking and needed to be fixed. It took 10 hours of grading this weekend. Morally, it was the right decision.
• Maintained a totally positive outlook on their artifacts. I didn’t want students to get the idea that I was disappointed or frustrated with their work and was simply having pity on them by giving them a do-over. I want them to know that revisions are a natural and necessary part of the work flow.

Dan Meyer noted that as your teaching expertise grows the technical challenges (i.e. designing and implementing projects, among other things) disappear and the real challenge becomes moral (will you put in the effort to ensure all are successful?). My technical challenges have decreased dramatically since year one. However, I’m not confident there will ever be a time when I don’t mess up the technical stuff. What differentiates my mistakes in year seven from mistakes in year one is that now I can fix the mistakes.

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Teaser:
Even though I messed up, it’s amazing to me that some students still hit it out of the park. Here are two artifacts that needed little fixing:

• Chemical Reaction Newspaper
• Chemical Reaction WikiPage

I used the following presentation to go over how and why to balance chemical equations with my 9th graders:

The concept itself isn’t complex, but instruction often gets bogged down in providing students with a list of specific steps to follow (First, count the number of atoms, second…).  Suddenly it goes from being a simple concept to a complex procedure which almost requires students to actually memorize the specific steps.

I started with a quick review of the Law of Conservation of Mass (matter cannot be created or destroyed, though it can be rearranged), and then jump into the teeter-totter analogy to explain why unbalanced equations violate this law. We then worked through some examples together.

With each repetition I increasingly withdrew my support. By the third example students could go through and balance equations without me around. They didn’t need to follow a prescribed set of steps. They knew that you can”t have more oxygen atoms on one side of the reaction than the other and worked through to figure out the balanced equation.

As for technological savvy to create the edited images of the sign: I did all image editing in PowerPoint itself; which is to say it’s pretty basic and pretty crude.

Resources

• Balancing Chemical Reactions (.ppt)
• Balancing Chemical Reactions (.pdf)
• Google Docs Presentation
  • (I use this since SlideShare is blocked at my school)