Teaching Generation Z

Multiliteracies –Teaching The Consumption and Production of Multimodal Texts

Dr. Geoff Bull and Dr. Michelle Anstey

www.ansteybull.com.au

Session One

Teaching The Consumption and Production of Multimodal Texts.

What is a multimodal text? Goes beyond just straight print text, can be interactive, linear and non-linear. All texts have values and the reader is an active constructor of meaning from the text. (This is an interesting point as students move more into construction of texts for wider audiences beyond their classroom. Are they aware enough of the different ways the words and images they choose will be interpreted?)

Written paper texts are generally consumed in a linear fashion, but digital text can be very non-linear. Even television can be non-linear and interactive (i.e. reality television) where you can use SMS and web voting to influence and change the direction of the text. Processing a text means drawing on the experience of other texts. Texts incorporate a variety of semiotic systems – decision making can be influenced by preferences. Both digital and non-digital formats of a text are produced these days. Design and aesthetics of a text target specific cultural groups.

When presenting a text to students, decide what you want the students to know and be able to do? We were shown two multi-modal texts and had to consider the contexts – which they were published. Two images shown from the Iraq war – one from early in the war and a later one. Our group discussed the difference between the two and came up with many different possible interpretations. A photographic technique is the use of the Y-vector to attract attention to a specific part of the photograph. (“Punch Into Iraq” – The Australian March 2003 and The Australian July 2007.)

Texts are becoming more screenlike. Showed an example “The Penguin Book: Birds In Suits.” Layout offers a number of starting points and boxed in texts mean shorter, simpler sentences. The traditional ways of decoding a text do not always apply to more screen like texts. Previewing, skimming and scanning are skills that involve eye movement on a text. Look at a similar topic using various texts and work though with your students how to make meaning and navigate the information.

Jakob Nielsen - useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html You have 30 seconds to grab your reader’s attention. Looked at the changes of the National Geographic front page from 2003 to 2008. Changed so that signal to noise ratio had improved.

Obvious statement – start with a purpose then choose the technology or tool to suit.

Session Two

Consuming and Producing Still Images

What is your literacy identity? Use of prior experience with text, knowledge, cultural knowledge and experiences, social knowledge and experiences, and technological knowledge and experiences. Break away from “doing school” and re1ate to the “life world.” Showed “Anzac Day - Simpson And His Donkey” cartoon for the Australian April 26, 2001. Showed KIA ad showing a van with a sign “New To Country, will Work For Less.” What reaction do you have and what trigger that reaction? Having the skills to understand a mobile phone contract or to undertake a rental agreement – who has the power and to clarify - this is using critical literacy. Advertising texts is a good place to start but you can move onto other forms of texts - scientific texts cited as an example where one scientist was presented in their work environment in their lab coat etc. while the other was interviewed in the street with opposing points of view. Who appeared to be more authorative ?

Why study still images? We get so much information today via visual images that we run the risk of taking them (and what they mean) for granted. What role do images play in a text? A few examples - a pulp mill leaflet from Tasmania with an open ended question, a Donna Hay recipe book showing toffee apples and a magazine article showing a hand drawn map of the Huon Valley.

Color is used in images – harmonious colours and contrasting colours used to evoke feelings or to draw attention. Plan a colour script for a piece of writing – examples cited were Pixar movies and children’s picture books (The Lorax came to my mind as a good example. Another planned example of color combination I came up with were the Miami Dolphins NFL team whose team colors are Coral and aqua - the colours and the names match the image.)

Showed through a number examples of children’s picture books where images and how they are presented are really important to the story being told. One example was “Black and White” by David Macaulay. The front cover consists of four separate images that present images in different ways using different colours and styles presenting a significant challenge for the reader to decode. We were also shown the book ”Fox” by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks where the text was designed to match in with the illustrations.

Session Three

Moving Images

Hidden agenda aim of the session was to ensure that we never view a moving image in the same way again! How do we get meaning from “moving visual”? Are we always conscious about how we gain meaning? Use codes and conventions to do so. Gave an example of how a group of friends may see a movie together, but discussion will show that they viewed it in many different ways. Use grabs of video from what the students themselves watch advertisements, soap operas etc. in 5-30 second segments. Does not contravene copyright of material – as it is covered under “fair use”.

Talked about male and female ads and the various choices made by advertisers to differentiate with choices of colour, music and pace. Looked at camera angles in covering men’s and women’s sport and how it changed over time. Can be an interesting study when viewing the Olympics. “Literacy by stealth” assists boys who are literacy-reluctant. Trend, emerges from research that a lot of student learning comes from moving image, up to 25%. This has implications for texts presented in the classroom. If teachers do not include “moving image” as part of their teaching, they will become increasingly irrelevant (as well as not doing their job.) Use the extras sections of DVD to look at storyboards (excellent reason to use tools like Comic Life). It is important to explicitly teach the metalanguage. Big and little, zoom in and out then become characterisation and context.

There was considerable time spent in the deconstruction of the short film “Star” directed by Guy Ritchie, and the making of “Walking With Dinosaurs.” Geoff paused and talked us through the different codes and conventions of the what we were seeing, hearing in terms of soundtrack and also dialogue.

Moving Images blur the lines between fiction and non–fiction. Walking With Dinosaurs is an example of fictionalising facts - a story is created to demonstrate what scientists have learned and determined from their research. Presents issues about authenticity – how do we determine it and identify it? Talked about the role that virtual worlds, (Second Life) have in disturbing the paradigm about what is real life.

Overall, a very good day that confirmed many of the practices that occur in my room in terms of using digital content to teach specific concepts and cater for the multi-literate learners in my classroom. It also highlighted the usefulness of an Interactive Whiteboard in the classroom and provided many useful explanations of how texts are constructed to use in discussion and analysis with my students. I still would like to have had wireless to look stuff up as we went along - it is very much a preferred learning style of mine and in line with the whole multi-literate point of view. Text is still important but the ability to decode and make sense of the other text forms is a crucial part of being literate today. I wonder if digital literacy can be construed as something else or just the digitisation of the three forms of written text, still images and moving images? There has to be more to that as this [multiliteracies as covered today] mainly deals with the consumption angle while the creation would bring other things to consider. Something more to tease out at a later time - or perhaps my readers would like to kickstart with their points of view.

Kudos to educationau for offering to host the May 2nd event titled “Learning In The 21st Century” as a positive spin off from the issues coming to a head with Al Upton’s class blog closure. Now the event is not about Al’s situation but is more a roundtable discussion as a starting point for moving forward. Acknowledgement must go to Alex Hayes who came up with the initial concept of an event and drove the TALO involvement but will be nursing his swollen knee as the discussion unfolds. Janet Hawtin has also been amazing, connecting all the dots and encouraging key people to have their say. Over a GMail chat the other night I negotiated an afternoon only visit to the event and a recorded contibution for the morning due to my classroom teaching commitments. As I type the just over 10 minutes of audio is uploading to my podomatic account and hopefully I’ll link to it just before I head to bed.

Audio presentation for May 2 - click to download.

Sites mentioned or relevant to my presentation.

Connecting the Digital Dots: Literacy of the 21st Century

Spin The Global wiki project

Chris Lehmann has written some of the best posts for my money in 2008 and his timing always seems to be impeccable. His recent Letter To A New Teacher spoke to all teachers, new or experienced, regardless of sector or country and I found Chasing False Gods to be really good fodder for my own thoughts. As the whole Al Upton and his miniLegends issue dropped into the edublogger pool and the ripple waves started washing up onto various shores, Chris’s words have new meaning for me as I try to work out why blogging is worth pursuing in the classroom. Is it a faddish idea because it’s new technology and merely digitises what’s always been done in classrooms or does it offer students regardless of age something more? Chris points out:

We have to understand — we cannot compete with the ever-more-fast-paced and realistic entertainment world. What we can offer is meaning and purpose and authenticity.

Does blogging have purpose and authenticity? Or is it just a shiny new wrapper that just maybe has too many hard-to-manage variables for the average teacher? Where does it fit?

Something tells me that we should be encouraging teachers to be innovative, to push into unfamiliar territories but once again, Chris’s most recent words come swimming into my brain, looking to temper that innovation with our responsibility as educators:

As educators, we must be hyper-aware that we cannot be revolutionaries at the expense of our students.

And there are plenty of revolutionaries around. It is one of the things that Al himself must guard against - being the poster boy for any cause that sees itself at odds with the status quo of administration that doesn’t get it, railing against an impersonal system that just doesn’t care or in desperate need of an overhaul or dismantlement. He must beware of powerful personalities willing to hitch their cause to the miniLegends - and most are worthy but it’s so easy to get sucked into the frenzy, to forget that there is a curriculum to deliver, a classroom to run and there are the students who probably just want their blogs back and have had enough of their time in the spotlight.

But Chris does elaborate more about the role of the risk taker in the classroom:

We must take risks in education. We must challenge the tried-and-true way of educating students, but we must do it thoughtfully and carefully and transparently, because we don’t have the luxury of just “going out of business.” Every school that makes those choices poorly affects the lives of the students who honored that school with their choice to go there. This is — as much as any other reason — we must always, always, always humble ourselves before the enormity of the task in front of us.

I know that writing a blog has altered the way I learn. But capturing the elements that enable me to reflect and connect is not so easy with the students that I teach. It’s why I think that the work that Konrad Glogowski has done with his students to be incredibly important. It’s also why Al’s issues have resonance for me. It’s why my own department’s response and planned future responses are important to me - how authentic student blogging can be will be determined by how well they can connect to each other, to other students learning similar things and to adults who can guide and direct them in their learning. Otherwise, it will be just recounts and writing in short bursts in pretty themed environments - the digital equivalent of colouring in the page margins.

By running a class blogging program, am I really pushing the boundaries of what the classroom should be today? I think so but only if there are connections out of that classroom. It’s early days - and I’m pleased that a sense of community is starting to emerge with my students. There is encouragement, there is some risk taking going on in terms of reluctant writers creating their topics and posts, there is some exchange of ideas and the kids are looking already in under a month to go beyond the “Cool blog” comments and add some substance to their observations of their peers’ writing. The Blog Coaches was my next logical step - I need to partner that up with parent information and education as the greatest threat to this carefully monitored situation is media-fuelled apprehension. So I can see the blog as a learning tool that helps students to become digitally literate, improve their use of the written English language, explore topics from their SOSE (Studies Of Society & Environment) curriculum and reflect on their learning in any area of their set curriculum.

But how realistic is this all? How sustainable is a model that demands that the teacher implementing it be linked into a global network? That they understand the digital tool they expect the students to use intimately? I like what Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach has to say on this point:

As educators we need to get ready for a real shift in culture. The shifts that are coming will not allow “business as usual” rather it will be “business as unusual”. That is why it is critical for all of us to first own these emerging technologies and the pedagogy/culture that surrounds them, by using Web 2.0 tools to connect- in an effort to chase our own passions. Through the experience of building of your own PLN, not only will you model for your students how this should be done, but you might find some transformational moments along the way -that like mine with Jenny and Dan- will leave you a better person. And do NOT discount what those younger or older than you have to offer. Use expertise and passion- not age- as criteria for who you should learning from and for who should be part of your learning network.

The miniLegends are well on track in this regard. Al Upton is an exceptional teacher who believes in empowering his students. If Sheryl is right and she’s identifying what is needed to be a teacher today, I feel ready for the challenge and I reckon that the kids in my class are going to be well positioned.

For this year.

See, that’s where my selfish generousity kicks in. I can leverage my network and hook my students up with Alaskan kids on wikis or have well respected edubloggers waiting in the wings to become another one of their teachers. But what about the other teachers in the building? The ones without their own blogs? What about the teachers in my son’s school who have never ever read a blog? What about the students I teach as they leave me and hit high school where they get taken back to basics with their technology use and assumed levels of competency?

Has my genorousity been more about me and my passions than their needs for their actual future? As opposed to the one we all agree they should be getting? Don’t worry - I teach all of the stuff that Chris advocates we do not overlook. Balance is important.

We need innovators. As Leigh Blackall once said to me, (I’m paraphrasing here) that you need the boundary pushers as it then gives those following behind room to move. Occasionally, however, it doesn’t hurt to remember that the students of innovative teachers don’t get a say in coming along for the ride. But then there are implications and consequences for inaction and ignorance as well.

I pride myself on my spelling ability. So much that I can get indignant when confronted with the accusation that my lifelong memory of a word is actually incorrect. But who can argue when the Wikipedic wisdom of crowds defines the right spelling for me…

Luckily for me, perhaps I’m merely contributing to the evolution of the English language…

Thanks to an invitation from Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim, Doug Noon and I were guests on the Teachers Teaching Teachers webcast last week to discuss our global project, Spin The Globe, that we have worked on with our respective classes. It was great to chat and hear Doug’s voice at length after working with him for half a year and I think we covered some good territory. Catching up with an experienced hand in Joel Arquillos who has trialled these sort of global collaborations in his classroom was a bonus as well. I’m actually keen to listen to it again because every time I participate in these Skypecasts my brain struggles to remember anything I’ve uttered as soon as I remove my headset. I took the liberty of adding the webcast to the FLNW wiki as my contribution to that event but I know that several interested educators were unfamiliar with the Edtech Talk setup and had issues with connecting to the live audio stream. So, here’s the archived podcast - I’d love any feedback about any point that was made, either here or back at TTT.

Spin the Globe–A conversation with Graham Wegner, Doug Noon, and Joel Arquillos.

Some people enjoy reading books. Others like to kick back and watch TV or play video games.

Me?

I’m weird. I like going online and reading other people’s stuff. I also like mucking around in Photoshop and creating inane things like logos and cartoons.

So, it’s probably no surprise that I would “have a go” at Dan Meyer’s design competition No.2. The whole idea is to showcase 2007 in four information design jpg’s that utilise data in various forms. I found this a lot harder than my first attempt in Competition No.1 - because it was hard to find meaningful personal statistics. (And much what I have ended up including is very questionable in the meaningful stakes.) Anyway, it really made me think - some parts I think turned out OK and other parts I know are as dodgy as can be.

Here it is.

Stephen Graham - Australian literacy consultant.

These are my rough notes, captured as I went and as laptop battery and my concentration span allowed. No web access and he used a whiteboard and markers as well as the occasional OHP - I was sceptical about how up-to-date his literacy message would be - I think he stopped short of exploring that area so this workshop was definitely about exploring the literacies required to succeed in school as it stands currently.

Australian literacy level in schools is second in the world after Finland. Australian teachers are sought after around the world for their literacy expertise – with 1300 of them working as literacy consultants in New York. Australian teachers are generally reflective and will continually re-visit until students gain the skills or concepts - he believed that his experience in the US is that teachers feel pressured to move on regardless of whether all kids “have got it”.

Talked about Content and Literacy – in our schools,rightly or worngly, it is always set against the conventions of White, Middle Class Anglo-Saxon values English (WMCASE). He gave an example of a child in Sydney in an underpriveleged school going through an assessment exercise where the required response to a question was “I am sleeping” - his response was “I am buggered”.

So, our LAN (Literacy and Numeracy) tests only look at whether kids can manipulate WMCASE, and not concerned with the content. Regardless of content there are hidden literacy demands that aren’t immediately obvious to all students, for example you use past tense for a history recount and present tense for a Science report. Kids can know the content backwards but need the skills to get it down into writing.

What are the demands of literacy?

Made the generalisation that most students enter middle school with their literacy and writing predominantly based on narratives and stories. This means that pronouns have very different meanings depending on whether it is an information text or a narrative. Not enough to just learn how to decode or spell unless they are taught skills to pull it all together to make sense. Talked about teaching reading a text without referring to the content - more content is not needed, as the goal needs to be that literacy knowledge is transferable. Stephen then talked about the underperformance of boys in Australian schools, citing that one of the reasons being that boys are focussed on the content – being unable to tell the difference between discussion, reports, analysis etc.

Text type > genre = text forms (fairytales, science fiction etc.)

Suggested that in the high school lesson, you give ten minutes of your 45-50 minute lesson to literacy if you expect your students to complete your demands. Immersing kids in the experience is not enough - explicit teaching can make a huge difference in understanding purpose and how it all works. Talked about how some Asian languages show tense through tone – one example where kids from that sort of background need the explicit structural information about how to write tense.

Teachers carry a strong sense of equity with them - however most of society doesn’t. Literacy demands of the workplace have never been higher and will only increase. Kids tend to write expositions with their strongest argument first, down to their weakest. They need to be shown how to structure things differently so that their exposition doesn’t run downhill. “You can only write (or speak) down the language choices in your head.”

Put up a great example of Kevin with Centrelink. This was a man who had been docked extra social security money that he was entitled to. As Stephen said, “You can only use the language in your head.” So when Kevin rang, his literacy skills caused him to say, “What the f*** are you doing down there?” Of course, Centrelink has a zero abuse policy so he was hung up on, until Stephen said that he became involved (I don’t recall how) and rang on his behalf and solved the issue with his literacy skills. It’s ironic that in Australia the main social agency that only deals with disadvantaged and disenfranchised requires its clients to use WMCASE to engage their services.

Modelled reading - show them. Use of writing scaffolds. When using a scaffold, use two columns (1) words I won’t write and (2) words I will use on either side of the sheet as they plan their writing.

Website is www.cengage.com then go to Link to Primary then click on bookwebplus= then Download Writing Scaffolds. PM Interactive Writing interactive whiteboard software program.

Talking about the Conference process with students – Stephen pointed out the process is not practical in a classroom of 30 students as it doesn’t allow enough quality time with each individual student. Too much time expended for an equal amount of educational outcomes. One of his suggestions was to reserve a page for each text type in the student’s exercise book and add points to it as the year goes on. Just handing them the list doesn’t get them to cognitively engage with the requirements of each type and internalise their learning. Use silent editing time to look for the things that one already covered then the teacher can introduce a new aspect.

Comprehension rule - if a child is getting more than one incorrect word per ten, you cannot teach the next level of text. Talked about the bell curve and the bottom group of achievers comprise of distinct groups including boys, indigenous kids and ESL students. In these groups there or two strands – the aliterate students, who haven’t practiced reading and are out of practice but possess the decoding skills, and the illiterate student who lacks the skills to decode and therefore comprehend effectively. Different approaches are needed for each group. Critical literacy - especially on the internet, essential to ask who wrote it, why they wrote it and how did they go about constructing it.

3 types of questions - 1. literal comprehension (the answer is in front of you) - 2. inferential (reading between the lines) and 3. response questions (internalising the text).  Aust’n kids are good at one and three but terrible at two - there are ten key strategies (p.6 on the booklet given out - to be inserted here later) to use to solve that type of comprehension. Looked at comprehension, and viewed the Features Of Text Types table from the “Comprehending Stories And Facts” booklet. Gave the example of the use of text boxes on a page where the students aren’t sure how and when to read the information in the box. Teachers assume too much of students in this including bolding, change of fonts, italics etc. Do the students know the order to view maps, diagrams, images? Biggest issue for teachers when working with students is “transfer of knowledge” – doing something in one context doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be able to in another. Kids need background knowledge and they need to spell and understand the forms of punctuation in differing contexts.

A vibrant exchange with Al Upton in the comments section here on this blog had me challenged with his point about educators being involved in “rich ongoing online learning that is reflected in their students’ learning.” What does that look like in the classroom? My classroom? Any classroom? Al was open about his class’s efforts:

[My class blog and the kids’ individual blogs (although often a struggle with the basic aim to provide an initial exposure to online networks … 8 and 9 year olds) is my attempt as a teacher in an open sense. Our explorations of Quest Atlantis - a MUVE … a bit like SL but with built in learning quests and missions for 9-12yo is my attempt in a virtual 3D game like learning environment … in a walled garden sense :]

So while I’m swanning around cyberspace, twittering this and networking that, building up connections near and far, what benefit has it brought the students that I teach? It’s time to document my efforts at global digital collaboration for my class - warts and all.

My class is part of a primary school ( the North American equivalent is elementary) covering from 5 year olds to 13 year olds. We call ourselves middle school students because the school is divided into learning teams - junior primary, middle primary and the Middle Years Learning Unit (MYLU). Basically we form part of a 4 classroom block - usually made up of Year (Grade) 6/7’s but as all classes are composite (multiple year levels) and Australian classrooms are funded to be class sizes of 30 from Year 3 onwards, that’s how why I’m co-teaching a 5/6 combination with slightly younger kids mixed into my class.

Anyway, MYLU classes collaborate on several levels and co-plan for cross-curricular units of work. This past term’s over-riding theme was Communication and I floated the idea of covering this by setting up class global partnerships where they could actively work through the process of communicating about their respective parts of the world. Of course, I had to lead the way - both because my online networking and Web 2 tools skills would be required plus it was my turn to “lead out” on the unit of work. I knew it was important to convince my MYLU teaching colleagues that I knew what I was doing (even if it wasn’t true) and to be able to model some options as they got going with their classes. I turned to one of the educators I trust and respect the most, Doug Noon, to see if he’d be keen to work with me and to see if this concept could work.

We both figured a wiki would be a good rallying point for our collaboration and so SpinTheGlobe was created. There’s been several well publicised global wiki projects around that have been very successful - the Horizon Project wiki , initiated by Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay, was one where I tagged in for a minor role as a peer review classroom - but I was keen to take a different approach and deliberately wanting to work in a low key and grassroots orientated way. This suited Doug as he also wanted to forge our own collective ideas rather than follow an established blueprint. He pointed out in one of our early e-mail exchanges about the possible gains for his students being that “These projects will involve my students and (hopefully) lead them toward a more global consciousness. That’s my larger goal. For Alaskan kids, especially if they’ve never lived anywhere else, the larger world is a big unknown.”

So, with the main idea being communicating how each other’s parts of the world works, it was time for me to “lead out”. I started the wiki, embedded some eye candy widgets to show location, time and temperatures of both locations and then got the class to brainstorm out what they already knew about our global partners a “spin of the globe” in Fairbanks, Alaska. It turned that they didn’t know a lot - but we documented that on the wiki as a starting point and Doug got his kids to do the same. Then the tricky part of making collaborative decisions about which way to go came into play.

There are quite a few hurdles to be overcome in order to get a global project (even a grassroots one!) off the ground. The first hurdle is timing - my class were well settled with half a year of school under their belt and used to my “let’s do this” approach to technology based learning while Doug was starting his school year with new kids, a new grade level and kids who weren’t necessarily tech-savvy in the way required to be using the web and Web 2.0 tools in an efficient manner. The next hurdle was time - finding the time to commit to the project, then filling the time between waiting for Doug’s students’ next contribution with related work that maintained the interest and purpose. Another hurdle was our own communication patterns - ironic that the people who may learn the most about effective communication may be the teachers involved! I totally forgot to make Doug a wiki organiser at the start which created problems when he wanted to get his kids signed up. One of us would fire off an e-mail asking crucial questions or suggesting important changes in direction and the time differences or workload requirements would get in the way of a speedy and useful response.

But we got started. My class started posing questions on the wiki and Doug’s started tagging Alaskan websites of interest in a del.icio.us account. Then my class started the same and using the Network feature both classes could look easily at each other’s sites as a way of “frontloading” the students on a part of the world they know very little about. In this way, both groups were introduced to the power of social bookmarking and an image on one of the sites has become my reference point for demonstrating possibilities to my class. More on that shortly.

I also started my kids playing with FlickrStorm as a way of creating photogalleries of the topics up for discussion. That also produced important discussion as some kids were able to use the tool to stay focussed on the task at hand and others got distracted by the power of the tool. I even used this example in a comment on Doug’s blog:

Working on the wiki for our “global partners”, I talked with the class about the idea of using photography as a way of communicating ideas about the Australian way of life. I let them loose using FlickrStorm to create a photo montage on a specific idea like Australian food, or money or sport. They had so much fun working out how FlickrStorm worked, using key words, adding images they liked to the download tray and then generating the final hosting page of images, that very few thought critically about the images they were choosing and what message they would send about our way of life. Reviewing these back in class as a group was very useful as we (the class as a whole, not just me) realised that the photo collections needed checking for validity and accuracy. Check the difference between the collection of Australian money images from one child who was able to keep the end goal in mind in contrast to the other student who got caught up in the moment. The class discussion when viewed on data projector was invaluable. What conclusions would someone draw when the US dollar features in the pics? But when I send the students back tomorrow in the computing room to review, fix and link in their image pages, I reckon the results will be much, much closer to achieving their goal.

We still haven’t decided whether these galleries are a key ingredient in this project. Another major frustration is when a tool with potential turns out to have issues related to the school environment. I started playing with VoiceThread the other week and immediately got excited - in fact, I was convinced I had found the key to the next part of our collaboration. To set the scene, I focussed my trial example on an element of an image from one of the Alaskan websites showing an inukshuk, which I had never seen or heard of before. I grabbed images from FlickrCC for my VoiceThread, then recorded questions with each image. I saved it and then the next day, caught Chris Harbeck on Gmail Chat during my recess break. He, too, loves VoiceThread and offered to check out my example and add a voice comment. He did, even ignoring my mispronunciation of the word inukshuk, and I was sold. I started imagining South Australian and Alaskan student voices posing and answering questions via VoiceThread then writing up what they had learnt from their primary sources back at the wiki. I was so excited I showed my class my VoiceThread up on the interactive whiteboard. “I can’t hear your voice very well, Mr.Wegner.”

Then it came to a grinding halt. My original example had been recorded at home and I soon found that VoiceThread doesn’t work well from within our school environment - the images wouldn’t upload and the record button took too long to activate and it basically bombed. I did find out from Chrissy Hellyer (during a chatcast for Kim Cofino’s parent Web 2.0 presentation in my lunch hour) that she had similar issues at her school but they were solvable by unblocking a specific IP address and a certain port on the server. She also emphasised the worth of pursuing a solution as VT has a lot of great collaborative potential. So that is something still to work on.

But it does bring up another thing to consider when “going global” in your classroom - don’t assume that your access to web technology is the same as your partner’s. Doug’s class hit the issue of student emails in order to create unique identities for student work on the wiki. At my school all students from Year 3 have an email address that is packaged up with their internet logon. Not so at Doug’s school. There may be other bandwidth issues to consider. Certain sites may be blocked or filtered at one end but not the other.

Still, I’m pretty pleased with our progress so far with our grassroots global collaboration. Why do I refer to it as grassroots? Well, both Doug and I are committed public educators (he’s a bit more vocal about it than me) and we weren’t shooting for any high concepts that seem to be the topic of flavour ’round the edublogosphere. Just because an issue is high priority in the networks doesn’t mean that our age students will be all that engaged. What they are interested in is themselves and how they might be perceived by others. So, if all Doug and I do is raise some awareness that yes, your way (the students) of acting and thinking isn’t the only way and to debunk some misconceptions about our respective parts of the world.

We now know there are no penguins in Alaska !

Konrad Glogowski has written one of the best posts of the year for any edublogger interested in the concept of inquiry learning or student initiated learning. Like Barbara Ganley, Konrad’s relatively infrequent posts are skillfully written with insightful detail that shows an open educator at their best. I was really taken by the parallel lines that I could see in my own attempts with my class’s Personal Research Projects from last term and the start they have made for this term. Konrad teaches older students than myself but many elements of his process were of immense interest to me, especially in the light of the excellent and thought provoking feedback I had received from Artichoke after my most recent post on this topic. Konrad detailed some of his thinking in the following way:

I started thinking about their progress as researchers and it occurred to me that the whole class seemed to follow the same pattern. Once I gave them the freedom to find a topic they were interested in, they began to seek out and immerse themselves in learning experiences. No one really seemed to care about grades or tests. Instead, they were immersed in learning about topics they cared about. Looking back, I realize that the process that the whole class engaged in consisted of four stages. Vanessa and Trudy, however, moved beyond into the fifth stage. The girls, along with their classmates, inspired me to start thinking about the process of creating learning experiences.

He also shared a diagram outlining the five stages:

As is usual with high quality posts, they usually attract high quality comments. In line with his thorough blogging process, Konrad addresses all comments with a personal response that is often blog post sized in itself! Not wanting to lower the tone but wanting to contribute and add to a conversation that seemed to be another jigsaw piece to this concept of individual inquiry learning that Arti, Doug and I were percolating back at my blog, I added a comment. Basically I pointed Konrad back to my recent post, adding the mental link I had made between our classroom practices.

Probably, the big difference is that I am still pushing a product based end point while I am really interested in the Contribute stage and wonder how younger middle school students might make that happen.

Konrad’ response in full here was:

Graham,

Thank you for linking to your very engaging post and the ensuing discussion.

There is a lot to digest there and I do intend to address your thoughts and those of Artichoke in a separate blog entry. However, there is one thing that intrigued me and I would like to comment on now.

The culminating presentation, in my opinion, is a great idea. You wrote that “adding the final presentation in front of their peers added another layer of purpose to their work.” Does that mean that the children do not have access to the work of their peers as it unfolds? You see, the reason I ask is because I have used an approach that is similar to yours (and described in this entry) but without a final, culminating presentation. Your entry made me realize that I should definitely incorporate it into the process. The reason why I have never had it before as the final part of the research process is because the community that the students built with their individual blogs already added what you referred to as “another layer of purpose.” In other words, there was already so much interaction and feedback happening online during the research process (in the form of comments and even blog entries about the work of their peers) that the final presentation did not seem necessary - the students were encouraging, supporting, and learning from and with each other during their individual research journeys. It seemed to me that the final presentation would be repetitive because most students were very well aware of what their friends were engaged in. It also seemed quite final and definitive, reminiscent of what Carol Kuhlthau refers to as “Search Closure” (Kuhlthau’s Model of the Stages of the Information Process).

Your entry, however, convinced me that the final presentation is a very valuable component of the inquiry process. You have inspired me to incorporate it into this approach. However, since I see the last three stages of the process I described above - Immerse, Build, Contribute - as a cycle, I am now thinking of asking students to present their work at the end of each IBC cycle, as opposed to at the end of the term/year. That way, they will present more frequently but their presentations will not be as long or definitive - they will present as researchers still very much engaged in the process of researching and learning, not as students who finished their project. (I see it as a kind of conference poster session, where the point is to share what one’s been working on, not necessarily reveal the findings of the research).

As you can see, I am really interested in the IBC cycle. I see it as a kind of spiral that keeps the students engaged. So, what if I increased the frequency of these presentations, so that the students could present every time they contributed something to their chosen fields? What are your thoughts? Could that work? Should the final presentation still be the final component of this approach? Personally, I think it could be an opportunity to summarize the previous presentations and explore possible future research possibilities.

Your thoughts?

Thanks again for sharing your ideas with me!

It struck me that Konrad’s process of using blogs as the vehicle for his students to explore their topics was the very thing that negated the final presentation product so I was intrigued that he saw that part of my process as being of value as an addition to his own process. This was because I had been questioning that idea’s validity since Artichoke’s 5 points about inquiry learning. I was also attracted to Konrad’s students’ pursuit of individual topic choices (albeit under the banner of Human Rights) after putting my students’ “something new” topic choices under a big question mark based on Arti’s point that “the research suggests that inquiry works best when kids are already experts in the domain”. Konrad’s student blog use to keep each other informed of mutual progress and learning is indeed a missing component of my own process and one to give serious consideration to for future projects, because my own student “do not have access to the work of their peers as it unfolds”.

I still need to go back to Konrad’s blog and address the questions he asks properly. I was hoping that writing this post might have helped me in that regard. More careful thinking to be done. I’ll take a leaf out of Konrad’s book and make sure it is thought our properly and not a rush job.

From Twitter this afternoon, Australian time.

BeckettsDad celebrates alone while wife, dogs, and kiddo sleep gently. Why? He just finished reviewing all of the DY/Dan blog ‘4 Slide Sales Pitches’! about 6 hours ago from web

grahamwegner @BeckettsDad. Another way to judge the 4slidecomp would be to get the contestants to name their favourite (apart from their own). about 5 hours ago from web in reply to BeckettsDad  

Here’s mine - Neil Winton, UK. Great message, brilliant visuals, simple design. Everything I wanted mine to be.

[slideshare id=90232&doc=me-in-4-slides3692&w=425]

A close second for me is Glenn Moses’ succinct effort.

[slideshare id=89130&doc=four-slide-contest-me-as-a-teacher-21531&w=425]

Who would you choose?