Google Earth African Field Trip

     In Five Minds for the Future, Howard Gardner states that "if we are to fashion persons who respect differences, we need to provide models and offer lessons that offer such a sympathetic stance." (Howard Gardner, 2007).

The "Africa Virtual Field Trip" is intended to do that through a mix of media experiences showcasing northern, western, eastern, and southern African cultures. Once the students have enjoyed the teacher-created field trip, they will create glogs about countries of their own choosing.

     Children are naturally fascinated by Africa because of its wildlife, and this field trip taps that interest, then focuses the students' attention on the human interest stories that the continent offers. Respecting another culture has little to do with a zoological interest...the kids need to focus on the PEOPLE. Each country glog includes a video about the life of a typical child from that nation...helping the student connect personally to life within that culture. Students can compare and contrast their own life experiences with those of a contemporary child living in Africa.

     What teachers do and do not include in individual learning experiences affects children's attitudes toward the content, including culture-based content (Gardner, 2007). I wanted to avoid the typical "beleaguered nation" narrative assigned to Africa, and was careful to select images and media experiences which focus on the positive side of the African experience. However, Africa's endemic problems are the world's problems, and I felt it was important to include the stories of malaria and water accessibility. Who knows which empathic child will grow-up to be a part of the solutions to those, or other, global problems. Genuine respect coupled with genuine empathy and caring and powerful motivators for engagement and change. 

     Our third grade standards include studying regions, which we have chosen to loosely interpret as "continents and oceans." This field trip will serve as a model for student teams to construct their own continental field trip...eventually culminating in a "virtual travel agency" of geography learning opportunities. This research will also support the students' creation of a "Where in the World is..." video project.

     Children can only come to respect other cultures through gaining and constructing knowledge about them. Otherwise, they are left with disjointed news images and puzzling stereotypes that hinder understanding and the development of genuine respect. 

Gardner, Howard. (2007). Five minds for the future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

The African Virtual Field Trip supports these Colorado State Standards:

Social Studies 2.2: Geography: The concept of regions is developed through an understanding of similarities and

                                              differences in places.

                     2.1: Geography: Use various geographic tools to develop spatial thinking

Reading/Writing/Communicating 2.2: Comprehension strategies are needed when reading informational or 

                                                         persuasive text

                                                  3.2: Students plan, draft, and write a variety of informational texts

                                                  4.4: Researching a topic and sharing findings are often done with others

                  

     

  

     

Gardner, Howard. (2007). Five minds for the future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Using Digital Media To Help Children Understand "Respect"

According to Howard Gardner, one of the best ways to teach respect is to have children work in heterogenous groups on common projects, get to know each other first-hand, and learn that viewpoints may be different, but that doesn’t make them wrong (Gardner, 2007). Once a foundation of authentic respect exists within a classroom, content learning can begin and flourish. 

To help my new class of third graders develop a working understanding of respect, we will begin the school year with a digital media project. This will serve a two-fold purpose: first, to set the tone and expectation that our class will be an oasis of respect; second, the help assess and build media skills the students will use on upcoming project-based learning products. 

This exploration of respect will take one week and begin on the first full week of school.

We’ll open with a quick discussion of what the kids know about the word “respect.” We will connect it to our school “Wrangler Code,” The Six C’s: Character, Collaboration, Creativity, Community, Caring, and Critical Thinking. The students will form six groups of 4 children...each group assigned one of the “Six C’s.” The teams will brainstorm some ideas they have about how the word “respect” can apply to their particular “C.” After a brief classroom discussion, we will watch the Discovery Education film, Getting in Character: Respect. Each student will watch for examples of “respect” that will fit their “C” and take notes or draw pictures to help them remember the content of the film.

From this initial exploration of the concept of “respect,” we will transition to small group work (“C” Teams) to develop screenplays and scripts similar to those shown in Getting in Character. Once screenplays and scripts are completed and rehearsed, the students will record their movies on iPads. Completed movies will be transferred to iMovie, where a class “Respect Film” will be compiled. We will publish this film to a class wiki we design specifically to chronicle the year’s learnings and activities. This film will be our “first installment.”

Permanently posting the class film to our wiki will give us an archive we can return to and update as we need to over time. No doubt, circumstances and familiarity will give rise to conflicts and less-than-respectful behavior throughout the school year...we will already have a product and routine in place for revisiting our conversation about respect...creating new films (and practicing our digital editing skills) as we need to along the way. Discovery Education has several appropriate videos and video segments that deal with diversity, respect, and other ethical issues. Observing other students deal with these issues in video will help younger students realize that “respect” is a universal value everyone struggles with occasionally, and that truly respectful people work in positive ways to resolve these struggles. 

Gardner, Howard. (2007). Five minds for the future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Video Dialog (Producer).  (1998). Getting in Character: Respect. [Full Video].  Available from http://www.discoveryeducation.com/

Glogster and Cultivating the Creative Mind

Rock Cycle Glogster


     The creative web tool, Glogster, is one of many digital tools teachers have at their disposal to help them cultivate much of what Howard Gardner advocates in the way of intellectual development in his book, Five Minds for the Future. The "glog" I composed for this class supports our exploration of "the rock cycle." This teacher-created glog directly addresses Third Grade Science Standard 3: Earth's materials can be broken down and/or combined into different materials such as rocks, minerals, rock cycle, formation of soil, and sand—some of which are used for human activities. For students, this glog provides much of what Gardner calls for in the development of a disciplined mind...namely, multiple entry points to engaging and understanding the factual information of a specific discipline (Gardner, 2007). Gardner states that authentic creativity can occur only after mastery of a discipline has been achieved. "Mastering" the key concepts of the rock cycle will provide students the background they need to compose more innovative, authentic, truly creative projects that reflect the depth of their content understanding. This initial glog will serve as a concrete model for the students as they build their own glogs involving any number of content areas. Both teacher and student-created glogs will serve as great independent reading and study centers where students can engage the information in their own way on their own time. Outside the confines of direct instruction, students can engage, review, and extend their study of any particular content through a well-constructed and creative glog. Reading others' glogs supports Reading, Writing, and Communicating Standard #4: Research and Reasoning: 1) Research a topic and sharing findings are often done with others, d) develop supporting visual information, as well as Standard #2: Engage in a wide-range of non-fiction reading to solve problems and judge quality of ideas.

     The teacher-created example serves as a foundation for content mastery that will scaffold student understanding so that they can eventually create their own informative glogs. Glogs truly support synthesis of information, and creativity naturally flows in an environment in which synthesis is supported and developed. Students must synthesize a great deal of information to create their own glogs...the lines between synthesis and creativity are frequently non-existent (Gardener, 2007). As students acquire a repertoire of publishing options ranging from Powerpoint, Prezi, Glogster, etc., they will use critical thinking skills to choose which best suits the purposes of their presentation, as well as which one feeds their own personal creative muse.
 
     In his book, A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age, Daniel Pink states that one of the most powerful methods of communicating an idea is through the use of narrative (Pink, 2006). Young children often struggle with making narrative "meaningful." They are masters at the "bed-to-bed," but getting them to think critically about audience and writing about interesting or exciting things can be a challenge. Glogster would be a great planning tool providing visual support for the idea of "exciting" events. I plan to use the program with my students to help them map-out their stories before committing to writing. It would be very difficult to write something mundane in the jazzy and eye-popping text boxes offered by Glogster. This use would support Reading and Writing Standard #3: A writing process is used to plan, draft, revise, and edit written work. The kids would LOVE ensuring their words support the graphic they have chosen to plan within.

     A person could easily use 500 words to describe all the ways Glogster could be used to support the Common Core. What is exciting about programs like this is that they have the power to convert a classroom into a "hot bed of creativity and innovation." Historically, great thinking and cultural revolutions (of the positive kind) have had their genesis in such intellectual centers as Athens, Florence, Vienna, Silicon Valley (Gardner, 2007). What a wonderful challenge it is to re-imagine a classroom as a just such a center!


Gardner, Howard. (2007). Five minds for the future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.


Pink, Daniel. (2006). A whole new mind: moving from the information age to the conceptual age. New York:  
    Penguin. 

Middle School and Creativity

            For this assignment, I interviewed a 12 year old seventh grader from a local middle school. Truth be told, I interviewed my son, because we are out of school, and my own third graders are not available. (I will tell you that I am enrolled in this program precisely TO increase the creativity quotient in my classroom, so I would not be surprised to hear my students say they would “like to do more with computers,” and things of that sort. That is what I would like for them, at any rate.)

    
          I wanted to hear what my son had to say about creativity in school because I see close to zero creativity in his program, and I have been frustrated by that for the past several months. I know I bring my own bias to this interview, so I asked: “Do you CARE that there isn’t that much creativity, or is it not that big of a deal to you?” (Pretty much the only way to get more than a “yes” or “no” answer from this pubescent male.) His response was: “It isn’t that big of a deal to me.” Which, frankly, I found surprising.

 Here is a run-down of our Q and A.

1. Would you say you experience creativity in school?We only have creativity in one   class...science...we do science experiments and other projects.     

     2. Have you ever used computers to do science projects?

              Yes, for studying and researching...googling and word processing. We made an 

              iMovie in science (could not remember the nature of the project).

      3. In 6^th grade, you did lots of digital things...could you name a few?

           Wikispaces, glogsters, iMovies.

      4. How would you compare last year to this year as far as creativity is concerned?

          We did WAY LESS creativity this year.

     5. Which year would you REMEMBER the most about what you learned.

          6^th grade (last year).

     6. Why do you remember more from 6^th grade?

             It’s easier to remember the creative stuff. We actually had real projects and  

             stuff...we did things that were actually worth doing.

      7. How does that compare to this year?

            We had a lot of stupid things to do.

      8. What do you mean?

              We didn’t do any “hands-on learning” in any of our classes. It’s easier to learn from 

              the hands-on stuff.

      9. What has been your favorite grade so far in school?

              6^th grade.

    10.Why?

              We had lots of hands-on learning...it felt like I was doing things that were 

              worthwhile...not just another stupid paper or stupid worksheet.

     11. Why do you think the teaching got so conservative in 7^th grade?

              Maybe because it doesn’t really count in middle school. It will really count in

              high school, so they want to make sure we know what we are doing before we get 

              there.

     12.  Do you prefer individual or group projects?

                Group. 

     13. Why do you like group projects better?

                Other people can catch things you miss.

     14. Can you give me an example of when that happened?

                We were reading a textbook, and I missed something, but another person

                got it.

      15. Can you give me some more thoughts on learning in a group vs. learning 

                 independently?

                 In a group, you have to think harder...you get different ideas than if you are 

                 working by yourself

       There is the data, anecdotal though it may be. If I had to interpret it, I would say that school was not all that engaging this year due to a general lack of creativity. Our conversation went longer than this, but it continued to circle back to the same idea: seventh graders do a lot of worksheets and other “activities” that they don’t really connect to, and don’t really value. As a matter of fact, with one notable exception, The Hunger Games, the seventh grade language arts reading list was nearly identical to the one I recall from 1972. 

   
     Sixth grade was a highly creative year...his teacher was quite tech savvy, and they did a number of digital projects. Sixth grade is usually not someone’s favorite grade...it was definitely his. He enjoyed his homework...I was impressed with his academic growth and happy that he was personally vested in what he was doing. This year has been quite different. He has beautiful technology at his disposal here at home, and he is loathe to use it to do anything other than game. His assignments don’t push him in any way, so my “helpful suggestions” around utilizing technology to “spice things up” are met with the typical seventh-grade roll of the eyes. I don’t think this is just part and parcel of his age. I think school has bored him to death this year. I don’t get the impression they care whether the kids like school or not...that they have just written off these “difficult” years, and are just surviving. 

     
     I have often wondered why middle school is not a seething hot bed of creativity. If this is such a difficult group to engage, why are we not implementing project-based learning, and other highly motivating, meaningful practices? If it “doesn’t count” for a permanent record, doesn’t it “count” for exciting kids about learning and the world they are about to enter? Doesn’t it count for launching prepared, creative, energized freshman into the most important schooling years of their lives? Of all years, the middle years should be open to creative thinking, problem-solving and...CREATION. Who knows? Maybe kids who are highly engaged academically and intellectually, would be less highly engaged in the negative social aspects of these particular years. I hope some middle school somewhere is experimenting with this idea.