New Classroom Technologies

This year, to change up the research paper presentations, I asked my action research partner Fran Prather to prepare a lesson introducing critical media literacy skills, especially with visual information,  as she introduced the concept of digital storytelling to my English IV classes. First, we administered  a survey to find out what experience our students have had with Powerpoint, PhotoStory, or Windows Movie Maker (or any other movie program). Then, Fran and the class discussed the good, bad, and the ugly about Powerpoint presentations, and launched a video featuring a comic ripping on bad Powerpoints. Hilarious! Then this outstanding lesson continued as Fran  displayed an image and discussed the elements of the image (in this case, a picture of a Hatian woman in despair).  In the key part of the lesson, Fran presented the use of digital storytellng as a means of presenting their research topics to their peers. We both noticed that the video storytelling clips immediately engaged the students' attention. In one class, a presentation about tobacco companies' global marketing strategies was mis-interpreted to be a message to "stop smoking". NOWHERE in the presentation did this message occur! W believed that those students had a schema for PSA's about tobacco that truncated their ability to critically review. Later in the day, both of the other classes completely "got" the message of the clip. Interesting. The second clip, about Cesar Chavez didn't have voice overs that directed the viewers' attention. We expected students to not understand the video because of their lack of background knowledge. A few thought the protests and speeches featured were taking place in Mexico, and many were unfamiliar with Chavez's farm strikes and the issues around it. To gauge the quality and effectiveness of these presentations, Fran had an assessment for the clips on back of the survey. Animated discussion ensued as we walked through the  students' assessments of the presentations. 

Fran taught the first two senior English classes, and then I tried the lesson myself with another class. The lesson was so well crafted and demonstrated, that I found it easy (and fun!) to teach. Fran had organized the lesson and the clips through an attractive and professional-looking SMART Notebook 10 presentation. Fran's instructional design and choice of content structured the lesson to move learners from what they know (how to read an image) to the new learning - creating and evaluating a digital story.

Fran's lesson and use of our new classroom technologies inspired me. On the day following her presentation, I taught myself Notebook 10 in order to create a presentation for a staff development session I was giving on Wednesday on precis writing.  I then downloaded and inserted video clips from Discovery Education and linked web sites and documents. 

Reflection - What We've Learned about Teaching Student Research

As Fran and I have collaborated on student learning and attitudes through my senior high school students' research process this winter and spring, we continue to "peel the onion" of our action research together, examining our own assumptions, the students' work itself, and the results of the student surveys. For clarity and efficiency, I will list some of these discoveries and further questions (in no particular order) that have come up during our discussions as we have reflected upon this experience:

1. Nearly all students responded that they are glad the know the research process and that they were glad we broke it down into steps. The didn't say "how to write a research paper", but actually used the term "process". I explain to the students that the process is structured to ensure success in terms of the end product; but I also explain that I know they will create their own processes when they are assigned a research project or paper in college. We discuss having the skills to complete the research process and pacing the work. From a teacher perspective, that nearly 95% of the students responding that they value learning the process is an indication that one of our teaching goals was met. As a sidebar to the concept of process, there were points for recursivity in the process - that is when students were outlining or writing the rough drafts, they discovered a need for further research, for example. A way I might break this down more to ensure recursivity is to ask students to find one article or book that adds considerable information they don't have already and have them take notes on that article - and then reflect upon that activity.
2. Students frequently rated taking notecards as essential to determining the quality of the resources they selected. I gather for some of them, sources were de-selected based on their lack of usefulness. As one student suggested, possibly they should take note cards earlier in the process. From my perspective, that was the point of the two overview articles and Cornell note-taking assignment at the beginning of the process. Maybe one strategy we could consider in the future is having students take those Cornell note sheets for one article and transfer them to notecards with headings. The students see value in the note taking, I am guessing, because it helps them build a schema for their topics and to scaffold their new research into their cognitive networks related to these topics. The note cards build cognitive competence and are a concrete way for a student to really see a source. The "AH HA" that Fran and I had around this is that students may not evaluate sources well by skimming, or at least reading and note taking provides greater depth in terms in terms of truly knowing the value of a resource. This also suggests that some of the more digital methods of taking notes - such as the copying and pasting that students would no doubt rely on if they could might not yeild the same cognitive actions of selecting/de-selecting sources, not to mention that students (hypothesis) cognitive gains are not as strong as with writing and paraphrasing. Next year, when I have the class period dedicated to surfing the web at the very beginning of the project, I will have the students copy and paste "notes" into Word from one source. Then I will ask them to bring an overview article to class and have them take paraphrased note cards the next period, followed by a Cornell note taking assignment that night. I would have students write a comparison and reflection of these methods in their Writer's Notebook the following day when they could psycically compare/evaluate the three types of note taking. I think some very interesting
3. While students rated Fran's Web Evaluation and Blog Evaluation lessons highly, few of them rated the use of web sites and, especially blogs, very highly in terms of selecting resources. At first glance, Fran was disturbed by this apparent disconnect. I argue that the lessons were very valuable to the students because they helped students "de-select" many online resources as lacking in validity or quality in some way. So, in that way, the lessons served a very important purpose. Many students, inlcuding my AP Lit students commented on the value of these lessons as they weren't familiar with all the eval strategies Fran was teaching. In general, our students have no idea how to evaluate online information or what tools are available for that purpose.
4. Students prefer having choice of topics in the research process. Many mentioned this in the post-experience surveys. This is clearly motivating to students and elevates the positive emotional attitude toward the research. This is one of the rare opportunities they have had a chance to delve into an interest of their own in English.
5. For my action research, I posited the question: How can School Fusion (our online teacher 2.0-esque web pages) faciliate student learning in the research process? The student surveys indicated that the students found the online sbib card examples and handouts very usefull - most students ranked this a 5/5 on the survey. They were neutral in terms of the educative value of the two blog responses they did, but my sense during that period is that there might have been a positive affect established with the blogs because students were able to state what they saw as strengths and targets for improvement after the first semester research paper (voice their own reflections) and then, later, to read what everyone's topics were and to respond to at least two of those. If I were to do this survey again, I would ask a few affectively-oriented questions. Clearly the use of SchoolFusion to post models is an important new way of students learning to teach themselves.
6. Not an aspect of our action research, but one point that is important that became clear through the survey responses is this: The number one value - beyond all the steps and lessons we taught the students - is help from the teacher. This was written in the student reflections and indicated in the survey over and over. This means that students value the teacher interaction through the process; we know this generation learns socially, and to them, that means collaborating with a teacher or librarian as much as it does a peer. When I do this process again next year, I would like to set up quick-collaboration sessions with each student in the process - no more than five minutes each while they are taking notes. I also would like to follow up with another quick conference during the rough draft phase. I don't know how this will work with the numbers of students we will be teaching, but I think if I can have the librarian answering their research questions and circulating, that will help me focus on each individual student, at least briefly. Much more research needs to take place in terms of teacher as fellow learner/collaborator.
7. So much of how we teach now (ensuring all learners are on task, etc.) limits the developmental need that our students have to achieve some independence in and to take responsibility for their own learning. I want to do more in my teaching that models how a literary scholar might look at a poem or how a researcher might look at research or how an essayist might develop an essay, etc. and then turn over responsibility to the learners; if I can structure some small group collaboration more formally into the research process, the students can be responsible for each other. Creating stable social learning groups in the research process is another goal for the next time around. Students do this informally to some degree - we saw that in the fall survey in that students who do well tend to discuss their work with and get information from other students. The lowest achieving students are left out of that loop completely - and don't even know it. Again, fertile grounds for further research.
8. Working with Fran, my teacher librarian/collaborator increased my own learning exponentially throughout this process. We learned volumes beyond what we intended by continuous verbal reflection and discussion. Both of us read widely in literacy research and application literature and bring a richness to this discussion that isn't possible with every colleague. We are different enough in perspective that we can challenge each other as we reflect upon and refine our teaching and learning experience. My research this year would not nearly have been as productive for me or my students without a collaborator. (Besides, they loved it that we were researching them!)

The Blog Evaluation Lesson

Last week, my colleague, teacher librarian Fran Prather, taught my students to evaluate blogs; the lesson was illuminating for us all. Our students especially enjoyed learning that both Fran and myself have blogs and that we are blogging about them! Working through the lesson with three classes brought three issues to bear:

1. Most of the blogs students would find through Google are blocked arbitrarily by our district's internet filter. Fortunately, some of the web sites they used for research contained blogs within the site, and those we could access. This filtering keeps students from accessing most blogs at school which is a problem for our students without home access. For those students, I set up some time that I could work with them one on one through my unfiltered access. How can we teach digital literacy with such arbitrary road blocks?
2. There really ARE reasons students would want to include information/content from blogs. I, for example, enjoy reading Sharon Begley's Newsweek blog on neuroscience/psychology topics, and I consider her a viable source of that type of information. As Fran pointed out, students could use public blog postings as "primary source" material. Indeed, many of the students accessed appropriate blogs for their topics of research.
3. Both Fran and I learned that blogs are indexed; I would like to learn more about how those indexing sites really worked. She and I will need to investigate the art and science of blogging more thoroughly so that we can share this, along with our other research strategies with our colleauges.

During the course of our current research unit, the web evaluation and the blog evaluation lessons have generated greater "digital literacy" among our students - which is apparent in their discussions about their resources and in their selection of web content for research. The addition of these two lessons to the senior research paper instruction have been powerful, and I will include them next year.

Research While Researching?

Last Friday, I watched a student taking notes onto notecards from a database article he had printed out. He also had the internet up and was googling people and information from the article on which he was taking notes. I watched him for a few moments, thinking that this is best of both worlds - students researching from database resources and using the internet to further research or understand the information he was reading. Fantastic! I will probably explicitly teach this as a strategy on our next paper. Here's the new issue, though: As I watched him, I noticed that he began to take notes from the Internet source right off the screen, but writing the notes into the note cards that were linked by a code to the database article he was reading. I told him that taking notes from the internet source was fine (after he evaluated it), but that he would need to link that notecard to a bibliography source of the web site from which he was taking the notes. So, while it was inspiring to watch a student further educate himself, I am finding another level of instruction about this proces is needed.

Podcasting and Vodcasting

As part of our action research project and our site and ASU work, Fran and I have been focusing on reading strategies in the research process, digital literacy, and the research process itself. I have mentioned my frustration with students' neediness and inability to think through content and process for themselves (remember, the ARE seniors). I feel compelled to explore other means for breaking down and communicating some of the steps. When I read in Richardson's book about video and podcasting, I came up with the idea of creating short mini-lessons that students can watch including video of setting up the research paper literally with Word with an instructional voice over. In addition, I might add a podcast for the students for "the final checklist" prior to turning the paper in. Finally, I am very interested in what would happen if I offered teacher feedback on the papers in the form of a podcast narrative. This is unteneable to take on with all my students, but I will try it with two smaller classes or a subset of students. As I work through my thoughts on this, I am refining my action reserach to the question: What will happen if I introduce instructional materials and teacher feedback through vodcast and podcast format to the students? Will it improve their process? Will the feedback mean more? Will students retain and transfer the feedback as they apply it to the next research project in the winter?

Magazine Awareness

During the current research project, I noticed that many of our students are unaware of the weekly news magazines such as Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report. When I used Time magazine in a written example, some students thought I meant "the time" in the bib format, which they found confusing. This lack of awareness stunned me, but it did given me a good idea for the next research paper in the winter. I am going to display a bundle of these magazines in hard copy in the room and create an assignment in which the students work in small groups or pairs to deconstruct the organization of these magazines. After I discussed this with Fran, she found a good link from Harvard about differentiating general magazines from journals which I will use next times as well. As long as I have been doing this, I find I need to re-examine my assumptions about existing knowledge - especially about print!

Research Paper Process Blues

I have confronted some real obstacles with the research process this month. While some interesting findings have come from the research Fran and I are doing and discussing the survey data itself could keep us going for awhile, I am frustrated with the lack of reading and thinking skills my students have come to me with this year. The first two steps of the process -- pre-search and information gathering and now note taking - have taken at least four more class periods than they usually do! I am hoping that spending this extra time will result in a better result for the end product, and we do see evidence that some students are grasping the "method in the madness."

Fran and I did an interesting experiment to kick the unit off - we let students surf the internet to do some preliminary reading the way they would if we turned them out on their own with no instruction. We asked them to track the web sites they visited on a tracking sheet. For many students this worked well, but many of the students didn't know the difference between a search engine and a web site. Even two weeks in as I grade bib cards, several students put the name of the web sites they were citing as "Google" - when we move to the major research paper later this year, I know we will want to more explicitly teach the distinction. In my period 7 section, the students didn't do a very good job writing down the web sites they were visiting, but this is the group that would rather talk about what they are doing versus recording what they are doing! (In the Career Ladder Action Research group we are participating in, several members had good ideas: have students copy and past the URL's into a Word document.) Watching the students complete this activity told us that the students are not very discriminating or advanced seekers. We made photocopies of the students' sheets which should provide more useful data. (Later in this unit, Fran and I plan to do a web evaluation lesson to address the need to increase our students' internet search skills and information selection skills.) Unfortunately, we have not been able to analyze the data we are gathering in a comprehensive or organized fashion yet because of the massive amount of time spend this week grading bib cards and schedules that keep Fran and I being in the same place at the same time. Another issue we are facing is student motivation - they just don't want to do the work, any work, regardless. In addition, behaviorally, they are young for their age, requiring constant attention and monitoring. I want to figure out some ways to structure research groups that make students accountable for keeping each other accountable!

After learning a little bit about podcasting, I am thinking of using podcasts as a way to respond to student research papers. Offering students a narrative review/critique of their work . . . I am working on the logistics of this.