PodPiper's Digital Education

I had the pleasure of presenting the keynote at the Cahuilla CUE conference. This is a local CUE affiliate conference that’s out in the Palm Springs area. Not a bad place to be in Fall/Winter! My presentation topic dealt with publishing student work. Although I mentioned some of the tools for publishing and promoting student work (websites, blogs, podcasts, YouTube, SchoolTube, TeacherTube, Twitter, etc.), I really wanted to focus on the idea that it’s the content that matters. Without a focus on the content itself, the classroom doesn’t produce compelling work that is as post-worthy. Don’t get me wrong. I believe in publishing as much as possible as often as possible because it sends a message to kids that their work is important, thus leading to an increase in student achievement, but at some point, you want to make sure that students are putting out the best work they are capable of before it gets published. Here are some of the other key points I brought up…

It’s all about starting with a vision. What do you want to do with the technology? What types of projects do you want your students creating? In the end, it’s all about communication, and visual communication is essential when you’re talking about the 21st century. Often times having that vision first will determine the tools purchased and lessons designed. Part of that vision has to be focused on what you do with the student projects afterward. Don’t let your IT Department decide what you can and cannot do with the student work. Although it would be nice to have all the student work posted on the District or School website, the truth is that it’s often easier to go to a free podcast host like PodBean or pay a little for LibSyn than it is to teach your IT peeps about RSS. It’s often more practical to go to TeacherTube or SchoolTube than to sit through another meeting about “bandwidth limitations” if you want to post a video at the District. Even trying to start a blog can be difficult… so try Edublogs. The point is, don’t let anyone stop you. Publishing is important.

Two of the biggest reasons for publishing are because 1)It’s more green! and 2)It celebrates student success. On the green front: It’s not just because it’s the hip thing to do. It’s because it’s the right thing to do. We don’t need to print every student report and put it with a comb binder and plastic cover. That’s cute a few times… and it’s motivating for sure, but it’s also a waste that is often destined for the landfill at some point. Go ahead and do the final publishing in print form now and then, but what about doing a PDF on a CD at the end of the year that compiles EVERY project completed? Why not publish as a website? There are lots of ways to publish without killing more trees or filling more dumps. As for celebration: Why not celebrate? We want school to become relevant to students. We want them to feel empowered. The best way is by sending a clear message to all students that their work is worthy of being published and used by other kids and adults. As a teacher, it’s a wonderful thing to say that your students’ work is something to be displayed and applauded.

Once you begin publishing work, and students realize that everyone with Internet access can view their projects, then it can truly transform their learning. The process of creating and publishing takes on new meaning, and students will often want to improve the production value of their projects. Nobody wants to be embarrassed, and this leads to a dedication to rehearsing. Think about this a moment. If students are rehearsing podcasts, rap or song lyrics, or video dialogue or narration repeatedly, then that means they are reviewing the curriculum as they practice for the final product. Practice makes perfect, right? and if it doesn’t make perfect, then at least it moves students more towards mastery of the curriculum, and that’s the goal, right?

To transform classrooms so that there are more interactive multimedia projects, it takes planning. The fact is that there will be obstacles along the way. There will be naysayers (whether teacher, admin, or parent) who don’t want things to change. But I believe, in my own Pollyanna kind of way that good teachers will understand what you’re trying to do. They still may resist, but when they see the results, they’re more than happy to try it too. It’s all about engagement! Curriculum without engagement equals boring. If teacher directed instruction truly worked in our day and age, then we’d have the majority of schools meeting AYP without any problem. If direct instruction were the silver bullet, then we wouldn’t have a 30% drop-out rate. Sadly, our school system does have that drop-out rate in this country, and it’s directly the result of kids who don’t feel engaged with the curriculum.

Consider using Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy as a guide in the classroom. In this version of the taxonomy, the lower levels of critical thinking continue to be Remember and Understand, mid-levels are Apply and Analyze, and the higher level is Evaluate… However, the highest level of critical thinking… the pinnacle of where we want our students residing when they’re creating projects is Create. We want our students creating meaning, constructing knowledge, and utilizing a the highest order level of thinking they can in school and on projects. In the classroom, that means we want them to go beyond Reporting of facts and begin Teaching. Don’t we always talk about that as educators? We say that students master things that they are able to teach… yet, like so many things, the actual application of this philosophy is often lacking. As my friend, and fellow podcaster, Dan Schmit, author of Podcasting in the Classroom, says, “Great podcasts don’t live at the bottom of Bloom’s Taxonomy.” And this is true of any multimedia project… not just podcasting.

In the end, we want our students to communicate, create, and collaborate. We want them to be utilizing 21st Century Learning skills while learning the curriculum… and in doing so, there are three great ways to design compelling projects: make it a Challenge, utilize personification, and sing a song. Challenge based learning is a new way to look at the project-based learning. I know what many teachers are thinking… “What? I just got on board to do some project-based learning… now it’s changed?” For those people who are nervous, I think of it as less of a change and more of a re-focusing of the content. It’s still project-based learning… it’s just focusing on a challenge. For more info on that, I always always always point to the Apple Learning Interchange site on Challenge Based Learning. There’s information as well as classroom examples. At the essence of CBL is the fact that “Students embrace media that presents participants with a challenge and requires them to draw on prior learning, acquire new knowledge, and tap their creativity to fashion solutions.” I showed the video about Miguel who is facing the problem of voting. Make sure you also download the CBL white paper, the CBL report from the New Media Consortium, and the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow – Today (ACOT2) report.

The next great way to get students using 21st century learning skills and achieving higher order levels of thinking is through personification. I guess, it’s personification and personalization really… because it doesn’t have to be about making an inanimate object come to life. It’s about making the curriculum come to life! Whether it’s a podcast, a video, or a photo essay, students really begin to understand and relate to their subject when they put themselves into the subject’s shoes… so to speak. What if you were a gold miner who had failed to find gold? How would you feel? What might be some things going through your head if you were a predator on the prairie? What if you were prey? By asking questions like this and getting students to verbalize their thinking, students internalize the experience and begin to understand it on a deeper level. I played the Saturn Podcast by the TechSavvyGirlz as an example.

Finally, a great way to get the kids involved is  through song. We always talk about music being a universal language, and it’s true. On a more personal level, Schoolhouse Rock helped me get through multiplication tests. The fact is, singing is a great way to create curricular lyrics that students practice over and over again. Not only that, but the human brain seems to have an easier time memorizing lyrics when they are put to music… well, maybe I should say that my brain, and the minds of my students had an easier time memorizing through song. When students create lyrics and put them to a beat or a melody, they have an empowering experience that provides an enjoyable way to reinforce and master concepts. The example I showed here was of a 1st grade classroom that created a song on matter. This was through our wonderful All the Arts for All the Kids program in Fullerton School District, but it can happen in any classroom! Solid, Liquid, Gas Song.

In all of the different student projects that I showcased, there was a certain amount of “cool” factor… a resonance that really showcased who I mean by compelling student work that emphasizes standards mastery through creativity and innovative thinking. One of the most important things is to have The Twist.…AKA a twist of creativity. This twist of creativity can be in the form of making the project a song, pretending the students are the person or inanimate object being studied, or creating a challenge. There are definitely more ways to add a twist of creativity, but all of them are similar in one respect… they get the students to think creatively and problem solve to produce a memorable project. That’s the thing with multimedia projects that have a twist: they help students master the standards and retain the concepts for a greater length of time.

Creating compelling assignments doesn’t happen magically or instantaneously. It takes some work. More than anything, teachers need to plan the assignment as well as they can. It takes careful planning and preparation. Truly, it’s garbage in, garbage out. Think of lesson planning with multimedia as “Backwards Planning” on energy drinks. Not only should you begin with the end in mind (consider the concept or standard that you want your students to learn or show mastery of), but you should also think about the different technology tools that will help showcase and communicate that knowledge. Teachers need to consider how technology will help students differentiate their learning and create something compelling. How will the technology transform the learning process? And it’s with these questions that teachers will plan out the steps so that everything that a student does is for a purpose and leading towards the ultimate goal.

In the end, one of the greatest reasons for publishing student work is to create an environment where students have something to go back to. It’s a concept that I call the Disney Model of Marketing. Disney does a great job of having a variety of activities, services, and products that all point back to each other. Radio Disney has ads pushing the Year of a Million Dreams. The Buzz Lightyear ride has information on playing the Buzz Lightyear game online. The Online presence mentions the TV channels. The TV channels mention the park again. So everything points back to the Park. In essence, the Disney experience doesn’t end when you leave the Park. It goes on and on. That’s what we want in education. We want the educational experience to continue after the students leave the four walls of the classroom… after they leave the boundaries of the school. With memorable work online, students have something to remind themselves about their work, about the curriculum, about their educational experience, and they will not only enjoy school more, but they will be more educated and empowered.