#pw12 Tell Stories ... (design thinking 4 of 12)

Image by dkuropatwa via Flickr ... about what you learned over the last three weeks.

Over the last three weeks you:

• decided on something you wanted your students more engaged in learning and thought about the second-order concepts they'll need to understand.

• listened in and (hopefully) participated in some passionate conversations with other teachers on twitter or blogs who want the same things for their students. Maybe you even had a good book suggested to you. (You got 5000 points if you read it!)

• searched for analogies to describe what people do and feel when they're engaged in learning something.

That completes the first of the five phases of Design; Discovery. Now we begin phase two; Interpretation.

Finding meaningful insights you can turn into actions is hard work. We'll take it in steps.

What was the most interesting conversation you heard or had yourself? What was most memorable? surprising?

What did people most care about? What motivated them? What frustrated them?

Did anything interesting come up about their environment or the context in which they teach?

Do you have any unanswered questions?

Recount the tale of one or more of these things. You know how when you come home at the end of the day you tell your family what happened at work? Or how you tell stories over coffee at work about things that happened to you yesterday? Tell a tale or two like that. And share it with someone. The more stories you can tell the better. Next week we'll dig into these stories and search for meaningful themes and insights.

You get 1000 points for each story you tell; to anyone. More storytelling is better; we learn best through stories. I know you're honest about keeping track. ;-)

Please share one or two of the stories you came up with this week in a tweet, a blog post, or leave a comment here or anywhere and include this tag in it somewhere:  #wpedagogy

(This series of posts inspired by Design Thinking for Educators, 4.2.)

#pw11 Think of analogies ... (design thinking 3 of 12)

Image by Daves Portfolio via Flickr
... for what an engaged learner does, feels, or sounds like.

You've spent a week listening in on passionate conversations that may have started on twitter and hopefully extended into meatier blog posts or books about the things in which you want your students to be deeply engaged. List all the activities, emotions, and behaviours that engaged learners in your discipline display; at least one of each.

Now, for each activity, emotion, or behaviour on your list briefly describe a situation outside of school where you might see that come up. For example if the activity you saw was people engaged in deep conversation you might see the same thing happen among a group of friends at a coffee shop. If you saw people excitedly discussing something, another place people might be excited is on a roller coaster. If the behaviour you noticed was people sharing personal experiences you might see the same thing happen when a grandparent looks through old pictures with their grandchildren.

You're looking for a few good analogies connected to the engagement you hope to develop in your students. Next week we'll weave these into narratives that may help us figure out how to engage our students more deeply in "________", you filled in the blank.

Make a point of sharing your search for analogies with people you've been engaged with on twitter or blogs this past week. They'll probably come up with a few good ideas you may not have thought of on your own.

Please share one or two of the best analogies you came up with this week in a tweet, a blog post, or leave a comment here or anywhere and include this tag in it somewhere:  #wpedagogy

(This series of posts inspired by Design Thinking for Educators, 3.7.)

#pw10 Fuel your ideas with inspiration ... (design thinking 2 of 12)

Image by dkuropatwa via FlickrGet inspired by talking to people who are passionate about the same things you are. You've got something you want to improve, people who share your passions probably want to do the same.

How do you "plan activities to learn from multiple peoples’ perspectives and explore unfamiliar contexts"?

You might "spend more time with a select group of people rather than trying to meet many. It will likely help you learn more." (quote source: see below)

Here's one way to get started:

Step 1: If you don't have one already, get a twitter account.

Step 2: Follow people who teach, or have interests similar to you. Scan through the list of teachers on twitter here or there or in this Google doc. Follow as many as you like. More is good.

Step 3: There are regular "meetings" on twitter of educators (and all sorts of other professionals) discussing how to better do what they do. These meetings are called "twitter chats." You can scan through this fairly comprehensive list of these chats listing the dates and times they "meet" in twitter. Start by lurking. If you really want some inspiration and help getting better at what you do share your opinions and ask questions. (You get 500 points for every opinion you share or question you ask on twitter!) Here are some education related chats to get you started:

#edchat #EdNewsChat #elemchat #engchat #kidlitart #kidlitchat #kinderchat

#LangChat #libchat #litchat #lrnchat #mathchat #musedchat

#ntchat #schoolgardenchat #schoolschat #scichat #sschat #UKedchat

By the end of this week, you can consider yourself an advanced player and take an additional 1000 points each time you:

• make a targeted twitter list.
• add an educational blog to read in your reader.
• get suggested articles/books to read by asking on twitter or leaving comments on the blogs posts you've read.
• many bloggers have a "what I'm reading" section in the sidebar of their blogs, look for those and ask for more info about those articles/books on twitter or in the comments of the blogs you're reading.

Buying a suggested book to read is worth 1000 points, actually reading it is worth 4000 bonus points!

Please share one or two of the best ideas you learned this week in a tweet, blog, leave a comment here or anywhere and include this tag in it somewhere:  #wpedagogy

If you bought or read a book let us know that too! (I'm always looking for good book suggestions. ;-) )

This week we're focused on collecting as many different ideas as we can, we'll dig into this a little more deeply next week and focus our learning a little more; make it more personal and 1 on 1.

(This series of posts inspired by Design Thinking for Educators.)

#pw9 How might we ... (design thinking 1 of 12)

Image via Wikipedia"How might we engage students more deeply in ..."

Finish that sentence with any word you like; something to challenge yourself; something that might help you grow as a teacher.

Some possibilities: reading, mathematical thinking, the scientific method, writing, multiliterate expression, critical thinking, understanding bias, media literacy, etc.

Think about the second order principles of the discipline you teach;  use one of those to fill in the blank above. (Examples of second-order concepts in the study of history can be found here and there.)

Spend some time this week thinking about and jotting down one or two second-order concepts, or organizing principles, of the content area(s) you teach. Do you think a focus on these "big ideas" might make for more powerful learning for your students or maybe give them a way to begin thinking about their learning more deeply?

How might you incorporate these ideas into your lessons in the coming school year?

Does thinking about these second-order concepts help you understand your content more deeply?

Is there a course you teach that doesn't have any second-order concepts that underpins the content?

Please share your list of one or two ideas in a tweet, blog, leave a comment here or anywhere and include this tag in it somewhere: #wpedagogy

If you can think of a discipline that has no second-order concepts (SoC) please share that too!

If all this turns out to be hard, don't worry, we'll dig into this a little more deeply next week.  Start by thinking about this on your own. We'll figure out how to get help from other people next week.

(This series of posts inspired by Design Thinking for Educators.)

Design Thinking For Educators

Image via WikipediaStarting tomorrow begins a series of 12 posts inspired by the Design Thinking for Educators toolkit.

We'll start by deciding on one thing we want to do differently to improve our teaching using a design thinking approach. If any one post seems overwhelming don't worry about it. We'll go slow, week by week, incrementally helping each other figure things out.

The first thing we'll do is pick one thing about our instructional design we want to improve. The weeks that follow will build up to how we might best make that improvement.

Along the way we'll try to get our heads around how the buzzword "design thinking" might be practically applied to our work in the classroom.

Riverdale & Ideo's Desigh Thinking toolkit for educators

View more documents from serve4impact

#pw8 Allow New Evidence to Replace Old

Image by epSos.de via FlickrConsider throwing out students older grades when they've demonstrated competency in a more recent assessment.

Your drivers license doesn't say anything about how many times you took your drivers test before you passed. Why should student's earlier grades affect their final mark if they've later demonstrated competency?

If the final grade you give a student is a reflection of what they know at the end of a course of study should that mark include data (e.g. grades from earlier assessments) that doesn't reflect their current understanding of the course material?

What impact do you think doing this might have on your students' attitudes towards learning in your class?

Talk this over with your students or a colleague, see what they think. Please share the results of these discussions here or elsewhere.

Tweet, blog, leave a comment here or anywhere and include this tag in it somewhere: #wpedagogy

#pw7 Share Evaluation Criteria

Image by nchoz via FlickrMake the criteria for judging the range of student performance explicit.  Take this week to show your students exactly how they gain or lose points for a variety of assessment questions.

Ensure students know what success looks like; particularly if your students are writing final exams soon. They can achieve the targets for success we set for them if they know where the targets are and what they look like.

After a week of doing this do you find yourself thinking differently about how you assess student work?

Did this have any impact on the questions your students asked or how they showed their work?

Were there any changes in the atmosphere (culture) of your classroom?

Tweet, blog, leave a comment here or anywhere and include this tag in it somewhere: #wpedagogue

#pw6 No Numbers

Image by dkuropatwa via FlickrMore than once this week, assess your students work without assigning a numeric grade or mark, comments only. Keep it simple, like a short quiz with 1-3 questions. Some advice for giving comments:

Comments should identify what has been done well and what still needs improvement and give guidance on how to make that improvement. (source)

 Give yourself  1000 bonus points if you keep a digital record of this weeks assessments (questions, student responses, and your comments) in a blog, wiki, podcast, or digital pictures on flickr. (You might want to make your students' work anonymous to the public in some way.)

After a week of doing this do you find you ask different kinds of assessment questions?

Did this have any impact on the answers your students gave?

Were there any changes in the atmosphere (culture) of your classroom?

Tweet, blog, leave a comment here or anywhere and include this tag in it somewhere: #wpedagogue

#pw5 Make Thinking Transparent

Image by dkuropatwa via FlickrFind ways to make your students thinking transparent this week. You might have them explain their thinking to the class, write a blog post or leave a comment to a prompt on your blog, or create a visual summary of what they learned this week using five carefully chosen pictures from the flickr creative commons archive.

After a week of doing this do you find you know more about what your students know and still need to know?

Did this have any impact on class discussions?

Were there any changes in the atmosphere (culture) of your classroom?

Tweet, blog, leave a comment here or anywhere and include this tag in it somewhere: #wpedagogue

#pw4 Idea Networks

Image via WikipediaThis week explicitly explain to students how different ideas they are learning are in fact connected. Give yourself 1000 bonus points if you can help them see the connections across different subjects.

Another way to think of this: "Structure learning around the big ideas of your discipline." Can you articulate one or two of these big ideas?

After a week of doing this are your students starting to make connections you hadn't thought of?

Did this have any impact on conversations in class?

Were there any changes in the atmosphere (culture) of your classroom?

Tweet, blog, leave a comment here or anywhere and include this tag in it somewhere: #wpedagogue

#pw3 Expand Your Active Area

Image via WikipediaPay attention to areas in the classroom you physically occupy most of the time. (Front of the room?) Conscientiously expand this to areas of the classroom you rarely teach from. (Back of the room?)

After a week of doing this do you find it less awkward moving into these "student spaces"?

Did this have any impact on your interactions with your students?

Were there any changes in the atmosphere (culture) of your classroom?

Tweet, blog, leave a comment here or anywhere and include this tag in it somewhere: #wpedagogue

#pw2 Identify Preconceptions

Image via WikipediaHave your students explicitly identify their prior knowledge or preconceptions related to the things you teach this week. You might use "entry slips" to do this. Give yourself 1000 bonus points if you used technology in some way to do this.

After a week of doing this do you find yourself teaching differently?

Did this have any impact on the questions your students asked?

Were there any changes in the atmosphere (culture) of your classroom?

Tweet, blog, leave a comment here or anywhere and include this tag in it somewhere: #wpedagogue

#pw1 Wait Time

Image by Michael | Ruiz via FlickrEvery time you ask a question in class wait 5 seconds longer than you usually do. Count the seconds off in your head before continuing.

After a week of doing this do you find you ask questions differently?

Did this have any impact on the answers your students gave?

Were there any changes in the atmosphere (culture) of your classroom?

Tweet, blog, leave a comment here or anywhere and include this tag in it somewhere: #wpedagogue

About Pedagogy Weekly

Each week this blog will publish and auto-tweet one concrete pedagogical idea or practice that teachers can play with in their classroom. After a week of playing with each new (or old) idea try to tweet, blog, leave a comment here, create a slide on flickr, podcast a reflection or leave some kind of digital trace of your experience. Each week's challenge will include a tag like: #pw... where "..." is a number. Include the tag somewhere on your reply. Mind you, you don't have to do any of that. The main thing is to just play with the ideas and see what effect, if any, it has on you and your students.

If you miss a week, so what? This is a voluntary thing. Don't set artificial obstacles for yourself that get in the way of your participation. Come back again and continue the next week or just pick up where you left off. There's not really a time limit on any of this, the weekly thing is really just a way to keep this bank of pedagogical models growing.

One more thing, you get 1000 points for every day you try one of the ideas here in your teaching. So even if you don't last a full week you win anyway!

I was inspired to start this project by two things.

1) My personal experience and growth fostered by participating in the daily shoot on twitter and flickr.

2) George Couros' blog post The Difference Between "Neat" and "Deep". George articulated something that has been bothering me for a while. I decided I'd rather do something concrete about it than talk about it. This idea exploded in my head fully formed after I read George's post and it seemed like a good idea.

Some other reasons I think this might be a good idea, which all turn around John Seely Brown's idea of "learning to be" rather than "learning to do":

• Teacher action research doesn't have to be hard to do or document.
• We need more concrete opportunities to turn educational research into practice.
• As model learners we need to leave traces of ourselves learning our craft.
• We need time to develop good ideas, together.
• Reflecting on our own learning facilitates us teaching metacognitive learning strategies to our students.
• As I said in my 2010 K12 Online Keynote: The Total PACKage needs a Community Of Practice.
• We don't need any more "banks of teaching resources", we've got enough of that. We need a bank of pedagogical principles and models of what those principles look like in practice.
• Selfishly, curating this is part of my own reflexive practice forcing me to think deeply about the fundamentals of good pedagogy.

The subtitle for this blog is "drops of water." This ancient Jewish folktale explains why:

Wisdom / Riccardo Cuppini / by-nc-nd

“What mighty power there is in a drop of water,” thought the shepherd. “Could my stony heart ever be softened up that way?”

He saw drops of water falling on a huge stone – drip, drop – and directly where the drops were falling there was a deep hole in the stone. The shepherd was fascinated. He gazed at the drops and at the stone.

“Hello, Akiba! What are you gazing at?” It was Rachel, his master’s daughter. She was wise and kind and fair.

“Look what the little drops of water did to the rock,” Akiba exclaimed. “Do you think there is hope for me? Suppose I began to study the Torah, little by little, drop by drop. Do you think my stony heart would soften up? I am forty years old! Is it not too late to start?”

“O no, Akiba. It is never too late.”

The shepherd gazed at the drops of water for a long time, and then his mind was made up.

And this is how Akiba the shepherd became the great Rabbi Akiba, the greatest and wisest scholar and teacher of his day, who had 24 thousand pupils! He often told them that it was a drop of water that changed his life.

I'm not Akiba, but I figure a few drops of water wont hurt much. Change begins small, one drop at a time, doesn't it?