u04a1 - Stouffer

To be honest, I was a little disappointed when I saw our task for this unit's blog post. Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk, "How Schools Kill Creativity" is one that I have had to view over and over again in my education courses (both in my undergrad and during this grad program). I've frankly run out of things to say! I'll give it a shot though.

Do schools kill creativity?

The obvious answer to this question is yes. I would venture to say every student in this class is going to answer similarly, unless they work for some awesome Expeditionary Learning Charter School or something. Every public school teacher faces the ever-present dauntless task of preparing students for standardized assessments. Every public school teacher feels pressured by the administrators at their school to ensure their students perform well for one reason or another. This definitively causes a deficit of "creative learning opportunities" in the classroom, as teachers are focused solely on content, content, testing strategies, and more content.

The less obvious answer to this is no. More specifically: no schools do not kill creativity — state educational protocols (fueled by the need to acquire funding from the federal government) kill creativity. If less pressure was put on teachers to get students to perform well on standardized assessments, there would be more time for creativity and the arts. Sir Ken Robinson sums up this problem slightly differently in his TED Talk "How Schools Kill Creativity" when he states, "If you were to visit education, as an alien, and say 'What’s it for, public education?' I think you’d have to conclude, if you look at the output, who really succeeds by this, who does everything that they should, who gets all the brownie points, who are the winners — I think you’d have to conclude the whole purpose of public education throughout the world is to produce university professors. Isn’t it?". When we only focus on preparing students for tests, we are effectively accomplishing exactly what Robinson outlines above.

How can you use digital media to bring creativity alive in your classroom?

This is a much easier question to answer. My district is in the process of going one-to-one with Chromebooks. Currently only the high school has made it that far; the hope is to get 9th and 8th grade to one-to-one next year. Given our goals of technological advancement, we have seen an increase in available resources over the last two years. I have a Chromebook cart that lives in my room and is shared with the other teachers in my wing. I try to incorporate these into my lesson plans as often as I can without monopolizing them.

Here are some of the things I do with our Chromebooks that encourage creativity while still furthering the students' grasp of the content we need to master by the end of the year (read: by PSSA season).

FlipGrid: Occasionally when students do a Collins Writing, I will have them hop on a Chromebook and record their response or a summary of their response on FlipGrid. This may not seem hugely creative, but my students LOVE recording themselves, seeing themselves, and personalizing their videos. Are they still writing and analyzing? Yes, but in a much more creative way for the end goal. Linked to the title of this example is my students' most recent FlipGrids. They read an article, analyzed it, did a Socratic Seminar with it, wrote a Collins Type 1 reflection, and recorded a FlipGrid at the end. Check it out!

Google Slides: Google's G-Suite for education is really a dream when it comes to technology integration in the classroom. Linked to the title of this example is quite possibly the most boring topic we tackle in 7th grade English: PSSA Vocabulary Terms. While I do teach these concepts individually, students need to know the definitions as well. Rather than breaking out a dictionary, I have each class create their own visual dictionary using the integrated creative features in Slides. Check it out!

Pear Deck: This is an Add-On for Google Slides that I just discovered in the last few weeks. It turns a normal Google Slides presentation into an interactive one for students. While I cannot link a presentation that I've created (you need to view it live with a code), I did link an article that describes the add-on in depth and shows examples. Students have a device (a Chromebook in my case) while the teacher is presenting the Slides. There are slides interspersed that students must directly engage with. That could be a matching activity, a true or false question, a written response, etc. At the end of the presentation/notes/whatever the teacher can export the students' responses and use them as formative assessments if they wish. If anyone would like to see how it works live, I'd be happy to set up a time to demonstrate it.

Resources:


Robinson, K. (2006, February). Do schools kill creativity? Retrieved February 08, 2018, from https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity

u03a2 - Stouffer

Prezi on MLA Citations and Plagiarism


The media-infused presentation I created can easily help to foster the development of both the disciplined and synthesizing minds. In Chapter 2 of "Five Minds for the Future", Howard Gardner argues that, "The training of disciplinarians takes place through ... the modeling of ways of thinking (“here’s how we go about proving a theorem of this sort”); the successful completion of certain signature assignments (“that’s a good analysis of Sonnet 23; let’s see whether you can carry out an analogous interpretation of Sonnet 36”); the provision of timely, useful feedback on earlier disciplinary efforts...and the passing through successive hoops en route to becoming a master of the discipline (“you’ve now learned how to write a good lead to the story; the next job is to order the paragraphs so that the important points will survive, even if the story has to be cut in half”)". I realize that is an exceptionally large quote to pull from the text; however, I feel as though I highlighted the key portions that are relevant to the presentation I created. The Prezi Presentation I created accomplishes the above steps from Gardner that delineate how to train the disciplined mind. This Prezi models how to go about properly citing texts in MLA, it shows the success criteria, it could be used to provide timely, useful feedback, and it scaffolds the "passing though successive hoops" on the way to mastery. 


This Prezi presentation also helps to foster the developments of a synthesized mind. Works cited pages are a literal demonstrations of synthesis in themselves. Further, the arrangement of this Prezi allows for it to be used in rather versatile ways. After initial instruction, students can come back to it as a means of reference so that they cited correctly in future assignments. It also provides a bridge for beginning interdisciplinary work. In Chapter Three of his book, Gardner states, "Perhaps the most ambitious form of synthesis occurs in interdisciplinary work" and "Even when students have begun to master the disciplines singularly, there is no guarantee that a combination of disciplines will be appropriately or productively linked". Learning how to cite sources correctly allows students to properly integrate sources of various origins and disciplines, thus accomplishing "the most ambitious form of synthesis". The mix of disciplines would then have been appropriately and productively linked, as students will have been able to use the Prezi on proper citations and plagiarism to accomplish this. 

u03a1 - Stouffer

https://educlipper.net/edu_clip_boards/5a7379855b9fb804566ef74b/embed

I chose to curate a EduClipper Board on a Socratic Seminar activity. The link for this board is hyperlinked above. I chose the topic of Socratic Seminars as we will be doing our first one of the year tomorrow, and we will build on them for the remainder of the year. I included a YouTube video demonstrating what a successful Socratic Seminar looks like, several images, a website to implement collaboration, a PDF outlining the process with graphic organizers, and a PowerPoint for enrichment.

As a side note, I found the EduClipper website a bit cumbersome to navigate. It is not very intuitive for new/inexperienced users, and it lacks some desired features. For example, I could not figure out how to unpin something from one of my boards. Given this, I would find it unlikely that I would use this website with my classes. 

U02A1 Stouffer

I created this image using https://ipiccy.com/ and I think it turned out well! I would use this image in my 7th grade English classroom as a creative writing prompt. Students would be able to practice the concepts, techniques, and skills that we have learned this year about narrative writing. I think students would be especially engaged by this prompt as it allows them to incorporate two of their teachers (Ms. Stouffer and Ms. Steele) in a fictional manner.

u01a1 - Stouffer

u07a2 - Stouffer

I have definitely learned about how adaptable inquiry-based learning is. I would say, more that anything however, that my previous understandings of inquiry-based learning have been more reinforced than anything. After teaching for a few years at an Expeditionary Learning School, I have dabbled in inquiry-based and project-based learning in several contexts already.

One new insight I have developed relates to rubric creation. In looking through the variety of rubrics posted by my peers on the discussion forum, I have come to understand that there are so many different options, varieties, and variations on the style of rubric that I traditionally use in my own classroom. I look forward to reading through the ones I have not gotten to yet to see what I can pull into current assessments in my room or adapt for other activities.

I can't say that anything has changed too much since last weekend's blog. Formative and summative assessments are not new concepts to me. The three sources we researched for our papers did not pose new information for me either.

I have actually already begun implementing inquiry-based instruction into my own classroom. The Charles Dickens unit I designed ended up finishing just in time for my students to begin their unit on A Christmas Carol. They were all very impressed that I had created a website (they're middle schoolers, so eventually they will figure out it isn't all that impressive). Since it was quite successful, I plan to work out how I can include additional, different inquiry-based learning activities in my classroom in the future. 

u06a1 - Stouffer

My thoughts about inquiry based learned have not developed drastically over the past week. If anything, they have just been reinforced. It has been amazing to have the opportunity to see what all of my EDIM classmates have come up with for their own inquiry-based learning unit plans and Google Sites. 

I have developed some new insights into Web 2.0 tools that I did not know existed. Some I want to find a way to implement immediately into my own classes where they may be compatible.  I consider this exchange of knowledge one of the most beneficial components of online graduate classes such as this. We, as teachers. are able to absorb so many new and different kinds of ideas to then turn around and implement in our classrooms!

As I stated in my last blog post, one "burning question" that still remains to be answered for me is how I can seamlessly integrate this into my current curriculum. At the moment, my 7th grade ELA curriculum is already overloaded; it is nearly impossible for me to cover all of the material that I am required to have students master by the end of the year. The inquiry-based learning process, though it sounds incredibly effective and engaging, seems as though it would require more time to implement effectively. The more examples I see from my classmates, the more concerned I am that I wouldn't be able to dabble with inquiry-based learning units too often in my classes. It is just too time consuming.