Articulation, Documentation, Reflection

Since my last post to this blog (months ago - yikes!), I have spent a good deal of time considering how I approach the creation and cultivation of my own classroom culture.  While some classrooms are plumping up their "academic" approach and priding themselves in their reputations for rigor, I am looking to "take back" kindergarten.  In other words, what makes sense in my kindergarten classroom culture right now?

I asked myself:

 What types of activities, projects, and assignments will really make the difference in the educational experiences of my students?

I started with:

• I still believe that there is a right tool for the job.

• I still think that documentation in the classroom is important and that the iPad is the most accessible and efficient way to do that.

• I still think that (to a certain degree) the apps don't really matter - it's how they're used that does matter.

And then:

This past summer I decided that it was time to re-evaluate how we use many of our classroom materials and how students use those materials to be partners in their own learning.  I considered how I might shepherd the kindergarteners as they go from being partners to being owners of their learning - in kindergarten-age appropriate ways.  (for me, that changes how students approach learning - are they engaged? are they self motivated? will they be able to continue even if and when I am not there?)

What I Read:

I am always moved by the resources shared by Ron Ritchhart and his Culture of Thinking as well as his work on Making Thinking Visible.  I used the Essential Questions by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins to help shape my own practice and reflections.  I also keep in mind a quote from Dr. Seuss, "It is better to know how to learn than to know."


Using these resources as jumping off points, I have refined the use of iPads in my classroom as threefold:

Articulation, Documentation, Reflection

Articulation:

One of my goals as a teacher of 5 and 6 year olds is to encourage them to practice articulating their thinking.  We want varied ways for our varied learners. We want them to feel safe enough and to feel bold enough to find some way to share their ideas, connections, predictions, and opinions.

I might ask: "What apps can you use to help tell the story of your learning on this?"

Documentation:

Even the youngest students can get involved in the collection and curation of their thinking. We aren't looking for photos of beautiful finished work, but the mess and mistakes and challenges that happened along the way.

I often ask: "Can you find a way to share with me the goofs that helped you figure it out?"

Reflection:
We reflect daily on our work in order to practice challenging ourselves and to use what we notice to help us grow.  The students look at their finished work (and their thinking) together and then look for ways to improve upon an idea or for ways to approach a problem from a different angle.  We also practice listening to a friend's thinking and then try to use those ideas to see something from a new perspective.

I love to ask:  "How has your approach to this idea changed / grown / evolved?"

In all of this, there is a long list of apps that I might recommend... but it really doesn't matter as long as you have a handful of open-ended apps that allow students to share their thinking in a variety of ways. They should be apps that you are comfortable with and that make sense for your own classroom culture.

Of course, much of this is messy and the classroom can get wonderfully noisy with the sounds of articulation, documentation, and reflection.  The students are happier, more independent, and are becoming bigger risk takers.

Learning is Creation

Our team has been focusing on using mantras to focus our thinking about iPads and how we are using them in the classroom as we talk about, write about, and share our experience with others.  What's mine right now?

"Learning is Creation" 

In a previous post I wrote about "creativity" being a goal of the fourth grade one-to-one program.  When I heard or saw some iteration of the above statement at the EdTech iPad Summit in Boston, I was taken aback because though I have always firmly believed in "creativity as an essential component of learning", this sounded different.   I enjoy semantic banter from time to time so I turned the phrase over a bit in my head.    It wasn't learning is creative or learning involves creativity.  It was "learning is creation". A big theme of the conference was how the expectations for students and workers and citizens are changing. With knowledge being something of a cheap commodity these days it's much less about what you know and more about what you can do with what you know.  The models of education that are about consumption of information are becoming less useful than situations where students are given opportunities to use what they know to do something innovative.

It reminds me of the contrasts made between passive and active learning. However, it is different because I can imagine situations where students look active and are being creative, but are not necessarily producing or experiencing anything novel, new, or innovative.  An engaging lesson can still place the student in the position of the consumer if they are "doing" the ideas and processes and products of someone else.  Until they are owning one of the three, they might not be creating anything, no matter how creative the result appears.   Throughout the conference and after, I really became fixated on what types of things I had been asking my students to do, why I wanted them to do them, and what they were gaining by doing them. 

Of course a parallel thought was how could the iPad positively impact what was being done in our classroom. I ruminated on what kinds of things were bring created in our classroom and my first thoughts were pretty literal. Art, of course. Writing. And then I talked to people about it and the list grew:  understanding, ideas, opinions, perspectives, processes, problems, solutions...the list goes on. 

I definitely feel that iPads are revolutionizing our class's one to one program.  Moving from netbooks to iPads means that children are engaging with the available technology in much more meaningful ways and those ways really have to do with what the devices allow our children to create. Now I see creation happening when they are use Drawing Box to design maps that show their understanding of landforms and orientation:

Or Inspiration maps to create an organized flow for their research paper:

Or when designing a process to finish a project.  Using Educreations and Explain Everything we've been making screen casting videos in math to demonstrate and record procedures and solutions.  We decided not to show them how to use either program; one of our goals was for them to design a process that allowed them to meet the objectives: make a video that shows how to solve an area and perimeter problem for a chosen rectangular object.  Include a photo, text, and your voice. Good luck!

Here the process of making the video was just as important as the math concepts.   Along the way they demonstrated an ability to measure and multiply, but they also learned to work through frustrations and create solutions to apparent and surprising problems. Following our last screen casting project using Educreations a pair of students wanted to make another screencast. They heard we had a similar program called Screen Chomp.  They asked to make a screencast showing how to use it.   These two children came in at recess to work on their project for over a week.  All of a sudden they were in iMovie filming themselves using the program.  They added credits and music and then created a trailer. We started having "production and promotion" meetings to determine an audience and possible distribution channels.  They showed it to some classmates, who pointed out a few flaws, and decided to organize their feedback using a survey created in Google Forms.  Through their own initiative, they sure have learned and taught themselves a lot.  All that they needed was the space, time, and tools to bring their ideas to life.   They are now teaching themselves Keynote so that they can teach the class how to use it, and several other students have developed projects for iStopMotion videos, book trailers, and movies to promote our upcoming class play.

Learning is creation.

Space Junk

Teaching, Learning,  iPads and Space Junk
Several educators have asked me:

“Can you help me figure out how iPads can fit into my classroom curriculum?”  

The back of my iPad

I was emailed this question again this week and it made me flip over my own iPad looking for this sticker which I stuck on during the first week of our iPad program...over a year and a
half ago.  I would now replace my thinking about "teaching"
with "learning" since I'm not sure I want to create a classroom environment in which I am teaching to or filling up my students with content (I know that sounds like a vocabulary issue).  I do know that I want to create a classroom environment in
which we all are sharing our ideas, articulating our thinking, creating in unique and individual manners, digging into persistence, demonstrating understanding... generally
growing a culture of learning.


So how do iPads fit into a class curriculum?  No one ever asks how they can fit paper and pencils... or blocks...or a protractor...into their curriculum.  As educators, we try to turn our classrooms into places of learning (places that provoke and promote great thinking, creating, collaborating, problem solving, etc).  We provide the tools, structures, and routines to hopefully allow students and teachers and sometimes even parents to go about that learning.  As a kindergarten teacher, I have many varied tools in my classroom for a variety of learning goals including paper, pencils, and blocks.  I also have iPads.

This is how I now describe the way iPads “fit” into my curriculum:

iPads are not The Sun of our learning galaxy, they are just one of the planets in its orbit.  In other words, I don't put iPads at the center of every activity that I can.  Now that I have iPads available, everything does not revolve around their use. The Sun in this analogy is my classroom culture of learning and there are many planets (tools) in its orbit. In fact, the thing at the center of our classroom "universe" at any given time is the learning goal that I have set.  The tools I choose for the activity would be the planets.  The iPad might be the tool I (or the students) choose or it might not be.  Actually, this is a great place to replace that original question with what I'll call The First Step.  iPads are a great tool for learning - if you're still wondering about that check out Great Teaching is about the Process and The Challenge is On - you just need to take The First Step.  I like to refer to Dr. Ruben Putendura’s SAMR model. (Who doesn’t?).

The First Step is often easiest if you think about Substitution.  In our kindergarten class we used handwriting apps for our substitution step.  If you have older students, online research or writing might be a good choice for The First Step.




Keep all your planets in orbit around the galaxy of learning.  Now that you’ve taken The First Step, you and your students should be more comfortable and confident using this tool and ready to pull it out when and how it makes sense.  Using the SAMR model, you will find that iPads allow students alternate ways to share their thinking, demonstrate understanding, and go out of this world with creativity.

Apps are the space junk.  Ok, so this last part of my space analogy is a little bit out there... The apps really don’t matter!  If the iPads are one of the planets orbiting The Sun (learning), then the apps are all The Space Junk flying around the planets.

For example, there are many art apps that teachers can choose from.  It doesn’t really matter which one I choose as long as it works in my classroom.  We like Brushes and Drawing Box, but another teacher might find they prefer Scribble Press or Draw Free.  It doesn't matter which app works for me as long as I have been intentional in my app selection.  Also, some Space Junk is bigger than others - apps which should be orbiting every classroom (Book Creator, Evernote).  Sometimes Space Junk falls out of orbit and burns up in the atmosphere, meaning that sometimes an app no longer works and you just have to delete it.  In the end, it's really not about the apps at all.

We are not teaching children how to use iPads.  We are  creating a classroom culture of learning. Sometimes iPads are the right tool.  Sometimes they are not the right tool.  Students might start with paper and pencil and move on to iPads.  iPads might be just one part of a larger or longer process.  iPads might be the right tools for some students and not for others.  As with any tool we pull out in our classrooms, we need to think about what makes sense for the children and their learning. 

What is the Hallmark of our iPad Program?

In our second year of using iPads in the classroom, we are are recognizing how much our vision of the role iPads would play has evolved. Had you asked us last year, “What is the hallmark of your iPad program?” we would surely have described our successes teaching handwriting to kindergarteners and how helpful teachers find Evernote for classroom documentation. Even then, we would have insisted that it’s not “all about the apps”, but rather it’s about including iPads as a classroom tool when it fits the curriculum, or a moment where the iPad offers the best option for learning.

When we first began to teach with iPads, we sought out apps that solved the challenge of improving how we teach specific skills in Kindergarten, beginning with handwriting. This led to the inevitable search for the “best app” for the purpose, and we learned a lot - specifically we learned that there is no perfect app, and that perhaps our search for such a thing was distracting us from the real opportunities iPads provide.

With early writers and readers, we want to create multiple ways to help them share their knowledge and make it accessible to others. We use Book Creator to make books about their experiences in class and on field trips. We used iStopMotion to record events in the the classroom, and to tell stories in a new way. We create our own illustrations for our stories using Drawing Box.

As we began this year, we realized that we had a very different view of how the iPads would be used. We have expanded the program to include a set of iPads in each first grade, and 1-to-1 iPads in fourth grade. We chose a few apps, and grouped them in a folder on the iPads called “Creativity”. This group includes those already mentioned, and writing apps, presentation apps, and photography apps.. Students are using their iPads to create written projects, to do research and take notes, to express themselves, create collages, prepare books to read aloud to younger students, and to create presentations. The iPads are thus becoming a useful, accessible tool that fits the need when the need arises. The single-use, single-purpose apps are rarely, if ever called for.

There seems to be a divide among iPad teachers between those who seek the “killer app” for every job, and those who seek to find the apps that offer the most open-ended, creative possibilities. This is the similar to the divide between teachers that seek the “best” curriculum package to teach a subject and those teachers who pull from all the resources they find, and embellish their curricula with their own touches to fit their students’ needs and to match their classroom and school culture.

The hallmark of our iPad program? Encouraging creativity and self- expression; offering multiple ways for our students to make their thinking visible. It is so simple, and so rewarding!

It's time to introduce the iPads to a new class of Kindergarteners...

The Plan:    To give students a shared vocabulary and manner of handling for the classroom iPads.

What we do:    Our first session involves 1 teacher and a small group (6 or so) of students for 20 minutes.

 

 - 5 minutes of teacher-led introduction
Bearing in mind that children will only retain so much in one session so we pick just a few of the most important details for one lesson.  We begin with how to carry an iPad:  "Fingers on the bottom, thumbs on top, that way my iPad will not drop."  Next I show the everything button and explain that if you get lost somewhere on the iPad, you can press the everything button to get yourself back to the start screen.  I show the students what we call the start screen.  From the start screen, I show a folder and ask them to open one.  Now we can find an app and open an app.  Then I ask them to get themselves back to the start screen (they need to remember to use the everything button).

 - 10 minutes of guided exploration (the good kind of chaos)
I ask the students to find the Art folder.  I might share on the white board how "Art" is spelled to help them out.  The I show them an icon card with the Drawing Box app and, once they've opened that app, I show them how to get a blank page by tapping the little house.  That's it for my instruction.  They get to just explore, try things, talk about what they're drawing with whoever's sitting next to them.  It can get chaotic, but that's ok - it's all about their discovery and independence.

As they do make discoveries or get stuck, I ask them to turn to the classmate sitting next to them and share or ask.  In our classroom, we value peer collaboration and support, so our students are already forming the habit of asking a friend for a tip before they give up or come asking the teacher to bail them out.  This tends to foster peer teaching which deepens understanding and generates wonderful thinking conversations!

- 5 minutes of reflection
We have the students put the iPads in our "off" position (press the sleep button on the side and turn the iPad face down on the table) and students quickly share something that surprised them or a discovery.

Some apps to use:
Art apps are a great choice for guided discovery with K-4 grades.  We like Drawing Box, Brushes, Draw Free.  (we don't like apps that either have ads or in-app purchases)