Pixels & Pedagogies

Digital Interactive Notebooks: A marriage of paper notebooks and Web 2.0

The Digital Interactive Notebook, or "InNo" (pronounced "I know" ... nice, right?), is an idea that I've had on the back burner for a few years. A friend (and great teacher), James Brightman (http://thebrightestman.wikispaces.com/) and I had conversation a while back where we came up with the basic idea. He took the idea and made it a lot more concrete. I've been able to try it and revise it this year. It combines some of the best features of paper notebooks and Web 2.0. An InNo entry is kind of like the classic wedding custom of "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue,” but instead of blue, it’s awesome.

Something old:  

The first half of an InNo entry is a modified version of Cornell Notes. Students take notes on what they read, write a brief summary, and write a few questions related to it.

Something new:

Instead of students using a physical paper notebook, they use our class wiki and a wide variety of Web 2.0 tools to create their InNo entries.

Something borrowed:

Once they have finished the notes, summary, and questions, students find images and videos related to the topic(s). Students cite the sources of these "borrowed" items using MLA.

Something blue, no, wait... I mean "awesome":

This is my favorite part of an InNo entry. Students make something original based on the information in their notes. I learned about this from TCI and their Interactive Student Notebook (http://info.teachtci.com/forum/isn.aspx). Students can create their “awesomeness” in any way they choose: graphic organizers, hand drawn stuff, slide shows, charts, graphs, comics, movies, etc. Many students use the great graphic organizers from Education World (http://www.educationworld.com/tools_templates/#graphicOrganizers). Cool Tools for Schools has also been really useful (http://cooltoolsforschools.wikispaces.com/). Instead of the left and right approach in a paper notebook that TCI suggests, we use a top and bottom approach on our wiki pages. I encourage them to place their awesome stuff at the top.

Here are a few student examples to show you what InNo entries look like:

• pen-and-paper illustrated notes – http://relay-of-revolutions.wikispaces.com/Part+1+11.10.10

• timeline – http://relay-of-revolutions.wikispaces.com/Russia+in+War+and+Revolution+II+%28pg.+16-23%29+yipsumw2013+10.21.10

• press play on the voki widget – http://relay-of-revolutions.wikispaces.com/InNo+Russian+Revolution+Notes+Nicholas+Lim+10.12.10

• bone chart – http://relay-of-revolutions.wikispaces.com/InNo+andylin1212+10.13.10

• flow chart – http://relay-of-revolutions.wikispaces.com/InNo+hyejijun94+10.17.10

Here’s a link to the InNo Guidelines, where you can download the evaluation rubric and see the nitty-gritty details: http://relay-of-revolutions.wikispaces.com/Interactive+Notebook+Guidelines.

And here’s a link to the InNo homepage: http://relay-of-revolutions.wikispaces.com/Interactive+Notebooks.

Thanks to Trent Lorcher for some nice ideas on evaluating Cornell Notes: http://www.brighthub.com/education/k-12/articles/6833.aspx.

My students have been creating InNo entries for a full quarter. There has been one significant revision of the requirements and rubric, and a lot of time spent teaching the students how to make them, but things have started to come together nicely. Digital Interactive Notebooks just may be a marriage of old and new that lasts.

Any ideas or questions? Let me know what you think.

8 tips for better wikis

Can you smell it? That’s the scent of summer vacation in the air. Before you head off to the beach or baseball game (GO GIANTS!), I would encourage you to think about your wikis. Whether you’re planning to use your existing wiki next year or you’re prepping a new one, here are some tips to help make your wikis great.

• Keep the end user in mind: I try to make my wikis as user friendly as possible – lots of links, well organized, and full of useful information. If students have trouble navigating a wiki and there’s nothing useful for them on it, they won’t want to use it.

• Organization is key: Wikis can grow out of control faster than crabgrass in your front lawn. It takes time and effort (from both you and your students) to keep your wiki organized and user friendly. This includes properly naming pages so they're easy to find, using links, and keeping the side navigation limited to the most important pages. Use tags, too.

• Keep pages short: We all dread the endless-page-of-scrolling when we surf the net (does anyone even say that anymore?), so don’t do it on your wiki either. There’s no limit to the number of pages a wiki can have, so when a page starts to get a bit too long, add a new one. For example, instead of listing all your assignments on one page, break it up by unit.

• Put new stuff at the top of a page: If you do have a page that is really long, try putting the newest information at the top of the page so users don’t have to scroll all the way to the bottom to see it. Here are two examples – Announcements and Daily Blog.

• Make it pretty: I’m no artist, but I do appreciate clean design with some color. Add some “buttons” (http://cooltext.com/), relevant pictures, etc. Use tables and take advantage of the formatting tools available, such as alignment, font size, etc. I like to make a logo for my wikis, too.

• Selective pruning: Take time to remove old, unnecessary pages. If you don’t want to permanently remove them, you can always archive them (see below). I have students help with this. We had a “clean up the wiki” day. Students found misnamed pages, added tags, identified pages that needed to be deleted, added citations, etc.

• Archives: I like to move older pages to an archives section. This way they are there if I need them, but they're not getting in the way.

• Play it safe: If the entire world can see your wiki, encourage your students to think about how much personal information they are sharing. I try (a constant battle) to avoid full names, and never have them share any contact information.

Have any other wiki tips to share? Let me know what you think.

Does technology make students more creative?

According to David G. Myers (from Psychology, 7th Edition), creativity is defined as "the ability to produce novel and valuable ideas." 

So does technology make students more creative? No, technology alone does not make students more creative.

Can technology help students be more creative? Yes!

How much of what teachers call "creative" actually represents new, important ideas? One could argue that much of what students produce is not actually "creative" at all – it's just sharing old information in fancy, high tech ways. How many original ideas do we see students produce? I don't know about you, but I would like to see more (please send me examples). We've all suffered through the dreaded powerpoint or keynote presentations that look flashy, but contain nothing new. Same goes for podcasts, videos, etc. Same information, new form of regurgitation.

So is all this tech stuff a waste of time? No! I think technology can play an important role in creativity. Here are five (and a half) components of creativity (again from quoted from Myers):

• "Expertise is a well-developed knowledge base... The more ideas, images, and phrases we have to work with, through our accumulated learning, the more chance we have to combine these mental building blocks in novel ways." Teachers can help with this one, whether it's helping students learn about our specific content areas, or helping them learn how to use various applications, Web 2.0 tools, etc. For example, the more we use the various iLife and iWorks applications, more the more ways we find to use them together to make stuff we can’t make using just one of them. Technology also allows students to have access to a much wider knowledge base than they could otherwise (thank you, internet).
  

• "Imaginative thinking skills provide the ability to see things in new ways, to recognize patterns, to make connections. Having mastered the basic elements of a problem, we redefine or explore the problem in a new way." We can encourage students to see things from a different perspective, like in a debate when we have to argue for the side with which we disagree.
  

• "A venturesome personality tolerates ambiguity and risk, perseveres in overcoming obstacles, and seeks new experiences rather than following the pack. Inventors, for example, have a willingness to persist after failures." Although personalities are tough to change, I think there's room here as well. Having, and encouraging our students to have, the attitude that it's okay to make mistakes can make it easier for students to take creative risks. The process is sometimes more important than the final product. Sometimes we try something that doesn't work, but we don't quit – we try a new approach to reach the final product. Problem Based Learning and Challenge Based Learning may have a part to play, as does avoiding tasks with one correct answer.
  

• "Intrinsic motivation is creativity's fourth component. As psychologist Teresa Amabile points out, 'People will be most creative when they feel motivated primarily by the interest, enjoyment, satisfaction, and challenge of the work itself – rather than by external pressures' (Amabile & Hennessey, 1992). Creative people focus not so much on extrinsic motivators – meeting deadlines, impressing people, or making money – as on the intrinsic pleasure and challenge of their work." Read Daniel Pink's Drive. If we can find and develop educational tasks and activities that students are actually interested in and care about (rather than just doing them for a grade), we're more likely to see creativity. Again, PBL and CBL may help. Student choice of topics and choice in how they share what they know may also help.
  

• "A creative environment sparks, supports, and refines creative ideas. After studying the careers of 2026 prominent scientists and inventors, Dean Keith Simonton (1992) noted that the most eminent among them were in fact not lone geniuses. Rather, they were mentored, challenged, and supported by their relationships with colleagues. Such people often have the emotional intelligence needed to network effectively with peers." Again, we can help create this type of environment in our classrooms and schools. Have students work together, encourage each other, and support each other through group work, peer editing, critiques, feedback, etc. Get students talking about what they are learning and doing. Get them to move past what doesn't work by having them give suggestions and ideas on how to make it better. Tech can help with online discussions, wikis, nings (please don't charge for educational use), voicethread, etc.
  

• A creative environment, part II: "Amabile's (1983, 1987) experiments demonstrated that creative environments also free people from concern about social approval. In one experiment, she asked college students to make paper collages, telling half beforehand that experts would evaluate their work. Those unaware that their work would be evaluated produced collages that judges later rated as more creative. Unworried about being evaluated, they felt freer to be creative." Does this mean that telling our students that they will be sharing their products with the entire class or the entire world may actually hinder creativity? The products may be more polished and more "correct," but will they be less creative as well? I don't know. Evaluation and assessment will always be a part of education. Maybe only share some of what students do by sharing the most creative stuff with a worldwide audience.

Any other ideas on how we can help foster creativity in our classrooms?

Let me know what you think.

Four ways to make slide-show-type-things on a Mac.

During a recent visit to a school in Chiang Mai, Thailand (thanks for the daily dose of delicious khao soi), I had several conversations about digital storytelling, slide shows, and the various ways to make them. There are (at least) four ways to make a slide-show-type-thing using iLife and iWorks, each with it’s own strengths and weaknesses.

*Note: When I was creating this pro/con list, I was just focusing on slide shows, not all the other cool stuff you can do with these applications. :-)

When deciding between these I options, I try to envision the finished product and what is most important in the slide show.

In general, I use:

• iPhoto when I want to make a straight forward slide show with music.
• Keynote when I want to use photos, graphics, charts, etc.
• Garage Band when the audio is the most important.
• iMovie when video is the most important.

These four applications are designed to work together, and they do so very well. What my students and I do on a regular basis is to combine Keynote with Garage Band or iMovie. We build our slides in Keynote, save them as photos, and then use them in Garage Band or iMovie (which is a snap if the photos are saved in iPhoto – thanks “media” button). This allows us to make the exact visuals we want and the best audio or video to go along with them.

So, what am I missing from this list of pros and cons?

What did I get wrong?

How do you use these applications with your students?

What other applications and/or online tools do you use to make slide-show-type-things?

Psych Associates: A good example of a video project?

In my previous post, I encouraged people to have a good reason to use technology in a lesson, especially when having students make videos. Well, it's time to put up or shut up. I humbly submit for your approval the following example of a unit that incorporated student created videos.

The Psych Associates unit was designed to cover three chapters of related material in our AP Psych textbook: learning, memory, and thinking. I believe that, in some ways, these are the most important chapters of the entire textbook because this is what we ask our students to do in school everyday: learn, remember, and think. I wanted students to move beyond memorization and regurgitation, and try to apply the concepts to real life situations. This is where the videos comes in.

Working in teams of two or three, students took on the role of marketing consultants hired by Psych Associates to create infomercials. The infomercials were supposed to "sell" psychological information to a specific type of customer, ranging from a high school principal to an owner of a café. In order to accomplish this, students needed to learn and understand the concepts from the three chapters, and decide which concepts would best enhance the daily life of their specific target customer. And they had to show all of it in a video which was five minutes max.

Here's the entry document I provided: http://www.scribd.com/doc/27316029/Psych-Associates-Entry-Document

Here are four finished videos (a few of them used music without permission... always fighting that battle):

Target customer: business with teens as main customers (PC Bang, movie theater, clothing, etc.):

Target customer: high school coach:

Target customer: students who are preparing for or entering college:

Target customer: high school coach:

Here's the rubric: http://www.scribd.com/Psych-Associates-Infomercial-Rubric/d/27798707

For the rest of the details, you can check out the Psych Associates pages on The Neuron, my AP Psych wiki.

So did I live up to my own standard (see previous post for the standard)? Let me know what you think.

When do videos suck as an assignment?

Don’t get me wrong, I think student produced videos can be wonderful opportunities to enhance student learning. I would, however, add one caveat: unless you teach video production, the objective of a lesson or unit should not be for students to “make a video."

Instead, the video should facilitate the curricular goal for the lesson or unit. I think this also applies to technology in general. Technology provides new ways to explore and create information, but it is usually not the driving force for a lesson or unit.

As the high school technology integration specialist (or tech coach), teachers sometimes approach me with something along the lines of “I want my students to make a movie.” To which I reply, “Well, what do you want your students learn?” Maybe making a movie isn’t the best way to get students there. Sometimes kickin’ it old school (i.e. no-tech) is the way to go. Maybe a different tech option would be a better fit.

Technology is not magic: adding it to a lesson doesn’t, by definition, make the lesson better. The effectiveness of technology depends on how and why it is used, which means that we as teachers need to be very clear about our curricular objectives before we decide to use technology in our lessons.

So to sum it up…

1. Figure out what you want your students to learn.
2. Figure out the “best” way to have your students get there. This may involve the use of technology, but some things are still best done with paper and pencil.

Here are some non-tech links which may help with lesson and unit development:

Have students make their own online dictionary or encyclopedia.

Last year I decided to have my students start making our own version of Wikipedia which just focuses on psychology. Now I know there are many psychology wikis and dictionaries out there, but I wanted to make something that took advantage of a wiki’s ability to combine multiple forms of media in one place, including text, audio, and video. The Psychological Multimedia Dictionary (or Psych M.D.) has grown out of this idea – or, I should say, it is growing out of this idea because it is definitely a work in progress.

Students pick a word and fill in the template which I made for my AP Psychology wiki, The Neuron. Each entry includes definitions from our primary textbook and one other source, videos, pictures, diagrams, links to related sites, and links to related terms. We’ve also started tagging pages to let the wiki find related content for us.

Students must write their own contextual explanation for each entry. Since this is where students need to think about their chosen term and how it relates to the bigger psychological picture, it is one of my favorite parts and something which I would like to emphasize more in the future.

Newer additions to the Psych M.D. cite sources using a modified version of APA. This includes photos, diagrams, video, and text. Originally, students were just listing the sources at the bottom of the page (usually as links), but I wanted to get a step closer to APA and reinforce the importance of citing sources.

Some older entries have podcasts, but we’re not currently doing this. The podcasting did not work very well – not because of the students or the technology, but because I was just having them say what they had written which ended up being redundant. I like the idea of having audio, but I need to find a good reason to ask my students to do it (any suggestions are welcome).

Since this is a student created product, the quality varies – some entries are great, while others need a bit of work (and some need a lot of work). This where revisions come in. In addition to adding new terms to the Psych M.D., we will soon start revising/updating/editing old entries. The goal is for students to improve upon other students' work and to learn that information is not set in stone, that it changes as new research is conducted.

Students complete a self evaluation and a peer evaluation with a simple check sheet.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/26182280/Psych-M-D-Evaluation-2009

A colleague of mine, Melanie Kells, has also started to experiment with something similar in her AP Chemistry class.
http://kisapchem.wetpaint.com/page/Collaborative+Chemistry

Overall, I’ve been satisfied with the results of the Psych M.D. I’m frequently amazed by what the students can find for their entries. They have found things that have become a “permanent” part of my class discussions – stuff that is just fantastic. I don’t have time to hunt down great information and content for each of the 562 vocabulary terms in our textbook, but working as a team, my students are on their way to doing so.

Never miss another word: peer review with a screencast.

Peer review sessions can be wonderful opportunities for students to give and receive feedback. Traditionally, students must scramble to take notes about what is being said while attempting to be an active participant in the discussion, and may miss an important piece of feedback in the process. To help prevent this, I decided to try having students record their peer review sessions as a screencast. This way they could just focus on the conversation without having to write everything down. They could review every word of the session later.

My AP Psychology students were working on a major project which involved creating an infomercial “selling” psychological information to a specific target customer (more on this project in a future post). In the peer review session which occurred roughly two-thirds into the unit, students were encouraged to share their scripts and any movie footage they had shot, even if it was just a collection of unedited rough cuts.

I attempted to have them use a structured peer review format, which I downloaded from the Buck Institute of Education’s Problem Based Learning website (great stuff on problem based learning, and their workshops are great, too). Here are their guidelines:

1. Choose two groups of four to five students each. These should be groups of students who have worked together on a project or on one aspect of a project.
2. Group A presents, outlining vision, project activities, and outcomes. Group B listens without responding or questioning.
3. Group B asks clarifying questions.
4. Groups B pauses to reflect on ‘‘warm’’ and ‘‘cool’’ (warm is positive, cool is critical) questions to ask.
5. Group B discusses what they have heard among themselves, offering warm feedback. Group A takes notes and does not respond.
6. Group B discusses what they have heard among themselves, offering cool (not cruel) feedback. Group A takes notes and does not respond.
7. Group A responds and engages in open conversation with Group B.

Peer Review Screencast:

I had students give me a copy of their screencasts. This allowed me to listen to all of the sessions to evaluate their effectiveness, and to see which students were actively involved and which ones refrained from joining the conversation.

This was a new process for my students, as was the concept of recording the whole thing as a screencast. Although there were a few moments of confusion, it worked well overall. Students have commented on the usefulness of the recorded feedback.

I definitely plan on using this method of peer review again in the future.

Note: Thanks again to Junior Tan for the wonderful screencast application, Berio.

Subway Map of the Brain: Non-linear Slide Shows

Slide shows made with Keynote or PowerPoint don’t need to follow a set order (slide 1, slide 2, slide 3… linear). Instead, they can be designed to allow the viewer to choose the next slide (slide 1, maybe slide 33 or slide 17, then back to slide 1… non-linear). This is done by using hyperlinks to link to other slides.

My hands-on experience with this grew out of a paper and pencil assignment from my AP Psychology class. The basic idea is to take all the parts of the brain we’re studying and create a map which shows how they’re all connected to each other – kind of how a subway map shows how all the stations are connected (hence the name of the project). This is fine and dandy on paper, but wouldn’t it be cool if you could click on a brain part learn more about that particular part? This is where the idea for non-linear slide show popped up.

The first slide shows the map of the brain. Viewers can click on any of the “stations” to learn more. This additional information includes text (definitions), photos, videos, and/or audio. Since the viewer decides where to go, the slide show becomes more interactive and engaging. Of course, it helps to have interesting, well designed content.

The biggest problem with this project is sharing the completed slide shows. The slide show doesn’t work unless you have it on your computer because you need to be able to click on the stations. (If I’m totally missing something here, someone please let me know). These files tend to get pretty big, too.

Other potential uses for non-linear slide shows include other mind-map type stuff, timelines (which I’m going to try with my Developmental Psych unit), and choose-your-own-adventure type stories (which I also want to try as a wiki project).

(download)

Click here to download:

Subway_Map_of_the_Brain_Non-li.zip (1.19 MB)

Short Story Project: Script, Screencast, Movie

My colleague from the English department, Karen Taylor, approached me looking for some ways to use technology to help students discover and enjoy the short stories of Lu Xun. The primary goal was to get students to analyze a short story. After some brainstorming, here’s what we came up with…

Diary of a Madman Short Story Project

Students chose, read, and analyzed a short story. Students then created a movie script for this short story which was supposed to effectively and correctly show plot and character while focusing on the symbolism present in the text. After completing the script, students recorded a screencast discussing why their group made the choices that they did, and supported their choices with evidence from the text. If needed, students could make changes to the script after the screencast. The script and screencast were then given to another group to film. Students also evaluated their group members at the end of the project.

The emphasis of this project was not the film (20 points), but the analytical process which was assessed with the script (112 points – due to odd math and rubric) and the screencast (90 points).  

I’ve included links (and vids) for the script, screencast, and completed film for the story Some Rabbits and a Cat. The screencast isn’t very exciting – but it was not supposed to be. It’s where students were to give their analysis of the story and explain their script. All students were supposed to contribute to the screencast, and this group lost a few points because most of the explanation was done by one person. Remember, the film was not made by the students who wrote the script and made the screencast.

Length of project: 4 weeks total. This included a week without classes due to an H1N1 outbreak. Without H1N1, it would have been shorter.

Technology Utilized: Screencasts (Berio), iMovie

How students benefited:

• Students have a greater appreciation for this less famous writer and can see the author’s personal style and beliefs.
• Students were able to see connections between the stories that might not have been obvious by just reading them.
• Students were able to apply their learning about symbols and themes to a completed visual project.
• Students learned that a bad movie based on a short story could be due to the script or the story – some stories do not lend themselves to becoming movies.
• Students learned to verbally explain their writing.

What worked:

• The time frame for the project.
• The students doing the filming had to really focus on what the scriptwriting group had to say on their screencast – the screencast became a tool, not just an assignment.

Changes for next time:

• The audience for the completed films was the class, not the world. There were some copyright issues, and since the film was a very minor part of the project, we were not too concerned. If doing this for a wider audience, the use of copyrighted materials (particularly music) would be addressed.
• Students need to be taught how to write a script.
• Have the script writers use the rubric to critique how well their classmates converted the script into a film.
• Choosing a good story is important. Create a list of “recommended” stories.

Script: http://www.scribd.com/doc/23536130/Some-Rabbits-and-a-Cat-Script

Screencast: Part 1

Screencast: Part 2

Movie: