I have been waiting for this...

Ever since the tablet computer appeared, I have been waiting for a tablet that would be useful for middle school LA classes. Just now I have read about the enTourage eDGE e-book. It is definitely interesting! 

I am a Kindle user. In fact, I will have eight or nine Kindles in my classroom by the end of this month. BUT this device might out-detail the Kindle in some key areas: first, it has a stylus, and the hand-to-text connection is huge for developing an interest in literary analysis (teacher talk for making students want to underline and take notes on reading - skills not possible in the don't write in the book public school environment); second, it displays in color and supports illustration, so the eDGE might do double-duty for social studies or science, once texts are developed.

eDGE not out yet (February) and it is priced out of my range. In fact, it is priced out of the range of most school districts.  But I think it is worth a closer look. I'll be watching.  It's about time competition had an impact on ELA.

Crowdsourcing Vocab

Panicked by the inflated importance of affixes (prefix, suffix, root words) in our new implementation of testing (the NECAP), and faced with surly 7th graders who have very little knowledge of the same, I raced to Google and to The Reading Teacher's Book of Lists.  What I found is daunting. List after list. Many fascinating (philias and phobias are really cool), but most simply overwhelming. That's over- = excessively + hwelfan = surge + ing forming the present participle.  Just about every word over one syllable has or is an affix. Where to start?

Hey - we are digital (digitus = finger, toe). Why should learning be all about me and my choices? Inspiration (in- = into + spirare = breath) when I read about the hunt for Genghis Khan's tomb. Scientists are using, among other things, crowdsourcing in an attempt to pinpoint the location of a tomb hidden for almost a thousand years. GeoEye satellite images of the probable burial range are being made available digitally to "people" who are willing to scan them, searching for small details that might indicate human activity all those years ago.

It will be crowd that is the source of information, from which each member of the community will learn.

I don't expect to make any money from my lesson plan, so here it is summary form. I make available to my students two appropriate online lists, one of prefixes and one of root words.  Each student chooses one item from either list and "claims" it by writing the affix on the whiteboard.  No duplications are allowed.  That night's HW is the creation of a digital product that teaches other 7th graders the affix, its meaning, and one good new vocabulary word formed from the affix. 

Most students used Keynote for this, a good choice because it exports to QuickTime. But I also have some ComicLife pages, some podcasts, and a an iMovie. We use NoteShare voicememo for quick voice recording (Send to iTunes script then right into Keynote), sound effects from GarageBand, and music from iTunes. All projects will be uploaded to one of our secure web spaces for viewing and learning by 82 7th graders - and 6th and 8th graders as well.  I will be assigning these on your own files as HW over the next month or so, then we will produce another round.

So instead of me teaching from a list, students are doing the teaching and making decisions about what content is interesting. Any surprise that homo was one of the first claimed?  During each core class we are looking at two or three of these very mini projects (30 seconds is an average length). I take the time to include a visual literacy/presentation critique, to talk about new vocabulary, and to do a post-check for understanding. Every presenter can make changes before final submission (that's sub- = under + mittere = send or put). 

I can't tell you how many aha! moments we have had this week! Some concrete thinkers have made abstract word connections for the first time. Most students are picking up on the image -> color -> sound ->  size -> design -> meaning connections.  Rather than rushing to finish, they are rushing to do well.  And the time commitment for students is about 20 minutes.  In class, the presentations are silent (as if viewed online), so presentation plus follow-up comments take five minutes max for each affix. 

How cool is that! I can instantly assess student understanding of word meanings, of the concept of affix, and of the relative difficulty of the new vocabulary.  One boy, for example, chose the root acid, but did not understand how it operates to make new words (acerbic, acrimony are way too hard so he stopped with acidic). He got a new root and we will revisit acid later in the year. 

And I have gotten to tell the story of Genghis Khan and the Mongol Horde (that's not hoard, although in this case the homophones are somewhat ironically connected), one of the great grabbers of all time, and often overlooked by today's middle school curriculum. 

Why iTouch #1

So I am playing Trivial Pursuit on my iTouch. I am one answer away from beating the "game." Because I am playing to learn to use the app in my class, I have Firefox open. I search for the answer - I've got it! I reach to the screen and press - on the answer below mine. It happens not once, but twice. I lose.

REMATCH.

I don't do a whole lot better at first. I am not looking up every answer and the computer is getting smarter. On the other hand, I am paying better attention to the hints built into the game about what tiles to land on. I start looking up every answer. I win Game #2.

How does it feel? Given that I had to Google almost every answer (Easy?), I did well. So, how can I use this in my classroom? Easy.

Plug in my document camera and project the iTouch game on the LCD screen. Divide the class into teams and give them bells or buzzers. Students work in teams to beat the game. It would be easy to tally answers on the board. I can even video record the whole game, but I won't.

SKILLS? Researching with keywords is HUGE. This happens to be a Maine learning result (measured skill) for grade 7. Collaboration is a sub-skill.
LEARNING? Cool random trivia, which is learning-enhanced by competition. A lot of geography. Effective keyword search skills. Visual Literacy (a lot of the questions involve decoding visual clues). Communication (if students work in groups).

Now that I have an iTouch (2nd generation), I am all over using Trivial Pursuit at some point in my classroom. Not an everyday event, but an event worth remembering. Of course, lots of teachers already have the board game in their classrooms. I don't own that. Seems to me that either would be an excellent choice for a research skills activity.

I have also just put Civilization and Spore on my iTouch. For a non-gamer, this is risky business.

Games

Yesterday I ran, quite by chance, across a reading training program that reminded me of Tetris (remember that old game of the falling shapes?). In the program, students focus on the central image in an ever-changing, but simple, landscape of letters, shapes, and objects. It seems that by activating peripheral vision and eye movement, you can increase your reading efficiency. And perhaps that does lead to an increase in comprehension. I know that I increased my reading speed during the trial from 560 wpm to 680 wpm. I am not giving you the program title because I have since read debunking opinions, and I do not want to recommend this solution to schools with RTI reading needs.

But - I do, deep down at the experience level, believe that game players are better readers than they would be if they did not play games. Now why would that be? Focused motion. By that, I mean extended focus upon something that is not standing still. In the case of Tetris, the game pieces are moving. In the case of a book, it is the eyes that are moving. Moving the eyes is the real physical skill involved in reading. If students can develop the skill of not only moving the eyes more effectively, but also using peripheral vision to review and anticipate the content of the reading, they will read better. I sound like the online reading development program...

But - now add the option to use the reader's physical skills. In portable gaming, this means fingers and thumbs. Tetris on the iTouch is a thumbs game (at least I think it is - don't have it yet). WolfQuest on the laptop is a fingers and thumbs game - all of the games I have played are. Activating more than one "intelligence" is a key to learning any skill better. So I conclude that interactivity while gaming develops skills. If the skills involve visual accuity, prediction and short-term memory skills that can be applied to reading, these simple games must also play a part in developing "reading brains." Do they help develop readers? No. Do they help develop reading skills? Yes.

Backtrack in time with me. Do you remember historical fiction? I for one read endless historical fiction when I was in middle school: WWII, Civil War, Colonial period, Westward Expansion, Arthurian England, Victorian England, Rome, Greece - I couldn't get enough of it. I still read it occassionally. I have learned tons of information - not all true, but it was mostly true (I was lucky to have a great school library and parents who had bought fact-checking encyclopedias; now I have the world online). When documentaries and the History Channel became freely available, I watched those endlessly. I learned tons of information. The point: I learned a lot of history in an alternative way.

Now there are game formats that are as well-researched as these novels and "documentaries." I am not a history teacher, but I am a teacher of novels. Great themes are historical stories. Great moods need to be visualized - and are even better when lived. Great plots repeat. Great characters reappear. Great conflicts appear again and again and again.

Games have a place in ELA. Take WolfQuest (link above), a free game that is great fun and that also teaches students about the habits, habitats, rituals, etc. of wolves. It is experienced from the wolf point of view. Success requires deep observations of the environment and chat-like collaboration with one's pack. Each "life" can be traced in plotline. It is possible to create conflicts. Viewers of the game can build antagonist/protagonist allegiances. Teachers projecting games can ask students to make predictions and to summarize (chronological, cause/effect relationships). I have just highlighted a passel of our NECAP standards. I know that there are some other great games for ELA, such as a new one about Leonardo da Vinci's world. Another that comes to mind is a non-violent PS2 game I wrote about in a previous post. Unfortunately, my classroom does not come equipped with game stations. Hmm...Maybe they should.

But - that's not about reading.

But - it is about learning how to read well. I think that anything we do to improve our students' ability to read what we throw at them, in class and in testing, is timely and important. And when I use odd ways to get at reading, I make sure that I tell students why they are doing the activity and what I expect them to get out of it.

By the way, not all games are digital. I have a kids' activity that is a set of "fairy tale" picture cards. How are we using it? Guess.

A Garden of Your Own

What a mess my gardens are! The seed heads need to go. The fall weeds need pulling. The climbing rose and that reddish shrub that goes haywire every year need to be reminded of their roots.

And yet I see coneflowers, berries, parsley, monkshood, and delicate unnamed pink, yellow and purple blooms. The witch hazel is about to drop its leaves, revealing the sculpture of its stems. Chickadees, nuthatches and jays still come to the feeders for sunflower seeds while brown sparrows hunt for the droppings. This garden is still alive, and it will be alive all winter. It is alive in spite of my neglect.

I don't think it a garden like mine that David Warlick had in mine when he wrote of A Gardener's Approach to Learning. He imagines an organic vegetable garden, a tightly interwoven community that feeds its caregivers well. I don't do vegetables (too many deer, too much rain), but I can relate to organic. A few weeks ago I stayed in Sonoma for a wedding and visited the Benzinger winery. It is hyper-organic. The claim is that nothing "outside" enters the winery. Fertilizer is provided by cows that live on the grounds, eating the crops grown on the slopes. Good bugs that eat the bad bugs are attracted to the yarrow gardens interspersed with the vines. The grapes are sprayed with an emulsion made from ground quartz that is mined from the volcanic rock in the hills. Sheep are driven through the terraces to aerate the soil. It is a fabulous, circular operation, even if you don't believe that burying manure in a cow's horn will give it special nutritional properties (I wonder if the charm requires a virgin).

Warlick wonders - isn't this the way learning should happen? What if we view learning as a closed system in which each individual student is a part of a growing, productive community - just a part, not a controller or a creator. Does such an organic learning community exist? Times millions of students? Is it possible for a student to learn simply by being herself integral to the learning process?

It strikes me that for this vision to be reality, some criteria would have to be met. Foremost, it seems to me, is the criteria that every part of the productive community has to do its job. Yarrow has to grow, bud and bloom to attract the good bugs. Soil has to absorb and use the nutrients provided by the cow waste (with or without the cow horn), which requires that a multitude of microbes and worms (I am guessing here) also have to do their work. And Benzinger's workers have to do their jobs. If one job is not done, bye bye hyper-organic Benzinger.

I used to tell my daughter, and now I tell my students, that being a student is the most important job to do. But what if the student doesn't want to do the job? It is hard work being part of a 24/7 community. My students are asked to be students less than five hours a day. Why would a student buy in to something more?

Perhaps because she chose the garden to grow in. At least that is the theory of choice and self-direction. It works for me. But I am no longer in middle school. Sometimes I wonder how I would go about learning if I were 14 today. But on reflection, that is a worthless path to follow. So then I wonder what can I do better to lead my students into a learning garden. And this is where I have to think that this country is all wrong about standards and testing.

Remember Peter Rabbit? He kept going back to that garden and getting nowhere - no food, no tail, no coat, certainly no relationship with Mr. McGregor, and a punishment besides. But all he knew was getting those carrots... His sisters, on the other hand, were gatherers. They lead neat and boring lives, devoid of extension. Nothing pushed them because they were fearful of the garden. If the Rabbits had know how to grow their own garden, they would have had time to learn about sustainability, crop rotation, and good bugs. They would have networked with their peers. And Peter might have taught Mr. McGregor a thing or two.

The Rabbit standard should not be "a carrot before every bedtime." It should be "a carrot patch of your own."

How does this work for education and real kid people? Take my least favorite standard, grammar. There is not a single student who would choose to do grammar worksheets during an LA class period. But in order to write full-credit answers on the mandated reading tests, students do need to understand the applications of correct grammar and usage. In order to communicate effectively, they must apply grammar correctly - in fact, they need to apply it intelligently and inventively. Teachers spend endless hours dialoguing about grammar and usage, editing student work, finding online and print worksheets - students spend endless hours doing this work (their "job").

If the grammar standard thread were removed from the Maine Learning Results, students would still learn this grammar. Why? Because grammar lives in the garden called "writing." Focus on the garden as an organism, not on every little bug and carrot sprout. Students who enter the garden (by whim, by requirement, by choice) grow with it.

Peter Rabbit gives us pleasure because he continues to have a terrible time - and we can root for him to someday get out of that flower pot on his own. We are involved with him because he endlessly chases a standard he will not meet. Peter is all about picking and taking - and not at all about learning. This is what too much education has come to - because of our standards.

We need to rethink standards and their assessment entirely - what is it really that we want our students to learn about learning? And how can we help them to plant or find the gardens they need in order to learn?

The more we focus on our "standards" the further we push our students from their education. I wonder what would happen if we asked them to design their own gardens? A lot of messes, I guess. But what a lot of flowers! I am all about flowers.