Reading Infographics

It is a peculiarity of Blogger that a post, once begun, remains at that position in the posting timeline. Today I completed a post called Teaching Infographics - Teaching Reading, but it is dated Oct. 27.

I think it is both important and timely.  And it contains my first completed flip lesson.  Please check it out.

Here is a recently published infographic to add to the lesson. It "illustrates" that students who use a mobile app to study (in this case, StudyBlue) spend more time studying.  Or does it?  Studying Online Flashcards on Smartphones.

Teaching Grammar: Can You Find the Errors?

I hate the "their" error.  Someone, anyone, one, a person, the person = he or she.  Every time I see it or hear it, I correct it boldly.  I have been known to use permanent marker on District classroom signage, been known to correct missives from the principal.  I have written to the D.O.E. about grammar errors in position papers and newsletters.

It may be a losing battle, but it is one I choose to fight.  Join me.

Above is a screen shot of quite a wonderful infographic, What does it take to get a job at Google?  There are three grammar/usage errors here.  Can you spot them?  Challenge your students to spot them.

• PS:  The last interview question makes for a great literacy lesson: sequence, cause-effect, vocabulary (multiple meanings, is/is not), connection-to-self.  I get it.  Can your combined students get it too?  

I wrote them and pointed out the error.  I have done this often lately.  One voice is just a voice - many voices is a shout.

Here's another error.  This video trailer for Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 is all over TV.  What a wide spread for an error!  Do you have the courage to ask students to pen letters to Activision?  I wrote one.

scene from video trailer

Here's another, this one containing errors in parallelism, sentencing, misplaced modifiers, capitalization:

JitterbugDirect.com

Of course, the most effective examples will come from the texts that your students actually choose to read and the media they access regularly.  Challenge your students to find similar errors in print and digital text (many YA novels are a great source of pronoun and punctuation errors), in advertisements, in media-speak.  Share these prominently in your classroom.  This might go a lot further than a set of canned, or even digital, skill lessons.

NAEP Scores: National Shout-Out

As prep for a longer post I am writing on the topic of Infographics, I took a look at the NAEP State profiles for the 2011 testing year, focusing on my state, Maine, and at grade 8 in particular.

Imagine my delight when I received, the same day, a FOR IMMED. RELEASE online press release from the D.O.E. Director of Communications, David Connerty-Marin.  The headline is:

Maine up in 8th grade math; flat elsewhere

Oh?

The release goes on to explain that:

•  Maine’s scores and the percentage of students “proficient” – that is, meeting or exceeding expectations [in math and reading] – has remained largely flat.
• “Maine has continued to show no progress in reading for far too many years.” Bowen [Commissioner of Education] said. “There is compelling scientific research about how kids learn to read, but we are not applying those methods universally.”
• in reading in grades 4 and 8, Maine showed no statistically significant change.

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/

As I read the data (chart and graphs shown above) and did some research,

• I notice that the X axis units are not the same - what happens to the Reading or Mathematics score lines if the tics are identical?  These graphs can not be compared.
• Writing is no longer tested.  So why are the NECAP writing test results from 1998-2010 not part of this article?  I want to know if those scores are improving.  Writing is, after all, the 2nd most compelling and important element of literacy, and a significant part of the state's reading test.
• Reading in Grade 8 is not flat - it is decidedly up and down.  And in the last 2 years, it is decidedly UP.  Does this indicate that we are beginning to see some up-trending as a result of 3-5 grade efforts in literacy over the last three years? Or is it simply an indication of variable test groups and cohorts?
• For several years, while the nation decreased in Reading, Maine improved.  What was going on?  What happened between 2007 and 2009?  (HINT: End of Local Assessments + Readicide + Economic Depression in Maine = curricular confusion at the 6-8 level.  I know - I lived through it.) 
• a 2 point change is not significant, but a 4 point change is.  OK - so why don't the graphs mine us down to the 1 point level?  
• It looks to me like Maine is recovering.  

Perhaps something good is already happening with Literacy in Maine.  What's so bad about that?  Mine must be a very unpopular point of view.  I wonder if anyone talks about what GOOD is happening? and Where?  and How?


But then again, data can be mined for a purpose, which may not be the purpose of the actual data.  This purpose seems to be tied to making a sound argument for funds for preK-3 Literacy development in Maine.  

Those funds and that attention to literacy are needed, but I don't understand the purpose of selling a state's progress short in order to gain funds.   Or maybe it is important to agree with the national take on the NAEP results.

It seems as of this morning that this headline is national news. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and Education Week carry it as a story.   It seems that superintendents and commissioners around the country are jumping on this story. 

The Times article is the only one to suggest some reasons for the "stagnant" reading scores.

I have heard all of these reasons before - for at least five years.  If Literacy funding can combat poor parenting, poverty, an educational system and schedule that discourages rather than encourages "deep reading," and an emphasis that is less on understanding each child's reading need than on average and aggregate scores - go for it.  But I think perhaps more programming is not the best answer.

There is far from one "scientific understanding" of how and why a child learns to read. There is no scientifically based understanding of why many children stop learning to read before middle school.  There are as many research based pedagogies and programs as there are universities, reading recovery programs, best-selling educators and teacher's colleges.  I have reviewed, worked with, or read much of this - and every single program works.  As long as it is matched to the specific needs of a specific child reader.  If you don't give children your time, they won't learn as quickly or as well. 

There is no one band-aid for reading.  Never has been.  I fear that these catch phrases - Flat Scores and "the knowledge economy of the 21st century" (Arne Duncan) - will lead to another search for the better band-aid, at the expense of some excellent child-centered practice.  I'm not sure that we are a "knowledge economy" - or that we aspire to be.  We do seem to be heading in the direction of a "knowledge-based economy."  That's knowledge, not reading ability.  They are different.

What is needed, in Maine and elsewhere, is a good long look at the districts, schools, and teachers who ARE making progress happen consistently, coupled with a data-driven look at the students with whom they work.  And states should study those math programs that are working for DC and elsewhere.  How do they work?  Why do they work?

Celebrate this and model what works.  My sense is that a little celebration will go a long way toward energizing education.

I know that SHOUTING OUT FAILURE is not going to motivate teachers - or their students.  

Teaching Infographics - Teaching Reading

infographics classi

#1 I have to critically think in college, but your tests don’t teach me that. (20 things students want the nation to know about education)

When I was in the edtech world, a major check-point on my peer rating system was appreciation of Edwin Tufte's infographics tetralogy (Envisioning Information, Visual Explanations, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Beautiful Evidence).  If I saw his texts on an office shelf, I was immediately hooked by that office holder. If an edtech teacher knew of Tufte's short text The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching out Corrupts Within (which demonstrates that a poor PPt presentation failed to prevent the Columbia disaster), I knew that this educator knew her stuff. These are brilliant studies of visual information across global time and place.

Not being a particularly visual learner, I knew immediately when I met Tufte's 1st book that I had much to learn. 

No, our students should not be thrown to Tufte.  But they must be thrown to his legacy. When what I taught was called Literacy, I always included a discrete infographics unit. I also included infographics in pre and post reading activities for informational text - sometimes even for fiction text (historical and international fiction, for example).

I am a fan of embedding visual text into reading standards. 

What is an infographic?  Wikipedia has the definition used by every how-to I have found: "graphic visual representations of information, data or knowledge. These graphics present complex information quickly and clearly."  

Infographics belong in ELA as texts because they require that students (quotes are from CCSS ELA Reading 6-12):

• Identify text structures and their purposes
• Read for detail - "Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it" 
• "Determine central ideas or themes of a text"
• "Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text"
• "Summarize the key supporting details and ideas"
• "Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse formats and media, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words"
• "Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence"
• Think critically
• Ask questions
• Identify purpose and audience
• Problem-solve

I mined the net for a short video on "How to read an infographic" -  but there does not seem to be one.  This is the perfect flipped assignment for ELA. In fact, as discrete instruction goes, it is one of very few flipped lessons that will be successful or useful in an ELA classroom.

So I made my own flip-lesson video called Reading Infographics.  Find it on YouTube or look at it below.  One thing you might do with students is have them use the YouTube Annotate function to interact with the lesson and with each other.  I have embedded many activities/exercises into the resource than can be used this way or assigned for HW or classwork.

In the Middle School classroom, I made a Concept Wall containing the key concepts and vocabulary from this video.

[new:  Visual.ly is a terrific source for infographics.  It is not in the video.]

If you want a copy of the original Keynote, contact me.