We Teach We Learn » English

The Future: Where “winging it” becomes best practice

Chris Wondra — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 04:47:59 +0000

“Students today depend on paper too much. They don’t know how to write on a slate without getting chalk dust all over themselves. They can’t clean a slate properly. What will they do when they run out of paper?” –Principal’s Association, 1815 1, 2

“Students today depend upon store bought ink. They don’t know how to make their own. When they run out of ink they will be unable to write words or ciphers until their next trip to the settlement. This is a sad commentary on modern education.” –The Rural American Teacher 1928 1,2

by Chris Wondra, WTWL Editor

The problem with blind spots is that you don’t know you’ve got them. I mean, it’s obvious to us today that students weren’t going to need a slate or homemade ink in order to be successful.

But imagine living in that time. There was no way those people could have foreseen the changes that make us snicker at those statements today. Might we also be clinging to faulty beliefs about what will make our students successful? If so, how do we identify them? How do we differentiate between the beliefs that are no longer relevant and need to go, and the ones that are and we need to keep? What skills and content are we teaching that will be irrelevant in five years? What tools are we still using that are already outdated?

And how can we possibly determine that?

Out with the old, in with the new

As a quick exercise, take a part of your curriculum, any part, and imagine for a moment that it’s totally irrelevant to our students’ realities in the 21st century. Then make a bold and crazy statement–or two. I’m an English teacher. Let me start.

The traditional research paper in English classrooms is dead.
So is the traditional works cited or bibliography–you know, that MLA or APA formatted way of documenting your sources.

In some districts, those two statements would probably be grounds for my dismissal. But we’re all friends here. So let’s just play around with this for a while.

The research paper: A closer look

Why do we have students write research papers in the first place? Why include a works cited? Well, we assign the paper to instruct and assess skills and knowledge related to researching, organizing, analyzing, and synthesizing information. We have students include a works cited to show that they’re not just making stuff up as they go along. But works cited and bibliographies also serve two other important purposes:

They give credit for ideas, and
they point us in the direction of those ideas–so that interested readers can follow up and learn more.

Organizing, analyzing, synthesizing, writing, and attributing ideas are valuable skills. So what could possibly be wrong with the research paper?

The problem is two fold:

If we want to read some of the sources, we have to do more work. We have to order a book, go to a library, find a specific journal, magazine, or article. This takes effort. But perhaps, more importantly . . .
This takes time.

What would happen instead, if we assigned students a research blog or asked them to collaborate on a research wiki? Like this.

Couldn’t they then simply link to the actual source that they used, and/or help the reader along by linking to a definition for potentially confusing terms or concepts (as I did above)? Doing so simplifies the whole process by attributing, defining, and also actually supplying the source of the ideas referenced.

Yes, I know. Sometimes that’s not entirely possible. One can’t always link to an entire book or periodical. Alas, not everything is on-line and free. But we can still link to a listing of the book on Amazon.com, an author page, or biography. So we can get pretty close–much closer than a properly formatted APA citation.

So, in comparing this approach to the traditional research paper: What skills are we missing? Nothing. We’ve enhanced it. We’ve taken the research paper and made it better, faster and stronger.

But that’s not all . . .

Perhaps the most glaring weakness with the traditional research paper is who has access to it. If the topic and writing is truly relevant, aren’t they also potentially valuable to greater audiences? And isn’t that audience’s feedback also valuable?

Today’s tools make all this possible in ways we couldn’t imagine as recently as five years ago.

So is the traditional research paper, in fact, going the way of the slate and homemade ink? I’m pretty sure it is.

And if that’s the case, and we’re still attached to the research paper (and we are), to what else might we teachers be clinging?

And how can we possibly know?

We can’t. But I think we can shine a little light in this darkness by asking ourselves two basic questions:

What will the future look like? and,
How do I prepare my students for that?

The engine of change revs to exponential speeds

If Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod are right:

there are five times as many words in the English language than when Shakespeare lived, and
the amount of technical information we have available to us is now doubling every 72 hours.

We think we’re supposed to know what our students need to thrive in the 21st century? C’mon. Let’s get real.

These kids are going to have fourteen jobs, many of which don’t even exist today, before they turn thirty-four. How do you prepare students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t been invented, to solve problems that we don’t even know are problems yet? How can we–how can they–possibly plan for that?

We can’t. They can’t.

The bottom line (and perhaps most important reality to consider) is that the rate of change is accelerating exponentially. We can’t possibly keep up. Ergo we can’t plan. Apple or PC? Explorer or Firefox? Google or Yahoo? Photoshop or Fireworks? A blog or a wiki? Ford or Chevy? It doesn’t matter. Today’s standards will not survive the night. Tomorrow will be completely different. By the time these kids hit the job market, we’ll be snickering at questions like these.

In fact, somebody somewhere is probably snickering already. The cost to communicate has fallen through the floor and the speed to do so has gone through the roof. This creates a whole new world. A flat one. Ideas, collaboration and creativity no longer have borders. Technology is removing the traditional constraints that used to slow progress. Today, our students can collaborate in real time, with information and people half way around the world, to solve problems, create solutions and to change everything.

We don’t know what, and we don’t know when. All we can be assured of is that, eventually, everything will change—again. And again. And again. It’s time to face the music. We can’t possibly plan for that. That’s the bad news. Welcome to the 21st century.

The Good News

The good news is that we can coordinate like never before.

Let me explain.

Remember what it was like a few years ago, before we all had cell phones, when you had to pick someone up at the airport? Remember what had to take place in order for that to happen? Lots of planning. You had to consider where the baggage was. You had to get there early to park the car. You had to meet at a prearranged time and place. And hope the plane was on time.

You don’t have to do any of that now. Just check the flight schedules on-line, and have your party call you when they land. If the flight’s late, run a few errands. If it’s early, just pick them up outside. Figure it out on the fly. No planning. Just coordination.

Now, with cell phones, it makes more sense to just wing it. Flight schedules change, baggage takes time to pickup, stuff happens. But now we can adjust on the fly. It’s easy to just roll with it.

Preparing our students for their futures is a bit like using our cell phones to coordinate an airport pick-up.

Successfully navigating the chaos of the pace of 21st century change will not require our students to know how to use today’s technology. It will not require them to plan very far ahead. It will, however, require them to connect to people and information and be able to create and collaborate in real time–on the fly.

It will require that they be able to “roll with it.” To “wing it.” To improvise.

Think of life in the 21st century as improvising in a jazz quartet. You never know exactly what’s coming, so you can’t plan too far ahead. Still, it’s not chaos. You are connected to the other players through the structure of the music. The notes of the piece flow from a combination of that structure and the harmony of your collaboration and creativity.

Our job as teachers is to show students what is possible within the structure of our time and space, an how to coordinate information and people in ways that create music with our lives . . .

. . .and then to dance.

Your Turn

Reflect on your beliefs and add your thoughts in the comment section below:

What skills and concepts are you teaching that will help students be successful in the fast paced changes of the 21st century?

If the “Research Paper” is going the way of the Cuckoo, what are some other instructional techniques/strategies/tools that might soon be outdated, or look very different in the near future?

Sometimes the more things change, the more things stay the same. So what essential understanding are you teaching today that won’t change in the 21st century. What do you believe will stay the same?

Source of quotes:

1. Thornburg, David. Edutrends 2010: Restructuring, Technology, and the Future of Education. Starsong Publications, 1992. (link)

2. To see additional statements read and scroll to the bottom of this article .

“Put Up a Parking Lot” – On Your Board!

Chris Wondra — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 01:09:40 +0000

Jeffrey Ayer, WTWL Writer

Ever notice how a discussion you want to have with students can severely lag? Okay, think May or June, and I’m sure every teacher out there has struggled with this in his or her own classroom.

Enter the parking lot. For those of you not familiar (and some of you are thinking, “Oh, yeah, I remember that”), here’s how it works.

First, select an area in the classroom where you could have students place sticky notes or tape scraps of paper. What works ideally is to use a large sheet of butcher paper, or if you have room cleared on your board, you can work from there. I usually clear white board space, and then create an actual parking lot layout.

To encourage students, I also intermittently place sticky notes in some of the blanks, and sometimes for fun, I’ll include a few parking lot notes (like “Student Parking Here”).

Once that’s on the board, it’s a discussion cue to my classes (I’ve used it for the better portion of a recent novel unit). Just direct them to take up a parking space over the course of the class period; based on how many spaces are filled by the end of the hour, I ensure them that I will leave aside enough time for us to discuss the ”parked” questions before the bell rings.

Advantages? One, students don’t have to write their names, so there’s a level of anonymity (this seemingly defeats the “dumb question” phobia). Two, students have the class period to think about the novel. For many, questions don’t just arise the instant the teacher asks, “Any questions on the novel at this point?” So over the course of the class period, no matter what activity may be taking place, students are more likely to have an “I don’t understand” moment and then post that on the board. And third, the activity simply encourages critical thinking, because I don’t answer the questions, I prompt students to answer them together.

This activity could also be applied to just about anything where you want students to develop questions (I-searches in the research process, thesis statement possibilities, questions they would pose to a historical figure, comments, opinions on a topic, and the list goes on).

Give it a shot. Give it some thought. And call it what you want (parking lot works, but imagine the number of names you could assign this approach to discussion – I just thought of “Landing Pad” as another, and I’m just hacking away at a keyboard).

Share your ideas by commenting; I would love to begin collaborating with you!

The Library of Congress is Using Flickr: Shouldn’t Teachers?

The Library of Congress is Using Flickr: Shouldn’t Teachers?

Chris Wondra — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:32:57 +0000

by Jeffrey Ayer, WTWL Writer

In recent months, the Library of Congress has piloted a new photo series on the photo-intensive website, Flickr. If you’ve never been to Flickr, it’s essentially a website where photographers from around the world are uploading and sharing their photos, and commenting on the photographs other people post.

In this case, Flickr has teamed up with an unlikely photographer (or should I say archive of American historical photography), and the results are literally breathtaking. One example alone is Jack Delano’s “In the waiting room of Union Station”, taken in Chicago, Illinois. The photo features two officers who create shadows in spotlight-like beams of sunshine coming in from the gothic windows above.

And the list goes on. In all, as of May 2009, the Library of Congress has posted over 6,000 historical photos from its archives, including World War I panoramas, photos of President Abraham Lincoln, and the decades of the 1910s, 1930s, and 1940s.

How does this all fit teaching and learning, you ask? Think of the potential uses of this archive. Because Flickr includes a slideshow feature, you and your students could gaze at history through the lenses of long-ago photographers – and leave comments (thanks Web 2.0). A colleague of mine uses photography to inspire young creative writers, both to tell stories in prose and describe an image in poetry. The possibilities in art, photography, psychology, journalism, sociology, English, and history classes are just the beginning.

And if nothing else, it’s an easy-to-use site where students could be encouraged to use the old right brain and create using a digital camera. It’s also a site where some are using the space to store photographs for personal use (users can make photos private or public).

The site even encouraged me to get started and get more serious with my own freelance photography, so I’m excited about that alone.

To get started, simply go to Flickr, click on “Create Your Account” (easy to do if you already have a Yahoo e-mail account), and then click on “Sign Up.” Unlike Google accounts, this one asks for your full name, gender, birth date, and postal zip code, but if you’re using this for professional use, there’s nothing here that should scare you. In addition, like many Web 2.0 sites, everything is free (there is a megabyte limit to how many photos you can upload until you may want to consider “going pro”).

To get started, click here to access the Library of Congress’s photostream.

On a tech note, beware of the filters your school may have. Flickr can be accessed in some schools and school districts, and not in others. Having a conversation with your IT director or building principal would be worthwhile in a case like the one above. Remember: We are the leaders on a 21^st Century pioneering venture. If the Library of Congress is on board, shouldn’t our schools be as well? Happy Flickring!