Chapter 13:  Toolbox

I am working to be waaayyy more brief this week--sorry about last week's length. 

Ohler has said a bunch of this before, but not all of it.  He does have to walk the line of not recommending, of not recommending too much old stuff since as soon as the book went to print, some technology is considered old.  However, I do appreciate an idea that he has expressed before, the new stuff is NOT necessary. 

It might have been nice to have a couple of lists rather than paragraphs, one for the very basic toolbox, and one for a bit more.  But that is just me wishing for brevity, as he does provide that information. 

Good advice he offered: 
1.  start with what you have, and check into what you really do have as you may not know it
2. give yourself a search time budget (I am not sure if this is actually budgeting money to pay yourself for searching, or if it is budgeting time to do the searching.  In either case, he is right, it is time consuming, and one should plan for that.

3. "My Motto: one eye focused on today's classroom, the other looking down the road."  I love this one, as it is true on so many levels (not just on the level of watching for technology, but on big ideas being learned, and types of human beings we are teaching our children to be.  (Stop there Deb, be brief.) 

 4.  The discussion on microphones was enlightening, I like the wireless type with which I might be able to record 2 people, and the idea of a flat conference mike.  "AUDIO IS KING."  If I had good audio, and bad video, I could probably put other pictures to it and find use for it.

For the rest of the stuff in the chapter, I am not really imagining doing DST in a classroom with kids, as I teach teachers about math, and I have other fish to fry.  So, it didn't seem to apply as much to my situation.  But I am considering adding a video component of teachers talking to other teachers about lesson plans they have created--which might be a bit of a story about how to create a tension in the lesson that kids can work through.

ARRGGHHH!  regarding video for Screencasting.

So, in my haste to make some room on my ipad, I deleted my screen cast from it.  I had no idea it would also remove it from my youtube account and my blog.  And so, I don't have the old one.  But later this week, I did another screen cast for work, and so I shall post that.  I was actually happy that I had learned how.  Anyhow, now I know I can't delete from my ipad without removing from youtube.  That makes no sense to me, and I need to learn about that--as I know I will be out of room here soon.

So the following video could be substituted for my first one.  Since I wasn't making it for you all, I probably don' t have the appropriate title slide and such.  I sent if out via email, where I used the email to set up the video.

I made this using Explain Everything on my ipad.

It is about how to get to a tutorial course on the Common Core Standards in Math.  The former executive director of the math project and a few other directors (not me) worked on it.  It is free and open to all--and is a good first step in learning.

You will see I was goofin with sound effects at the beginning.

This week's  video was trickier than I thought it might be after talking with some of  you yesterday.  I decided to get a new app on my iPad, Explain Everything which can do screencasts among other things.  I thought is was recording as I was navigating the site, as everything looked okay on the screen.  When I played it back however, sometimes the screen lagged, and I was still talking like you could see what I was referring to. So I learned to pause before navigating to another page on the website, and that helped.  I still had to insert some photos in places in order to clarify directions.

But then Explain Everything assisted with a problem I was having in iMovie for the iPad.  It didn't let me do title slides or credit slides, only add text on video or photos.  So I created my title slides and credits in Explain Everything, and uploaded the image as a photo to my camera roll, and then inserted in the right spots in iMovie.

Hope this is useful to some of you.  Common Core is really pushing for thinking and reasoning, and not just asking students to produce right answers to 30 problems just like the one modeled for them by the teacher.

Ohler's Production Process, Ch. 11 and 12

Chapter 11: The Media Production Process, Phase I: Developing the Story

Media production has built in assessment.  That part makes sense to me because as the author plays back the media production she naturally checks to see if she has caught what she intended.  It is more difficult for the author to keep perspective and see if the parts fit together to tell the whole story.  (Or perhaps that is me projecting what I find difficult onto this process.)  But the Ohler says, “Simply develop a checklist or rubric based on each phase…”.  Hah!  Simply?   That is not the adjective I would use in that sentence.  Using a rubric to assist with feedback is not a simple process—it is helpful I agree, and better for getting to the substance of goals, and for having students assess themselves—but it is anything but simple.  The development of the rubric itself so that it communicates the goals effectively and which communicates the distinctions between levels in a way that isn’t subjective is anything but simple. 

I must be cranky today as I read. Ohler’s next part is to make us not feel overwhelmed by the process by likening the process to baking a cake.  Some of my previous experiences with teachers saying something is easy as pie have lead me to believe that quite the opposite is true.  Teachers (especially math teachers) say with good intentions, trying to make the students relax, “This is going to be simple”.  [It would give the students more confidence to go ahead and do the process with the students, and then have them reflect on what they have done, noting the complicated process and how smart they are.  This builds confidence for next time. But I digress.] 

The 5 step process that Ohler identifies makes sense. I am just being picky about his choice of analogy and the difficulty level of the analogy.  As far as complexity of the task--is the cake being baked from scratch—or is it from a box?  He makes me doubt his own experience in baking cakes, when he identifies that “dough” must be finished in the production phase. I believe it’s called batter—but I am not a cake baking expert as I do make them from the box. Dough is for cookies and breads.  Although I take issue with this being as easy as baking a cake (as cake baking from scratch and decorating is not easy in my opinion, I do agree that the process he describes does seem fairly universal in its application to things that can be accomplished in life.

Ohler recommends a short task of introducing oneself in a short video with stills and narration, as a good first step, and to encourage students to play.  This makes sense so students have a sense that they can experiment and figure things out while talking about a subject they know, and without having a particular assignment which could constrict their abilities to let go and play.

Time:  wow!  That is a huge investment in time—one to two hours a day for a week!  (I assume he is talking about self-contained elementary classrooms here, and not secondary classrooms.)  To convince teachers that this is worthwhile in the classroom we need to indentify how a DST project for the students attends to goals they already teach in other ways or better ways or more efficient ways. More importantly, it is critical to identify the value-added is using this medium to accomplish their seemingly never-ending list of standards and content.  This is a tall order.  If all teachers started using some DST, and students became better skilled with multi-media production, this might reduce some of the time that might be required—but not much—gathering materials and editing eats up time.

Ohler points out the importance of ensuring equipment is available and working.  This reminded me about a tiny idea I have about teachers developing lesson plans for Common Core.  I have seen an online video of a science teacher describing a lesson for other teachers, stating goals, talking about how to set up a demonstration or experiments for the students, suggesting types of materials and describing what not to do for demonstration up front.  This seemed like an expeditious way for another teacher to get some information about a lesson in a different way than reading a lesson plan.  So, now I am considering what sorts of equipment I would need to provide groups of teachers while they collaboratively plan lessons, if I want them to create a short video to share with others about how to conduct the lesson they created.

Chapter 12:  The Media Production Process, Phases II-V

Much of this seemed repetitive.  I did find it useful that he provided a list of steps in production which started with finalizing all media pieces that will be part of the DST.  Then they are to focus on narration and record the story first using iMovie or Movie Maker.  After that, they add the media pieces including pictures and video, and then music and sounds, finally checking the mix of audio.  I noted that the narration was the first part actually done in telling the story and then all the other components are added in around it, in keeping with story first. 

He continues sharing nuts and bolts of production process which will be useful when actually implementing DST with students, including the fact that they will likely get tired of looking at their stories and lose interest and the ability to see when editing.

What was more intriguing to me were his thoughts about reflection after production.  He suggests asking the students to tell the story of their story-telling process.   We could ask them to identify some problems they encountered and how they learned to work through the problems (not just technology problems, but content problems as well).  This turns the teacher role into that of being a learning-coach—something we should pause and do more often in the classroom.  If I were asking students to make DST’s of their problem solving process—this would be key step in having them think about their thinking.

Another reflection he suggested was to ask teachers how DST changes their classrooms, or how it assists in making them communities of practice.  One of the hot professional development issues now is that teachers should be participating in Professional Learning Communities, and that all staff at schools should be part of those communities.  I have seen this sort of idea mandated and teachers put on teams and told to bond and become learning communities.  But I have not seen professional development that suggests learning communities could start inside the classroom, and I think teachers would find that a valuable idea.  If teachers were able to build communities of practice inside their classrooms, then PLCs outside of their classrooms might become extensions, just another place to analyze what is going on inside the classroom. 

 

Hey All,
Video woes for me this week.  I had an impacted work week and difficulty trying to complete this on my ipad.  For more detailed notes about that, please see below.

Hope the video isn't too long and that you enjoy fireside chats.  I don't think it works in Firefox.



Video Mashing Woes:
Thought I would explain where I am at with last week's video--this is a long list of excuses, but at least you can know I didn't just choose not to do it.
I  stopped by the apple store and bought the converter to connect the camera to my ipad and updated to ios 6, which meant I had to back up to the cloud (as I had bee using itunes on my laptop).  So a bunch of new stuff on the ipad.  The camera connector worked, with was good as I had seen various reports about it working and not.  And imovie was then downloaded successfully.  So I thought I was all set to go to a meeting in L.A. with my ipad ready to edit video, but turned out I left the ipad at home charging.  Oh well.
So after returning I couldn't complete the video by Sunday night.
I am still having trouble finding an app for converting youtube videos to mp4.    I downloaded tube downloader, which won't download anything from youtube, but does do some from vimeo.  Then I can load videos to my photo roll, and then I can see it in imovie.  Although some things say they'll only take the audio.  So doing mashups is really trying, as many  ideas I have cannot be found or downloaded appropriately.
So that is where I am at.  I should have communicated this a bit sooner, just so you knew what was up.  My intention was to edit my video from last week, as I had stuff I wanted to include that didn't, and I included stuff that was not the way I was supposed to mash up.  But I am not convinced that I can do that as I can't get the peanuts video which is pretty critical to my story--as its the trumpet I hear in my head when I teach by lecturing and not engaging students.
Sorry to be such a pain!

Chapter 9: Maps

The places where Ohler makes the tire-hit-the-road for me were in describing Egan’s and Adam’s work.  I found Egan’s list of questions in Figure 9.6: The Story Form Model useful for teachers in planning lessons, particularly, “Why should it [the topic] matter to children?”  and “What powerful binary opposites best catch the importance of the topic?”  The notion that one can begin a story by using binary opposites to set up the tension was interesting.  The example of the stream generation in science was a good one—looking at heat as a positive force or as a negative force.  In math one could harness that to get students to recognize that something must be going on to explain both forces.  

Adams sentence starters seemed useful too.  Often times I have asked students to write word problems for a math problem, like 

 3 x 4 + 6        or     3 x (4 + 6)       or    3 + 4 x 6. 

It would be interesting to try Adams sentence starters in conjunction with that idea.  “Once upon a time there were 3 friends…” You get the idea.  I would ask them to write for each of the expressions, so they could compare the different aspects of the story necessary to make each expression correct.  Adams Spine could assist in the story telling aspect.

Ohler makes the point again about the story coming first, but this time he identifies the effectiveness of the map as a tool in supporting the students to actually identify the “power” in their stories before they get too many hours into the digital technology aspects.

I also thought the idea of work to be done at home, might include watching a favorite TV show in order to make a map of a story.  The point of this activity is to learn about the map as a tool and to be able to identify the components of the story.  This makes sense to me as a step in storytelling, as it is what we at the math project call a “backwards question”.  When you are working on establishing an idea, if you only ever ask students to deal with it from one angle or forwards, they don’t get as robust a view of that idea.  They have a one dimensional understanding and cannot see when to apply it in slightly different situations.  Mark Driscoll, in his book Fostering Algebraic Thinking, suggests that going backwards with identifying terms in sequences is a necessary step before being able to generalize algebraically.  (That last sentence was more for me and Jeremy.)  Anyhow, seems like a good idea to both create story maps, (a question going forwards) and identify map from existing stories (backwards question.)

Commercials too! I love that commercial with the guy in the suit sitting at the kindergarten table with the small kids, just talking and listening.  It would be interesting to map those.  (Don’t you just wish you got paid to just to ask kids kooky stuff and then listen?)  Commercials might be a good medium to use in class.

Chapter 10: Other Kinds of Stories

His point: as usual, we westerners have a tendency not to include others.  I appreciated Ohler’s introduction.  I think this might be the first time I really felt like I could hear his voice coming through as he spoke about not knowing what we don’t know, but that him making a poor attempt at describing stories told by indigenous stories was better than no attempt at all.  I also liked  considering that we are all untied in our not knowing—at least those of us who don’t know about such storytelling.

But then after that he goes on a long time about how we can’t really know anything and cannot really attribute what we think we know to any particular folks.

That all said, the only idea I took from his analysis of types of stories and authors that worked out of the literary box of their times, was that this works like other ways we should be connecting with our students.  If you are teaching storytelling, you should look for storytellers of all genres as authentic resources; get them to come work with the students.  Make sure to properly respect their work and culture, and teach your students that too.

Video:

Noticing and Wondering 

or

How NOT to Become Charlie Brown's Teacher

Use the link below the window.  Evidently there is an error in the code to embed which I copied from youtube.

http://youtu.be/5nhBF736F34


Chapter 7 Story Planning Considerations

Here Ohler presents some of the tools and approaches he takes in teaching storytelling.  Below are the tools that struck me.

1.    The Story-Storming Grid seems like a useful tool—especially if groups of students were to do a project.  I can imagine students brainstorming alone first, and then the students putting their ideas out on the table and placing them in appropriate places on the grid, thereby identifying some problems without solutions or transformations.  Or perhaps each person in a group brainstorms problems, then the group places all problems out there and then more brainstorming to determine more than one possible solution and transformation that could be used to address the problem.

2.    I also appreciate the questions he provided in the event that someone is blocked: 

·       For teachers: “What’s an important concept you teach that you feel students have a hard time grasping?”

·       For someone telling a personal story: “When is the last time you cried or got really excited?”

·       For an organization: “What’s the most important thing you think people need to understand about eh value you bring to heir lives, and can you remember a time with a client that exemplifies that value?” 

3.    Research Box diagram in figure 7.1 which he said he uses for both storytelling and more formal research.  I would have liked to hear more about the latter just now, having just rewritten my outline of my culminating experience for EDTE 250i.   I agree with him that it allows the writer to keep thinking of idea, so as not to stop the flow, while also asking the writer to classify those things inside the story and outside.  In this way ideas are not lost, and can be put down, so the writer and identify their place and move on, instead of having too many ideas and going all over the place.  Below are the guts of the box from diagram 7.1.

Research Box… What’s inside the story? time frame… events… relationships… places… What is outside of the story?

4.    Tips for working with younger kids seemed to make sense.  Ask the students to draw a picture (which is something I would have thought about) about something that “reminds them of something in the story” (p. 100).  That last part seems like a nice twist that would help the students get started, as it reminds them of the story—rather than saying something like “captures the essence of the story” which might be a bit paralyzing to the student (let alone the fact that younger students wouldn’t use that language!)

5.    Ohler’s statement that “A story map is a portal into the storyteller’s thinking” was intriguing.  This might be another way to formatively assess student thinking.

6.    In “Telling via Transformation” Ohler suggests students should consider the potential of a story by identifying different possibly transformations for a single problem/solution pair.  This identification could assist students both in testing the viability of the problem/solution pair as a story, and in taking on different perspectives in order to consider different transformations.  This is something we need to ask learners to do more often—it helps them to see more than one side of an issue.

Chapter 8: Transformation Formations

Bloom was certainly a busy fellow, writing so many taxonomies including one about  Character “Transformation” with a continuum of change from physical through spiritual.  Then those familiar 8 categories were applied in a way I had not seen, in the taxonomy of Cognitive “Transformation” which described the changing in a character along the continuum from knowledge up through evaluation.  And finally he presented Bloom’s Taxonomy of Affective “Transformation” with a continuum beginning with the character receiving phenomena to the character internalizing values.  Who knew Mr. Bloom was so busy and well rounded?

Ohler states something that I sometimes get the feeling some folks in the institution of American schools forget is the primary function of a teacher,

"As always, what you’re really doing here is challenging students to understand something in greater depth.  After all, this is what teachers do." (p. 111)

Here here!  Let’s make sure everyone remembers that is our purpose!