End of Semester Reflection: Thoughts on Semester One in a 1:1 Class

So this will probably be a lengthy post. To go all teenager hashtag on you #SorryNotSorry. Please feel free to read on, but do so at your own risk.

I feel like I learned more this semester - my first in a 1:1 classroom - than I did my first year teaching. Granted I see more now than I did in year one, but there were just crazy amounts of learning that went down this semester.

So what went down this semester? I thought you'd never ask.

Some Positives

(In no particular order. And these paragraphs don't flow together. They're like bullet point paragraphs. Whoops.)

My class this semester

Students had a lot of choice in the content of their projects this semester. In the two big content-related projects from the semester, kids had huge amounts of choice around the content of their learning: the content of these projects were bound only by the unit we were studying. Kids could go out and learn something of their choice about World War II and the Holocaust - 1:1 allowed that kind of freedom. It allowed students to ask - and answer - their own questions within units. It gave them the opportunity to pursue their passions within a given unit. HOWEVER, this freedom came at a cost: there were big content holes that my kids had. More on this later.

Another good part of class was the choice students had in the way that they could demonstrate their knowledge - yay to all of the free internet tools out there! Or they could use good old pencil and paper. Or Minecraft. Or build a diorama. Or just about anything else that they wanted to build.

Self-directed learning generally goes well with my kids. They have now spent a year and a half in the weird that is my classroom. Students have gotten use to less structure. They have gotten comfortable (or more comfortable) making choices about the content of their learning and following through with a deliverable.

After a year and a half together, my kids collaborate online like woah: they have done a lot of this and they do it well. It's fun to watch!

20time has been a lot of fun. After an epic failure last year, students have taken to the format I'm using this year well. (Thanks Kevin and Kate!) Most importantly, my students are doing meaningful work that will impact others in a positive direction. I can't wait to see these projects come together second semester!

20time has made Friday - always a fun day to teach - an absolute dream to be at school! (We do our 20time projects every Friday.) I get to walk around and troubleshoot with groups. Kids are on task and excited to get this opportunity and freedom in class.

Despite the emphasis on choice impacting other aspects of my class (mentioned briefly above and also discussed below), this semester has been SAMR-friendly. I think I'm working to modify and redefine what a history classroom can be. It's exciting! Lots of bumps are happening along the way, but it's exciting. Students are creating. A lot. That's a good thing.

Being 1:1 means that new collaborative inquiry structures are needed. I've worked to redefine what historical inquiry can be in 1:1 classroom. In short, ask a big question, provide a few sample resources, and give kids not enough time to fully wrap their heads around the question you ask. No one can do all the work - there isn't time - and if you ask the right question kids are engaged. More on this new inquiry structure can be found here.

I think I've got a dream class: I almost don't need to be there to teach it. And it's my last class of the day. I just got lucky, but it is most certainly a positive.

For the first time ever, I might have zero kids fail. Which is always the goal, but not something I've ever been able to do.

If you push hard enough for things - repeatedly, to lots of people - often times the things you want will show up. After running my Chromebooks on the student BYOD network, and complaining to a lot of people about how slow it was, I was able to get my own private wifi network that runs only my Chromebooks. Huge win!

The "ask forgiveness not permission" maxim went well. Because of it, I made big steps toward making my class line up more completely with what I think my ideal classroom is. Thanks to not asking permission, I eliminated tests and added 20time this semester. This mindset worked out well - I'd strongly recommend it to anyone.

No homework. That's still a positive.

I got to hang out with tons of awesome peeps: Robert Pronovost and I organized a #brewcue every month this semester. Edcamps were plentiful: edcampSFBay and two SoCal edcamps happened this semester. Yes, edcamps are awesome. Yes, these three helped prove this rule. CUE conferences and events - the fall CUE conference and the North Bay CUE event - continued to drive me to be better. Hanging out and talking to awesome people helps me to create higher expectations for me and my classroom than my administrator could ever have. Love my PLN!

Some Negatives

The unit structure I chose to use allowed for my student to have a lot of choice. However, this choice came at the expense of content knowledge: there are definitely huge gaps in the content knowledge of my students. And while big picture I'm okay with this (you're going to make mistakes whenever you try to innovate in your classroom) it's something I need to clean up.

There was entirely too much writing clumped into about six weeks at the end of October and November and not enough earlier in the semester. Another drawback of student creation: probably not enough writing tasks.

I am abjectly failing in one class: resentment towards tasks - even tasks that allow for significant student voice and choice - dominates that class. It is far and away my biggest failure from this semester. It is also going to be my biggest victory second semester. More on That Class here.

All of the online collaboration and creation that my students have done has come at the expense of class discussions around document work and other big ideas that we've covered. I need to do a better job finding this balance to get my kids the space to process ideas together.

My assessment structure isn't what I want it to be. While trying to give kids space to take risks in the classroom, it has morphed into something I don't love. Can we just get rid of grades? Great.

***

Overall, the semester was a positive one. Probably the most fun semester I've ever had in the classroom. I'm blessed so be working with a group of awesome kids who will roll with me and try things and then provide good actionable feedback that helps make my class better.

That's probably the biggest positive of the semester: a spectacular group of kids.

And learning. By me in particular. If my kids learned 20% as much as I did this semester, they learned a ton.

***

I'm excited for what second semester has in store. We've got a fascinating three or four weeks to spend on Afghanistan. We're going to spend a couple weeks on Syria. There's an awesome counterfactual history project that we'll do. And May? I've got no idea. My kids might run class in May.

And this the fourth - and last - semester with these students. It's gonna be a blast.

We're gonna crush it. I can already tell.

Collaborative Structures and Inquiry in a 1:1 Class

I've been lucky to get to work with a really awesome teacher candidate (TC) this year: she has totally rolled with and been flexible in the weird (or more accurately the hot mess) that is my classroom. She asks good questions. She adds value to assignments and projects.

She has been working recently on a group task that she taught and is an assignment for one of her grad school classes. I went through the same grad program she did, and this was a class I remember pushing back a little bit against the class this assignment was for as well.

There are some structures to this group task that are imposed on TCs that they are required to use. As I reflected on her task with her, we got into a fascinating discussion about fostering collaboration versus assigning group work.

I then took this discussion to a few awesome members of my PLN. After bouncing ideas around with them, a few things became clear. One, the difference that I was trying to force between collaboration and groupwork was, as Kelly Kermode rightly pointed out, largely about labeling the negative aspects of poorly designed or thought out groupwork as groupwork and labeling the better parts of groupwork as collaboration.

So what were my issues? Hokey roles being assigned to kids. Too much structure in the resources - my class is 1:1 - for my liking. Not always having the necessary time crunch - in group tasks, kids can fall into what Jon Corippo calls The Suck: periods that lack productivity because of this lack of a time crunch. (Or sometimes because there isn't enough work for the kids to do, and people feel like they can slack off - someone else will do the work. But that's my addition to The Suck.)

So where is all this going? Yeah, that.

Well, all these ideas - yes, ideas fueled by an awesome PLN (#BetterTogether) - created a new iteration of historical inquiry for my kids. In groups of three or four, they had sixty minutes to figure out why people allowed the Holocaust to happen. I provided some initial resources and a description of the product. I intentionally created a task that was too big for kids to get done in sixty minutes. (Link to the description of the task is here.) They had to divide up the work and talk about what their research turned up and then create.

Collaborative Google docs were started immediately. Some groups made graphic organizers on the docs. Others cordoned off parts of the page to take notes on. And then they went at it.

I haven't had a chance to look over the products yet, but there was a lot I like about this task. It was too big for groups to handle without collaborating on it so The Suck didn't happen. Kids had to share - and listen - to their group members. And they had to come to some sort of a consensus about why people allowed the Holocaust to happen.

Was it perfect? No. Inquiry never will be. Was it a step in the right direction? I'm going with a hearty yes on that. The size do the task made collaboration necessary. Kids had a real reason to use devices: they needed to go out and locate more resources and test their hypothesis. The lesson was a step in the right direction towards what collaborative inquiry can be in a 1:1 classroom.

So what's next? A couple things. Look at the products my kids produced. Think more about the level of scaffolds that I provided for them: were more needed? Fewer? And finally - and most importantly - ask the kids how it went. What changes do they think need to be made?

I'm excited to keep pushing on this: good collaborative historical inquiry that leverages tech? That's moving towards exciting places in SAMR land.

World War II Project Thoughts

I’m still waaay in the developmental phases of what my 1:1 class looks like. As of now, it consists of some whole class work - big historical thinking projects: socratic seminars, structured academic controversies (basically inquiry-based history) as well as Humanities focused items that connect my class to English content. This time is coupled with time for a ‘your choice’ section of the unit where students have the freedom to go learn about some aspect of a given unit that interests them.

So based on some feedback from my students after the Rise of Totalitarian Dictators unit, changes were made to the ‘your choice’ section of my World War II unit. (WWII unit project description here.) Students were given the choice to pursue a smaller area of focus for this section of the WWII unit - female spies, for example - or something larger that would allow them to see the whole scope of WWII.

Great. Awesome. Let’s do this.

Oh wait. Then I took away the ability to show what you learned with a Google presentation. My kids had done too many of them. Let’s move on to something new.

So what happened? Kids who are REALLY excited about Thinglink. Kids who taught themselves Prezi. Groups are collaborating using mural.ly. And guess what? This doesn’t happen WITHOUT taking away Google presentations.

Scale models are happening. Minecraft is happening. SO COOL.

Okay, I get it. I shouldn’t get excited about students being engaged by a new tech tool. But still. If they are excited to use the tool to show what they know, and are more engaged in the content creation, that’s a definite win.

Andrew and Aidan on a GHO w/ Diane Main talking about their Minecraft project