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.

#edu531 Guest Appearance

About a month ago, Andrew Schwab put out a call to folks to have them stop by his #edu531 class - a class of preservice teachers - via Google hangout. Clearly, I was interested in chatting with some folks about to head out into the classroom!

I chose to talk about the importance of student choice in the classroom. We started the conversation with some brainstorming around the importance of student choice. Next we talked about SAMR and how it relates to choice - as you move up into modification and redefinition with technology, I believe the importance of student choice becomes clearer: choice allows you to modify and redefine what can happen - and who does the thinking! - in the classroom. We then moved into what student choice looks like in the classroom: the easier way to do it (choice around demonstration of knowledge) and the harder way to do it (choice around content).

Dan Pink's ideas about autonomy, mastery, and purpose are important here, and were mentioned. I tied these ideas into genius hour, 20Time, and Innovation Day. It's always fun to share these more envelope-pushing projects with teachers, particularly newer teachers. The sooner you can get teachers unattached to all-content-all-the-time, the better.

Finally, I shared some free tools at the end. Want to check it out? The link to the doc I shared with the #edu531 folks is here.

On the big screen! Thanks for the pic, Andrew.

EdTech with Teacher Candidates

I got about 30 minutes to share some thoughts on integrating tech into a middle and high school history classroom tonight with an awesome group of teacher candidates from Stanford's Teacher Education Program (STEP). As a STEP grad, it was cool to be able to go back and share some things that I do to try to thoughtfully integrate tech into a history classroom.

I stressed using tech for students to create (not consume) and preached the Twitter message (get on Twitter now, darnit). I walked them through the SAMR model as a guide for tech integration and gave examples of SAMR and Google docs.

It was a good conversation, but too short! I also got to hear Bobby Cupp talk about how he integrates tech in his classroom. Give Bobby a follow - he's a super thoughtful guy!

Here's the document I shared with them.