Five innovations for the first day of school

Although I was at school last week, tomorrow is the first day for students and I’m very excited. I’ve changed a few of my approaches to teaching and can’t to get started. I think other teachers may be interested, so I’ll outline a few of this year’s innovations:

1 Organizing resources with Evernote. As I’ve been reporting in my ‘Inquiry with Evernote‘ posts at Inquire Within, I have a few hundred photos, articles, videos, websites, etc tagged according to theme, concepts, and disciplines. The result is a cache of resources that can be called upon in various ways and is meant to provide provocation and support for inquiry-based learning and teaching.

2 Using the class blog as a learning hub. This year, our blog will be central to learning, connecting, and collaborating. With that in mind, I’ve already prepared posts in draft form ready to be published when the time comes. For example, in our first unit, we’ll view two videos and read a magazine article. We’ll discuss them in class, but respond on the class blog. I’ve embedded the videos and link to the article in posts so that they can be reviewed before students respond by writing comments.

We’ll be inviting other classes inquiring into similar themes or topics to respond, as well, by searching their blogs for related posts on which to comment and using twitter to raise awareness.

3 Designing connected, creative learning. Tomorrow, there’s a significant chunk of time set aside for a Marshmallow Challenge. This year, I want to introduce and nurture the ‘maker’ spirit much more than before. MIT Media Lab’s Learning Creative Learning course and this summer’s Making Learning Connected MOOC inspired me to think less like a traditional teacher and more like a designer of learning experiences, or metateacher. Providing materials and time for tinkering and the tools for collaboration and reflection is a great way to get started, I think.

4 Emphasizing Independent Inquiry. My grade 6 class will undertake our school’s first PYP Exhibition. Independent inquiry is essential for the process, so I plan to help my students develop their skills during the entire year both in and out of school.

5 Using Google Apps to engage parents. During parent orientation last week, I introduced families to an experiment. I plan to document students’ development along the PYP Language Scope & Sequence by using using this google doc. I’ve made a set of four for each student (listening & speaking, viewing & presenting, reading, writing). Learning outcomes which they have already achieved are changed to white background color. As they practice the phase 4 and 5 outcomes, I’ll be adding dates and linking to artifacts, whether they are online, scanned images, etc. Each time an outcome is practiced, it’s color becomes lighter. When it’s white, it’s considered mastered.

The beautiful part is that I’ve shared each student’s documents with their parents so that they can see, comment on, and participate in tracking their child’s learning. They seem very excited about it and I can’t wait to see how it works.

Thanks for reading! What are your innovations this year?

Connected Learning or just learning?

Make Cycle 6 (envisioning)

I was a rather curious child and a natural inquirer. A particular interest in cars led me to subscribe to magazines like Road & Track and Automobile, talk to knowledgeable people about how cars work, and even invest in a wonderful book called Auto Math Handbook. It provided the engineering foundation for many car designs which I diligently drew while summarily ignoring the television.

I’m pretty sure one of my designs inspired the creation of the Bugatti Veyron.

When I first researched for an assignment using my father’s CompuServe account, I knew the internet was special. I dreamed of sharing and collaborating with people around the world. I joined AOL chat rooms in 1995, enjoyed my first free dial-up via AltaVista, and became unsettled when my email address change from RocketMail to yahoo!. I was a developing musician and composer and saw the incredible potential of the internet for learning, sharing, and collaborating about music.

As the years passed, however, the internet became a distraction. I tried new sites, sought new connections, but everything felt hollow. Rather than sharing, I was collecting ‘friends’ and ‘likes’. Rather than collaborating, I was arguing with forum trolls. Eventually, I avoided the internet, relegating it to the same status as television and shopping malls – distracting, frivolous, commercial.

I was a victim of data overload. Connection saturation. It took a decade of stumbling across websites and mucking about in social networks to gain a degree of fluency necessary just to be able to peer through the haze at what is looking back on the other side of the modem:

You.

Not to be overly dramatic, but that’s the end of my Making Learning Connected MOOC reflection. Primarily, this experience has reminded me of what excited us about the internet twenty years ago. So here it is, the future of connected learning for me is to compose my first String Quartet.

The fourth movement is based on a figure I wrote seventeen years ago in Nepal.

It’s going to have four movements, and I’m doing it all by hand, no notation software until every note is written. Then, I’ll do what I always wanted to: Use the internet to share it.

I’ll be incorporating Connect Learning principles into my classroom practice, of course. Ensuring that my students develop their media fluency has become a top priority as I have discovered that it is the key to effectively utilizing the internet for learning.

I hope you’ll also continue to follow my posts as the Independent Inquiry project progresses.

Learning Walk

I thought my evening commute would be a good route for a Learning Walk. New perspectives on a familiar pathway…

I want workbenches in my classroom.

Make Cycle 5 (reflection)

The first assignment I remember from my ‘teacher training’ was to make a map of my ideal elementary classroom. It was based on what I called ‘zones’. There was a quiet reading zone equipped with beanbags, a gallery zone with easels dedicated to exhibiting artwork, and a vegetable garden under the windows. My proudest feature, however, was the workbenches. When I presented my map to the class, I spoke about how it was fine for students to have desks, but I wanted another area without chairs, just large, tall tables around which they could collaborate and build.

I wanted workbenches.

I had a few years experience teaching musical keyboard classes. I had wild ideas of ‘open school’ and giant learning spaces in which the boundaries between teacher and student, classroom and community, were smeared beyond recognition.

All I knew was that children learn best when they are self-directed and encouraged to collaborate.

Then, I became a teacher.

My first classroom in a start up charter school was far too small to squeeze anything but the students’ desks into. My own desk was just a waist-high bookshelf with a computer keyboard and monitor on top. Slowly, sadly, my dream to have a creative workspace for students became hazy and distant. Sure, they sculpted and painted at their desks. We arranged them in rectangles for collaboration. A few even took me up on the offer not to use a chair. My dream, to see my class on their feet learning with sweaty elbows and unrestricted creative potential, slowly drifted away.

Until the Making Learning Connected MOOC.

Now I’m considering a map for my classroom for the next school year. Considering? No. Conspiring is a better word. One idea, inspired by Sam Sherratt of Time Space Education, was to have an individual studio for each student arrayed around the classroom and all of their desks clustered in the center for meetings and collaboration. They would be free to arrange, decorate, and hack their studios as they like. They will undertake our school’s first PYP Exhibition and need an open creative space. I want to expand the Independent Inquiry project by providing more time to collaborate in class. Sam’s concept of classroom as studio is exactly what we need.

Will I be able to get workbenches? Doubtful this year, but if I leave the possibility open for them to bring their own preferred style of desk, it may be even better. Has anyone heard of BYOD? Bring Your Own Desk? Build Your Own Desk?

I’m very grateful to the  Making Learning Connected Community for helping to reawaken my creativity toward learning and teaching. I feel like a smartass student teacher again with huge ideas, inspired.

Someday, I will have workbenches.

My Connected Learning Credo

Make Cycle 4 Reflection (Credo)

I believe that trust is the foundation of learning.

Learning is built on a foundation of trust.

I’m having a hard time trying explain it. It’s kind of a gut feeling and it will probably be different tomorrow anyway. I would like to I really need to reflect on how I arrived at it, however.

I joined the Making Learning Connected MOOC for summer professional development and specifically to help develop my Independent Inquiry project for the next school year. Since the project was largely inspired by Mimi Ito’s talk in the MIT MediaLab Learning Creative Learning MOOC, it only made sense to continue along that path of inquiry. I introduced myself innocuously and interacted with some nice people until…

I was shanghaied by the dread pirates Tellio and Dogtrax and their band of swarthy makers and dangerous creative thinkers! They hacked and challenged me and each other with unbridled aggression. Do this! Do that! Look here! Look there! My Google+ notifications were a distress beacon calling mayday on the high seas of my iPhone.

Then they did something unprecedented which has changed my outlook on learning forever.

They encouraged me.

With fervor. I couldn’t help but get swept up in the enthusiasm. I felt driven to participate. Within days, I felt that I had joined the gang. I was encouraging other land lubbers with positive comments and thoughtful suggestions. I began to consider piercings and tattoos. I hoisted the Jolly Roger and invaded new communities, trying to draw others into the mischief.

Then I began to trust my fellow pirates. I knew that whatever I tried, they would take seriously. If I made an honest effort, they would return it in kind. If I stumbled, they would lend their arms. When they hesitated, I would urge them on. Keep to the code.

The confidence that followed freed my mind. I began to act strangely, pondering the imponderable and imagining the unimaginable until a revelation hit me like a storm-driven swell!

This is what I want for my students, and now I know how to do it.

Build trust through unrelenting encouragement.

Is laziness good for learning?

Make Cycle 3 Reflection (Map)

Witnessing the creativity and originality of the maps my peers in the Making Learning Connected MOOC had submitted, I was overwhelmed by my own laziness. I didn’t feel like being ‘hands on’. Didn’t want to tinker. Wouldn’t go outside. I wasn’t even inspired by the thoughtful prompts or useful tools which had been shared. I was just too lazy.

Was it because this is the first week of my summer break? Was it because the weather in Tokyo is becoming hotter and muggier? Am I naturally lazy?

From an evolutionary perspective, isn’t being lazy very important? Wasted energy and effort don’t support survival, and nobody likes a busybody out on the Serengeti. Lions are lazy, sleeping most of their lives, and bears hibernate for a few months every year! Bears and lions are awesome, so why is laziness such a taboo?!

As I wallowed in my laziness, it dawned on me that I could make a map to help solve my problem, both to understand my laziness and finish my assignment, and viola!, my Laziness Map.

Click to view in google drive.

Working on it was metacognitively enlightening. I managed to achieve precisely one of the subconscious goals of Independent Inquiry, which is to have fun learning without realizing the seriousness of the learning occurring. This is a major breakthrough, as I often struggle to motivate or encourage students who “can’t think of anything” to inquire into or try. Knowing that whatever they do will be exercising their learning, I might suggest that they do nothing. Just go for a stroll or make a list of words beginning with ‘D’.

I should encourage students to seek creative strategies that work for them and present models in the form of famous artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, etc, to help guide and inspire them.

‘I choose a lazy person to do a hard job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.’ Bill Gates

In terms of creativity and innovation, laziness is not necessarily negative. My laziness led to a fun and creative solution to the problem of making a map. Perhaps makers should embrace laziness when it overtakes them in order to stimulate untapped creativity. When in doubt, take a nap.

While I’m not planning to encourage laziness in my class, I do think that authentic autonomy in learning must provide the opportunity for inactivity as well as activity. I look forward to exploring these notions further.

Naps will remain encouraged, of course.

Toy Hack – Thomas the Train Plays Marimba

For my Making Learning Connected Toy Hack, I used a laundry clip to attach one of my almost two-year-old son’s marimba mallets to his Thomas the Train toy. I had to wait until he was taking a nap because he doesn’t appreciate when I fiddle with his toys.

This is exactly the type of toy hack I would have tried as a child. It started from a novel and fairly simple idea. Acquired the time and materials. Put it all together. A moment of triumphant elation when it works. Then disappointment or dissatisfaction coupled with a nagging desire to make it better, louder, faster, more complex…

Introduction for Making Learning Connected MOOC

I ‘signed up’ a little late, but should be caught up by the end of the weekend. I’m so excited that I found this MOOC, Making Learning Connected, because it applies directly to my Independent Inquiry project and will be fun professional development for the summer. I am an elementary school teacher at an international school in Tokyo.

By way of an introduction, please visit my SoundCloud profile and listen to my music. I composed all of the music on there, and will be uploading more soon, including my current improvisational electronic project.

https://soundcloud.com/bartlmiller