Exhibition rubrics & Global Issues Expo

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Elements of the PYP Exhibition

This week, my class of fifth and sixth graders began the culmination of their IB Primary Years journey, the Exhibition. A self-directed and collaborative project, it is my favorite part of the year and a deeply enjoyable challenge to facilitate.

Before setting out, I organized a meeting with all Exhibition stakeholders including students, parents, teachers, and administrators. We discussed everyone's ideas, questions, and concerns in order to draft our Essential Agreements.

Components

The Exhibition Guidelines provide clear expectations, which I have synthesized for the students to provide support for their projects. One helpful practice I have chosen is to clarify five required components of the project. Specifically, every student must choose a global issue, deliver a persuasive speech, write an expository essay, create a work of art, and engage in community action. Among our first activities was introducing the organizer below.

In this way, each student has a clear map of expectations, yet is empowered to pursue their project along their own path.

Student Empowerment | COETAIL final project

A keen observer will notice that I haven't exactly followed the assignment here. Rather than revising a unit of instruction to attempt to redefine learning, my goal is to utilize educational technology to empower students to redefine their own learning. In a sense, I am reimagining every unit I teach. I started by trying to revise a single unit, but every change I made toward increasing student choice, voice, and agency, resulted in thinking less about deciding what I wanted students to do, and more about how I was going to document and curate what they would decide to do.

Maker Club year 1

One year ago, I started a Maker Club at my school as part of our after school program. While maker spaces for older learners generally focus on robotics and digital creation, I believe that an elementary maker experience should start from concrete, physical creation. Most of our materials were donated by families, but we also frequently raid the school art supplies.

Based on my participation in the Learning Creative Learning MOOC in 2013, the initial guiding principles for our Maker Club were Independence and Social Creativity.

Independence

It's critical that Maker Club have no assignments. The only requirement is to always be 'making'. Imagining, researching, designing, sharing, and reflecting are all parts of the making process.

A Maker Faire often includes digital production, as well as arts and crafts, engineering and construction, cooking, scientific experiments and demonstrations, and the visual and performing arts. There are no artificial limits.

For the first few meetings, there was a refrain of 'What should I make?', 'What do you want to make?'. This dialog is indicative of empowerment. As young makers realize that they are in control of their learning in their maker space, their creativity is ignited.

In a sense, this is what makes a maker space. Of course, maker tools and materials are important, but most important is fostering an environment in which everyone feels safe to experiment and create.

Every maker must be encouraged to try anything, and indeed, 'makes' that fail are not failures at all. Failures are courageous learning experiences and opportunities to safely practice a growth mindset.

LX Design

Two intersecting areas of study which have captivated my interest this year, Design Thinking and Project Management, have significant promise as I consider how to apply new principles to planning a year of learning in my Grade 5/6 classroom.

The two disciplines are strongly intertwined and have profound implications when applied to designing learning experiences. This post seeks to define LX Design as an approach to classroom planning and as a framework for ongoing iteration and reflection.

Design Thinking

Completing the Macromedia University Design Thinking MOOC introduced me to the discipline of User Experience Design, or UX Design. When thinking in terms of user experience, a designer considers all human elements and possibilities related to a product or service, not only the material and economic.

For example, when designing a machine to make coffee, one must consider not only the cost and suitability of the materials used, but also the likely moods of users, often early in the morning, while using the coffee machine.

A common theme in Design Thinking is to understand people's emotional, social, psychological, and spiritual needs when designing products, services, and experiences. In the case of education, we design learning experiences, hence the term 'LX Design'.

Meanings of use

Klaus Krippendorff's lecture, The Key Concepts of The Semantic Turn, and in particular his explanations of 'meanings of use', challenged and transformed my thinking about learning. I recreated the graphic below to represent what I consider an essential model for educators. It is the foundation for my approach to LX Design.

Exhibition: PBL To The Max!

Exhibition

This year, my sixth grade class prepared and presented our school's first Exhibition. As an International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program candidate school, it was an opportunity for me to research project-based learning, put into practice the guidelines established by the IB, and for our students to experience a culminating project to conclude their elementary school lives.

DLMOOC

The timing of the Deeper Learning MOOC, a massive open online course dedicated in large part to Project Based Learning, could not have been better. A host of organizations were introduced and resources shared and discussed, as well as models and frameworks that I could use to inform and enrich my role as a facilitator and coach.

During the Week 9 Participants Panel, moderator Rob Riordan remarked to me, 'If you want to get engaged in deeper learning, a good way to start is to schedule an exhibition.'

His words reminded me of a quote by the prolific composer Duke Ellington: 'I don't need time. What I need is a deadline.'

The future of learning

This week, I am excited to continue my connected learning inquiry as a participant in a new course, Teacher Practice in a Connected World, taught by Meenoo Rami, author of Thrive: 5 Ways to (Re)Invigorate Your Teaching.

I feel very grateful to be enrolled in the course on a scholarship from The Rendell Center for Citizenship and Civics.

Ooooh?

Our first task is to write a statement of goals. It's a perfect opportunity to reflect on my connected learning and teaching journey which began about one year ago and summarize my hopes and goals for the future.

Reflecting on Edcamp Tokyo

Beginning with an errant tweet and concluding with an impressive Demo Slam, helping to organize and then participating in Japan's first Edcamp, Edcamp Tokyo, was a truly remarkable experience.

Incredible Team

Special appreciation belongs to Kim Cofino, Clint Hamada, and Yokohama International School for hosting us so well. Their attention to detail and world class facilities left nothing to be desired. The fluency of collaboration demonstrated by the entire organization team including Greg Feezell, Glenda Baker, Sarah Sutter, and Rab Paterson was simply astounding.

The result was an organization and planning process that was as enjoyable as it was effective.

Making Connections

The strongest connection I made at Edcamp was in the sharing of ideas between diverse learning communities. It was the first time I gained a sense for the approaches to learning and teaching being practiced at other schools and in a variety age ranges and developmental stages.

Discussing the Maker Movement with secondary educators was a revelation for me, as I gained insight into how my efforts at the elementary level can build the fundamental scientific, mathematical, collaborative, and innovative thinking skills that learners will expand and develop in the future.

Making Thinking Visible, a relatively new line of inquiry for me, turned out to be an in-depth discussion of the conceptual connections between learning in various disciplines and how explicitly taught and practiced 'thinking routines' can provide continuity between skills, topics, and ideas.

I was happy to share my experiences developing the Independent Inquiry project with a group of educators in the 20% Time in Education session. I hope that they will find the resources shared to be useful as they cultivate self-directed, interest-driven learning.

In the Creativity, Design, and Innovation session, there was a palpable desire for change. We all shared a passion for learning and hope for the future that was an inspirational way to end the day.

The notes from the sessions are all linked to the Collaborative Organization Document (aka the schedule), a resource which I hope can help to maintain the connections we have made.

Building Community

How Edcamp Tokyo helped to build a community of learners in Tokyo and across Japan remains to be seen. There haven't been any tweets using the #EdcampTokyo or #Edcamp東京 hashtags on Twitter for awhile, nor is there much activity on the Edcamp Tokyo Google+ Community.

In all likelihood, participants returned to their busy lives and classrooms with new perspectives and tools, but not necessarily time to reflect and share publicly. Given the intensity of engagement throughout the day, I'm confident that we are all applying our new understandings in creative and meaningful ways.

Personally, I feel that what we did was ultimately in the service of learning. Every idea shared was a generous gift and I'm happy to express sincere gratitude to all of the participants in Japan's first Edcamp.

Infographics in the classroom

Who doesn't love a good infographic?

I get my fix from Daily Infographic, but a quick Google search uncovers many more sources.

I'm often surprised how the layout, color palette, and design of a document draw me into a topic. To capitalize on this phenomenon in the classroom, I started building an infographics section on the wall.

The concept is so simple and fun. Just print infographics, laminate them, and affix them to the wall with magnetic tape. Students are welcome to browse during independent reading and inquiry periods. Having them mounted magnetically means they are portable. Occasionally, they become very excited about a particular graphic and share with each other.

Although it has been somewhat labor intensive to build a collection, the result is an engaging range that my sixth grade students find very inviting. Changing the selection always results in some kind of excitement, and learning with them builds visual media fluency and provokes inquiries in a novel way.

With such an emphasis on digital technology, it's important to remember that people learn in many different ways. Providing a variety of approaches to learning is always the best application of educational technology.

Why not start your own infographics wall?

PYP Exhibition: A Rite of Passage

Several weeks ago, I began an inquiry into visual literacy. Feeling that visual communication is My Greatest Weakness, it's been an exciting challenge to spill this can of worms and start stomping. It has been easy to find opportunities to practice and apply new skills and understandings in the classroom.

Purpose

My students have begun preparing their PYP Exhibition. It's our first in every sense: as individuals, as a class, and as a school. I have researched extensively about elementary school Exhibitions around the world and have been trying to approach the process from a design perspective.

Metateaching

The essence of metateaching is knowing students well and designing an environment in which their learning can thrive.

For Exhibition, that environment consists primarily of independence, yet it is important to introduce the project in a way that helps inform and inspire the process.

When I was preparing the presentation I would deliver to the school community about Exhibition, the Exhibition pre-Zen-tation, I intended to provide information about what we should all expect during the coming several weeks.

I blogged about the meeting in the post, Exhibition Week 0. It was successful, but there was something missing. From the perspective of visual literacy and storytelling, I realized that my efforts could accomplish much more if I aimed to persuade rather than inform, or, to use Seth Godin's terminology, 'persuade' rather than 'convince'.

The presentation and slides are effective at delivering information and provoking thought, 'convincing', but they wouldn't inspire anyone to join the adventure. They don't 'persuade'. They lack emotion.

What I needed was a video.

My own inspiration

To inspire my video, I pondered the Exhibition. The objective is for students to demonstrate mastery of the IBO Primary Years Program through self-directed and collaborative inquiry. It occurred me that it closely resembles a traditional rite of passage, a ritual marking the transition from one state or status to another.

In this case, the students are moving from elementary school to secondary school. They are presented with a challenging task and provided limited assistance and expected to use what they know to organize and take action. They are intended to cause cognitive dissonance, the resolution of which is both the process and product of the experience.

This led to the conceptual framework for the video. It would start with an introduction to rites of passage, then invite the students to engage in the inquiry process through video footage of other schools' exhibitions.

I do everything the hard way

At that point, things became ugly. Or interesting, depending on your perspective. I was trying to learn several different technologies, as well as visual literacy concepts and skills, all at the same time.

First there was searching for Creative Commons licensed images and video to remix. Next, learning how to use iMovie to organize and edit them, as well as adding the text. Adding text involved searching for an interesting font, a process in which I became totally lost for most of an evening. Finally, I hacked together a scratch music track with audio from one of my class' collective improvisations for keyboard percussion. Unfortunately or fortunately, I'm really not sure, technological misunderstanding prevented the audio from being included in the uploaded YouTube video.

Without further ado

I decided to share this version of the video because part of my personal inquiry is to be more collaborative. I have always had a very thin skin when it comes to critique and criticism, something I am working to improve. 

Please view my video and tell me what you think!

EDIT 19 March 2014 - View the final video in the post, Visual Literacy Achievements Unlocked!.

Exhibition Week 0

School Community Meeting

On Thursday evening, we held a presentation and meeting for students, parents, and teachers to learn about and discuss our school's inaugural PYP Exhibition to be held in about two months, on 26 April during our International Children's Day event.

I began the meeting by reviewing the description of the Exhibition on the International Baccalaureate Primary-Years-Program website and the directing everyone to the Exhibition Guidelines for further details.

Next, I delivered a short presentation. Here are the slides and notes:

Elementary Digital Music

For the past few weeks, I have enjoyed looking forward to my 'Music with Computers' after-school class on Wednesdays, for 2nd through 6th grade students.

It's a ten week course. During the first five weeks, I introduced various creation tools. The second half is for exploration, experimentation, composition, and creation.

The availability of intuitive, expressive, professional, free sound creation tools is exploding. I've enjoyed exploring to find a few of the best to share with students, as well as a few teachers who happened to be in the media center on Wednesday afternoon, and I would like to share them with you!

Synthesizer

 

SiON SoundObject Quartet

Student Blogging & Meaningful Connections: The Noobster

Using the Internet and specifically blogs to network classrooms around the world is a priceless learning activity, in my opinion. Writing for an audience provides incomparable motivation, receiving objective feedback provides authenticity, and engaging in developing as writers with other people promotes relevance and significance. I have blogged before about strategies for developing this network of connected young learners in the post, Engaging and Authentic Student Blogging.

A wild tweet appeared

More recently, during a #teach2blog Twitter chat, a wild tweet appeared:

Q1  What blogging activity can we initiate between our students, as a get to know each other activity? #teach2blog
— Paula Neidlinger (@pneid) January 16, 2014

While I was unable to properly participate in the chat, I did come up with a solution based on the Liebster award. Why not make a Liebster for student bloggers?

Introducing the Noobster

Student bloggers are 'noobs', and I think that the negative connotation that accompanies that term in online video games and chat rooms needs to be reappropriated into something positive. A Noobster is awared to student bloggers who are expressing themselves and sharing openly. A Noobster honors their courage as communicators.

The structure for writing a Noobster post is very simple. Be sure to include these directions in yours!

It should include: 

-The red  Noobster 'Noob' image embedded.

-One paragraph linking to the post in which the Noobster was nominated and describing your thoughts about receiving the award.

-Answer five questions about yourself.

-Write five random and interesting facts about yourself.

-Ask five questions to your own Noobster nominees.

-Nominate and link to five other student bloggers, preferably in different classes, to make your own Noobster nominations.

Comment on those five blogs informing the authors that you awarded them with Noobsters so that they can write their own. Don't forget to leave a link to your Noobster post!

Have fun!

I'm excited to see if this works to help students to connect and get to know each other as authors and audience. Here's a link to the first Noobster post. Watch your comment box for your nomination, noobs!

Teacher as Learning Documentarian

Looking at student work

'Looking at student work', the focus in the Deeper Learning MOOC this week, has me reminded of a project I have been working on this school year.

I teach in an inquiry learning elementary school  (PYP), an environment which facilitates and empowers deeper learning very effectively. As I have explored inquiry in the classroom, I have noticed that I do far less teaching and far more documentation.

Students engaged in authentic learning shouldn't be bothered by standards or specific learning outcomes, yet they constantly accomplish them. As a teacher, I see myself more as a learning documentarian seeking out evidence of their learning as they inquire into their interests and curiosities.

Google Doc experiment

In order to document learning according to an established continuum, I devised a shared google document which allows teachers to document learning individually for each student and can be used by any stake holder to review like a portfolio. It's still experimental, but I can already see how it is helping to maintain a balance between student-driven learning and traditional learning outcomes or standards.

How it works

Our learning continua are organized by phases, so I color coded each. When a student demonstrates a particular learning outcome, I indicate the date and hyperlink it to a digital version of the artifact. Examples so far have included scanned writing assessments, photographs, Evernote entries, videos, and blog posts. When an artifact is recorded, the shade of the box for that learning outcome is made lighter. A white box indicates a mastered learning outcome.

The example I provided in this post is for a sixth grader, so I took it for granted that the first three phases were mastered. Please have a look at phases four and five and follow the links to get a sense of how this type of document can work. If it were used from a young age and accompanied the student through elementary school, it would serve as an authentic representation of their learning.

This is still an experiment, and your comments and suggestions are highly welcomed. I would certainly appreciate collaborators on this project to develop an efficient system to document deeper learning!

PYP Exhibition Theme Synthesis

In the New Year, my sixth grade class will undertake our school's inaugural PYP Exhibition. Here's the description of the event from the International Baccalaureate Organization website:

"Students who are in their final year of the programme are expected to carry out an extended, collaborative inquiry project, known as the exhibition, under the guidance of their teachers.

The exhibition represents a significant event in the life of both the school and student, synthesizing the essential elements of the programme and sharing them with the whole school community. It is an opportunity for students to exhibit the attributes of the Learner profile that have been developing throughout their engagement with the programme. It is a culminating experience marking the transition from PYP to further steps in education.

Schools are given considerable flexibility in their choice of real-life issues or problems to be explored or investigated in the exhibition."

In the past years, I have visited several Exhibitions in Tokyo and explored the online presentations of dozens more. There are as many unique approaches as there are people participating! Designing an environment in which the exhibitioners will thrive is a grand and fascinating challenge and an ideal example of metateaching.

One aspect all examples I have viewed share in common is that they fall under one of the IB PYP Transdisciplinary Themes. However, in the Exhibition Guidelines, it states that one of the essential features should be to "synthesize aspects of all six transdisciplinary themes".

"synthesize aspects of all six transdisciplinary themes"

I thought of one way to attempt this by way of inspiration from refrigerator poetry magnets. I simply printed the key terms from the six transdisciplinary themes, laminated and cut them out, attached magnets and arrayed them on a corner of our whiteboard. My class and I had a brief discussion of the themes and the goal to draw items from them of interest to us and rearrange them to create our own theme description. From that, we can create a title for our theme which can serve as a title for our Exhibition.

They began by playing, which is exactly what I had hoped for. The point is to play with the words to begin to explore our ideas. As our ideas become more organized, so should the words. I am extremely excited to begin our Exhibition inquiries, and have been planning activities all year as practice and preparation. I view it as an archetypal Independent Inquiry, and the first formal test of many of the principles of inquiry we have been exploring.

The Evolution of Independent Inquiry

When I introduced Independent Inquiry in my Grade 4 class during the last school year, it was out of a desire to reinvent homework as a more relevant activity connecting learning at school with learning at home. The primary inspiration was the MIT Media Lab Learning Creative Learning course, and in particular, being introduced to Connected Learning.

Interest-driven learning comes as naturally to us human beings as breathing and scratching ourselves. The brain is made for it. We naturally seek creative solutions to problems and desire to learn what is useful and/or fun. I also became fascinated with the Maker Education Initiative and the implications of purposeful play for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education.

Why does school try to make learning so hard?

We began using a Google Form to reflect on our inquiries and holding weekly meetings to discuss the independent projects we were doing at home. Some highlighted projects can be found by searching the independent inquiry label here on Symphony of Ideas.

Soon after, I discovered Genius Hour. There were thousands of teachers around the world providing class time for students to pursue their passions and interests! Teaching at an inquiry school, I always provide time for independent research and autonomous learning opportunities, however, only along the lines of inquiry specified in our units.

The time had come to blow it wide open. I started a wiki to clarify purpose for myself and share with other educators, collect relevant resources and supporting articles, and publish my students' reflections.

Constructing The Learner Profile

One of the most positive and sincere refrains one hears in education is to teach 'the whole child'. Most of the time, however, what that means isn't clear. Common sense dictates that we should care about students' emotional and social growth as much as academic. Inquiries into learning modalities or multiple intelligences seem to shed light onto planning more inclusive learning opportunities. As a slogan, 'teach the whole child' is perfectly fine.

The IB Learner Profile takes a much needed step toward articulating more specifically what the attributes of a 'whole child', or indeed any person, are.

My approach to reflecting on and documenting development of the Learner Profile in my classroom is very simple. The attributes are posted at the edges of a large blank display. As students demonstrate an attribute, they or I suggest to attach an artifact of the event on the display. When someone 'nominates' an artifact, it's an ideal opportunity for reflective discussion and celebration of our achievements!

Thus far, we determined that exchanging origami Peace Cranes with students in Hawaii showed that we are caring, so we stuck some cranes on the board.

Our origami Peace Cranes show that we are caring.

Symbolically, I love having a visual representation in the classroom of our growth, not only as learners, but as people.

Our learner profile will fill up as the year progresses.

Visualizing our thinking and learning is a fun and remarkably useful endeavor, particularly in elementary school. In what ways are your students showing what they have learned and how they have grown?

Back-to-School Marshmallow Spaghetti Tower Challenge!

I was first introduced to this activity during the MIT Media Lab Learning Creative Learning course. There are a few variations, such as limiting the amount of resources or including tape, but for my students' first day of sixth grade, I let chaos reign.

I gave each group a package of dry spaghetti, three small bags of marshmallows, and the simplest rules I could think of:

1 Build the tallest structure you can.

2 You may only use the materials I gave you.

3 We'll measure after 60 minutes.

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.

Summer PD Reflection - DES!GN

My summer professional development challenge for myself was to expand my understanding of design, including graphic, physical, instructional, etc. It was my Independent Inquiry for the last several weeks and I'm happy to share my findings.

The first thing that happened to me was the Making Learning Connected MOOC. The values I learned during that collaboration of Equity, Social Connection, and Full Participation, create an excellent frame for designing learning activities and opportunities for my students. By ensuring that these values are represented in my classroom at all times, I'm confident that engagement will be enhanced.

Please view my Laziness Map and other posts for the collaboration. The spirit of the Making Learning Connected MOOC will continue to thrive in the Educator Innovator Network and I look forward to following and participating in that endeavor.

Another exploration I made was of the remarkable depth of design resources available on tumblr and Pinterest. In addition to being entertaining, these social networks are teeming with artists, designers, brilliant teachers, and other interesting people who are happy to share their excellent work and resources. I still consider myself a beginner 'pinner', but I have enjoyed discovering and following new boards, although I must admit that I've been mostly attracted to the food... Much of design sense, as with any aesthetic appreciation, comes from viewing and experiencing many examples and constructing one's own understanding and social networks provide a rich selection.

There was also this timely post, which I have yet to fully explore.

My wife, Yuka, was an invaluable teacher this summer. We had many discussions about color, layout, font selection, and many other topics related to the visual appeal and usability of my instructional tools. As I continue to prepare presentations and materials, it's exciting to apply the her tutorials about using Adobe Creative Suite.

Finally, she discovered and shared with me the Design Thinking for Educators Toolkit, which I immediately downloaded and began reading. Many of the principles remind me of my own notion of metateaching, but from an informed and more highly developed perspective. It's exactly what I can use to realign many of my own ideas with developed theories and concepts of design.