Journeys in Podcasting 3: Socratic Circles

In house we study a series of Socratic Circles from a project with Lynsey Tveit and Jessica Hertz and compare other methods and practices such as Circle of Knowledge and The Unquiet Librarian's experiences with Twitter backchannels during Socratic Circles.  

We interview Dr. Aaron Kuntz from the University of Alabama about his participation in the Disruptive Dialogue Project and the role of critical discussion in literacy development.

Finally our fourth graders discuss pros and cons of Socratic Circles with author James Sturtevant's seniors.

Journeys in Podcasting 2: Student Created Screencasts

Our second podcast discusses strategies in student created screencasts using Explain Everything. We discuss Math tutorials, procedural tech tutorials, and possible applications in a project based planning framework. For extension, we interview Reshan Richards, creator of Explain Everything.

Journeys in Podcasting 1: Collaborative Tools

Journeys in Podcasting is a collaborative project between Natalia Leon, third grade teacher, Diego Lopez, technology integrator, and Chris Davis, technology innovation project coordinator. These early sessions were our first attempts at podcasting with the intent of researching within the walls of Colegio Nueva Granada, then extending the research with video conferencing beyond. These recordings are very much evidence of tech integration themes of a particular space and time, however the theories of learning we began developing are as applicable today as the current challenges of Ai, different tools, same wicked problems. 

Chris Davis · Ahmed Kharrufa on principles, practices, and potentials of collaborative learning through tech

Socratic Spaces

Socratic Spaces

Learning communities are networks, systems that themselves grow and learn, propelled by the interactions of their members.  Socratic spaces are a vital network element enabling learning of both individual and group, created by a collection of mindsets - respecting conflicting point of view, empathizing with the speaker, understanding cultural perspective - and methods of knowing when to ask the probing why and how questions to drive thinking deeper.  Paulo Freire identified these critical discussions as essential to learning - where our ideas conflict, our potential to learn is greatest.  Where two beams of light intersect, their brilliance is most intense.   Today in the 21st century, we add the lever of technology and we potentially move the earth.

Enter Mrs. Renee Cheng's fifth grade class where students engaged in a three week project using poetry, social issue driven literature, in class Socratic book clubs, and online platforms to deepen their reflective process.  Our goal was to create a mixture of classroom discussion and lab space combined with an online platform to invite multiple forms of student expression. Students amazed us with their ability to revisit, rethink, and deepen their thinking through the combination of classroom time discussion and online sharing space.

Our project began within metered verse, the wails of the blues, and the polyrhythms of be bop jazz captured by Langston Hughes.  We began by singing a blues version of "Madam and Her Madam", rapping "Children's Rhyme", and dramatically reciting "A Dream Deferred".  To better grasp historical distance we traced the line of thought from a young African American "...I know I can't be president..." to the modern times of Obama's inaugural speech referencing Martin Luther King's "dream", then back to Langston's "dream deferred".  Then we dove into a closer analysis of "Madam and Her Madam", a narrative of a mistreated maid by her employer.  Students grappled with writing in first person from four different perspectives - the maid, the Madam, the poet, and the modern reader - then used iPads to capture their metacognition of the process in Explain Everything screencasts.  With Google Sites as a sharepoint, the dialogue continued the following day in class.

The next phase of the project challenged students to a real life practicum, a Skype interview with Australian poet Kevin Brophy at the University of Melbourne.  To spark questioning, two poems from Kevin served as insight into Brophy’s perspective.  Through Google Docs students brainstormed, edited, and revised their inquiry, finalizing a list of probing questions.

At 8:00 AM we arranged arena seating around out projected screen.  We DC laughed at the notion of us being in Brophy’s past, he in our future.  Then Omer started with a bang,

“Ok.. so a famous Israeli poet once said, ‘A man is model of his own homeland.’ In what way is poetry affected by your homeland?”  

Students posed questions while the class frantically collaborated on collective notes online.  Kevin was playful and laughed with each student, picking up on minuscule details in their appearance and mannerisms, and then, through a mixture of poems he recited to the class and anecdotes from his own life, he dove straight into life’s heartiest matters - nationalism and identity, estranged parents, global warming, child abuse, how to maintain inspiration and creativity, and advice on finding direction in life…

“You don’t really choose what you become you just become what you are.”

It was impossible not to be moved by the acuity of his thinking and glaring honesty with the students.  I wondered if we had pushed our fifth graders into issues too deep to digest, but, as defined by Aristotle, the right mix of ethos, pathos, and logos makes something unavoidably interesting.  Over the next few days we watched as scattered seeds germinated.

That night students collaborated on a Google Document transcribing the interview, embellishing details like a few moments of dramatic silence went by, and, Jiho got up and left dramatically.  They also identified the parts of the interview that were most meaningful.  In class these highlights became the central focus of silent, slow motion socratic dialogues using post its and butcher paper, as we emphasized that reading and writing are just very slow conversations that allow one to encapsulate thoughts before sharing them.  To explore different platforms of expression these threads were digitized using Murally, a Google App that serves as an interactive posting board.  A line from one of Brophy’s poems, “panic is our companion”, instigated a vibrant discussion.  Joshua explained…

“...even when you're crying your eyes out, a bit of panic is with you, because your sane side thinks, ‘I'm so upset, I might get TOO out of control in emotion, and start getting angry, and you know where the panic goes from there.’ So, panic is kind of a second brain in your body, a second personality, always looking for what to worry about, what to be afraid of, what to panic about.”

One of many more beautiful examples inviting an openness in student reflection in thought we don’t always find face to face interaction.  Technology served as a medium to capture student expression through collaborative documents, verbal-visual-tactile Explain Everything screencasts, backchannel discussion threads, live interviewing with Skype, slow motion socratic dialogue using Murally, and Google Sites as the platform base for documenting and curating everything.  All of this to create a living classroom space where the critical discussion has already begun prior to the real time meeting, and a revisiting space is there to collect student thought in multiple formats.

And as always, this is not about the technology, it’s about fomenting the learning community by enabling every learner.  Technology just makes it more intense, more immediate, more flexible, more metacognitive, more integrative, more personal… and, more fun!

Drumming Practice

Drumming at the Talent Show

Explain Everything

Extending the Lever:  APPlying Explain Everything

Big expenditure brings big expectations.  As elementary gets more iPads we focus our attention on the APPlication of Apps.  

"Technology needs to provide us with a low floor (an easy way to get started) and a high ceiling (lots of possibilities for taking things even further). There also needs to be wide walls, so that projects can be extended into other domains ..." - Mitch Resnick

The App landscape for the iPad can be overwhelming but in elementary we are quickly learning how to differentiate between content apps that may be used for a short time, like a book being checked out from the library, and production apps that become tools we use throughout the year for students to produce their own multimedia.  Explain Everything, a wipe board screen casting app, fits our criteria.  

Mr. Gahringer’s fifth graders piloted its use during their study of circuits.  Students documented their learning by photographing their circuits they created with batteries, wires, bulbs, motors, and switches.  They then photographed their schematic drawings from their wipe boards and their research notes.  The images easily imported into Explain Everything slides and students began recording their multimedia presentations that they then shared with their peers for review.  

Coincidentally, a week earlier I “attended” StemX, a free online education conference that has no physical location.  Presenters and attendees meet on Blackboard and interact, similar to how they would at a traditional education conference, only here the participants are scattered around the world.   Reshan Richards, the creator of Explain Everything, presented on his app, I was able to ask him a few questions.  

I learned the intention of creating the app was for highlighting process, to make thinking visible, and provide a foundation for reflection and revision.  Students’ thinking can be captured without the teacher having to be present which means that certain students, maybe shy in front of the group, or not apt to record all of the their thoughts on paper, can work and perform at their own pace in a tactile, visual, and auditory format.

Intuitive and social learning took over.  After a brief introduction to the app, students mostly discovered and taught each other how the app functions, similar to the cooperative learning shown in Sugata Mitra’s “Hole in the Wall” (see his Ted Talk) where students with no computer training were able to learn and teach each other without adults.  Students quickly manipulated the arrows, text, zoom, laser pointer, and then recorded multiple versions until satisfied.  But the most thrilling observation was seeing students who don’t share as enthusiastically as others create flawless oral presentations.  The inner perfectionist revealed in each student.  Their videos uploaded easily to Google Drive for peer review and teacher assessment.  

Pencil, paper, wipe boards and markers, and most importantly our hands and brains were all put to use.  Traditional technologies were still present, but Explain Everything and one powerful mini-media production studio, or iPad, helped us transform our learning to a new form and level.  Not only did students have to organize their thinking into written research notes, but they had to visually organize slides, logically order their presentation, and work on verbal delivery.  By putting their work up for peer review they used each others’ critical judgement before it ever reached final review.

The APPlications for Explain Everything are limitless.  Teachers can flip their classrooms by sending the lecture home for homework and doing the homework as classwork where students have access to the teacher.  Or students could do something as simple as photograph their text, record their reading and thinking, annotate it, and share it with anyone, anywhere.  It only takes a few minutes to learn and it is APPlicable to just about any content, any subject.  Explain Everything gets added to our toolbox for building a better CNG.