FLEX Room Usage

A few posts back, I talked about creating a room that can be used by all classrooms for various purposes. In fact, I believe all classrooms for all subjects should be mutable in some way; but we had to start somewhere, so low and behold, the KCS FLEX Room!  So what does this FLEX room look like and how is it working?  First, it seems to be working very well! The room is used by various classes and grades, with the booking of the room done with a simple whiteboard outside the room (with a few added sticky-notes for good measure and future booking it seems :).

FLEX Room Sign Up

For the most part, the grades span from Kindergarten to Grade 12 and the subjects also vary. In fact, there are even groups using the room outside of the standard classrooms (more on this later).

So, it is being used, but how is it being used? First, let us consider the philosophy of the room: I wanted a room that could be used by a classroom for independent or group work or lecturing or whatever else is needed. Some of these things can even be done at the same time in this room, while others would simply be too loud to do at the same time in the same space.

So, is this happening? Can this room be used by numerous groups for numerous reasons?

Below is a recent picture of the Grade 2 class using the room. As you can see, students are able to sit where they want and work on whatever the assignment requires of them to work on. Visually, what you see is that some students are reading, while others are working on projects of some sort.

Other students are sitting on chairs, while some have chosen to sit on the "poofs" (which are simply big bean bag kind of things). In fact, in the directly below, you will notice that a few of them are lined up along the window bench working independently.

The teacher for this class mentioned that the Elementary department has been working on trying to implement a strategy whereby students are asked to be more "independent learners", being given more freedom to choose topics that they would like to study or work on that are not mandated by the teacher. The thought is that this would help students to become more independent learners. For this teacher, the FLEX room makes it easy to implement such a strategy since the students can be working in different areas of the room on different topics at the same time. In fact, the classroom teacher commented that she "was not sure how I was going to do this" before the addition of the FLEX room.

With the addition of a computer, webcam (for teleconferencing), a Smartboard, and four movable whiteboards, this room becomes a great place to use for any grade and topic to work on whatever assignment(s) they would like to! In the picture to the left, for example, a high school student is able to use the whiteboards to present the information he needed to show to a group of his classmates.

In my opinion, however, this is not the best part of the room. For me, the best part of using this style of room is how it naturally changes the role of the teacher from lecturer to co-worker, mentor, and coach of either independent or group(s) of students. This, I believe, is because the room does not have a static front or back, but is completely mutable in every way (movable chairs, tables, and boards).

The usage does not seem to stop with classrooms either. Other groups within our school's extended family also use the room for various reasons (ex: PAC meetings, Graduation committee meetings, staff meetings, etc.).

Though there are still things to add and update in the room, I feel that the room itself is a success. Yes, it is a simple room and some might make comments like "How could you use this for a science class" or "Math wouldn't work here", but I think it can, and perhaps even should be. The subtle change that goes along with setting up a room like this is the philosophy that knowledge is easy for students to get now from various sources (the teacher is not the wellspring of knowledge anymore),  thus classrooms should change from a lecturer / listener style to group / independent work with a teacher / mentor style: this is the style this room is set up as.

Let me know if you have any thoughts about it!

BCTF Strike: Need Money in the Public School System? Send Students To Independent Schools. But what about the cost?

STRIKE!

The BCTF and the BC Government are at it again. I do wish the teachers the best, of course. However, I do also agree with Christy Gordon when she mentioned that the BCTF and the BC Government will have to come up with a strategy to not have such a disruption to schooling every time they work towards a new bargaining agreement. But what is that strategy, and is it even doable in BC? Sadly, I don't think it is, but let's travel down the rabbit hole together. 

Here's a thought: I recently talked to a new Grade One teacher who mentioned that she had 24 Grade One students, two of which had Ministry numbers; she found it very hard to effectively teach that class (though I am sure she did a great job). Yes, she was a new teacher, but having to spend so much of your time with a few students can take away from being the best teacher you can be for the entire group. If teacher salaries begin to take money away from other areas that impact education, or even force schools to close down, then smaller class sizes, better working conditions ,etc., could become bigger issues again - there is only so much money to go around.

So how do we fix this? As I recently heard on CBC Radio (Kamloops CBC station, May 28th at 12:30 pm), one might think that shutting down private/independent schools would help, as those schools receive a grant worth 50% of the funding a public school would receive per student; so if we shut them down, the public schools would then receive that money as well. However, as Dr. Peter Froese from the Federation of Independent Schools mentioned during the same talk, moving all the students from the Independent school  (12% of the student population I believe is what he mentioned are enrolled in Independent schools in BC) to the public system will actually cost the school district more money (that 12% of the student population is funded by only 5% of the populace). As well, many of the independent school teachers would then be moved to the public schools and their salaries would then have to be funded by the ministry. The long and short of it is that the public system would need more money to cover the influx of newer students and staff which the government grant itself would not cover. Where this money would come from is clear: tax dollars.  Let's look at it this from the flip side: one way to save money in the public educational system would be to move more students into the private sector. This seems to be happening on its own anyway as more and more parents are sending their students to private schools (http://metronews.ca/news/vancouver/857131/private-schools-in-b-c-bucking-trend-of-declining-enrollment/).

Now of course, you can't simply "move" students to an independent school: this needs to be a family choice. Also, you cannot increase government funding for independent schools as that will increase the needed money, thus increasing taxes again. Perhaps the issue itself is with the taxes: how much of our tax dollars actually goes towards the education system per family in BC?  Trying to figure out the taxes paid by each person in BC is almost impossible, as many have stated (http://retirehappy.ca/does-half-your-money-go-to-taxes/). Let me use myself as an example: I have five children, and each child gets a school grant of $8,603 per student this year. That means that my five children can bring a school $43,015 in funding from the Government. I know I don't pay this much in taxes on my income, but with all the other taxes I pay (as well as all the other income the Government gets), I guess in some way this money must be there (and more to cover the other publicly funded jobs, such as health care).

So, does the money add up? Is Dr. Froese right? Well, here's a little background and some number crunching to test this all out: according to the Ministry of Education (http://www.newsroom.gov.bc.ca/2013/03/operating-grants-maintained-per-pupil-funding-highest-ever.html) there are a total of 541,618 FTE (full time equivalent) students in 2013-14. Total grants given for all of these students in BC would then be $4,659,539,645 (this is a very close number to what the 2012/13 Ministry PDF shows at https://www.bced.gov.bc.ca/independentschools/is_resources/funding_rates_march2012.pdf; I will use the 2012 numbers from this point on as they are quite close). As well, according to the above mentioned documents, there were 68,127 students in private schools in 2012 (http://www.brentgranby.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/2011EdFacts.pdf), which is around 8% of the populace (I think the 12% mentioned by Dr. Froese must include all privately held schooling (not simply Tier 1 and 2 schools who are partly funded by the Ministry).  How much did independent schools actually get per student in 2012? Per student, according to the 2012 model, in the area I live in independent schools received $3999 for this current year, so let's use $4000 per student as an average for BC (this is not completely accurate, but it will make my point well). This would mean that in total (68,127 * $4000) the Ministry would have paid $272,508,000 to independent schools in BC. This sounds like a lot, but it is only around 6% of the total money paid out to schools. as you can see, the 8% of the populace only transfers 6% of the money from the Ministry funding to independent schools. That leaves a 2% profit to the Public school system (money they save and do not have to spend on students who are being educated). Adding the other students who are not at all being funded by the Ministry but are at schools (not supported at all by the Ministry) could increase this to the 12% mark, as Dr. Froese suggests, and this would save even more expenditure for the Ministry. 

The long and the short of it is this: yes, independent schools actually save the public school system money. I would suggest that increasing funding to the private system (which would lower tuition for some schools) and thus allowing more students to enter the private school system (allowing choice) could actually save the public education system even more money (there would have to be a bit of a balancing act, but of even a 1% more increase per student of funding to private schools attracts even 3% more of the students to the private school system, that would again give another 2% increase to the public education system budget).

But, and here's the caveat: independent schools all have an agenda, and as many of them are religious in nature, this plan would now fall flat on its face. Percentage wise, there are still about 50% of the population in BC that have religious affiliation according to current BC Census, so there may be an appetite for this. However, the tuition cost for independent schooling would be a large deterrent, thus shrinking that 50% pool into a smaller number. In fact, if we were to consider that the upper middle class in BC (those families making more than around $50,000 annually) is only around https://moneygenius.ca/blog/middle-class-income-canada of the population, it may well be that only 12% of the population could actually afford Independent schooling in BC. 

So, I guess we simply travelled down the rabbit hole and looked through the glass at an alternative world that will most likely never be. 

Empty Room = Educational Opportunity: How Do You Furnish An Empty Classroom Correctly?

I have an empty room. It used to be a computer lab. This year we decided to move the lab into another room (conglomerated two labs into one actually). The reason is simple: I don't believe that computer labs are as needed as they used to be. Almost all students have their own computers, be it phones, pads, laptops, etc. The issue now is connectivity - do they have access to cloud based systems? If they do, then they can make a lab wherever they are and use their own devices to do so. Many school have begun to use IPADS (which we have done as well) or other portable tablet devices and have consequently allowed those students who do not have portable computers of their own to use these. Does this mean we should get rid of all our computer labs? No it does not, since the younger students will most likely not have their own devices, or are not allowed to bring them to school. Also, some courses use specialized software that students will not normally have on their machines or which would not easily run or be used on tablet devices.

So we have one lab. What about the empty room? This empty room is earmarked to become a multi-purpose room.

Empty Room

The concept is this: we want the room (45' by 22' or so) to be usable for all classes, all grades, and for anything they want it to be. Tall task. But if we keep in mind 21st Century Learning tasks and contemplate what you want students to be able to do in the classroom, then I feel that this room can be furnished and set up to accommodate this.

Thinking from the younger grades up, here is a list of what we want the room to be able to accommodate:

1. Open space for students to move and find their own area to work in
2. Inviting, not over stimulating (for those ADD students), but not so bland that it does not inspire
3. Modular: no set style to the entire room - students can move objects around
4. Areas where you can lecture to an entire classroom
5. Areas where you can do mini-lectures with small groups of students - where many of these can happen at the same time (for collaboration)
6. Areas where students could work independently
7. Multimedia area (screen - projector - computer) for presentations
8. Areas to draw or brainstorm on (whiteboards)
9. Access to the Internet (WIFI)

So what will this look like and what will we put in? The process is still in the brainstorming stage, but we have a few ideas. Here is a quick list of some of the things we have thought about:

1. All desks and chairs should be movable
2. Chairs should be adjustable in height to accommodate bigger or smaller users
3. Tables should be trapezoidal in shape so they can be made into small or larger groups of desks if need be
4. Whiteboards should be movable: this allows us to make walls and work areas wherever we are
5. A large mural on one wall
6. Three tier stairs against the mural wall (22' wide) to accommodate for all students to sit on if you need to lecture
7. An area with a sofa and a desk, computer, etc., for multimedia presentations or for teleconferencing options
8. Single seating areas along the window
9. WIFI node in the room for clear internet access (along with a few plug ins for laptop power and network access)
10. Some foam blocks or bean bags for younger students to sit on and move around as well.

As we progress through this, I will post updates on the project. 

Fraser Institute: A Look at the Standings from the Numerically Changeable Top

 Saying the name of this organization to teachers or administrators of schools in BC will prompt responses: some will be positive and some will be words that I talked about in my last post. The school I work at happens to be at the top of the pile of high schools in our city this past year (1st for high schools [1 of 12] and 6th for Elementary schools [6 of 30]) and, yes, we are happy (we'll take it). However, what strikes me about our standing is how easy it could have been different. Also, it brings to question how accurate it is.

Our school is small: the n of the students used by the Fraser Institute was 19 for the high school. Our mark was a 7.4 (out of 10). Again, this doesn't speak well for all schools in our area as we, the highest ranked high school this year, only received a mark of 74%. For the Grade 4 (Elementary), the n was even smaller (13) and we received a 6.9 ranking (6th out of 30 elementary schools in our area, which is good).

Interestingly, of the top 10 ranked high schools, only 3 of them had over 100 grad students. Does this suggest that smaller schools do better? Let's go one step further: do better at what exactly? 

My initial thought on the issue of working in a small school and the Fraser Institute ranking system is this: numerically, when you have only 16 students as we did, having a few students who did not for whatever reason do well on their exams will bring the institute's score down, perhaps by quite a large amount. In fact, the Fraser Institutes' own "How To Read The Ratings" help file has this to say: "Indicator results for small schools tend to be more variable than do those for larger schools and caution should be used in interpreting the results for smaller schools." And yet, overall, it is the smaller private schools in BC that seem to consistently do better in this form of rating than the larger public schools.

The Fraser Institute uses many measuring points to come up with a total for a school:"The Overall rating out of 10 takes into account the indicators a) average exam mark, b) percentage of exams failed, c) school vs exam mark difference, d) gender gaps, e) graduation rate and f) delayed advancement rate." According to Sridhar Mutyala, in his posting entitled The Real Problem With The Fraser High School Rankings – Part 1, the percentages of each indicator is as follows: 

• average exam mark—20%
• percentage of exams failed—20%
• school vs exam mark—10%
• English gender gap—5%
• Math gender gap—5% 
• courses taken per student—20% - This seems to have been taken out this year, so the rest of the weighting has changed a bit for the 2013 year.
• diploma completion rate—10%
• and delayed advancement rate—10%. 

I would encourage anyone to look at Mr. Mutyala's post as he does a great job of looking at the statistical issues with the ranking and indicators used by the Fraser Institute. However, to speed things up a bit, here is a synopsis: the issue that Mr. Mutyala has with some of these indicators, and I tend to agree with him, is that many of them have very little to do with how a school does in educating their students (and here I will not even go into whether these indicators have anything to do with how a student is "educated"). So why were these indicators chosen? According to the Fraser Institute, the indicators cover the following areas: three indicators deal with effective teaching, there are indicators showing consistency in marking (and gender gaps), and there are indicators showing practical well informed counselling. 

However, I go back to the notion that small changes in one or many indicators can make large differences in the overall mark. For example, if I use our school as an example, when one student out of 16 fails an exam, the overall mark of the school will drop dramatically.  As well, if a grade 12 student drops out of school (and there can be various reasons for this that are not controllable in any way by the school itself) it can also heavily affect a school's overall rating. 

Notice, however, that small schools seem to do better on the Fraser Institute report. In fact, if all your grads graduate and do well on their exams, they will rank high on the report; even higher than larger schools with the same scenario. According to Mr. Mutyalah, the mix of variables and "ad hoc weighting" of the indicators by the Fraser Institute (how did they come up with those percentages?) will actually favors small schools over larger schools. This trend is easily seen when you look at the Fraser Institute's ranking in comparison to raw test scores. 

The question that this raises is this: are exam scores an acceptable way of measuring a school's ranking? I suggest "no", and arguments could be made here about the pros and cons of standardized testing as sole indicators of education - this topic is much too large to broach here.

With all of this in mind, I conclude the following: the ranking by the Fraser Institute is not the sole factor that families should base their decision on school choice for their child. Instead, parents need to look at many factors, including school demographics, ethics, beliefs, etc. (what is important, what is not) and begin there: how do you want your child to be educated (what is an "educated" student in your eyes?). granted, parents should keep an eye on academics and, yes, this is important. Yet, the schools themselves (teachers and administrators), should always look at achievement scores of their students and respond accordingly; but there are many factors that will need to be addressed on a per student basis to help each student reach their academic potential.

As well, let me add this comment: perhaps students themselves should become more involved in their own education, and schools themselves should instead only be the place where they go to work through their educational goals and not a place that is responsible for how they did. 

"F---'n What?": A Look Swearing and Communication in the 21st Century

Swearing is prevalent in many conversational venues, such as school hallways, bars, concerts, resorts, and even simply walking down the street. However, the types venues that swearing seems to be the most prevalent in (where swear words are used in almost every sentence and throughout the conversation) are, I would argue, not the older traditional settings many of us over the age of 30 grew up in.  I have noticed that the day-to-day and face-to-face conversations that I am a part of, whether that be my workplace (an independent school where openly swearing is not acceptable by students and definitely not be staff), my wife’s workplace (she’s a nurse at the local hospital, where swearing could get the employees fired, and is not tolerated by patients either), stores we frequent (I cannot remember a grocery person swearing at me ever for any reason, and I am confident  that there would be some form of disciplinary action if they did), services we hire people for, etc., do not condone swearing as an acceptable communication norm. However, when I look or converse in more modern and non-regulated areas such as online discussions and comment areas, I find that they can be wrought with profanity. Though not exclusively so, I do also find that most of the swearing I hear in any area I am in seems to be done by teens and young adults (and this seems to diminish as people get older).

Though some of the venues one would find swearing in might have changed or morphed in some way, the concept of swearing has not. Though the words have perhaps changed a bit since their inception, swearing has been around for a very long time. Granted, the history of swear words, and specifically the F-word, is clouded in historical obscurity.  As Geoffrey Hughes (2006) writes in his book An Encyclopedia of Swearing, much of the data has been “buried, hidden, or deliberately ignored” (p. 10). However, it is not the purpose of this writing to research the history of these specific types of words, but instead to look at why we use them in the contexts that we do.

There are a few obvious reasons one might use swear (curse) words in modern conversation. Firstly, these words can be used for “shock” value (thus the concept of the “F-bomb”) – saying something that is usually seen as taboo by the majority of the populace usually get people’s attention. As well, swear words are also used as emphasis (“Holy S---!”). As well, as a colleague of mine recently commented, using these words can actually create a sense of comfort and ease, since using profanity can have the corollary of bringing conversations down to a more simplistic or base level (to the level of everyday people). Finally, these words can be used as exhasperative expletives (“F---!”) that one might say when pain is felt (for example, the every painful hammer on the thumb scenario).

However, regardless of why we use them, there is a grammatical difficulty with the words themselves: many of these words have either no actual meaning (or unknown meaning) in these contexts or can have multiple meanings at the same time. For example, if one says “that was F----‘n awesome”, the F-word becomes an exclamation mark. For arguments sake, let’s say that in this instance, the exclamatory F-word is defined as meaning “really”, as in “that was really awesome” – better than a normal awesome.  If the F- word actually meant “really” in all cases, we should be able to take that same word and use it in other sentences and it would make sense. We could then say “Go really better yourself”. But this is the exact opposite of the sentence’s meaning “Go F--- yourself”. This can become quite entertaining if one were to ask what a person who uttered a curse word meant when they used that word in their sentence. In fact, they would probably increase their F-word usage from that point on.

Now, most people understand what the words mean in the context of the sentences themselves and the situation they are used in. However, with respect to communication itself, there is an issue with swearing which is this: swear words themselves actually contain no meaning, some meaning, or even changing meanings depending on what the user actually meant. If that’s the case (as it is), then these words by themselves are somewhat useless with respect to actually communicating an idea: they instead communicate nothing more than the listeners best guess is to their meaning which is extrapolated from the situation at hand. One could even argue that using swear words shows that the user does not clearly know what they are trying to say (they are exasperated); thus, they use a word that allows them to say nothing – thus getting away with not having to come up with an actual word that communicates an coherent idea. Perhaps, given time, this same person could have thought of an actual clearly defined word that better communicates what they were trying to say, but because of time constraints, they instead swore.

So, who cares? The issue for me is in the lack of clear communication, something that many argue is “dumbing down” our society. Words are quite powerful and are used to create our understanding of the world around us. This starts early in our upbringing: "Babies first bridge the gap between sounds and meaning as early as nine or ten months of age” (Elliot, 2001), but obviously continues into adulthood. Thus, unclear thinking and unclear words can result in an unclear understanding of the world around us. As George Orwell writes in his essay “Politics and the English Language”, the English language can become “ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts” (1946). Thus, it can be seen as a downward spiral: we use words with no meaning because then we don’t have to think about the meaning of a certain event, which lowers the meaning of the event itself.

As society speeds up and our lives get busier, the ability to quickly communicate in an accurate fashion becomes more and more important. Many of us have had emails or texts misunderstood because of their innate lack of being able to clearly communicate ideas; these can cause issues that then take time to fix or apologize for. We (and youth especially) are being asked to do more and more, faster and faster, and with other people, even to the point of having to collaborate with individuals from other cultures and countries. We need to learn to be clear in our increasingly faster and shorter communications with each other.

Therefore, in this highly technological and multicultural world that we live in which is shrinking daily due to our ability to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time , perhaps we should begin looking at swearing as something to be avoided in most (if not all) communication. If we want to have others completely understand what we are saying and feeling, perhaps we need to use words that are easy to understand in the context they are used in. Yes, I am not naive enough to think that swearing will disappear altogether (it hasn't yet), and I do believe that there will be years when people will use it for the reasons mentioned at the beginning of this writing, but I feel that, if we know the truth about why we use them, then perhaps they can be used more sparingly and perhaps disappear from our vocabulary quicker than it is now. This, I believe, will help us to both better understand the world around us as well as to better interact with those in it.

Eliot, Lise (2001) Early Intelligence: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life

Orwell, George (1946), "Politics and the English Language.” Https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

Hughes, Geoferry (2006). Encyclopedia of Swearing: The Social History of Oaths, Profanity, Foul Language, and Ethnic Slurs in the English-Speaking World.

When Students are Given New Tech, The First Thing They want To Do Is...

Don Tapscott (2009) is the author of the book Grown Up Digital: How The Net Generation Is Changing Our World." (Toronto: McGraw-Hill) and in it he lists eight characteristics of what he terms the "net generation", the first generation who have grown up in the digital era we teachers are now teaching. One of the characteristics of this generation that Tapscott writes about is the push to customize themselves and the things they use. He writes that net gens like to "modify products to reflect who they are" (p. 78). This goes not only for devices, such as phones, laptops, pads, etc., but also for work, jobs, cars, and almost anything else that can be modified to reflect their personality (p. 79).

As a case in point, the school I work at has recently made a purchase of a class set of iPads for classroom use. I have been spearheading a committee of teachers and administrators whose purpose is to make a plan for successfully implementing the iPads into the grades and classroom (K-12). I have been using a document from the London Knowledge Lab 2013 (http://pdf.thepdfportal.com/?id=61713) that looked at classroom use of the iPads during a three year study both in the UK and globally to help structure our plan.

We recently had a couple of teachers use the iPads in their own classroom settings so far (as trial runs). The grade 5 class used the iPads to work on writing reports using Apple's Pages program, while the grade 7 class used the iPads to do web-based research on certain elements in the periodic table. When the iPads came back from the grade 5 class, they were in exactly the same condition as they went out with no added features, pictures, or customization (something that the grade 5 teacher specifically mentioned she did not want them to do or they would lose the privilege of having the iPads). However, when the iPads came back from the grade 7 class, there was a lot of individualization of the iPads themselves (background pictures were changed, iMessage was used to send information, sharing of pics between iPads, etc.).

This seems to indicate a couple of things. Firstly, the type of task that students were asked to do with the iPads could play a role with respect to keeping the students interest up. Secondly, the trend to customize at the older grade level does suggest a confirmation of both the London Knowledge Lab report and Don Tapscott's book with respect to a student's drive to customize their experiences with the technology.

This raises some interesting discussion points. Firstly, the London Knowledge Lab report does suggest that having personalized access and individual ownership of devices like iPads is "highly motivational" and even a "crucial element in successful adoption and effective use of the iPads" (p. 11). Thus, perhaps the best model is to have a more 1:1 iPad to student ratio. But how does a smaller school with limited income do this? Also, if you are not able to do the 1:1 ration for the entire school, could you do this with upper age groups? Are the iPads the way to go with this type of technology use (they can get quite expensive as well, sometimes even rivaling the cost of a laptop)? Finally, is there a way to lock down the iPads so that there isn't the ability to customize it as easily (of course, anything you do to such a device to try to lock it down simply creates a challenge for students to try to figure out a way around it; furthermore, crippling such a device does go against the ease-of-use aspect of the device itself)?

I end with this: one of the other net gen norms that Tapscott mentions in his book is freedom. Perhaps we, as teachers, are asking students too much when we try to bring a technology in and get them to use it the way we want them to instead of allowing them to have the freedom to use it the way they see fit; in fact, is this not where innovation, one of the key aspects of a 21 Century learner (www.bced.gov.bc.ca), takes root?

WIKI Unit

As I have now done a few years in a row, I will be doing the WIKI unit again.  The idea is simple: the students will use our WIKI server (MediaWIKI) to create a WIKI page. They are put into groups of four to five and will work collaboratively on a WIKI about one of five topics that come out of Chapter 12 in the BC Science8 chapter. For example, one deals with ocean pollution, one with freshwater, etc.

Students were given an assessment page that explained to them exactly what I am looking for them to do, both individually and as a group.

My biggest concern right now is simply dealing with my server: it seems to not be super fast and bottlenecks a bit at times. This creates issues with access to the WIKI at times and students have to refresh the page. This is annoying and can contribute to the successfulness of the unit itself. Time to put on my "techie" hat and take a look at it tomorrow.

However, as a tool, the WIKI is fantastic and does do what I envision it doing: it gives a group of students the ability to truly collaborate on the WIKI page and make something that is better than any one student would be able to do on their own. However, each student is marked on their own ability and contributions to the page on a whole. This is an important part to the success of this: historically, students hate group work because they feel that they will be assessed as a group and, thus, one student can bring their mark down (or visa versa I guess). The WIKI makes this a non-issue (this year, no student mentioned this as an issue, something the first year group did mention as a problem).

Finally, this year should be the year the study which deals with the WIKI (which I now did two years ago) will be published! I am so excited for this! In the meantime, the journal that my hopes rest on (The Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology  - www.cjlt.ca) is a great online journal with many good articles. For those reading this, there is a great resource for you all to read anyway.

Part 2 of the Freedom Post - How did they do?

No lie here, the students in my Grade 8 Science class did not complete this assignment perfectly the first time around. Here are a few observations:

1. I found that students worked together and looked like they simply "copied" drawings one from the other. Either I do not allow them to work together, or I watch much closer to see if they are drawing it on their own. However, I do think that the collaborative work is beneficial if they come to the right conclusions, of which most did not it seemed.
2. Students seem to have the right definitions, but could not translate the definition into the drawing correctly. Thus, they would need more time to truly understand what the definition really meant.

My plan is a simple one: give them back and have them correct them and then hand it in.

The issues above might be corrected if a) students were not working on this assignment all a the same time, and b) weren't all asked to do the same thing! Perhaps, as my previous posts alluded to, if students were able to simply show me that they knew it but were not asked to draw it, I might get better results. Also, the hand in / assess / hand back / correct scenario might be how this type of assignment would have to go: I should not be looking for perfection the first time - how would student's learn if they were not able to try and fix?