The Information Diet

The Information Diet was an interesting book to read, though it did get a little long. It was also helpful to think about where I get my information and how much time I spend doing it.  Ironically, I think it’s interesting that I’ve said for a long time that people have stopped consuming media, news, and other information that don’t confirm their existing beliefs, so oddly, this book and the interview I found from Clay Johnson reaffirmed my thoughts. Fox News, Breitbart, Huffington Post, ThinkProgress, and other information providers exist solely to confirm what their target audiences want to hear, because that’s where the money is (advertising). As a society, we have lost balance, willingness to hear other perspectives, and willingness to consider any information that challenges our belief system. We expect all of our information to be pre-digested, pre-processed, and cut up into small, bite-sized pieces. As a society, we don’t engage our minds and try to analyze or decide for ourselves what we’re hearing is good or not – “If So-and-So says so, then that’s what I’ll think/believe/vote.”

I think this is very relevant in this current cycle of “fake news,” which follows the “media elite,” which I’m sure followed other conspiracies. We need to be more willing to see things from other viewpoints. This is tied to empathy, but also to the diversity in news sources that Clay Johnson recommends. We need to teach kids (and grown-ups) to filter and process the information they take in and be able to evaluate it for its worth.  I really liked his point about needing a sense of humor. We take everything so seriously anymore, and I can see his point. If you can’t laugh at something, you are not flexible with the information, meaning your mind can not be changed, no matter what the evidence may say. I see this with students and adults who are serious fans of particular sports teams or athletes who get offended when someone jokes about their teams or athletes. They take things way too seriously and don’t have much balance or sense of humor. As the book says, we need to “lighten up.”

This means as educators, we really need to teach our students to consume information responsibly. Mr. Johnson had a lot of great ideas that we could translate into our media lessons on being conscious consumers of information, as well as civic-minded individuals who have the will to do their own mindful research into issues or topics that concern them. The activity we did in class, where we pulled out 12 of the skills we felt were important to know and created a “wearable” was helpful in processing this book. I know my third graders’ thinking is still a little concrete for some of that, it’s something we can work towards. I can see doing this activity with some of our social studies or science units. Contributions of the ancient civilizations? Maybe energy resources? I love that each week, we try new activities and ideas that we could modify for our classrooms!

Creative Spirit and Students as Designers

Students as Designers Principle

Good learning designs engage students in using content to construct meaningful outcomes by comprehensively scaffolding students’ ability to design.

A few of my students value and admit to their creativity, but most of the students don’t feel that they’re “creative.” I often feel the same way. Flexibility in thinking and designing helps with the Creative Spirit of Design. The three characteristics of design are imagination, being creation-oriented, and inter-disciplinary. With interdisciplinary action in mind, I love the idea of bringing together students with different knowledge or strengths and having them work together to create new ideas, or new ways to show what they know. I often pair patient students who know how to use technology well with students who are still learning – kids are usually great teachers to other kids. I like the idea of students engaging their brains in constructing meaningful products to demonstrate their learning. Students need to be able to use their judgment to decide how best to demonstrate their learning. Am I hearing support for the PICKLE again??

Being able to create and use imagination is something we assume kids are good at – I think about the age of the imaginary friend, being princesses, space explorers, and dragon-fighters. However, I find that my third graders are often afraid of “getting it wrong,” so they want to know exactly what I am expecting. Third grade is the year parents push for FUTURA and perfect 4s on every assignment, despite the fact that we try to stress to parents and kids that 3s demonstrate mastery and 4s are sometimes not possible. When I tell the kids there is no one right answer, they look at me like I’m crazy and then ask for more parameters. They also don’t always have the endurance to try, try again, or the communication skills to express what they need, how they’re feeling, or what they need a partner to help with.

In practice, we need to create the environment right from the start that we expect and accept that we won’t always solve our problems the first time, and that’s okay. We should all expect to encourage each other, work together, and expect to work. Our class expectations this year are pretty much this idea, but getting the students to live these expectations is a bit more of a struggle. When you have a few students who expect to do very little to get by, a couple others who are the first to point out that someone did or said something wrong (and see themselves as perfect victims who are always getting picked on), and a handful of others who are willing to answer every single question while the other students sit there and wait to be told an answer, it’s an uphill struggle. I’ll keep working to get everyone on board!

Affordances, Ozobots, and Students as Designers

This week, I learned that I’m not great at “playing” and exploring when I’m tired. It’s been a long week of grading graphing tests (which I JUST finished and can actually send home this week!) and wrangling my own tired, grumpy kids. Thank heavens for the 3-day weekend! I enjoyed playing and exploring Ozobots and Osmo with my buddy, Rachel. Perhaps I need to bring out my Ozobot and try to figure out ways I can tie it into my instruction. We don’t have iPads in our third grade classrooms, but I’m sure that if I bring the Ozobot to school, I can convince some of my students to download the Ozobot apps on their iPads once we begin the BYOT adventures in a month or so.

I understand the usefulness of using affordance analysis on any technology that we bring into the classroom. This exercise in trying to read the article and figure out how to analyze affordances on my own when I had a very shaky grasp of affordances was stressful and challenging. I created a chart on my own, but I’m not sure it’s the best format. From this, I think I’ve learned to make sure my students have enough background knowledge before sending them off on tasks. I’m sure that with practice, I will get better at this analysis process, but for the first time, it was challenging. I would like to work through a couple of these with a partner – as we’ve discussed in previous weeks, more brains working together is better! I feel the same way about the Lesson Designing. I’m sure with practice, it will become easier, but having to change how I think about our concepts and standards is taking a little longer than I was expecting. Perhaps it’s like learning a new language, and the more we practice it, the more fluent we become.

The idea of students as designers is a unique way to think about education and design. We design a set-up where we give the students resources, tools, background information, and a challenge, and they construct their understanding and meaning. My activity where the students researched statistics and wrote letters to our Congress representatives and the Governor were not originally planned that way. We were discussing a problem – kids can’t vote, but they have concerns and opinions they wanted to share. The students figured out ways we could communicate those opinions, and I gave background information on how to research, where to look for addresses, and how to write persuasive letters. I facilitated more than taught, and that was fun because the students were truly engaged. When we received our letter back with the official U.S. Representative seal on it, the kids (and parents) were thrilled! Typing it out and evaluating it now, I can see how I could turn most of it into a lesson design using the S-P-D, AeCTS, and ABCS formats…

What this last principle means for my practice is that I need to look at my classroom and how I teach. I don’t think I really give students a lot of control or opportunity to be designers. I still have quite a few students who aren’t in control of themselves (or their bodies or volume), who need a lot. Since I’m still new at this purposeful “designing” thing, I’m not sure I know what it would look like to give my students the opportunity to design themselves. I need to keep working on this. We’ll get there!