Students as Teachers Global Connection Project

I like big ideas. They excite me. In planning for next year I started thinking about the possibilities and opportunities that are available now. Being a geography teacher I can't help but think about the possibilities global connections. I have done some of this the past few years with varying levels of success. In all cases I know that the students like the idea of working with students from around the world, but it is tough with time zones, scheduling, technology, and just having the right activity, among a myriad of other issues that can make it challenging. Through it all I do believe that the overall experience is valuable it's just finding the most effective way of doing it. In other words there has to be something more than just talking with students from around the world. That is fun, but loses its novelty quickly. There has to be some inherent academic purpose in connecting. I have been pondering just what that is for the past few years. Then I came upon this quote:

“If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.” Albert Einstein

The wheels in my head started spinning and I got excited. Keeping in mind the following graphic I couldn't help but think that the academic purpose should be to have the students teach each other.


But here is the kicker: Why not connect with six/seven year olds and have my students teach them the concepts we are learning. So here is my idea, my class of 14-15 yr olds connects with a class from another state, or even country of younger students. It could be done as a mystery skype in order to introduce the different classes and then my students would have to teach some of the concepts that they are learning to the younger class. They would become guest speakers/experts for the younger class. My students would have to really know their stuff in order to teach it to the younger class. I can conceive of writing children's books or creating videos on different topics and then having them read the book/watch the videos and come up with any questions as they go along. There would be storyboarding and editing involved, class and peer reviews before attempting to teach the younger students. There are so many things you could do with this! Really the possibilities are as unlimited as your own thinking.

Instead of taking another quiz or test you would have to teach a younger class. How bout that for authentic assessment?!

Next school year will come much sooner than you know. I want to start planning for this right now. If you are interested in participating please let me know. You can leave a comment, send me an email, or reach me on Twitter @mrjfawson

I get that each school or class will be unique and come with its own set of procedures but I believe that we can make this work and not only connect, but have an extremely valuable academic experience for all involved. There is a lot more to work out, but I figured I needed to get my thoughts down as soon as I could.

End of Year Reflections and changes for next year

I started having students blog during 4th term and have decided to have them do it throughout the entire year. Basically the blog will be the their homework. They will update it weekly and get credit for their updates. I don't think I should grade the blog, just give them credit for doing it. If you have read this blog before you know that we did video zeitgeist that highlighted the major happenings worldwide throughout the year. I am going to have on entry per month in which they evaluate the current world and local events and determine which ones should be in their end of year video.

One of the final things I have students do is a final write up in which part of it is to give me feedback. One of the things I ask is what was your favorite activities/lessons/assignments. I have used the Genius Project idea for the past few years and students really like it. This year during fourth term students created a blog and then updated it weekly. Since my class is studying geography I told students they could pick anything 'geography related' for their genius project (which if they realize it, is just about anything). Their homework for the term was a weekly post, updating their findings. In the end they presented their blog and their genius project to the class during the last week of school. It was neat to see such a variety of projects from researching myths and legends from around the world to saving the great barrier reef to a history of Arabic music to the northern lights.

Here are some of their thoughts:

"My favorite assignment was the Genius Project. It let us think outside the box. I had a great time learning about my topic."

"My favorite assignment was the Genius Project. This is because it gave us an opportunity to make decisions on our own on whatever we wanted to do. You gave us total freedom...which is the best kind of homework."

"My favorite assignment was the blog. It was cool to be able to study and figure things out by yourself. Everyone picked something that reflected who they are and through it I got to know each person a little better."

"I really loved the Genius Project. I was able to write about something I was passionate about, and share my experiences with others."

"I really liked getting to pick what I was going to study and learn about. It helped keep me on top of my assignment and I feel I learned more than I would have if I chose from a list of topics."

Based on these thoughts as well as my own here are the changes I am making for the upcoming year:

Have students blog weekly through out the year for homework. Once a month on current events for Zeitgeist. Once a month for genius projects Once on what we have learned in class. With extra research on application and extension of knowledge. The other will be an open topic. 9-10 entries per term.

First week will set it up. They explain purpose of their blog and what they think geography is and what they hope to learn about during the year. They will do a term write up each term on each of topics. First few times will get lab to help them out. Periodically will get lab for same purpose.

I think creating a positive digital footprint is of utmost importance. With that in mind I am going to teach how to tag, comment, use CC pics, embed video, so that when their name is searched they have a lot of positive things to show for it.

This post if more me thinking out loud, but I welcome any suggestions of things that have worked well for you.

YouTube Video Editor the tool for end of year projects

I am a geography teacher and have been looking for a way to tie everything in that we learn about during the year into one big final project. I have always enjoyed the Zeitgeist videos that Google produces that highlight the most searched stories/events of each year. I decided to incorporate that concept into our class by having students chronicle the major current events worldwide from the start of school to the end, basically Aug-May. They had to pick events each month that they felt should be included in their final video. They needed to explain why they were choosing to highlight a particular event, what made that event more worthy to be chosen than other events. In the end they used the Video Editor to find images and video that showed their view of the past nine months of the major world, national, and local events.

There are many reasons that I think the Video Editor is worthwhile. First off the students get to create a project that they can show the world. Most projects end up being viewed by the student, parents, and teacher, maybe the class, but that is usually it. Using YouTube really does open it up to the world. Secondly students get a project that they can keep. In the past posters have been an acceptable medium, meaning as soon as project is over it goes in the garbage, plus there is only so much you can do with a poster. Next point is copyright infringement. I think the YouTube editor does a great job teaching how to be a responsible creator in digital age. Because you are limited to copyright free images, music, and videos students learn that if they are publishing worldwide they need to make sure they are following the rules. Finally and perhaps most importantly is the ability to create. I allowed my students a lot of freedom in this arena. They could add anything to their video that meant something to them which I felt was important from a creative stance as well as it meant I didn't have to watch the same video 150 times. Each one would be as unique as the students themselves. Students have really enjoyed this aspect of the video editor. They make the final call on edits, clips, and anything they put in or leave out of their video. They also love that others can see their video and they can view what the rest of the class has done. They will do a good job for you, if they know it will be published for the world to see they will make sure it's worthy of that as well.

I have included a few of the videos so you can see what students are able to produce. I consider creation the peak of critical thinking and the YouTube video editor really allows for something special.

What did you do in class? Nothing, we just took notes

One of my biggest pet peeves about much of professional development in our profession is that instructors talk about best practices and then lecture the whole time and go through a bunch of bullet points. The classic do as I say not as I do. I have considered this in my own teaching. I have realized at times I can launch into lecturer mode and students become passive learners who just write down everything on the screen or board. They are dispassionate hearers trying to determine what to write down as I move from point to point. A while back I overheard students in the hall ask what we were doing and one said, "Nothing really, we just took notes." I thought about this again and again and realized there had to be a better way. I began to consider this a put down, it became a battle cry for me to find a better way. Over the past few years in my attempt to hit at higher levels of thinking I have changed the way I do notes in my class.

I think back to when I took notes as a student and spent time writing away and not listening to what the teacher had to say. I mean who cares what is being said when there are notes to be taken? All that mattered to me then was making sure I wrote down every important thing that the teacher had put up on the board. I became a great note taker as a student, I figured out what was important, used my own system for shorthand, highlighted important details, and then forgot everything as soon as I wrote it down. It is this last thought that is the most troubling to me. As a student I took organized and well composed notes and then did little else with them. Before exams I looked through them with varying degrees of success trying to decipher why I thought these notes were so important that I had highlighted them. I had notebooks full of notes that ultimately did little more than give me reference for what I was supposed to be learning. A bunch of facts is really all notes were to me. Some useless some more important but basically just a bunch of facts that I tried to regurgitate and then forgot as quickly as I had written them down.

I don't want my students to be fact reciters that forget as soon as they recite. I want them to be critical thinkers. I changed the way I did things and have never looked back. It has made me a better instructor and my students active and critical learners. Here is the basis of what I have done:

First off I don't have my students take notes. Groundbreaking right, I will explain what they do instead.

Second I layer my lesson out and consider where to add different levels of critical thinking. There is starting point with everything where lower levels of critical thinking are essential. We can't talk about the Arab/Israeli conflict without some basic understanding of the background. Each lesson is designed to go from lower levels like knowledge and comprehension, then go to application and analysis, and then finally synthesis and evaluation. Recently there has been a shift to add creation as the top layer. This is definitely a place a try to get to with each lesson.

Third after explaining a topic I have them do something with the information. I might have them list items, draw a diagram, rank, or predict something with the information. The important thing is they don't just take notes and not use the information. They have to make sense of what we are discussing and then do something with the information. This is where you find out if they get it. If you are just having them take notes you usually accept the blank stares as understanding and move on. By having them do something you find out real quick if they got it or not.

Fourth I don't ask questions in the traditional sense. For instance there is no who, what, when, where, why, and how. I have them describe, compare, explain, categorize, defend, rank, predict, etc...

Fifth I have them share. This is where you really find out if they get it.

Finally I have them create. It might be a persuasive essay, it could be website, a video, a presentation. It can be whatever you conceive is the best way to show your mastery of the subject.

Here are some examples of going from lower level to higher level thinking and how I would design a lesson.

(We are currently studying Korea so I will use some of the material)

On your map label North and South Korea, the 38th parallel, Pyongyang, Seoul, etc...

Explain why the Korean War is considered part of the Cold War

Support or argue against the US involvement of maintaining the DMZ

Explain the hero worship of the Kim family and the effect this has on the citizens

Evaluate the effect of not having freedoms such as religion, press, and speech and how this can keep governments in power.

Compare Korea's situation to that of the US after the Civil War how are they alike/different?

Finally the build up is to have students work together and create an action plan for five scenarios(coup d'etat, mass defection, natural disaster, foreigners held hostage, and weapons of mass destruction) that the US and ROK have planned for. (PS these are actually real scenarios that have been planned for) They will need to show how to best handle each of the situations.

In the end I don't believe my students need to take notes in the traditional sense. They have already proven they understand the material as we go through the lesson. They have a firm understanding of the material. It has been a mind shift for me, but I can tell you it has made me much better at what I do, and more importantly it has made class more engaged, and hit at all levels of critical thinking. No one ever leaves class anymore and says we just took notes. No one ever says we do we have to learn this. They are all engaged learners critically thinking about the material, how it applies to them.

Teaching organization in writing

Teaching students how to write is never easy. There are so many different things you can focus on, reading 150-200 papers is time consuming, and let's face it each student is unique and will need individualized feedback. For these reasons and others many teachers just don't do it, or at least don't do it as often as they could or should. Leave it to the English department to teach students writing. There have been times I've been guilty of this thinking. Our administration asked all teachers to focus on writing this year, so I have been trying to incorporate more opportunities and more effective ways of teaching writing in a social studies course. After our study of the Middle East and especially Israel, students had to compose an essay on the one or two state solution to the Arab/Israeli conflict. I was pleased with most of the writing and thought it was a good assessment. However, I still noticed that students struggled with organization and this guided my thinking to our latest writing assignment.

China's controversial one child policy would become our next good opportunity for an essay. I thought about the best way to teach organization. I think when it comes to teaching writing it requires as much focus from the teacher as it does the students. I decided that the best way to proceed was to begin with the topic of unintended consequences. I found some great examples worldwide showing how a government policy that intends to do one thing may have hidden or unintended consequences. I introduced the 'Cobra Effect' from India where city officials worried about deaths as a result from bites from the snakes gave a reward for everyone who brought in a dead cobra. Good idea right, turn the problem over to the citizens and involve them in eradicating the problem and pay them for their efforts. It all sounds great, but what ended up happening was people saw the opportunity to make money and began farming cobras themselves. The result was more cobras, not less. Indian officials had never considered that their citizens would act in such a way and the result was they were paying people to increase the problem. A similar occurrence took place in Vietnam except it was with rats. Yea its gross but totally captivating.

After that we delved into the policy. We started with a discussion on population and resources and then looked at the implementation of the policy itself. I must admit that as versed as I am in the policy there are nuances that make it complicated and students can usually come up with a question that is hard to answer. Such moments can become a nice time to have students delve deeper and realize the complications of such a policy. After a thorough introduction to the policy we looked at results. First the overall data which government officials will use to claim its effectiveness and necessity. Then we looked at unintended consequences.

We watched a 10 minute film which shows many such consequences and then discussed them in greater detail. The discussion was important because it allowed students to state their opinions and a chance to give voice to their thinking that they would later be using in their paper. After our discussion I gave out a list that had consequences, intended or unintended, with information about each one. Students then read through the list and ranked them in order of what they felt were the strongest for against the policy. Little did they know that they had decided on what their body paragraphs would be in their essay.

I then gave them the prompt "Do the ends justify the means?" We discussed what that meant and then how they were to organize their essay. The introduction would briefly explain the who, when, where, what, why, and how of the policy and then the results. Students could either agree or disagree and use their rankings from the previous exercise to guide them with their body paragraphs. It was almost magical when I pointed out that they had already decided what they were going to use as their body paragraphs based on what ranking they had given each consequence. When I set them loose the students began immediately and had no trouble deciding what to write about or where or how to include information.

The final product was the best writing I have seen all year. It was thoughtful, organized, and to the point. Students that normally would struggle with such a task wrote nice balanced essays and finished in a timely manner. Now I understand you can't always do this, but for this subject it worked better than I even expected and in the end I think they have a sound understanding of the topic and the complexities in creating a 'simple' solution to such a complicated issue.

Student Projects: Zeitgeist 2013-14 using YouTube Video Editor

Earlier in the year I came up with my genius idea to have students create their own zeitgeist video. You can read more about that here. (Note: If you haven't seen the Google zeitgeist videos that they create every year featuring their most searched stories they are both linked in that post.) I had all sorts of ideas as to how we were going to pull this off, but nothing was really coming together the way I had envisioned it. I wanted them to create something similar to what Google does in both spirit and in quality. Yea I know we are at a severe disadvantage when competing with Google for the 'cool' factor. We finally got to the point where we had to start actually making something. I tried a lot of ideas, none really fit what we needed. Then someone mentioned the YouTube Video Editor. It makes sense that if you are going to try to make a project like Google that you would use their help.

One of my issues with student projects is that they work hard and the only people who see it are their parents, and the teacher. A few rare, great ones are seen by more. Using this allows for a true worldwide audience. The goal is to create their own video that is good enough to put on display for the world.

Here is why we are using the video editor. Students can create and edit their own videos the way they want to; the project becomes an extension of how they see the world. You can upload your own videos, but most students don't have footage of the Winter Olympics or the Ukraine conflict. This is the real genius of the video editor. You can search the creative commons videos, copyright free, and get footage of what you are looking for. You can also add images (my students have become quite versed in creative commons image search), text, music (the editor allows for copyright free music and has an extensive database), and transitions. One of the nice things about using this is students can work on it at home or where ever they may be. They just log into their Google account and then into YouTube. Changes are saved automatically like on docs or blogger. A true worldwide audience. A project they can be proud of and show off and keep. No worries about using images, video, or music that is copyrighted and they could get in trouble for using.

I spent a day in the computer lab working with each student making sure they knew what they were doing. Some figure it out quickly, some needed more help, all realized how using the video editor would allow their voice to come through and make something worthwhile. They are not due for another month but I feel like we now have the right tool for the job.

FYI each week from now to then they have to write up the events they are adding to their video. Explain what the event is and why they are adding it. Events should reflect what has happened globally since the start of school, with a topics from each region we have covered as well as any local events they feel were significant to the community, school, or themselves. One of the nice things about this project is students will include events like the Olympics, but show it from their perspective. Obviously many events will be in every video, but each student will put their own spin on the event. No two videos will be exactly alike. Each one will have its own voice and individuality.

Zeitgeist 2013-14: The essence of geography

Many of you are familiar with the Google Zeitgeist videos. If not, I have added them in at the bottom.

I have taught just about every subject and grade level. I have enjoyed teaching most subjects. For the past six years I have exclusively taught World Geography. For five years previous I taught Geography but it was at-risk and not quite what I am doing now. I love teaching Geography. I find it to be the easiest of all the social studies to teach because it's current, salient, and interesting. Sure history can have its fun moments to teach, but geography is about what is happening now. Plus with technology you can talk and work with other countries, which makes it even cooler.

All that being said I think it is a misunderstood subject. Many students come in thinking it is a math class (geometry) or that all we do is maps. Sure maps are part of it, but there is so much more to it than that. I had been trying to think of a good, fun way of introducing geography. In the past I have shown the Google Zeitgeist video for its geographic content, today I decided to make a slight adjustment and to this and found the best way I have ever introduced geography to my class.

For the record Zeitgeist means "the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time". I showed the 2011 version then had students brainstorm about what they would include in the 2012 version. They were at a disadvantage not having a device to use and having to rely on their neighbors, but in the end they did a nice job and hit the major events like the London Olympics, the Presidential election, the Red Bull space jump, world wide protests, Hurricane Sandy, among others. It was fun to see how much they got right and then realize how much more they had forgotten or didn't even know about it.

The magical moment came in the wrap up when I announced that these videos were the essence of geography. This class is about life in every part of the world. It is about people and how they live. It is about how we interact with one another and the environment. There are events that earth shattering like a vicious natural disaster. There are movements where people work together to make their lives better and remove corrupt governments through protests and revolutions. There are small moments as well as monumental ones, but all change the face of the earth in some way.

All of this led to the beginning of our new project. Making our own Zeitgeist production for the 2013-14 school year. This of course is in the embryonic stages of development. I think I am going to have students add events every week or two and maybe do mini productions at the end of each term or semester. Regardless how I decide to make this work in the end we will have a wonderful product that showcases all the events and learning from the entire school year.

My genius hour piece would be that students would take a part that interests them, after we have a substantial, comprehensive list, and go into detail on that particular piece.

Funny how one good idea can totally change everything. A week ago I thought I had a handle on how things were going to go this year. Halfway through the first week of school I have an idea that may change the entire year.

I will do my best to keep updates as to how we are progressing and in what direction this takes us. Gotta love the 3 G's: Google, a good idea, and geography.

Here are the videos: 2012


2011