Week 2 Fourth Post: ARP Summary Reflections

For my reflection this week I would like to discuss the summary of my ARP, and how my students seemed to blossom under the changes I made from Cycle 1 to Cycle 2. In creating the final touches on my ARP site, I really started to think about how much progress the students have made. In Cycle 1, I was so focused on having a quality project that I tried to make a year long project fit into 6 weeks. My kids were completely overwhelmed and confused with the structure and tasks. I had them doing blog postings, Googledocs, tutorial videos, voicethreads, glogster portfolios, etc….and some of them didn’t even know how to copy and paste! So as a few flew away and went to town with the self-directed structure, others sat there completely lost. To make matters worse, they were initially supposed to work in groups and help each other figure out the specific directions. Looking back, I realize what a huge jump this must have been for them. I mean, I usually introduce every project to them with background information and a thorough demonstration, which is usually followed by a practice activity and research on subject matter choice. I was asking them to suddenly jump into a self-directed, self-motivated, technology dependent, multi-level, multi-tasking set of interconnected activities that required a visual portfolio submission? No wonder I got so much negative feedback. My perspective, what I thought was cool after working in EMDT, was very different than theirs.

However, in the last few weeks of my Cycle 2, gathering up all the final data and visuals of student work, I am really pleased with their progress. I made some drastic changes and they embraced them. We worked together on directions instead of groups. I gave them flexibility in time (but still a certain deadline) so that they could pace themselves and still work on a regular class project at the same time, which was one of the biggest complaints that I got on Cycle 1…that they had to stop their normal Art class routine. The activities were more to the point, and they had more familiarity with them. I gave them a choice this time between doing hands-on or virtual for each topic, and I was really afraid that they would all choose hands-on after Cycle 1. No! Some did pick virtual stuff! I had a few choose the Googledoc activity and a lot of Sumopaint! I even had a few try Corel and Adobe. With Cycle 1, I got so wrapped up in showing them every cool tech tool that I forgot the meat of it—having an engaging experience! So I’m really happy that I learned and adapted and had success in Cycle 2…I can’t wait to show off my kids’ photostory of their projects!

Week 2 Reading Peer Response: Anne Alsup

Hi Anne!

I enjoyed your analogy of the “universe of possibility” to the World of Warcraft. It’s so true that when you play that game a lot you start to think normal thoughts in game-mode! What a neat way to think of the possible scenarios, choices, and outcomes of our everyday lives. It also helps with the fear of risk-taking and assessment if you think of it like a game, with more chances. I feel the same way as you do though, that although we would love to partake in the “giving the A” philosophy, sometimes the system just does not allow for it: at least in the sense he describes. Although parts of the educational structure are constructs, many elements are very concrete and simply required. We have to make our kids understand the information by the time of the standardized tests. We have to have an organized environment in our rooms. We have to follow the rules of discipline in our schools. Without these constraints, even if we don’t agree with them, our job would be compromised. So, there must be a balance between supporting our students’ free-expression and intellectual development, and actually imparting the knowledge. I think we are already doing a version of the “giving the A” mindset, just in subtle, content & location specific ways. If we just challenge the kids to be themselves and understand the need for bettering themselves for the future, we will have won as teachers.

Oh, and I agree that inspiration is vicarious. All these extra requirements of teaching that don’t actually improve our skills, but bog us down and overwhelm us…and it most certainly gets transferred to the students! Until people that aren’t actually teaching stop making poor decisions regarding the structure of our education system, we have to suffice with the small changes we have control over.

Anne's Original Post:

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Recently I had the opportunity to be introduced to the World of Warcraft during a class on Gaming Strategies and Motivation. My guides for the excursion into this alternate reality were my two youngest sons, Stephen and Andrew. We had some interesting adventures and I spent way more time than I thought I would in this strange land. Many of the quests would take hours and I would go to bed dreaming that I was running through a field, trying to find my corpse so I could bring my lifeless body back to life. I would leave my house in the morning and I started thinking of everything in my life as part of the game. Following the same road, noting landmarks along the way, entering the building where I work, walking down the corridor, opening doors like I was on some quest. As I read the book, "The Art of Possibility" by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander and came to the first chapter, it didn't take much to convince this reader that it is all created.

Who makes the rules anyway and what were they thinking? Seriously, if we never colored outside the lines, where would we be? If we define ourselves by our perceptions of what our administrators, legislators, students or their parents think of us; where would we be? Given the current state of affairs in education, I'd much rather step into a "universe of possibilities" where I can have some control over my perception of the reality. If teachers are going to inspire their students, they need to have some inspiration. Budget cuts, meetings, more reports, standardized testing, learning gains and AYP, do not count as inspiration. If we are going introduce our students to the world of possibilities, we need to make sure that we are acquainted with the terrain.

I would love to give my students an A and differentiate my instruction to better meet the needs of my students, but the system that I work in doesn't support that goal. It is wrong to tell a student to seize the universe of possibilities and invent his own path to success, when there is a big bad test at the end of the year that is going to determine whether he passes or fails. We simply need more options in our system to allow students more control over their future and the opportunity to experience the universe of possibility. We need to re-think the rules and create some new possibilities.

Week 2 Reading: Peer Response Debra Atherton

Hi Debra!
What an eloquent posting –as usual- that really describes the emotional response that we as teachers have to this reading. I mean, the stories he tells and the student responses he gets are a dream to the innovative, deeply-caring, and productive instructor.

I truly wish that I could be a student in your class or at least observe. Your style and intelligence, as well as positive attitude towards students, treating them as people not objects, is what I aspire to. I think it’s so wonderful that you recognized and responded to students’ strong need to feel meaning in their school activities. Don’t we feel the same way in our graduate program? I think that occasionally it is difficult for us as teachers to separate ourselves from our prepared content and reflect on how the students must feel as they see it for the first time. I have to constantly remind myself that not everyone is as passionate about seeing an artist work or discuss an artwork or complete a project as I would be. What I like about the Zanders is that they don’t necessarily tell us that students will respond perfectly every time, but it is our responsibility to give them the benefit of the doubt and provide every support we can. I thought it was interesting when he told the story of the apathetic violinist who had just given up because of a bad decision on his part about tempo. I compare that to my students and try to remember that just as they don’t know what I went through last night or in other classes, I don’t know what they have been through either.

I know what you mean about the impeding shutdown of effort if we were to give students A’s. Heck, half my students don’t even care if they are failing let alone care to work with a free grade. Zander came up with an appropriate motivator with the letter, which I suppose gave him a basis for assessment on the true efforts given. However, I agree that his group is a LOT different than ours—more like a college class—which can handle way different levels of responsibility.

I think that you have totally introduced the universe of possibility to your students this year…not just in activity design but in modeling your own experimentation. Great job taking risks and steaming ahead even when we meet the stone walls of our students’ immaturity downfalls!

Debra's Original Post:

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As I begin writing, the dominating truth is Ben Zander’s playing of Chopin. I started the video in a welter of not just tension and anxiety but resentment: “WhateverwhateverIjust don’tfreakinghaveTIME forthis.” There’s something about his playing that transcends any musical experience I’ve ever had before—as if Plato’s actuality of beauty had manifested itself through my ears into my brain.

That’s not good right now. Several times during the reading of these chapters, I teared up—my physical response to truth—but I squelched the tears. I don’t have to look at my thoughts to see the characteristics of the measurement mentality in my “operant powers”—tell me, when one quotes Shakespeare, is one required to cite? Or doesn’t one rather leave hanging the assumption that, of course, one’s conversational partners will recognize the allusion?—one of my favoritesbeing pretention. Oh, there’s a maelstrom of well

edublogs.org

measured melancholy burbling under my surface, as I sit at the end of a challenging year, which is at the end of a grievously difficult decade. And this blog would give me an opportunity to do another productive round of bleeding ink, symbolically speaking, or I can turn to a rather more intellectual analysis of my classroom and my students.

I don’t have time right now to bleed. The kiddies it is.

I had an epiphany in Dr. Dan’s class that changed the way I look at the emergent adults in my classroom. I can’t even remember why now (of course, I can’t remember if I ate lunch today), but I recognized that what these young people really wanted out of their education was not to get out of it, but to know that what they were doing was meaningful. And that what they’re doing in school, well, they usually feel that that isn’t. We were at this time wrapping upPygmalion, and instead of giving them the usual literary analysis essay topic, I asked them to think about a problem they or a friend had that might have a solution in a lesson they learned from that play.

I’ve been teaching seniors for twenty years, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen them so engaged in my life.

So when Mr. Zander writes that “adolescents are looking for an arena in which to make an authentic contribution to the family and to the community,” and “how few meaningful roles are available for young people to fill” (p. 40), I saw an explanation for the present vacuous obsession with prom. When we fail to give them anything productive to do, how can we be surprised when all that’s left to care about is “Me! Me! Me!!!”

On the other hand, “Me! Me! Me!!!” is a rut almost all of my students have been in for a long time. And I don’t know where this “senioritis” garbage came from, but they are utterly unashamed of wallowing in it. If I gave my students a guaranteed A, I have no doubt I’d never see a majority of them lift a finger again, except to text under their desks.

My students, you see, aren’t there because, like Mr. Zander’s students, they desire deeply to improve their performance, but because the state and their parents force them to be. Does this mean they’re getting nothing of value in my classroom? Oh no, no, no—you should see them, this week, shining eyes reflecting the black-and-white glow of Olivier’s Hamlet. And I am really sure that’d be happening, grade or no. But the other wonderful things they’re doing—the visual poem, the fascinating discussions? They wouldn’t have those experiences if I didn’t reward them with points.

My grades aren’t competitive. Plenty of points to go around—an unlimited supply. Of course, I’m fond of saying “I don’t give points—you earn them.” And I hope they earn them doing valuable work that teaches them not only how to express themselves effectively but who they are and what they are capable of. I see them satisfied when they achieve something in a way that certainly transcends the reward/punishment system of points. But without that carrot, I don’t see them giving themselves the opportunity to achieve the satisfaction.

At least, not this year. As I reflect, though, on opening for my students a “Universe of Possibility,” I see that I have myself modeled that concept continually this year. I’m not only one of the “Old Farts” but had a well deserved reputation for being, while devoutly enthusiastic, hmm, let’s just say a bit of a stickler. This year I have continually tried one new thing after another, flagrantly experimenting and making mistakes and trying something else. I’ve boldly gone where no one (not at my school, anyway) has gone before. When I showed our principal the tweets we did in class watching Hamlet, he looked at me and grinned, “Who’da thoughtyou’d be the one doing this, huh?” I’ve demonstrated categorically that one is never too … too anything to learn new stuff, no, not even if one's first pet was a dinosaur.

Week 2 Reading: The Art of Possibility Chapters 1-4

The Art of Possibility

First of all, I want to say that this book is absolutely amazing and the first text book that I have ever read in my life that is an actual page turner. I love all the stories and student words, as well as how it reverts back and forth between the authors. It is so down to earth and inspirational. This morning, I bought 3 copies on Amazon—one for me, and one for my mom and dad. Their philosophies are so profound and echo my own very closely. I love the concept of contribution in life, “giving the A”, and just reaching beyond the constructs and conventions of society. I would like to make some chapter specific reflections:

Chapter 1

“It’s All Invented”

I thought the discussion about perception, and how humans have specific mind maps to understand the world around them that are developed over their whole lives was very interesting. I have noticed in my teaching that students have very different mind maps, priorities, and preconceptions than when I was in high school 7 years ago. We all, but especially them, in their little bubbles, do not step back and think about how our minds work. It is so true that there are frameworks in all of our minds that are influenced by categorizing, story-line organization, and a network of assumptions.

It is inspiring to think about leaving all that behind and looking at life with a fresh perspective. It reminds me that we as teachers never know what’s going on with a kid beyond our class, and we need to give them the benefit of the doubt and the most positive reaction we can muster even when they act up. You never know, and maybe never will know, what a difference that choice made in that person’s life.

Chapter 2

“Stepping Into A Universe of Possibility”

I liked the discussion here about the world of measurement vs. the universe of possibility; how people live in the world of measurement and there are hierarchies of what is safe, how to survive in a world of limited resources. I never had thought about how scarcity-thinking and survival-thinking are different from the actual condition; how pressure from invented realities or fear of what could happen causes unnecessary anxiety. This phenomena reminds me of a part in the young adult novel The Giver by Lois Lowry (1993). The setting is a future “perfect” society in which everything is cut and dry, literal, and void of all emotion. There, young children are beaten if they were to say, “I’m starving”, because it is a lie, an exaggeration of the hunger feeling. In our society, so many things are also taken out of context. They get so far gone that the construct becomes the assumed reality. I feel that has happened with the process of standardized testing (which we are in the midst of right now), and how learning, and in turn funding for the school, is catered to performance on this test. Isn’t the convention of taking a final assessment being a good measure of learning completely blown out of proportion here? Do we really have the best intentions for our children in mind? And it is being transferred because now, with a month of school left, kids think they are “done” and can totally slack (and let go with their manners) because testing is over. How much better would it be if we were teaching them that learning has no culminating end, that there are profound concepts to be learned that can’t be answered in multiple choice format, and that everything in life cannot be re-done and re-done until you pass?

As stressed in the reading, the important thing is to reflect on HOW thoughts and actions ARE a reflection off the conventions of a measurement world. If I could somehow transfer just that simple concept to my students, I think they would grow a lot in all facets of their life.

Chapter 3 and 4 “Giving” and “Contributing”

What a beautiful story about the starfish woman to start chapter 4. I had heard it before, but often thought of it and similar stories (like you read in FW emails) on my worst days of teaching. When I want to give up because some ignorant students called me a bleep bleep bleep or smashed someone else’s artwork or threw a chair or clogged my sink or hid a dirty paintbrush, I try to remember the subtle positive changes I MUST have made somewhere along the road. The smiles, the hearsay of students mentioning artists we have learned about in other classes, the Facebook requests after graduation, the thanks, the personal growth that is shown in their artwork over time in my class. This is what makes it worthwhile to get through the struggles. And as a veteran teacher once told me, “high school students are like daffodils…they may not bloom the first year, in fact they might just stay in the dirt. But you still water ‘em and give it your best. Then, many years down the road, they will bloom and it will be from something you planted or helped with—even if you never are around to see it.”

I thought the concept of “Giving An A” was beautiful, especially when explained through those amazing student responses. The Michelangelo “revealing the statue” analogy also made sense. I kind of already do that in my grading philosophy, although I don’t discuss it as an instigation of creativity as he does. I can understand that this theory would be great in music class, because there is so much risk-taking involved in being expressive. I laughed out loud at what they do when they make a mistake—putting their hands in the air and saying “how fascinating!” I do that in my own way too. Its more in the line of: student spills something or breaks something or messes something up, and then gives me that scared look of apprehension, like I’m about to go off. Even though I want to, I always remember how my mom reacted to me when I had accidents…and how sad I feelwhen I see the opposite in a store or on a movie (like a mom slapping or cussing at a kid for making a simple mistake). Making these small choices to look beyond the initial negative reaction is what makes us richer individuals and better leaders. I will try to “re-define” my audience as Roz did to her group of graduate students. They are all great artists, eager and ready to participate and create (maybe I should make that my screen saver J ) I AM a gift to others and so are they!

References

Leslie, N. (2002). Left and Right Brain Function: B0003920, Wellcome Images. Available under Creative Commons at http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/

Lowry, L. (1993). The giver. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Herring, M. (n.d.), Perception of 3D Objects: B0003936, Wellcome Images. Available under Creative Commons at http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/

Shaffner, P. (2007). Starfish_02_(paulshaffner). Available under creative commons at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Starfish_02_(paulshaffner).jpg

Zander, B. & Zander, R. (2000). The art of possibility. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Week 1 Post 4: General Reflection on Copyright: Shepard Fairey

Since there is not a specific project this week, I have decided to reflect a little bit about my work with students about Shepard Fairey. I did him for my Artist of the Week presentation, which usually entails a PowerPoint, video(s), or website that goes over the body of work and life of the artist. Students take a few notes and then we have a class discussion. The students reacted a lot to his work and the story about the lawsuit. Some students loved his work, the boldness and modern "graphic-y" look. They recognized some images from popular culture such as the Obey campaign, and of course, the Obama poster, as well as one of the other images of the guns and roses, which apparently, one of my students has as a tattoo (which brought up a whole new conversation about copyright and tattoos--one student mentioning that Hangover2 is getting sued over a Mike Tyson tattoo?). Some students thought his work was repetitive, narrow, and didn't take as much talent because it was made on a computer.

The issue of the lawsuit inspired quite a debate, varying greatly between my sections but always 2-sided. Some students said that he should have given the photographer credit. Some said if its on the internet, its easy to get, and therefore up for grabs. Some said he changed it so much that it shouldn't matter. Some said he didn't have any other choice 'cause he doesn't have a press pass to get a photograph. Some said Obama is such a figure-head, and in a political campaign, so his photographs should be fair use. Most agreed that Shepard should have at least given Garcia credit. I really enjoyed getting the kids talking about the issue and broadening their minds to the idea of credit and fair use. The more they realize the details of both sides, the more they will understand how these same issues effect their own lives.

Image Attribute:

By Shepard_Fairey.jpg: Cliff from I now live in Arlington, VA (Outside Washington DC), USA

2009

derivative work: Davidowenmorgan (Shepard_Fairey.jpg) [CC-BY-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Link to this image on Wikimedia Commons

Week 1 Response to Peer Reading: Thomas Wood

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Michael Wood's Original Reflection:

Week 1 Response to Peer Reading: Peter Binskin

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Peter's Original Post:

That was a great spread of information and personal stories about copyright in this digital age presented in the videos. Copyright is something that has been constantly with me through the years and something I’ve looked at closely in Australia and America. Being a songwriter I am constantly reminded of copyright issues as I consider the melodies I create and, as a performer, I am reminded of the idea of paying for what you use and respecting others work as I would have them respect mine.

Back in the early 90s I was a product demonstrator at Mac World in Sydney for a product that was the first version in what would be later known as Protools. I remember that there were two types of people coming to my stand. One type would be marveling at the technology available to manipulate sound to create new music, the other would be furious at those same abilities used to steal other’s creations (or manipulate their songs without permission). I had more than one person literally screaming at my Mac II and me that I was the beginning of the end of music and should be ashamed at my part in it.

I think it affected me so much that, since that time (until Garageband and even then I try to only use percussion and add my own live instruments) I would create my own percussion loops rather than sample someone else’s songs even though I had the gear to do it.

That’s why the Good Copy/Bad Copy video was quite personal to me and those same issues that faced me twenty years ago are still being faced around the world.

As a registered songwriter in Australia I still receive a very small amount of money every year from the performing rights association, not for the royalties of my music being played on TV or radio but from an amount that is paid to this same association (and then distributed to its members) by the Chinese government because they do not keep records of the sale, distribution or airplay of copyrighted music. This is one way in which governments are recognizing their responsibilities to artists but it does nothing to change the situation in that country.

I also loved the list of Brad Templeton’s copyright myths. I have heard every one of those come from the mouths of friends, colleagues and people who claim to be in the know and some of them very recently. Certainly number one is huge. Even though copyright is automatic, however, it’s easier to take someone to court if you have a piece of paper from the copyright office rather than a self addressed, sealed envelope with your CD and a fading postmark to prove that your wrote it and when.

I have to say, a positive thing about the course we are doing is that this knowledge about copyright and where to find creative commons and public domain material is going to help save us (and/or our bank accounts) in this digital age as we continue to create materials to help us deliver more effective education to our classes. We don’t know where it’s going to end up or who’s going to see so we better have all the creative bits locked down legally.