Myth Busters: Summer Slide and The Loss of Learning

So I had this great evil plan to destroy the confidence of my grade 12 IB Biology students on the first day of school today ... with the intention of developing great strategies to start the year of course :-)  My 12th graders had returned from a very restful summer filled with very little biology revision (I suspect).  It is crunch time, the final stretch before their exams in May, so I decided to start class with an activity to show them how little they remember from their first year of IB.  I divided them into two groups and assigned them to two white boards.  No smart phones, no computers, no syllabus, no prompts...just their collective bank of memories that were formed back in January of this year.   One group was told to diagram everything that happens in respiration (aerobic and anaerobic) outside of the mitochondria, and the other group was instructed to diagram everything that happens inside of the mitochondria during respiration.  I then loaded up a couple of the videos they had produced in an activity I had them do last year as a comparison of what they knew then to what they know now.  Turns out the answer was almost everything.  One group had zero mistakes, and the other had only one error in the sequencing of two of biochemical steps in glycolysis.  They remembered all of the terms, were able to distinguish reduced molecules from oxidized ones, and accurately described all of the products for all of the stages in both anaerobic and aerobic respiration.  Here is one of the drawings produced.  

Now in the past this had been a foolproof plan...but then last year, I approached the teaching of the material differently than before.  When planning the unit on Cellular Respiration, I paid careful attention to the type of activities that I had the students engage in along with the sequence and spacing of exposure to the content according the current neuroscience research on memory retention.  Eric Jensen recommends the following strategy for content exposure to maximize retention in his book, Teaching with the Brain in Mind: 

By following Jensen's schedule of learning exposure combined with the use of collaborative multimedia learning activities, particularly this one, I have to put this one in the win column.  We reviewed a couple of the videos that my students created for this assessment, and were surprised to find that one of them had over 650 views!  Even better, one of the students claimed that she was probably responsible for 100 of them while she was reviewing for her final, and it wasn't even her video!  I will definitely be rethinking my plan for teaching photosynthesis over the next couple of weeks.  It is pretty awesome walking away from day feeling this optimistic!  Maybe that other shoe won't drop! 

13 Hours and Counting...

This is always the worst part of the year for me.  After an amazingly restful summer in Colorado...

It is time for my yang twin – I'm a Gemini – to take over so that I can hit the ground running on my first day back which is incidentally in 12 hours and 50 minutes.  UGH!  Normally the change in scenery is enough to get the gears in my brain going...

 ...but not even the cows blocking my path on the sidewalk did the trick.   

Fortunately my saviors, Daniel Pink and Seth Godin, awakened the yin twin in me. 

If you haven't read   To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink, I highly recommend it.  If you are in a time crunch, here is Daniel Pink's To Sell is Human in Less than 10 Minutes .  In his discussion on clarity, he presents a sample case where he offers several guiding principles that resonated with me. 

1. Clarify others motives with two "irrational" questions.   He explains this questioning strategy in this post. 
   
2. Try a jolt of the unfamiliar.  
3. Become a curator. In the book, he references a post by Beth Kanter that does a great job of explaining how to become a curator of information.   
4. Learn how to ask better questions.  Again, he directs his readers to a link for a questioning strategy that will help you to ask better questions.   
5. Ask the Five Whys.  
6. Find the 1%.   (Still trying to figure this one out)
   

Though this chapter was about clarity, I found myself leaving it with more questions than I started with, as did many of the members in my virtual book club this summer.  It reminded me of this Regis University advertisement that I saw in the Denver airport this summer.  

 Then in Seth's blog today, he wrote about focusing on the colors rather than the numbers.  Read it. My summary would be the same length as his post :-) This also struck a chord with me as I suspect that one of the first things that we will do when I return tomorrow is look at data, such as IB scores, to develop our goals and strategies for the year.  This is ironic considering that we are in the middle of a paradigm shift in education, and if looking at the numbers will only get us better numbers, shouldn't we be looking at alternatives to standardized testing?  Shouldn't we be creating different assessments to measure student learning on the 21st century skills that serve as the focus of our teaching and learning?  What are the colors that I should focus on to take my teaching to the next level this year? 

So with 12 hours and 4 minutes left before I give complete control to yang, I will leave you to your reading, while the yin in me signs off to watch the Newsroom.  

Gamification 101: Designing Your Playbook Beyond Levels Part IV

It has been a busy couple of weeks!  I just returned from the ISTE conference, which was an exhilarating, exhausting experience, but I will save my reflections for another post.  

As you can see I presented at the conference.  For those of you who did not attend, which includes probably everyone who reads this blog, here is a link to the how-to-guide that I created to go along with the presentation and my blog posts.  This is a good place to start if you have no experience with games or gamification as I have included links to tons of helpful resources that have helped me along the way. 

In my last post I discussed selecting your content and choosing a level structure for your game.  This of course is something that we as teachers do everyday when planning our lessons and units.  This should be the easy part!  Having said that, here are a couple of things to keep in mind before committing to your game if you are planning on creating a long-term game (more than 2-3 lessons): 

Remember, do yourself a favor and start small.  If you are one of those people who adheres to the mantra "Go big or go home!" then I would advise you to lock all future levels beyond the one that your students are working on.  This inspires curiosity creating a sense of heightened anticipation, which is motivating to your students. It also gives you a chance to call audibles and change things up.  Get rid of things that don't work and add in things that do.  Your first game will be a lot of trial and error, so give yourself a break as you will be doing a lot of "building the plane while you are flying it" your first time through. 

Once you have selected your content, it starts to get a little messy.  There are three main parts that you have to deal with:  the content, the narrative, and the mechanics.  There is no right way to approach designing your game, so if the creativity hits you, go for it and focus on the narrative and the mechanics when you are in your flow.  For others it will be helpful especially your first time through to focus on the content structure first and then embellish it afterwards.  I used the latter approach for my first game, but for the two that I am working on now, I am all over the place!   Below is a snapshot of my process.

The Dilemma: 

At ASB we follow a trimester system, so students take a trimester of chemistry in 9th grade and then a second trimester in 10th grade.  Because I work at an international school with a transient population, every year in 10th grade, I get several new students who have never had chemistry before.  I also have a handful of students who could us a solid review of 9th grade chemistry if you know what I mean.  When there are only 50-60 students per grade level, this is a significant percentage of my students.  Having said that, it is not fair to hold the others back.  To address this issue, I designed a self-paced chemistry review using online resources via our LMS.  The problem is that students are not as motivated to truly learn (read practice and/or memorize problem solving strategies) especially those who are further behind than others as they tend to skip the necessary repetition to catch up with their peers.  So I have decided to gamify the review in hopes that the game itself will help to motivate the students to take the time required to build a solid foundation.  None of the tasks associated with the review will be graded.  They will all be formative assessments.

My game will have 4 levels.  I arrived at this number by analyzing the content and determining the natural breaks in terms of difficulty and complexity.  So my level structure for this one is easy to hard/more complex.  This is where it gets messy.  The narrative exploded on the scene before the rest of the structure fell into place for me.  So I went with the flow.  As a result, I can only share how I have designed the game thus far, but it will give you an idea as to how to get started. 

The example posted above shows the first task in the game.  Students will be assigned basic vocabulary that they will need to accomplish the first level of tasks (electron, proton, etc.) I have created a set of online flashcards on Quizlet that will be shared with the class.  Quizlet has both a built-in self-testing tool as well as two games that students can play for practice. I will play one of the games, and set the "score to beat".  Prior to the quiz, I will encourage grinding by holding a class game competition.  I will set a deadline (before they can sit for their first quiz) and the top three scorers who managed to beat my score on the word game will receive a code breaker card.  These tchotchkes are essentially a subeconomy in the game that will confer special privileges to the students in possession of the card.  Students will be allowed to barter and trade these cards on the black market as part of the game to purchase equipment for their laboratories if they choose not to use the privilege themselves. 

The card pictured above will essentially grant the student the right to retake a future quiz with no penalty (reduced amount of rubles earned, higher penalties for missed questions, eligibility for other tchotchkes). Note that by locking levels/ challenges beyond this one, I will be able to read when it is necessary to offer a privilege like this again and to whom to ensure that all students stay motivated and in their personal flow. All students will be awarded Rubles based on the number of questions that they get correct on their quiz.  They may retake the quiz as many times as necessary, but their earning potential is smaller for each subsequent attempt.  This encourages students to get it right on their first attempt, as you don't want students to waste too much time on retakes due to a lack of effort or preparation. 

As the game progresses, students will be able to use their rubles and tchotchkes to buy lab equipment on the black market (such as a bunsen burner) to upgrade their lab from an underground bunker to the next level.  There will also be surprise challenges like a chemistry scavenger hunt through the school using their knowledge of chemical elements and compounds to decode their search which can earn them equipment, tchotchkes or rubles. 

Takeaways:  

• Small manageable chunk of content
• Assessments allow for quick grading (program does it for me) to provide students with immediate feedback
• mechanics selected (game competition, tchotchke award for top 3, ruble amounts) all motivate students to thoroughly learn the vocabulary required
• Tchotchkes are designed to help avoid flow anxiety later in the game.   
• Students that don't make the top three in the game will most likely have played it enough times to learn the vocabulary which will earn them a sufficient amount of rubles without having to retake the quiz.   

More to come as I flesh the rest of this out!  In the meantime, here is a link to a list of mechanics you might want to consider using in your game as you design your playbook.   

Medium: A New Blogging Platform

A few weeks ago, I read this post in Fast Company, one of my favorite online publications.  Apparently Evan Williams, one of the co-founders of Twitter, and Evan Hansen, a former Wired ​editor, formed a partnership to change the way that content is promoted on the web.  When you think about the way the social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter work in terms of your news feeds, the newest content always shows up at the top of your feed.  As a blogger trying to share out content, this has always been problematic, particularly with Twitter.  If you don't share a link at just the right time, chances are pretty good that the majority of your audience will never see it as the feed populates with newer content rapidly pushing your post further and further down in the feed.  

In the Fast Company article, Evans posed, "The reward structure as we have it now encourages high-frequency, low-cost content chasing pageviews and unique visitors rather than investing in a single article--a dilemma poignantly articulated by Atlantic editor Alexis C. Madrigal back in March."  ​

Medium, their new collaborative blogging platform that is still in beta, has adopted a more Reddit-style upvoting system.  At the bottom of each post there is a button for you to click if you recommend the post (no this does not "retweet" or post to any of your social media sites). 

Then when you go to the homepage feed, the posts are presented in order of the most recommended as opposed to the most recent posts. 

Why use Medium as your blog platform?  ​

Williams gives three reasons for this: 

1. Medium lets you focus on your words.  ​
2. Medium is collaborative
3. Medium helps you find your audience

I was certainly intrigued, so yesterday I wrote my first post entitled What it Means to be a Connected Educator.  ​Click through on the image above to read more if you are interested in contributing to Medium.

My Two Cents

As Evan claims, Medium is a beautiful space for reading and writing.  There are no widgets, sidebars or plug-ins.  It is also one of the easiest writing platforms that I have used.  It feels a little like the Mac computer of blogs.  Steve Jobs would be proud.  ​Last night, one of my Twitter "friends" who read my post confessed that he uses Medium and has several drafts that he hasn't posted just because he likes writing on the platform so much.

When you start a post, you add it to a collection of similar posts.  There are still some bugs to work out with this, so I would recommend that you create your own collection for your posts.  It is easy to do.  You can always add your post to additional collections later. 

I have found that in just 24 hours, my post on Medium has reached a wider audience than it would have had I posted it on this blog.  ​That being said, in order for it to stay relevant, readers have to make it relevant by recommending it so that it stays high enough in the feed to be read by visitors to the home page.   Though the idea of competitive blogging takes me a little out of my comfort zone, I do believe that it forces you to write better content.  I also like that you can blog whenever you want on Medium due to the collaborative nature of the platform.  People don't go to Medium to read my posts on education; they go to Medium to expose themselves to great content on a myriad of topics regardless of the author.  For example, yesterday, I read this great post by Austin Kleon (love Steal Like an Artist) called Shut up and write the book! but then I read an equally great post by Raymond Duke (no idea who he is) entitled You are Completely Full of Sit. 

Reading Medium is like reading your favorite magazine with out any of the adds or subscription inserts.  Give it a try. If you like what you read, go ahead and click that green button.  :-)