An Introduction to; http://www.trickey.ca/trick%27s_ss08/index_ss_08.htm

For my final Vison Project I have updated my Social Studies 8 course for online distribution and resource sharing for those teachers and students in British Columbia who may be forced back to online learning this winter due to COVID-19 restrictions or for those who are looking for additional support and resources.  The course is comprehensive and large in scale.  An entire course’s worth of material has been posted, complete with readings, assignments, adapted materials for struggling students, and is supported by additional resources like videos and inquiry projects.  The course itself is complete and can be used either as a direct online course or can be utilized as a supporting resource for teachers.  By design, the course is free, easily adaptable and easily edited by open non-restrictive digital formats.  It is teacher and student friendly and most importantly, classroom ready.

I have created and maintained an online collection of teacher and student friendly resources on my own webpage for over 15 years and periodically, I have to update or add new materials.  With new curricular changes in BC, this seemed like an ideal time to totally “reboot” my course.  My old Socials 8 course was linked to the Michael Cranny textbook Pathways, a standard text found in many schools.  When I went about recreating my Socials 8 course this time around, I was focused on making the course a stand-alone offering.  All materials, from readings, to worksheets, to inquiry projects as well as supporting videos would be made available on the website, for free and in an easily editable format so that teachers could manipulate or adapt as they see fit.

The Teacher-Librarian as a Curator of Useful Resources and a Guardian of Truthful Knowledge

Throughout this course we have investigated the important role of the Teacher-Librarian (TL) and their expanded role as more than just someone who signs out books.  The TL is that Guardian of Truthful Knowledge in a world that is increasingly becoming swamped in disinformation and echo-chambers of inaccurate information or beliefs.  We know that “Once acquired, false information is hard to dispel” (Froehlich, 2020) and it is not enough to assume that the digital natives of today need not to know content that can be found on the internet because “…this apparently tidy logic is wrong.” (Lemov, 2017).  What is needed of today’s TL is the ability to be that “Renaissance Person” who is able to provide a skill set of research, collection and analyzation of material to combat lies and misinformation in an era of what can best be described as “post-truths”. (Lor, 2018).  The TL can use their skill sets to create or collect teacher and student friendly material that can  then be shared freely, easily and digitally.

To be a “Guardian of Truthful Knowledge”, the Teacher-Librarian has to help with providing the maximum amount of “truthful” content so that when a student is confronted with misleading or outright lies on their own, a student can pause and begin the crucial process of critically thinking.  This will happen only when they stop, and ask themselves “that’s not what I learned in school” and when that happens, when students have a considerable store of background knowledge based in truths and facts, critically thinking will occur.  After all, a person cannot think critically about something that they know nothing about, and in that way libraries, as Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, become “…essential to the functioning of a democratic society”. (Kranich, 2001)

My Hope

My hope after this course is to provide a resource that is both useful and functional for those who wish to take advantage of it.  March of 2020 saw British Columbia’s public schools move to online learning due to restrictions put in place due the pandemic of COVID-19, and many teachers struggled to adapt to the online environment and students struggled with staying engaged.

It is noted by scholars such as Wayne Journell, that secondary students in particular “…may have difficulty succeeding in an online environment where the teacher is not physically present.” (Journell, 2012)   This is due to the fact that it is the inter-personal relationship that occurs between the teacher and the student that promotes and motivate a student’s ability to succeed. (Wentzel, 2009).   In March of 2020, teachers were tasked with providing digitally accessible materials and at the same time, to try to maintain a relationship of motivation and support virtually in a very rapid fashion with varying degrees of success.  If providing free, teacher and student friendly digital course materials, that can be accessed and shared easily, then my hope is that the time that would have been devoted to creating online relevant material, can instead be focused upon maintaining those student-teacher relationships, even if it is virtually.

Bibliography and Works Cited

Borup, J., Graham, C. R., & Drysdale, J. S. (2014). The nature of teacher engagement at an online high school. British Journal of Educational Technology, 45(5), 793-806.

Froehlich, Thomas Joseph. “Ten Lessons for the Age of Disinformation.” Navigating Fake News, Alternative Facts, and Misinformation in a Post-Truth World. IGI Global, 2020. 36-88.

Journell, W. (2010). Perceptions of e‐learning in secondary education: a viable alternative to classroom instruction or a way to bypass engaged learning?. Educational Media International, 47(1), 69-81.

Journell, W. (2012). Walk, don’t run—to online learning. Phi Delta Kappan, 93(7), 46-50.

Kirschner, Paul A., and Jeroen JG van Merriënboer. “Do learners really know best? Urban legends in education.” Educational psychologist 48.3 (2013): 169-183.

Kranich, Nancy. Libraries and Democracy. American Library Association, 2001.

Lemov, Doug, “How Knowledge Powers Reading”, Educational Leadership, (http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb17/vol74/num05/How-Knowledge-Powers-Reading.aspx ) (2017)

Lor, Peter Johan. “Democracy, information, and libraries in a time of post-truth discourse.” Library Management (2018).

Watson, J. (2008). Blended Learning: The Convergence of Online and Face-to-Face Education. Promising Practices in Online Learning. North American Council for Online Learning.

Wentzel, K. R. (2009). Students’ relationships with teachers as motivational contexts. In K. Wentzel and A. Wigfield (Eds.), Handbook of motivation at school (pp. 301-322). Mahwah, NJ: LEA.

Student/Teacher Friendly and Classroom Ready

Resources are meant to be used, however not all resources are always classroom-ready meaning that often a resource has to be adapted and modified in order to fit a particular teacher’s plan.  Often those resources are in print or digital copyright form, which may be easy to photo-copy, but may not be easily shared or distributed digitally.  My final Vision project of a comprehensive Socials Studies 8 course keeps that in mind, that any material must be;

• Open, free, and easily manipulated.
• The resources must be made digitally accessible
• The resources should include supporting content

Open, Free, and Easily Manipulated

Early on in my career, I was asked to help co-ordinate and design an online depository of resources for teachers within the Shuswap (SD83) district.  My name was brought up and I was asked to help create this depository because of the courses that I was already providing online.  The hope was to create a series of online course materials, organized by subject and grade that teachers could add and download for free.  Unfortunately, the project fell apart when the colleague that I was asked to work with became insistent that all submitted material had to be converted to “html text”.  His insistent argument was a philosophical one that focused around not wanting to use any form of “corporate digital formatting”, meaning that he refused to create or distribute anything that was in Microsoft Word or Adobe PDF formatting.  At that time, my feeling was; “Why not use something that everyone uses and is familiar with?”  Of course, converting documents to html webpages and still maintain a printer-friendly formatting and design for easy use was not an easy task back then.   That problem was compounded when given the sheer amount of work that just I was providing to the project, not to mention the amount we were hoping to attract and share.  The Windmill he was tilting at became too big of a hurdle to overcome.  The next year, an opportunity to change districts came up and unfortunately the project never came to fruition.

What I learned from this experience is that if you want people to use and share resources, you shouldn’t deliberately create hurdles or technological obstacles that would become barriers to the concept of sharing.  After that, I created my own webpage at www.trickey.ca and have been adding and maintaining that website for well over 15 years.  I have always used Microsoft Word for my worksheet resources because almost every teacher that I know, knows how to use the program and most programs will read a .doc or a .docx file extension.  As the years have progressed, other operating systems like Apple and Android and applications such as Google Docs have come onto the market, however Microsoft’s operating system still powers close to 80% of the world’s computers.  In the beginning, I was using and creating videos using the .WMV which is a Microsoft video format or a .MOV video format which is used by Apple, but for this project I have re-formatted my supporting videos to the .MP4 format which is universally accessible and does not require a media player plug-in for most browsers, meaning that the videos can now be viewed directly from the webpage.  Using universally accepted formats that people are familiar with is key to sharing resources online.

Digitally Accessible

Digital resources are easy to share and easy to create but it is not the “webpage” that makes the difference between a helpful or inconsequential online resource.  I have been asked many times over my career to help people create a “webpage”, but it is often not the “webpage” that causes issues, it is the amount of digital material that they have.  Teachers of my generation have a lot of excellent resources to share, but unfortunately, a lot of it is still paper-based.  When asked to help someone make a webpage, my first question has always been; “What digital content do you have to share?”  If the content is in the form of paper-based print material, then that material has to be first scanned, digitized, and then formatted into a usable document such as Google Docs or Microsoft Word.  This can be a very time-consuming and sometimes technically difficult task for many and although webpages in themselves are easy to create, it is the digitized content and formatting that often becomes the biggest hurdle for teachers to share online.

In the past, I’ve created course materials that are linked to popular textbooks that were used around the province, so those resources were readily accessed and utilized.  When I started to design and create my new Socials 8 course, I have decided not to base it around a textbook because I’ve noticed that I could reach an even greater audience if I didn’t have to first rely upon them having the textbook I was using.  For this “reboot” of my Socials 8 course, I decided to create my own “readings” to go along with worksheets and activities.  In this sense, I’m now creating a truly self-contained online course that is open, free, adaptable and free of the cost of associated resources.

Supporting Resources

Teachers have always supplemented lessons that they teach with additional supporting materials.  It may be a video that adds to the discussion or adapted materials for students who struggle with regular assigned work.  My new Socials 8 course is providing supplemental resources such as .MP4 videos linked to each lesson and I am also providing adapted material that looks just like what other students are receiving, but have design measures put into place to help such as cloze responses for written work and imbedded space for written work to help lessen the organizational aspect of assigned work.  I will provide examples of these adapted materials on the webpage, but will withhold all of those adapted materials to the public.  The adapted worksheets being what they are, would allow “regular” students to take an “easy route” that would not be as beneficial as if they did the work on their own without assistance.  I will include my email on the webpage and if a teacher with a school district account wishes to email me, then I’ll be happy to share those adapted materials with them.

My Audience

My audience is obviously teachers and students within the BC school system, however the topics in Socials 8 are used in many other jurisdictions as well.  The ease of access, the organization of the units, the supporting materials all make my new Socials 8 course a prime resource for teachers who may wish to supplement their own lessons, or more importantly are looking for a resource that can be shared online if schools have to migrate to online learning this winter due to COVID-19 concerns.

Final Vision

With a greater demand for digital resources that work well with BC’s new curriculum, I would like to update and finish my current Socials 8 online course.  I have had experiences with student and teacher friendly online offerings for over 15 years now and have always made those resources available on my personal website; www.trickey.ca .  All of the resources that I have provided at this site are organized as independent online courses.  Many schools around the province, have made use of these courses and how those resources have been used varies.  Some schools have told me that the Learning Resource Room and the counselling department make use of my courses for students at-risk.  While other classroom teachers use them to supplement their own resources.  Because I have always kept the format of the documents open, without restrictions, anyone can easily edit to fit what is being shared to their specific needs.  These two uses and approaches is not surprising in that is the ultimate aim has always been the same, to create something that can and will be used.

Switch to Online Learning during COVID

During the switch to Online Learning during the COVID crisis of the Spring of 2020, I had a few conversations with people who had made good use of the courses already posted because of the way in which they are organized and the way in which they are easily and freely accessible digitally.  My Socials 7 and Socials 8 courses in particular were found to be useful by others.  It is because of this I would like to complete my up-date of my Socials 8 course to also better align with the new BC Assessment practices around competency assessment.  My target audience will then be those Grade 8 teachers in BC who are not only looking to add to their own personal resources, but take advantage of a teacher/student friendly online course materials that may be useful if we return to Online Learning this Winter of 2020.

Large but Doable and Usable

This Vision project is a large scale and comprehensive project which includes lesson by lesson design with online, printable readings and worksheets, supplemented with supporting videos and alternative work for struggling learners.  Fortunately, a lot of the heavy work has already been done, because it is a course that I have been working on for a couple of years now, adding, supplementing, editing, etc… . What needs to be done next, is to complete or update some more of the end of unit inquiry projects and supports that can be used to help demonstrate proficiencies.  I am also looking to receive some constructive feedback as to what else can be done to make my online Socials 8 resource more usable and useful for the classroom teacher.

The intent of this Vision project follows my personal and professional philosophy that the most important aspect of teaching is the interactions and relationships that can help a student become successful.  If I can create something that lessens the amount time that needs to be devoted to preparing and planning online friendly material during a pandemic, then that time, effort and energy can be focused on those relationships, even if it has to migrate to an online form.

Kids are Kids

When I look back and reflect upon what  have investigated over the course of LIBE 447b, it is has been a journey towards a better understanding as to the not only the role of a Teacher-Librarian (TL) but also an exploration as to some of the concerns regarding the move towards Standards-Based Learning and Core Competencies assessment in the current “re-boot” of the BC educational curriculum.  At the heart of all of this change lies an underlying truth that “kids are kids” and that it is very unlikely that all kids possess the universal intrinsic motivation to “exceed” in all subject matters.  What remains constant is that in public education, as in most endevours, personal relationships matter the most in motivating and inspiring learners.

How Best to Support Teachers from the Learnings Commons

Teacher-Librarians have the unique ability to be the “Renaissance Person” of a school.  The TL often has a degree or a background in a particular subject and may have focused their teaching experience in certain areas, but the TL, by the nature of the occupation must also be a generalist with the mindset of a curator of truthful knowledge.  The TL often as the ability and expertise to gather resources, package useful classroom material and provide the infrastructure and space to foster collegial learning communities.  The Teacher-Librarian is the “Hub” of a school community and the TL can make use of that role and their expertise to assist classroom teachers in the building.

Intrinsic or Extrinsic, Relationships are Key

There is a debate as to what is needed most for today’s 21^st Century learner.  Current trends foster the idea that all students should be intrinsically motivated and be responsible for their own learning.  Others realize that adolescence is a unique period in one’s life, full of distractions and impulses that may get in the way of learning.  What is key though, is the relationship that the classroom teacher forms with their students.  Regardless of pedagogical leanings, most educators understand that, and are always balancing the demands of their jobs to maximize opportunities to develop and foster those relationships.

Power of Relationships – edutopia.org

My Vision Project

For my Vision Project, I intend to update and fine tune my comprehensive online Social Studies 8 course to match with the new curricular changes in BC.  My online course is designed with manageable, age appropriate non-fiction readings, supported with teacher and student friendly worksheets (including adapted versions) and supporting videos to expand upon topics presented.  I plan to include short inquiry projects at the end of each unit of study and provide scaffolding supports in the form of curated, online research sites to avoid the “black hole” on student online research.  The aim of this is to provide teachers with more time to focus on relationships and to take away some of the burden of prep work.

The online course will be included on my personal webpage, which has been made available to the public for over 15 years, and contains teaching materials and resources for a variety of courses ranging from Science, to Socials, to Math and Psychology.  These shared materials follow my own personal teaching history and a philosophy that all teachers are in this profession together and in an age of easy digital access, why not share what resources are available with colleagues?  That is one of the goals of all Teacher-Librarians, to share knowledge and resources publicly, free of charge, with no real limitations.  All of my resources that I share can be edited and adapted by anyone who chooses to make use of them and the goal is to take some of the pressure, time and energy away from “prep work” so that classroom teachers can focus on what matters most; their students.

Bibliography and Works Cited

edutopia.org, ” The Power of Relationships in Schools”, https://www.edutopia.org/video/power-relationships-schools

Froehlich, Thomas Joseph. “Ten Lessons for the Age of Disinformation.” Navigating Fake News, Alternative Facts, and Misinformation in a Post-Truth World. IGI Global, 2020. 36-88.

Kirschner, Paul A., and Jeroen JG van Merriënboer. “Do learners really know best? Urban legends in education.” Educational psychologist 48.3 (2013): 169-183.

Riedling, Ann Marlow, Loretta Shake, and Cynthia Houston. Reference skills for the school librarian: Tools and tips. ABC-CLIO, 2013.

Stellenboch University, “Use of Smartphones in Classrooms Impacts Academic Performance, Oct. 16, 2017, youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJAUwjiZNfg

More Than Just Books

A 2013 article from Pew Research Center examined the role and importance of community libraries.  In its article, it outlines not only the traditional role of Libraries to lend out both fiction and non-fiction books, but it also describes a dynamic hub for individual communities.  Today’s libraries provide free access to the internet which enable community members to access governments services, research information related to health care and apply virtually for jobs. (Pew, 2013).  More than just books, libraries are community informational hubs that provide internet access to some of a community’s most disenfranchised members. Nancy Kranich in her edited collection of writings Libraries and Democracy: The Cornerstones of Liberty, echoes a quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt who describes libraries as; “…essential to the functioning of a democratic society”. (Kranich, 2001) She then goes further to describe how in the information and digital age, that libraries not only provide the society with access to truthful knowledge, it also bridges the gap between the information rich and the information poor of society. (Kranich, 2001)

Peter Lor updates Kranich’s views with an updated look at how libraries and librarians play an important role in providing a skill set of research, collection and analyzation of material to combat lies and misinformation in an era of what he describes as “post-truth discourse”. (Lor, 2018).  In each of these examples, the Library of the 21^st Century is more than just the loaner of books, it is a true cornerstone of communities and an essential part of democratic discourse.

Libraries in Developing Countries

If Libraries are as important to developed nations as Kranich and Lor suggest, then the potential for positive impact on developing nations is almost guaranteed.  The access to information gap between develop and underdeveloped countries can be reduced with greater access to public libraries and the connections that they can provide to the internet.  Sharma notes that Africa, which hold one-eighth of the world’s population can be “…considered as the information-poorest continent when it comes to connectivity.” (Sharma, 2009) Some of that access to knowledge deficit can be made up with greater access to Libraries in the under-developed world.

Mobile Devices Can Help

A recent UNESCO report entitled Reading in the Mobile Era, notes that even if few people in developing nations have access to hard copy text material, the preferred way of accessing information is now becoming text via mobile phone devices.   The UNESCO study goes on to say that;

• large numbers of people (one third of study participants) read stories to children from mobile phones;
• females read far more on mobile devices than males (almost six times as much according to the study);
• both men and women read more cumulatively when they start reading on a mobile device;
• many neo- and semi-literate people use their mobile phones to search for text that is appropriate to their reading ability.

In areas that lack the resources for locally funded libraries, the democratization of the information age may in fact lie in the hands of easier access to internet capable mobile phones and the creation of local libraries.

Works Cited and Bibliography

Kranich, Nancy. Libraries and Democracy. American Library Association, 2001.

Lor, Peter Johan. “Democracy, information, and libraries in a time of post-truth discourse.” Library Management (2018).

Pew Research Center, Library Services in the Digital Age, https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2013/01/22/library-services/ , Jan. 22, 2013

Sharma, Ravindra N. “Technology and academic libraries in developing nations.” International Conference on Academic Libraries (ICAL). 2009.

UNESCO, Reading in the Mobile Era, https://en.unesco.org/news/reading-mobile-era-0 ,April, 2014

UNESCO, UNESCO Study Shows Effectiveness of Mobile Phones in Promoting Reading and Literacy in Developing Countries, https://en.unesco.org/news/unesco-study-shows-effectiveness-mobile-phones-promoting-reading-and-literacy-developing-0 , April, 2014

Teaching is an Exercise in Life-Long Learning and TLs can Help

Like any other profession, teaching is more than just a skill set occupation, meaning that the art of teaching itself is a skill but it is also a career of on-going, continuous learning, both in the content area of expertise and in the pedagogy of how best to get kids to learn.  Because knowledge is constantly evolving and the sum total of information related to a particular subject area is improving, refining and being added to, Professional Development, like Professional Development in other professions, is used to constantly keep teachers up-to-date with their areas of expertise, and Teacher-Librarians (TL) can be there to help.  Often this is related to TLs staying up to date on current trends in pedagogy or curricular changes and developments, but it also includes opportunities to stay abreast with the current changes in  subject fields, such as the latest in genome theory for biology or new theories and evidence related to the foundation or expiration of ancient societies.  Teaching is a constant exercise of life-long learning and it is that philosophy; that people will always be life-long learners, regardless of whatever occupation our students may grow into, that often drives and promotes our practices and lessons in our classrooms.  TLs are in the unique position to foster life-long learning with not only the students, but the staff as well by facilitating opportunities to share and debate professional topics.

What Can Teacher-Librarians Do to Help?

Teacher-Librarians are in the unique position of being that collector of knowledge within a school setting.  Their particular skill sets involving a cross-curricular knowledge base, the ability to vet, catalogue, and share appropriate resources that can be supported in the Learning Commons and the staff room.  Teachers who are challenged with new curricular expectations can find assistance in a TLs who can help with alleviating or expediting some of the necessary “prep work” by directing them towards resources so that teacher efforts can be concentrated on working with student needs and implementing new practices.  Often it is the TL who is the first to find a particular helpful resource, while maintaining a site of useful and vetted research sites for school staff and students.  In this sense a TL can also become a curator of teacher/student friendly online resources.

Most importantly, Teacher-Librarians can facilitate discussions and foster “bottom up” professional development.  Being a TL does not mean that one is just there to serve the educational needs of the students.  TLs can be there to host and moderate professional online discussion boards or blogs, maintain a “staff room library” or even encourage opportunities to meet outside of the school setting to connect and share ideas, practices and experiences with each other.  The school learning commons is a central hub for most schools and it is the ability and willingness to assist, share ideas, resources, and facilitate discussions or professional inquires that falls well within the “wheelhouse” of the modern Teacher-Librarian.

Bibliography

Fullan, Michael. Leading in a culture of change. John Wiley & Sons, 2007.

Henri, James, and Suzette Boyd. “Teacher librarian influence: Principal and teacher librarian perspectives.” School Libraries Worldwide 8 (2002): 1-18.

Orr, Greg. “Diffusion of innovations, by Everett Rogers (1995).” Retrieved January 21 (2003): 2005.

Riedling, Ann Marlow, Loretta Shake, and Cynthia Houston. Reference skills for the school librarian: Tools and tips. ABC-CLIO, 2013.

Scheirer, Bev. “The changing role of the teacher-librarian in the twenty-first century.” Acedido em 3 (2000): 16-19.

Personal Learning Networks – Start Local

I am well into my final third of my career and have been teaching since 1996.  In that time I’ve taught many subjects in many schools, from high schools, to district behaviour schools to currently running an in-house middle school program within a rural high school.  Throughout my career which has seen me teach just about every academic subject area from grades 7 to 12, I have relied upon colleagues to assist me whenever I tackled something new.  I learned very early that within a staff, there exists a plethora of knowledge, experience and most importantly wisdom.  A staff room is that one unique room within the school building that brings together teachers from all subject areas and I have had the pleasure of experiencing some of the most stimulating conversations related to learning in those rooms.  The staff room is a collection of beginning and seasoned teachers.  Each bringing to the table their new ideas or experiences, and I have always encouraged student teachers with whom I’ve been assigned, to make a conscious effort to make time in their busy practicums to come to the staff room to not only learn, but to laugh as well.

Personal Learning Networks are just that; “Personal” and although we may be quick to go online to develop extensions of those personal networks, I have often found that the ability to connect with staff members and have discussions and share experiences over lunch is often the most productive form of professional development a teacher can engage with.  Teachers tend to naturally want to share what they have tried or are experiencing in the classroom, and in this sense, in a very immediate, personal and social manner a PLN can start with a conversation around the lunch room table.

Put the Phone Down and Engage in Conversation

The impact of mobile phones in the school has already been discussed in many topics and I have found that true to be in the staff room as well.  In my school, we actively try to discourage the use of phones in the staff room during lunch and breaks and we encourage the art of conversation.  Some of the younger teachers sometimes have to be encouraged to put their phones away by having others simply ask them questions as to how their day is going or what they thought of the last Pro-D.  Actively engaging teachers in the staff room is much like actively engaging students in the classroom but often more rewarding because teachers have the knowledge and the experience that is much more broad and deep than a typical high school student.  It is always interesting to hear the experience of a science teacher who came across a question or topic in class or on their own that can be relatable to teachers in other teaching areas.  Current trends in education, teaching pedagogy and practices, new ideas on projects and even concerns about particular students have all been shared to the benefit of all.

PLN Outside of the School – Relationships Are Key

Connections with educators outside of the school setting are being made easier with the many social media platforms available and these are effective ways to make connections.  I have personally found that prior relationships tend to be the foundation of networks outside of my school.  At the beginning of my career I shuffled between schools and districts.  The job market being as it was, it was difficult to establish continuing contracts in one school.  I hear the same complaint from many new teachers as well and it is the rare example of a teacher who gets a full time, continuing contract job right out of university.  Although movement (especially for high school teachers) tends to be the norm, I have found that the relationships that I have formed during my time in a particular school or position tend to continue.   Taking advantage of inter-district Pro-D opportunities to re-connect with old colleagues has opened many avenues for professional development and inquiry.  Bumping into an old friend at a conference can quickly lead to what they are doing and experiencing in the present.  Those connections then foster the sharing of resources and materials because in today’s digital age, it is literally an email and an attachment away.

PLN and Sharing

I have always been open to sharing ideas and resources and I have been posting course materials online for close to 20 years now (www.trickey.ca).  My email address is always available at the top of each course that I am sharing and once contact has been made I always offer extra materials such as tests, quizzes and adapted material to anyone with a school district email.  Often the requests are so large, that I simply ask the teacher to “snail mail” me a large USB Flash drive and I will then copy all of my resources onto that drive and send it back to them.  This openness and willingness to share has resulted in many conversations around the province and there is isn’t a region in this province in which I haven’t been in contact with and shared resources.  In this manner, my PLN has expanded beyond my school and my district.  As some teachers that I have known have gone overseas, my PLN has expanded to places like China, New Zealand and Thailand as they share with teachers they meet the items and resources that I have.  In most instances, building a positive, personal relationship came first and then was supported and expanded by technology.

Within every school and district there exists an almost unlimited sources of personal connections and expertise that can be acquired over a career.  These relationship have formed the roots of my own Personal Learning Network and have sprouted branches that have literally crossed oceans.  I plan to continue to engage with teachers, be open to share my experiences, resources and skills until I retire.  For myself, teaching has always been a collaborative affair and because so much of what we do now can be digitized, the ability to share is so much easier.  Gone are the days when a retiring teacher would let you have access to his two or three filling cabinets during his last week of work, instead I find that materials can be shared with a click of a button and then, because they are digital, they can be adapted and modified to a particular need quickly and easily.  The ease in which we can now share resources has allowed teachers to spend more time working and building relationships with students and that has been the real benefit of Personal Learning Networks.

Bibliography

Trust, Torrey. “Professional learning networks designed for teacher learning.” Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education 28.4 (2012): 133-138.

Warlick, David. “Grow your personal learning network: New technologies can keep you connected and help you manage information overload.” Learning & Leading with Technology 36.6 (2009): 12-16.

Reading Strategies – Background Knowledge is Key

Effective teachers will often introduce reading by asking questions to students about what they may already know or ask them to make a personal connection to the reading at hand.  Classroom teachers will also “pre-teach” or lecture to a topic before assigning a more in-depth reading of the topic at hand because even a little bit of prior knowledge helps with comprehension and understanding (Vitale, Romance, 2007).  Teachers seem to instinctively know this but I am worried with the current trend or mistaken belief  that students don’t need to know anything that can be “Googled”.  If my perception is true, that the instruction of background knowledge is being replaced by specific, personalized inquiry, then the message that is then seemingly being sent to students is that; “Why bother to read anything of substance in areas such as Science or History that doesn’t relate to you specifically at that particular moment in time?”  Ironically, most teachers that are following this trend will also admit that making connections to what a reader already knows is one of the key components of effective reading strategies.  Lemov echo’s this idea when he states that: “…that reading comprehension, deep thinking, and even creativity all rely heavily on prior knowledge.” (Lemov, 2017).

Reading as a Culture

Reading as a culture of the public school experience has been changing due to the increased use of online text.  The BC Grade 10 Literacy assessment acknowledges this change in reading styles when in its exam description, it provides examples as to what students will be exposed to on the assessment; a list that includes; “… blogs, infographics, newspaper or magazine articles, social media feeds, and stories”. (BC Gr. 10 Lit. Assess).  This in of itself can be viewed as troubling because it seems to be promoting the idea that purely non-fiction text or factual knowledge is perhaps too cumbersome and should instead be watered down or filtered by others, who may not have credentials or may in fact experience “filter bubbles” or “echo-chambers” resulting in information coming from questionable sources.  Critical, non-fiction reading based on “truthful knowledge” is being replaced by whomever can produce the “viral video” of the moment.  Reading (non-fiction in particular) as a culture is being threaten by streaming videos because it is passive and effortless, whereas effective reading requires effort and practice.

Non-Fiction Reading is Being Replaced

It is my experience that High School libraries are trending away from collections of non-fiction resources in favour of fiction out of a realization that cost restraints are too limiting.  Easy (and cheap) access to online non-fiction is fast replacing the non-fiction resources that a library may used to have.  Riedling, Shake and Huston in their book Reference Skills for the School Librarian note that print encyclopedias, textbooks and any non-fiction works related to science or technology have a shelf life of 5 years before they are out of date (social sciences seemingly fare better with a 10 year life cycle), (Riedling, Shake and Huston, 2013) and so librarians (not surprisingly) are choosing to allocate funds towards popular fiction in order to encourage reading as an entertaining, pastime culture, rather than invest largely into periodicals that are so quickly being called out-of-date.

There is nothing wrong with promoting recreational reading.  However, public schools have to promote both fiction and non-fiction reading.  Unfortunately, because more and more non-fiction reading is being pushed towards online resources, there exists the danger of “rabbit-hole” narratives within an almost limitless amount of online “disinformation”.   Many of these sources of “information” may be misleading and in some cases outright lies, but catch online attention due to the promotion of non-literate attractions such as video and simple infographics.

I have personally noticed a change in student pre-dispositions to immediately reach for the internet for non-fiction research.  As a classroom teacher I can assemble as many high-interest, age appropriate non-fiction books for a class inquiry project and almost every student will ignore the books in favour of the chance to go online.   The danger is that with all of the disinformation that is available, often as the result of social media and search engine algorithms, the student choice to go “online” is often inefficient and ineffective.

Reading as a Transfer of Knowledge

For myself, I find that students who choose to read non-fiction online do not take away as much knowledge or understanding as they do when asked to read from paper.  Online reading is a different experience that tends to be as individual as it is multi-dimensional (as acknowledge by the BC Ministry of Ed. with its emphasis on assessing blogs, infographics, social media feeds, etc..) and often kids are instead often drawn to Youtube videos or any form of imbedded videos that can be found attached to numerous non-fiction websites.  I find that students are quick to scroll for infographics or videos in order to avoid reading online.  It is as if, for non-fiction online, reading is an obstacle to avoid.

Reading is the quickest and easiest way of transferring knowledge of any real depth, but it does lack the ease and appeal of infographics and videos.  Instead of catering to this idea of trying to compete with 30 second “Tik-Tok” transmission of knowledge, public schools should be encouraging more non-fiction reading in the classroom.  If the goal of public education is to provide students with the necessary background knowledge so that they can truly become critical and creative thinkers, then schools must not try to compete with well-funded, high production valued online “infomercials” and instead promote the idea that knowledge is not only important, but it is an effort based endevour that can be made easier by teacher assistance, but cannot be replaced without the process of effortful reading on their own.

Works Cited

BC Grade 10 Literacy Assessment, https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/assessment/literacy-assessment/grade-10-literacy-assessment

Friesen, Norm, and Shannon Lowe. “The questionable promise of social media for education: Connective learning and the commercial imperative.” Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 28.3 (2012): 183-194.

Froehlich, Thomas Joseph. “Ten Lessons for the Age of Disinformation.” Navigating Fake News, Alternative Facts, and Misinformation in a Post-Truth World. IGI Global, 2020. 36-88.

Lemov, Doug, “How Knowledge Powers Reading”, Educational Leadership, (http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb17/vol74/num05/How-Knowledge-Powers-Reading.aspx ) (2017)

Youtube Links

Beware online “filter bubbles” | Eli Pariser, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s

In A Divided Country, Echo Chambers Can Reinforce Polarized Opinions | TODAY, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I98jjGlg6tU

Trends in Education

Trends in Education tend to come and go, but what hasn’t really changed is how humans develop.  We continue to gain a better understanding of how the brain and the process of learning works, but the simple idea of developmental stages of human development has been fairly consistent and universally accepted.  Piaget’s law of conservation is an example and few question its validity.  Bloom’s taxonomy is another universally accepted tenant of education and according to a 2019 posting on the website TeachThought it still ranks at the top of educational inquires and trends.  Both of these examples support the idea that before any higher order thinking can occur, knowledge must be in place.

Trends can often become fashionable and in the zeal to apply them, they can over shadow established understandings and this is what I have been noticing in education as of late.  The intent of constructivist learning theory or experiential learning is solid, however when discovery learning is promoted as the answer to all of public education’s problems, and then educators go “all in”, they often do so at the expense of limiting crucial background knowledge acquisition.

Kids are Kids

I have witnessed, both in my own practice and that of my colleagues, that when students are asked to discover or learn on their own, if they do not have the requisite prior knowledge, then the endeavor is largely wasted.  Recently, a colleague was describing his attempts with direct, guided and pure inquiry learning with a Socials 11 class.  His first focus of study was teacher directed.  Students had no choice in what they were being taught, but were still engaged and effectively “learned”.  His second focus gave students a choice and after giving them minimal background information he “guided” them towards his learning objectives. His last focus was purely independent and students chose their topics, submitted required plans and outlines as to how they were to proceed, and when left to their own devices, that is what literally happened; they went to their devices.  Most (not all) 17 year-old students were unable to utilize their time effectively and despite constant reminders, warnings and prep work to ensure students knew what they were to do and how they were to go about it, they wasted learning time on their phones, socializing and generally procrastinating and avoiding work.  In the end, the majority of the project work handed in was of poor quality and was obviously complied, assembled (and in some cases) plagiarized at the last minute. This scenario is similar to comments made by colleagues in different subject areas and in different schools.  My own personal experience suggests that the younger the high school student, the more ineffective their project-based learning was. In the end, as Kirschner, Sweller and Clark suggest, and as my colleagues are discovering, it was the direct instruction that was most effective and efficient (Kirschner/Sweller/Clark, 2006), and it was the inquiry projects that were the least effective and the most time consuming.

Teenagers are teenagers and they lacked the emotional maturity and the intrinsic motivation to effectively manage their own learning.  We understand developmental stages and we understand the predispositions of social and emotional importance teens possess over logical reasoning (Dahl, 2004).  We institutionalize that understanding with a whole host of laws and understandings such as rules around the consumption of alcohol, voting and the requirement of graduated driver licensing, but I feel that we tend to disregard these facts when we assume that all teenagers can be intrinsically motivated to be responsible for their own learning in all subjects that are required and offered in high school.

“You Cannot Think Critically About Something You Know Nothing About”

There are other examples of large amounts of inefficient learning time being under-utilized by adolescents and other examples of self-directed learning that goes awry when students lack adequate background knowledge.  Another personal example was of a Social Justice 11 teacher in my school who at the end of her course provided a list of topics for kids to develop a Capstone project.  One student chose “racism” and when the final project was handed in, the paper was full of misinformation and misunderstandings.  The student’s bibliography was peppered with questionable Youtube videos and what can best be described as “alt-right” websites.  The sad part of the whole experience was like what Froehlich says that; “Once acquired, false information is hard to dispel” (Froehlich, pg. 24, 2020).  In this example, the student had a small amount of background knowledge that lead them into a wrong direction, and like a textbook example of Dunning-Kruger, was convinced of their competent knowledge.  Effectively, the student was unable to think critically about something that they really knew little about.

Schools Should Become Bastions of “Truthful Knowledge”

In an era of almost unlimited amounts of misinformation and an era of almost universal access to disinformation, public schools need to focus on more effective, efficient direct instruction that results in the maximum amount of “truthful” content so that when confronted with misleading or outright lies on their own, a student can pause and begin the crucial process of critically thinking when they ask themselves “That’s not what I learned in school.”  In an ever increasing complex world where anti-science narratives are spun, high production value “snippits” of information are easily created and social media algorithms that produce “echo-chambers” or “filter bubbles” abound, the intent of using public schools to produce knowledgeable citizens is, in my opinion, being threatened with simplistic arguments that students need not know things that can be “Googled”.

Opportunities have always, and will continue to exist to allow students choices and projects of interest in public schools, but those personal choice inquiries must be short, limited in scope, come from vetted sources (Richardson, 2012) and most importantly, must come at the end of comprehensive learning.  Bloom’s pyramid of learning cannot be an inverted pyramid.

Bibliography

Dahl, Ronald E. “Adolescent brain development: a period of vulnerabilities and opportunities. Keynote address.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1021.1 (2004): 1-22.

Friesen, Norm, and Shannon Lowe. “The questionable promise of social media for education: Connective learning and the commercial imperative.” Journal of Computer Assisted Learning 28.3 (2012): 183-194.

Froehlich, Thomas Joseph. “Ten Lessons for the Age of Disinformation.” Navigating Fake News, Alternative Facts, and Misinformation in a Post-Truth World. IGI Global, 2020. 36-88.

Hektner, Joel M., and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. “A longitudinal exploration of flow and intrinsic motivation in adolescents.” (1996).

Kirschner, Paul A., and Jeroen JG van Merriënboer. “Do learners really know best? Urban legends in education.” Educational psychologist 48.3 (2013): 169-183.

Kirschner, Paul A., John Sweller, and Richard E. Clark. “Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching.” Educational psychologist 41.2 (2006): 75-86.

Lapointe, Marc, “The Truth About Discovery Learning” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De6ChXRiVmw ), (2016)

Lemov, Doug, “How Knowledge Powers Reading”, Educational Leadership, (http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb17/vol74/num05/How-Knowledge-Powers-Reading.aspx ) (2017)

Mayer, Richard E. “Should there be a three-strikes rule against pure discovery learning?.” American psychologist 59.1 (2004): 14.

Richardson, Will (2012). Why School? How Education Must Change When Learning and Information are Everywhere [eBook edition]. Ted Conferences.

Riedling, Ann Marlow, Loretta Shake, and Cynthia Houston. Reference skills for the school librarian: Tools and tips. ABC-CLIO, 2013.

Stokke, Anna. “What to Do About Canada’s Declining Math Scores?.” CD Howe Institute Commentary 427 (2015).

Teachthought, “30 of the Most Popular Trends in Education” https://www.teachthought.com/the-future-of-learning/most-popular-trends-in-education/  Oct. 7, 2019

Youtube Links

A typical child on Piaget’s conservation tasks, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnArvcWaH6I

Beware online “filter bubbles” | Eli Pariser, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s

Inside the mind of a master procrastinator – Tim Urban, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arj7oStGLkU

In A Divided Country, Echo Chambers Can Reinforce Polarized Opinions | TODAY, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I98jjGlg6tU

The Science of Anti-Vaccination, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzxr9FeZf1g

Why incompetent people think they’re amazing – David Dunning,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOLmD_WVY-E

21^st Century Adolescence: A Period of “Bright, Shiny Objects” and Disinformation

High School is a busy time in many regards.  Adolescence brings with it a heighten level of emotional and social intensity that may or may not ever be replicated for the rest of their lives.  Those early maturation years present as a challenge for most parents and educators who may be trying to impart learning to a generation who at no other time in history has been subjected to so much competing messaging based solely upon access to social media and the internet.  Adolescents crave “bright, shiny objects” or an intensity of stimulation (Dahl, 2004) which is not necessarily conducive to deep investigative learning about everything that they are being asked to learn about in school.  A constructivist approach to grabbing a teenager’s attention is to make the learning personal, meaningful and experiential, to trust students to intrinsically find their own truths.  Intrinsic motivation is key to success, but it is a rare individual who in their adolescent years can be intrinsically curious about every subject in school.  Most people understand that a public school education is the one environment wherein everyone in society is given an opportunity to learn the basic content knowledge that will produce a well-functioning society.  What is perhaps being lost is that educators are having to do this in an age of not only “bright, shiny objects” but “bright, shiny disinformation”.  We know, for example that; “Once acquired, false information is hard to dispel” (Froehlich, 2020), so is it wise for educators to trust an adolescent to think critically and effectively, to manage almost limitless information and evaluate it to a level that we expect, if we leave them to their own devices (literally and figuratively)?

Does Discovery Learning Lead to Gaps?

I’m finding that gaps in students’ understanding is becoming more pronounced.  Knowledge is being replaced with an assumption that content needs not to be taught because students can “Google” any answer.  Lemov would argue “…this apparently tidy logic is wrong. (Lemov, 2017) and like Kirschner’s belief that the idea of “digital natives” is just a myth (Kirschner, 2013), I see my students behaving much like any other pre-teen or teenage human being, in that given enough time, they will find all sorts of things, other than the lesson intended, to occupy their interests.  If provided the time to discover on their own in a subject area that they may see little value in, I find that the time is often wasted and students will reach for the quickest, easiest and often “shiniest” answers at the last possible moment.  The inefficiencies in the time needed to practice effective discovery or inquiry learning comes at a cost of learning the amount of crucial content knowledge that is really required to become an knowledgeable person in an age of disinformation.  Week (or weeks) long constructivist group projects to build catapults with the intent of making a one day lesson on what “a parabola is” more meaningful, may be more fun and social for students, but it comes at a cost of lost deeper learning and the application and practice of the actual concept.

“Get them while you can.”

Whether it is a goal for more efficient and effective reading comprehension, a better understanding of math concepts or an ability to think critically about scientific facts or past and present events, large amounts of background knowledge is key to understanding.  It would be wrong to wholly dismiss the benefits of intrinsically motivated inquiry learning, but it would be also wrong to assume that pre-teens and teens possess the requisite background knowledge and even the maturity and the desire to deeply learn about ALL that is needed for a modern citizen to function in today’s 21^st century world.  Teachers, both Elementary and High School, need to promote as much “truthful knowledge” as possible while they are in the public education system.  Afterwards, if a specific topic engages them as a mature adult, to a deeper, critical analysis of that subject, then they would hopefully have enough prior knowledge to enter into the ever-increasing realm of good and bad information online, and make wise and relevant opinions and decisions.  No society in history has benefited from a partially educated citizenry of its population, in fact the opposite is true; that the more educated a society is, the greater it is for all.

Works Cited

Dahl, Ronald E. “Adolescent brain development: a period of vulnerabilities and opportunities. Keynote address.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1021.1 (2004): 1-22.

Froehlich, Thomas Joseph. “Ten Lessons for the Age of Disinformation.” Navigating Fake News, Alternative Facts, and Misinformation in a Post-Truth World. IGI Global, 2020. 36-88.

Kirschner, Paul A., and Jeroen JG van Merriënboer. “Do learners really know best? Urban legends in education.” Educational psychologist 48.3 (2013): 169-183.

Lapointe, Marc, “The Truth About Discovery Learning” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De6ChXRiVmw ), (2016)

Lemov, Doug, “How Knowledge Powers Reading”, Educational Leadership, (http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/feb17/vol74/num05/How-Knowledge-Powers-Reading.aspx ) (2017)

Mayer, Richard E. “Should there be a three-strikes rule against pure discovery learning?.” American psychologist 59.1 (2004): 14.

Riedling, Ann Marlow, Loretta Shake, and Cynthia Houston. Reference skills for the school librarian: Tools and tips. ABC-CLIO, 2013.