Getting High School Kids To Talk “Math”

 

Today I had the pleasure of working with a dedicated and gifted first year teacher. Tim is doing an impressive job teaching pre-calculus grade 11 and 12 math; he has well prepared lessons and examples, clear explanations and solid answers to student questions. Tim invited me into his classroom to work with him and his students to develop some mathematical discourse with the kids.

The unit of study for todays grade 11’s was circle geometry; students had to learn, prove and apply both the Tangent Radius Theorem and Equal Tangents Theorem

Equal Tangents Theorem: PA = PB

Tangent Radius Theorem: Angle OPQ = 90 degrees

The lesson played out as shown below. Keep in mind the focus is on student talk.

Part 1 – Modelling Teachers (Tim and I) stated the Equal tangents theorem for the students, and walked them through the logic of the proof

Part 2 – We Do Together Teachers stated the Tangent Radius Theorem and elicited ideas from the whole class regarding their understanding of the theorem, the diagram, assumptions, and conjectures. Students were encouraged to use relevant math terms and were probed with open ended questions to guide their thinking.

Part 3 – You Do Together (whole class) a) Students solved a problem that most students could easily prove. b) Then, as a class (this is the “do together” part) students brainstormed relevant terminology and theorems used to do the example proof.

Part 4 – You Do Together (Pairs) Students had 60 seconds to use a diagram and the terms from part 3 to explain/prove the problem to a partner – after 60 seconds they switched roles from listened to speaker.

During part one of the lesson no students used the language of mathematics verbally. During part two, students struggled to use the language (either they weren’t comfortable doing so or they didn’t know how). By part four of the lesson students were very talkative and on topic. The sentences formed by students seemed to be perfectly logical and mathematically correct. It was quite exciting for both Tim and I to see how quickly students became engaged in mathematical discourse when given clear structures and expectations. Tomorrow we will be trying out a write-around (recently called paper-blogging in the blogosphere) and I am quite excited to see the results. My personal agenda is to get students using social media to engage in discourse by the third lesson (approximately 160 minutes of lead up instruction time).

If you’ve been wanting to get students to talk more in your math classes – just give it a try. A couple of simple structures and a few minutes of planning seems to go a long way!

Presentation: Developing Academic Rigour with Social Media

As presented at the 2010 ATA Science Council Conference at the Fantasy Land Hotel (Edmonton, Alberta). Below is an overview of the presentation that will be updated in more detail after the presentation is complete. Additionally, you can view the prezi here.

Part A:Social Media?

What Is Social Media?

First we analyzed the meanings of these two words, and then teachers put those meanings together. Susana Gerndt (my co-presenter) and I offered this definition for social media.

Social Media is the information of the community. It is cordial. Gracious. Informative, popular, and neighborly. It is created by people for people. Individuals become active participants in a communal understanding that is not limited to their own thoughts, or the thoughts of a select few individual ‘experts’, but they are linked to the understandings of the world – would you rather leverage one person or dozens, hundreds, thousands, even millions of people?

Archimedes is credited for saying “Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth” referring to his understanding of mechanical systems such as levers. I think this idea can be true for social media. Every individual is given a platform up which to stand. The earths population (or at least it’s english speaking ‘connected’ population) is the audience that we are trying to engage as bloggers, video-sharers, etc). An effective social media user can influence thousands, even millions of users.

What Is the typical Social Media experience?

People of all ages are using social media to connect with their friends and family. We find out when new babies are born, look at photos from someones graduation or wedding, and receive invitations to baptisms, birthdays and halloween parties. We find out about the latest election information and international news by reading blogs or through status updates on facebook and twitter. We are entertained and educated on youtube, flickr, vimeo and other video sharing sites. We also take part in conversations, edit wiki’s to share our understanding, and post tutorials and questions on youtube. Social media is an every day part of the life of many people in western society.

Part B: Learning

What is the Traditional Classroom experience?

Sitting in rows, students listen, teachers talk. Once the ‘teaching’ or ‘learning’ is over, students may get a chance to ‘practice’. Sometimes there are conversations in class, which really consists of teacher asking many questions and a few students participating.

How do we Learn in every day life?

We touch, manipulate, see, hear, smell and taste. We analyze. We inquire, formulating various questions to guide our learning. Today we will often do an online search rather than ask an individual. Connected people, instead of asking individuals, may ask thousands of people online by posting a question on youtube or to wiki answers. We also apprentice, practice, apply, communicate, explain, and collaborate.

Part C: Rigour

What does it mean for learning to be Rigorous?

• The foundation of our Science Curriculum (at least in Alberta) has four components: Science Technology and Society, Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes
• Learning is Rigorous when students ‘get it’. ‘It’ doesn’t refer to all of the facts that we expect students to know for our standards based tests (Think provincial exams/diploma exams). ‘It’ refers to the purpose of teaching and learning about science. We want our students to
  • 1) think critically, problem solve, analyze, communicate, collaborate, create and innovate. The purpose of science education is to foster these skills as well as to;
  • 2) develop an understanding for the interactions of science, technology, society, environment as well as for the nature of science (theory, experimentation, observation, theory revising/replacement)
  • 3) develop positive attitudes and appreciation for science as a discipline.

Can Students complete tasks, do ‘well’ and still not get it?

One observation that Susana and I have made is that sometimes students can complete social-media based assignments, meet the requirements, get a good mark, but still not really understand the underlying concepts. Many of us have seen beautiful posters that describes all of the ‘content’ (maybe the biotic and abiotic factors of an ecosystem), but the student still doesn’t understand. Has that student done well on the assignment?

How do we make Social Media Projects Rigorous such that they have to get it?

This graphic organizer has been developed based off of the experience of many teachers and consultants. We think that there are some key components within it that get teachers asking the right questions that will lead to rigorous projects, assignments, and tasks in the classroom.

We start on the left hand side of the graphic organizer, looking at student learning outcomes. This has to include not only the knowledge outcomes but the skill and attitude outcomes as well. We need to consider what vocabulary is important for students to use, where the students might make mistakes, and then a look at content literacy strategies (you can interpret this to mean learning strategies). These types of strategies include things like KWL charts, venn diagrams, discussions, questioning strategies, reading strategies etc.

On the right hand side of the sheet are four questions that we think get at the heart of making learning rigorous for students (with social media or without).

1. How can we powerfully activate students ‘need to know’ content?
   • we want to make learning experiences relevant to our students. If all I do is talk about biotic and abiotic factors with my grade 7 students some will be interested but most will just be learning because they are supposed to. But if I can talk about an issue in an ecosystem that they are curious about and know about I will have them hooked into the learning. A few years ago talking about the coral reef and the movie Finding Nemo may have had this affect. This can happen simply by having a story at the beginning of the unit and a framing question to refer back to throughout the unit.
2. What strategies and activities will be used to build 21st century skills (Collaboration, communication, critical thinking and problem solving, creativity and innovation, inquiry and questioning)
   • If you want students to communicate in various ways (using pictures, sound, video, text, spoken word, etc) and you want them to do so effectively you will probably have to talk to them about communication. If you are going to include a song on a digital poster (like the ones you can build on the Glogster website), how is that song going to be relevant? How are students going to choose the text, font, colors etc. This is something that should be addressed, and it doesn’t require much time.
   • If you want students to guide their own learning in an inquiry project and develop their own questions to guide their learning you should be teaching your students about levels of questions using some sort of questioning guide (three level questioning is shown in the prezi; another good tool set are Barrets questioning guides)
   • If you want students to collaborate, we need to teach them how to honor the ideas of others and how to structure their groups such that everyone is responsible for their own learning yet they are also able to learn from each other and develop common understandings. Common understandings can be developed through collaborative brainstorming sites such as popplet, edistorm and mindomo
3. How will students justify their choices/explain their products
   • students need to be engaged in some sort of dialogue (be it written or verbal), and required to explain what they have done. If they have created a cartoon on a site like toondoo. To learn more about using cartoons in class, check out this older post on cartooning in class
   • When students are having an online discussion, and they express an opinion, they should be required to back up what they are saying. Find a quote in the novel they are reading from a character they are analyzing. They can find a source (online or print) that backs up their comments on global warming and carbon sequestering. Find an example of something happening in the world from a news article or video from cbc.ca (as an example) to support their comments and beliefs about technology and its influence on science.
4. What are the expectations of students and how will they receive feedback from teacher and classmates?
   • If you want students to do a good job you need to communicate to them what ‘doing a good job’ looks like. Expectations need to be clear, and students should be given an opportunity to receive feedback from both teachers and students.
   • This is when we can start talking about the need to do things during class time. If you can’t honour the students work by giving them the time in class to do it and to take that time to give them feedback, you send a strong message about the importance of a task. Online discussion, wikis, digital posters; all of these things should be started during class time so that you as the teacher have the opportunity to see where students are and guide them to where they need to be.

Part D: Social Media: Developing The Foundations of Science

What Skills Can Online Discussions Develop?

If you are interested in using online discussions, you can learn a lot more about them here on a previous blog post

• Online discussions give students an opportunity to participate in important disciplinary discourse. They learn to use the language of the discipline – to think like a scientist (in the case of a science class). Discourse is also a form of collaboration, not only should students be talking about their own ideas but they should also be responding to the ideas of each others in an effort to further develop the understanding of the community (in this case the community would be the participating students)
• develop class communities for online discussions on Ning or Edmodo.

What Skills Can Wikis Develop?

Depending on how you implement their use wikis can develop skills including: writing, information fluency, collaboration, questioning and critical thinking

• How does a wiki work? (wikispaces, pbworks)
  • A wiki is a collaborative website that is usually very text heavy but can include videos, pictures, and links to other sites. Users can edit the content of these sites easily without knowing anything about web programming; it is almost as simple as typing in Microsoft word.
  • Wikis generally host extensive history of the page, so that you can see who made changes, when they made changes, and what changes they have made
• An example of when to use a wiki and why.
  • a wiki can be great to use throughout a unit of study. You can begin a unit of study with an empty wiki (assigned to a group of maybe 3-5 students) that would just have some titles or questions (students may be required to come up with the questions or add to the questions), but very little information.
    • Students could start off by editing the wiki on an individual basis, putting in what they already know about the topic (this is called front loading, activating student prior knowledge).
    • after each learning experience (some notes, a video, a reading, a lecture, etc) students can go back into the wiki and add more information. They can also fine tune info or delete info that they figure out to be incorrect.
    • at the end of the unit you would have a huge document with text, pictures, links and videos that represents the understandings that students developed throughout the unit. To keep all students accountable throughout the unit of study you can simply look at the wiki history to see who did edits and when they did them

How Can Synchronized Collaborative Work Change Everything?

There are some websites that allow multiple users to live edit and collaborate, watching each others every move and being able to respond to each other without every refreshing the page. A few of these sites that I like are:

• ietherpad
• prezi
• mindomo
• edistorm
• popplet
• google docs
• wallwisher

Imagine having 36 students, all brainstorming/mindmapping and just use as the teacher trying to keep up with everybody writing on the board. It could take most of a class and each student will be limited to a few short interactions. Get every student on edistorm or mindomo and you can have the whole class brainstorming at once, contributing to ideas, making connections, organizing each others thoughts, voting on thoughts, and responding to thoughts. It becomes a very different experience when every student for just 10 minutes is fully engaged in such an activity.

——————–

If you want to use these tools effectively in your classroom and ensure that the activities are academically rigorous, you can use the Project Planning Page and it should help you consider the following:

1. What expectations should I have for my students regarding behavior, and how will I communicate these to students
2. What skills will be developed and how will I scaffold these for the students to ensure success?
3. How will students justify their thinking/choices/ideas
4. How will students receive feedback from me as the teacher and from their peers?

Who’s Doing The Talking During Class Discussions

I had an interesting conversation in my class tonight regarding the development of discourse and hosting student conversations in (math) class. I shared with my classmates an observation I’ve had as a consultant: during most class discussions a teacher will say a few dozen words, and then a student will respond with two or three.  Teacher then affirms or rejects the students input, says a few dozen more words, and eventually elicits another 2/3 word response from a second student. This pattern continues until the conversation ends, and the teacher wraps up the ideas for students.

When I think back to my own classroom practices, I wonder if my classroom conversations were the same. I believe conversations are one of the most important activities that students can be engaged in during the learning process, but students need to actually be engaged. Sometimes we educators monopolize conversations in class in order to guide the discussion to where we want it to go.

I worked with a teacher today, John, who very successfully implemented an online discussion (shameless plug) in his social studies (grade 9) class. Students were highly engaged writing pages upon pages of ideas, pulling in evidence from online sources and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Canada) to back their opinions. John only had to add his input on occasion to gently nudge the conversation (moderating) keeping it on topic. Students were very successful and in turn, so was John as a teacher facilitating discussion.

John took it further and added something that I haven’t seen before. He told students that they were required to read through the entire conversation before the next class, and write a brief 1 or 2 paragraphs. The focus will be on how their thinking has either changed or their opinion has become stronger due to the comments of their peers. In addition to having every student participate in a conversation, John now has students reviewing the collaborative learning process and synthesizing it on their own. Brilliant!

If you value conversations as a part of the learning process you may want to reflect on what experience your students have during a class ‘discussion’. Are students listening to you state facts and ask a few questions from a handful of students? Or are they deeply engaged in a conversation, given the chance to think about their own ideas, revise them, and challenge each other?

One things for sure, the next time I host a ‘class discussion’ I’ll be considering who’s doing the talking, and who’s doing the listening.

E

Story Telling In Science Class

I would like to quickly share with you this video on biomagnification. I believe is a pretty good example of how someone has taken facts and created an interesting story.  The video is fun to watch, and I bet it was fun to make.  A lot more interesting and far more valuable than a traditional report on biomagnification.

8 Reasons, 7 Tips and A Rubric: The Digital Literature Circle

Maybe you’ve heard of a literature circle before – the idea is that students sit in small groups (maybe 4/5, depending on the needs of students), and talk about a piece of literature they’ve been reading.  It could be a long novel or a short article, but I think that longer pieces are more common.  These circles have the great benefit of students speaking out loud about their own interpretations/understandings, and gaining ideas from other students.  The draw back is that as a teacher, you can’t hear every idea when there are 4 groups speaking all at once about different topics/books.  There is also no record to assess (usually formatively) and get information for feedback and monitoring progress/growth.  But now with the technology of the last 15 years, we can easily have literature circles in a virtual environment, easing some of these issues.

Reasons to Use Digital Literature Circles

1 – Students Get Feedback Students voice their opinions and then can get feedback from their peers.

2 – Community Knowledge As others share ideas, students gain new perspectives and ideas.  The community knowledge grows, and therefore the individuals knowledge grows.

3 – There Is Something to Assess Because there is a digital record of the conversations, the teacher can monitor student progress and provide feedback.  If a proper rubric is created, you could even start considering formative assessment, as I have done sometimes.

4 – All Students Can Participate Often, in a class discussion, only a handful of students get the opportunity to speak. Online, every students can converse and share their opinions

5 – All Students Will Participate Even in a setting where students use real names, they are more likely to participate.  Students are more comfortable online.

6 – The Level of Responses is Amazaing! Students have time to think about their ideas and formulate their responses.  Keep high expectations and you will be surprised and overjoyed with what students say, and how they say it.

7 – Develop Disciplinary Discourse In a science or social students class (maybe even in math), students can discuss non-fiction that they have read, and begin to use the language of the discipline.

8 – Great Essay Prep At the end of a Literature circle, if students need to write a response or essay they have lots of ideas to build on and a record of it all to assist in their writing.  If done properly, the conversations should even include references to quotations or external sources to back up their opinions/thoughts

How To Use Digital Literature Circles

I usually treat digital (virtual) literature circles as something that happens synchronously between students and teachers during class time, but it doesn’t have to be.  On a discussion board, 5 groups of students discuss within 5 different discussion threads about something they’ve ready, and I will often use if for just short pieces of reading, both fiction and non-fiction in the content areas.  A few tips from an experienced (I’ve probably done this in over 100 classrooms) Digital Conversationalist

1 – Have Expectations and Talk About Them The very first thing you need to do is talk to your students about your expectations of them online.  Have discussions regarding digital citizenship, and what it might mean to be a good digital citizen.  Give respect to students and tell them they need to do the same to their peers.  It’s not ok to call someone stupid, or their ideas stupid.  We want to challenge each other to think about thoughts, but it’s not about the person, it is about their ideas, and we will all grow our understandings by learning from each other.

2 – Provide A Rubric You must know what you expect of students, and how you want them to respond.  Show them how you will decide if they are doing a good job, so they know what to strive for

3 – Monitor Student Conversations Just as you would monitor a class conversation that is verbal, monitor online behavior.  Correct inappropriate behaviour and talk to students, be part of the conversations and guide them

4 – Reflect on Student Work Out Loud After the first 15ish minutes of students posting online, stop them, and ask them to look up at the projector (hopefully you have one).  Read some students posts out loud, and have discussions about what is great about each post, and how they add to the conversation.  If there are inappropriate comments, call students on it (without using their names), be stern, and tell them you don’t ever want to see that again.

5- Model Be a part of student conversations (as mentioned), and model what types of comments you expect of students.

6 – Backing Up Ideas If your kids are conversing online, they have internet access so take advantage.  If appropriate, get students to look for online resources and references to back up their ideas.  Challenge students to find examples in the novel or text that they are reading to back up what they are saying.

7 – Scaffold Sometimes students lack basic skills (I’ve seen this even in IB and AP classes at the high school level). You will probably need to teach them how to ask questions and make references (See tip 6).

Example Rubric For Science Class

Very quickly, here is the science discussion rubric. It comes with teacher notes and a brief little assignment at the top.  It also comes with teacher notes on how I linked it to curriculum in Alberta.  I used it for a current events discussion I used to have my grade 10 and 11 science students take part in.  Please feel free to use and modify, but I would appreciate being credited.  If you would like to publish/present this in part or whole please contact me.

Keep in mind, as with all new ways of learning, this might be a bit of a challenge.  It usually takes me two 45 minutes blocks to get students proficient with this strategy, but it is worth the time.  Just think deeply be reflective and I’m sure you’ll figure it out.  In the future I plan to make a post about some different websites you could use to set up a discussion board for digital literature circles.

I hope I’ve given you lots to think about.  If you have any questions whatsoever, please ask in the comments below.  I would be happy to help and you with your implementation.

E

A great resource for scaffolding strategies is Inquiring Minds Learn to Read and Write by Wilhelm Wilhelm and Boas (2009)

A great resource on how to develop discourse in the classroom comes from Fisher, Frey and Rothenberg called  Content-Area Conversations.

6 Reasons and 3 Tips: Making Cartoons In School

The most popular post in the short history of this blog was Get Your Students Stripping: A Simple Review of Online Comic Creation Websites back in May 2010.  I wanted to honour it by posting some practice tips for teachers on how to utilize these sites. I’m not going to get into extensive details on ‘how’ and ‘when’ to use comics in your classroom.  I’m simply trying to provide a little bit of inspiration here. I think that online comic creation sites are a great way to get students developing 21st century skills.

If you haven’t already found a site you love for creating comics, I recommend both creaza and toondoo.

Reasons To Get Your Students Making Comic Strips/Books

1) It’s Fast! Online tools such as creaza and toondoo are so simple to use that you barely even need to show students how the tool works.  It takes about 10 minutes to get a class logged in and show them the basic functions the very first time, and than they are working. If they have a good plan, it shouldn’t take very long to finish.

2) Students Have To Think! Science, Math, Social, or English, I can promise you students won’t easily find what you’re asking them to make.  Students are forced to synthesize information, and create dialogue from facts.  They also must be succinct, adding to the challenge.

3) Students Love It! I’ve gone into over a dozen classrooms to help out with doing cartooning in class. In both middle school and high school, kids love it! Now, if you make them do it all the time, I’m sure the appeal will quickly die, but it certainly is a different type of assignment for them.  Everyone likes cartoons, and these websites take the challenge out of having to draw.

4) Its Accessible! Students who might struggle with a writing-heavy assignment due to low levels of literacy can still thrive, and show off what they know!

5) They Live On! On most websites, students not only create their comics but they can get feedback from others.  It’s a whole new meaning for literacy, and a new challenge, to get people to rally around your message.

6) Rework and Reuse Old Assignments! You don’t have to come up with a brand new idea and toss out old assignments.  Sometimes the easiest way to start making change to your practice is a simple modification.  My first cartoon came from an old assignment, where I used to ask students to take on a historical figure in science and write a letter about their own thoughts/discoveries.  Now the assignment requires students to create simple dialogue that will portray the same knowledge. Students are creating new stories instead of old reports, and including a visual literacy element as well.

How To Make It Successful In Your Classroom

1) Plan In The Classroom! Get students to plan before you let them ‘play’ on the computer.  It is even better if you can give them a graphic organizer (table/chart) to help them.  Get students to consider, for each slide: the background, the characters, the prompts, the dialogue.  This is really where most of the thinking is going to occur, and so we want them to spend some time here.

2) Show Them How It Works, Before They Plan! I know, I just said planning has to happen first, and that is true, we want students to learn the value of planning ahead.  But the planning will be much easier for them if they know how the tool works, what kinds of characters they can choose, backgrounds, prompts, etc.

3) Make Them Explain! Actually, I have students do this for every kind of assignment.  When students justify choices they’ve made (and when they know that they will have to justify choices in advance of making them), they tend to put more thought into what they do.  They seem to become more conscious of their choices.

Good luck ‘stripping’ in your classroom.  If you haven’t tried it yet, I think you’ll really love it.  If you’ve used it before I hope I still have given you something to think about.  And don’t forget to check out my other blog post where I recommended toondoo and creaza to see why I liked them.

E

I would like to thank Susana Gerndt, who is my partner from 8am-5pm. This article was written on my own but the ideas have come from work that both her and I have done over the past year.

Presentation: Managing Your Digital Tattoo

I held a session on Friday with Danny Maas for grade 5 and 6 students in our district.  We were asked to speak to digital citizenship, and so given the timeframe we focused on the idea of a digital tattoo.  We collaboratively built a presentation using prezi meeting, and in less than an hour on prezi meeting we created the basis for what turned out to be a very successful session.

Our goal was to inform students of the concept of a digital tattoo, and to empower students with some basic knowledge so that they could make informed decisions when they participate online.  We framed the session around two sub topics: respecting others and respecting self.

We wanted to talk about cyberbullying, and Danny introduced this great video to strike up some conversation among students.  We provided the focus question “how do the things I  and do online affect the people around me” to talk about the video, and students came up with great ideas about cyberbullying, how it makes the bully feel, the victim, and how it victimizes the whole community.  Students were even able to make connections with things they can do to prevent and maybe even stop cyberbullying.  We also got into conversations about how other people’s perceptions can be changed by our activities online.

Danny then shared another video to show what social media sites do with your information.  Students talked about the responsibility they have when posting information about not only themselves but others online. They came up with ideas on when it might be appropriate to post pictures/videos of others, and how it might make other people feel when you do that (in both positive and negative ways).

Overall it was about 50 minutes of mostly students talking and sharing ideas, collaborating to construct a common knowledge of how their actions online affect both themselves and the people they interact with.  Danny and I both felt confident that, generally, students left the session empowered with knowledge that would be important when making decisions and judgements when interacting online.

Thanks Danny for the great session!

“Searching Online Is A Waste of Time” – Really?!?!?!

Once upon a time my partner, Susana , was sitting in a room full of teachers when she overheard something that got her blood flowing.

Before I go on, I guess I should tell you some background.  Susana and I work full-time as consultants for publicly funded schools promoting 21st Century teaching and learning strategies.  We work with teachers to promote reflective practice and focus on teaching teachers to teach learning strategies.

So, imagine Susana and I sitting at the lunch table, when across the room a teacher says

I tell my students to just use their textbooks to find information, searching online is a waste of time

Wow, really?  [start sarcasm] Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m all for promoting the use of expensive textbooks bought with public funding.  How else would unnamed publishing companies make their money on information that is available for free? [/end sarcasm] Seriously, information is so abundant it is effectively worthless.  Our jobs as educators in the 21st century is to teach our students to discern between what is required and what is superfluous.  Students must learn to discriminate between reliable and unreliable sources.  Susana would agree with me when I say that this skill is possibly one of the most important in the digital world and in a global community.  Information is coming at them more than ever on; google, bing, facebook, twitter, the blogosphere, YouTube, podcasts, tv news broadcast, radio and… oh yeah, print resources including textbooks.

The only way that our students will learn this is if we explicitly teach these skills and provide opportunity to hone them.  Searching online is anything but a waste of time.

E

Alberta Curriculum Encourages 21st Century Learners

Many of the professional development sessions I have attended in the past year have been in the United States or have been delivered by a teacher from the US.  I find it interesting that so often keynote speakers discuss criteria for developing curriculum.  Coming from Alberta, this is foreign to me.  As a science teacher (General Science and Physics) in Alberta I believe I am provided (and mandated) an awesome curriculum (I’ll provide the grade 10 Science curriculum as an example).  Sure, it is not without fault, but the structure and layout is excellent.  It is written in a way that encourages a shift towards a 21st century classroom.

The curriculum is divided into four foundations.

1) Science, Technology and Society; and understanding the interactions and developments of each.  These emphasis give teachers the framework and focus for each unit of study.  This makes it easier for teachers to understand the bigger picture, or the point of learning the facts.  This brings us to the second foundation

2) Knowledge, which includes the key concepts and actual content that students must learn.  These outcomes are well written and logical.  For example, students learn about careers in chemistry.  This is very straightforward and fact based, so the outcome is written as, identify examples of chemistry-based careers in the community. The word identify tells teachers that students simply need to know the facts.  Another outcome in the curriculum states, describe how advancements in cell theory have been enhanced as a direct result of developments in microscope technology.  From the way this is written I know that students need to understand an interaction between technology and theory.  I know that the point isn’t for students to list 15 different historical microscopes and a dozen different individual discoveries.  The point is to synthesize all of those facts into a much more advanced understanding.

3) Skills, which is broad and varies from collaboration and communication to laboratory and mathematics skills.  This is pretty awesome.  Right within the curriculum you can find (or interpret) an entire set 21st century skills.  Students need to collaborate, communicate effectively, build models, display information visually, analyze and interpret.  All of a sudden all of those 21st century literacy activities fall perfectly in place in the science classroom.

4) Attitude.  It is interesting how these outcomes are written.  They are the only outcomes in the curriculum that are written as teacher actions instead of student actions.  The curriculum recognizes that it is near impossible to expect students to change their attitudes towards science, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t the job of the teacher to at least try to develop positive scientific attitudes within students.  To me, this is where the curriculum makes room for digital and global citizenship lessons.  It clearly states that students will be encouraged to demonstrate sensitivity to societal and environmental needs, have mutual respect for people from different cultures, and even take part in collaborative activities.

As you can see, the Alberta Science Curriculum really does allow for all sorts of activities surrounding 21st century skills and attitudes.  It also demands that students become aware of the bigger picture of their learning, and focus less on the facts and figures that are memorized along the way.  If you are a part of a team developing curriculum for students and teachers, please, take a look at this fine example.

If you happen to be just another teacher, like myself, wondering how to fit all of these new 21st century skills into your existing curriculum, take another look.  I’m sure somewhere in your existing program of studies there is room to shift the focus from facts and figures to valuable skills, attitudes, and deeper understandings.  Just read a little closer.

Get Your Students Stripping: A Simple Review of Online Comic Creation Websites

 

Created in under a minute on http://www.toondoo.com

 

About a year ago someone asked me for software suggestions to create comic strips.  At the time I had no personal experience making these digital comics other then seeing some of the comics created by students and colleagues.  Turns out there is a lot of interest in using comics in the classroom, so I started doing some research.  At this point I have put together a few PD sessions for teachers on comic creation (focused more on the pedagogy and less on the tool, mind you) and have of course created many on my own.

I really have no desire to create reviews of websites and online services, but a niche market like this has very little information and I’m sure others can benefit from my own experiences.  This article isn’t about the pedagogy or appropriateness of using comics in the classroom.  That will come at a later time. The goal of this article simply is to look at some online comic creation sites, and compare their capabilities.

Creaza.com – Choice for Primary/Elementary: Easiest to Use!

Backgrounds: Each theme seems to have about 6 or so (on average) different backgrounds, and I think free accounts (I have a premium account that costs $) have 5 different themes to choose from.  Some of the outdoor backgrounds have a night or day option, but any further customization of the graphic backgrounds doesn’t seem possible.

Characters: Creaza lacks the ability to create your own avatar, but it makes up for this by having enough free art to keep you going for a while.  Choose from themes, scenery, objects and characters.  Most characters are provided in multiple positions (about half a dozen positions or so) and you do get the option to choose their expression (happy, sad, or normal).  All of these changes are very easy to implement.  For the most part everything is drag and drop.

Objects: In each theme there are a few different objects available for use.  Objects can be moved around and resized, and their layers are easily shifted to come forward or go backwards.

Personal Art/Media: There are a few simple drawing tools in Creaza, as well as you can upload your own images and artwork.  Everything you upload will be saved as your own media, and is available to you when needed.

User Interface: The user interface of Creaza is incredibly familiar and intuitive.  The layout reminds me of the look and feel of Microsoft Office 2007/2010.  This means that both students and teachers will need little instruction on how to use creaza tools, assuming they are familiar with MS Office suite.

As mentioned already, Creaza comic software has its strengths in its look and feel.   The intuitive and familiar user interface will make the tool become transparent, allowing students to focus on content and creativity rather then on the tool itself.  So despite some of the lack of control (compared to tools such as toondoo), I highly recommend Creaza for those who are working on simple comics, or are concerned with usability.

Pixton

Pixton is another fantastic online software.  It impresses me that programmers are able to build so much control into a web based tool, and this speaks to the power of flash.  I imagine that this site is taking advantage of the bone tool offered in flash CS4, but I’m not programmer, so I’m just taking a stab at that.

Backgrounds: There are only a couple dozen different backgrounds offered by pixton, but they are customizable and zoomable.  I’m sure you will have many more options if you upgrade to Pixton+ or earn enough credits, but I didn’t bother to check.  I knew from the initial few hours working with the software that I didn’t want to pay for it, as it didn’t fit my own needs

Characters: There is so much control over characters in pixton that as far as I am concerned it is the biggest reason to include the website in this review.  You can manipulate character limbs easily, giving them pretty much any posture you can imagine.  You have fine control over foot and hand positions, head tilt and turn and even eye position.  And of course you have similar control as other software options to choose eyebrows, hair styles, shape of face, ear shape and other facial features.  The character control is amazing but it is easy to spend an hour just playing around and learning what you can do, which may become a problem during assignments when time is limited.

Objects: The objects are well organized into genres and there are quite a number of options. The graphics look good and are easy to manipulate

User Interface: The user interface isn’t anything to brag about.  Controls are simple in the sense that there are only a few, but it seems less intuitive then other sites.  Some users will find the UI unclear and therefore ineffective.

There is no doubt in my mind that pixton offers immense control over characters and objects rivaled by no other service reviewed in this article.  Unfortunately, in my experience, too much control isn’t always a good thing.  Students can become easily distracted and overwhelmed, and the rigorous academic nature of an assignment gets lost somewhere along the journey.  For advanced students or for courses where body language is an important part of student communication, pixton would be the ultimate stripping tool, but in most cases it is just too over the top.  I would only recommend pixton.com in situations where students have abundant time to work on their comic.

Toondoo – Overall Favorite Choice

Toondoo is a fantastic product that has been created with what seems to be a vision to easily create fabulous comics from a simple one slide cartoon to a 3 slide strip.  Mutlipe slides and strips can then be placed together in the book maker to put short comics together into a longer story.

Backgrounds: Toondoo has dozens of free backgrounds to choose from, and they are logically arranged in categories.  The backgrounds can be zoomed in and out as well as changed to grey-scale to give you that extra little bit of creative control.  The included backgrounds are diverse enough to allow you to tell pretty much any story you can think of without having to go to a third party art or graphic provider.

Characters: Characters, just as the backgrounds are organized into categories such as men, women, kids, animals, etc.  Once within the categories you will be pleased with the number of choices.  Each character is provided with different stances, and further posture customization is available on the toolbar provided.  Users can also change the expression (happy, sad, angry, etc) and the color of the characters using the same toolbar.  You will not be bored with the characters provided, but if you want to have more control you can use the TraitR tool to create your own characters easily and quickly.  The characters you create are saved to your profile and can be used across your projects.

Objects: Just as with the other features, props or objects are abundant and are organized into genres.  Again, you have control over size, color and orientation.

Personal Art/Media: There is a tool called DoodleR built into toondoo.  THis allows users to draw their art witha  reasonable amount of control over the tools.    Users can also import images and graphics from the web or upload them from your hard drive for use across your projects.  These features will not dissappoint.

User Interface: Considering the amount of control that toondoo provides, it is surprisingly easy to use.  Even less-then-tech-saavy teachers will be able to navigate through the tools and find what is required.  Though less familiar then creaza, users will quickly become comfortable with the heirachy of the tools, buttons, and controls.

If it isn’t obvious already, I will be explicit.  Toondoo.com is an amazing tool.  Even though many of the other sites offer great (and sometimes unique) features and layouts, toondoo is just so powerful yet easy to use, it stands out from the crowd.  Not only does it allow for free registration (for now), it also offers toondoo spaces which is a pay for service feature that provides a safe environment for your students to work in.  For this reason it allows teachers with no budget to use it, as well as those with some extra funding to create a safer more private space for their students.  For these reason I highly recommend this tool for classrooms from middle school through and including high school.

GoAnimate

These are somewhere between comic strips and the cartoons created in xtranormal.  Characters and objects are animated.  There are many animations, gestures, and expressions that characters can have.  This is a simple tool to use.  You can also build your own characters, or use ones that exist.  one problem is that it is built off of a points system so users do not have full access to the software capabilities from the get-go.

Backgrounds: Dozens of backgrounds, and unlike other websites, they sometimes have layerd properties, allowing you to hide a character behind a tree or other background objects.  This will allow you to create much more sophisticated stories compared to what can be done on many other tools

Characters: It is really easy to make your own characters.  Additionally, there are many great existing characters as well.  Some pre-created characters require GoBucks, but if you search characters by genre, there are lots of great options.  Political Science or History classes can take advantage of many important figures that are characterized.

Objects: There is a vast array of objects available, with many genres to choose from.

Personal Art/Media: Upload backgrounds, characters, objects, music.  Upload from the web, your own computer, or from social networks such as flikr or facebook.

User Interface: Simple and predictable, very natural to use.  Gives you a timeline of each of the slides from your comic

Animation: GoAnimate, as the name indicates, allows you to easily animate your comics.  Choose from lists of animations to create entertaining comics.  Animations include different expressions, movements and gestures that can include walking, dancing, motions of excitement, talking and dozens of other options.  You have to see it to appreciate the capabilities of this tool

This is really a good tool, and as they attempt to create new versions or spaces for classroom use teachers will find this to be a valuable resource.  Infact I just received information today from a colleague of mine (@dannymaas on twitter) about some trials that are taking place in my school district that so far have been very successful.  There is much fun to be had when creating your cartoon in GoAnimate, and it really isn’t too time consuming compared to something such as toondoo.  A quick 15 minute lesson or some tutorial videos will get your students animating in no time.

MakeBeliefsComix

The cartoons created here are very simple black and white pencil drawings.  They are simple, and cartoons are only a few slides long, taking away the opportunity to create full stories if necessary.  This tool is easy to use but lacks control.  A number of characters to choose from, each drawn with their own expressions.  Does have a print function, so easy to print in B&W.  Doesn’t have the extensive artwork that other programs have, doesn’t have the props and backgrounds, so much less visually appealing.  Much more focused on the text involved.

Backgrounds: Backgrounds?  You don’ t need no stinkin’ backgrounds!  Well at least I hope not.  If so, move along.

Characters: 20 Character options are provided, and you can choose their emotion, which means they have a different expression, stance, and sometimes clothing.  There really aren’t a lot of options here.

Objects: Objects?  You dont’ need no sti…. Ok, you get the point.  Move along.

User Interface: I found the UI to be less intuitive compared to other websites, yet also offering you less control over characters.  It is bizarre, I know.

Ok, so based off of the amount I have written here, you can tell that there isn’t much too MakeBeliefsComix.  It creates very simple comics with very few options.  Sure, you could make some great insightful stories with this tool, but why not use something that takes it to the next level, and does an impressive job at the same time.  With so many other good options out there I would just skip right over this tool.

Strip Generator

Strip Generator is a fun tool that allows you to create simple black and white (mostly) comics.  You can choose from one row, two row, or full page comic layouts giving you the option to create stories of many lenghts.  Users have the additional option of creating custom frame layouts, which is unique to Strip Generator.

Backgrounds: With strip generator, there are no backgrounds, you just use the white background of the sheet.

Characters: There are a lot of characters, both people and ‘beings’.  It is fun to see the dozens and dozens of options.  The downside is that each character is often only offered in one form, with no ability to change their posture or facial expressions.

Objects: There are a few dozen objects and shapes available.  Customizing is simple, allowing you to change their size, rotation, opacity and blur (unique to Strip Generator in this review).

User Interface: The UI is predictable, allowing users to easily make any possible changes and requiring little instruction on how to use the website.

Strip Generator is a pretty interesting site.  The user interface of Strip Generator is seemless, and amongst my favorite of all the sites I have used.  Strip Generator also offers some unique options (blurred objects and custom frame layouts).  This uniqueness and beautiful UI make it an interesting tool but when combined with the lack of backgrounds, missing controls over character creation, and the inability to add your own media, Strip Generator just doesn’t stack up against the competition.

Xtranormal

From what I can tell Xtranormal is a unique tool (I haven’t spent much time searching, but if you know of something similar please comment below, I’d love to see it).  It allows you to use 3D digital backgrounds and characters.  The product is more of a digital film then a comic strip.  Users choose characters, assign gestures, camera angles, choose a voice, and type in text.  The xtranormal servers then go render your movie and the product actually has your characters speak the text.  Very fascinating.  One concern with this site (a bit more so then others) is that I have come across many cartoons that would be inappropriate for even secondary students to be watching in school.

Backgrounds: In Xtranormal you choose from a variety of pre-made themes.  Once the them is chosen you then have your options of backgrounds and characters to choose from.  The backgrounds look good, and there are enough options to satisfy your creative juices for quite some time.

Characters: The character options are different depending on the theme you have chosen, but generally you get many options (a few dozen) for characters both male and female.  Choosing the characters voice, expressions and gestures make this much more entertaining and engaging for the user.

Sounds: Not only do the characters speak through computer generated voices, you can also embed various types of sounds.  Simply choose from the dozens provided and you can enrich your animation.  Additionally, you can upload up to two simultaneous sound tracks for ambient sound and music.

User Interface: This is another well though out tool that is very intuitive.  With a good plan and a thorough introduction to Xtranormal, users can create a rich, entertaining animation in a single class.

Animations, sounds generated voices, camera angles…all these add up to to what is truely a one of a kind experience.  This is a fantastic tool but unfortunately (at the time that I reviewed the site) there is no pay-for-service option that would provide a safe place for students and teachers to work.  Hopefully in the near future Xtranormal will create some sort of safer educational version that we can use with our students.  I do know of some teachers though that have happily used Xtranormal with their High school students.  Some teachers, with the right class, may feel confident that students will be mature enough to deal with and ignore the innapproriate content on Xtranormal and stay engaged in the assignment.

Chogger

This is really designed for young artists, where students can draw their own art.  Students can also upload art from their computer or from the web.  The layout and tools are simple but if the point of an assignments isn’t to be a proficient artist then this tool may not be appropriate.  I am not a digital any kind of  artist so I will not speak to the usefulness of the artistic tools.

Bitstrips – Secondary Winner

Bitstrips is very similar to toondoo with regards to the style of control it provides.  It is also incredibly easy to use and offers a good amount of art.

Backgrounds: Backgrounds are the only downfall to bitstrips.  While there are a number of options, they aren’t great, and they aren’t well organized.  I’m not sure why bitstrips has chosen to neglect this area, but from what I could tell, they have.  Every other tool in bitstrips offers organization by genre, as well the art in other categories is much nicer.  It’s not that the backgrounds are terrible, it is just that they aren’t to the same calibre as the rest of the art, nor is the organization.  This doesn’t prevent you from being able to make some fantastic comics quickly and easily.

Characters: Characters are easy to make, or you can choose from a few that already exist.  You can choose features down to details such as eye brows and lips, and you can make different versions of your character to have different expressions such as happy, surprised or sad.  Avatar creation is excellent and well thought out within bitstrips.com

Objects: There are many, many objects to choose from, and they are very well sectioned off into usable categories.  Objects can be copied, twisted, blown up, moved around and shrunk down easily with the tools provided.  You can also choose from pretty much any color within the color palette.

User Interface: The user interface is so similar to that of toondoo it feels silly to say anything about it.  In sum, the tools within toondoo become transparent after only a few minutes within the tool.  It is easy enough that even upper elementary students could use this with little direction at all.

After using both toondoo and bitstrips it is exciting to see that there are some great options for teachers and their students.  It’s really hard to say which one is better, so I’ve given them both winner status.  Toondoo receives the slight edge due to providing marginally better graphics, organization and control.

Conclusion

I thought I would be able to make a clear and obvious decision on which software is ‘best’ to use, but I honestly can’t do that.  Goanimate creates beautiful comics, creaza is so simple to use and offers an ecosystem of online creative software, and bitstrips is a great pay option which provides more security.  The bottom line is that any of these sites can be great in your classroom if you have the pedagogy to back it up.

Your Input

Please comment below and tell me about your own experiences with these sites, some other great comic stripping sites, or how this review may be helpful.