Category Archives: Projects

Nov 11

Music Unit—defining dignity, teaching empathy and the Blues

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By the end of Grades 7 & 8, students will:

C1. Creating and Performing: apply the creative process (see pages 19–22) to create and perform music for a variety of purposes, using the elements and techniques of music;
C2. Reflecting, Responding, and Analysing: apply the critical analysis process (see pages 23–28) to communicate their feelings, ideas, and understandings in response to a variety of music and musical experiences;
C3. Exploring Forms and Cultural Contexts: demonstrate an understanding of a variety of musical genres and styles from the past and present, and their sociocultural and historical contexts.

In this unit students gain musical skills and language while learning to write and perform the Blues. It’s written by and for a guitarist with background in theory and performance, but in a way, I hope, that can be adopted by any instrumentalist, or even by the less musically inclined teacher with support from local musicians.

Musical outcomes:

  • Learners will encounter and engage with elements of music
    • duration, tempo markings
    • pitch
    • dynamics and other expressive controls
    • timbre
    • texture/harmony
    • form

The expectations encourage students to explore issues related to personal identity and community concerns as they interact with increasingly complex and/or challenging media; to critically analyse and evaluate perspectives in works of dance, drama, music, and visual art; to use inquiry and research skills to extend their interpretive and creative abilities; and to use the arts to explore and comment on topics of relevance that matter in their daily lives. Issues of social justice are often highly engaging for students at this age.

Exploration and communication of multiple perspectives and points of view should be emphasized. The arts curriculum for Grades 7 and 8 is designed to engage students in tasks that they see as meaningful and motivate them to learn about and create art works out of interest as well as to meet curriculum expectations. In addition to the materials provided for instruction, students should have access to a wide range of themes, materials, and activities that are relevant to their personal experiences and interests as creators, artists, and critically literate viewers.

— Ontario MoE (2009, pg 131)

Social justice outcomes:

  • Choose a topic based on a personal story involving fairness, equity and/or social justice
  • Write Blues lyrics
  • Compose and perform music in the Blues form

The introduction is based entirely on what I know. My own musical education was, for the most part, highly Eurocentric. Fortunately my musical upbringing was much less so. By the time I was 11 my parents had exposed me to music as diverse as Miriam Makeba, Ravi Shankar, Wendy Carlos’s Switched On Bach, and Charles Ives.

I take the learners through an admittedly superficial and brief history of the guitar and “standard” notation, what it might have been like to be a musician 400 years ago—Who did musicians work for? What kind of music did they write?—and I play some Western European music.

Cultural Relevance

To be culturally competent and relevant, based on the demographics of my design, I’ll include parallels to South Indian classical music, the Persian origin of the ‘tar’ in ‘guitar’ and influence of the instrument of the same name, the African roots and history of the Blues as a response of an oppressed people to slavery and subjugation.

I teach blues licks, and I teach that if you can say it, you can play it. This practice strategy has parallels in many African and Middle Eastern cultures and reaches the level of a science in South Indian (Carnatic) music’s solkattu and tala system. The Blues and Jazz contain many examples of “scat” singing, which I use in a couple ways to introduce and reinforce the practice.

Structure

Day 1

The unit starts with a small concert by me. I set up my nylon string and an electric, with my amp and array of effects pedals in plain view to arouse curiosity. One of my petals is a Roland loop station, which contains pre-recorded accompaniment I will use in my performance. I have a Smart board behind me and my laptop in reach for accompanying visuals. I’ll play short representative pieces from Baroque, Classical and contemporary periods. I’ll show slides of the music notation and the period and say something about each piece. The acoustic pieces—a chaconne, a minuet, some studies and a performance piece—are chosen to highlight a progression from a context of music purposed for religious services and dance, sponsored by the Church and aristocracy, to one of concerts and freelance performers expressing themselves and making statements.

I use Steve Howe’s Mood For a Day to segue into the modern era by asking the class to guess what century it’s from, and whether it’s another dance, study or a performance piece. The Roland Loop Station comes with pre-recorded demos that include a 12 bar blues. I’ll say a few words about the blues, its form, the blues scale and “licks” then jam to demo . I totally show off and shred some blues licks, but make a point of following the form and scale I described. 

I’ve customized the lesson by storing a backing track from a song I know for certain, having visited the classroom where I’ll be doing this, is something we all know — Under Pressure by Freddie Mercury and David Bowie. I prepared it using a MIDI file and a Roland Fantom-S keyboard too large to include in today’s setup.  It’s important not to run out of time before showing the ukulele blues video. 

The school has ukuleles. The goal of the first, introductory lesson is to situate the music they listen to in historical and cultural context and to inspire and motivate the class to want to learn to play Blues and compose some blues of their own. 

Day 2

Slavery, Dignity and The Blues: Use the Smart board and laptop to show some of Dana Gluckstein‘s photos showing the dignity of indigenous people, including Africans. Of each picture, ask the class if the subject has dignity, why do they think so, and what does dignity look like.

End this short segment by showing the picture of Robert Johnson. Remind the learners about the era and Jim Crow. Tell the Legend of the Crossroads. The purpose of this introduction is to plant seeds for the personal stories of fairness they’ll soon turn into Blues lyrics. 

Distribute pre-tuned ukuleles and demonstrate how to hold them. From this point on we begin to see wide differences in talent, experience and musical motivation emerge, which is a challenging piece of every group musical learning experience. Some kids can learn a I IV V pattern their first time with a ukulele, others may be struggling to curl their fingers and press a string behind a fret. 

With the 12 bar blues form displayed, I attempt to show the fingering for 3 chords and split the class into three groups, each one holding their fingers in place over one of them. As everyone counts I conduct, pointing at each group when it’s their turn to play. The V chord group is also known as the “turnaround” group. We can have some fun improvising turnaround rhythms, and begin using “say it then play it” strategies that they’ll use for as long as they remain involved in playing music.

Day 3 and beyond

We’ll watch Does it Swing? An Introduction to Swing Jazz for Young People part 1link, using points in the video to focus learning strategies to continue learning the ukulele and the Blues, for example, call & response, and I’ll use short activities to tie these directly to the musical elements (tempo markings, pitch, dynamics, timbre, texture, form, etc.) required by the curriculum. We continue exploring the social conditions that accompanied the rise of the Blues, it’s evolution through jazz and ongoing influence on every form of music, ever since.

Lesson Resources…

… are stored in a concept map found here. This map can actually be shared with students, who may wish to provide their own suggestions. If there’s interest and the situation permits we may want to use the cmap cloud (and/or provided/available collaboration support).

CMapTools for Learning Design

This map is organized as a concept map, reading top to bottom and left to right. I accept and promote a formal definition of “concept map” as a structured mind map, detailed here. I like the CMapTools software better than several other mapping tools I’ve used for this process because it looks and works identically in a browser, can be shared via a free cloud repository, and significantly: because I can attach many resources to a single node. 

Beyond learning the buttons, this is the first time I’ve actually used CMapTools. At the time of writing the introductory lesson is reasonably well laid out… I’ll play the pieces in order from left to right, and the things I want to show and tell about each, including direct links to things like the sheet music and images from the period, form sub-concept-like columns underneath. The power of CMapTools can be gleaned by looking at the outline dialog. You’ll also see how to develop concepts into propositions using linking words and phrases. Seeing the outline of my partially developed map not only helped me set up my activities more logically, it helped me better understand the rather powerful tool set this definition of concept map brings to the practice of mind mapping. (My linking phrases, especially near the top of the map, need some work!)

I’m comfortable with the delivery and familiar enough with the material that this kind of map, with the links to content, is all I need. But I think it would be easy to make very precise daily lesson plans from such a sketch. I’ll simply drag the nodes around each activity or resource into more clear-cut columns.

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Reference:
Ministry of Education (2009), Ontario Curriculum 1-8 The Arts [PDF]
Blues Kids of America

My Major Research Project

Aside

Reply

I came across the slide notes from a presentation that I was supposed to give, back in February 2013, about my major research project in grad school. The presentation—using designVUE as a presentation tool—didn’t go off as planned from the start, and with 2015 hindsight I see how parts of the script I found might only have made things worse!

The update below follows the same plot line, but retells the story in a way I think is more clear, and better showcases the major points I think should be up for peer-review and further debate.

About my MRP

My final “Major Research Project” (MRP) started out to be an HTML5 Media Player in a jQuery plugin, and ended up being about the ascendancy of divergent thinking, and the deprecation/impending obsolescence of the paper document and its technological metaphors (eg MSWord print layout, Notepad…). I said “documents” would have to be deeper and “thicker,” having followed Jean Lave’s ethnographic method back to Clifford Geertz. You have to be able to get a lot of meaning into a small amount of visual or perceptual real estate—multimedia and DOM/Ajax manipulation of interfaces on the Internet do that. I also proved that in 2010-13 there was already enough information on the Internet for an informal, self-guided learner to create accessible audio/visual synchronizations that run in a modern web browser.

I said the new metaphor already exists, it’s “applications.” These likely require different kinds of literacies beyond pencil/paper writing—code literacy, video literacy, design/user experience literacies… for examples.

So, MRP, take two—I designed a project where kids code stuff. At the time jQuery Mobile was pretty advanced but I got some kids (alas, a bit older than my J/I target group) to copy/paste code from the jQueryMobile demo site and make stuff that ‘looks really cool on my cell phone’ (now I know some kids doing node.js and angular.js, and they make way better stuff; they still either know or ‘totally get’ jQuery). But I didn’t have access to a classroom and the activity to this day has never received a thoroughly authentic test.

Take 3. The MRP morphed a third time. I mixed in social media. I used a mind map to link stakeholders in education and their interests. I proposed multi-aged, multi sector collaboration centered in schools. There’s a direct line from the Xerox-funded ‘cognitive apprenticeship’ school of the 80s to 2015 ‘design thinking,’ but today the recording and editing tools are becoming ubiquitous and everyday people are becoming ‘literate’ in their use.

The evidence is strongly in favor of ‘blended learning,’ which means face-to-face instruction and coaching (“scaffolding”) supported by technology. In today’s classrooms—21st Century by definition, as arguably should be understood by default—the Apprenticeship Model is emerging, renewed and refreshed by new, refreshing technology, and fresh new ways of leveraging it. “Instructional Design” of ‘modules’ gives way to holistic “Learning Design” that mixes human chemistry and plans for serendipity.

The Public Sphere is endangered; schools as community centers and education policies and practices derived from educators’ 50-year + head start in research-based and evidence-based pedagogy offer viable paths towards a democratic society of engaged citizens.

Aug 04

Import 3D models into HitFilm Ultimate

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Educators have been intrigued by the potential of 3D worlds to engage young learners almost since the idea of virtual worlds emerged on the internet wish lists of the early WWW. I first learned of “immersive 3d” and several projects based on the Open Cobalt platform in about 2008, and I investigated Sloodle, of which all that now remains is the Git repository. When the SMARTboard-friendly Open Cobalt flavour “EduSIM” announced you could import 3D objects from Google Earth I got very excited. I loved models as a kid, and the Google 3d Warehouse was an instant hit, even in its early days.

I soon found a model of the Kabul Museum, which some of you may know was destroyed by the Taliban but later rebuilt. I created a learning activity that was basically a scavenger hunt for images of other historical objects, which it was possible to retrieve from elsewhere in the virtual world and “hang” in rooms within the museum. Great fun and potentially educational—when it worked—but it flopped due to technical difficulties. Immersive 3D was intriguing, yes, but also time intensive, technologically challenging and, for teachers in the classroom, too much work: “…it is not clear that the investment in time in building and using the Virtual World is worth it” (Conole, 2014). Are there other ways to leverage the intrigue models, even virtual ones, hold for many people?

Film making as digital storytelling

Are aspiring filmmakers nearly as ubiquitous as the cellphone cameras they may be using to get their start? I’ve seen some evidence there are a lot of them, and it’s certainly arguable that multimedia communication is a literacy, maybe an entire set of literacies, important to develop in our digital era.

Are aspiring filmmakers nearly as ubiquitous as the cellphone cameras they may be using to get their start? I’ve seen some evidence there are a lot of them, and it’s certainly arguable that multimedia communication is a literacy, maybe an entire set of literacies, important to develop in our digital era. It may not be necessary or desirable to have everyone in the class “make a video,” but if you have an idea as to how a videographer or three could contribute to an emerging student-driven inquiry, seeking out local experts at the student level might be just the thing—maybe creating an opportunity for student and teacher to reverse roles.

Start with Google Sketchup

For Sketchup users, says Google, “…drawing is thinking. They draw to explore ideas, to figure things out, to show other people what they mean. They draw because they love it, and because nothing great was ever built that didn’t start with a great drawing.” Making thinking visible is what the best instructors do. They call Sketchup “The easiest way to draw in 3D, and from my limited experience that may well be true. The 3d Warehouse is a repository of models in many categories.

Sketchup can export 3D models as AutoCAD, Collada and several other popular 3D file formats, of which HitFilm Ultimate imports 3. I had the most success with 3-D Studio (*.3ds) files.

Step 1. Explode any groups you want to animate. Before I could select the propellor I needed to “explode” the entire model.

Screenshot Sketchup

Model: FRANCE CANDAIR by XALOC-SOLARIS selected… then Right-click → Explode

Step 2. Select the things you want to animate. Ctrl+DblClick to add entire objects (will make sense when you try it.)

Step 3. Export in a useful format. I had best results with 3DS, but I soon learned to create a folder for every model I want to work with. Some of the other formats do this for you, because if your model is in the least bit complex it will generate many image files, and with 3d Studio files they all end up in the folder you save the master .3ds file. Press Options and check Export only current selection.

Step 4. Export other parts of the model.

HitFilm bundled with Sony MovieStudio

To import 3D models you need HitFilm Ultimate, which costs money. Sadly, in many places that creates a barrier. If that’s your situation don’t give up! Install Sketchup anyway, explore the 3D Warehouse and watch the tutorial entitled “Use Scenes to save important views” which is advertised from the splash screen when you start Sketchup. Read this, and turn kids loose, let them teach you how to use Sketchup to make animations and then use whatever editing software you may have access to (iMovie? Windows MovieMaker?) to put them together in meaningful sequences. You can still use green screens place themselves right in the action.

I was introduced first to HitFilm 2 Express, which does not do 3d, and came bundled with Sony MovieStudio Platinum, essentially buy-one-get-one-free. I found the $150 very reasonable considering what the two can do together, and within several months I was offered an upgrade deal too good to pass up — 70% off the full cost of Ultimate. The Sony is far and away the better editor and renders movies on average 3 times faster than HitFilm, but unless you can spring for top-of-the-line Vegas you’ll still need HitFilm’s compositing tools and effects, not to mention text styling and animation. If you use a green screen (and you will) you’ll especially need the masking tool.

You’ll find [3D Model] on the media import dropdown menu. It analyses the model file and then displays what it found in a 3D Model Properties dialogue.

image of 3d import screen showing propeller

Propeller extracted from Model: FRANCE CANDAIR by XALOC-SOLARIS. HitFilm Ultimate offers an opportunity to tweak the “materials” of each piece of the 3d object.

Animating literally dozens of available parameters is straightforward, designating a “parent” layer and attaching “child” layers only slightly more difficult (‘cartoonish’ is just fine with me for now!) Sticking to scale, position, orientation, transparency and zoom are probably more than enough to have some fun creating your own 3d worlds.

I duplicated the propeller composite and tried some other effects

Putting Humpty together again was a challenge at first, and in the end I think a reasonably good way to get started learning HitFilm’s layers, views and tools.

The way compositing works, this project isn’t necessarily a wrap when you render the day’s creativity. I can spend some time on the script, bring in actors and create variations on “the cargo bay scene,” and when I return to render the “fly by” it will have updated.

The airplane engine came from the repository at www.mediacollege.com.

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Further reading

Talking Points: Immersive Education Initiative [PDF] from the Immersive Education Initiative

Apr 06

Situating the “WebApp Maker”

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AppMaker Activity

My project within a project within a project was accepted. I’ve got some final edits to make and constructive criticisms to apply, and I’ll receive my M.Ed. in June. But the best news is, I’ve got a friend with a class who are up to the challenge, we’re working out details to actually build mobile-friendly web apps. But wait! There’s more! I’ve just been tweeting with PLN interested in this and/or similar ideas. I’m quickly going to summarize some of the constructive criticisms I’m talking about, and in so doing reveal what I think comes next, at least for me.

The nature of this thing is you can pick and choose what parts might be useful to your own endeavors, or join in and help set the course of this one, branch off on your own at any time, or lurk and watch what happens to the rest of us.

It does not require Internet, only computers. The experience will be better if computers can share a network; Internet makes it all much easier, especially such rewards as viewing your work on smart phones and sharing with family/friends.

Framing the activity

The project needs a goal—context and boundaries. A simple instant gratification version of this activity can be done if each participant has an image of themselves and 2 or 3 documents of some kind, for example assignments… poetry, written work. It might take the shape of About Me, or My Work in Grade x. In my imaginings, participants have something with their picture and things they’ve created inside it, and they have just grasped a sense of how to control those things using buttons and links. I believe if I do that correctly, they want to go further and do more, and they tell me so. I prepare for that.

Each student needs a USB stick, even a 1GB will do. If you have limited computers you need to set up timesharing; the USB travels with the participant. The only premise I have so far for a group version is whatever the students do individually, the teacher compiles as a class page. Teacher should do the individual activity up front, but you’ll be learning with the class, too. You should hunt down things you need and people who can help—the class’s PLN. A “thicker” (rife with teachable moments, methods, strategies) scope might be My Community, and an extension Project-Based learning situation could have reporters, videographers, copy editors… the class decides the organization’s structure and “business model,” create jobs and hires each other to fill them.

I used mind-mapping software to chart this out, my first maps are very clear to me, but to few others. I’ve been given a newer version of the easier one and I’ve already made cleaner better maps. I’ll be replacing and rearranging things here for a week or two. designVUE is good at collecting resources and showing how dots connect—try it you might like it

I’ll respond to comments on this blog, on this or any other post, but I’ll also welcome and incorporate ideas of others. I may add to this post, and I’ll write Updated at the top if/when I do.

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Footnotes

  1. Entrepreneurship is a 21st century competency in both C21 (Canada) and P21 (US).

 

Mar 29

Instant gratification as intrinsic motivation.

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“I learned HTML CSS and JavaScript exactly the same way I learned guitar—by stealing other people licks.” chord diagram, E major, first position.
I’ve said this a few times, but I’m coming to believe my point is largely being missed. I think if the point’s worth anything at all it’s incumbent on me—the communicator—to give it another try.

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Mar 20

Which way is in?

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Do you like maps? I know they’re not everyone’s cup of tea. But especially the kind of map you might draw for someone to get to your party, where they get to choose their own way in—depending where they’re coming from. Just over a year ago I began seriously researching learning design tools and techniques that might work well for Internet-based collaborations creating project-based learning experiences. I didn’t expect to still be at it a year later—and I definitely didn’t expect to become so thoroughly intrigued by a single class of software—I had no idea sophisticated, free, open source idea-mapping software existed.an outdoor stone labyrinth

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Jan 19

Mind mapping for learning design

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UPDATED: when you’ve read this, see my latest update on Gráinne Conole’s latest contributions to these ideas, linked at the end.

Mind map of CompendiumLD showing Getting StartedThe past 30 years in education research has seen the influx of big ideas from computer science, social anthropology, design and even architecture. We now say learning is situated in authentic social contexts many call communities of practice.

This has had some pretty significant effects on research itself (e.g., ethnographic case studies, action research), and learning design tools, themselves designed to reflect this current situation, but for reasons I won’t waste any more time pondering, the uptake still seems relatively slow. Gráinne Conole, with others at the Institute of Educational Technology, Open University UK, looked into an idea/concept/mind mapping tool, Compendium, that was already under development there, and in yet another demonstration of the efficacy of open source, created CompendiumLD, Compendium “Learning Design,” allowing designers to visualize the many connections that exist within learning situations. I believe such tools will play an increasingly important role in the design, planning and implementation of learning experiences.

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Nov 04

Cognitive Apprenticeship and the 21st Century Web Application

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In my previous post I (literally) talked about a long historical need to provide more information than a written document can physically hold. I pointed out how footnotes have accomplished this, how these and such familiar devices as front-page headlines and teasers have evolved, and continue to evolve in the modern web-browser. I’m doing this to demonstrate how Web browsers and the three main (and open) technologies—HTML, CSS and JavaScript—can support Cognitive Apprenticeship’s goal of “making thinking visible.” Ultimately I hope to encourage classroom teachers to leverage this generation’s immersion in technology in new ways that lead not only to their own empowerment but that of all who become involved in 21st century learning environments that can stretch past boundaries of space and time.

I began to show some actual code1 [to see my “footnotes,” press the number; to close them, click or press Esc] which creates a style that can be applied at the paragraph or section level to assign an icon signalling its content or relevance to the document. I used narration, in the form of recorded audio, with pictures timed to coincide with words—a concept that is the basis of almost all elearning software, TV advertising, documentary film, even political propaganda—to explain and demonstrate what I was thinking about the topic and the technology. If you’ve followed this Cognitive Apprenticeship from the beginning I hope you can start to see now how I’ve intentionally set out to contrast a traditional academic style with an increasingly Web-enhanced one.

In so doing I used technology to solve some problems—and predictably introduced several more, demonstrating another potential technology holds, one I suspect we all have experienced. Software often contains bugs; preparing a lesson plan using pen and paper, or presenting using a comfortable and familiar paradigm such as a slide show with handouts one often feels more in control. It’s often too easy for the technology to become the focus, and not in a good way. But while many classroom teachers tell me anecdotes that conclude with a student fixing something, far fewer tell me they’ve learned to embrace that as a strategy, and are willing to jump in the deep end head first, with ample faith that together they’ll tackle whatever obstacles arise. It’s my personal goal to foster that confidence and empower educators to create such environments. Indeed, I feel there’s a certain urgency, not just for individual teachers or the profession, but for the future of public education itself.

Ursula Franklin, in her famous 1989 Massey Series lecture, noted the changing role of technology and important ways it was changing the role of technologists, distribution of labour, and the balance of power, while in her view shrinking the public sphere.

The situation in the classroom at the interface between the biosphere and the bitsphere is but one facet of the situation in the workplace within the same realm. In fact, often even the designation of workplace is no longer appropriate. Not only do new technologies, new ways of doing things, eliminate specific tasks and workplaces… but the remaining work is frequently done asynchronously in terms of both time and space.
— Ursula Franklin (1992:172)

Her distinction between what she identified as prescriptive approaches2 versus holistic3 ones led to a concern that not working together in the same space causes “opportunities for social interactions, for social learning and community building [to] disappear.” (Franklin, 1992:172). A neoliberal market model of education is paired with a neoconservative social model that work together to “change people’s understanding of themselves as members of collective groups” (Apple, 2009), a course at odds with public education’s heritage of citizenship-, character-, and democracy-building. An aggressive and well-funded movement is under way that “supports marketisation through its clear preference for incentive systems in which people are motivated by personal, not collective, gain rather than by the encouragement of social altruism. Yet, the tradition of social altruism and collective sensibilities has roots just as deep in our nations, and its expression needs to be expanded, not contracted.” (Apple, 2004; Apple, 2009).

Neither of the above authors in the works cited alludes to what I believe can only be described as a new literacy for the 21st century: fluency in coding and code. At Occupy Wall St. the techies “[built] websites, put out messages, manage[d] the ebb and flow of information about the occupation on the Internet.” (Judd, 2011) A year later “TechOps,” as the New York contingent of web-developing occupiers call themselves, built and maintained the website for the Sept. 17 anniversary events. They put together a whole host of other underlying technical infrastructure… TechOps-built database software sits behind a system to match people who needed a place to stay during the demonstrations with people who had space to offer […and built…] what has become a broad suite of web tools built specifically for Occupy activists. Using their own flavor of WordPress’ multi-site functionality, TechOps can facilitate sites like S17NYC.org and allow individual movement groups to maintain their own web presences themselves.” Those who code may have a special understanding of the saying “free as in beer, but not free as in speech” (Judd, 2012).

Franklin, in 1989, was perhaps just a bit too early to fully anticipate the complex socio-politico-economic forces that would result in Twitter, a commercial start-up, empowering the Arab Spring. But Apple’s 2009 essay describes in full the motives and methods we see manifesting in high-stakes testing and redistribution of public resources to private concerns that are part of many ed “reform” efforts. I believe there’s a need for further research into the roles of social networking within emerging communities of practice, but also its influence on communities of practices’ emerging. In the meantime, code literacy is something that’s fun and beneficial to pursue, which you can leverage within many learning environments to help create the kinds of authentic, situated opportunities for discovery and knowledge construction project- and inquiry-based learning models are touted for. And while you probably don’t have the next Dimitri Gaskin in your class, you almost certainly have more expertise available than you’ve imagine or tapped.

All of the jQuery JavaScript scripts I’ve used so far are my own—and all of them contain flaws that were part of my learning process. Currently my Footnotes script works with this WordPress theme (or any theme that uses <article> elements for posts), I simply hit the HTML tab on my WordPress editor and create a <sup> element of class=”footnote” and down below a numbered (“organized”) list of class <ol class=”footnotes”></ol> and it automatically creates a rollover/keypress on the number. In this version I have to hard code the numbers in the <sup> tags… so if I move a list item or add one in between I have to manually renumber. One of the first tasks for a group could be to improve on that. If a classroom or school has a blog or web page, and they use it for student writing, and they encourage using such common conventions as footnotes, then it might be an intrinsically motivating project to design and implement something that facilitates and modernizes the process in a way students can own.

My footnotes script is part-way to becoming a jQuery plugin. You may or may not know what that is, but I’ll wager you know someone who does. It’s only part-way done because I’m  trying to think more like a programmer so I’m learning about design patterns and building in stages. The Smashing Magazine article in that link contains links to all the information one needs to finish it. In my next and hopefully final instalment I’ll talk about a project I have in mind that I think holds benefits for classroom teachers who are still tentative about technology and/or looking for creative ways to include it, one that demystifies programming and the coding culture, and hopefully creates space in the classroom for activities and knowledge that may already be taking place informally outside, extending access and creating new opportunities.

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    Notes:

  1. For example, if you provide the path to a 36×36 pixel image representing a rubric or video:
    .bg-rubric {
    background: transparent url(“..path_to/rubric.png”) no-repeat 3px 3px; padding:3px 9px 3px 36px;
    }
    .bg-video {
    background: transparent url(“..path_to/video.png”) no-repeat 3px 3px; padding:3px 9px 3px 36px; }
  2. See for example, Harvard Business School’s aggressively disruptive, top down, market-model for education reform in Christensen et al., 2009
  3. See for example, Harvard Graduate School of Education’s “Beyond the Bake Sale: A Community- Based Relational Approach to Parent Engagement in Schools,” (Warren et al., 2009), PDF available from The Logan Square Neighborhood Association http://bit.ly/nYwbjK accessed 2012-11-03

References

Apple, Michael W. (2004). Ideology and curriculum (3rd ed.). New York: Routledge.

Apple, Michael W. (2006), Understanding and Interrupting Neoliberalism and Neoconservatism in Education, Pedagogies: An International
Journal, 1:1, 21-26

Christensen, Clayton; Johnson, Curtis W.; Horn, Michael B. (2008), Disrupting Class: How disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns. New York: McGraw Hill, 288 pages.

Judd, Nick (2011). #OWS: Tech-Savvy Occupiers Hope to Open-Source a Movement, http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/ows-tech-savvy-occupiers-hope-open-source-movement, accessed 2012-11-03

Judd, Nick (2012). How Free Software Activists are Hacking Occupy’s Source Code, accessed at http://techpresident.com/news/22867/how-free-software-activists-are-hacking-occupys-source-code 2012-10-23

Osmani, Addy (2011). Essential jQuery Plugin Patterns, http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/10/11/essential-jquery-plugin-patterns/, accessed 2012-11-03

Franklin, Ursula. (1992, rev ed. 1999) The Real World of Technology. (CBC Massey lectures series.) Concord, ON: House of Anansi Press Limited, 206 pages.

Kreiss, Daniel and Tufekci, Zeynep (2012). Occupying the Political: Occupy Wall Street, Collective Action, and the Rediscovery of Pragmatic Politics (September 17, 2012). Cultural Studies – Critical Methodologies, 13:3 (Forthcoming). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2147711

Warren, Mark R.; Hong, Soo; Rubin Leung, Carolyn; Uy, Phitsamay Sychitkokhong (2009). Beyond the Bake Sale: A Community- Based Relational Approach to Parent Engagement in Schools, Teachers College Record Volume 111, Number 9, September 2009, pp. 2209–2254

Nov 01

21st Century Cognitive Apprenticeship: 4 Ways We Make Thinking Visible

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Back in 2005 Dorian Peters posted a summary of Mayer’s Principles for the design of Multimedia Learning I’ve visited frequently. I read it again today through the lens of cognitive apprenticeship and made some connections. Two essential components of apprenticeship models and multimedia design are narration and its timing, which is probably why software applications like Adobe Captivate, PowerPoint, or PowToons contain various ways to synchronize the appearance of objects with audio, visuals and text. The framework and principles can help form a checklist to improve the Who, What, When, Where, and How of choosing what to include in learning environments, all of which illuminate two distinct aspects of the Why — a given that someone wants to learn the stuff, and our ability to assess that including something in specific ways — or not — helps achieve that goal.

Mayer (2001, 2003, 2005) presented research-based principles for the design of multimedia messages. His fundamental principle is the multimedia principle itself: people learn better from words and pictures than from words alone. Peters has organized the principles into sets:

  • Principles for managing essential processing  more»
    • Segmenting principle: People learn better when a multimedia lesson is presented in learner-paced segments rather than as a continuous unit.
    • Pre-training principle: People learn better from a multimedia lesson when they know the names and characteristics of the main concepts.
    • Modality principle: People learn better from animation and narration than from animation and on-screen text.
  • Principles for reducing extraneous processing  more»
    • Coherence principle: People learn better when extraneous words, pictures, and sounds are excluded rather than included.
    • Redundancy principle: People learn better from animation and narration than from animation, narration, and on on-screen text.
    • Signaling principle: People learn better when the words include cues about the organization of the presentation.
    • Spatial contiguity principle: People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented near rather than far from each other on the page or screen.
    • Temporal contiguity principle: People learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather than successively.
  • Principles based on social cues  more»
    • Personalization principle: People learn better when the words are in conversational style rather than formal style.
    • Voice principle: People learn better when words are spoken in a standard-accented human voice than in a machine voice or foreign-accented human voice.
    • Image principle: People do not necessarily learn better from a multimedia lesson when the speaker’s image is added to the screen.
  • “One last principle,” the Individual differences principle.  more»
    Design effects are stronger for low-knowledge learners than for high-knowledge learners. Design effects are stronger for high-spatial learners than for low-spatial learners.

More about these in a moment. These principles illustrate a point of mine: that what Collins, Brown, Duguid, Newman, Holum et al. (see my posts here and here) bring with their theory of cognitive apprenticeship is a practical framework by which to apply such good principles. Conversely, the principles can guide the how, when, who, where, and why of specific situations. Consider the statement that teachers (who may often be more generally deemed “designers” of learning experiences) should show the processes of the task and make them visible to students (Collins et al.., 1991:). The common root of processes and processing reveals the relationship. The set of essential processing principles informs the design and planning stages, with a strong nod to individualization. Extraneous processing are filters and fine-tuning strategies. Both sets speak to content, method and sequence in Collins’s language. The fourth member of that set in cognitive apprenticeship lingo is sociology, and Mayer offers guidance here as well.

I’m going to apply Mayer’s fundamental principle now and try to enhance this communication with narration and pictures. Maybe you’ve never thought of footnotes as technology before, but they are a highly developed device1, designed to make an author’s thinking visible.

I use this icon to exclaim or assert something. I assert that this is one way to make thinking visible. For a web site, it’s easy to use CSS to make a set of icons. available, as I’ve done for this one. Of course the meanings of the icons must be communicated throughout the community and a common understanding shared by those who use them. Press the letter N to open this “Note” showing my growing list. The letter U opens my Audio narration in which I discuss 4 simple things we’ve done within documents to make thinking visible, and how each can be enhanced with the 3 main Web technologies, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Icons Used Here

  • Assertion 
  • Argument 
  • Audio 
  • Decision 
  • Web page 
  • Idea 
  • Issue 
  • List 
  • Idea Map 
  • – Con 
  • Note 
  • + Pro 
  • Position 
  • Rubric 
  • Video 

This icon is not in the original Compendium set. I added it because I thought it filled a need.

Using icons is another thing on my list. It’s not a new idea, but applying it specifically when managing essential processing, thinking about segmenting and pre-training (prerequisite knowledge?) while imagining and planning authentic environments, or striving to reduce extraneous processing throughout demonstration and coaching phases. A consistent icon set provides coherence by signaling and providing cues about the content. For more ways, roll your mouse over the list icon, or press the L key to open my List. Press N to open a Note displaying the list. Press U to open my Audio narration for this content.

  • Icon sets
  • “More »” links  more»
    More links reduce extraneous information and communicate which points you think are important.
  • Footnotes2
  • Narration & animation

§

    Footnotes:
  1. Anthony Grafton, in The Footnote: A Curious History (1999) points to men like Pierre Bayle, who “…made the footnote a powerful tool in philosophical and historical polemics; and Edward Gibbon, who transformed it into a high form of literary artistry. Proceeding with the spirit of an intellectual mystery and peppered with intriguing and revealing remarks by those who “made” this history, The Footnote brings what is so often relegated to afterthought and marginalia to its rightful place in the center of the literary life of the mind…” (cover notes).
  2. With JavaScript the eye never has to leave the main text. It can count them for you, too!

References

Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2003). E-learning and the Science of Instruction. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Mayer, R. E. (2001). Multimedia Learning New York: Cambridge University Press. Mayer, R. E. (Ed.). (2005). The Cambridge Hanbook of Multimedia Learning. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Grafton, Anthony (1999). The Footnote: A Curious History, Boston: Harvard University Press, 241 pages.

IDEO (2011). The Design Thinking Toolkit for Educators, http://www.designthinkingforeducators.com/, 94 pages.

Peters, Dorian (2005). Mayer’s Principles for the design of Multimedia Learning, blog http://designerelearning.blogspot.ca/2005/09/mayers-principles-for-design-of.html retrieved 2012-10-10.

Best new thing in my world today: Git

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Git is version control software, sort of like “track changes” for an entire directory structure. But it has powers and abilities far beyond those of ordinary version control tools. Among other things it can move files — securely — between servers anywhere you have access to install it.

Why did I bother to learn Git?

My motivation was both intrinsic and extrinsic: I have experienced the deep feeling of chagrin that comes from knowing you’ve just overwritten hours of good work with an older version of a file. I already wanted to learn how to use Git because I had seen interesting projects on GitHub that I thought I might even be able to contribute to. The extrinsic motivation, and the reason I stopped procrastinating, is I now have to use it at work.

Did I have a strategy?

Having a project of my own allowed me to put many more hours into learning Git, and to use it for things I wouldn’t try at work for many weeks. At work I’m literally only expected to contribute to two files — one is CSS the other JavaScript. For my project I’m carrying around a laptop, but my biggest screen (and most comfortable coding chair) are at the desktop in my music-room. The desktop has 3 or 4 different web servers running on it, which I can access from anywhere on my home network. My learning strategy then was to set up as if I’m a team of people working from different computers on a network. I ended up setting up two repositories on each computer. I used a variety of Internet resources whenever I faced an impasse. I soon found several well-written sources that helped me.

What did I already know that helped me learn Git?

Almost immediately as I started working with Git I thanked the fact that I’ve installed and worked with various Linux flavors — Fedora and Ubuntu mainly, but others as well. Git runs on Windows in a Linux “shell” and you need to know about case-sensitivity and forward slashes. The most frightening and potentially alienating thing for any Windows user is probably Vim, the 20-year old text editor (and so much more) that Linux geeks will never abandon or bury. When you commit changes using commit -a a Vim terminal appears. When you start typing in Vim all hell breaks loose until you learn to press Insert up front, and you won’t get out with anything you type intact until you learn the sequence ESC : w q . I was lucky I went through that frustration a couple years earlier.

What surprised me about learning Git, or what did I learn that I didn’t expect to learn?

At one point I had to open a utility, Gitk, that comes with Git. Looking at the long list of commit messages I generated as the project evolved I realized I had inadvertently collected a log of my thought processes. If I were teaching something in a classroom and I could have my students keep a similar log while working on their projects I’d know what they were thinking at various stages, and perhaps gain all sorts of otherwise unexposed insights into both their learning and my teaching. I mentioned this thought to the IT program manager at work. His comment was he would love it if they taught Git in high school.

I’ll probably post more about working with Git. But don’t wait for me… get Git and all the documentation and tutorials you’ll probably ever need at git-scm.com/.

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