Synergy 8 Update – Week 3

Posted on August 31, 2011 by boadams1

Last week in Synergy 8, our team of 26 established and integrated our triad of foundational course-communication tools – Schoology, Posterous, and WordPress. After all, a learnopolis needs an infrastructure for advanced communication. Additionally, we began utilizing and practicing our #1 tool in Synergy – the observation journal. In the upcoming weeks, our team observations will allow us to develop projects of our choosing that address community needs about which we are curious…and about which we care.

This week, on Monday, August 29, we began Synergy with this short piece:

We wanted to use a compelling hook for enlisting the students in a prototypical project. By engaging this project as an “alpha project” for this semester’s Synergy 8 team, we could “learn by doing” within the context of a project – a project started by last year’s Synergy 8 crew. After watching the video, we coached the team through a process of determining methods and action steps for researching the perceived problem of keeping Malone Dining Hall clean. Based on the team’s gamestorming, we focused on four possible methods: 1) direct observation of Malone, 2) interviews with homerooms regarding KP, 3) interviews with Malone staff and director Robert Nash, 4) student body survey.

On Tuesday, we used Poll Everywhere to explore how we might operationalize our teams. Based on the results, we decided to jump into a “spontaneous lesson plan shift.” If we were playing football…we called an audible. We used the results to walk through eight mediated journal prompts created on the fly. We explored graphical analysis and numeracy, and we examined some misconceptions about what the Poll Everywhere data were telling us. The data revealed some teamwork issues, too, and the team members proposed solutions to the issues. We then implemented a solution and retook the Poll Everywhere survey.

Now, the Synergy 8 team is distributed in sub-teams, and we are working to develop the action steps needed to implement our community problem-solving. Before jumping in too deep, though, we paused to read Dan and Chip Heath’s Switch chapter on “Finding the Bright Spots.” We believe there is so much to learn from the example of Dr. Sternin and the Vietnamese-nutrition project. Now we plan to:

1. Enlist the community as partners in the problem-solving process, instead of swooping in and acting like we have all the answers.

2. Study the bright spots of what’s working and strategize how we can do more of that good stuff.

3. Empower the community to sustain the change needed to improve the situation.

Through this alpha project – the KP Challenge – we are addressing a serious community issue, we are bridging the work begun in Synergy 8 2010-11, and we are modeling a project process that can frame future projects that we undertake in Synergy 8. All the while, we are integrating content and skills that are typically distributed and segregated among various “departments.” We are engaged in a scientific process, we are collecting and analyzing data, we are discussing human psychology and sociology, we are drafting persuasive pieces and developing interview questions and protocols.

I cannot wait to see what tomorrow brings!

Let’s Know Our Campus & Getting the Wind Back in @clarkbeast

Posted on August 15, 2011 by boadams1

First, I hope you will read these two posts from @clarkbeast (they are brief in length and powerful in message):

“like a punch in the solar plexus”

“a simple vision”

I truly don’t have time to draft and publish a post this morning. By prioritizing this writing, something else important to the start-of-school is not getting done right now. However, a faculty member has inspired me to respond and support. As a true believer in formative assessment and community collaboration, I would be acting irresponsibly if I were slow to respond this morning. Additionally, what middle-school learning could be more important than a place-based education for our children? They should know their world, and that can begin with the very world around them…a world that we are fortunate and blessed to occupy with nearly 200 acres in the heart of Buckhead, Atlanta, Georgia.

This morning, I was following my routine of reading a few blog posts. I was concentrating on my folder of “Blogs-Colleagues.” In the past few days, it appears that @clarkbeast has been reflecting even more than usual on the delicate balance between our charge with technology and our critical need to attend to our natural world. Moreover, @clarkbeast has posted a response (same as second link above) to a call for #PBL ideas (link to Keynote on PBL…sent before 8-11-11 JH fac mtg). The intentions for our 8-11-11 JH faculty meeting took a different turn, and we discussed some questions that were not on the agenda. Therefore, we were not able to act with the #PBL ideas that people were asked to bring to the meeting. I am so thankful that @clarkbeast used his blog to ensure that the conversation did not end with a change-of-course-faculty-meeting.

On a related note, as I was playing around campus – in Nancy Creek – with my two boys, I snapped a few pictures and posted to my Posterous blog (such is now a habit with us). To the three Adams boys’ great pleasure, @clarkbeast responded to a post and got us excited about a potential stream exploration (click link to read that quick exchange)!

How can we better know our campus – our 200 acres of Atlanta, GA? What can we do to understand the natural world which is our very own school backyard? In what ways can we use our campus to study the essential learnings present across the departmentalized curricula?

I hope the JH will undertake this challenge this year. We have some superb feet in the door already – past bright spots to build on and improve. What’s best for the children? We need to get outside!

A World of #PBL Possibilities

Posted on July 30, 2011 by boadams1

I am training myself to see more #PBL possibilities. Through the years, and from reading such works as Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind and Carol Dweck’s Mindset, I am convinced that being an artist largely involves practicing the acts of looking and seeing. Why would becoming a “PBL-ist” be much different?

Here are a few examples of how I am practicing being a PBL seeker, with resulting ideas for PBL. Oh…that’s project-based learning, problem-based learning, etc.

1. Using TED talks to spur thinking.

Each morning, thanks to an RSS feed, I watch at least one TED talk – it’s delivered to my computer, like a newspaper to a house. Before I even touch that beautiful red “play” arrow, I ask myself, “What is this going to show me that could be related to PBL?” This morning, I watched Geoffrey West’s “The surprising math of cities and corporations,” which I have embedded below. Throughout the talk, I imagined middle schoolers studying our city of Atlanta – understanding its historical growth, its environmental and business challenges, its political scene, etc. In my mind’s new PBL-eye, I could see students collecting the type of data that Geoffrey West describes, and I could see the students Skyping with other students in other cities as they exchanged city data and ideas. I could see them applying science thinking and sociology thinking and economic thinking to some of the issues our city faces.

2. I use my iPhone and iPad to capture pictures that spark inquiry and curiosity in me.

This week, I happened upon this growth in a nearby building. I wondered why this was growing here…what is it…how could we prevent it from growing here again? What a strong possibility for students to integrate science, math, history, and persuasive writing to enact a plan that addresses this unanticipated indoor fungi!

3. I combine #1 and #2 – I think in my mental Rolodex about what I have photographed and what I have seen on TED.

For example, with colleague Mary Cobb, I recently completed the 6th annual hanging of the Junior High School Permanent Art Collection (this is one of my greatest joys each summer!) This year, as we hung student art, we discussed Amit Sood’s TED talk, “Building a museum of museums on the web,” which I have embedded below. Can you imagine the “coolness” of students building such an online gallery of our JHPAC? Then, can you imagine this resource potentially being linked with Amit Sood’s project? The JHPAC could be another virtual gallery alongside the MoMA and the Louvre.

4. I listen to and talk with faculty.

Colleague Danelle Dietrich has become increasingly interested in various capabilities of the TI-Nspire (a graphing calculator and software). On Thursday of last week, she was sharing her excitement as she was thinking about the mathematics of leaf veins. She had some great ideas for importing leaf images and studying the vein-ation of the leaves. We started to brainstorm about the relationships of blood vein-ation to leaf vein-ation. Then, we hypothesized about the relationship of computer networks and communications veins to leaf veins and blood veins. Can you imagine students writing letters and websites to city politicians explaining their study of the communications systems of Atlanta and the need to rethink the vein-ation of our networks around town?

What ideas are you imagining? It all starts with imagination…just like a young child imagining a pretend world. We are only limited by our capacity to realize our imaginations through creative expression. And our capacities can expand – with teamwork, practice, and persistence.

Get your #PBL-lenses on!

Readicide, Springboards, and PBL

Posted on July 6, 2011 by boadams1

Thanks to the Westminster English Department and chair Bart Griffith, Kelly Gallagher’s Readicide was on my summer reading list. The short, compact read is full of summarized research and practical advice about how to end readicide in schools and to promote more engaged joy with reading for a lifetime. In addition to describing teaching in a “sweet spot” – neither under-teaching nor over-teaching – Gallagher provides a monumental “duh” (one of those grand aha moments!) for me in chapter three:

“In my first book, Reading Reasons (Gallagher 2003), I discuss the work of philosopher Kenneth Burke, who says the reason young people should read books is that it provides them with ‘imaginative rehearsals’ for the real world. When children read books, Burke argues, they are not just reading stories. They are being given an opportunity to understand the complex world they live in (1968). Books enable adolescents to begin wrestling with those issues that remain universal in all our lives” (66).

Later, Gallagher states that “The value comes when we use this great book as a springboard to examine issues in today’s world” (67).

With the examples that Gallagher provides, he is not merely advocating for in-class, passive imaginative rehearsal. Rather he is advocating and advancing the practice of student learners interacting ACTIVELY with their current world as citizens who are springboarding into issues through great literature and the guidance of a lead learner (teacher).

For teachers getting more comfortable or even more deeply immersed in PBL (project/problem-based learning), I believe this advice and advocacy from Gallagher provides the ideal bridge from a long-taught classic to authentic, “do-something-real-in-the-community” PBL. Gallagher gives a number of examples that would apply directly where I teach, as the books named are novels that we include in our school canon. Additionally, such books and the issues they raise could provide the threads and links that tie together curricula for integrated studies.

A great reminder about RELEVANCY…thanks Kelly Gallagher!

Gallagher, Kelly. Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It. Stenhouse Publishers, Portland, Maine: 2009.

Temporary Move to Posterous

Posted on June 22, 2011 by boadams1

For a few weeks, I will be blogging more through my Posterous blog (and relatively less here). It feels a bit more mobile, and it’s quicker when using email over 3G to post (at least with what I have learned so far). If you are reading this from a browser pointed to It’s About Learning, a link to my Posterous can be found on the right column. The direct URL is http://boadams1.posterous.com/. When I post to Posterous, the post is auto-tweeted. This morning, I began this little blog experiment with a post about ski school and PBL.