Thinwalls and The Outsiders

We are in the final throes of finishing up our study of the novel The Outsiders in our thinwalled classroom. Beginning with a Skype chat back in October (while I sat in a questionable professional development seminar actually), our study of this piece has taken us through different stages and steps.

We read the book in both class in Snow Lake and Los Angeles. Instead of assigning chapter questions to suck the life out of the book, instead we had the students write a reflective blog post every two chapters. At first, we left this wide open to students. We expected them to write a summary of the chapters and we also talked about things that could be written about (traditional elements of literature: characters, setting, predictions, author's craft and style, etc.). Later in this study, we gave the students several words (heroism, fear, survival, and friendship) and had them choose one of these words for each set of chapters and defend their choice based on the book.

This part of our connection went well. We also built time in to our classrooms to get students reading and commenting on the posts of other students. They were involved, interested, and debates raged across the classroom and the blogospere about various things that came up in the book. We ended up with a fair number of pieces we were pleased that the students had produced.

For a final project, we wanted to take a different tact. We wanted the students to become more independent and think their way through this piece of literature. We set up a wiki where we asked kids to choose a theme from the book and organize themselves into the spaces they are interested in. After some shuffling, we had 17 total groups. We hosted an initial chat on Moodle for the students to set up their own times to chat. In this initial chat the students met to fill out a planning template we had posted on their wiki page. A basic outline asking them about their form of representation, a timeline outlining each partner's responsibility and their focus. From this point we provided class time and the students were on their way. While all of the students decided on a presentation of some kind (PPT or Google presentations or Voicethread), this actually might not have been a bad idea considering that we were only giving them two weeks to finish this project.

In the end, this was a successful connection but we learned a lot of things (as usual) about trying to hook kids together long term as we are doing:

- We've learned about the important of commenting on blogs compared to posting. They carry equal weight. They both need to be taught as skills and they both require extended periods of involvement to achieve some sort of mastery. For middle school students to push other learners in their class is something completely new to most of them and getting them to see the value of this difficult task is not easy.

- We spent the majority of our time during this part of our collaboration working with communication skills and channels. Over the course of this project, we had the kids using Moodle, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, Meebo, Skype, email, and the discussion tab on their wiki page. This number of tools shows the number of troubles that we had. We moved into using IM in the classroom after pushing the edges of what we could get Moodle to do for us. We thought this would hep to solve our troubles and increase the capacity of our network. Instead, it brought new problems. In the end, we still had students who had trouble connecting and the number of channels available to them may have led to some troubles and misunderstandings as they were often unsure of what tool they were to be using. But as Barbara has mentioned on her blog, the chat transcripts and the discussion tabs on the students' wiki pages have given us a unique view of their challenges and thought processes. One take away from this process that we have is that we have now made it a classroom requirement that all students have Skype installed on their home computers. We require kids to have specific school supplies, why not specific software?

- A constant stream of email, Skype chats and calls were required by the adults involved in this process to problem solve, open doors for students, and also to bring students together and hold them to account. We had to dedicate ourselves to this openness and these channels between our classrooms and schools. The time involved was not small, but this was essential to the success of this part of our collaboration. This was a "warts and all" process of transparency and openness.

Next up: a short collaboration, a compare and contrast activity of early leaders from Egypt and America allowing us to uncover ideas of what makes a good leader and what a society needs to advance.

Photo Credit: Collaboration http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=235290355&size=m

Tags: thinwalls, The Outsiders, collaboration, Skype, dare-to-dream, Barbara Barreda

Comments

[Matt Montagne]

Clarence-

This is fantastic stuff! The kind of sample that our language arts/english teachers need to see. I just forwarded your post to half our our school. Consider presenting this at a nat'l language arts conference-what an excellent sample of contemporary practice.

Cheers!
~Matt

[diane]

Clarence,

I agree with Matt. For those teachers who are not already committed to embedded technology, this type of roadmap is invaluable.

Even for more experienced technophiles, having someone like you test drive a unit or lesson plan reduces frustration and gives us a heads-up on what might need extra prep time.

Thanks for modeling the future.

diane

[Barbara]

Clarence...As usual a great record and reflection. I am really looking forward to getting a peek at the final projects We will also have something upon Voicethread shortly form our 6th grade based on their simulation.

Your point about getting the students to push each other;s thinking is well made. I have been trying to think through and prioritize some of the big picture skills and this is certainly one of the critical pieces. I think it also will lead us toward some of the issues David has raised about reflections fromthe students on their world views.

[Clarence Fisher]

Matt: Just wanted you to know that your side is exactlty how I come at technology. I have given presentations the last few years at the NCTE national conferences in Nashville and Pittsburgh but I skipped going to NYC this year. And as the NECC has seen fit to skip over my submission to them (...sniff....) I may be looking at that route more seriously. Thanks to all for your thoughts.

[Tonia Johnson]

Clarence-
This is amazing stuff that I want to share with my colleagues. This project encompasses all that tech. ed. is. You've used technology to teach skills that we want our students to have and have given them access to technology experiences in the future. It seems that your class has experienced The Oustiders, community and technology. Thank you for sharing your experiences!

[Wesley Fryer]

How ridiculous that a NECC proposal review committee turned down your presentation. Good grief. It seems clear the folks on that committee are not readers of your blog. How very sad. I dearly wish you were coming to NECC and the EduBlogger meetup, as well as presenting on this there in the summer.... This project sounds great. Thanks as always for documenting your learning journey.