The Digital Native Teacher

"What-If" Answers Ridiculous Questions with Science

If anyone has not yet found the webcomic XKCD do yourself a favor and read all of it! Written by former NASA roboticist (seriously) Randall Munroe the comic is covers a wide range of themes including forensics, social networking, politics, weather and teaching. The comic even has a website dedicated to explaining the meaning behind some of the topics. I wouldn't hesitate to say that this may be one of my favorite comics of all time, including Calvin and Hobbes (XKCD is #2 and the first 20 years of Garfield would be #3 in case you are wondering, your not are you?). I have even posted one of XKCD's comics on this blog.

image credit: What-If logo

While I believe XKCD itself deserves recognition in a classroom (pre-read the comics before showing your students) Munroe recently started a new section on his site where he answers what-if questions with science, math, physics and a hefty dose of humor. The section is called "What-If" and more often than not leads to an "oh, wow!" moment. While reading some of the recent entries I realized what a great discussion some of these questions could start in a science or physics class. Questions like

What if everyone who took the SAT guessed on every multiple-choice question? How many perfect scores would there be?

and

What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?

These could make great thought experiment questions to end units on statistics, conservation of energy, weather systems, lightning or photosythesis. Imagine giving students an extra credit question that asks them what would happen if you detonated a nuke at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Or put the students into groups and have them attempt to come up with an equation for how long it would take Michael Phelps to swim to the lowest point of the ocean and back if he could hold his breath indefinitely?

While there are currently less than 20 What-If's answers to new questions are posted every Tuesday. You could even have students come up with their own questions and submit them to the site. Take a look around and see what your could use to liven up the mood in your classroom. You can even purchase posters to hang in your classroom. Be sure to give XKCD lots of attention. He makes physics look awesome!

Cross Curricular Awesomeness

Maybe it's because my first teaching job was in a vocational school. Maybe it's because I have always enjoyed learning about every aspect of everything I possibly can (I love Curiosity on the Discovery Channel). Maybe it's because I believe that a school should be a community, with teachers, administrators and students sharing and helping each other out. Whatever it is I have a strong belief that when designing a curriculum it should cross over through as many different subjects as possible.

@anainvancouver tweeted this great link to a custom marble run with ways to utilize it in a math class. The link also includes instructions on how to build the marble run. The first thing I thought of was the use of this in a math class after being built by a woodshop class. Then I started thinking;

Science could use this as a entry to a discussion on cell distribution
Computer science classes could program a digital pascals triangle
Art classes could create designs based on the fibonacci sequence which is mathematically related to pascals triangle.

Not only would it get even more students involved in the lesson you could draw from each individual students knowledge from the other subjects to scaffold to greater understanding for all students.

I am sure that it would be difficult to get all of these subject to time out just right to make all of this work but imagine how long this lesson would stay with the students. A lesson like this could hit on all of the major cognitive levels and hit from all learning styles. Not to mention the fact that it shows students that knowledge from all subject is required to make an informed opinion or hypothesis on something.

One of the most important lessons I have ever learned is in order to truly understand something you must have a foot in so many different areas. I have always enjoyed working with computers, but until I learned a little about programming, engineering, production and marketing I never really understood anything about computers. Curriculums that touch on as many subjects as possible will show students that true understanding requires knowledge, and true knowledge requires a willingness to always learn more.

The College Creep

Is there a college degree for "Fireman"?

The "Christmas Creep". That time around mid-October when stores begin peddling their Christmas goods. It's annoying. I freak out every year when I go to pick out a Halloween costume and Rudolphs red lightbulb nose is glaring at me from the next aisle over. So it's no surprise that when I saw this banner hanging in one the elementary schools in my district I had a similarly negative feeling towards it.

When I saw that banner my first thought was "Oh thats nice". Then I realized where I was. I was in an elementary school. A school where students as young as 4 walk through the halls where apparently they should be thinking, "What do I want to do with my life?". At 4 years old they shouldn't be weighing the options of Harvard and Stanford. Elementary school students should not be learning in order to write so they have a perfect college essay they should be learning to love writing. They shouldn't be learning that 2+2=4 so that they can eventually know how to solve 2x+4=10, they should be learning to love math. These kids should be learning to love learning.

In middle school we did a project where we were required to present on what we wanted to do when we grew up. I wanted to be an animator. I got it into my head that I wanted to go to the Art Institute and learn to make cartoons. The problem is that I began to idolize the school. I understood what I needed to do to get into that school and really didn't put forth much additional effort. My young mind had made the decision that I was going to this school and it was so set in my head that I didn't even think to deviate from it. If I had I may have realized that there are very few animation jobs in or around my home town (which I was very happy to remain in), or that Pixar hires almost exclusively from a select few colleges (not the one I was attending), or that I would be vastly better at another field entirely. How can I be okay with asking children under 10 what they want to do with their lives when I didn't now until I was in my early twenties?

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We are pushing kids down a path before we even show them how to navigate. My first child recently turned 6 months old. As a father who is deep in the world of #edreform and #edtech I can tell you that I am already worrying about what kind of education he is going to receive. Now I will be sure to do everything in my power to make sure that he gets a hefty dose of critical thinking and personal experience but I still worry that he will be in a school system that focuses on testing him until his mind becomes so numb that his body falls limp from his Virco 3400BR Solid Plastic Combo School Desk. I want to make sure that my son loves learning. I want him to be able to change his mind about what he wants to be as many times as he wants. I want him to feel safe with us if he says, "I dont' want to go to college". But most of all I want him to learn how to learn before he tries to decide what to learn.

Tweak Your Student's Environment

Image from HackCollege

I was listening to the Freakonomics podcast a few days ago as they were discussing how human behavior is influenced by outside forces. Tweaking a person's environment (clothing, scenery, rules, etc) can have a very profound effect on that person's behavior. This may sound obvious but it doesn't take as much of a tweak as you might think. Here is something you can try that can show you the power of this. Next time you are at a nice restaurant politely inform the waiter(ess) that you will be eating dessert first, then your meal. You might be surprised at the reactions you get.

There have been several very popular studies done showing that a person's environment has a direct effect on their personality. A classroom is a student's environment for learning. Studies show that you can have a very powerful effect on learning by tweaking the environment. From desk arrangement to lighting and color there are many things that into affecting how a student acts in a classroom. Are you not getting the reaction you want out of your students? Tweak the environment. You can even have fun with it. Turn all of your student desks 90 degrees and watch what the students do when they come in to find this small change to their normal environment.

Don't be afraid to experiment with your students. Keep them on their toes so that they never know what to expect next. Doing this will make sure that your classroom does not become stale and that you always get the reaction you need from your students.

Teach Kids to Program?

I ran across this article on Gizmodo about a book funded by Kickstarter that attempts to get young kids (ages 5-12) to think like a programmer. The book is called Lauren Ipsum and you can read the first chapter here. The article on Gizmodo links to an article from Jeff Atwood titled Please Don't Learn to Code in which he claims that trying to teach everyone to code is unnecessary.

It is obvious to me how being a skilled reader, a skilled writer, and at least high school level math are fundamental to performing the job of a politician. Or at any job, for that matter. But understanding variables and functions, pointers and recursion? I can't see it.

He obviously fails to see the overall point in teaching students how to code however. The point is not to create an army of programmers marching out of school, the point is to create students that understand how to logically work their way through a problem and repair issues as they go.

Programming is an excellent subject to teach in schools for a variety of reasons:

Cost

Resources to teach students to program are plentiful on the web. From free e-books to online resources, there are so many ways to introduce programming to students that are low-cost or free. The software required to run most introductory programming languages is often provided free of charge. Since so many schools already have computer labs installed (and more often then not a 1-1 initiative in place) this means that the material cost of introducing a programming course is small.

Critical Thinking

It has been argued that critical thinking is difficult to teach in schools today. With standardized testing and race to the top it has become difficult to fit in time for students to be able to think outside of the box and create something new. Programming provides this opportunity.

A Gateway Subject

You can't learn to code until you understand the basics of what makes a computer work. File structure, directory information, memory vs. storage; all of this is necessary to create a program that does what is intended. With computers invading every aspect of our lives it is now necessary for the students to understand what they are doing. Just like students learn to not play around with electricity by learning the basics of electricity, they can learn to better computer users by learning how it works.

Get Them Young

When most people hear "programming" they think of a fat slob sitting in Dorito crumbs surrounded by empty Mountain Dew cans. They expect it to be nearly impossible to learn without a degree from Stanford or MIT. If show kids that even things that seem difficult can be learned gradually they may be willing to take more risks and branch out to learn other "difficult" things.

While I believe that teaching programming is important I don't think that the skill of programming should be the final goal. The goal should be to make students think like programmers. Today's technologically advanced society was not brought about by people simply making things better one step at a time. It was made possible by people who can think like hackers. People who can look at a problem and break it down to manageable parts and then reassemble those individual parts into something better. Programming teaches this skill better than anything we have currently found, and once we find something better we will be pushing to teach that instead.

Help Support Project Based Learning

Students assembling a Biz Challenge computer

In the education reform world there is always talk of PBL or Project Based Learning. To some people it is seen as the saving grace of the educational reform movement, the "magic bullet" if you will. The problem is implementation. How do you fit PBL to the standards required within your school?

I am fortunate enough to work at a school that embraces the PBL model all over. Our students get both a high school diploma as well as a certification in their chosen vocation. They can choose from trades such as carpentry, culinary, cosmetology, business, electricity, nursing and IT technology. Each employs their own brand of PBL around the school. Senior electricians help fix wiring problems within the school, carpenters hang doors and shelves and computer technicians repair student and teacher computers.

While each "Vocational Academy" uses PBL daily to teach the required skills, most academies have a large project that helps to show students how all those skills work together. In the IT Technology and Business academies that project is known as the "Biz Challenge".

Completed computer from Biz Challenge

The Biz Challenge consists of 2 teams of Business and IT Technology students working to design, build and raffle off a custom designed computer. The Business students handle the marketing and accounting process while the IT students design, build and test the computer. Each team is given $50 seed money that allows them to purchase items they will need to begin raising money. From that $50 teams in the past have raised between $2,000 and $7,000 profit. The computers they raffle are not cheap either. Past computers have featured HD monitors, blu-ray players, cases with LED's, terabyte hard drives and 6+ GB of RAM. The computers always turn out great and are always drooled over when they are shown off around the school.

All money raised from Biz Challenge goes to funding a service learning trip for selected students where they travel to a town in need of help and offer their skills learned in school to make a difference. These trips are recorded in a public wiki and were even featured in Will Richardson's book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms (Mercy Vocational High School). In past years these trips have gone to areas effected by Hurricane Katrina but this year the students are helping closer to home. Tropical Storm Lee hit Towanda, PA very hard last year and the small town is still in need of help. The students will be travelling there over spring break to offer their services to the community.

This is where you come in. Below are links to both teams webpages (built themselves) which include ways to donate to this great cause. Any little bit will help immensely and will benefit the people of Towanda as well as our students. Donate on behalf of your school, your family or yourself. Donate to help our students know that there are people out there who care and want them to make a difference. But most of all donate to help the people of Towanda, PA get back their homes, communities and lives.

Biz Challenge Team CB2

Biz Challenge Team Professional-LEE Established

http://operationkatrina2011.wikispaces.com/

http://operationkatrina2010.wikispaces.com/

The American Education System is Like an Old Building

If there is one thing we can all agree on it is that the educational system is broken. There are plenty of solutions out there but they all feature one fatal flaw, they attempt to build on top of an already collapsing structure.

This type of thinking is pervasive in American politics. Is something not working? Stick some legislation on top of it, that oughta' take care of it! Imagine if a construction company were tasked with fixing a collapsing apartment building and they said "I know! Let's just put some penthouses on the top! That should straighten it right out!"

Our educational system is like a building. No matter how big and beautiful a structure may be it is never meant to last forever. There comes a time when you must stop attempting to prop up the crumbling structure and decide instead to bring the building down in a controlled way and use what was learned to build a better, stronger and ultimately longer lasting structure in it's place. That doesn't mean the original architects failed, it simply means that time has passed and new must eventually replace old.

The educational system has been treated like this since it's beginning. It has had reforms tacked on one after the other. We have never as a nation seen it a a good idea to simply say you know what, let's just scrap this and start again.

Understand that I am not a fan of having Congress create a new school system from scratch, I can't say I fully trust their judgement when it comes to what is best for our educational system. However I do trust our teachers. Why not let the teachers decide what our educational system needs.

Leaders rely on data to show what problems exist at the classroom level. The problem is that there is no way to reliably gather data about what the problems really are. It's like being in a war and the troops on the ground calling for a strike on approaching enemy troops and the people controlling the missiles say "No, we have data that says the problem is actually over this way. Let's shoot there." It's reckless and potentially has vast unintended consequences. Let the teachers have a say, they know where the problems are and can help guide the hand of the government to the right answers.

The teachers are with the students every day. In the trickle down of the system, they are where the proverbial 'sh*t' rolls. We have the power to devise a system by which leaders can crowd source solutions to the plagues of the system from those that truly know what those problems are. Trust the people that know what is happening on the battlefield. Protect the ones that are living in the crumbling building. Don't just build around them, give them a new and better place to call home.

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