Web 2.0 Math Reflections - Collaborating and Blogging

A few months ago, with the talk of political protests making travel to school difficult, my co-teacher and I started a project in ESL-support-for-Math-Science class to simulate working from home. We set the stage with the words: "The protesters have filled the streets. The traffic is terrible. It's not possible to get to school. School will go online. Are you ready?"

Our goal was three-fold. First, work with students on a topic that would prepare them for an upcoming assignment in math class -- writing a math reflection about fraction division. Second, collaborate and interact with a partner to complete part of the assignment jointly. And third, use information technology to collaborate exclusively online as if students were working from home.

The first two are run-of-the-mill goals as far as execution, but the online collaboration was basically artificial. After all, how can two students in the same class restrict their during-class collaboration to the web? It turns out we had the luxury of two classrooms that we regularly use to divide students since we have 20 ESL students in the class. We assigned partners across classrooms so no two members of a team were in the same physical space. Again, we designed this artificial online collaboration to simulate a Virtual School situation.

The assignment was as follows. Working with a partner by chatting online, jointly create an a realistic story problem that requires a solution using fraction division. The example should be constructed in Google Docs. Then independently use this problem as an example of a math reflection describing when and how to use fraction division. The reflection should also be done in Google Docs in collaboration with the teacher for the purpose of feedback. Finally, post the reflection to one's school blog.

We tried out the various applications to make sure we ourselves could perform the tasks we were assigning and used our examples as models for the students, with the exception of chat for which students had the option of Google Apps or our school Moodle, PantherNET.

The link to the Google Doc presentation file that we used to model joint construction of the realistic story problem is here.

The link to the Google Doc document file that we used to model independent reflection writing is here.

And the link to the blog we used to model a published post is here.

Ultimately, we were able to carry out the project as we planned, but not without some surprises. Some of those surprises were the limitations of chat in Google to the Gmail application. It would have been better if available in Google Docs. We also discovered that using Google Docs in Internet Explorer resulted in the loss of Google Docs' menu bar, essentially disabling the application. We learned that some images created in a Google presentation file could not be copied directly to a Google document file. And we found that some students could not see their images in their blog posts when copied from Google Docs to Word Press. Except for the last issue, we were able to work around all problems, albeit if somewhat tediously.

We were pleased to see students negotiating their ideas by chatting online, using Google Docs to collaborate with each other and with us, and publishing their reflections to their blogs. We initially lamented the technology glitches along the way and going over-budget on the days devoted to the project. We later appreciated the fact that some of the glitches catalyzed meaningful, authentic and highly-engaging student interaction in problem solving far beyond the interaction of our own design, and that students students' learning extended beyond our most narrow goal of English for Math class.

Both of these last points were brought to our attention by two colleagues who observed various points of the project during Looking for Learning visits. One was our ISBangkok Dean of Learning, Andy Davies, who commented after interviewing students that some were so engaged and focused that they would not stop working to have a conversation with him about their learning. And the other was the Middle School educational technology specialist, Kim Cofino, who interviewed students and observed me from a educational technology perspective as part of my final project for ISBangkok's Certificate of Educational Technology and Information Literacy series of courses.

In the end, we had a day of Virtual School because of a State of Emergency declared by the government, but it fell on a Friday before a week vacation, so it did not involve extensive work for students. However, the possibility continues in Bangkok for more Virtual School. The school recently asked that teachers show students how to use their Gmail accounts and Google Apps. Thanks to our Virtual School simulation, our students already do know how.

Instant Feedback Online Math Homework via Moodle

This year's new Math program, CMP 2 (Connected Mathematics Project) brought with it some concerns about how to handle going over homework. At the beginning of the year, we settled on the following system: on the due date of the homework, students compare answers with each other at the start of class, and we review one or two of the most challenging problems as a whole class. That evening on our class management software, PantherNet (our schools form of Moodle), we post the answers to the homework problems we did not review as a whole class. Students correct and check their own work before handing it in for a score. This was our Math teams attempt to provide feedback while not cutting into lesson time. Prior to this system, we had found that it was possible to spend half of class or more going over the homework.

Nevertheless, I wasn't satisfied with the fact that students were doing so many problems for homework in Math that I wasn't able to give direct feedback to. I found also that students were either: 1. not correcting their homework with the answers the teachers were posting, or 2. just copying the answers straight from the key. That wasn't very satisfying either.

At the same time, I was frustrated by the organizational challenges for myself and the students of the daily homework assignments and grading. This motivated me to explore online submission of homework. I was aware of PantherNet's modules for online quizzes through my wife's, Carole Henriot's, exploration of this feature in her French classes (Intro, A and B). So I decided to trial it myself. What I quickly realized is that the Moodle quiz module allowed for immediate feedback in terms of accuracy as well as any comments I might want to make in response to students' answers or scores.

I have used the Moodle quiz module for online homework for about a semester now. In it's current form, I allow students to redo the homework as many times as they want, and I take the highest score for their grade. (It is actually possible for students to get a perfect score even after multiple attempts by correcting incorrect responses.) I also choose settings that allow students to keep previous correct answers on any new attempts (so they don't redo problems they worked correctly initially) while reworking only problems they have missed. There is also a handy feature that allows students to check the accuracy of their answer before submitting the assignment for a grade. From the teacher side of the module, I can see all of students answers and how they have adjusted them as they learn they are incorrect. I have been amazed to see how many students can correct an incorrect answer simply from being told that it is incorrect. Students rework the problem and appear to find their error and correct it. I have been amazed to see that no student settles for submitting an incorrect answer without trying to correct it at least 3 times. I have also been amazed to hear that students begin to work with their parents to find the correct answers. My sense is that using an online scored homework assignment has transformed the process of homework practice from one of simply trying to get through the homework as quickly as possible regardless of accuracy to one of multiple passes with multiple resources. I frequently hear students say something to the effect of not having understood a problem and not having attempted it. Papers with blank problems is not unusual. But online homework problems with blank problems IS unusual. I attribute the occurence of students' editing/revising of homework and the increased number of attempted and completed problems as resulting from the instant feedback nature of the homework. When a student knows BEFORE SUBMISSION that a blank problem is counted against them or a that an answer is incorrect, the student is motivated to solve the problem correctly, at least moreso that in the traditional homework format.

In terms of organization and management, it has reduced that amount of paper that both I and the students keep track of. It has taken the same or less time to create the online assignments than to grade the hard copy equivalent. And the time investment now will pay great dividends in future years when the assignment is already online for future classes, essentially requiring no more time on my part. Great advantages for management.

With that said, there are some cautions about online self-correcting homework. 1. It only lends itself to problems with discrete answers. Explanations cannot be scored automatically. 2. It requires the teacher/programmer to imagine various possible forms of the answer in order that the teacher/programmer enters all variations as acceptable correct answers. 3. The syntax of the answers must be exact to be accepted as correct, for example, spacing, labels, place value, etc. 4. It may promote a concern for a score rather than a concern for understanding.

Nevertheless, I have found the process worthwhile. It has also led me to ask if students' ability to self-correct their work when told an answer is inaccurate could result in better test performance. During a test early in the year, before ever thinking about online homework, I circulated around the classroom tell students to double check their work because a certain problem was incorrect. In many (most?) cases, I found students were able to correct their work once I told them it was incorrect. I don't think it's unfair to score students' tests after giving them a chance to correct themselves. Perhaps knowing which problems are incorrect provides motivation for checking their work. Otherwise, they seem to do it very little. And isn't this a worthwhile skill in itself, besides the understanding of content?

Next school year, I will attempt to conduct a more systematic study of the effects of online self-correcting homework to determine what effects it has on students homework completion, accuracy, parent interaction, and understanding as measured by tests. I'd like to be able to determine that such homework results in greater rates of attempt, greater completion, greater accuracy, greater collaboration, and greater understanding. Ambitious, definitely, but also worth a systematic study!

Critical Thinking on the Web with Alan November

As a member of a team beginning a 1-to-1 laptop program at ISBangkok, I was part of a meeting with Educational Technology consultant Alan November. I knew nothing about him other than what I just described, and I have to report a pretty fascinating meeting.

I walked in hoping to have a consultant take a unit and 1-to-1-ify it. Instead he started off saying the most important thing to teach kids about computers/internet was critical thinking on the web. He started us off with a mock unit plan for the following topic:

How did different countries respond to the crisis in Haiti?

As a Math/Science teacher, I thought first of data and statistics that could be used in a math lesson. At that point, our team sidetracked and wondered about the math curriculum our school had recently adopted, Connected Math Project 2.

Alan showed us the computational knowledge engine, Wolfram Alpha, which he said essentially takes care of the mechanics of math forever. He was able to demonstrate that it could produce steps to solve math problems, not just give final answers. When we protested that we wanted our students to understand the math, not just produce it from the internet, he showed us an interesting technology way of demonstrating understanding. Students would make a screencast of the Wolfram Alpha results of a math problem and record themselves explaining the steps to solve the problem. Alan's choice of screencasting software was Camtasia Studio.

Link to My Own Example of a Math Screencast a-la Alan November

Another point Alan November made about the use of laptops in Math was for simple homework practice. He referred to research on influences on student learning done by John Hattie which found that instant feedback was one of the most significant influences on learning. The connection was that students could do self-scoring homework online rather than correcting it in class the next day, a day after that by the teacher, or never. Thanks to our school's Moodle, we are able to concur with Alan's point, because we have started using self-scoring homework and are encouraged by the results to continue using and improving it.

Finally, we returned to the initial Haiti example. Alan shared some Google search tricks, such as "zooming in" on links from a particular country by using a country code in a search including the "site command", for example, "site: hn" for Honduras. During one of his searches, he found a relevant link at the Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I believe. What he showed us was a link on the page that he said was gold. It was the "Contact Us" link. This link he said allows kids to interact with real people in the world. Via Skype they can have conversations with experts. They can record these phone conversations, edit them, and finally upload them as podcasts to iTunes to share with world. (His two technical notes were that the audio file must first be loaded to blog, and that Skype calls can be recorded with a piece of software called Audio Hijack Pro (on Macs)

He also briefly showed an example of validating a website. Honestly, it went by so quickly, I don't remember the details, but one idea was that through checking what pages link to a particular page, one can evaluate the particular page. He used Alta Vista and explained that it was better suited to this end.

While he showed these examples, he summed up the big picture by saying that one of our main goals should be teaching kids basic architecture of information, the grammar of Google. Doing this could be a learning for G6.

It was a very rich hour and a half and the list goes on. I'll summarize the last few items briefly.

He mentioned new classroom jobs of the technology age - tutorial designer, daily scribe, and he didn't get to what he said were an additional four. Each of the jobs would need to be taught, just as teachers teach anything else. He acknowledged that tutorials were work intensive and should be started using a volunteer system, which kids would sign up for once they saw how cool a tutorial was. In this context he also mentioned freeware for animation/movie making called Scratch that was created and run by MIT.

He showed an example of making a documentary using a screencast of Google Maps street view. He narrated while he panned Google's street cam along the road. It was as if he had been on the road with a hand-held video camera. This was probably the "coolest" use of technology he showcased. His example was for a Social Studies report about the Battle of Lexington (US History).

He showed an example of discussions that can go on via the web surrounding a video posted on a Ning.

He showed examples of posting pictures on Flickr and let students tag the image with overlays - This he called "no end to creativity."

When a concern arose about authentic audiences for student work, he mentioned that another way to get students connected rather than have them post on a blog and wait for the world to comment, was to got to a major website with extensive traffic and comment there, for example CNN's blog.

His ultimate message was that technology was a tool to to reach the goal of personalized education. He made a convincing case that there was ample information technology to begin moving Education in that direction.

Google Docking for Feedback, Collaboration, and Managing Assignments

I've always dreaded the paper trail of teaching.

Collecting papers. Marking on papers. Returning papers. Taking up second drafts. Rewrites. Edits. Corrections. All on paper. Lost papers. Damaged papers. Sloppy papers.

In the "dark" pre-Google-Doc ages, I started trying to circumvent that with emailed word documents. Then when our school's Moodle opened, I had students upload files to a page on the Moodle where I could open and read them. After a few edits, I could post the new file back for the student to download.

Still too many files floating around.

Now I'm experimenting with Google Docs. I distribute papers to student via Google Docs. They work on the tasks, mostly writing tasks, and I see their work while they are doing it. Best of all, I can leave feedback on the draft-in-progress. I feel like my feedback gets more attention than when I write comments/corrections on students printed drafts.

Here's an example of a student's work that I gave feedback to. Her work addresses my feedback, but the feedback has not been deleted. She changed the font color of the questions so they would stand out from her answers. I used a third and fourth color for two separate feedback sessions.

Copy Of Wasted Water Experiment Questions

View more documents from herrmann73.

Then there's the student-student wiki function of a Google Doc that works so well. In the example below, I asked students to populate a table with presumed identities of mystery mixtures and with evidence from lab tests they used to come up with their conclusions. Students could compare conclusions and evidence from their classmates. Some identities were ambiguous. After sorting the data in the table, we were able to have a class discussion around the discrepancies. (Unfortunately the formatting of the table was lost when uploading the file to SlideShare, but you get the gist.)

Panther Pop Mixtures Class Conclusions

View more documents from herrmann73.

I've already reduced paper usage and paper management issues by going to Google Docs for student work. Below is a screen capture of Google Docs' file management box. As easy as any Windows Explorer system.

Looking forward to next year's 1-to-1 program and using Google Docs full-time for all its advantages.

Trialing Science Blogging

With the ultimate goal of connecting two classrooms across the Pacific to share and discuss science experiments, my fellow teacher next door and I embarked on a trial run with our own students. Our first step was to simulate the cross-Pacific relationship by having our own classrooms blog with each other about a common science experiment to determine various snail preferences. For our purposes, we limited preference options for each of our classes so that they would not have conducted the same experiments as their classmates next door. The hope was to simulate the kind of blog conversations that they might have with students from other schools. We planned to begin working with these other schools once we felt comfortable with some basic procedures about documenting and blogging.

The most exciting aspect of the ultimate phase of our project was for students to share experiments with each other as their audience rather than with the teacher or fellow classmates who likely conducted a similar, if not the same, experiment. Their questions could be answered and discussed by fellow 6th grade scientists across the world. They could describe their procedures for students who did not know them and who might seek to reproduce them in their own schools. 6th grade science had a potential for authenticity we had rarely seen in our own teaching and classrooms.

I will let the student blogs below to give you some details about what the experiments were about. But I can report that guiding an experiment while students took and uploaded photos to their blogs was entirely overwhelming. Even with a technology piece as theoretically simple as digital photography, the management of this on top of the management of a science experiment was enough work for at least two teachers. Science experiment issues (uncooperative animal specimen) were compounded by some technology troubleshooting issues, and we just about gave up.

Unfortunately, we were only a few days away from the end of the semester, and we lost momentum in the chaotic final days before the Winter break. But below are photos posted to the blogs of the team digital documenter(s). I believe only one group out of 6 was not represented by the photos posted to the blogs linked below. Better than I expected while in the chaos of the moment. Have a look and see a first pass at sharing a science experiment via a blog post.

http://blogs.isb.ac.th/miom/science/

http://blogs.isb.ac.th/briane/category/science/

http://blogs.isb.ac.th/celinae/2009/12/14/our-snail-experiment/

http://blogs.isb.ac.th/nicoleg/page/2/

http://blogs.isb.ac.th/teganm/2009/12/14/science/

http://blogs.isb.ac.th/nicolekrause/2009/12/14/science/