Being Present: Tweeting the Talk

Recently I attended the Leyden 1:1 Symposium.  On two consecutive mornings I was fortunate enough to hear timely, thought-provoking keynotes: first by Chris Lehmann and then by George Couros. See:

@chrislehmann First Dewey and now Neil Postman: technology is transformative and schools should be so as well. #LHS1to1
— scott glass (@sglass771) August 1, 2013

@gcouros echoing @chrislehmann: schools that don't leverage creative possibilities of tech are irrelevant in Ss lives. #lhs1to1
— scott glass (@sglass771) August 2, 2013

That's right. During these engaging addresses, I was tweeting.  But not only that.  I was also recording ideas and questions in Evernote.  Is all of this really necessary?  Wouldn't it be better to have my device closed and give my uninterrupted attention to the person speaking?

These are questions that I must address because, as my school moves to a 1:1 environment with Chromebooks, the same behavior that I exhibited will be duplicated by my students. And I do not want to feel impulsive in my classroom management decisions, or like a hypocrite.

Some of my "Evernotes" while listening to Chris Lehmann 

I think explaining why Evernote is important is easier than defending my twitter use.  After all, with Evernote I was making sure to document ideas that I wanted to employ in my own classroom and questions I wanted to consider after the presentation.  Most teachers I know encourage and even require note-taking by students during presentations, whether by the teacher or peers.  I think this would fall under the category of "active listening."

So what about twitter?  I tweeted 9 times while listening to Lehmann, 4 of which were retweets. During George Couros's talk the following morning, I tweeted another 9 times, including 3 retweets. When wondering if this is necessary, I know there are people who would answer with an emphatic "No!"

I imagine one criticism running like this: chances are most of the people citing a particular twitter handle (@chrislehmann) and hashtag (#LHS1to1) at a specific time are doing so because they are all participating in a conference, presentation, or workshop together.  Since these people have their twitter streams open, they will be privy to a lot of the same tweets bouncing back and forth, like light off of a mirror.  So how does it benefit somebody in the audience to reread a dozen tweets restating what the speaker just said, only in a more concise (less powerful?) rendition?

Actually, I think there might be something to this.

As I tweeted and read tweets during the presentations, I was struck by the repetitive nature of many of the tweets.  It was also interesting to see the flurry of activity when Lehmann or Couros would say something perfectly packaged for twitter consumption.  Suddenly fingers all around me would be busy.

Perhaps it would be preferable to just listen.

What's more, some people might add, is that part of the reason one tweets is to see how others respond--to see how many times others will retweet and favorite one's work.  In this way, there is a kind of narcissism to tweeting in general, and during a talk in particular.  It's like a bunch of people continuously reminding other audience members that, "yes, this speaker is good, but I'm also here and I'm special, too."  Ok.  So maybe twitter skeptics wouldn't argue this.  (Although I think some would.) But, being relatively new to twitter, I know I have wondered if this drives my tweeting.

So as I offer some reasons for why I added twitter to my listening repertoire, let me start by owning that last reason.  There is a part of me that feels good about others embracing my thoughts about what we are hearing, just as I'm sure others feel good when they see me retweet and favorite their tweets.  Is this a bad thing?  To the degree that it does not become the sole reason for tweeting, I don't really think so.

But the important reasons that I tweet during a presentation, and would like to offer my students the opportunity, are as follows:

1. Working the 140.  Wow it can be exacting, especially when I know I need to save 8-15 of those characters for a handle and hashtag.  But I find the discipline required an invigorating challenge. As teachers, we are all concerned with our students' ability to be concise and clear.  Twitter communication demands these qualities.


2. Making it stick.  As a teacher, I know that one surefire way to understand something is to teach it. No other activity insures that one gets to know a subject inside and out.  While tweeting what somebody else stated is not exactly like teaching it, there is value, nevertheless, in crafting a tweet that captures and articulates an idea.  In those moments when shaping a tweet, I find myself thinking more deeply about the idea and the perfect wording.  Contrary to the criticisms that tweeting reinforces superficiality, it provides me with spurts of hyper-attention and mindfulness, even if these can be brief, which, hopefully, help in the process of moving the information beyond the short-term memory.  And even if the idea does not make it into more stable memory, it has been recorded and can be revisited.


3. Joining the conversation.  Yes, that phrase is probably cliche by now.  Yet, widespread use does not make it untrue.  In the midst of tweeting about Lehmann and Couros's keynotes, I had individuals agreeing with my tweets, refining my tweets, and raising questions and sharing links based on my tweets.  As I stated in #2, tweeting is not mired in superficiality.  But neither does it encourage passivity.  As with Evernote, tweeting requires me to be actively engaged and evaluating what I'm hearing.  Unlike Evernote, however, tweeting also allows good ideas to spread because


4. Tweeting is sharing.  In the hypothetical counter-argument above, I imagined that a talk's physical audience also represented the majority of the people reading the tweets about the talk. Maybe. However, I know from experience that people absent from the Leyden Symposium commented on and retweeted my tweets.  These fellow educators deserve to hear what leaders in the field have to say.  It reminds me of this tweet, from an educator I connected with at the Leyden Symposium

If you have an awesome lesson that no one else knows about, you aren't fulfilling your obligation to education. #lhs1to1 #moedchat
— Bob Dillon (@ideaguy42) August 2, 2013

Given these reasons for why I tweet during presentations, I cannot fathom withholding the experience from my students.  Even if it means there will be times when I or somebody else is speaking, and the class looks like this:

Reflect-->reEnVision

Time for some reEnvisioning of my teaching

Having navigated the #clmooc, it's time to reflect on what I accomplished. Here are 5 key things I experienced.  

          

                                                                                                                                                                                                           Now it's on to the classroom in the fall. How much can I provide a physical and digital space that allows my students to have the same experiences? Not sure. However, this is more than just an "in addition to."  If my goal for everything we do in the classroom is to "make it matter," then these 5 experiences are imperative.  Not only will they help to foster an academic digital routine, which they desperately need, but it will also bring a healthy dose of Terry Elliot's "messification" to the classroom.  Not to mention positioning students and me on the edge of the "emergent possible."

The Credo-Flection

I finally had some time to think about my credo.  I decided to try organizing it using Blogger's mosaic view.  If read in the correct order, each post adds to the overall belief.  The problem is that the correct order could prove a bit challenging.

Flip the pictures over from left to right.  Depending on how Blogger feels at the particular moment you check it out, there should be three rows. The clearer picture of me should be the last one.  Here's the link: Credo-Flection.  Thanks for checking it out.

American Lit or American Ideas?

I woke up this morning wondering, "how important is it that students have a course called 'American Literature'?"  Ok, so I didn't wake up thinking that, but actually arrived at the question after reading a piece discussing the skills students will need to be successful in the 21st Century. The list was predictable: collaboration, creativity, adaptability, curiosity, communication. Predictable is not meant as an insult.  It doesn't mean this list is incorrect; if anything, predictable denotes how critical these skills are. Predictable signifies that there is a consensus surrounding the importance of these skills. I've read  blog posts, reports, articles, interviews with education leaders, books, and tweets that equate one or more of these skills to becoming productive and successful 21st Century existence.

So back to my original question.  Is "American Literature" necessary?

Of course, as an English teacher, and literature fan in general, I am not asking if literature is important or necessary.  Reading fiction, and simply being a reader, is also a critical activity.  But is there a compelling argument for insuring that students have read canonical American Literature?  If students do not experience Fitzgerald, Twain, Melville, or other classic American authors, will they be deficient citizens, unable to fully grasp the American Experiment?

America is a place founded on ideas about equality, opportunity, and freedom.  Undoubtedly, it is crucial for young people to struggle with these ideas, especially as the ideas move from the plastic-wrapped sanctity of our founding documents to the messy, conflict-laden reality of day-to-day life. Naturally, one way to get young people to do this is by having them read and consider Huck's dilemma as he navigates the Mississippi or Tom Joad's relentless stand against a venal, inequitable system.  

But is it necessary that students know these names to understand what democratic citizenship requires?  If young people have less familiarity with these names, does it jeopardize our cultural heritage and generational cohesion, making it less possible for the American Experiment to flourish?

While colleagues will disagree with me, as an American Lit teacher, my answer to these last two questions is 'no.'  

While I grant that cultural literacy has been and will continue to erode, I am not particularly upset about it.  Sure, I'm surprised, even saddened sometimes, by the growing list of dead references I encounter in the classroom.  However, this seems inevitable as our access to information grows and our media experiences become more diffuse.  All the same, this does not mean that we lose sight of our deeply held principles.  It is imperative that students confront the tensions inherent in the American Experiment, even if these confrontations do not grow out of reading The Scarlet Letter. 

As I said earlier, I will continue to stress how important it is for them to be readers.  I will continue to make a case for how fiction works as a testing ground where we encounter great minds asking difficult questions.  I will continue to help them become confident, thoughtful, tolerant thinkers and communicators.  And I will continue to look for ways to help them ignite their curiosity and find the questions and ideas that make them passionate.  I will continue to do these things because I believe this is how the American Experiment remains vibrant.  

My point is not to forgo all classic works simply because they are classics.  Instead, what I am trying to figure out is if a regimen of canonical American works somehow creates a more motivated, conversant American citizen.  This seems unlikely.  Instead, more and more, I'm confident that it's important to teach "American Principles" or "American Ideas", where the curriculum is flexible enough to include any media texts that are compelling and can enrich my students as human beings and as participants in all that America has to offer.

What I am less sure about is how critical it is for students to know that James Gatsby was born Jay Gatz.  If not, they can still understand what it means to be an American.  

More Than a Map, It's Polychrome Fingers

During the latest make cycle for #clmooc, I found

myself thinking less about the general theme,

maps, and more about the bits of paper stuck to

my fingers and the relationship between the brain,

eyes, and hands.

As I worked, I was reminded of the great origami documentary, Between the Folds.

My favorite scene is when artisan/craftsman Paul Jackson is working with his colored paper.  As he busily roughs up and colors the parchment, what always grabs my attention are his hands. Covered in greens, yellows, reds, and blacks, they're the hands of a maker.  They're a badge announcing his membership in a group to which I want to belong.  They're the embodiment of a thought process and signifiers of a passion to make tangible one's idiosyncratic vision.

Those rough, thick, polychrome fingers always stir within me a determination to make.

So now, as I tore pieces of New York state and swaths of New Mexico geography into strips and shreds and re-imagined borders, rivers, and landscapes, I paid attention to my fingertips. They were blackened and covered with worn, cottony pulp.  I paid attention to the way my eyes narrowed and I naturally held my breath as I slowly ripped the paper along some imagined, but no less important, line.

As Jackson says during his own moment of deep crafting, "The process of making is the point of it."

I wasn't lost in the activity, even though that would be a great metaphor for a project about maps.  Instead, I was subsumed by the activity. The materials, the journal page: I was creating a landscape, and I had the fingers of a maker to show for it.

The Bottom of the Bag

I had not poked around in this particular bag for quite some time: the white mesh one we used to take to the beach when we lived in Chicago.  Having pretty young kids, it is easy to guess the objects within: small shovels, various sand castle molds, an assortment of dinosaurs and action figures. While we now live on a smaller lake with a little beach about 300 yards from our house, this particular bag has not seen much action. The kids are older, and this collection of toys no longer garners much attention.

Therefore, it was the perfect bag to dig through for the toyhack.

So what did I find?  A little dumptruck.  A rubber shark.  A small Cro-magnon-looking action figure. I can't even imagine how this last one found its way into the bunch.

But the bigger thing I found was a sense of challenge and purpose.  Add to this the fact that it was an engaging way to spend a couple of hours, and I had the three necessary ingredients for a creative endeavor.    As I worked with the toys and shopped through our tools and art supplies for needle nose pliers, Gorilla Glue, Sharpies, pipe cleaners, and more, I focused on the evolving vision and on my hands, breaking apart the objects and putting them back together.  Of course I wanted to make something in order to share it with the #clmooc.  But this became secondary to crafting something with which I would be satisfied.

And I was ultimately satisfied.  The end result was a bit goofy, but it made sense in some '70's cartoon universe way.

Thinking more about the white mesh bag, I have to admit that the first time I looked through it I felt unimpressed with the materials. Nothing grabbed me. I actually put the bag down and started to pick around  in the garage. Before long, however, I decided to challenge myself with an obstruction: I had to use this rejected material.

So, here comes the educational payoff.

Digging to the bottom of the bag and using the less obvious materials:  How many times have I implored my students to do exactly this?  To move past initial ideas?  To resist their first thoughts, which are usually obvious and reactionary?  To embrace ideas that are only partially formed, a bit jumbled, possibly confusing?  So often it is in the murkier recesses that we find the makings for more compelling creations.  The toyhack proved to be an excellent reminder of what it is like to practice these directions instead of just saying them.  And how much easier it is to do so when interested in the task.

It's About Individual Vision

What do the following have in common: curating an online presence regarding a particular topic or question, using creative commons footage to craft a video in YouTube Editor, or considering how best to employ digital technology to explain to others why a question is important?  Besides the fact that students in my classes currently are engaged in one of these activities, all three pursuits require people to be active producers of content and exercise their voices.

Take for example the work students are completing with YouTube Editor.  As a class, they decided to each film at least three clips during a typical school day, upload the footage to their YouTube channels with the title DITL (Day in the Life), and designate them with creative commons attribution.  With 40+ clips uploaded, they then searched for each other's clips and used this raw footage to each construct their own 2 minute movie of a day at Glenbrook South High School.

Of course, the trick is to take some really disparate footage and make it work like a narrative so that somebody watching the movie understands that there is more going on then random shots of teenagers at school.

One student, for example, wanted to show his weariness as a 4th quarter senior.  As he said in a reflection, he "doesn't hate school."  He just feels done after four years.  To convey this, he decided to repeat certain clips--students listening to a teacher lecture, students walking in the building. He also decided that he did not want to add audio, but, instead, wanted to retain the natural sounds captured in the clips.  This way, he could provide a truer version of the atmosphere that contributes to his apathy.  Another senior wanted to focus on how random the school day is, even though most people have the opposite view.  With this in mind, she decided on the first and last clips, but then let chance guide her decisions for the intervening material and the order in which it would appear.

To achieve these narratives, the students had many decisions to make: which clips work best?; from these clips, what five seconds are most powerful (a limitation decided on by the class)?; what order best expresses a story?; if transitions are used, which ones should they be and why (same with filters)?; what kind of audio should be included?  Navigating these possibilities requires students to maintain a focus on what they are trying to achieve and how best to get there.

Regardless of how well these movie turns out, and they are, of course, amateur creations, one might ask, "what's the point?"  After all, the amount of content uploaded to YouTube is staggering, so chances are slim that these movies will be viewed by people outside of the class.  This criticism, however, misses the point of the activity.  "Will anybody see this?" It doesn't really matter. And it's the wrong question to ask.  The right question is "how important is the creative act for the individual's sense of self?"

As I catalogued above, these students are deeply involved in every decision regarding how this film is constructed.  It should be obvious that this kind of control breeds a sense of ownership.  Once one feels ownership, there is a greater probability that one wants to make something worthy of the time spent.  And this sense of worthiness most likely fosters a feeling of pride in making something that never
before existed in this particular way.

I can't stress this last point enough.  Amateur or not, when an individual creates, even if he or she is remixing or appropriating from other sources, the process and product can only come to life in relation to the autonomy and dedication of the individual. True, there is a collaborative aspect to this YouTube assignment: students in the class are all working from the same collection of raw footage, so there are bound to be certain clips that show up in multiple films.  But in the midst of the creative process, students do not consider themselves as part of a group making a movie.

Creating, whether one is an amateur or profesional, is an act of idiosyncratic expression.  In this respect, it is the opposite of a standardized approach to education.  There is no objective test and the right answer does not appear on a form.  Instead, the right answer is the one that makes students feel they have presented their vision in the most powerful, articulate way possible.