Last semester my Grade 10 Science students designed surveys in the Climate Change unit to determine if there is a correlation between age or gender and a few everyday actions that have an effect on climate change (i.e. modes of transportation, recycling habits, energy usage, etc). Based on the results of their surveys as well as secondary research students developed mini-activist projects to address various issues. Some of the activist projects included: lobbying school administration to redistribute recycling bins in the cafeteria so they are more accessible to students, writing a letter to the male gym teachers to raise awareness about our boys’ over consumption of meat at our school, creating educational brochures to address the issue of water consumption (see image below), etc.

This semester 9 classes are involved in study-informed activism: three Grade 10s, three Grade 11 Chemistry and three Grade 12 Chemistry classes. It will be interesting to see what other teachers think about the use of studies to inform activism and how their students respond to these kinds of inquiry/STSE activities. I believe that study-informed STSE action projects are superior to any other STSE project that I have done so far for the following reasons:

i) studies allow students to engage in open-ended inquiries that are meaningful to students

ii) studies are contextualized in real socio-scientific issues making them, again, relevant to students’ lives

iii) studies drive secondary research into various socio-scientific issues or vice versa

To learn more about how to conduct studies in your own classes, please visit Prof Larry Bencze’s website:

http://webspace.oise.utoronto.ca/~benczela/StudiesEd.html

This semester

I am reminded of the usefulness of mind maps when it comes to drawing out students’ conceptions and ideas. Their versatility and illustrative power are appealing and effective at promoting the interconnectedness of various concepts. Unlike concept maps, they are not restrictive in terms of any hierarchical structure or specific linking words that show relationships between concepts. Thus, they are more easy and maybe even more fun for students!

I am reminded that I need to incorporate them more in my teaching on an on-going basis to help my students make more solid connections as they progress through individual units of study.

Recently I volunteered to do a presentation to interested staff members at my school on Digital Activism during our upcoming PD day in March. I have been inspired by the latest global events such as the recent reform and revolution in the Middle East and the Occupy movement directed against economic and social inequalities.  I believe that such a form of activism has a place in 21^st century education, specifically to empower youth to advocate for issues such as bullying, community health and safety, social equality, racism, sexism, homophobia and other subject-specific issues that I will mention in the next paragraph.

In both the Middle East revolution and the Occupy movement digital activism (via Face Book and Twitter, respectively) was the medium for social, economic and political changes around the world. This past semester some of my students in Grade 10 Science were involved in activist project in which they decided to use digital media to raise awareness about issues such as oil spills, dangers of smoking, possible harmful effects of household chemicals and the effects of overusing electricity.  Students’ feedback on these kinds of assignments was overwhelmingly positive. Student advocacy using social networking can be an effective way to promote personal development and social responsibility, both of which are attributes beyond academic excellence. This is one of the pillars of an international organization called, Round Square, which is worth checking out for those who believe that schools should have a greater purpose beyond preparing students for college and university.

I look forward to sharing what I have learned about digital activism with my colleagues in the near future.

Please feel free to comment on digital activism. I’d love to hear what you think about this form of advocacy. Does it posses qualities that may embody a form of educational revolution?

After going over the quantum numbers and having the kids assign quantum numbers to electrons in an atom, I asked myself this question: “Is this even worth knowing at this point in kids’ lives?”  To soothe my curiosity, I asked the students to brainstorm in groups a list of 10 things that are worth knowing in life.

One student said: “This is hard!”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“ Do you mean any 10 things?” asked the student again.

“Yes, any 10 things that you would consider worth knowing in life!” I said.

Students took about 5 minutes to brainstorm their list, and then, I asked a member of each group to write their list on the blackboard. Here are the things that a class of Grade 12 students thinks are worth knowing:

• Your name (identity)/ Self (X2)
• People skills
• Reading
• Defend yourself / How to take care of ourselves
• Make food
• Basic knowledge of survival (X3)
• After life? (X3)
• Truth about religion / God’s existence? (X2)
• Knowledge about your future
• How people first developed theories
• The Big Bang Theory / Beginning of existence (X2)
• Why are there geniuses and regular people?
• Extraterrestrial life, does it exist? (X2)
• Unified theory
• Finding out our roles in society
• Communication (X2)
• Language
• Distinguish between myth and reality
• Morality (X2)
• History
• Technology
• News around the world
• Point of life

This is certainly an interesting list. The numbers in the brackets represent the number of times that the common answer or theme appeared. As you might imagine, this list served as a platform for an extremely rich conversation.

One student wrote to me after class stating: “By the way, the discussion during the latter half of the period was refreshing. Glad we had it.”

I had to ask him to be more specific and tell me what stood out for him and what made this a refreshing discussion.

He replied with: “I just found how some students found it more necessary that certain questions that haunt society are more important than the everyday activities we indulge in to sustain ourselves. I remember a couple questions being around the ideas of higher beings and extraterrestrial life forms and through the discussion it sort of amazed me that students take this approach.  I interpreted the question to be based around our necessities and not around these questions and so I found the discussion sort of refreshing to see that there are different perspectives and different answers to every question.”

Insightful reply from a Grade 12 student! Thanks S.F.!

I will end it here. Feel free to comment! What do you think of this list? What does it tell us about students’ perception of the 10 things worth knowing?
Image credits: http://theraffaellas.bandcamp.com/

Excerpt from October 17, 2011 Journal Entry – Inspiring Activism and Allowing Time for Students to Work on Research and Planning their Actions!

“Today I showed the photos and videos of my visit to St. James Park in Toronto during the Occupy Toronto event. Many students did not know about Occupy Toronto or other related movements around the globe. We discussed some of the images that I was showing and I related them as much as I could to student action projects. My ‘take action’ pep-rally lasted 20 minutes and after this I took the students to the computer room, where they had an hour and a half to work on their research.”

[Reflection: When look back I realize that this lesson on October 17^th was motivating and it supported the idea of activism. I modeled this to students by going to Occupy Toronto event. In terms of the streetsmarts, the images and videos that I was showing to kids were real and current! I talked about the sings that the protesters made and the information they included on their posters. I stressed the idea that masses should to be educated for a protest or a movement, like Occupy Toronto, to make sense. We talked about violent protests and what is and  what isn’t accomplished during such public upheavals. All of these conversations fed into the idea of streetsmarts more so that just booksmarts.]

Except from October 21, 2011 Journal Entry – Students’ Presentations of their Actions!

“I learned that students have tremendous potential to be creative and innovative as I watched their STSE action presentations. They like this project since it was customizable allowing them the freedom to do what they wanted as far the issues they decided to study and the kinds of actions they pursued….”

 [Reflection: One of the words that stands out to me is ‘customizable.’ Nowadays teenagers want most things around them to be ‘customizable.’ Classroom experiences are still traditional, for the most part. They are not very customizable by the students. Students should be able to ‘customize’ their learning experiences by tailoring them to their interests. The STSE action projects allowed students to do exactly this – to ‘customize’ their learning  by choosing their own topic, forming same interest groups and deciding on what actions to take. The concept of ‘customizable education’ relates more to street-smarts rather than booksmart since it has more in common with kids' everyday life experiences.]

 These are just two short and recent reflections of many more reflections to come (not necessarily on this blog), but as part of my effort to try to understand the factors or events that have made the students feel that they were learning street smarts over book smarts in my Grade 10 Science class.

Please feel free to share your thoughts about the value of street smarts in education and what kind of teaching would promote street smarts over book smarts.

Image Credits:  http://www.themichelpage.com/Humor_StreetSmarts.htm

As soon as the other kids saw that Randy took a great photo of the cells all of them who had a smart phone positioned their phones over the ocular lens of the microscope and snapped photos of their own.

Why was this such a great and exciting moment for me and the kids?

Two reasons: i)it was another great technology moment where kids discovered how to use their mobile learning devices to document their learning in real time; and ii) since kids had to produce biological drawings of the celery cells they no longer had to keep looking back and forth through the microscope while producing a drawing. It was right there on the screen of their smart phone.

The image is the original photographed by my student Randy.

 Please share some of your experiences if you have any with the use of smart phones in your classroom!

• Awareness. The science staff becomes aware that the innovation exists (ie. that someone is implementing something different). Details of the innovation are lacking. Colleagues may see evidence of some of the work in the school hallways or in the classroom.
• Information. The individuals who are interested want more information. They begin to wonder if the innovation can help them. They may actively seek out new information, both explicit and tacit, to gain greater awareness of the innovation.
• Personal. What will the demands of innovation do to my time? My energy? Colleagues who are interested in implementing an innovation have personal concerns over how the innovation will impact them personally.
• Management. The focus is on the process of implementing the innovation in the classroom and various tasks that are part of the process of implementation. Colleagues may have curriculum concerns and how will they manage the innovation so that certain parts of the curriculum are not compromised.
• Consequences. These are also called impact concerns. The focus is on the impact of innovation on students and others involved in the implementation of the innovation.
• Collaboration. This stage of concern refers to coordination and efficiency with which the innovation is implemented.
• Refocusing. This last stage is focusing on exploration of more powerful alternatives.

The above stages suggest that interventions and professional development should address the specific expressed concerns of the teachers. Research indicates that expressed concerns permit the identification of acceptance or adoption of the innovation on the part of teachers. Teachers must first have their concerns reduced in the Awareness, Information, Personal and Management stages, before the three adopter stages: Consequences, Collaboration and Refocusing (For more thorough research visit: http://www.ucalgary.ca/iejll/vaughan)

Reference:

Hall, G. E., Wallace, R. C., & Dossett, W. A. (1973). A developmental conceptualization of the adoption process within educational institutions (Rep. No. 3006). Austin, Texas: The University of Texas at Austin, The Research and Development Center for Teacher Education. (ERIC Document Reproduction No. ED 095 126).

i) students carry out secondary research on a choice of one of the four STSE issues presented to them in the chemistry unit and devise an action plan to address the issue (see the sample video below that was developed by one group of students)

ii) students engage in both secondary and primary (correlational studies) research on STSE issues in the climate change unit and devise an action plan to address the issue- this is still teacher guided, but open-ended

iii) students perform student-lead, open-ended STSE action projects in the biology unit – a list of STSE issues is given to students, but the choice of what secondary and primary research to do is left up to students

So far I have had a lot of success with the STEPWISE framework. Students are more engaged on average. My weaker students (ie. those who generally do poorly on knowledge-based tests) have done a lot better in class with the STEPWISE. Students like discussing socio-scientific issues and being empowered to act and make a difference in our society. Students’ inquiry projects (experiments and correlational studies) have more meaning since they are contextualized.

I’m attaching a sample of an educational activist video that was developed by three girls in my class. I thought that they did a very good job on their first STSE action project.

• Students in arts and tech classes were more engaged than students in ‘academic’ classes
• Students were more engaged in science than math
• Students were more engaged in math than history

This suggests the following about engagement (which is nothing new to us): For students to be engaged the following three criteria need to be met:

1)      Interactivity

2)      Concentration

3)      Relevance

Interactivity: students need to be doing something hands-on and they should have an opportunity to interact with other students in class

Concentration: it is not enough that students are doing in hands-on activities; their minds must also be engaged.

Relevance: if it is not directly relevant to students’ lives, the chances of students staying engage are lower.

So, this may now explain, why students are least engaged in history classes. Traditionally, we students ‘stuff’ and then we invite them to think. However, it should be the other way around. Students should be first invited to think – the driver needs to be thinking –  other ‘stuff’ can be added along the way. In science, this ‘stuff’ is usually theories, laws and basic knowledge and understanding, which so many teachers stress over more important things like applications of this ‘stuff’ to everyday lives.