More than talking: Using social networks in an elementary classroom

In order to affect real change in schools, and truly educate students, we have to move beyond the clichés of the “21st Century Learner” and begin to teach students to use specific strategies that can actually produce the skills needed to survive in the emerging global society. The hard part about this transition is choosing the tools and strategies to make this happen. Two of the most important skills for success in our constantly connected world are the ability to communicate in writing and the ability to collaborate with others (Wagner, 2008). Given the need to collaborate and communicate while staying connected, teaching kids to integrate aspects of cooperative learning within the use of social networks is a smart choice to create successful learners in the 21st century.

Cooperative Learning and Social Networking

Since the days of the Greek philosophers, people have known that learning is a social phenomenon.  Conversely, in schools during the past 100 years, learning has often been treated as an isolated skill set, despite the research saying the opposite. The classroom’s very design “assumes that the significant part of a student’s learning occurs in the transmission of knowledge from the teacher to the student in a somewhat linear fashion” (Nair, 2009, p. 25).   This method assumes that knowledge acquisition is essentially a solo act.  However, according to Vygotsky, "every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first between people...and then inside the child" (1978, p. 57).  Viewing learning as a process where the learner is influenced by those around him means that an individual cannot learn as much on his own as he can within a group who can add to and influence his conceptualizations (Frey, 2009, p. 14).  Therefore, to truly provide a student with an education means that he will have to interact constructively with other students. Cooperative Learning, when done right, provides the educational setting where this type of group interaction can happen.  Bringing cooperative learning into the 21^st century, social networks provide students a space online where they can work together to share their knowledge, help one another grow as learners, and solve problems together.  As Baird and Fisher (2006) state, “Social networking media engages the user in the content and allows them to be included as an active participant as they construct a learning landscape rooted in social interaction, knowledge exchange, and optimum cognitive development with peers” (p. 24).  If we really want students to learn how to work together, we have to teach them how to interact.  We cannot just put them online and expect them to interact successfully with no scaffolding or practice.  Integrating cooperative learning into social networking can provide this.  For this to happen, a definition of cooperative learning and social networking must be established. 

Cooperative learning is a way of organizing the instruction of the classroom such that students are working in small, heterogeneous groups (Wong, 1998 p. 245).  The groups are tasked with working on activities together rather than alone.  According to Kagan, for cooperative learning to happen successfully, four specific criteria must be met: Positive Interdependence, Individual Accountability, Equal Participation, and Simultaneous Interaction (Kagan, 2009 p.4.2).   When these four principles are adhered to on a regular basis, student learning will increase.  This is proven through a meta-analysis done by Marzano (2001, p. 86).  This research proves that cooperative learning is effective in raising students’ test scores, but cooperative learning does more than that.  It goes beyond the stated curriculum to affect the teacher’s hidden curriculum of social norms.  Through the principles of Positive Interdependence and Equal Participation as championed by Kagan, cooperative learning requires students to interact with each other in prescribed ways that often mimic the ways that adults work collaboratively in their own situations.  Among these interactions are such processes as “the ability to resolve conflicts in a constructive manner, to communicate effectively, and to ably draw upon the strengths of others to solve problems” (Frey, 2009, p. 18).  These are some of the same skills often touted as “21^st Century” though they have been in practice since people first began to interact with one another. 

Social networking, on the other hand, is a new, yet almost ubiquitous feature of life in the 21^st century.  When asked, most people would define a social network by simply naming one: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.  But to truly define a social network takes more than a simple example.  According to boyd (2007), a social network can be defined by the features it provides: “profiles, public testimonials or comments, and a publicly articulated, transversable list of friends,” (p. 4).  Finding social networks for use within an elementary school setting can be tricky because public social networks have an age requirement of 13 years old.  However, there are some pseudo-social networks that exist to create a safe, internal network for students to use in a school setting.  One such site is Edmodo (www.edmodo.com).  According to Stroud (2010), “Edmodo creates an online environment for teachers and students to stay connected in an educational setting” (p. 2).  For the purposes of this paper, Edmodo will be the system described and used.  Edmodo provides two of the three features listed by boyd: profiles and public comments by friends.  Edmodo does not have a public “friends” list on student profiles, though it does allow teachers to have “connections” which operate in the same fashion.  It also allows for posting of documents, files, assignments, links, etc. – both by the teacher and by the students.  And because students can communicate with each other through the system without the direct mediation of a teacher, it fits the overall definition of a social network.

As stated before, students have to have practice using technology in general, and in particular the specific social network, in order for them to use it comfortably and therefore be able to contribute to conversations (Lankes, 2008).   In our situation, we provided several opportunities for students to explore the system.  These included completing a scavenger hunt with a partner within Edmodo, personalizing their own profile including their avatar, and completing simple assignments that would earn them online “badges” within the system.  Beyond mere practice, we want to merge cooperative learning with a social network to create a situation where students are being self-regulated learners as well as participating in online cooperative groups as they read, think, and respond to what they are reading in our reading/social studies block. As teachers know, students often label many of the academic interactions they have during a day as boring.  As Sheskey (2010) noted, “one of the common causes of boredom in the classroom is students’ perception that the methods of how they curriculum is delivered to them is irrelevant to the how they learn,” (p.199). Because we know that using social networks provide, “greater engagement, greater interest, [and] students taking more control and responsibility for their education,” (Blankenship, 2011, p. 40) we want to give students the opportunity to move their thinking from their hardcopy reading journals into an online forum where they are not only required to post, but are also required to respond to each other, hopefully alleviating some of the perceived boredom.  Taking note of Sheskey (2010), we have used Edmodo to create online spaces “for collaborative learning and information sharing,” (p. 203) using driving questions and providing links where students can read and research.  The students are placed into small groups where they are expected to post the responses to what they are reading at least twice per week.  They are also expected to circle back and respond to their peers’ thoughts at least twice a week.  We also try to bring some of what we see transpiring online back to our offline discussions as we teach students how to not only use reading strategies but how to appropriately respond to others’ thinking – the essence of cooperation.  We hope that by having students respond and judge one another’s work we can also help them be more metacognitive about the “self-reflection phase” of self-regulation advocated by Zimmerman (2002).  We believe this is important because interacting online with students – and having them interact with each other – is an effective way for teachers to connect with them (Sheskey 2010).  Though we have only been up and running in this experiment for about four weeks, we have anecdotally noticed that Blankenship (2011) is correct; our students are more engaged and showing greater interest in their participation.  We have also noted that many students are taking their jobs seriously as they respond to their peers.  The next step is for us to use the responses to help individuals reflect on their own work to then be able to use that knowledge to set goals and plan for their next post (Zimmerman, 2002).

By setting up situations such as this in the classroom – situations that necessitate online cooperative group interaction – successful teachers will not only increase student engagement and interest but also have a concrete way to teach students the elusive “21^st Century” skills that have been discussed ad nauseum in key-note addresses and book abstracts for the past decade.

References

Baird, D. & Fisher, M. (2006). Neomillennial User Experience Design Strategies: Utilizing Social Networking Media to Support 'Always On' Learning Styles. Journal of Education Technology Systems. Volume 34, Number 1. White Plains, NY: Baywood Publishing. 

Blankenship, M. (2011). How social media can and should impact higher education. Education Digest, 76(7), 39-42.

boyd, danah. (2007) Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life. In Buckingham, D. (Ed.) MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Frey, N., Fisher, D., Everlove, S. (2009). Productive group work: How to engage students, build teamwork, and promote understanding. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Kagan, S. & Kagan, M. (2009). Kagan Cooperative Learning. San Clemente, CA: Kagan Publishing.

Lankes, R. D. (2008).  Trusting the Internet: New Approaches to Credibility Tools. In Metzger, M.J, and Flanagin, A. J. (Eds.) Digital Media, Youth, and Credibility. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008.

Marzano, R. J., Pickering, D. J., & Pollock, J. E. (2001). Classroom instruction that works: Research-based strategies for increasing student achievement. Alexandria, VA: ASCD

Nair, P., Fielding, R., & Lackney, J (2009). The language of school design: Design patterns for 21^st century schools. USA: Designshare.com.

Sheskey, B. (2010). Creating learning connections with today’s tech-savvy student. In Jacobs, H. H. (Ed.), Curriculum 21: Essential education for a changing world. (pp. 195-209). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Stroud, C. (2010). Edmodo: A white paper. Retrieved from http://coe.winthrop.edu/jonesmg/LTI/2010Fwhitepapers/Casey_Stroud.pdf

Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Wagner, T. (2008). The global achievement gap: Why even our best schools don’t teach the new survival skills our children need – and what we can do about it. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Wong, H. K. & Wong, R. T. (1998). The first days of school: How to be an effective teacher. Mountain View, CA: Harry K. Wong Publications.

Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Achieving self-regulation: The trials and triumphs of adolescence. In Academic Motivation

of Adolescents. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.

Base 4 Animation

Continuing Evolution

As I begin to read more about rubrics and students using them, I realize one thing I am missing is helping students actually write rubrics based upon projects/work that is already done.  Giving students finished products to look at and then ask them to differentiate between work that is above expectation, meeting expectation, or below expectation can help them understand how to differentiate those same characteristics in their own work.

I will continue to read and work out how to do this, but I think after the students turn in their first project, I may be able to use their work to help them then create better rubrics for the next projects.

Changes

As I began my inquiry process, I thought I was going to look at how to use blended learning modules with my gifted students. This didn't work out too well.  There were a lot of things that created stressors in this work.  The biggest issue is that I only see the students for 20 minutes once a week face-to-face.  As eleven year olds, they are used to being in charge of their learning at this point.  They need to learn to do it - which was part of what I was planning to do.  But when they go a week at a time with no face-to-face time, they don't have the opportunity to learn - they were simply expected to do it.

As the year has progressed, I realized that I can work towards my ultimate goal of self-regulated learning and student-led learning by helping my students learn to differentiate for themselves and write their own rubrics.  I have begun to read about the use of rubrics in general and student-created ones in general.  In my own past experience, I have had issues with rubrics because I feel like they are generally written to the lowest end of mastery and make it easy for gifted and talented students to make a 100% without much effort on their part.  My hope is that by creating the rubric themselves, they will have greater ownership and mastery of the criteria will prove to be more than simply crossing t's and dotting i's.

For the past six weeks, Learning Community has been learning about the Events Leading to the American Revolution.  All students were tasked with choosing a position: Patriot, Loyalist, or Undecided.  They were then asked to prove their position with evidence from the texts that they have read.  Part of the task is to write an editorial proving to showcase their learning. The students are now four days away from their first projects being due.  There are 15 gifted students and for this first project and as a part of my inquiry, I let the asked the gifted students to choose their own project beyond simply writing an editorial.  I have several students creating websites, a couple using Minecraft to reconstruct an event from the time period, a couple creating stop-motion animation, two writing stories, and one writing a choose-your-own-adventure book.  I haven't seen any finished products, but I have been encouraged by their ownership and excitement about the projects.  My hope is that they are able to accurately and portray their knowledge of the events and to know the information deeply.  That is what I am really looking for as I receive the projects this first round.

I plan to use what I find out to guide our future endeavors with student-created rubrics.  I don't know if I'll be able to have them choose their own projects every time, but we'll see.  What I do have to work on is creating an effective reflection for the students at the end of this project.  I have so many things going on in my head for how to progress.  As we now have 1:1 iPads, I want to have the students do a lot of reflection and use technology to explain a lot of their thinking - but I don't know that it can all be part of my inquiry.  So for now, I will focus on the reflection and the student-created rubrics.

As I move through the year, however, I would like to explore the following:

• blogging (maybe KidBlog?).
• using Evernote - I'm not sure if this would just be a rehash of blogging.
• Using educreations to show their thinking and learning processes for different topics including:
• literature circle topics
• home reading projects
• higher-order mathematics reasoning
• others?

Again, I know this is too much for an inquiry, but I'm really interested in helping these students go beyond simply learning and moving toward the creating.

My Inquiry Process

My inquiry process

I struggle with this portion of my career. I hate when I can't figure things out right away and when I perceive that I am less that perfect. I suppose in some ways that is why I relate to the kids I'm trying to work with. I also worry about feeling like I am winging stuff. I know I have read a lot about the stuff I am trying to do, but I feel like I have half-assed some stuff that hasn't worked out well and now I'm gun shy. I end up feeling that I am not doing it with quality and then thinking that means I should rely on canned curricula to fix it. One issue is that I don't think I've been as detail oriented. I don't always follow-through. And additionally, it has been several years since I have been able to really work with a group of kids on something without having to run it through committee and not have the time to get it done. That is what I have to figure out this year. Is it okay for Jhett and Brice and Kaiti to be my guinea pigs? How do I really start small and not offer the same thing to everyone? That is what I have to get comfortable with.

As for my inquiry, the first turn we are talking is teaching the students that they really do have to be online and working on the material. That wasn't something I anticipated. But then again, I don't know that I really hit the vein of them working on something they are interested in. Somehow there has to be a sweet spot. Right now I detect they like coming with me because it's "fun" and somewhat challenging, but nothing really to be responsible for. When it requires work, many of them peter out. Teaching that kind of perseverance is also a goal. But I do think I need to reform my inquiry around what they would be more interested in and use the time in my conferences to help with that. That is where my mind is now. I think my actual data gathering will need to wait until the second social studies unit.

My questions for tomorrow: what part of the events leading to the American Revolution interest you the most? What do you want to know more about? How can you incorporate that into your project?

What do you want to create? How do you want to show me that you know this stuff? How can I help you showcase your knowledge?

The same in math - how can you show me you understand base 4? And how it relates to base 10?

Growth and Change in EDG 6047

How have your definitions and your ideas changed over the past 8 weeks? Have you deepened your understanding of these concepts? What were your "pivotal" moments in that journey?

The biggest change for me in the definition of teacher leadership is the concept of the breadth of the term.  I also have a new appreciation for the depth of what is needed to really be a teacher leader.  However, one concept I still struggle with at this point is the concept of all teachers being "teacher leaders".  In one sense, I totally get this.  Everyone in a school has different passions, different strengths, and different goals.  It makes sense that each person can then be a leader in an arena of their own passion.  However, I still feel this is somewhat a utopia.  Not only can this create a situation where you have a lot of individual entrepreneurship, but it also assumes that all teachers want to be leaders.  Even in the most egalitarian, supportive environment, there are always going to be those who are looking to be really great classroom teachers and are not interested in leading others.  While in theory, I can argue that if you aren't willing to pass on this passion and knowledge to others than you are wasting part of your gift, it doesn't always change that person's viewpoint or activity.

All that aside, I think I have two major takeaways from this course: 1) my need to exercise empathy and 2) the need to increase the use of protocols.  The passage that has stuck with me most is from Katzenmeyer and Moller (2009) when they assert that teacher leaders must not only seek to understand the viewpoints of their colleagues, they must also try to operate from them.  This is going to be incredibly difficult for me, but I recognize that it will be critical as I seek to gain the trust of my teammates in a coaching role.  I know that they trust my intellect and my practice, but that doesn't amount to much when I'm in their room seeking to get intensely personal as I help them explore their practice.  They don't all have to be me; I need to help them be the best them they can be.  And that means I have to truly understand their worldview, their goals, and their passions.  Secondly, we have not been very successful in the past in using protocols.  Personally, I've always balked at them a little.  But reading through a lot of the research in this course and in the Guided Inquiry course I am also taking this summer, I am coming to understand how important they can be.  In order to truly level the playing field and help everyone participate in the conversations and decision making, protocols are a must.  The 'duh!' moment here for me is how much I use them with my students while walking them through Kagan Cooperative Learning Structures.  I can spout off all the reasons why I'm doing it while prepping the kids for them.  But when it comes to working with my peers, I pretend like it doesn't apply.  That is going to change as I move forward.