Andrew and I tell the story of our collaboration frequently.  We did the Flipped Learning Network's opening webinar a few weeks ago, and we presented at the Global Education Convention about our journey together and what it has done in our classroom and to our practice.

I never feel like we can truly capture how much has changed as a result of committing to work together.  The easy answer is "everything" but even that doesn't feel like enough.  In truth, meeting Andrew was like taking collaboration crack - he and I started creating and never looked back, to the point now where not one aspect of my life is untouched by the influence of our collaboration.

And yet, it is only recently that I've begun to see the way in which my view of creativity has been shaped by our collaboration.

I never thought of myself as an artistic or creative person.  I do know how to play several instruments, and I can sew, knit, and crochet, but the nerve damage in my hands has made the fine motor skills required for art nearly impossible for me.  You see, my definition of "artistic" was "can draw well" and because I couldn't, and had little "innate talent" (really, a desire to work as hard as I would need to in order to improve) I decided I just wasn't a creative person.

What I missed in my narrow definition was that creativity isn't about drawing.  It's about thinking differently.  It's about bringing new things into the world for the purpose of making people's lives better.  That's what I learned in my first few years teaching, and became for me the point of my professional journey: helping students see differently, and create in them a desire to continue learning because of the content and skills developed in my class.

When I met Andrew, I exaggerated my video editing capabilities.  I knew I could figure it out if I really wanted to, but hadn't had the need to before that point.  He brought the impetus, so I learned how to edit videos.  And eventually, I started to see video editing as a creative endeavour as much as visual art is.  All art is about telling a story, not about lines or shapes on a page.

The story we were telling was not just one of classroom transformation.  It was one of personal transformation.  I now see the ways in which I'm tremendously creative, almost to the point that I feel ridiculous for ever thinking that I wasn't.

Seeing that shift, I began to see the role of creativity in my classroom differently too.  I used to have art projects as part of the curriculum, but I phased them out because rigor.  I used to have students do elaborate projects that were often beautiful and artistic, but I stopped because standards.  I used to try and make creativity the bedrock of the student experience in my class, despite my narrow definition, but I stopped because confidence.

Genius Hour cemented in my mind how much has shifted because of the influence Andrew has had on my practice.  Actually, that's not quite accurate.  Yes, it was Andrew's entrance that marked the beginning of the change, but really, it's all about what we've built collaboratively.  It wasn't Andrew or me acting in isolation - all the good ideas and creativity and innovation come as products of our time spent in collaboration.  None of it exists without all of it.

My students almost all did their project on something to do with creativity.  I heard them discussing what it means to be creative, and it mirrors my own (much better) understanding: being creative is seeing possibilities where others see only limitations.  It is being willing to be different, even when that's the harder choice.  It is taking risks and daring greatly, even when it pushes us so close to the edge that we fall off a few times.  They all understand that.

And that's the real beauty from Genius Hour: only a few students wrote down facts or specific details about the content of what we learned.  Instead, they made abstract renderings of those ideas.  The common themes were about divergent thinking, growth mindset, factory-models of education being crushed by a new way of learning, how puppets are a pedagogical tool, and even why flipped learning gives them more control over what they learn, how they learn it, and how to demonstrate their learning.

Our students are experiencing something profoundly transformative: that collaboration drives creativity, and you have to practice taking risks to be able to truly learn.  

I now know how to use Adobe After Effects - professional level graphics software as well as basic video editing programs because the collaborative relationship Andrew and I forged compelled me to truly learn, even when it took failure after failure to produce success.  In a very real way, I am now able to be much more creative because there was a space made and a spark of inspiration lit by the relationship Andrew and I have.  And my creativity fuels the learning environment in which my students catch the spark to light their own creative furnaces.

That's what collaboration can do: light fires that had been extinguished.  Foster creativity and critical thinking.  Provide the space and motivation to learn something deeply.  That's why Andrew and I will continue to tell our story.  We believe that ALL teachers should have the same opportunity we did to be transformed.  We believe that our students deserve that.

And we believe that our collaboration will continue to produce more creativity as more teachers start the journey we've undertaken together.  I hope we can continue to point the way to the road less travelled, where while there are thorns and rocks and unsure footing, there is also great beauty and joy and when you've walked far enough, you get to see something that never before existed.  Something that wouldn't be in the world, but for you finding it together.  It is that collaboration that will make you more creative, and will in turn give your students more opportunities to be creative as well.

Collaboration will change your view of creativity forever, just as it has mine.

This collaborative road will be more difficult.  Sometimes, it will be so difficult that you struggle to remember why you started walking in the first place, but if you have found a partner who makes your classroom better, it will be worth every moment of difficulty.  

We - all of us - are #bettertogether.

There are lots of educational buzzwords I push back against when I first hear about them.  Ten years in California public schools have left me jaded and cynical about the latest fad, but the nerd that hides underneath secretly loves ALL OF THE NEW IDEAS!!1!.  

That's why I've done EDI.  I've done data-drive instruction.  I've done space-learning.  I've done constructivist learning.  I've done the Kate Shaffer writing method and the Kate Kinsella vocabularly method and probably loads of other Kates' methods that I can't even remember.

Flipped learning was one of those things - I pushed back against the idea because I thought it would never work with my students.  Clearly, I was wrong.

But the latest one is PBL.  Project-based-learning is something that always seemed a bit pointless.  Students completed projects in my class, but I thought most of what I saw labeled as PBL was little more than an attempt to shove some artistic work into the same boring curriculum.  I didn't see how changing a worksheet for a diorama made that much difference.

However, as Andrew and I have conceived our class structure this year, something began to change.  We have become obsessed with authentic tasks and products, and have tried to keep everything within the lens of "Will this be useful to them later? Does this demonstrate some skill, process, or product that will prepare them as critical readers, writers, and thinkers?"

Within that framework, I think we've accidentally become project-based.  In fact, that has become my new definition of PBL: Taking a skill, process, or product and making it relevant, in order to prepare students for the critical reading, writing and thinking tasks expected of them.  When you do that, and you add the flipped mindset - making best use of face-to-face time to do higher-order thinking in ways that give students voice and choice and through the intentional and mindful use of technology - I think you get a powerful learning environment that feels less like school and more like fun.  Challenging fun, but fun nonetheless.

As proof, I can only point to this: I have more buy-in and engagement right now than I have ever had at this point in the school year, especially when I've taught freshmen.  They are self-policing each other.  They are reflective about their learning.  They are seeing some of the decisions that have harmed their academic habits and are trying to change them.  They are convincing each other to work harder and do better.  They tell me how much they like my class.

And they work their butts off, so it's not just because it's an easy A.  Oh, speaking of grades, I get very few questions about grades these days.  I attribute that to the feedback students get - that replaces the anxiety of not knowing how they are doing in my class, and they have learned to trust that I am willing to help them in exchange for them showing up and trying. 

Here are some examples from this semester of what I'm calling Flipped PBL, of FPBL.  Each addresses product, process, or subject-area content/skills.

1. The Photo Journal (Product)
Students is all of our classes (my three English 9 sections, my leadership class, and Andrew's desktop publishing, public speaking, and English 11 Honours) took a photo of each hour of their waking life and compiled them with short descriptions.  These are being hosted in a website designed by a group in desktop publishing.  To get to design the website, each group presented a video pitch with their mock-up design and how they would organise the pictures (by time, by class, by period, by location, by last name, by gender, etc.) and what the site would look like.  Then my students provided feedback on the design, function, and overall presentation, and finally voted on their favourite and that group has begun to design the website.

2. Discussion Videos for Looking for Alaska (Process)
Both Andrew's English 11 and my sections of English 9 are reading Looking for Alaska right now.  We are trying to teach them how to have a conversation, so we have started working on various ways to get students to engage more productively with one another.  One way was to help them scaffold their thinking on a section in the book of their choosing and have them share their thoughts on video.  Those videos will be exchanged with the class across the country.  Andrew's kids have finished the book first, so they are making the first round.  In order to make sure they have good insight to share, we have shown them model videos from our CoFlipBookClubRead The Fault In Our Stars, and then had them apply a critical lens - patterning - to the text in a close reading assignment.  They will send the videos to my students, who will respond to the ideas and ask some follow-up questions, then will send them back for final reflections.  

3. Genius Hour (Skill/Content)
I know this isn't the "traditional" genius hour set-up, but I think it works.  In normal genius hour, students get a class period to create something - it doesn't matter what it is, but it has to be entirely finished in the time allotted.  For this genius hour, students will be crafting something that shows something they have learned about learning, the brain, personality, the education system, and motivation.  It doesn't matter what it is.  What matters is that they make some meaningful connection to what we have learned and how it applies to them.  For my students, this will also prepare them for Expressions - the whole school project in winter trimester - where they choose from the four colleges (visual arts, dance, music, and creative writing/drama) and perform something based on the school-wide theme (which are chosen by the seniors and the teachers collaboratively).  Students work on it all trimester, and then present it at the end.  

All three of these projects take a skill, product, or process and place it in a more real-world context than the traditional assignment.  For example:

• In the traditional classroom, the photo essay product would be a narrative writing assignment that the teacher would see, mark up, and return.  The student would then probably throw it away.  Here, we could even track the change in our students over time if we continue this project.  Plus, students will have an artifact of their life in the 9th grade (or 11th for Andrew's classes).
• In the traditional classroom, class discussion process would allow the same students who always talk to dominate, and inevitably, some students with really good ideas would be left out...and absent students would miss out, as well as there being no way to open up the conversation to another class, let alone one across the country.  However, by making the conversations happen on video, our students have to think through how to communicate with someone they don't know about a topic as rich and varied as literature.  They have to decide how personal and vulnerable they want to be, and they have to think about how their audience will view them.  They have to dig deep into analysis because if they don't, they let their partner (both in the classroom and across the country) down.  It also helps them engage in a format that has only gotten more popular - video blogging - and is a legitimate form of communication in the world now.
• In the traditional classroom, the skill of demonstrating knowledge would be taking a test.  Students could guess, or cheat, or have a bad day and miss questions they would have otherwise known.  But by making it artistic (particularly at an arts high school) and creative, students are forced to think differently, and wrestle with all the concepts and ideas we've studied.  They have to determine which is most important and how to express their understanding most clearly.  Plus they will get to see what the other members of their class create...unlike the grades on a test that become meaningless seconds after the student shoves it in their backpack or throws it in the trash.

And none of those required a single homework assignment (okay, most students took the pictures outside of class. But many did it during the time given in class).  And all of them are fun and challenging and "real-world" applicable.

For those reasons, I'm learning to embrace project based learning.  If what PBL is, at its core, focuses on making the skill, product, or process more relevant, then I can't see how it's a bad thing.

Think I'm wrong about PBL? Want to talk about examples? Leave a comment.  I'd love to figure out how to make PBL better, or why I'm wrong to call this PBL so I can find a new term to try out. :-)

Andrew and I often employ some advice that we heard from Jon Bergmann:

Do you want it perfect, or do you want it Tuesday?

Most of the time, we want it Tuesday.  There are very few ideas that merit spending extra time and energy on developing them when you have as much work as Andrew and I do.  We often feel pulled in so many directions that it's all we can do just to get them done to Tuesday-quality standards.

The one aspect of our practice where we make an exception is in video production.  Sure, we make quick videos, like the ones I do on ShowMe, or the close reading videos
that take more time to record than they do to edit.  But most of our best work takes hours.

That's why the summer is the time we get the most video work done.  Last summer, I re-edited the research paper series to make it more manageable and useful.  We did a series on writing a literary analysis essay using Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer (essay prewriting video here). 

And we started a video about The Great Gatsby.  It began as a close read of the opening passage, but evolved into something that has taken months to perfect.  In order to make it, I had to learn Adobe After Effects.  That alone was hundreds of hours.  We wrote, edited, assembled, designed, rendered, and then revised it all and started over.  

The goal of this video was to help students get excited about reading the novel in class.  Not only does it do that, but it also demonstrates how we developed the claims put forth in the video.

So here is the video we made.  It may not be absolutely perfect, but of all our work over the last year and a half, it is the product of which I'm proud.  If you enjoy it, pass it on.  We hope that it helps more than just our own students appreciate a text as rich and beautiful as The Great Gatsby.

And if people like it, we may just try to make another video that ends up more on the "perfect" side, rather than the "Tuesday" side.

There were moments of brilliance.  Here are some of my favourites:

• Of all the students who showed up, only one decided not to present, and she has only attended class four times this trimester.  That means every student who showed up (but one) decided to Dare Greatly.  That's pretty awesome.
  
• While waiting for her presentation slides to show up, one student managed to keep the audience engaged - for several minutes - and then kept their attention when the technology caught up.  Which is an extraordinary thing to do when you're 14, nervous, and in front of your entire 9th grade class.
• The passion for so many issues - why art is important, what we can do about sex trafficking, what education should be, evolution vs. creation, the very nature of reality itself - was great.  While they didn't always have the best research or most articulate presentation style, they cared.  A lot.
• One group explained each of the nine layers involved in being an ogre using a metaphor.  Then gave out gum WITH LAYERS.  Funny, innovative, and a great break from the more serious topics.
• When several students broke into tears after their presentation (EMOTION + BEING DONE), the judges all got up and hugged them.
• Watching 80 9th graders cheer for one another, cry with each other, hug away the nervousness, and even completely shine in the spotlight...yeah, it was amazing.

Then there were the things I wish had been different:

• Students didn't spend enough time preparing, and I didn't guide them enough.  My goals were A) to build community, and B) to encourage them to Dare Greatly and talk about something they loved.  And I knew that they didn't have enough time to adequately practice, or learn presentation skills.
• The visuals were not great, and many of them ended up not being displayed because reasons.  Also, I hate PowerPoint.
• We only got to have 2/3 of the students present in the theatre on day #1, and the others had to use a classroom on day #2, where they only presented to a small group of their peers.  There is basically one space on campus that holds large groups, and every grade level needed space, so we had to compromise.  The students who presented on the second day were relieved to not be on stage, but also a little disappointed to miss the experience of the Big Stage.

So content-wise, they struggled.  However, the answer presented itself: have them take their presentations, treat them as a draft, and revise.  Students have a video of their presentation (I filmed them all) and will look at the actual content to see where they need to add and modify.  Today we watched several videos that illustrated styles they may want to use - video blogging, RSA-style animation, voice over with video/pictures, videos with clones/special effects, and even stop-motion choose-your-own-adventure-style videos - and analysed the effect and how well the content was delivered. 

I told them they could make any sort of video...so long as it wasn't boring.  So no narrated powerpoints, and no standing up and re-presenting the same over again.  Students have now done a storyboard and a reflection, and the real work begins on Monday.  They have a week to finish.  

I hate grades, but people always ask how I grade these things.  Because we are treating this like a first draft, they will not be graded.  However, students will get credit for having completed it.  Then the mastery/quality letter grade will come from their video.  The videos will be scored by small groups of students and by teachers (EBA teachers and Andrew/me).

While content left something to be desired, community-building wise I'm pretty impressed with what happened.  Not only did the students support each other, but we are seeing the seeds of empathy growing as a result.  In one of the freshmen classes after the presentation, they talked honestly about the event, and many students shared some of their personal struggles - parents lost, alcohol or drug issues, struggles with academics and motivation, anything really - and they listened attentively and most importantly, empathetically.  There is so much pain being carried by our students, and yet they all feel so alone.  They need to see how we are connected, and how emotion is a human thing, not a weakness, or character flaw, or individual trait.

We talk a lot about helping our students see themselves and each other complexly, and being generous when they (and we) fall short.  Those steps are worth all the not amazing presentations and technical problems.  I can see the growth.

That makes it all worth it.

Andrew and I have been getting one particular question from lots of teachers lately.  Including in our webinar hosted by the FLN (archive link to come soon!)

When I start explaining what Andrew and I are teaching, nearly every teacher asks about how we teach our students to take notes.  It's a key skill in our first unit on the brain, education, and learning, and the content is really a vehicle to teach the skill and help them learn to check their own understanding as well as the quality of their notes as a record of what's important and what they learned.

That was really the first step - deciding that note-taking was a skill worth teaching.  It's really one of those things that all teachers assume students know, but in reality, one on which few have ever had any instruction (that's true for both teachers and students, actually).  So while there is little formal direct instruction in our classroom, there is content for which students will have to be responsible.  As this is eventually going to be something they self-regulate, it's important to do it right.

We watched a total of six TED Talks, and also took notes on a few shorter videos.  Actually, we did way more than that.  Here's the playlist of videos students watched this semester...and they took notes on all of them.  Some note-taking assignments were more intense than others as we scaffolded up to the more difficult videos/concepts

We did a bunch of different strategies.  Here are a few of them, in increasing order of complexity:

• We watched short sections (3-4 minutes) and had students talk after each, then decide as a group what information is important.  At the end, they shared out and added to their individual notes.
• We watched an entire video without taking notes, then discussed the main ideas.  We started the notes almost as an outline with those main ideas (early on, I actually gave them "section titles" that would guide them) and then watched it again to add some supporting evidence/details.
• We did visual note-taking for a video that wasn't quite as scientific, and after watching the RSA Ken Robinson video to see what visual note-taking looks like.  Then students shared their note-taking.  We also did a variation on this where students created an 8x11 "poster" that used fewer than 10 words and displayed all the main idea from the video they chose.
• We used Google Drive to have students take notes collaboratively in real-time (and did this "old school" on a group piece of butcher paper), in order to allow students to not miss anything while watching, but still have high-quality notes.
• We did some more structured Cornell Notes style where we reviewed the day after we took the notes.

In every one of those examples, I took notes in class and then allowed students to see, compare and even copy what I wrote.  The reason I'm okay with that are important:

1. All assessments were open-note and not something that is google-able.  It's all higher level thinking tasks.  The kind of tasks that require some content knowledge (what they took notes on) but then ask them to do something with that knowledge.  Example: "How does synaptic pruning help you learn?"  The video defines synaptic pruning, but not in the context of learning.  So if they didn't know what that was, they couldn't demonstrate the evaluation/synthesis required in the question.
2. In the "real world" collaboration is one of the most important skills.  These strategies teach them that they are part of a team, and that there is always benefit to working together.
3. It's my job to model what good note-taking looks like.  I also could show them the difference in my notes from the first period I watched it in to the third.  They could see the ideas change and take shape - that's not something I've ever modelled, and it was one of the best conversations we had in the first few weeks.
4. It provides support for ELL and SPED students - they can print my notes out (I put them all in a playlist for students to access at any time, which is easy - they go from my iPad to iPhoto, then one click uploads to Google Drive's folder for each unit.  Then I add them to MentorMob via the Chrome extension) and even use them in place of their own.  Because it's NOT ABOUT THE FACTS.  It's about them doing something with the facts.

So we are now 11 weeks into the school year, and my students can watch ANYTHING and know how to distill the main information.  They also know how to monitor their own comprehension.  And they have a whole load of content knowledge they wouldn't have had otherwise.  

Teaching this took time, but it was totally worth it.  It really helped them learn how to do high school.

Whether you use Twitter, Facebook, Edmodo communities, Google+, individual blogs, or other methods, everyone has a reason for sharing what they do, promoting what they do, and finding relationships with others who do the same.

I started tweeting because someone told me to.  Seriously.  The teacher in charge of the EdTech committee in my district said that getting on twitter was the most important move she had made in the last year of professional development.  So I asked a few students to show me the ropes, and then I tried to find teachers to follow.

I started with those "Top Educators To Follow" lists.  I have since unfollowed most of those people.  Here are some of the reasons I unfollowed them, and why I STILL hesitate to follow people now:

1. They tweet too many uninteresting automated messages.  Things like "Your Daily Tweeted Times" type of things.   I don't mind a few of those, but when you do 4-7 a day...ugh.
2. They don't engage with people regularly.  I don't need to be the one engaged with, but if they spend the majority of their time sharing instead of interacting, I'm the product, not the audience.  Conversations are the entire point.
3. Over 75% of their tweets are about pimping their own work.  

I want to focus on the third point, because it's the most nuanced.  I do share my own blog posts, my donorschoose project (funded in 6 days! eff yeah!), the book I co-wrote, and the chat I moderate.  I also will occasionally tweet or write about products I've used, like the iPEVO review I posted this week.

However, the majority of my tweets are engaging with others.  I've slowed down on the tweeting lately bc reasons (commuting 3 hours a day, increased weekend responsibility, etc.) but when I am tweeting, I focus on the people, not all of the things I've done in my twitter absence.

Recently, I have noticed that some people with whom I used to interact frequently have moved above the 75% self-promotion line.  They post the link to their home page, not to the new post they've written.  They solicit people to come to webinars but don't share the ideas that make their webinar worth attending.  They post #HumbleBrags about awards they received, successes they've had, and all of the projects they're working on.

Basically it comes down to this: If these people were sitting at a dinner party with me, they would be talking about themselves so much that they didn't notice others sitting at the table.  I don't have time for that kind of person in my real life, and they are not adding anything to my twitter life either.

If getting more followers is more important than meaningfully engaging with the followers you DO have, then I am not interested.  It also reminds me to keep engaging with my PLN beyond the small concentric circles to which I normally turn.  

I'd like to know your thoughts.

Why do YOU engage with social media?  Why do you follow or unfollow someone?  Are you spending more time learning and listening than talking?

Disclaimer:  I am probably crazy for even considering this.  That's what it feels like as I look out on students preparing right now.

In a week, every 9th grader at East Bay Arts will be delivering a TED-Talk style presentation.  They will get two minutes to talk about something about which they are really passionate.  They have to use a visual of some kind, and have been told DO NOT DO PUBLIC READING. ESPECIALLY FROM A POWERPOINT.  Unless they want to make their teachers cry, that is.

So let's back up.  Every students in 9th grade started the year with a unit on learning, the brain, and education.  The centrepoint of that unit was a series of TED-Talks.  We learned how to take notes and listen attentively.  We talked about passion, and how passion influences people to speak from a place of excitement and power.

Concurrently, they have been working on their very first all-school project.  At EBA, every grade level does one major project per trimester.  For the  first freshmen project, students have traditionally been asked to choose a social issue that is important to them and both write an essay about it and prepare a presentation to be given to a room of their peers and graded by the teacher.

If you read my blog and/or know Andrew and I, we tend to blow things apart and find the pieces in the rubble that work, and then build up the structure around those things.  That's kind of how this project started.  We liked the idea of self-selected topics.  We liked students giving a presentation that means something to them.   We also liked the idea of a project that all their teachers could see, work on with them, and learn from.  

But we also saw problems: most teachers from last year reported there being a ton of speeches on abortion or drug laws.  Having students write a research paper then deliver a persuasive speech seemed like a mismatch, and like too much for first trimester freshmen.  The topics don't necessarily touch the students' lives in a serious way, or in a way that is relatable in a 4-5 minute speech.  Also, the teacher in charge last year pretty much just told the other teachers what to do, and we really wanted to include the rest of the project team on the planning.

So we decided, in collaboration with the other two teachers on the team, to make it a presentation about how they wanted their school to change.  We started gearing up for that when we had a better idea.  Instead of advocating for a change at school, what would happen if we gave them the freedom to share something that made them truly passionate and interested?  What would school be like if every student got to share something they loved for a day?

Wouldn't that be the best day of school ever?  Wouldn't that MAKE the kind of school they would want to attend?

Then the next piece  that fell into place was when we realised that this was basically the structure of a TED Talk.  Since we've watched so many, it was an idea students quickly embraced.  It also has the benefit of being a real-world context for public speaking.  After all, how many people leave high school and ever have to present about a social issue for five minutes on their own?  But sharing an idea with passion and enthusiasm and clarity...that's something EVERYONE has to do.

And the final piece (stolen from Jon Corippo and Minarets): the teachers will not be assessing the students.  Instead, students will judge one another, based on the format of American Idol (the original).  There will be a Simon, a Paula and a Randy.  They will offer feedback based on the rubric categories and will decide the grade...but more importantly, will share what they thought and how it could be improved.

We will be filming the whole thing, and students will vote on which ones to feature on our YouTube channel.  I also told students that this was their chance to show their teachers, their parents, their friends, and the world that they were more than just a "dumb teenager who only cares about stuff posed on Facebook."  This is their chance to prove that they can have 80 9th graders in one room, listening to each other talk about something they love and not fall apart.

I'm writing about it here because I'm very aware that it might fail.  In fact, failure is likely - not of the whole event, but of certain presentations, and certainly technology.  But I'm sharing it so that I am clear going into it that the outcome doesn't matter.  What matters is that we aimed high and worked hard.  And that we learn from whatever failures may come.

In a week, it will all be over.  I'm excited to share what happened.

Over the summer, Sam Patterson and I started talking about puppets.

Now, we all know he's the Puppet Man, who actually does have Twitter accounts for all his puppets, and even features them on his YouTube channel.

So when I was selected to take over the Leadership class at EBA, I quickly found an application for puppets on campus: hosting the weekly video news broadcast.  Here is the playlist of all the Ninja News episodes so far.  Yes, our mascot is the Ninja.  Purple ninjas, actually.

Now, once other students saw the puppets, they wanted in on the sweet puppet-making action.  So I ran a few workshops on Choice Day teaching students how to make puppets, and we even had all the 9th graders make sock puppets one afternoon.

Here's what I've learned about puppets since starting this endeavour:

• Students come alive when they get to do, make, build, and design
• Students love challenge when it's presented in a way that makes it seem fun (like: build a sock puppet! No directions! No help!)
• Grades and points cease to matter when something is truly engaging.  I did have one student ask if his sock puppet would be graded, but other students told him to Just Stop before I had to.  That feels pretty awesome.
• Kids become kids when they have a puppet on their hand.  Suddenly, they are more playful, more funny, more animated, and more interesting.  Yes, I mean interestING - I think you have to be interestED to be interestING.  They also have started to think differently, and are much quicker to get to creative solutions to problems.
• Making puppets requires divergent thinking, storytelling, imagination, and creativity.  Many kids find that overwhelming, because they are being asked to do things that aren't quantifiable.  They get lost in the design phase because it cannot come from rote memorisation, or reliance on good academic habits.  It becomes scary for them to have to try something that might fail.  Those students need the most help and the least instruction.  I spend a lot of time listening, and then helping them glean their ideas from all of the rubble.  But if I give them an idea, it's no better than asking them to memorise the date Shakespeare was born.  The real work still came from me in organising, planning, and valuing the information.  
• Puppets are a great vehicle for teaching that it's okay to make mistakes.  My first puppets aren't great (in order of how I made them: Albert, Kiwi, Gypsy, New Unnamed Puppet), but I'm proud of them, and I learned a lot more from making them than I did from just using the puppets Sam let me borrow (EduFelon and Tina).  Figuring out how to do something like this required lots of YouTube videos, many hangouts with Sam, and a lot of trial and error.  And it was really, really fun.

L to R (& puppet maker):
Tina (Sam)

Gypsy (Me)

EduFelon (Sam's student)

Albert (Me)

Kiwi (Me)

This is my newest puppet.  He was built with a pattern Sam traced from Wokka.  

The kids absolutely love him.

The staff think I'm carrying a dog when I walk in with him.

Also, people can't agree on this puppet's gender.  I'd like to know your thoughts!


So TL;DR:
Puppets are amazing.  They are viable as an instructional strategy.  They help students be more comfortable in their own skin, and with taking risks and thinking differently.

Go make one.  Now.

A few years ago, I thought that using video in class was the lazy way out.  It was for teachers who couldn't figure out how to have a class discussion or didn't want to make copies.

I also thought YouTube was for cat videos and people with too much time.

Boy, was I wrong.

Now, I start class with a short video (under four minutes, generally) every single day.  This unit's playlist has dozens of videos that were shown in class, most of which I didn't make.

So what changed?

A few things.  I started delving into the world of online video and YouTube content creators because of my interest in John Green and his brother, Hank Green.  They have been video blogging (vlogging) on YouTube since 2007, when they went for a year using video instead of any textual communication (emails, texts, etc.).  Since then, they have added over a million subscribers, and have one of the most amazing online communities anywhere on the internet (called Nerdfighteria, with individuals being called Nerdfighters - basically, instead of being made out of flesh and bone, Nerdfighters are made out of pure awesome).

I saw thousands of teenagers interested in music, literature, politics, news stories, and even in helping make the world suck less.  The central tenet the Vlogbrothers and Nerdfighteria promote is that our job as humans is to understand each other complexly.  Humans, especially those growing up in this rapidly changing world, are used to seeing black and white, but often fail to see the much more complex tapestry that makes up human experience.  

As a literature teacher, that idea resonates with me.  I read so that I can understand what it's like to be someone else, living a different life.  I read so that I am connected to people with whom I could never otherwise be connected.  I teach reading so that my students can not be limited by what they see, or what they experience, or even what they are.

Exploring the Vlogbrothers led me to a variety of other channels.  If you're interested, here are some of the other channels I now subscribe to, here are some of my favourites: ViHart, WheezyWaiter, ZeFrank1, ZeFrankenfriends, Schmoyoho, TheGregoryBrothers, CrashCourse, Hankschannel, HankGames, KidPresident, gunnarolla, MentalFloss, Pewdipie, TheArtAssignment, TheLizzieBennettDiaries, TheFineBrothers, CGPGrey, Veritasium, VSauce, SciShow, MinutePhysics, PemberleyDigital.

I subscribe to some of those channels because they are EXTREMELY POPULAR.  For example, Pewdiepie, a Swedish video gamer, is the #1 most subscribed user on YouTube.  If you think that's weird, watch this video of him playing a game called Happy Wheels.  Well, don't watch it if you are offended by swearing.  He does that a lot.  But he also is pretty funny.  And that is what our kids are watching.  I want to be watching what they are.

I may never show his videos in class, but I do think it's important to understanding our students.

Some of those channels make content that is outstanding, like the reimagined Jane Austen stories on Lizzie Bennett Diaries or Pemberley Digital.  Some of them are science content, like V-Sauce, Veritasium, SciShow, and Minute Physics.  And some are just awesome and educational, like Crash Course or Vi Hart (if you hate math, watch this.  And then repent of hating math.  I showed this video months ago, and I still find fractals filled with elephants on papers).

Those videos are the ones I show because it says to my students:

• I care enough about you to understand the world in which you live
• I am interested in a lot of things, and I spend time learning when I'm not in class
• There are amazing things on the internet that can teach you anything you want
• I value other voices and other talent 
• There are people who can explain something or tell a story in a way that I never could match

On the practical side, here's some benefits to the strategy:

• Students hate missing the opening video.  That means they get to class on time
• It gives me time to take attendance, pass out papers, and get everything set for class
• It helps students settle into the routine
• It gives them something to write about in their daily writing warmup

Now, I also use longer content.  For example, in this unit, we have been studying the brain, how we learn, and how education can best meet the structural, psychological, and cultural challenges of adolescence.  I could have learned all of the content in the half dozen TED Talks we watched, and designed lessons with scaffolded note-taking and worksheets, and given multiple choice assessments on that information.

Or I could let the expert talk, and use it as a chance to teach students to monitor their comprehension while listening and how to best handle note-taking.  Plus, it allows me to take my own notes during the video so I can model how to do that best.  And, I take notes every time I watch the video, which shows them how much my notes improve every time I watch the video.  

Now, I don't think that my job is to just teach them how to sit down, shut up, and take notes.  In fact, if that's what education is, then we're failing our students completely.  However, I do think that note-taking is something that everyone needs to learn, and every teacher assumes another teacher has taught already.  Spending this much time taking in content and working on producing notes that accurately capture the information in a way that's useful to the student is totally worth it to me.  It builds the skills they need when they start taking on more responsibility for their own learning.

In this first trimester, the goal is to help them learn how to do all of the things they will need to do when they are more self-directed.  As Andrew and I have learned, throwing students into a self-paced autonomous environment right away is ALWAYS a failure...and especially at schools where the culture is one where spoonfeeding is accepted and expected.  So we teach them the basics.  Kind of like boot camp.  Only more fun.

That's another key to the whole "using video" strategy.  It's fun.  You know what's not fun?  Taking notes.  But when they are learning to do that with engaging content, it doesn't feel as soul-crushing.  Plus, we know that students can't really sit still for the entire hour-long class period.  Having short videos provides frequent breaks so they can help manage their attention and time on-task.  When a student knows that they will get a break in five minutes, they are able to worry less and learn more.

Fundamentally, using videos - both as short warm-ups and as longer content-delivery-systems - comes from the belief that when students see what life is like for something else, they will start caring.  Video gives them a much wider world to explore, and that gives them the opportunity to experience something they never could have on their own.  Literature still have a place, but I think English teachers have an opportunity to use this newer medium to teach many of the same skills and content we do for literature.

And that's pretty awesome.

Recently, I was given an iPevo interactive whiteboard kit to try.  It can turn any LCD projector and screen into a SMARTBoard...only for $150 instead of $6000. 

I was pretty apprehensive at first.  For one, I don't actually have a projection screen.  The one in my classroom that wasn't covering the whiteboard required about 50 lbs of force to keep open, and that just became too much of a hassle.  We also needed a green screen to film Ninja News, so we decided to steal Sam's blueprint for just such a contraption. 

Originally, the students were supposed to design something akin to the one Sam built - aimed at elementary students.  But the thing about having amazing and competent leadership students is that sometimes, they have better ideas.  I completed handed the construction over to Mario, a member of my leadership class and with the help of several industrious freshmen, they completed it in under 40 minutes.  Mario decided to take a chair and measure the top of the tallest leadership student when sitting.  That became the front screen.  Then the back screen was measured to have the green fabric completely cover it.  What we ended up with is a huge 11 foot tall PVC green screen.

In our class, we are ALL ABOUT thinking creatively, so we found a piece of white fabric, pinned it to the green fabric we use for the green screen and used that to project the LCD onto.  It has a few wrinkles (literally) but it works pretty well, and makes Ninja News super easy to film quickly.

So iPevo.  I thought that the fact that we weren't using super reflective material would render the infrared sensors obsolete.

I wholly underestimated it.  I made a video of myself using it, but I really wish I had captured the students clamouring to try the annotation function.  They thought it was even more amazing than I found it to be.  

From opening the box to using it was about 15 minutes.  I taped the sensor to the top of my LCD, and it took a few minutes of adjusting and calibrating to get it right.  Once that was done, it only requires a quick "Click on the crosshairs" to start it up each time.  So 30 seconds and you're rolling.  The sensor plugs in via a USB, which is really convenient, and the software runs with a little command bar right on the side of the desktop so I can always access it quickly.  The pen/magic wand is light but also weighty enough that it is comfortable to write with it.  The only downside to my current setup is that I can't use the pen directly - I have to press the button to make it work (if I was on a whiteboard or hard surface, just touching the tip of the pen would suffice).  But that's really not a big deal.  At all.

The annotation function allows you to draw over anything on the screen and capture it as an image on your computer.  So students could be marking something up and you can save that and add it to their digital portfolio really easily.  You can also mask part of the screen and draw simple shapes.

Plus: Hitler mustaches and devil horns for everyone. #winning #mustachesdriveengagement

Here's the bottom line - for under $200, I have a green screen, a projection screen, and a SMARTBoard.  I can have kids demonstrating thinking on it.  I can have them correct DOLs.  I can have them create a class meme.  I can have them display their work and give critical feedback live in front of them.  I can change slides while still pointing at the screen.  

Now, I don't necessarily see the point in putting a SMARTBoard in a classroom.  It's really just a fancy chalkboard the way most teachers use it at the secondary level.  But part of that is that it's prohibitively expensive.  It is far too expensive to be used as a glorified chalkboard.

However, this device is making me reconsider what is possible.  THAT is what I want good educational technology to do.  Because I don't want my classroom to be teacher-centred, having this device immediately pushes me to "How can students use this to deepen their learning?"

I'm not sure that I know the answer to that.  But it's now a question I get to consider, thanks to iPevo.

Here's a video of me demonstrating it, complete with my amazing PVC greenscreen/whiteboard: