Top Ten "Takeaways" from CEP 882 "The Nature and Design of Compelling Experiences"

Before writing this post, I looked at my classmates' blogs to crystallize my thoughts and seek inspiration in their ideas. Seeing the value of a virtual forum in our blogs and FB discussions was my #1 "aha" from this class, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. Here is my top ten countdown:

• #10 Focus on keeping things simple when communicating ideas-- this idea from Ashley W.'s blog resonated with me. Plus, it is one of the important concepts from Chip and Dan Heath's book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die and their article, "Teaching That Sticks"
• #9 "Heavy constraints can be a major catalyst to creative thinking"-- this piece of advice is a quote from Andrew L's blog. I agree that the strict time limits and the specific instructions for our CEP 882 projects helped to make me more creative and confident in my ability to try something new.
• #8 Understanding the elements of our own FLOW experiences will allow us to create more compelling experiences for others-- when I am looking for ways to create a classroom experience that is more compelling for my students, I need to tap into my "flow" experiences, such as writing in my journal, playing with young kids, hiking, etc.
• #7 It is important to learn the "vocabulary" for a specific art forms in order to appreciate the details of this art form-- I loved learning the descriptive terminology during our units on different art forms, especially interior design, photography and music. When I work with students, I need to focus on teaching some key terms from this art form so that the students can have a deeper understanding of this art form.
• #6 A system similar to Quadblogging would be a great way to increase communication between our blogs-- I found that I didn't take the time to look at my classmates' blogs, although I would have benefitted from their reflections. When I work with students and blogs, I want to create a system in which students take turns reading and commenting on each other's creative work. When writing my blog for this class, I felt less motivated to do these reflections since I felt that my audience was only 1 or 2 people.
• #5 "Light to walk towards" and other interior design ideas-- I loved learning Sarah Susanka's terminology for her interior design concepts. When I am setting up my classroom environment next year, I plan to review her ideas so that I can create spaces that inspire students and match their needs throughout the day.
• #4 Thinking about transformative experiences for my WOA project on Chris Jordan-- I enjoyed sharing Chris Jordan's work with my classmates with my WOA video. He does an amazing job of transforming powerful information into a creative, visually stunning, memorable format. As a teacher, I need to highlight the most important information and present it to students in the most compelling format possible. Chris Jordan's artwork provides an amazing example of this process.
• #3 Understanding the "Screenager" generation with resources such as the book Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal-- One art form that might be interesting to include in this course is the art of game design. Jane McGonigal's book shifted my thinking about the compelling (and addictive) games that my teenaged sons play on the internet with a virtual community of like-minded gamers. The game designers know how to create very compelling experiences. In her TED talk, Jane McGonigal provides some interesting historical and cultural context for the importance of games to a wide range of people.
• #2 It is important to ask "outrageous questions" in order to design and create compelling experiences-- This idea comes from Richard Gerver, who gave an amazing keynote speech at a technology conference in Anchorage this year. In order to transform the Grange school in Great Britain, he asked his staff an outrageous question along the lines of "why can't our school be as fun for kids as Disneyland?" I highly recommend reading articles about this school transformation and watching videos of his talks about his vision statement, "Living, Learning and Laughing"
• #1 In my future classroom, I want to create a compelling forum for my students that also serves to showcase their work over time-- In this class, it was wonderful to have the discussion forum of FB and our individual blogs to collect our work and personal reflections. Right now, I am unable to create this sort of forum due to my scattered teaching schedule (grades 2-12 in 3 different schools in a single day) and internet filter issues; however, next year I may be teaching in my own 3rd or 4th grade classroom. I plan to join the Quadblogger community and help my students share their work and respond to the creative work of their peers.

Revolutionary Fashion in the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins

In my previous post, I discussed the article, "Teaching That Sticks"(2010) by Dan and Chip Heath as well as the article "If Ideas Were Fashion" (2008) by E. D. Wong and D. Henriksen.

This post focuses on the current "buzz" in the movie world--The Hunger Games, based on the book by Suzanne Collins. In this dystopian movie and book series, the main character, Katniss, becomes a "lightning rod" for the forces of revolution. Katniss is "fashioned" into this symbolic head of the revolution by her stylist, Cinna. To increase her odds of surviving the Hunger Games, Cinna designs outfits that "brand" Katniss as the "girl on fire" and the "Mockingjay" in order to attract sponsors. (Spoiler alert....don't read further if you want to maintain the suspense of the second book, Catching Fire....) Ultimately, Cinna is killed for his role in "branding" Katniss as a leader of the rebellion. I hope that the young people who are reading this series and watching The Hunger Games will reflect on this revolutionary aspect of fashion and style. "Fashion" is sometimes regarded as synonymous with the superficial, ephemeral, inconsequential aspects of our culture. However, there is a way in which identity can be fashioned in a way that transforms our world. One real-world example of this would be the transformation of Mahatma Gandhi from an expatriate lawyer in South Africa to the iconic representation of the non-violent revolution for Indian independence. In his transformed state, Mahatma Gandhi embodied his fight for independence, his frame whittled down by his hunger strikes and wrapped in home-spun cloth. I hope to have discussions with my teenaged sons and their friends about their thoughts about fashioning a deeper identity, such as in Gandhi's life, and the potential for "fashion" to incite revolution, as in The Hunger Games.

The Aesthetic Design of "Teaching That Sticks" by Chip and Dan Heath

When thinking about effective design for ideas in the classroom, I highly recommend this article "Teaching That Sticks" by Chip and Dan Heath. This article echoes these statements in the 2008 article "If Ideas Were Fashion" by Wong, E.D. and Henriksen, D: "The experience of fashion is often characterized by intense imagination, motivation, emotion, and thought....Whether trying on a new outfit or designing a science project, the fashion experience evokes anticipating, hoping, dreaming, wishing, desiring, and becoming." One of the great ideas in the "Teaching That Sticks" article is the educational process of creating a satisfying "aha" moment that follows an motivational "huh?" moment. This "huh?" moment is the curiosity aroused by the "knowledge gap" engineered by the teacher. Instead of presenting students with concrete information, the teacher creates a mystery or a problem to be solved. For example, in a journalism class described by the writer Nora Ephron, "every assignment had a secret--a hidden point that the students had to figure out in order to produce a good story." In my "Work of Art" project, I am studying the graphic artist Chris Jordan who designs large-scale images to illustrate a specific statistic. For example, the 44"x 82" image above is composed of 50,000 plastic bags, which represents the estimated average number of floating plastic trash pieces in every square mile of the world's oceans. By integrating these 50,000 plastic bags into a large-scale, memorable and beautiful close-up of a whale, Chris Jordan has fashioned a "sticky idea" for his viewers. People who view this image are more likely to be motivated to take action on the issue of plastic trash in our oceans. Jordan's goal for his artwork is for people to increase their awareness of their negative collective environmental impact, then take actions on a personal level to reduce this impact.

These examples relate to the way in which the "fashion experience" evokes the mental and emotional processes of "anticipating, hoping, dreaming, wishing, desiring, and becoming." In the article, "Teaching That Sticks", the authors claim that "everyone speaks Sticky....The grammar of stickiness--simplicity, storytelling, learning through the senses--enables anyone to understand the ideas being communicated." When designing images that teach scientific concepts or illustrate statistics, the designer can use the "grammar of stickiness" to create these simple images that tell a story.

Listening to music while reading and writing in Sophomore English

Over the course of my first year as a teacher of a Sophomore English high school class, I have changed my attitudes about allowing students to listen to music while reading silently and working on their comprehension questions in class. The students were very vocal about advocating for this freedom to listen to music, and claimed that listening to their headphones allowed them to be more productive and focused on their tasks. Since an experienced English teacher in our high school allows headphones during individual work time, especially during creative writing tasks, I decided to allow students to listen to music on their headphones. Our school has a policy against listening to music on headphones since the teachers are unable to determine whether this music is appropriate for a school setting. However, teachers can decide to allow headphones and personal music devices in their own classrooms.
I recently researched this issue on the internet, to see what studies I could locate about the effects of music (especially student-selected music played through headphones vs. teacher-selected background music) on academic performance. I located an interesting blog post entitled "Does background music aid or impair reading comprehension?" This posting included results from a study of 7th and 8th grade students who listened to "top hit singles" while peforming on the Gates-MacGinitie reading test. Sunny Lee, the author of this post, summarized the results of this 2-day test with 334 7th and 8th grade students: "The results indicate that overall, background music is actually detrimental to work and study."

However, Lee goes on to say that, "studies have shown that emotional arousal and mood produced by music may be the important factor affecting performance, raising the possibility that gentle, relaxing music could boost cognitive performance under certain circumstances." In my classroom, I felt that there was a positive effect produced by the students self-selected music in the areas of emotion and motivation. Some of the students really disliked the tasks of reading and writing, yet these tasks seemed less onerous when they were allowed to engage in an activity associated with very positive emotions--listening to their own music.

On the blog site, Teachers at Risk, Elona Hartjes shared some of her research into this issue. The quotes from Nina Jackson's (cautiously) optimistic research results match my classroom observations of the Sophomore English students this year. In some situations, the positive effects of music can energize students, increase their motivation levels and boost their level of effort on tasks that they may not enjoy : Nina Jackson In her article “Music and the Mind” suggests that although more research needs to be done, we can be cautiously optimistic about the potential benefits of listening to music to motivate students, improve concentration and study skills. She supports the use of music in the classroom. In fact, she calls music the new teaching tool for the 21st century.

Elona Harjes quotes Nina Jackson as saying,

"Music plays with your state of mind as the electrical energy generated by firing neurons creates brain waves. The music a person chooses to listen to can influence the waves’ frequency, and their state of mind. It’s not only the mind that is influenced by music, the body also responds. Musical messages travel down the spinal cord, impacting the autonomous nervous system that regulates the heart rate, blood pressure, muscular activity, metabolism, and other vital functions…

Energizing music can make your brain exercise longer and harder. It increases speed and workload capacity … music with a strong steady beat can increase endurance, boost effort level, increase motivation and distract from discomfort and agitation."

"you say potato, I say potahto,.." a comparison of two grocery stores in Valdez, AK

Here is the link to my 5 minute iMovie on two grocery stores in Valdez, Alaska--Rogue's Garden, a health food store, and Carrs Safeway, a "mainstream" grocery store.

QuadBlogging, the next chapter for my English classes?

On a walk today, while thinking about a problem that I share with my English students, I realized that an organization like QuadBlogging offers some solutions. My English students and I feel uninspired as writers because we don't have a meaningful audience for our work. I have enjoyed designing this blog and writing my weekly posts, yet our class is not set up to encourage (or require) fellow students to respond to our blogs. As a blog author, I feel that I have designed a comfortable and creative place for people to have discussions and share their ideas, yet no one shows up to partake in the discussion. My sophomore English students, for the most part, really dislike the type of writing they are required to turn in to their teachers. They know that their writing will be analyzed, graded, given a bit of positive feedback, and returned to them. What a boring journey for a piece of writing. Who cares about writing a quality essay, except for those students who are highly motivated to get a good grade? In our CEP 882 class, our small group discussions on Facebook are improving in quality and relevance, yet our blogs are silent repositories for our weekly posts and creative projects. How can I change the journey of my students' writing so that they can post to a blog and receive meaningful feedback from fellow students around the world? I wish that I had feedback on my blog posts, and I know that it would breathe life into my students' writing to have an audience for a blog that showcases their ideas and creative projects.
In the system of QuadBlogging, a group of 4 schools makes an agreement to comment on each other's blogs on a 4-week rotation schedule. These schools are matched by grade level and specific interests. I plan to be a full-time English teacher next year, with a classroom blog for each English class. With the QuadBlogging structure, my students will be able to respond to the blogs created by students in other parts of the U.S. (or world) during a 3-week period while they prepare the posts that they want to share with the 3 partner schools. During their week in the spotlight, the students will receive quality comments on their writing from fellow students. I look forward to measuring the growth in writing skills and motivation while doing this QuadBlogging program next year, as compared to the relatively slow rate of growth this year with the traditional system of classroom writing.
I know that this post doesn't connect to our interior design studies for this week, except in the imaginative way in which a blogger deliberately creates a "salon" environment for discussions on selected ideas. When the blogger's voice echoes in an empty "salon", the motivation to write starts to die away.

Connections between Japanese Internment Camps and my 4-6th grade classroom

This post is in honor of the teacher who inspired me to follow in her footsteps, Ms. Chiyo Masuda. I learned life-long lessons during my three years as her student in a combined grade classroom for 4th-6th grade in Berkeley, California. As a young girl, Ms. Masuda and her family were forced to live in a Japanese-American internment camp during WWII. By teaching her students about how she dealt with this early exposure to racism and fear, she showed us to rise above injustice and prejudice in order to create a respectful learning community. (Here is a link to an excellent student-created Voice Thread about the Internment Camp experience)

In my recent studies of interior design, I have been thinking about Ms. Masuda's effective interior design of our 4th-6th classroom. Even though I was young, I have three years worth of memories of that classroom, with a wall of windows opposite the doorway, cozy nooks for game playing, low bookshelves that created a window seat area, tables for collaborative work and beautiful pieces of Japanese artwork along with featured student artwork. In the evocative terminology of Sarah Susanka, I responded to the elements of "light to walk towards", "shelter around activity", "public to private"(group work spaces and private reading spaces) and "point of focus" (the Japanese and student artwork.)

I have also reflected on how incredibly devastating it must have been to Ms. Masuda as a young child of 7 to be forcibly moved from her family home in the Bay Area to the ugly barracks of the internment camp. I can't recall which camp was her "home" nor can I remember how many years she spent there. My dear teacher passed away 16 years ago, so I am unable to talk with her about her experiences. However, during her three years as my teacher, I remember how she gathered us together in reading groups focused on books such as Farewell to Manzanar and Number the Stars so that we could learn about the heart-wrenching experiences of the concentration camps of the Holocaust and the Japanese Internment camps. The Voicethread project (in the link above) includes some thought-provoking interviews with survivors of the Japanese Internment camps. One woman recalls the shame felt by the intensely private Japanese women when they had to use public latrines without walls for privacy. Using their artistic talents to rise above their inhumane conditions, the women discovered that they could salvage and decorate large boxes, thus creating beautiful privacy shields for their personal use. I imagine that Ms. Masuda, her family and friends in the internment camps had to use all of their strength of will and artistic powers to find beauty in the desert environments of the barracks. Perhaps these experiences helped to fine-tune her sense of interior design, so that she could create spaces where my classmates and I could feel at home in the classroom.