Teaching Students to Summarize via Twitter

One of the problems that I have encountered when asking students to work independently is that I need to
create some system of accountability.  In my Project-Based Learning (PBL) units, I often provide my students with many sources and options to learn, and I ask each working group to create a Google site as a hub for their running notes.  This allows me to constantly check in on their work and to therefore monitor how they are progressing, issues that they may be having, and so on.

However, I have often been bothered by the fact that many students, and we are talking about honors students here, are often not good at summarizing material.  Very often, I open a Google site to find verse-by-verse translation/explanation of material where a couple of well-thought-out sentences would have sufficed.  It reached a point where some students were so focused on the verse that they were reading that they lost sight of the greater context, often asking me questions whose answers were contained in the previous paragraph.

Today I finally decided to do something about this.  Rather than have my students walk into class, form into their regular work groups, and fan out across the building working on their assignments, I had everyone come into class together and sit down with an ipad (we use an ipad cart in my class) and a text.  Each student was assigned one section (one parashat ha-shavua) and told that they were to read five verses and then boil all of that down to one tweet.  Not one sentence - one, little, 140-character tweet.  They were to do the same for the next five verses, and the five after that, and the five after that (and five more tweets for further practice tonight).

Aware of the fact that my students tend not to use Twitter, and that there are likely parents that do not want their children to do so, I created a Twitter account for our class (@7AChumash) and had everyone log in and post through that account.  Blessedly, a Twitter account can be signed in on multiple devices at once and thus the entire class could engage in this activity at the same time.  You can see some of their results by clicking on the link above.

All in all, the students enjoyed this activity and benefited greatly from it.  For some, the challenge was how to shrink their tweets down by a few characters, and I explained that text language, abbreviations, and misspellings were par for the course.  For almost all of them, the process of determining which information was essential and which was less-important detail was a valuable exercise in the fine art of summarizing.  Hopefully, this will carry over into their daily research and their notes will become more focused while simultaneously becoming shorter.

A Smashing PBL Success (with an assist from Twitter)!

As a teacher, there are few moments in your job than when your students not only reach but actually exceed the expectations and hopes that you have for them.  Over the past two days, and really over the past several weeks, I was privileged to have one of those moments.

Every year, my 7th grade Chumash (Torah) class learns a unit on kashrut, the laws related to keeping kosher.  It is one of my favorite units to teach, and one of the students' favorite units to learn.  In addition to the Biblical text, I bring in a wide range of articles, videos, pictures, and other materials that discuss recent issues in kashrut, ranging from how we determine if buffalo or turkey is kosher, to problems that might arise when ordering coffee at Starbucks.  If any unit was ever primed to be turned into a Project-Based Learning (PBL) unit, this was certainly it.

However, in preparing the unit I ran into my usual dilemma.  I had plenty of materials ready for the students, both posted on a class wiki and copied and placed in a filebox on my desk.  I had arranged for the students to have daily use of the school's ipad cart during our class and sporadic access to the computer lab.  I had divided the class into solid working groups.  But I needed a project that would drive their learning and would lead them to produce something more than a simple spitback of the material (see this post for more on this problem).

I wanted my students to create visual presentations of the laws that they were studying, but I wanted them to present them to people who were not knowledgeable of those laws.  My goal was to find a class of Middle School students who knew little to nothing about the details of the Jewish kosher laws who could serve as the target audience for my students and their presentations.  My thinking was that since the other students would not be familiar with any of the terms of details of the subject matter, my own students would have to prepare assiduously to be able to explain virtually any word that they would mention.  In other words, spitback would not be enough - they would have to fully understand every single aspect of what they were presenting.

So I reached out on Twitter looking for an audience.  Within moments, Tyler Amidon (@mramidon), a friend from #Edchat who I have met in person and correspond with frequently (see the story of our live meeting here) replied that he felt that he had a class or two who could participate.  Tyler is principal at the Highland Ranch campus of Denver Christian Academy, and he put me in touch with Tim Zieste, who teaches 7th grade history.  As luck would have it, Tim's classes recently learned what my students would refer to as the Chanuka story, specifically the restrictions that the Seleucids placed on the Jews, which included restrictions on keeping kosher.  I had hit paydirt.

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So now the project proceeded on two fronts.  In the classroom, my students were running like well-oiled machines.  They entered class every day, opened their iPads, and set to work on the material.  Some groups tackled each item as a group, others split the material up among themselves.  I asked every group to create a Google Site as a place to take notes, which gave me the ability to monitor their progress.  For the actual presentations, I allowed them to use any presentation tool that they preferred, which resulted in a collection of Powerpoints, Google Presentations, Prezis, and one iMovie (out of eight groups of students).  Once in a while, class ended with a Socrative quiz, which allowed me to further gauge how each group was progressing, which sources and materials they were using, what help they might still need from me, and if they had gone beyond the materials that I provided to seek out new sources of information.  In total, I spent less than one period over the course of over three weeks doing any real frontal teaching, and that was to learn a source that was not essential to the unit as a whole but that helped provide a important way of thinking about the entire system of kashrut.

At the same time, Tim and I were in contact to work out the details of our collaboration.  Over Skype, we discussed the nature of what we each teach, the nature of the project, the size of our classes, and the particular timing of the presentations.  That was following by several days of emails back and forth nailing down the logistics of how we would connect our students.  We decided to use Skype, as that provided my students with the chance to share their screens while speaking to Tim's students.

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And, finally, showtime!  I broke my class into two groups - four project groups in each one - so that they could spread out in the computer lab and not disturb the other groups.  Four groups presented yesterday and the other four today.  With the help of the amazing computer faculty at Yavneh (and especially our IT man Emyll Almonte), we figured out the best way to set up the students so everyone could speak and hear without disturbing the other groups in the lab at the same time (if you're wondering - audio headsets with splitters and snowball microphones which allow students to speak in indoor voices).  I gave my students some brief coaching on how to introduce themselves, to give an overview of their projects before diving into the nitty-gritty, and to make sure to stop and ask for questions every once in a while.

I would like to say that my students did me proud, but I would be selling them short if that would be all that I said.  They were, in a word, amazing.  They were poised and articulate and very well prepared with their material.  Most groups kept a second computer open with additional notes to help them explain their points or answer questions.  While I could not hear what the students in Denver were asking, I was able to here my students respond and I was duly impressed with how much they had learned.  And remember - I taught them none of this material.  Said differently, I did not lecture this material to them.  I brought the material to them and allowed their natural curiosity and desire to turn out a good product drive them through this entire unit.  The students in Denver proved to be an excellent audience, asking many questions which kept my students thinking.  Most groups spent a few minutes after the formal presentations concluded schmoozing a little about their different schools and different lives.  Amazing Amazing Amazing.

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Now what?  For starters, our official post-PBL pow-wow in class tomorrow morning will include food as congratulations for a job well done.  Tim, Tyler, and I have scheduled a post-game schmooze to discuss any further takeaways for students on both sides.  I emailed the parents to let them know what a fantastic job their children did.  I am getting at least one easy blogpost out of this.

For my students, I hope that they appreciate how many skills they worked on over the course of this project.  They had to collaborate with their partners, which were chosen by me.  They had to decide on an effective approach to researching and curating material.  They had to step outside of themselves and think about all of the little things that they take for granted but that others may not understand in the slightest - and then figure out how to explain it. They had to create presentations that were ready for prime time, since they could not guarantee that their audience would be as forgiving as I would be. They had to really think about what Jewish law looks like to someone who does not live it, and be prepared to explain at some level why they do live it.

I gained a tremendous amount from this unit as well.  As I get more comfortable with iPads in my classroom, I continue to learn new apps and new ways of deploying those apps to help instruction.  I have become more sensitive to the need to stay on top of what the students are doing, and having them share a Google Site with me proved to be an excellent way to do that.  During the presentations, I discovered some content areas that I do not always cover but that really matter to Middle School students (such as "what happens if you don't keep kosher?").  And, of course, I learned that it is always important to test every aspect of your technology with time to spare before you go live.

I was also privileged to have many of my colleagues stop in to watch the presentations.  As we work to expand the practice of PBL in our school, sometimes showing it in action can be the best way to encourage someone who is considering PBL to actually give it a try.  Yes, it is a big leap to trust your students enough to take control of their own learning.  But with the proper preparation, structure, and constant guidance, the results can be, well, simply amazing.

Twitter Comes to Life at ISTE

I have written in the past about the importance that I attach to the social network Twitter, but the true importance of it was driven home to me on several occasions during last weeks conference of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). I knew going in that there would be many people there that I knew about via Twitter, perhaps because I follow them or perhaps because they are "Twitter rock stars". However, my own personal "Twitter moments" at the conference made the event something that it would not otherwise have been.

To wit:

1) No sooner had I boarded my plane Sunday morning and settled into my seat than the woman across from me asked me if I was going to ISTE. Turns out it was Dr. Shira Leibowitz (@shiraleibowitz), Principal of Solomon Schechter in Westchester, NY, an avid and respected tweep, both in Jewish and general education circles. Finally putting faces to the avatars, we had some fruitful discussions, occasionally joined by Dov Emerson (@dovemerson), founder of #jedchat and Assistant Principal at DRS-HALB on Long Island.

2) While waiting to enter the opening keynote, I finally met in person Debby Jacoby (@debbyj18) of the BJE in San Francisco, someone with whom I have been corresponding all year - to the point that we have already collaborated on several projects. I should note that that last statement is not strange in the twitterverse - several presentations at ISTE were co-run by people who considered themselves colleagues and friends yet had never met before coming to San Diego.

3) I walked into the conference on Monday morning and noticed a semi-familiar looking individual sitting on the floor (which is common at ISTE) perusing his daily schedule for the day. Taking a chance, I said, "Mr. Amidon?" - and Tyler Amidon (@mramidon), who I had only corresponded with via #edchat, looked up, recognized my Twitter name written on my badge, and wound up following me to the first session of the day. We would attend several other sessions together during the course of the conference, and have continued our dialogue in the week since. As he tweeted to me following the conference: "Chatting now will be that much richer now that I've shaken your hand!!"

4) I attended a panel session about flipped learning moderated by Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergman. During the session, I was tweeting notes and questions that I had about what was being discussed. Common practice is to do this mainly for those who cannot be in the session but want to follow it anyway (multitasking is very vibrant at ISTE). After I tweeted one question about something one of the panelists said, I glanced down and saw that he had tweeted me back an answer. This back-and-forth continued for a moment or two, and in the meantime others noticed the discussion and jumped in.

Now for the cool part. No sooner did the panel end when the person sitting in front of me turned around and asked if I was Rabbi Ross (my Twitter handle). When I replied yes, he introduced himself as the person who had just tweeted me a question, and we began speaking about creating online materials for Judaic Studies classes. As we made our way towards the door, someone else stopped me, and it turned out that she had also been following the tweets and suddenly we had a very rich conversation among five or six people about some new ideas in the Jewish classroom.

5) Of course, part of the way that I choose the sessions that I attended - out of several hundred choices - was by seeing which twitter heroes I wanted to hear from for more than 140 characters. As such, I had the pleasure of hearing Chris Lehmann (@chrislehmann) discuss his successes at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, Vicki Davis (@coolcatteacher) speak about wikis and the flat classroom, and George Couros (@gcouros) and Patrick Larkin (@patrickmlarkin) discuss visionary leadership and digital citizenship.

What is common in all of these anecdotes, and probably thousands of others that people could tell from ISTE, is that they highlighted the fact that Twitter is just a tool, but a very effective one. While I have learned much from so many people in snippet-length tweets, the most important thing to come out of all of that is the basis for real human interactions and relationships. Having interacted with people via Twitter, I knew to seek them out to learn more from them. I agree that networking with people in a blind fashion is missing something, but there is no question that it can certainly be a step to greater things.