WHAT IS TRANSFER?

I created this Founding Documents Jeopardy game, as a way of testing for transfer.  The questing is designed to progress from tests of recall, to tests of transfer.  In a way, the prompt is sort of the transfer, and so it is partially a tutorial.

For instance, a prompt begins:

"According this Constitutional Amendment, a state could lose legislative representation without immigration from that state."

In ways like this, I try to do the work of transfer, to show students the broader implications of some of these documents.  I try also to show the transfer of cause and effect from one document to the next, as these document progress chronologically from right to left.



I have to admit, I struggled to make this game for interactive, and in many way I feel I should have included more in the answer section, some commentary.  This would have made this game more of a tutorial and less of a drill and practice activity.

This game addresses the California Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Science, Science, and Technical Subjects, Reading Standard Nine, for Informational Texts:

"Analyze seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century foundational U.S. documents of historical and literary significance (including The Declaration of Independence, the Preamble to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address) for their themes, purposes, and rhetorical features."

TEXTBOOK REVIEW: MULTIMEDIA LEARNING 2nd ED., RICHARD E. MAYER

This textbook offers foundational knowledge on multimedia learning theories.  Never assuming, a priori, the validity of a multimedia approach over a single medium approach, the textbook explains the theories surrounding multimedia learning and their grounding in research.  The author, Richard E. Mayer is Professor of Psychology at University of California, Santa Barbara, from 1975 to present.  He has previously contributed on two textbooks about multimedia learning, and in his introduction he brings his long-term perspective, referencing the educational histories of 20th-century technologies.  Cautioning us, Mayer suggests we 

"consider the sad history of educational television – a technology that combined the visual power of the motion picture with the worldwide coverage of radio. By the 1950s, educational television was being touted as a way to create a 'continental classroom' that would provide access to 'richer education at less cost."

A girl tunes into the School of the Air, from her Outback home, in 1950's Australia
Source: http://lt.umn.edu/earthducation/expedition3/education/

 The idea of expanding learning like this has been fulfilled to a far greater extent than the early adapters of radio could have imagined.  The Internet is democratizing in many ways, but it is far less restrictive than radio because it blends mediums and removes certain time constraints inherent in radio communication.  Few had the foresight to imagine the restrictions of radio on learners how needed the extra, visual medium, or could they account fully for the failure of television (predicted to replace human teachers) to mediate classrooms and provide individualized attention. 

"Although different technologies underlie film, radio, television, and computer-assisted instruction, they all produced the same cycle. First, they began with grand promises about how the technology would revolutionize education. Second, there was an initial rush to implement the cutting-edge technology in schools. Third, from the perspective of a few decades later it became clear that the hopes and expectations were largely unmet."

Generally speaking, Mayer explains the failed expectations of technologies like radio (the advent of which, he suggests, birthed a certain futurist idealism toward education), television, and computers (both before and since the use of the Internet in classrooms) are not so much to the medium than as to the theory behind their use.

This is the technology-based approach, which is, theorizes Mayer, the "automation phase, [where] computers are used to replace humans on certain tasks", which is giving way for the 

"second phase of computer application – augmentation – involves the use of computers to enhance human performance on various cognitively complex tasks. Augmentation involves designing computer systems 'to act as assistants, aids, and power tools”

This shift in technology reflects the shift in multimedia learning toward towards learner-centered (rather than technology-based) approach and is finally making some good on the promise of improving both distance and classroom learning environments.  Academic writing can be heavy on predictions, but Mayer dissects the theories and methods that do and do not work in envisioning the future of education.

This textbook reads in two ways, a discussion of the history and theory of multimedia learning, and a manual for creating multimedia for learning.  To its' second end, the reader will find precise prescriptions for drafting multimedia, starting with the right the goal, the right theory.  Mayer argues that what he calls the information-acquisition view of learning is not a useful goal; it fosters recall, but not transfers of knowledge to new situations.  Multimedia should have the knowledge-construction view in mind, where the

"learner’s job is to make sense of the presented material; thus, the learner is an active sense-maker who experiences a multimedia presentation and tries to organize and integrate the presented material into a coherent mental representation."

The textbook takes a measured approach toward methods for creating effective multimedia presentations, arguing that situational considerations are a large factor (including the learners working memory capacity), but that certain methods are proven broadly more effective by studies of transfer testing.

Mayer finds that research supports a version of multimedia formats that adhere to the coherence principle, which calls for keeping multimedia presentations brief and concise.  Part of multimedia's effectiveness is that strips away extraneous information from a text by replacing it with visuals, but that to be most effective, visuals need to be simple, adding only essential information.  Length of presentation plays a large role in effectiveness also, therefor; lesson topics should be broken into segments of manageable ideas.  Streamlining extraneous information does not apply to redundant information, the representation of which signals importance and improves recall, in most situations.  The use of media should support the learner in constructing knowledge, or creating meaning, from multimedia.  Spatial continuity between text and visuals (as opposed to presenting one, then the next, in succession), allows learners to actively "build mental connections between them."  Further, multimedia with verbal narrations was shown more effective than that with text, when used in conjunction with visuals, perhaps because narration allows readers to process visuals and words simultaneously. 

As prescriptions for creating effective multimedia for learning, those are my major take-aways from the textbook.  The textbook is highly concerned with cognition and economy of implementation in multimedia learning, all of which is useful, and presented well.  On a last note, before rating the book, the author is writing in the first-person, presenting his views (and some of his research), which I find a relief from the endless barrage of passive sentence structures that accompanies most academic writing.  I give the textbook a two-thumbs-up.

Twilight Zone Writing Prompt Contest!!!

I stick to it like glue, the Writing Standard 3 for English Language Arts in 11-12 is like a wedge that momentarily breaks students away from the bitter medicine (but medicine all the same) of textual support, close reading, expository writing.  These are the skills that would transfer out most usefully across all subjects of study in post-secondary education, and I remember doing far too much busy work as a high school student to ever speak cynically about their promotion.  I think that reading and writing more informational texts is a positive thing; but it is the salient feature in the California Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects, so it gets old.
Having said that, I see in my favorite standard the potential to teach creative fiction writing in fresh ways that incorporate multimedia technologies.  Here is the whole text of the standard:

"3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.
a. Engage and orient the reader by setting out a problem, situation, or observation and its significance, establishing one or multiple point(s) of view, and introducing a narrator and/or characters; create a smooth progression of experiences or events.
b. Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, description, reflection, and multiple plot lines, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.
c. Use a variety of techniques to sequence events so that they build on one another to create a coherent whole and build toward a particular tone and outcome (e.g., a sense of mystery, suspense, growth, or resolution).
d. Use precise words and phrases, telling details, and sensory language to convey a vivid picture of the experiences, events, setting, and/or characters.
e. Provide a conclusion that follows from and reflects on what is experienced, observed, or resolved over the course of the narrative."

I am not exactly sure how well the some of the non-narrative writing standards would mesh with a talent search type assignment.  My idea is to ask students to evaluate writing from an opposite group (two writing formats will be used, students may work in pairs or groups of three depending on the format they select), to ensure nobody will vote for his or her own work.

For fun, here is the creative writing prompt (excerpted from the opening narration of The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street, an episode of The Twilight Zone):

"Maple Street, U.S.A. Late summer. A tree-lined little world of front porch gliders, barbecues, the laughter of children and the bell of an ice cream vendor. At the sound of the roar and the flash of light, it will be precisely 6:43 p.m. on Maple Street. This is Maple Street on a late Saturday afternoon. Maple Street — in the last calm and reflective moment — before..."

For those of you who have not seen the episode, the scene devolves into Cold War and invaders-from-outer-space type paranoia, with the citizens (monsters) of Maple street locked out of one man's home made bomb shelter, where he hoards his resources with his family.

The students should probably see the episode to understand the possibilities of where the story could go.  Rod Serling, the writer for Twlight Zone had a talent for using symbolism and suspense.  This interview series with Serling might help students to conceptualize ways to adapt science fiction to my component of differentiation.

In brief, I am looking for two formats of writing, which is intended to provide some differentiation for my students.

1. Your short story should include illistrations or photographs to accompany the writting.  You may collaborate with another student.
2. Your story will essentially be radio drama with music/sound effects and narration, not unlike the original chorus like narration of Serling in The Twlight Zone.  You may collaborate with other students, in groups of three.

Both of these formats, the text/visual and the audio files, will be uploaded to a class blog.  The blog will be acessable to parents, hopefully entertaining them and everyone else.  This is an excersize in short format writing.

Further modeling of this excersize, through an extended prompt, may prove an effective adaptation for ELL students.  

STAGE PROPERTIES WITH HANK

Here is a video of my neighbor Hank, who worked as a stage properties manager in the Santa Barbara area.  Being a stage properties manager means creating and finding (through antique stores, thrift stores, and flea markets) props that complement the conceptualization of a production.  Hank worked many for productions at the Lobero Theatre for the Santa Barbara Opera Company.  He is a long time Summerland, CA resident who has a massive collection of props, memorabilia, vintage surfboards and memories.  DIffentiating instruction for visual/spatial learners means you must expand the definition of a text.  Hank consults the written script of a play/production, as well as the director (to learn more about their conceptualization) before he finds or creates props.  His props become part of the visual text of the performance, so it is imperative that he have excellent visual literacy, as well as traditional textual literacy and historical knowledge.

SERIES INTRODUCTION AND CONTENT

Introduction

This post in the first in a series of three, sharing useful resources.  The resources that will be shared are five content area (English Language Arts) curriculum resources, five websites on differentiated learning, and five technology tools in my content area.  I hope these will be useful in your classroom.  My focus is on providing tools for your students to create knowledge, providing lesson plan resources and perspectives on teaching, and providing resources that offer ways to tether multimedia curricular materials and plans with common core standards.  I hope the websites on differentiated instruction suggest new ways to you on how multimedia materials work effectively to differentiate presentation and assessment methods.

Five English Language Arts Curriculum Resources

Teach with Movies offers a good guideline for teachers who are wishing to align the films that they screen with Common Core Standards generally.  Reference to these do not help completely if you are working with State Common Core Standards, as we are in California. Still this is a good resource for teachers who are looking for ways to ground film screening in standards.  Their website includes links to printable material and detailed lesson plans.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS TEACHER RESOURCES

The Library of Congress maintains a website with a directory of their own educational resources.  The directory features a filter to refine the results to those that match certain ELA Common Core Standards, or state content standards, should that be desirable.  The resources that it publishes for teachers include materials for both students and teachers and are ideal for English Language Arts and Social Studies/History classrooms.  Also of interest to teachers whose students are creating knowledge through the application of research skills are their Primary Source Sets.





The American Storyboard Project is a great way to teach students about digital story-telling and production.  The California Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects calls for the teaching of narrative storytelling, and this is an ideal way to integrate interpersonal communication/public speaking skills, not to mention a few ISTE standards into your lesson plan.  The stories may be considered for radio broadcast, but must be:
"-a true life experience-mindful of at least 3 senses-between 350 and 500 words (we will accept stories up to 600 words, which will be pared down to 500 or fewer during the editorial process)-written in first person-read by the writer "

This a great poetry teaching resource that includes lesson plans for teaching poetry (which is a difficult subject to teach, especially when time and resources are limited).  This is ideal also for teachers who would to hear other teachers perspectives on teaching poetry.  

The above video, a multimedia presentation of W.H. Auden's poem Night Mail, from the film of the same name, reminds us of an age when communications were first accelerated by coal power, which powered even the telegraphs of the lucky few.  It's pace and presentation suggest the original swarm of information that has ballooned to critical capacity today, and the very human need it fills.

The National Core Arts Standards offers an alternative perspective on how to evaluate the arts in your classroom.  The website features a PDF of the standards, that includes suggestions for assessing the standards; and on page 17, there is particularlly interesting segment on what it means to be artistically literate.  So much art, especially today, is a multimedia presentation.  Multimedia comprehension skills are necessary to interpret film and even theatre, not to mention, these are both valid mediums for addressing core standards in narrative writing.

WEBSITES FOR DIFFERENTIATED LEARNING

Howard Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences is often misunderstood, thought of more as a call to teach to all eight forms of intelligence, eight different ways.  Here, in this video, Gardner explains his theory and its' implications for instruction and assessment.  As he explains, the operative idea for teachers, is to become a child-centered classroom, where student's individual intellectual strengths are at least considered.  One way is through presentation of interactive multimedia, or promoting self-assessment.

Edutopia has this resource for suggesting how to create groups.  This article is a sort of polemic editorial, supporting homogeneous groups.  It was insightful to me because I had previously thought that distributing strong academic students evenly throughout the groups in my class was a good strategy to hedge against disaster.  It is a simple point, but counter-intuitive, that this strategy holds strong academic students, GATE or otherwise, back.

Education Week ofters two essays espousing different perspectives on differentiated instruction.  In one, the author,  James R. Delisle, argues against the promotion of differentiation generally, arguing specifically in favor of homogeneous classrooms (i.e., tracking, as he states plainly, which is distinct in some ways from the homogeneous student grouping, used for projects and the like).  In the other, a response to Delisle's essay, author Carol Ann Tomlinson argues in favor differentiation, citing and summarizing research pointing to the ineffectivness of tracking.  These are worth reading perspectives.  I do not have the seasoned perspective of a long time teacher, and in practice (having none), I can not speak to effectivness of differentiation, nor do I want to be a cyncic.  However, as Delisle points out, according to the research that he cites, teachers are not differentiating often in classrooms.  I think to ask why, if that is indeed the case, is the start of a valid critique. 

Edutopia also has this resource on teaching Visual Literacy (VL), elements which naturally engages all students.  As they ask, "Ever heard kids debate the object salience and shot angles of a Ryan Gosling meme?" (I have not, thankfully.)  Though so-called "Spatial Learners" and their ilk are more adept or apt to gravitate toward visual presentation and assessment options, VL engages Mathematical/Logical Learners also through mediums like graphs.  VL is not the same exactly as media literacy, as understood in English Language Arts classrooms.  There are some great strategies, such as think aloud exercises and group descriptive discussions that are discussed here, as well as solid procedures for present and assessing VL.  Remember, visual media are a texts too.

Bluiding on the idea of promoting visual literacy, here is one last article from Edutopia, on using graphic novels in your class.  Whether to diffentiate instruction or to simply introduce your students to this fun genre, there are a few things new comers should learn about the style of art used in them and expectations we should have for students interperating them.  For example, the image above is from the Japanese manga master, Shigeru Mizuki.  It is a non-verbal action frame despicting creatures from Japanese folklore; still, there is more to the artistic style, which acts as a narrative device, than representing a scene.

TECHNOLOGY RESOURCES FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS

 This website offters an easy to navigate digital anthology of major works in American liturature, likely more expansive than a text book, certainly not limited by phyisical volume, and free (consisting of works in the public domain).  This is a good tool for students or teachers who want to explore a certain period or author further.  Making relations between authors or accross movements by finding information to create knowledge and be digitally literate.

Of course there are ways to explore a period further, through exploring digitally transcribed obscrure or rare sources.  This would involve exploring digital data-bases, many of which offer access on a subscribtion basis.  However, there a few good free, though rather specific, ones availble to the general public.

For instance the the website Readex offers a wealth of digitally transcribed archival American newspapers.  You might use this to further explore the perspectives of people living the period that your class is reading about, or simpily find out if your hometown was as dull as it is now 100 years ago.  It is your choice, the idea is to use this tool to create knowledge that is original and draws from primary sources.

There are tools that I find just sort of fun and interesting that could serve useful purposes depending on how they are implimented.  For instance, if you were reading works dating even from the Old, Middle, or Early Modern English periods, as students in surveys of British Literature often are, the Online Etymology Dictionary is a fun way to understand more about language history and how word usages have changed overtime.  Print versions of these are extremely cumbersome (entries are much longer than in traditional dictionaries), so the online version is handy.  Often times archiac word usages or language serve to impede modern readers greatly.

Tools like the one above are ways to augment the reading expereince, though they just automate or digitize the functions of earlier technologies, they also accelerate thier use.  That alone justifies them, in my opinion.

In some ways, the internet simply offers tools to students that would be difficult or cumbersome on district budgets, if they exist at all.  Personally, I am interested in language histroy, and so I find resources like this on the history of the English language intrigueing.  I would share it with my students, so that they might further understand the origins and translated nature many early texts in a British Liturature course.

Other resources, like Writer's Digest, which provides a comunity of peer editors, and tools like writng prompts are broad, and allow students to explore the multiple functions available.  With supervision, this website could provide a supportive community or just more feedback to highschool creative writting students.