Thanks to some blog love from Roland I put together a small, inadequate list of how the scribing blog love is spreading; check out these wonderful teachers:

Chris Harbeck's class blog hub (innovator par excellence!)

Ryan Maksymchuk's suite of class blogs (more scribing class blogs than you can shake a stick at!)

Derrick Willard's class blog

Jim Homan's Cathoilic Morality wiki

Mr. Marti's precalculus class blog

Reversearp's (an alias I believe) precalculus class blog

Mrs. Everard's AP Calculus class blog

Image by dkuropatwa via Flickr

Every new day brings more new math (and non-math) bloggers. This is a small and woefully incomplete list. If I've failed to include your blog, or another one you know of, where the teacher has implemented the practice of having daily student authoured scribes please share it here in the comments.

actually, it was 11 minutes and 45 seconds.

This is the slidecast from one of three talks I gave on Friday October 9, 2009. I was in Virden Manitoba participating in the NIBBLE Conference for the Fort La Bosse School Division.

More coming soon. Everything will be aggregated on the Senior Years Information and Communication Technology wiki I'm maintaining to share all the work I do in Manitoba with teachers across the province ... and you.

On Monday two new blogs started up, the AP Calculus AB: Without Bound blog is still going strong.

This is what I did the weekend before the blogs went live:

COURSE TAG

I decided on a course tag. This has become fairly routine now. I've got it down to a system. I know my students will be blogging and will have at least one assignment on flickr, at least one project on a wiki, and one major open ended project where they may use any of a variety of tools freely available on the net. The course tag allows us to identify our work as ours and aggregate it through RSS and Google Alerts. I try to chose tags that are unlikely to be chosen by anyone else, anywhere, and are meaningful to me and my students.

My Pre-Cal 40S (Winter 2009) class tag is: pc40sw09

My Applied Math 40S (Winter 2009) class tag is: am40sw09

The AP Calculus AB 2008 class tag is: apcalc2008 (that's not so unique actually, need to work on this for next year)

CLASS BLOG TEMPLATES

I use Blogger for all my class blogs. I sometimes use their pre-set templates and sometimes search the net for a different, but compatible, Blogger template. Generaly, the Applied Math class is my template laboratory. I have one blog each semester where I use a non-standard Blogger template to play with different design ideas and stay fresh and up-to-date with editing templates. I've learned lots of html and css this way.

BRANDING

Once the template is chosen I head over to flickr and do a creative commons search for an eye catching picture of an open window. I started doing this last year. The picture brands the blogs from each school year with a visual cue that allows me to reuse templates from year to year while maintaining a certain distinctiveness for each year's set of classes.

Why an "open window?" Because all my class blogs share this descriptive text:

A window through the walls of our classroom. This is an interactive learning ecology for students and parents in my Pre-Cal Math 40S class. This ongoing dialogue is as rich as YOU make it. Visit often and post your comments freely.

BASIC TOOLS

my email address


At the top of the sidebar I publish my email address. Students will need this from day one and periodically throughout the semester. Sometimes, years after they've been in my class they come back to their class blogs to get my email address to get in touch with me. The email address is typed this way: dkuropatwa {at} gmail {dot} com to cut down on spam bots harvesting it. I get spam anyways, but gmail is really quite good at filtering most of it out.

translation tool


Right underneath my email address I install a Google Translation Gadget. It's been estimated that collectively the students at my school speak 55 different languages and share 10 different religions. It is my hope that this increases accessibility for their parents. Also, about 33% of our students are non-native speakers of English. And it's wicked cool.

Visitor Map


The next down the sidebar is a ClusterMap. This allows us to see where we've had visitors from as the semester progresses. Students are often fascinated to see how we get hits only from Winnipeg in the first few days of class and then start to collect hits from around the world. While some of these hits are random visitors (hit and run) many aren't. I use my professional blog, and sometimes twitter, to point other people to some of the excellent work my students are doing. (Yesterday's scribe post in the Pre-Cal 40S class was fantastic! It quickly generated quite a few comments amongst the students in the class, some of whom want to learn html skills from the scribe.)

Never underestimate the importance of "audience" in motivating kids to do good work; not for marks, but for social credit. Leveraging "social credit" to motivate kids to learn is an underutilized force in school, but that's a topic for another day.

AnswerTips widget


Next down the sidebar I install the Answer Tips widget. It makes every word written on the blog clickable. Try it. I've got it installed on this blog too. Any time anyone double clicks a word a popup window tells you the meaning, pronunciation (often with an audio sample), and links to further sources. When I demoed this functionality in my first class of the semester the students gasped. One said, "This totally owns the physics blog!"

I like using the AnswerTips widget to emphasize the importance of spelling ("If you don't spell it right the widget won't work.") and sometimes publish vocabulary words on the blog that students learn about through clicking.

equation editor


Next, for my math blogs, is the SITMO Equation Editor. An elegant solution to adding mathematical expressions to blog posts, or any website really. It's very easy and intuitive to use and the kids learn something about LaTeX (<-- double click that word) incidentally as they use it. I like incidental learning.

labels


Lastly, I enable Labels, Blogger's version of categories in WordPress. I keep them sorted alphabetically. Labels are really important in the way we organize information on the blog.

ORGANIZING THE BLOG WITH LABELS

Students will essentially do two sorts of writing on the blog:

(1) Scribe Posts: a daily summary of what was learned in class each day. Authoured by students for students. Each scribe selects the scribe for the following day. Over the course of a semester, in a class of about 25, each student will authour at least three but no more than four of these. Fewer students/class increases the number of scribe posts/student. These posts are labeled: Scribe Post.

(2) Reflections: Before each unit test each student must publish to the blog a brief post outlining their personal muddiest point in the class so far. I ask them to do this up to 3 days before the unit test so I can address these issues in class. This is worth one mark on the unit test. Some students publish their reflections the morning of the test. That's OK to get the one mark, unfortunately they miss out on clearing up the other confusions they may have to get many more marks. It's their choice. These posts are labeled: Reflection (in the past we've labeled them BOB).

Students are free to publish anything else they like to the blog as long as it's connected to our class. If they do I ask them to label it: On My Mind. (This is new this semester.)

Every time a student publishes anything on the blog they must include exactly three labels:

(1) The type of post: Scribe Post, Reflection, or On My Mind.

(2) The title of the unit of study it relates to. e.g. Circular Functions, Matrices, etc.

(3) Their name; first name only.

If they don't label their posts properly they cannot receive any marks for it. It's the same as putting your name on work before handing it in. I can't give someone any marks if I don't know whose work it is, even if they handed it in. Scribe posts are worth 5% of their class mark as a completion grade. When the class excels at scribing, which is more often than not, I raise that to 10% to recognize the good work they've done.

FIRST POST

The first post is published to the blog before I ever meet my classes. It's become pretty standard for me now. With only very few modifications it's pretty much the same each semester. I always include a link to the course outline and, of course, I publish the SMARTboard slides from each day's class to the blog so students can review anything we discussed at their leisure, now or five months from now when they are preparing for their exams.

Their first night's homework consists of three things:

(1) Email me. This is so I can copy & paste their email addresses into an invitation to join the blog. (In Blogger go to: Settings > Permissions > scroll down and invite new authours.

(2) Get a Google account. We make use of a suite of Google Tools and they need it to ...

(3) get a Blogger account.

I've made short screencasts (that need updating — I had a cold when I first made them) using Jing that illustrate how to sign up for Google and Blogger accounts. Links to them are embeded in the slides from the first class which are published on the blog.

NEXT STEPS

In my next post in this series I'll talk about the first few days of class and the first few posts I make to the blog as we get organized for the semester. I'll also share how I deal with certain pitfalls like students that don't have computers, email accounts, hit technical snags, or don't register for the blog.

Terry Freedman asked me to contribute an article the the second edition of Coming of Age: An introduction to the NEW world wide web. It was originally scheduled to be released this month but due to circumstances beyond Terry's control publication has been pushed back to January 2007. Terry recently emailed all the contributors to the new edition to say we should feel free to publish our articles on our blogs in the meantime. The second edition has over 50 articles; I'm really looking forward to reading it.


In the past few months a number of people have emailed me asking how I orchestrate the use of scribe posts in my classes. This article is a step-by-step guide to using scribe posts with your students ... and then, how to take it to the next level. ;-)

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Distributed Teaching and Learning


The Power of Pedagogy and Audience


by Darren Kuropatwa



All my classes are hybrid classes. They have both a face-to-face component and an online component. Each class is supported by a blog. The class blog is used in a number of different ways but in this article I will focus on two ideas, Scribe Posts and Feed Windows, pedagogy and audience; the first leads into the second.



Harnessing the Power of Pedagogy: The Scribe Post



This straightforward idea has incredibly powerful consequences.



Each day, except for test days, a different student is responsible for the daily scribe post. This is worth 5%-10% of their class mark (see below), everyone who writes a scribe post gets their marks -- non-blogging students don't (it's their choice). They end their post by choosing the next scribe. Over the length of the course these scribe posts grow into the textbook for the course, collectively authored by the students; one student at a time, one day at a time.



The first scribe is a volunteer. The teacher's daily involvement is limited to updating a post called The Scribe List which is at the top of the links list in the sidebar of each class blog (sample class blog). The Scribe List is an easy way for scribes to see who has already scribed and who they can choose next. Once the whole class has been scribe once we cycle through the class again. I teach in a semester system (full courses are taught in 4-5 month blocks). In my classes, every student will be scribe a minimum of three times; some will write four scribe posts. In this way, the responsibility for teaching and learning is distributed both across the class and the semester.



The assignment is simply to post a brief summary of what happened in class each day. The instructions given to students look something like this:

Write a brief summary of what we learned in class today. Include enough detail so that someone who was away sick, or missed class for any other reason, can catch up on what they missed. Over the course of the semester, the scribe posts will grow into the textbook for the course; written by students for students. Remember that as each of you write your scribe posts. Ask yourself: "Is this good enough for our textbook? Would a graphic or other example(s) help illustrate what we learned?" And remember, you have a global audience, impress them.

The mechanics for teachers, aside from updating The Scribe List, also requires the occasional reminder to students to stay on top of their scribe posts. Occasionally, if the day's scribe is sick or away for any other reason give the class a few minutes, perhaps while taking attendance, to decide among themselves how they are going to deal with this issue. (One of the ideas behind the scribe post is to make students responsible for their own learning.) This essentially requires that a student volunteer to "cover" for the scribe who should pick up the routine again the next day.



This simple idea has lead to some incredible student work. Early scribe posts tend to be entirely text based (example). As the class progresses, successive scribes begin to try to outdo each other and their scribe posts begin to incorporate text, images and colour used in meaningful ways (example).



When scribes reach this level of excellence they are inducted into The Scribe Post Hall Of Fame. The students first name only (to protect their identity), grade, subject, link to their post, post date, inductor and reason for induction are all recorded on a wiki. This is a further motivator for outstanding student work as different classes compete to be the Consecutive Hall Of Fame Scribe Post Record Holder.



Anyone can induct a scribe post into The Hall Of Fame. As a matter of fact, it's more powerfully motivating and has a greater impact when the inductor is not the student's own teacher. You can find a list of class blogs that use scribes in The Hall Of Fame. Feel free to add yourself and your classes to the list. (The password for the wiki is: iscribe) You'll notice that all the 2005-2006 School Year participants are math classes. That's because I began this project and I teach math. Nonetheless the pedagogy is easily transferable to other domains. Anne Smith, an English teacher in Colorado, has started using scribes in her English World Literature class. Alison Elkins, a grade 5 teacher in Winnipeg, has also had some success using scribes in her class (Alison's blog has moved, the new blog is here). This year, 2006-2007, we also have a badge that teachers can put (copy and paste) on posts that get inducted into the Hall Of Fame. Some of the benefits brought on by the Scribe Post Hall Of Fame are:

• Recognition of outstanding student work.


• Additional motivation for students to produce their best work.


• Encouragement for other students to excel.


• Build students self-esteem by using this forum to generate widespread public recognition.

Of course the question arises, what does it take to get inducted into the Hall Of Fame? In a post to my class blogs called "Create a Scriber's Guide to Scribing", I asked two of my classes these questions:

• How do you go about writing a scribe post? Do you do anything differently in class when it is your turn to scribe? If so, can you describe what you do differently in class when you are scribe?


• What makes a scribe post worthy of entry into The Scribe Post Hall Of Fame? Specifically, what should be included in the post for it to achieve this recognition?


• Compare the first scribe post you wrote to the most recent one. What, if anything, did you do differently?

I'm going to patch together three different students answers but all their answers are worth reading. They answered here and here.

Manny: "When I write my scribe posts, I try to make it as so my classmates go, "ohh!" and "yeah that's it right on." That is my first priority because I want everyone in the class to do well, "we're all in it together" (at least that's how I feel anyway). During class, if it's my turn to scribe, I feel pressure that if I don't do well in helping my peers I'll let everyone down. So in class, I open both my eyes and ears wider than normal, and my pencil taking notes on just about everything related to the topic."



Corrie: "I think to be able to make a scribe post worthy to be in The Scribe Hall Of Fame, is the content. I think that's no. 1. But you also have to look at it differently. You have to be creative with your scribe. I think you should try to be different, do something that no one has done before. You should try to stick out from the group. To be recognized content and creativity is most important ... well that's what I think."



Teddie: "When comparing my first scribe and my very recent scribe I can see the quality of the scribes improve greatly mostly because of the competitiveness of the other scribers to make the hall of fame."

If you've already looked at the examples I've linked to you'll see the quality of work this pedagogy fosters in students. If not, you may be asking "Why should I do this?"



Having a daily scribe has improved both the student's learning and my teaching -- since I insist that they summarize their learning each day I had certainly better provide the content for them to work with. On my professional blog, A Difference I wrote about the impact of having daily scribes on my students and my teaching. I encourage you to read it. In the meantime consider this: Medical school is often considered one of the most academically demanding educational experiences a student can have, and so it should be. The paradigm in medical school that leads to deep learning is "watch it, do it, teach it." Scribe posts will bring that paradigm into your classroom, regardless of what you teach or how old your students are. As a teacher you know that there is nothing like having to teach something that leads to learning it well. Scribe posts make your students teachers ... with a global audience.



Harnessing the Power of Audience: Feed Windows



Once you have created a class blog where students are publishing what they are learning then we can open Feed Windows to each other's classes. Feed Windows are dynamically updated (via RSS) windows into other class blogs. If you can't regularly publish new content to your blog then as long as someone is publishing on a blog to which you have a feed window open new content is added automatically, all the time. This results in really distributing the work of teaching and learning across the globe.



Every blog has an RSS feed (see the article earlier in "Coming of Age" by John Evans, What Are RSS Feeds And Why Haven't I Heard About It?). Using one of the (free) services outlined below you can add feed windows to the sidebars of your classroom blog(s).



It’s too early to identify all the ramifications, good and bad, of using feed windows, but one thing is clear; there are benefits for both students and teachers. Students benefit by getting access to other students and teachers around the world who are learning the same or similar content. Teachers benefit by keeping the class blog a dynamic environment for students and getting pedagogical inspiration from other teachers. For example, my idea for wiki solution manuals came about because of something I saw happening in another class in the feed window on one of my class blogs.



It may be objected that feed windows lead to information overload. Also, what if objectionable content comes through the feed window? The information is there for students who need it or wish to make use of it. They are not obliged to access it. As regards inappropriate content, while possible, it is highly unlikely to occur as students work to outshine each other in their educational efforts. Also, feed windows are only opened to the classes of blogging teachers; the edublogging community is a safe self-monitoring community. Will mistakes happen? Yes, but they really just provide an educational moment for everyone involved. (see my blog post Safe Blogging Resources under the headings Podcasts and Stories From the Classroom).



These two ideas, Scribe Posts and Feed Windows, lead naturally from one to the other. Using Scribe Posts encourages student creation of outstanding content. Using Feed Windows distributes that teaching and learning across the globe. This provides fertile soil for more creative teaching and learning with web 2.0 tools.



How To Install A Feed Window On Your Blog



At the time of writing (September 2006) I am aware of five different ways you can get a feed window for your blog. All these tools are free of charge although one will give more design choices for a small fee.



These first four sites will generate html code that you just copy and paste into your blog template, the last is entirely automated. You may have to experiment a little until you have the Feed Window placed exactly where you would like it. Keeping it in the side bar makes it always accessible from the front page of the blog.



Feed2JS


http://feed2js.org/


The Grandaddy of them all. Alan Levine really originated the idea of using RSS feeds to redistribute content in the form of del.icio.us links. He not only had the original idea, he created the first tool to make it work. And it's free. This is the tool I use on my professional blog, A Difference, but I also use a little html coding.



Grazr


http://grazr.com/


Grazr is a web 2.0 site that automatically generates the code to produce a Feed Window on your blog. You select an RSS feed and a few formatting parameters with a few clicks of the mouse and the html code is created on the spot. Copy and paste. With Grazr you can actually wrap several feeds into a single Feed Window and graze the content from several classes.



FeedoStyle


http://feedostyle.com/


FeedoStyle is a similar web 2.0 service to Grazr but each feed will have its own window. Also, formatting options are limited unless you upgrade to a paid account. Prices vary from $5.00 US to $15.00 US. The basic service is free.



RSS to Javascript


http://www.rss-to-javascript.com/


This is a completely free service. Click on a few buttons to customize the look of the Feed Window. You can preview how it will look before you click the [Generate JavaScript] button. When you do just copy and paste.



Blogger in Beta


http://beta.blogger.com


Blogger (by Google) has recently updated their software. It's currently in beta but has a host of new features that make it superior to the original service. One of those features is the ability to just paste an RSS feed into a form and Blogger will automatically create a Feed Window for you. Then you can drag it to wherever you want it to appear in the sidebar of your blog. It really doesn't get easier than this. Blogger is a completely free blog hosting service. This is the one that I use with my classes.



Endnote


Question: 5 marks just for writing a blog?!? If I wrote, "I really can't be bothered to blog about this, but I need the 5 marks", would that get me 5 marks?