Research at Northwest

We were joined at our last department meeting of the year by Nancy and Ben for a discussion of research skills and projects in the Humanities department. As often happens, the meeting raised more issues than it resolved, though we began some useful discussions about academic integrity, appropriate sources and scaffolding the research process. (Each of these topics could be the basis of a future department meeting.)

Academic Integrity

Ben made the interesting observation that there is a wide gulf of understanding between American and Asian students on the issue of plagiarism and intellectual property.

Is there a productive way we could address this issue in a class or integration activity? We might compare several examples of papers that make use of secondary sources and determine if they do so in an appropriate way. It might be interesting to hear the students' feedback on papers which offer the same progression of argument and textual support as the Summary & Analysis page of Sparknotes. Do the students think this counts as a kind of plagiarism? If not, why not?

Scaffolding

Thinking about reducing plagiarism led to a productive discussion of the pace and structure of our assignments. Throughout the grade levels, students get good practice with Works Cited format, annotated bibliography and thesis formulation. However, there may be more we can do to support their work with sources. Can we build in more structured exercises using a variety of source materials? Ben offered Document Based Questions as a useful model: these are short, focused exercises that allow students an opportunity to explore a research question while interacting with both primary and secondary sources. It would be ideal if we could increase the students' comfort level with the many databases that are available through the school and the Seattle Public libraries (thus also decreasing their tendency to go to Wikipedia and Google). Perhaps we could create an exercise that required them to compare ProQuest, J-Stor and e-library?

Finally, John pointed out that it might be helpful to be more explicit about the skills involved in reading for research: scanning a source for specific information and skimming to assess its relevance are techniques that need to be explicitly practiced with international students--and perhaps with domestic students as well.

Teaching So Students Remember

The first TESOL workshop I went to was given by Kathy Olson, an educational consultant who reminded me of a veteran elementary school teacher--in a goood way. Her presentation outlined ways for teachers to capitalize on basic brain-research findings.

Naturally, she cited the alarming statistic that most of us forget as much as 80% of what we read and 90% of what we hear within 24 hours. However, she offered lots of ideas for working with this in the classroom.

Her first suggestion was about attention. She is WAY into stimuli, the more intense the better. She points out that students don't learn anything if you don't have their attention...so she recommends music, movement, humor, emotions, costumes, surprise. She points out that most of us love to guess and apparently, we try harder to remember information we've guessed wrong.

Olson recommends visuals, as vision trumps all other senses in the impact it makes on the brain. Even simple things like color can make a measurable difference: colored paper, highlights and of course pictures. (Evidently, groups using illustrated texts performed 36% better than groups using text alone.) She touted the great return you get by accessing prior knowledge. Connecting new information to information already stored in long-term memory enables the brain to process more effectively.

Her main idea is that once you have the students' attention and introduce some new material, it is important to "rehearse" or "manipulate" the information right away. This will move the new input from short term memory--where it will stay for fewer than 24 hours--to long-term memory, where it actually becomes useful to the student.

She offered lots of ideas about ways to do this: paraphrasing, summarizing, personalizing, predicting, repeating, mapping, classifying--especially classifying. The brain loves identifying patterns, charting differences and similarities, connecting ideas to each other or to personal experiences. I tried and failed to attach her powerpoint, but if you're interested, look her up on the web (Kathy Olson and "Teaching So Students Remember").

At times during her presentation, Kathy seemed a little grade school--or perhaps old-school: costumes? Really? However, I overheard a bunch of juniors yesterday fondly reminiscing about the 9th grade lecture Daniel gave dressed as Theodora of the Byzantine Empire. It's true that they remembered the costume better than the lecture, but at least two out of three remembered that there was a Byzantine Empire, with Theodora and Justinian on the throne.

T.E.A.C.H. Online

Somehow, while wrapping up in South Africa, Jeff found time to forward another interesting resource: T.E.A.C.H. Online. This is an extensive website, but a useful component is the section on teaching emotive or controversial history, which the site defines as history "where there is actual or perceived unfairness to people by another group or individual in the past." Some examples include teaching about slavery, empire and the Arab/Israeli conflict. The link contains practical lesson plans and also some philosophical principles which are interesting to think about.

The first of these is that the best results are achieved when students are invited to participate in specific inquiry questions. Teachers are challenged to create activities that allow independent thinking within "a secure historic and pedagogic framework."

This fine-sounding idea is echoed in another principle, that of interpretations. It's important that students grapple with multiple understandings of a historical event or situation. Students need practice comparing versions of history and assessing the different kinds of evidence, source material and points of view that shape them. This gives students a more nuanced understanding of a particular set of events--and a deeper understanding of the discipline of history itself. One interesting lesson involves annotating a web site which is biased in favor of Israel. The specific inquiry is for students to take note of what is missing and what is emphasized in this account. How might a Palestinian describe these events differently?

I am reminded of the Age of Explo exercise the 9th grade sometimes does, which offers students different accounts of the discovery/despoiling of the Americas by European explorers. Students immediately recognize and appreciate the opportunity this exercise creates: the opportunity to sharpen their judgment and do their own thinking.

Thanks, JB, for sending this interesting website. We are looking forward to getting the next Blair Report live, in real time.

Wikipedia: Guilty Pleasure or Role Model?

When I began writing this blog, Alan drew my attention to a blog called Shared Leadership by educational consultant Jamie Feild Baker. One of Baker's recent posts was a feisty defense of Wikipedia, whose detractors, she suspects, tend to be a bit old-school in their ideas about education. In fact, she feels that many of the Wikipedia features most often disparaged by teachers are in fact virtues--or at least realities of education in the 21st century.

What are some of Wikipedia's core values?

• Accessibility: Wikipedia's mission is to be free, easy to use and available in many languages.

• Transparency and Currency: Political agendas are prominently flagged and openly discussed. It is possible to track the history of every article, to read profiles of many of the contributors and to judge how each edit was received by the broader community.

• Inclusive Collaboration: Anyone can contribute to Wikipedia, at any moment, from anywhere in the world.

This last point, of course, is where we teachers often get stuck. Who are these people? Is this information reliable?

Baker suggests that engaging these questions is exactly the sort of work our students need to be doing. Limiting inquiry to neatly vetted sources may not best equip students for the fast-changing, paradigm-shifting world they are venturing into. There is bad information on Wikipedia, to be sure, and it's our job as educators to point that out.

But there's a lot to like about Wikipedia. Their Mission Statement: To empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain and to disseminate it effectively and globally.

That sounds quite compatible with our own " diverse community of people who challenge each other to learn in a healthy, creative and collaborative atmosphere. Or doesn't it? Let me know if you think this post may require cleanup.

See Jamie's blog to read her own words or to see a short-ish (20 minute) video clip of Wiki Foundation Chair Jimmy Wales. (You may need to search her blog to find the post, but it's worth it.)