The story in the newspaper is about a surprise that was ruined by Facebook’s new “Beacon” feature.  You know, the feature that allows Facebook advertisers to put up an ad on your friends’ pages alerting them to recent purchases you’ve made.  One embarrassed guy saw the surprise jewelry gift he had planned for his wife “ruined” when it was announced to her when she logged in to the site.

But the real story is about the surprise for Web 2.0 junkies who thought that all the free services that companies like Facebook provide maybe ain’t so free after all.  Apparently, our collective acceptance of google-ads, pop-ups, dancers promoting lower interest rates, little flash videos, and so forth says that we think the commercials are worth the information and services that we get for free.  But once the SQL servers start creating ads with our data, well, that crosses a line.  It takes a little shine off the Internet party when a billboard above the fireplace starts flashing data on where we bought our underwear, for how much, and invites the partygoers to make a similar purchase of their own.

Surprised?  I’m not.  When “old media” tycoons like Rupert Murdoch pay half-a-billion dollars for a social networking site like MySpace, you can surmise that he sees financial gain in it.  Half a billion is a lot to pay for a name, some software and servers, and a squirrelly bunch of teenage “users.”  Unless you see a big payday somewhere down the line.

Surprise!  Since you have input your likes, dislikes, and lured all your friends to sign up and sign in, I’m guessing that the terms of service you agreed to without reading them gives MySpace the right to use that information in just about any way they want, as long as they don’t, heaven forbid, sell that information to anyone else.  That was one way that folks imagined that they would be able to monetize their social networking investment but it hasn’t panned out.  And why should it?  These new service providers decided “why sell the information?”  It’s more valuable to keep it for themselves.  And it allows them to adopt the holier-than-thou position that they would never sell your information to anyone.  No one.  Ever.  But that’s because it is just plain too valuable to them, in business terms.

I guess we just didn’t see that one coming.  Surprise.

One of the topics that emerged this fall at TeacherPlaces Book Clubs is "play" and its role in education.  After reading several great posts on the topic by people much better informed on the topic than I am, I have arrived at this conclusion: the status of "play" in education is largely hypothetical.  To read some of these posts yourself, here are some links:

Bringing Play Into the Mainstream 

Yes, play gets lip service, mostly for children who are too young to read or writ.  But the minute that we could reasonably expect kids to track print with their eyes or hold a pencil, time for "play" is over and it is time to get down to the important "business" of learning the content and skills of academia.  Ned Hallowell, in his book The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness, refers to this impulse as the "great Harvard fallacy."  In other words, if we don't start working on that g.p.a. and SAT prep ASAP, getting into Harvard will slide off the table and a certain lack of adult happiness (read: earning power) will result.

So, even the most ardent defenders of play are very careful about what they say about its usefulness in certain situations.  Yet, it is easier to get into Harvard if you know how to play than if you don't.  It is axiomatic among college counselors that the so-called "perfect" record in high school (high grades, team captain, class president) can be the kiss of death at the most highly competitive colleges.  Those kids who show academic aptitude but who have done something more, something different, something exceptional, have a better chance at admission than those who followed all the rules to a "t."  Hallowell provides just such an example in his book.

So, how can we define play so that it sounds more productive and on point to those who think good grades are the key to success?

Well, we're back in the swing of things here in Orlando.  I've spent the last week doing team building and "get-to-know-you" activities, and now that the students' schedules have been corrected and adjusted, I'm ready to get us started on our books. 

I have 9th and 10th grade again this year, although unlike last year, this year three of my five classes are honors classes.  It's been fun to consider how I might do things differently with the honors class.

So, here's my plan for the beginning of the year.  I'm going to use Among the Hidden (Level 2) with the 9th graders.  It's so engaging and, while the reading level isn't incredibly challenging, there are really important concepts that we can discuss.  The one negative comment my students had last year was that I had them do too much 'stuff' while we were reading.  In retrospect, I agree with them.  There's so much to do and such good stuff in the teacher's guide, but it can be overwhelming for the students.  So, I'm going to try to focus on visualizing and vocabulary.  We'll do the "Vizualizing to find main idea" and "Visualizing reading by making connections."  We'll do one vocab word a day as a class and I'll ask students to find another word of their own to add to their notebooks.  We'll keep a word wall and develop and organization for the words we add to the wall.  We'll also use a few of the nonfiction pieces to begin practicing research skills like developing questions and noting facts.

Both of my 10th grade classes are honors classes.  We're beginning by doing The Hoopster (Level 3) as Book-in-a-Day.  This is actually an independent title, but I did this with the students last year and it went well.  Each student is responsible for a small part of the book.  They read, summarize, and note questions they have about what happened before and after their parts.  Then we go through the chapters and each person shares their information.

After The Hoopster we're going to begin Lay That Trumpet in Their Hands and then To Kill a Mockingbird.  We'll focus on tolerance and civil rights.  Then we'll move into a study of the Holocaust with Night .  Although this isn't a core novel in Level 3, we teach it to all 10th graders at our school.  There are several great nonfiction pieces in PITR that tie these two together nicely. 

That's my skeleton plan right now and I'll blog more details when we get going.

This topic came up as part of the TeacherPlaces Book Clubs discussion of Made to Stick, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.  Click here for the first post on this topic.

In that post, I cite the following definition for this phenomenon:

The book addresses a very interesting topic on pages 159 and following: the availability bias, defined as "a natural tendency that causes us, when estimating the probability of a particular event, to judge the event's probability by its availability in our memory." In other words, "we intuitively think that events are more likely when they are easier remember" (page 160). Hence people predict that homicide takes more lives than suicide, even though there are fifty percent more suicides in the United States in a year than homicides.

Tehre is more information about this bias at Wikipedia:

"The availability heuristic is a rule of thumb, heuristic, or cognitive bias, where people base their prediction of the frequency of an event or the proportion within a population based on how easily an example can be brought to mind. In these instances the ease of imagining an example or the vividness and emotional impact of that example becomes more credible than actual statistical probability." (Source: Wikipedia).

At the Book Club discussion, Sherry raises an interesting point about whether kids will now predict a greater probability of bridge collapse because of the bridge failure in Minnesota--a greater probability of bridges collapsing than, say, having an accident on a bridge.  Interesting question, and very pertinent to how our students build up cognitive biases based, in part, on how we handle the news of a particular event.

If anyone has example of this phenomenon to share, please do so here as a comment or at Book Clubs as a post.  When the Book Club is finished, we can keep this topic alive here if folks are interested. 

Over at the TeacherPlacesBookClubs I recently posted a summary of a research article that folks might be interested in here.  How asynchronous discussions impact learning is a very interesting topic, so I am reposting it here for comment. 

 "Asynchronous Discussions and Assessments in Online Learning"
Journal of Research on Technology in Education 39/3, Spring 2007

I recently read an article in the Journal of Research on Technology in Education entitled "Asynchronous Discussions and Assessments in Online Learning" (JRTE, 39/3, Spring 2007). The authors studied the use of online discussions in five graduate level courses at two midwestern universities. The article makes a number of points that are worth touching on here:

• first, the authors note that prior studies demonstrate that online discussions allow "every learner to respond to questions, participate equally, and offer a potential to support the co-construction of knowledge through meaningful discourse" (p. 311)

• one of the findings indicates "that the structure of an online discussion is essential for successful learning" (p. 315)

• one of the study's participants noted that "discussion questions need to be designed and monitored to grow and adapt to the responses from students so that they don't get repetitive and boring" (p. 315)

• other participants noted "that providing optiosn for students to choose among options of interest can diminish redundancy of the responses in the discussions" (p. 315)

• assigning participants roles within the discussion is another technique seen as effective by participants in the study (p. 316)

• others noted that "it is necessary for a sense of community to be built first" for "learners to feel comfortable sharing their opinions with a group they may not know" (p. 317)

• the authors also emphasize the importance of writing for students in the asynchronous environment to "facilitate reflection, metacognitive processes, and articulation of students' own learning" (p. 323)

A question came up yesterday concerning the use of the "Filmscript Language" graphic organizer for Monster.  Anne and I brainstormed some ideas:

(Keep in mind that that Janet has designed Plugged-in to Reading to reflect her strongly held belief that "if you present it to them, it is information; if they build it themselves, it is knowledge.")

So, you can use this graphic organizer in many ways to let them "build it themselves":

1.  Use the organizer to assess background knowledge.  The TG suggests that you put the g/o up on the overhead and ask the kids to define as many words as they can.  This could also be done in small groups if the class is disciplined enough to work this way, with each group taking a few of the words to assess.

2.  Use the organizer as an ongoing vocabulary collection tool.  Give each student a copy of  the g/o and have them fill in the definition for words they recognize or predict the definition, and then use the sheet to offer definitions as the words are encountered in the reading.

3.  Use the organizer for a vocabulary scavenger hunt.  This approach gives kids even more independence in ferreting out the specialized vocabulary words and providing definitions. Set aside some time every day or two during the study of the novel for this activity.

As you can see, these options focus on the organizer as a tool for inquiry and discovery rather than as a static exercise to be completed, graded, and put away.  At the Bradenton institute earlier this summer, Janet commented several times that so much of what constitutes real teaching takes place between the traditional teaching activities of planning and grading.

You can view a copy of the organizer in PDF format here.

Well, I thought I'd copy Melissa's idea to let others know how the core novels went for me and my students.  I think I can say that Melissa and I probably had similar experiences.  I read Among the Hidden with my 9th grade classes (3 of them) and Slumming with my 10th grade classes (2 of them). 

I think Among the Hidden is a great way to start.  The reading itself is not challenging but there are very interesting issues for the students to contemplate and discuss.  Actually, my students hated the audio at first.  I told them to get through 5 chapters and then if they didn't like it, we'd stop listening and I could read out loud.  But after five chapters, all classes voted to continue with the audio.  Also, like Melissa's kids, we quickly got to the point when they complained when we were stopping and begged to hear more.  There were several times when I had to point out that we had less than 2 minutes left in class and that's why I wouldn't allow us to continue on to the next chapter.  The suspense/cliffhangers at the ends of the chapters make Among the Hidden an ideal book to begin with. 

After reading about Melissa's interactive word wall, I decided to try more with the vocab.  I had them start playing with concept circles.  For example, I put propaganda, rally, revolution, and crusade together and asked students to explain how those words are connected.  Then I gave the title of "change" and asked them to explain how they're related to change.   Then I had them categorize words and make their own circles.  I also gave them circles and asked them to fill in a related word.  It makes so much sense that they'd do better with the words if they're thinking about how they're related to other things and I found it much more successful that way.  I look forward to the next core novel where I can use Melissa's word wall idea and the concept circle together.

I will say that Melissa and I had one difference.  My students felt that I had them do too much while we were reading.  I think I got a little carried away with the different strategies and graphic organizers.  So, I'll need to tone that down next time I teach this.  But the book was really a success.  In fact, although I had copies of the sequels already in my classroom, I had to go buy more because the kids wanted to keep reading about Luke.

I would say that my 10th graders were less enthusiastic about Slumming.  My 2nd period class was so quiet, I often wasn't sure whether they even liked the book.  But almost every single 10th grader said it was good and that I should read it again with my classes next year.  The reading of Slumming is definitely more challenging because there are 3 different points of view and the readers have to do a lot more inferring.  Those are the things we focused on as we read.  We used the graphic organizers to keep track of what we knew about each character and what we could tell about them from their words and actions.   

This is a great novel to have students talk about how people are judged.  We had some great discussions.  The fact that there were 3 very different main characters really broadened our discussions.  For example, Alicia led us to discuss how blind girls can be sometimes when it comes to guys they're attracted to.  We looked at the inferences she made about him and the evidence she based those inferences on and the kids agreed that she made faulty inferences.  But we also agreed that all of us have done the same or know someone else who has.  I'm glad that I was able to do this novel with my 10th graders because I think we had much more mature conversations than the 9th graders would have had.  But, this might be perfect for the 9th graders after we've had a few novels under our belts, and especially after they've discussed novels in the lit circle format. 

THE GOOD User-Friendly- For both me and my students. I was worried that some of the graphic organizers would look too "babyish" for my kids (some of whom are in gangs, have been arrested, etc)- but it did not come up once. For struggling readers, they can approach the graphic organizers without the intimidation/dread they normally feel with traditional handouts (or the dreaded worksheet). Utilizing the word sort throughout the book. It was great to see the kids interact with the sort up until the last day of reading! (See my other post to see how I used it and hope to improve it for other core novels.) Did all the kids learn all the words? No. Did many kids begin to look at challenging words differently and attempt to grapple with vocabulary that they would normally skip over? Yes. Connections- My students were able to make several connections with the texts. Utilizing Read Alouds will improve this even more. Engagement- My students were very engaged in the book (especially after Chapter 8). It was fantastic to see kids who professed to dislike reading throw tiny fits when I turned the audio off. I think there will be a level of trust now when I introduce other novels.

THE BAD- Most of this revolves around my instruction. Connections- My students and I had a lack of faith that they could make connections to a book set in the future about "farmers and white rich people." Our fantastic discovery was that they made many connections as we read. The connections were deeper than expected and genuine. Vocabulary- I need to work on utilizing other ways to work with the vocabulary. I did not do a great job of reinforcing how to use context clues. The kids did a pretty good job of it despite me. When they took the Multiple choice assessment, they tended to miss the same vocab questions. However, I passed them back and they overwhelming got those questions right the second time around. Also, (this is actually a "good")because I did not do a good job of teaching the context handout and point of view, I allowed the kids to keep those handouts while they took the assessment. The kids who used them did a good job on those questions. We will keep those handouts and refer to them throughout our reading until the kids no longer need them. Engagement- This is good/bad. The kids are so engaged, and I was so excited about that, I didn't focus enough on some of the strategies. Hello! This is the point- especially with the core novels, especially at the beginning of the year. As Angie put it today, we have to remember the goal of using audio and the program as a whole. On the flip side, I had a few kids who were not all that engaged in the book. Should I have them read another book independently? How do I work with them more so that they will be more engaged? How do we help the kids who tune out at first but then get into the book as time goes on? I have some ideas, but I would love to hear how other deal with these problems.

THE UGLY- I did not do enough front-loading for myself. I think really focusing on the needs of my students before we begin, and then adapting and adjusting my instruction as we go (the breakdown in the teacher's handbook is fantastic for stopping and reflecting) will take care of any difficulties that I am having. The beauty of the program is that the graphic organizers are tools. The problem is that as teachers we are sometimes afraid to use new tools and therefor take risks and more risks and try again when we do make mistakes. Being open with students about my learning curve as I go is invaluabe. If I am going to ask my students to take academic risks, I have to be honest (and model) how I work through my own.