Gallery Walk Stations were created based on this Time Magazine article: Time Magazine Article
Station 1 - Learning 2.0/Web 2.0
1. Read This First
The chairman of Sun Microsystems was up against one of the most vexing challenges of modern life: a third-grade science project. Scott McNealy had spent hours searching the Web for a lively explanation of electricity that his son could understand. "Finally I found a very nice, animated, educational website showing electrons zooming around and tests after each section. We did this for about an hour and a half and had a ball--a great father-son moment of learning. All of a sudden we ran out of runway because it was a site to help welders, and it then got into welding." For McNealy the experience, three years ago, provided one of life's aha! moments: "It made me wonder why there isn't a website where I can just go and have anything I want to learn, K to 12, online, browser based and free." His solution: draw on the Wikipedia model to create a collection of online courses that can be updated, improved, vetted and built upon by innovative teachers, who, he notes, "are always developing new materials and methods of instruction because they aren't happy with what they have." And who better to create such a site than McNealy, whose company has led the way in designing open-source computer software? He quickly raised some money, created a nonprofit and--voilà!--Curriki.org made its debut January 2006, and has been growing fast. Some 450 courses are in the works, and about 3,000 people have joined as members. McNealy reports that a teenager in Kuwait has already completed the introductory physics and calculus classes in 18 days.
Curriki, however, isn't meant to replace going to school but to supplement it and offer courses that may not be available locally. It aims to give teachers classroom-tested content materials and assessments that are livelier and more current and multimedia-based than printed textbooks. Ultimately, it could take the Web 2.0 revolution to school, closing that yawning gap between how kids learn at school and how they do everything else. Educators around the country and overseas are already discussing ways to certify Curriki's online course work for credit.
2. As a group, read aloud each scenario listed.
Scenario #1: Topic of Communication
Communicating with students and parents is very important and the communication tools at our disposal continue to grow. Think about the communication tools that you presently use to communicate with parents and share those with the group. What communication tools/strategies do students use to communicate with others? Using the questions below, poll your group and write the totals on the wall poster (leave space for other groups rotating around to add their numbers). If time permits, discuss your decisions.
Yes/No/Maybe/Don't Know Enough to Answer Question: Would you…
A. Use e-mail to communicate with students and their parents
B. Use texting or instant messaging to communicate with students and their parents?
C. Use facebook or myspace to communicate with students and their parents?
Scenario #2: Use of Web 2.0 Tool YouTube
During homeroom, you hear students talking about YouTube videos that they have been viewing--often sharing the name, web address, and sometimes even asking to use your computer to show others. Knowing that this is something that interests your students, you went to YouTube and looked at the offerings and found that there is a wide variety of material available--some good and some bad. With an upcoming unit, you decide to use student interest in YouTube during the unit. Using the questions below, poll your group using the Yes/No/Maybe/Don't Know Enough and write the totals on the wall poster (leave room for the other groups rotating around to add their numbers). If time, discuss decisions.
Yes/No/Maybe/Don't Know Enough to Answer Question: Would you…
A: Go to YouTube and find a video that you decide is appropriate and use it as an introduction to the unit?
B. Allow older students to go to YouTube and find a video about the Industrial Revolution to share with the class?
C. Allow students to create a 2-3 minute video to post to YouTube that could be viewed by others? (after you have viewed it first of course!)
Scenario
Yes
Maybe
No
Don't Know
Enough to Answer
Scenario #1A: Communication
E-mail students and parents
Scenario #1B: Communication
Texting and instant messaging
Scenario #1C: Communication
Facebook and myspace
Scenario #2A: YouTube
Teacher Use
Scenario #2B: YouTube
Student Use
Scenario #2C: YouTube
Student Creation
Station 2 - Real Knowledge in a Google Era
1. Read this First
Learn the names of all the rivers in South America. That was the assignment given to Deborah Stipek’s daughter Meredith in school; and her mom, who’s dean of the Stanford University School of Education, was not impressed. “That’s silly,” Stipek told her daughter. “Tell your teacher that if you need to know anything besides the Amazon, you can look it up on Google.” Any number of old-school assignments- memorizing the battles of the Civil War or the periodic table of the elements- now seem faintly absurd. That kind of information, which is poorly retained unless you routinely use it, is available at a keystroke. Still, few would argue that an American child shouldn’t learn the causes of the Civil War or understand how the periodic table reflects the atomic structure and properties of the elements. As school critic E.D. Hirsch Jr. Points out in his book, The Knowledge Deficit, kids need a substantial fund of information just to make sense of reading materials beyond the grade-school level. Without mastering the fundamental building blocks of math, science or history- complex concepts are impossible.
Many analysts believe that to achieve the right balance between such core knowledge and what educations call “portable skills”- critical thinking, making connections between ideas and knowing how to keep on learning- the U.S. curriculum needs to become more like that of Singapore, Belgium, and Sweden, whose students outperform American students on math and science tests. Classes in these countries dwell on key concepts that are taught in depth and in careful sequence; textbooks and tests support this approach. Countries from Germany to Singapore have extremely small textbooks that focus on the most powerful and generative ideas. America’s bloated textbooks, by contrast, tend to gallop through a mind-numbing stream of topics and subtopics in an attempt to address a vast range of state standards.
Depth over breadth and the ability to leap across disciplines are exactly what teachers aim for at the Henry Ford Academy, a public charter school in Dearborn, Michigan. After reading about Nike’s efforts to develop a more environmentally friendly sneaker, students had to choose a consumer product, analyze and explain its environmental impact and then develop a plan for re-engineering it to reduce pollution costs without sacrificing its commercial appeal.
2. Using Google documents on the computer at this station, read other groups’ comments (scroll up if necessary) and add your group’s ideas on what we can “stop doing” (the article listed things like memorizing the battles of the civil war or the periodic table of elements).
3. Discuss: What in your curriculum could you let go of? Are there things that you feel are not negotiable (must stay)? Share your thoughts/ideas…
Before rotating to next station:
4. CHANGE FONT to distinguish your additions
5. If time, match the Google Applications listed on the cards with their use.
Station 3 - A New Kind of Literacy
1. Read This First
The juniors in Bill Stroud's class are riveted by a documentary called ‘Loose Change’ unspooling on a small TV screen in urban Astoria, N.Y. The film uses 9/11 footage and interviews with building engineers and Twin Towers survivors to make an oddly compelling case that interior explosions unrelated to the impact of the airplanes brought down the World Trade Center on that fateful day. Afterward, the students--an ethnic mix of New Yorkers with their own 9/11 memories--dive into a discussion about the elusive nature of truth. Raya Harris finds the video more convincing than the official version of the facts. Marisa Reichel objects. "Because of a movie, you are going to change your beliefs?" she demands. "Just because people heard explosions doesn't mean there were explosions. You can say you feel the room spinning, but it isn't." This kind of discussion about what we know and how we know it is typical of a theory of knowledge class, a required element for an international-baccalaureate diploma. Stroud has posed this question to his class on the blackboard:
"If truth is difficult to prove in history, does it follow that all versions are equally acceptable?"
Throughout the year, the class will examine news reports, websites, propaganda, history books, blogs, even pop songs. The goal is to teach kids to be discerning consumers of information and to research, formulate and defend their own views, says Stroud, who is founder and principal of the four-year-old public school, which is located in a repurposed handbag factory.
Classes like this, which teach key aspects of information literacy, remain rare in public education, but more and more universities and employers say they are needed as the world grows ever more deluged with information of variable quality. "We kind of assumed this generation was so comfortable with technology that they know how to use it for research and deeper thinking," says Egan (Educational Testing Service). "But if they're not taught these skills, they don't necessarily pick them up.”
3. Discuss: How do/or will you teach your students to be discerning consumers of the information?
Station 4 - What it means to be a Global Student
1. Read This First
Quick! How many ways can you combine nickels, dimes and pennies to get 20 cents? That’s a challenge for students in a second-grade math class at Seattle’s John Stanford International School, and hands are flying up with answers. The students sit at tables of four manipulating play money. One boy shouts “10 plus 10”; a girl; offers “10 plus 5 plus 5,” only it sounds like this: “Ju, tasu, go, tasu, go.” This public school has taken the idea of global education and run with it. All students take some classes in either Japanese or Spanish. Other subjects are taught in English, but the content has an international flavor.
Before opening the school seven years ago, principal Karen Kodama surveyed 1,500 business leaders on which languages to teach (plans for Mandarin were dropped for lack of classroom space) and which skills and disciplines. “No.1 was technology,” she recalls. Even first graders at Stanford begin to use PowerPoint and Internet tools. “Exposure to world cultures was also an important trait cited by the executives,” says Kodama, so that instead of circling back to the Pilgrims and Indians every autumn- children at Stanford do social-studies units on Asia, Africa, Australia, Mexico and South America. Students actively apply the lessons in foreign language and culture by video-conferencing with sister schools in Japan, Africa and Mexico.
Stanford International shows what’s possible for a public elementary school; dozens of U.S. school districts have found ways to orient some of their students toward the global economy. Many have opened schools that offer the international baccalaureate (I.B.) program; a rigorous, off-the-shelf curriculum recognized by universities around the world and first introduced in 1968—well before globalization became a buzzword. Courses offer an international perspective, so even a lesson on the American Revolution will interweave sources from Britain and France with views from the Founding Fathers. Says Jeffrey Beard, director general of the International Baccalaureate Organization in Geneva, Switzerland; “These are students who can grasp issues across national borders. They have an understanding of nuances and complexity and a balanced approach to problem solving.” Despite stringent certification requirements, I.B. schools are growing in the U.S.—from about 350 in 2000 to 682 today. The U.S. Department of Educations has a pilot effort to bring the program to more low-income students.
2. Discuss: How can we give our students a more global education?
3. Test your “Global Technology” knowledge. Try to match each technology fact to the country. Lift the sheet to check if you were correct.
Walking the Talk of 21st Century Learning
Here is an archive of all documents from the Gallery walk
Vision of K-12 Students Today
A Vision of Students Today
Gallery Walk Stations were created based on this Time Magazine article:
Time Magazine Article
Station 1 - Learning 2.0/Web 2.0
1. Read This First
The chairman of Sun Microsystems was up against one of the most vexing challenges of modern life: a third-grade science project. Scott McNealy had spent hours searching the Web for a lively explanation of electricity that his son could understand. "Finally I found a very nice, animated, educational website showing electrons zooming around and tests after each section. We did this for about an hour and a half and had a ball--a great father-son moment of learning. All of a sudden we ran out of runway because it was a site to help welders, and it then got into welding." For McNealy the experience, three years ago, provided one of life's aha! moments: "It made me wonder why there isn't a website where I can just go and have anything I want to learn, K to 12, online, browser based and free." His solution: draw on the Wikipedia model to create a collection of online courses that can be updated, improved, vetted and built upon by innovative teachers, who, he notes, "are always developing new materials and methods of instruction because they aren't happy with what they have." And who better to create such a site than McNealy, whose company has led the way in designing open-source computer software? He quickly raised some money, created a nonprofit and--voilà!--Curriki.org made its debut January 2006, and has been growing fast. Some 450 courses are in the works, and about 3,000 people have joined as members. McNealy reports that a teenager in Kuwait has already completed the introductory physics and calculus classes in 18 days.
Curriki, however, isn't meant to replace going to school but to supplement it and offer courses that may not be available locally. It aims to give teachers classroom-tested content materials and assessments that are livelier and more current and multimedia-based than printed textbooks. Ultimately, it could take the Web 2.0 revolution to school, closing that yawning gap between how kids learn at school and how they do everything else. Educators around the country and overseas are already discussing ways to certify Curriki's online course work for credit.
2. As a group, read aloud each scenario listed.
Communicating with students and parents is very important and the communication tools at our disposal continue to grow. Think about the communication tools that you presently use to communicate with parents and share those with the group. What communication tools/strategies do students use to communicate with others? Using the questions below, poll your group and write the totals on the wall poster (leave space for other groups rotating around to add their numbers). If time permits, discuss your decisions.
Yes/No/Maybe/Don't Know Enough to Answer Question: Would you…
A. Use e-mail to communicate with students and their parents
B. Use texting or instant messaging to communicate with students and their parents?
C. Use facebook or myspace to communicate with students and their parents?
Scenario #2: Use of Web 2.0 Tool YouTube
During homeroom, you hear students talking about YouTube videos that they have been viewing--often sharing the name, web address, and sometimes even asking to use your computer to show others. Knowing that this is something that interests your students, you went to YouTube and looked at the offerings and found that there is a wide variety of material available--some good and some bad. With an upcoming unit, you decide to use student interest in YouTube during the unit. Using the questions below, poll your group using the Yes/No/Maybe/Don't Know Enough and write the totals on the wall poster (leave room for the other groups rotating around to add their numbers). If time, discuss decisions.Yes/No/Maybe/Don't Know Enough to Answer Question: Would you…
A: Go to YouTube and find a video that you decide is appropriate and use it as an introduction to the unit?
B. Allow older students to go to YouTube and find a video about the Industrial Revolution to share with the class?
C. Allow students to create a 2-3 minute video to post to YouTube that could be viewed by others? (after you have viewed it first of course!)
Enough to Answer
E-mail students and parents
Texting and instant messaging
Facebook and myspace
Teacher Use
Student Use
Student Creation
Station 2 - Real Knowledge in a Google Era
1. Read this First
Learn the names of all the rivers in South America. That was the assignment given to Deborah Stipek’s daughter Meredith in school; and her mom, who’s dean of the Stanford University School of Education, was not impressed. “That’s silly,” Stipek told her daughter. “Tell your teacher that if you need to know anything besides the Amazon, you can look it up on Google.” Any number of old-school assignments- memorizing the battles of the Civil War or the periodic table of the elements- now seem faintly absurd. That kind of information, which is poorly retained unless you routinely use it, is available at a keystroke. Still, few would argue that an American child shouldn’t learn the causes of the Civil War or understand how the periodic table reflects the atomic structure and properties of the elements. As school critic E.D. Hirsch Jr. Points out in his book, The Knowledge Deficit, kids need a substantial fund of information just to make sense of reading materials beyond the grade-school level. Without mastering the fundamental building blocks of math, science or history- complex concepts are impossible.
Many analysts believe that to achieve the right balance between such core knowledge and what educations call “portable skills”- critical thinking, making connections between ideas and knowing how to keep on learning- the U.S. curriculum needs to become more like that of Singapore, Belgium, and Sweden, whose students outperform American students on math and science tests. Classes in these countries dwell on key concepts that are taught in depth and in careful sequence; textbooks and tests support this approach. Countries from Germany to Singapore have extremely small textbooks that focus on the most powerful and generative ideas. America’s bloated textbooks, by contrast, tend to gallop through a mind-numbing stream of topics and subtopics in an attempt to address a vast range of state standards.
Depth over breadth and the ability to leap across disciplines are exactly what teachers aim for at the Henry Ford Academy, a public charter school in Dearborn, Michigan. After reading about Nike’s efforts to develop a more environmentally friendly sneaker, students had to choose a consumer product, analyze and explain its environmental impact and then develop a plan for re-engineering it to reduce pollution costs without sacrificing its commercial appeal.
2. Using Google documents on the computer at this station, read other groups’ comments (scroll up if necessary) and add your group’s ideas on what we can “stop doing” (the article listed things like memorizing the battles of the civil war or the periodic table of elements).
Link to Google Doc - Real Knowledge in a Google Era
3. Discuss: What in your curriculum could you let go of? Are there things that you feel are not negotiable (must stay)? Share your thoughts/ideas…
Before rotating to next station:
4. CHANGE FONT to distinguish your additions
5. If time, match the Google Applications listed on the cards with their use.
Station 3 - A New Kind of Literacy
1. Read This First
The juniors in Bill Stroud's class are riveted by a documentary called ‘Loose Change’ unspooling on a small TV screen in urban Astoria, N.Y. The film uses 9/11 footage and interviews with building engineers and Twin Towers survivors to make an oddly compelling case that interior explosions unrelated to the impact of the airplanes brought down the World Trade Center on that fateful day. Afterward, the students--an ethnic mix of New Yorkers with their own 9/11 memories--dive into a discussion about the elusive nature of truth. Raya Harris finds the video more convincing than the official version of the facts. Marisa Reichel objects. "Because of a movie, you are going to change your beliefs?" she demands. "Just because people heard explosions doesn't mean there were explosions. You can say you feel the room spinning, but it isn't." This kind of discussion about what we know and how we know it is typical of a theory of knowledge class, a required element for an international-baccalaureate diploma. Stroud has posed this question to his class on the blackboard:
"If truth is difficult to prove in history, does it follow that all versions are equally acceptable?"
Throughout the year, the class will examine news reports, websites, propaganda, history books, blogs, even pop songs. The goal is to teach kids to be discerning consumers of information and to research, formulate and defend their own views, says Stroud, who is founder and principal of the four-year-old public school, which is located in a repurposed handbag factory.
Classes like this, which teach key aspects of information literacy, remain rare in public education, but more and more universities and employers say they are needed as the world grows ever more deluged with information of variable quality. "We kind of assumed this generation was so comfortable with technology that they know how to use it for research and deeper thinking," says Egan (Educational Testing Service). "But if they're not taught these skills, they don't necessarily pick them up.”
2. Visit the websites below:
3. Discuss: How do/or will you teach your students to be discerning consumers of the information?
Station 4 - What it means to be a Global Student
1. Read This First
Quick! How many ways can you combine nickels, dimes and pennies to get 20 cents? That’s a challenge for students in a second-grade math class at Seattle’s John Stanford International School, and hands are flying up with answers. The students sit at tables of four manipulating play money. One boy shouts “10 plus 10”; a girl; offers “10 plus 5 plus 5,” only it sounds like this: “Ju, tasu, go, tasu, go.” This public school has taken the idea of global education and run with it. All students take some classes in either Japanese or Spanish. Other subjects are taught in English, but the content has an international flavor.
Before opening the school seven years ago, principal Karen Kodama surveyed 1,500 business leaders on which languages to teach (plans for Mandarin were dropped for lack of classroom space) and which skills and disciplines. “No.1 was technology,” she recalls. Even first graders at Stanford begin to use PowerPoint and Internet tools. “Exposure to world cultures was also an important trait cited by the executives,” says Kodama, so that instead of circling back to the Pilgrims and Indians every autumn- children at Stanford do social-studies units on Asia, Africa, Australia, Mexico and South America. Students actively apply the lessons in foreign language and culture by video-conferencing with sister schools in Japan, Africa and Mexico.
Stanford International shows what’s possible for a public elementary school; dozens of U.S. school districts have found ways to orient some of their students toward the global economy. Many have opened schools that offer the international baccalaureate (I.B.) program; a rigorous, off-the-shelf curriculum recognized by universities around the world and first introduced in 1968—well before globalization became a buzzword. Courses offer an international perspective, so even a lesson on the American Revolution will interweave sources from Britain and France with views from the Founding Fathers. Says Jeffrey Beard, director general of the International Baccalaureate Organization in Geneva, Switzerland; “These are students who can grasp issues across national borders. They have an understanding of nuances and complexity and a balanced approach to problem solving.” Despite stringent certification requirements, I.B. schools are growing in the U.S.—from about 350 in 2000 to 682 today. The U.S. Department of Educations has a pilot effort to bring the program to more low-income students.
2. Discuss: How can we give our students a more global education?
3. Test your “Global Technology” knowledge. Try to match each technology fact to the country. Lift the sheet to check if you were correct.
Learning and Motivation in the 21st Century
The Machine is Using Us!