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Nebraska: Where it Happened

I was looking at this Flickr photo by a Twitter colleague of mine named Michael Peterson. He’s often posting photos of locations that played a significant role in Nebraska’s history. Official historical markers, ghost towns, the remnants of churches, hospitals, barns and places all around us that are about to disappear all together.

It got me thinking about 4th grade Nebraska History units, and people around the state who are proud of their heritage, and people who are passionate about photography, and the ever growing number of geo-taggers and the amazing web based tools that we have at our disposal in 2010. How can we focus all of these things into a single, incredibly informative and highly entertaining package?

Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a website that had elements of the following all combined in one spot:

  • A database that correlated Nebraska photos with geo-data
  • A beautiful (minimalistic) web interface that allowed you to view the photos by map view, or list view by county or region
  • A web interface that allows people to contribute (moderated) 1st person narratives or content
  • A mobile interface that allowed you to easily view the contents and/or contribute new data while in the field (+ iPhone/Android apps)

A person would not have to start completely from scratch, many ingredients/resources/models are already out there.

So anyway – I had this idea, and I do not presume that it is a unique one, but I know that I don’t have the requisite skills or the time necessary to pull it all off in the way it exists in my head. I’m throwing it out to the wind in the hopes that some folks out there might be able to pull off the creation of a site like this if a lot of people pitched in. Crowd-sourcing and all that.
And if nothing ever comes of it, I have a great list of resource links for the 4th grade teachers in Nebraska to use in their Nebraska History units.

Posted in My Thoughts.

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By Chris Pultz – September 9, 2010

Divergent Thinking Opportunities

“I reject your reality and insert my own!” -Adam Savage

For the exact same reasons that we need to introduce opportunities for creative expression and use an inquiry model we also need to go out of our way to create situations in which divergent thinking is rewarded and valued. Situations in which there are many right answers are few and far between in our traditional educational system.

Divergent thinking can arise in many ways. For example “brainstorming,” the process of generating as many different possibilities as possible, without giving any one idea a great amount of focus, is a divergent thinking exercise. After spending as much time as is needed to brainstorm a set of ideas, we often review them and place them back into categories, a convergent activity.

Divergent thinking also ties into metaphorical learning, in which there are no right or wrong answers and students are left to prove their ideas by supporting them with their knowledge of the subject. This divergent, or metaphorical knowledge often comes about when students are asked their opinions on a topic. This type of processing promotes real learning in a way that mechanical regurgitation of facts does not.

Evelyn S. Zent, an instructor at the University of Washington, suggests the following types of activities for stimulating divergent thinking in a classroom; brainstorming,journaling, freewriting, mind (or concept) mapping. Luckily, there are technologies that make each of these methods much easier or more engaging.

  • Brainstorming can happen on websites like WallWisher or via google forms.
  • Journaling can happen (either publically or privately) in a blogging tool.
  • Freewriting can happen with word processing applications on your desktop, or in Google Docs.
  • Concept mapping software exists in desktop tools like Inspiration or Kidspiration as well as websites like bubbl.us.

Beyond these situations, we can promote divergent thinking by asking divergent questions. These are questions in which students are asked to predict, hypothesize, infer, or reconstruct. These often include phrases like:

  • If… then: “If the South had won the Civil War, what would be different about Nebraska today?”
  • Imagine/Suppose: “Can you imagine a world without animals? How would it be different?”
  • Predictions/Guesses: “What would President Lincoln say about the immigration issues we’ve discussed if he were alive today?”

These sort of questions are well suited to being answered creatively through video responses, musical compositions, parodies, reenactment in alternative settings, script writing, poetry, etc.

The evaluation of any creative endeavor by students should be focused upon the learning on display, not on the use of the tools or the quality of the final products. (Unless the core subject is the use technology.) If the student has not synthesized the information and presented new ideas, the prettiest pictures or fanciest slideshows, or most inspiring movie soundtracks should not convince you that learning took place.

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By Chris Pultz – September 9, 2010

Opportunities to Express Creativity

“Creativity is the permission to be original all day, every day.” – Peter Reynolds

“If you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never create something original.” – Sir Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson is one of a growing chorus of experts who help us to see that the education process in America stigmatizes wrong answers so much that we rob our students of the opportunity to be genuinely creative. Yet we know that creativity is the highest level of intellectual behavior (see updated Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Objectives). Any opportunity that we as teachers can present students to honor their innate willingness to put new ideas out for consideration should be embraced.

There is a rich palette of technological tools available to students in schools today for creating the types of products we have never experienced before. Drawing and painting software, presentation tools, video cameras, audio recorders, sound editing tools, word processors, these are all opportunities for a student to express their learning in a differentiated ways.

When focused on creativity, you might benefit from NOT discussing what kind of product students will make, instead focusing on what they intend to communicate to their audience. Once that is established, discuss possible modes of delivery. Bernajean Porter is a thought leader in this area, and you can find more information on this type of instructional process at her site  http://www.digitales.us/evaluating/index.php .

Porter also focuses on the evaluating of projects that rely upon creative thinking. She suggests that we do not get distracted by the quality of the product. Instead, we should assess the rigor of learning on display within the product. You want to look for examples of original thought, fluency, elaboration, brainstorming, modification, imagery, associative thinking, attribute listing, metaphorical thinking, forced relationships, formulation, design, and development.

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By Chris Pultz – September 8, 2010