Edpuzzle How To & Review

My students from last year are scarred by Edpuzzle. They tell me horror stories about how they had one assigned every night in 5th grade. How they did all their reading homework on it. AND they tell me how much they learned from the teacher who assigned it. 

I have also used Edpuzzle in my class. Well, not me. My more tech savvy co-teacher from two years ago used it for a few lessons. The first lesson went great! The students loved the novelty and digital format. 

For the purposes of this assignment, I think it's a good time to give it a try myself. Here are my experiences. 

This tool allows teachers to embed questions into a Youtube video. You can choose a video, for instance an audiobook chapter of a text, and embed questions at pause points. In order to keep playing the video, students must answer a question. This can be multiple choice or short answer. 

The website is easy to access and get started. Just asks for an email. Then it prompts you through some basic tutorials. 

First, I tried perusing for already created videos for the first book student will read next year. They had some. I went along with the video and found the questions to be fairly basic comprehension questions. This might be good to pace students through a text and have a more challenging assignment once the reading was done. 

There are options to edit the video. This allows changing the questions or adding things like notes, polls or reflections. 

However, students are able to skip to each question and basically bypass the content. So this may be a pain point if the program was used regularly. 

I also tried making an assignment from scratch. Start by finding a Youtube url. Paste into a search bar. Then they have an editor where you pick points along the video to add questions. I chose a 15 minute video and added 4 questions. 3 multiple choice and 1 short answer. It was all intuitive and easy to set up and to edit. 

It only took 10-15 minutes for the assignment creation process. 

There are then ways to assign the video to students or whole classes. There is a link to Google classroom here. If I had students to run a test pilot, I'd play with this function as well. But it seems intuitive. 

All in all, I'm happy to have explored this program. It was actually easier to use than I had previously thought. I usually like to pace students through a reading with an audiobook and strategically timed discussion questions. This tool feels like a more independent digital version of that. The downside is students aren't learning from each other in whole group discussions. 

My Year with Nike Chapter Review

 As many of you know by now, I have a young daughter who just finished kindergarten. For the first time, she has been bringing new ideas and values home. Among these was Nike. 

She came home asking if we can get her a pair of Nikes because she like the swoosh ... or because a friend had a pair. Either way, she asked. We said, "We'll see. Maybe later." Our default response, which time and her shifting interests ultimately answer for us. The pressure on her or us is mild at best. 

I cannot imagine the pressure on Rachel Cloues, a teacher whose school's 4th grade was taken over for a year by Nike. After a persistent and targeted marketing campaign, the school allowed Nike to fund and host a bunch of activities and field trips, including trips to their corporate offices in Oregon. 

The whole school was on board, except Cloues. She had misgivings about the influence of corporations on young folk and on Nike's particularly unsavory reputation for exploiting foreign workers. Still, she capitulated and didn't protest to having her class go along with all the Nike based activities. 

The impression the article gives is of a lone dissenting voice overwhelmed by a single corporation's marketing agenda and the brief histeria it caused at her school. Her worry was for how her students were a vulnerable population being exploited by a powerful company. 

Nike is, after all, one of the strongest brands I can think of. It has a decades-old foothold in the public eye and hard-core followers. It is one of the dozen or so coveted brands my students wear. This sort of following around a clothing company does make me cringe, at least a little. 

Cloues has a good point about how powerful corporations ethically behave. Where are the regulations for this? She thinks it should be left up to the schools. She calls for schools to have policies regarding corporate relationships. 

If schools have the time and resources to decide on  meaningful corporate relationship policies, then yes they should. But I think this view is neive. Individual schools, or even school districts, are already busy with mountains of tasks that often don't get the attention they need. 

To me, especially since the corporations in question are larger, international companies, this should be something for states or the federal government to decide on. Alas. 

To wrap up this post, my mother found my daughter a pair of blue Nike's at Savers for about $10. She loves them. 

Final Project Ideas

Thought Process

Please interpret the following ramble as an nebulous exploration of ideas. To take a risk and be vulnerable, I'm going to post something less edited and more stream of consciousness than I'm usually won't.

Lit Review

I perused the slide deck quickly for ideas and liked that the projects all focus on a skill or problem of a classroom and use an element of technology as a point of interjection in that, in hopes of improving student learning. I like the focus on literature and options in some.

A digital choice board sound like a good idea, but I'm dubious of its effect in my context. I have considered this in a paper version for homework a t my school. I'd like to see how this goes before considering an in class digital version.

Last year, I focused a lot on students becoming better readers. Next year, I'd like to focus on them becoming better writers. I'd like my project to focus on building this skill.

I read Adrienne's post and saw she hopes to use Canva as a tool. I applaud this, but don't know Canva well enough. Although there is merit to learning along with students. I don't mind the idea of putting something in front of them and seeing what comes of it, not knowing in advance.

Wet Cement

My concrete ideas at this time are as follows:

1. Have students collaborate to write an essay. Have a group of 4 share a google doc and instruct them to write a 5 paragraph essay in a single class block. The time crunch will make sure everyone is contributing. And it will lower the stakes a little. I'll say up front, I know the strangeness of the task, I just want to see what comes of it. Students can choose how to delegate. They can agree on a thesis, then one can grab quotes, another can start writing claims, another can outline the essay, etc.. They can see the "jobs" of essay writing.

2. Have students re-write a paper using AI. After students write a paper in a traditional way. I'd ask them to write the same paper in a short period of time using AI. This could take on a few different forms:

        a. One version could be like a race: write a passable 7th grade paper the fastest.

        b. One could look more challenging and sneaky: write a paper using AI that would pass through an AI checker. What prompts did you use?

        c. Or it could be an exploration of prompt writing. The goal would be to share and discover useful ways to use a series of prompts to accomplish the goal.

        d. A last option could focus on originality. Students could attempt to create something I wouldn't expect but technically fits the criteria the essay was asking for. Like perhaps it's written in a slam poetry voice ... I don't know.

The AI experiment option is not super appealing to me, especially after yesterday's discussion. But I may, in time, warm to it.

My Relationship with AI

What is AI? 

AI is a disembodied algorithm designed to predict the next logical link in a chain. It is not a biological being with a body. Therefore, it does not feel like a person or other creature will. It has no will of its own. No desire, hunger. No fear. Nothing to drive it of its own sake. It sits dormant until prompted. 

This is at the forefront of my mind in any discussion about AI. I see it as a tool to accomplish information based tasks. I do not see it as a replacement of human thought or feeling. 

Slow Down 

However, I do feel like AI makes some tasks too quick and therefore counterproductive to long term learning. Generally, I believe deep, long-term learning takes time. A fact quickly Googled, reviewed, and put into action right away is more easily forgotten than something learned through longer means. 

For instance, say it's 30-40 years ago and the internet is not a thing. If you wanted a piece of information what do you do? Ask someone? Look it up? Either way, you're investing relatively more energy into getting that information. Either a conversation or a trip to the bookshelf or library at the least. 

If you wanted to know something, you had to really want it. So you prioritized. You may have learned fewer things overall, but the things you learned, through greater effort, you learned more deeply and held onto them longer. 

The metaphor I like for this is bread: a sourdough bread that takes over a day to proof will have a more complex flavor than a bread using commercial yeast over a few hours. 

The Works of Ferlazzo

Ferlazzo speaks to me because he gives a picture of how teachers really use AI, but haven't yet incorporated into mainstream trainings yet. It seems almost grassroots that educators as individuals are using AI in similar ways without systematic collaboration or training. 

He turns to it as not a "finished product to my standards, but a rough draft I finish crafting." Much in the same way I have come to incorporate it in my lesson planning. He also talks about changing the complexity level of texts more quickly. 

Here it feels like a compromise. Yes, I would like to do these tasks like differentiation on my own. However, given how many tasks I have, I make the compromise to use AI to do some more quickly. 

The Work of Galland & Rettingger

This last point leads into the ideas of Galland & Rettinger. Much like some of the students he talks about, I feel pressed for time and chose to "cut corners." And thus a part of the process is lost, and that complex flavor of learning is compromised. 

They suggest students need to feel like they can accomplish a task or learn to accomplish it, so they don't turn to cheating or using AI. It's tough for me to hold this against them when I have succumbed to the same impulses under a similar set of emotional circumstances. 

Prensky and Spiegel

 What do you make of the positions of Prensky and Spiegel? 

If the rising generation is made up of "digital native" technocrats, proficient masters of anything any screen running on a circuit board, why do they sometimes struggle to troubleshoot a frozen screen? Or ask to receive typing instruction?

I respect Spiegel for publishing work that got so many people talking and thinking critically about the young generation. This is not a new phenomenon.

Tension and fear over the education of the young has been in literature since at least the time of Plato. It is an ancient topic to muse over. Although I have not read the source material, from what I gather from Spiegel's critique, Prensky frames generational tension, not as an old topic, but as a manifestation of modern technology.

I get the same impression reading the article about Prensky that I got while reading Don Campbell's The Mozart Effect that claimed listening to classical music, particularly Mozart, made children smarter. His premise was based on one study that showed a link between short term spatial processing in young kids after listening to music. Most of Campbell's conclusions were based on uncorroborated assumptions. Fortunately, after reading Campbell, I read Einstein Never Used Flashcards, which directly refuted Campbell in a well substantiated and scientific way. This work advocated for more student centered approach to learning, one grounded in the notion that children are natural learners. Much like the Ted Talk by Robinson. 

Generally, I do not agree with Prensky's methodology. Nor do I agree that the young generation is operating in a distant and inaccessible linguistic and functional space. Young folk are still human and share culture beyond technology. 

Technology is a part of life, not the entirety. 

The Myth of Digital Nativism

Generally, I agree with Spiegel's critiques of Prensky's writings and the terms used in them. He does a good job of applying logical arguments to interrogate Prensky's terms. 

Particularly meaningful for me was how Spiegel points out the assumption Prensky makes about young people, that because they are "digital natives" they have an intuitive and vast knowledge of the inner workings of technology. In fact, Spiegel points out, young folks need explicit instruction to use technology, just like any skill they are ascending into. 

In my own context, students ask me, as an ELA teacher, to include lessons on typing, a skill they have identified as useful and necessary. 

My feelings overall are that these terms are generated and perpetuated by assumptions about people. They may have a place to start conversations about generational tension, but they are false in accuracy and can lead to harm if unexamined. 

AI Disclosure

I used Google Gemini to generate the image. I entered the prompt: "generate a simple, whimsical line drawing to go with this blog post. Symbolic not literal." This was followed by cut and pasting the post as a whole text. 

Introduction

 Hello members of Lesley Bogad's Summer Course! 

Welcome to this introduction! What would you like to know? Rather than using our time here together, me as writer and you as reader, in a meandering way — you, as the reader, might get more out of this relationship if we started with your curiosity. 

What would you like to know about me? What's the sort of thing you like to know about others when getting to know them? Do you try to put them into a context? What are you looking for? Then, what's the next thing you like to know? 

Please, ask questions of me, and I shall attempt a meaningful response. 

Welcome to my blog! 

Dana