Tag: writing

When less is more and when it isn’t

I am interested in the process of writing. Originally, I was interested in my own writing and how I might write more productively and efficiently. Gradually., I became interested in student writing. My first interest was in what I would describe as writing to learn and this focus came about because I was convinced what was called Web 2.0 (I called it the participatory web) provided a practical way for individuals to express themselves for an actual audience. In doing so, it made sense that the process of visible expression required deeper thought and a better understanding of what you wanted to share. An interest in the role of technology in learning to write and in collaborative writing followed. I hope this makes sense. There are multiple components here and I am trying to outline how these components are interconnected and came to be as much for myself as for anyone who reads this description. 

As I have spent time learning about writing and how the process might be conceptualized and developed, my way of thinking about what writing involves has expanded. This expansion has been useful because it allowed me to include a long-time interest in student and personal note-taking in how I came to think about writing. Recently, I have been reading a book entitled “How to take smart notes”. The full title which is much longer explains that the book is really about writing as a broad process that begins in reading/listening, moves to note-taking, and then explains how learning and creativity are involved in the progression to generating a text for others. I have found that the full model offered me a lot to consider and to write about. Eventually, some of the writing will likely appear on this site. For now, just accept my recommendation for this book.

Anyway, the topic of note-taking plays a crucial role in this book and especially a type of note-taking that I would describe as an investment in the future of personal understanding and knowledge building. By investment, I mean that the process described involves the immediate accumulation of interesting ideas and important concepts in what the text describes as a slip box. This was a descriptive term used by the originator of the process outlined in the book to describe a physical box in which short, but well-written statements were saved. These “notes” were then linked to other notes in the box through a notation system. Eventually, an author could use these linked statements to create an informative document. Of course, many of us can immediately imagine how to use technology to apply this system and this is part of the message of the book’s author, but there are some basic ideas that are of greater general value. For example, the “slips” amount to more than the highlights or edge of page annotations created while reading, but rather well-formed and personalized statements created from primary sources. Such brief summarizations or insights are closer to a core product of writing than a physical copy of a snippet of the original.

One of the comments from the book and a great example of the cognitive behavior that is at the core of why the writing process is productive was provided in a “side observation” offered by the author. This observation was that while the author kept offering suggestions for how technology might be a great way to implement the ideas from the original “slip box” process, the author suggested that the process of writing notes by hand might be more beneficial than the digital equivalent. I have been having a kind of “meta” experience as I write about my reading and relating of this idea. The author is writing about how to find productive associations among ideas and I see such an association in what I already knew about the logic of taking notes on paper (I have taken notes by hand in a decade) and why I still advocate for digital processing of the entire process of idea storage to final written products.

The author cites a study (Mueller & Oppenheimer, 2014) in support of his position. I have read this study and have existing notes on the pdf of the article I store in my collection. There were three studies in this article comparing performance (comprehension and application) following exposure to an audio lecture and note-taking. All three studies involved one group that took notes by hand and another that took notes on a computer. There are other multiple studies on this issue and because I have a bias toward the value of technology I look for several things in the methodology of studies arguing for the benefit of taking notes by hand. Is the performance test immediate or delayed? If the test is delayed, are learners allowed to review their notes before taking the exam. In comparison to just listening or reading, note-taking offers two potential benefits – external storage and a task that may involve more productive processing of the input. Taking notes on a computer typically results in more content being recorded as most of us can take notes faster on a computer than by hand. If I am reviewing my class notes weeks later, I want a more detailed account. Mueller and Oppenheimer found greater detail in keyboard note-taking, but in their third study with a delayed exam found a benefit for taking notes by hand. They argue that when faced with the reality that you cannot possibly keep up, handwriting requires you to summarize and record key ideas producing the best long-term value. This ends up being the argument used in advocating handwritten notes for the slip box. Summary and key idea notes are what is valuable in writing. It is kind of a less is more argument. 

I am still not a believer although I buy the notion that at some point you need to process the original input for personal meaning. The proposal that an approach that is slower (handwriting) and as a consequence encourages deeper processing (also slower) seems to argue for some approach that is must address these two limitations. Both slow and slower strain the limits of working memory. The issue with deeper processing is when this more productive processing should happen – during the presentation (as saved to summary notes) or when studying more complete notes. Here is my criticism of the Mueller study in making the suggestion for practice that appears to be made and is picked up by Ahren’s book. . Allowing a few minutes to review notes before taking an exam is not my idea of studying for an exam. Certainly, if this is all of the time allowed good summaries would be most helpful. However, if I had a day or so and at least the night before to study a large body of lecture notes I would prefer access to notes that are more complete. When doing this, I would prefer more complete notes I could think about (process for meaning and application).

I think there are tools appropriate to the task of taking digital notes and providing a better delayed experience. The two recommendations that follow record the audio of a presentation (this is the input Mueller uses) and allows for the taking of notes. The apps link the notes to locations in the audio. If on reexamining the notes to see if they make sense (hopefully initially close in time to when the notes are taken) something does not make sense. Small portions of the audio can be replayed for additional processing.

Pearnote

Soundnote

Ahrens, S. (2017). How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers

Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological science, 25(6), 1159-1168.

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Consumption/production and transfer

We are on a transatlantic cruise and the passage gives me plenty of time to read. I have had the opportunity to spend a little more time than usual with my Kindle. The book I am presently working on is Mitch Resnick’s Lifelong Kindergarten.

I would describe the book as Resnick’s attempt to make the case for maker culture which I tend to translate as “production” culture. When translated to the school environment, I would describe the theme as “too much consumption, not enough production”.

I started thinking about my own efforts in “consuming” his book. I probably go through an average of 2-3 books a month and I think I have purchased one “paper” book in the last several years. That was necessary because the book was not available in a digital format. I am committed to the digital format as an important part of what I consider my workflow. I do read some for pleasure, but I also still spend a lot of time reading to give me something to write and speak about. So, my consumption and production are tightly connected. An example might be this post. I would not be writing about Resnick’s ideas unless I had first read his book.

Even my process of consumption is far from pure. I like the digital format because I can highlight and annotate, search for my additions later, and copy my embedded content to my external products (writing). I understand that some argue reading on a device is inferior to reading a paper version, but I think this assessment must be considered carefully as to the purpose to be served. Reading as an active experience is certainly cognitive construction, but the thinking can also be simultaneously externalized as annotations and highlighting. Often, reading is not independent of external productions.

It seems reasonable to me to consider the consumption/production processes as linked. This was certainly the logic behind the language experience approach (reading/writing, speaking/listening) that has been used as a way to understand the development of reading proficiency. What I think is important to consider is which areas is this consumption/production process can be emphasized. When does consumption/production develop something beyond the content of interest (critical thinking, problem-solving, etc.) and how far does the development of these higher level skills transfer (near transfer, far transfer)?

The issue of transfer is important and the research on the extent of transfer should play a role in the educational focus on production. What I mean by this is that the educational setting does not have the time to provide production experiences in every possible consumption/production area. When should production be emphasized as an elective and when as a requirement? Consider the possibilities that are seldom examined. Most individuals enjoy the consumption of music, theater, photography, and food.

There are two questions here. First, which production areas should be emphasized if the time necessary to develop related thinking skills can be accomplished by any production experience. Most research suggests that the time necessary to assure transfer is significant. This is one of the concerns with the use of coding to develop higher order thinking. Most research shows that limited exposure is not enough. Second, there is the issue of which areas should be required of all if near transfer is all that is produced. Again, choices have to be made.

My thought is that we have been doing it right all along. I would propose that we emphasize the reading/writing connection which probably means students don’t do enough writing. The processes of reading and writing have such wide utility that has not diminished over the decades and probably needs enhancement. I would focus on the arts, coding, and making as electives. These questions are a matter of balance and it should not be assumed that earlier questions of emphasis resulted in the wrong decisions.

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Newsela adds “paired texts”

Newsela has not been around for long, but the company has become quite popular as a way for educators to meet the literacy needs of classrooms serving a wide range of reading levels. The service offers the same “news” stories written at multiple reading levels.

Newsela  now offers an additional approach that meets the challenges of what some have described as a “new literacy”. Most of us increasing turn to online resources to meet our information needs and we locate this information using search. What search returns are multiple hits and we tend to fashion an understanding from a review of several of these sources. In keeping with this notion that we build a personal understanding by combining information from multiple sources, Newsela now provides a resource called Paired Texts. Two articles that address a common theme are provided. Students are provided a writing prompt that is best addressed by combining information from the two resources.

As far as I can tell, the articles are selected to provide different information and not contradictory perspectives. This would seem to be the next step – what do you do when a search provides information that is not consistent and you are asked to take a position?

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Write About

I am a fan of the general educational benefits of writing with a personal interest in writing or authoring to learn. I see authoring as a “go to” technique that can be helpful to learners with any content area and at any age. In addition, authoring offers the opportunity to write for others increasing the authentic feel of the experience and often incorporating the cognitive benefits involved in “teaching to learn”.

These interests result in a constant search for tools and environments that facilitate authentic authoring. I end up writing about my finds (writing and writing must be some kind of meta thing).

Write About is an online service implementing many of the ideas I value. Their mission statement (what I would call it) goes like this – “A community where students engage in high-interest writing for an authentic audience and teachers help students grow through the entire writing process”.

Write About offers a flexible environment offering support and guidance or the opportunity to be entirely self-directed. Among the features are the following:

  • Proposed topics within genres to serve as prompts
  • Commenting and feedback tools. For students, these include suggestions for what to avoid to comment or offer feedback effectively and comment and feedback stems.
  • Multiple methods for sharing products
  • Recognition of security and privacy concerns with control over multiple levels of sharing. Teacher and author sign off is required for truly public sharing. Participation of learners under the age of 13 is assumed to involve parental permission.

How would a service like this be different than say Google Docs within the Google Apps for Education environment? I would suggest that you could likely accomplish most of the same things, but the Write About environment is designed to be a teaching/learning environment (with prompts, feedback stems, built-in sharing opportunities). Google docs would have superior multimedia capabilities.

What about cost? Writing About offers multiple plans with features and the amount of use varying by plan. I would suggest that the free plan is mostly useful for experimentation and it is probably more practical to purchase by the month or year for serious application.

writeabout

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Improving peer editing

One challenge in writing a textbook on technology integration is knowing when to stop including things. You do not want to drift into areas covered in other courses (e.g., Methods) or to extend your comments beyond your areas of expertise. Of course, you also want to include enough information that what you do write leaves learners with enough guidance that they feel they can act on the information provided.

One of our core recommendations has long been a modification of writing across the curriculum or writing to learn we have labelled authoring to learn. We extend the area of writing to learn in to include approaches that involve multimedia authoring. We contend such recommendations are concrete, efficient, and thoroughly researched as a strategy that lends itself to various implementations of project based learning.

In our most recent edition, we explore the role online tools such as Google docs offer in developing writing skills and applying writing to learn strategies. A key component of effective instruction in either area is the revision process – writing is an iterative process that moves toward a higher quality product and a deeper level of understanding when revision is emphasized. A reality associated with such benefits is the time intensive nature of supporting revision. Ideally (although some might question the use of this superlative), teacher review and guidance would offer the best approach. However, heavy use of writing to learn tasks would also place what might be unrealistic demands on teacher time. Peer editing may offer the solution. In addition to the advantage of a division of labor, peer editing should offer a way to develop editing skills. Improvement in editing skill not only would benefit peers, but would also the writing skills of the “editor”. 

Our content on this topic already reviewed the challenges of developing skilled peer editors and provided references both supporting this approach and identifying issues that can occur when peer editors are “turned loose” without preparation and training. Our suggestions for how to support editors offered general guidelines, but did not provide specific examples. This is the issue of straying into the area of methods courses and limitations in our own personal experiences we mentioned earlier.

I have finally located a resource that offers the kind of concrete suggestions to explain the general guidelines we provided. This is a lesson from the ReadWriteThink site. The PowerPoint that can be downloaded gives very specific suggestions for what young editors should do in reacting to the work of their peers.

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Computational thinking, historical thinking, and beyond

Old folks are supposedly famous for reacting to their younger peers by responding to their new ideas claiming “we already tried that and it did not work”. Sorry if some of my comments seem to fit this description. However, …..

The limited time available within the school day is limited and interested parties seem to be arguing that their content be given a larger portion of the pie. I accept the value of advocacy and I consider myself relatively neutral. I become critical when it seems to me the positions taken go beyond what I think can actually be delivered. I agree that not everyone really needs what everyone gets and, that when practical financially, greater flexibility be provided. However, when it comes to innovation, two positions that cause me to react with skepticism claim a) all students need this new experience, and b) this new experience develops general skills/knowledge in ways not now accomplished by the existing curriculum. Here is where I want to see some evidence so education does not given in to the fad of the year.

Presently, there seems to be interest in something called “computational thinking.” I have no idea if this is really new or a rebranding of an earlier idea. I remember reading Papert years ago and he proposed a computational way of understanding geometry. I admit when I first thought of the way he proposed understanding “circle” I thought there was something unique about his perspective. Of course, I knew the definition of circle – a closed, plane figure consisting of all points equidistant from a point, but being able to generate this definition was not really understanding. Now, if you imagine yourself as the LOGO turtle standing on a point and you walk forward a given number of turtle steps, lower your pen and walk one more step, raise the pen, then backup the given number of steps +1, you have created a point at a given distance from a point. Turn right one unit, repeat, turn right one unit, etc. You have a circle.

I admit this is my one example. However,  the difference between my ability to offer the definition of a circle and create a circle via coding has influenced my understanding of understanding. Is this reaction unique to programing or is the capacity to execute a construct through action a more general way to achieve understanding? I understand what I can do.

Flash forward to the present and recognize that computational thinking has experienced a renaissance. What I mean by this is that some in education are again promoting the value of learning to program, but also proposing more general benefits for these experiences. Clearly, those of us who have developed programming skills (now sometimes called coding) have experienced vocational advantages. Programming seems a skill for the 21st century based on the larger role digital devices play in all aspects of our lives. While I agree with the value of this particular skill as important in multiple vocations, I balk at the argument that it is a skill for all or that what students might learn through programming courses goes beyond the skill of programming.

My concern is that those in various disciplines argue too broadly for the benefits of their discipline. If a particular discipline happens to be in favor for one reason or another (STEM seems to be the in thing at the moment), there seems a tendency to embellish a bit and to argue that a skill is more than just a skill.

So, just to make a point, I think I can make the same case for several disciplines not typically considered as being broadly beneficial. For example, consider what could be learned from history. Yes, yes, I understand about important names and dates, knowing where we came from, and not repeating mistakes. However, historians should argue there is the potential to teach far more. What historians do is not what you likely learned from taking history courses. You learn what historians learned, but you do not learn how they learned it. Historians piece together accounts from multiple, primary sources. Since sources were generated by individuals with different perspectives, i.e., biases, piecing together an account of what likely happened is a great exercise in critical thinking. There is also great value in appreciating that individuals experience history from different perspectives and with different personal outcomes so the consequences of historical events is complex and multifaceted. Anyway, when explained in this manner, there is the potential here to develop very important higher order cognitive skills and such skills are exactly what reformers contend are missing as a consequence of typical educational experiences. Think like a historian.

I do promote a given activity both as useful for all and as a way to develop thinking capabilities more generally. My personal recommendation for an alteration of typical practice would be to place a greater emphasis on writing. Yes, students are taught to write, but I think they should write more as part of all classes they take. There are limits when you learn to write by writing to practice writing. Beyond the basics, you learn to write by writing to communicate. Students should write for their parents and they should write for their peers. They should write for themselves. Mostly, they should write about they learn. This seems more purposeful than writing about an arbitrary topic assigned in English class. The effort in putting something down on paper leaves far less room for the assumption of understanding than does just studying. There is something about that blank sheet of paper or monitor screen that challenges the illusion of knowing. Call it “Writing to learn” or “Writing across the curriculum”, the flexibility of writing would be my recommendation for an activity required of all and offering higher order advantages.

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