Reading Response for October 18, 2014

In the reading How Teachers Learn and Develop, the authors state that “The problem of knowing something but failing to have it guide one’s actions is ubiquitous. Many years ago, Alfred Whitehead (1929) warned about the dangers of inert knowledge. This involves knowledge that is available to people in the sense that they can talk about it when explicitly asked to do so…However, the knowledge is inert in the sense that it does not guide one’s thinking and actions in new settings” (Hammerness et. al, p. 372).   

This has been completely true in my experience. I understood the concepts in all of my theory and literature classes. I could write great papers, and ace exams, but getting into the classroom was a completely different experience. I acted on impulse and did not stop to think about the theory that supported my action or the state standard that was included in each seemingly off-topic talk (where students actually learn more than I could hope). 

As Whitehead is mentioned in the article again, he suggests that most pre-teacher knowledge “remains inert”. This is very true of some of my knowledge. My content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge I do very much use over and over again. However, knowledge about the developmental stages of children, and learning school law has remained inert. Is there a better way to prepare pre-service teachers for their own classroom? Of that, I am not sure, but I do know that it took several years’ experience to feel like I knew as much as a teacher should know and had forgotten all of the unnecessary information I didn’t require. 

Shifting gears…to Twitter

In Twitter is a Snark Valve, Mark Sample states that one of the most common uses of Twitter among his students is criticizing and snark. Instead of being angry, he is interested and sounds mostly pleased: “It’s involved, it’s witty, and most importantly, it takes an oppositional stance — a welcome reprieve from the majority of student writing, which avoids taking any stance at all.”

Sample states that although students use this as a way to voice negative opinions about material, at the very least it is working “to demonstrate that the student is in fact earnestly engaged with the material.”

Sample also finds this useful for getting things done in class. “By having a systematic, constrained outlet for the snipe and snark and sarcasm that smart twenty-year-olds might otherwise direct towards more civil discourse, or unleash outside of the classroom, or worse, bottle up, the Twitter snark valve frees up both class and the class blog for more “serious” dialog. And I’m putting “serious” in scare quotes because I believe even sardonic comments provide insight — insight into the topic under discussion, but also insight into how it’s being received by students.”

I feel a little torn about this. I see what Sample is getting after. He is seeing this as successful because his students are not robots – they are demonstrating that they have a voice and an opinion. However, students should know that there are real-world consequences for posting snarky remarks about professors, institutions, bosses, work environments, etc. Not everyone will be impressed that they have an opinion about their surroundings.

It’s wonderful to speak out about situations that are displeasing and deserve attention and it’s amazing to have a tool to allow a global conversation, but for situations like class, job, etc. there doesn’t seem to be a reason to allow the snarky tweeting to continue. Furthermore, Sample states that his students were completely aware that he was part of the Twitter followers and would be participating in the conversation. For his students to not care who read their “snarky” remarks shows a way more interesting phenomenon in my opinion. For the majority, students would most likely not directly share their gripes with their professor to his face, but they are completely fine posting it to a site where he will read their comments. They are only brave and opinionated when they are not directly facing the object of their contention. Those people are not agents of change – they are whining. Am I interpreting this correctly or have I completely gone on the defensive? Would you allow students to write snarky remarks about your classroom/teaching/educational material? If I’m way off the mark here, someone please bring me back to reality.

I do admit that this would give the teacher/professor a time to reflect on their teaching and material. In the article Reflections on Teaching with Social Media, the section about using Zotero interested me partly because I would be very interested in playing with this technological tool myself to see if this would be useful in my classroom. I was also intrigued by this section because the author admits that many students did not utilize the tool to complete their assignments. He has an honest evaluation of the technology used in his classroom. Self-reflection is a gigantic part of being a good teacher. Reflection of your own practices is great, but then also giving students a chance to reflect on your practices. Completely terrifying to make yourself vulnerable but totally useful to creating a better lesson, unit, and classroom.

Mark Sample’s Framework for Teaching with Twitter, his overview of Twitter-use in this later blog post seems to be more in line with what I would like to use Twitter for in my own classroom. “Or try Twitter as a platform for reflective thinking, asking students at the end of class to sum up the most valuable lesson of the day.” I have used Twitter sheets in the past where they are summing up their opinions or reflections to the lesson modeling a Twitter post without actually posting it to the Web. They simply turn in their sheets to me as an exit slip. I like this activity for the very reason that Sample includes: “In my experience, having only 140 characters to do so will actually make it much more likely the students give a concise and focused reflection, rather than some canned response they think you want to hear.” I like using the paper method for “Twitter Posts” because then I’m not forcing my students to use their Twitter for school and I’m not in danger of seeing things on their feed that I really don’t want to see. I also don’t have to deal with families that do not want their student on Twitter. Would you use the real-deal Twitter in your classroom? Would that create a more authentic experience and would it be worth the potential road blocks?