Thoughts on teaching & educational technology

Here’s a plug for the “Last Flight Home,” a documentary I just had the privilege of seeing. It’s about ongoing efforts to recover the remains of American servicemen lost in the Pacific — specifically the Palau Islands. That may sound a little esoteric, but it’s not. It’s probably the most compassionate, human story I’ve heard about WW2, combining solid history with family interviews and footage of recovery expeditions launched over the last 10 years.

If you teach the war form a traditional big picture view, and need a way to make it more personal — more alive at the individual level — this could be it. If you’re more interested in the human/social history aspects of the war, this is perfect, and would provide a means to tie that side of the war to the military events that comprised it.

It’s just over an hour, and covers three different sub-stories, each focused on efforts to find the remains of one aircraft and its crew, so you could easily show only parts of it in order to fit into your bell schedule.

I met the directors and the guy who is behind the recovery expeditions (doing it out of his own pocket) when they screened the film at the Pima Air and Space Museum in September. The screening coincided with the annual reunion of VMF-114, a USMC fighter squadron that operated off of Peleliu, in the Palau Islands, from 1944-45. They all thought it was outstanding, and I figure that if a group of veterans put their stamp on it, it’s worth seeing.

jdg

Okay, thus far I’ve focused on inquiry-based learning, a little edtech, and a lesson — all pretty serious, sober stuff. And this lesson is no different, although it may seem otherwise.

Let me be direct: I think Iron Maiden is one of the best bands out there, and probably the best heavy metal band, period. And metal is great stuff — and far more cerebral than you might think (go here to see how!).

Anyway, that said, this is a lesson I used two years ago for a freshman World History class. Since the course was of the survey sort, we had too little time to do too much, and I needed to blaze through Alexander so I could get to Rome — bt I wanted to do something that would pique the kids’ interest, and maybe push them out of their comfort zones a bit. Enter Iron Maiden’s great historical tune, ‘Alexander the Great,’ off their 1986 album ‘Somewhere in Time.’ If you read the lyrics you’ll see that they tell the story of his life — or at least sketch out the high points (minus Oliver Stone’s take on the poor guy). I had my students write L1 and L2 questions for each line of the song (see my LoQ post for information about that if you’re scratching you head right now), then guided them to the ABC-CLIO Ancient History database to hunt for answers. The questions varied depending on the student, but there were some that were universal (what 9th-grader knows about the Scythians?), but there was variety among the students, based on prior knowledge & extent of vocabulary knowledge.

As a final product I had the kids create a glossary of terms and concepts, based on the answers to their LoQs from the lyrics, and put together a visual (either on paper or digitally — all the students have laptops at Empire) showing Alexander’s travels & exploits. On the day it was due I played the song for them in class, and given the interest among the current crop of students in classic metal (their parents’ music), it went over famously.

See? Historical inquiry, laptops, and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal can produce great learning outcomes — that’s what I call synergy.

jdg

ps: Maiden has a slew of historically–oriented songs, ranging from ancient mythology to WW2. And you can stream parts of the songs directly from their website..but if you want the full experience, you need to buy the CDs.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then it must be worth at least a few good questions — probably more, if students have been taught how to frame good questions. I use Levels of Questions, and the categorization of questions into L1, L2, and L3, as a common vocabulary to help students develop basic inquiry skills. I believe the easiest first foray into the land of inquiry is through a compelling image, like this one:

I’d project this on my screen (or you could display it on an overhead — it’s available from the Nat’l Archives.

Anyway, I’d start my class with that picture, and these instructions: “write as many relevant L1 and L2 questions as you can about this picture. Write questions that, if answered, will help you fully understand what is going on inside the frame of the picture — not outside of it, not related to or implied by it, but just inside the frame itself.”

I might give the students, early in the year, 5-7 minutes to write questions, after which we’d go over them as a class.

Going over their questions helps reinforce well-written questions, and helps the students recognize what sorts of questions are genuinely helpful in ‘unlocking’ a topic — that is, really helping them to learn about it.

Anyway, once the questions are written, the students need resources to dig through for answers. Empire High School subscribes to several of ABC-CLIO’s excellent social studies databases, and using them I can create customized ‘Research Lists’ of resources — pictures, quotes, biographies, essays, primary source documents, and more — for the students to use as springboards to learn about a given topic. As part of my lesson preparation I would have created a list of resources related to this image, or whatever image I was using for that lesson. I wouldn’t include anything too obvious — like an essay about women ordnance workers in WW2 — but I would populate the list with things like statistics about the demographics of the American labor force during WW2, a few biographies of major personalities from the time & topics, pictures of some of the many morale-boosting posters of the time, and other resources that would enable the students to answer the questions they had framed.

Then I set them loose for a given period of time, in class or out, to use the list of materials I’ve provided (which helps me stay on track to meet my mandated standards) to answer as many of their own questions as possible, and to write additional ones (more on that step later).

The point, at this simple, early stage, is that students quickly become more interested in the topic presented because they are approaching it and meeting it from where they are — not from where I want them to be. I might have some junior history buff who’d recognize the model of plane that those nose assemblies go to, and he/she would write questions based on that prior knowledge. I might have a student who has no clue at all what those things are — and he/she could frame questions that would be immediately useful in figuring out those critical basics — the key questions — that must be answered before any additional, deeper consideration can take place.

So it’s simple at the outset: students write their own questions, then go about answering them using teacher-selected resources that are topically-focused. More on what I do with all this in my next post.

jdg