Dumb-ocracy and the Wisdom of Crowds

“Whenever the people are well informed,” Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “they can be trusted with their own government.”

If that’s right, says Clarence Page, then we’re in trouble.

In a recent Chicago Tribune column, Page highlights some of his concerns:

• Less than one in four of us can list all five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances) but more than half can rattle off at least two characters from the Simpsons.
• Almost half of all Americans believe that the president can suspend the Constitution whenever it suits.
• According to a recent Time magazine survey, 25% of Americans incorrectly believe that President Obama is a Muslim.
• The percentage who correctly say President Obama is a Christian is at 34%, down from 48% last March.
• A majority of us still believe that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
• Page cites research suggesting that 20% Americans don’t know that there are 100 senators.
• Only two in five can correctly name all three branches of government.

Have we always been this stupid?

According to Rick Shenkman, an associate professor of history at George Mason University, probably not. But in his 2008 book, Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter, Shenkman suggests that the stupidity pace is accelerating.

He argues that American voters have become increasingly ignorant of politics and world affairs and are susceptible to political manipulation. Shenkman claims that we are incapable of critically understanding the subtleties of both domestic and international issues. So voters often lack the knowledge and ability to participate effectively in the political process and are often mislead into voting for leaders who are not in line with national or local interests. Part of his argument is that we also lack strong media literacy skills – thus ensuring that whatever happens to come across the blogosphere and twitterverse or arrives via text message is taken as absolute gospel.

In a conversation with Page, Shenkman said

people follow the news so loosely that they are susceptible to any wild idea.

Shenkman’s not the only one to suggest that new media is changing how and what we believe. In a February Miami Herald column, Leonard Pitts writes

To listen to talk radio, to watch TV pundits, to read a newspaper’s online message board, is to realize that increasingly, we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth. We admit no ideas that do not confirm us, hear no voices that do not echo us, sift out all information that does not validate what we wish to believe.

Farhad Moojan argues for exactly the same thing is his book, “True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society.”

In True Enough, Manjoo basically says that Web 2.0 communication tools makes it easier for us to lie and harder for others to know the difference.

. . . when we strung up the planet in fiber-optic cable, when we dissolved the mainstream media into prickly niches and when each of use began to create and transmit our own pictures and sounds, we eased the path through which propaganda infects the culture.

So perhaps the question we should be asking is not are we stupid, but why are we stupid?

Lots of people, myself included, have been pushing for more “wisdom of crowd” types of tools – blogs and wikis and Ning sites and Plurk, for example. Manjoo calls these sorts of tools the “infosphere.” The concept being that the more we can share ideas, we all become smarter. I still accept that.

But I’m also starting to accept the fact that it can work the other way as well – that the more we can share ideas, the possibility exists that we can also become . . . well . . . more stupid. The infosphere pushes incorrect ideas just as easily as it pushes good ones.

And right now, I’m not sure if there’s a clean and easy solution. At the same time that Manjoo’s infosphere is becoming a stronger and stronger influence on how potential voters view the world, future voters are getting less and less instruction on the basics of citizenship.

States are de-emphasizing the testing of social studies and thus the importance of social studies as a part of instruction. K-8 buildings are reducing the amount of time spent on teaching social studies. And I know that many who do teach social studies often don’t have the background and qualifications to actually do it.

But I also know that we need to continue to advocate for strong social studies instruction. The recent issue of The Social Studies Professional offers a nice list of ways that we can use to support social studies on a variety of fronts.

We also need to be more accountable in our own classes to

• teach media literacy
• ask kids to think critically
• solve realistic problems
• encourage actual discussion skills besides simply talking louder
• develop a wide variety of information sources

So why is this such a big deal? Page ends with

When the elections are close, the deciding votes usually come from the least informed, least-engaged and most emotionally driven voters.

Heaven help us.

Heaven help us, indeed.

Tip of the Week – Interactive Student Notebooks

One of the stereotypes of high school classes, especially history classes, is that most instruction consists of dry, boring lectures. The teacher from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as played by Ben Stein comes to mind.

In 1930, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in an effort to alleviate the effects of the . . . Anyone? Anyone? . . . the Great Depression, passed the . . . anyone? Anyone?

The tariff bill? The Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act? Which, anyone? Raised or lowered? . . . raised tariffs, in an effort to collect more revenue for the federal government. Did it work? Anyone? Anyone know the effects?

And while direct instruction delivered this way has very little impact on long-term learning, we also understand that kids need to be able to gather and organize basic information so that they can apply that information in creative ways.

We also know that graphic organizers are great tools for this task. One form of graphic organizer that works very well is something called Interactive Student Notebooks. I was reminded of ISNs this week when I got an email from a teacher looking for ways to integrate technology into their use.

ISNs are the anti-thesis to the old style outline notes that we were taught as students and many teachers still use. Interactive Student Notebooks allow students to record information in an engaging way that’s based on brain research.

At a very basic level, an ISN is simply a notebook or binder with each page divided in half – a right side and a left side. The right side or “input” side should be used for taking class notes, notes from a video or discussion or from assigned readings. This can be done in a traditional outline format but teachers can also model a variety of visual models such as flow charts, annotated slides or other simple graphic organizers. Basically the rights side is where a student puts information that everyone in the class needs to know.

The left side or “output” side is where application of that information begins to happen and where students start the processing of new ideas. You should ask students to use illustrations, diagrams, charts, poetry, colors, matrices, cartoons, and the like. Have kids articulate their opinions, agree or disagree on controversial issues, ponder hypothetical situations and ask questions about new ideas. Early in the process, you will need to model what these activities might look like. These activities help kids understand that simply writing down lecture notes does not mean they have learned the information.

So what does it look like?

This example from the History Alive people shows a student taking class notes on late nineteenth-century industrialism on the right side of her notebook. Later as homework, she created a topical net on the left side using the information from the right side.

Why use ISNs?

• ISNs encourage students to use both the visual and linguistic parts of the brains.
• Note taking becomes a much more active process. Students become directly involved in constructing their own knowledge. Much of the work is actually doing something with the information.
• ISNs encourage students to become more organized in the learning process. Kids begin to see relationships in the process of doing history. Many teachers also ask that students use highlighters, subject headings, underline and colored markers.
• Over time, ISNs become a portfolio of the student’s work. You, the kid and parents can track progress throughout the school. ISNs also provide an excellent review tool.

There are tons of ways that you can use the left hand side of the ISN (courtesy of History Alive):

• Advertisements
  Design advertisements to represent migration, settlement, or the significance of a specific site.
• Annotated Illustrations
  Make annotated illustrations to recount a story of travel or migration, to represent a moment in time or to label architectural features.
• Annotated Slides
  Use simple sketches of powerful images, accompanied by annotations, to help students understand difficult content.
• Book / CD / Video Games covers – design the layout using information from the right side.
• Caricatures
  Draw caricatures to present the main characteristics of a group in history or how an individual or group was perceived by another group.
• Eulogies
  Write eulogies to extol the virtues of prominent historical figures or civilizations.
• Facial Expressions
• Draw facial expressions to summarize the feelings of groups who have different perspectives on a single event.
• Flow Charts
  Create flow charts to show causal relationships or to show steps in a sequence.
• Forms of Poetry
  Write various forms of poetry to describe a person, place, event or feeling of a moment.
• Historical Journals
  Assume the role of a historical figure to keep a journal that recounts the figure’s feelings and experiences in language of the era.
• Illustrated Dictionary Entries
  Explain key terms by created illustrated dictionary entries. Write adefinition, provide a synonym and an antonym, and draw an illustration to represent each term.
• Illustrated Outlines
  Use simple drawings and symbols to graphically highlight or organize class notes.
• Illustrated Proverbs
  Create illustrated proverbs to explain complex concepts.
• Illustrated Timelines
  Create illustrated timelines to sequence a series of events in chronological order.
• Invitations
  Design invitations that highlight the main goals and key facts of important historical events.
• Mind Notes
  Draw and label outlines of the heads of important historical figures. Fill in the outline with quotations and paraphrased thoughts from that person.
• Mosaics
  Synthesize information from a broad content area by creating mosaics. Use visuals and words to represent similarities, differences and important concepts.
• Perspective Pieces
  Design drawings or write newspaper articles to represent different perspectives on controversial figures, events and concepts.
• Pictowords
  Create pictowords (symbolic representations of words or phrases tha show their meaning) to help define difficult concepts.
• Political Cartoons and Comic Strips
  Create political cartoons and comic strips to provide social or political commentary on important historical events.
• Postcards
  After studying specific content, write postcards to summarize information about places or events.
• Provocative Statements
  Have students react to provocative statements to introduce historical themes or to critically assess a historical period.
• Report Card
  Use graded evaluations to assess the policies of leaders or governments.
• Sensory Figures
  Create sensory figures (simple drawings of prominent historical figures with descriptions of what they might be seeing, hearing, saying,feeling, or doing) to show the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of historical figures.
• Spectrums
  Place information on a spectrum to show multiple perspectives on a topic or to express an opinion about an issue.
• Spoke Diagrams
  Create spoke diagrams as a visual alternative to outlining.
• Venn Diagrams
  Develop Venn diagrams to compare and contrast people, concepts, places or groups.
• “What If?” Statements
  Use “what if?” statements to apply newfound knowledge to hypothetical historical situations.

Have fun!

Top Ten Blogs for History Teachers

Okay . . . not sure whether I deserve to be on the list but am certainly happy to be included with such great company.

The Milestone Documents people put together a quick post they’re calling Ten Top Blogs for History Teachers and History Tech made the cut. The list has some heavy hitters and includes local favorites such as Teach Paperless and The History Teacher’s Attic.

There are many terrific blogs written by and for history educators, including a number that focus on the themes that motivate us here at Milestone Documents: inquiry-based learning, technology integration, Web 2.0 teaching, and document-based learning, to name a few. We thought we’d take a moment to highlight ten such blogs.

Milestone Documents has a great site themselves with tons of stuff that you need to check out. They’ve got some awesome primary source documents and some very sweet mobile apps that highlight presidential speeches. I’ve also enjoyed reading the News and Opinion section.

Head over and explore not just the other blogs on the list but Milestone Docs as well.

10 Tips for jump starting the school year

Several months ago, I had the chance to listen to and meet Suzie Boss and Jane Krauss at the Laptop Leaders Academy at Mitchell, SD. They are doing some incredibly cool stuff with PBL around the country and so I’ve been following their blog these last few months.

A recent post at Reinventing Project-Based Learning was a link to an Edutopia PDF document that can “jump starting” the beginning of the school year. It’s got ten tips and useful resources to help you integrate technology into your instruction.

Useful stuff! Find it here.

We’re #11! We’re #11!

A recent issue of Newsweek focused on answering the following question:

If you were born today, which country would provide you the very best opportunity to live a healthy, safe, reasonably prosperous and upwardly mobile life?

Newsweek editors and writers chose to focus on five areas – education, health, quality of life, economic competitiveness and political environment – and then applied data from each of those areas across 100 countries.

The overall results?

The US finished 11th behind such countries as Switzerland, Denmark, Norway and Australia (sigh) but ended up way ahead of Uganda, Yeman and Cameroon (yea!). Newsweek did break stuff out a bit – they created smaller lists comparing similar sized countries by category. We did better on some of those lists.

The article noted some interesting trends. Some obvious, some not. Most obvious? Being small and rich (Switzerland) is much better than large and poor (South Africa).

Perhaps not so obvious was their observation that your educational system can make a huge difference in where you ended up on the list. And while this is a very wide-angle view of 100 countries, the authors of the article were also able to notice a few educational trends in those countries at the top of the list.

One of the first things that they noted was that family circumstances impact success more than any other factor. By age three, the authors suggest, children with professional parents are a full year ahead of their peers. Kids know twice as many words and score 40 points higher on IQ tests.

By age 10?

The gap is now three years.

And if nothing changes, many of those already behind will not master basic skills. As in . . . never.

So what successful international educational trends can we steal?

Get kids into school early

“High-quality preschooling does more for a child’s chances in school and life than any other educational intervention.” Pre-schooled kids earn more, had better jobs, are less likely to be in prison and more likely to remain in stable, long-term relationships.

And don’t forget the parents in that equation. Kids aren’t the only people who need an education at that point. We also need to train parents how to parent.

Keep kids in school longer

Current US educational policy is currently focused on creating longer school days and a longer school year. But the economy is making this difficult – schools are cutting back on student contact time to save money.

But I gotta tell ya. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. Unless the instruction is of high-quality, more time spent in school doesn’t seem to make much sense. Longer days with poor teachers, poor resources and out-dated methods will do more harm than good.

Pour lots of effort into improving teacher quality

“Studies have shown that kids with the most effective teachers learn three times as much as those with the least effective.”

Now this I can get behind. Great teachers make a huge difference. I would gladly send me kid to school longer if I knew they would spend that time with quality people. We need to spend more time and effort recruiting teachers, invest in more and better staff development, provide constant feedback and provide bonuses for top performers.

Of course, that’s the real challenge, isn’t it? How do you document the top performers? Of course, we all know who’s good and who’s not. It was the same when we were in school or sports . . . we all knew who was number one. It’s the documenting that we need to work on. And I don’t know what that looks like. But we, the system, needs to spend time fixing that.

Recognize the value of individualized instruction

This is one of the benefits of programs like MTSS or RTI. We are taking a much clearer look at individual kids and what their needs are.

——————

And while these ideas all make sense, they are systemic and institutional. What can I as an individual do?

Not much I can do in my classroom about the preschool stuff. But I can

• Provide high-quality homework that will extend learning outside of class. This is not an easy thing but what we ask kids to do should involve more problem solving activities, more video games and group activities that incorporate online collaborative tools like Google Docs, Edmodo, Skype and Delicious.
• Become a better teacher. Get involved in creating and participating in a Personal Learning Network. Join Ning networks like Classroom 2.0, get on Plurk or Twitter, join a book study, subscribe to more blogs, travel more, read more books in your content area.
• Purposefully plan to differentiate your instruction. Don’t hope that kids learn. Figure out what they need and deliver your stuff in ways that guarantee that they learn. Plan for individualized learning.

Martin Luther King once said

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.

Be the minority.

Tip of the Week – Twitter template and Tweet summaries

I haven’t decided quite yet whether this is sacrilegious or not. But a guy named Chris Juby has decided to use Twitter to summarize the entire Bible, one chapter at a time.

We’ve talked in the past about using social media tools like Facebook and Twitter as instructional tools. But it’s always been a way to simulate or recreate the actions of thinking of historical people and this Bible thing has got me thinking a bit.

When asked about the project, Chris said

It’s a really tough process deciding what the key themes of each chapter are and what can be left out.

Many kids have trouble with summarizing, trying to do exactly what Chris is doing with Twitter – trying to figure out what is really important.

What if you used the Twitter concept to help kids summarize text? It’s a idea that they understand, with many of them already using the tool or texting via cell phones.

And while Twitter is probably blocked in most of your schools, it’s not tough to create some sort of usable blank template based on the Twitter page. In an earlier post, I posted directions on how to create a Facebook template. Follow those instructions to make one yourself or you can simply download a PDF version of a blank Twitter template that I quickly put together.

Have kids read the text, watch the video or listen to the lecture. Have them stop at appropriate times in the text or during the video and, using the template, ask them to create a “tweet” of the most important themes or ideas presented in that section of content. (But have them leave the big empty space at the top blank for now.)

Students can “publish” their tweets by having a partner read what they wrote. Encourage conversation and comparison between partners about what each wrote. Repeat the process until the content has been completed delivered.

I would then have partners exchange their Twitter “pages” one last time. Students should create a question for each of the tweets created by their partner. This will provide a quick way for students to review the information – having both a simple summary and a question that can help trigger additional information.

An example might be a tweet that I created stating

Gettysburg is big 3-day battle in PA, July 1863. 20th Maine holds, Pickett’s Charge fails, north survives Confederate invasion

My partner would create a question in the margin along the lines of

Why was the Battle of Gettysburg so important?

The final step would for each student to go to the top of their Twitter template (the space that they left blank earlier) and create a tweet that summarizes all of their previous tweets. All of these activities will help students create, store and recall tons of information.

And while we know this is just another form of a graphic organizer, your students will see just the Twitter connection and dive right in.

Have fun!