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Fox IBSC Action Research Presentation
1. Using Student Generated Blogs
to Guide and Assess
Maker Learning Experiences
Christopher Fox
The Haverford School
How might a shared student review
process during a Maker Project enhance
self-management and creativity in
Grade 11 boys?
2. The Haverford School is a selective private, non-sectarian, all-boys college
preparatory day school, junior kindergarten through grade twelve. Founded in
1884 l, it is located in Haverford, Pennsylvania, nine miles northwest of
Philadelphia.
Students: 1,013 total, 436 Upper School, 225 Middle School
15. • Guide or Frame the “Maker
Practice” without directing it?
• Create opportunity for deeper and
transferrable learning?
• Assess effectiveness of the practice
for growth?
Action Research Project
22. • Joseph Cornell
• Louise Nevelson
• Jean Tinguely
• Kurt Schwitters
• Robert Rauchenberg
• David Hockney – Video Installation
• Low Relief
• Shadow Box
• Bas Relief
• Assemblage
• Kinetic Art
Search terms for research:
23. “The one who does the
work does the learning.”
Terry Doyle
So what about my Action Research?
38. Challenge Stage:
• What is the guiding question and what do you
think it means?
• Were there terms in the question or project
description you needed to look up? If so, explain
those terms.
• What are the actual limits of the project?
• What then is open to your interpretation?
• Were any artists or art movements suggested for
further investigation and what did you find out
when you looked into them?
39. Freddy uses a classroom iPad to blog about his brainstorming stage
40. Brainstorm/Experiment Stage:
• Describe some of your first ideas through writing and
photos (even though first ideas can sometimes be
lame)
• Sometimes brainstorming involves making quick lists
of words, maybe you could post one of those lists.
• Photograph any rough sketches or doodles you did
while brainstorming.
• Did you, through your brainstorming, discover some
new possibility that you think is a particularly unique
way of answering the challenge, even if it’s
impractical to carry out? If so describe it.
48. “The principle goal of education is
to create men who are capable of
doing new things, not simply of
repeating what other generations
have done – men who are creative,
inventive and discoverers.
Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980)
49.
50. “Sam, what do you think about the grading of the
stages rather than the final product?”
51. “Sam, what do you think about the grading of the
stages rather than the final product?”
57. “The greatest sign of success
for a teacher... is to be able to
say, "The children are now
working as if I did not
exist."”
Maria Montessori (1870 – 1952)
I am a high school art teacher and chair of the Visual Arts Department at The Haverford School, located just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States.
I’ve been an art teacher for 34 years teaching a variety of grade levels and a wide range of art media.
I am also a practicing artist with m paintings in public and private collections in North America and Europe.
Seeing the topic of this year’s Action Research project caught my attention. This is something I know something about and am interested in.
While I appreciate the enthusiasm in the new “maker movement” I will admit to being a bit annoyed that this is somehow seen an new.
Students in my classes have been involved in “maker learning” of one sort or another for all the years I’ve been teaching.
I know a lot of emphasis of this current iteration of maker learning involves certain gadgets that enable forms of making not previously available to individuals. And we have these in the art studios at Haverford now.
But our studios have always had plenty of tools for making in a variety of materials for years now.
I would argue that our ability to learn by making and doing is our survival advantage as a species. We are able to learn faster than natural selection can know us off. At least so far.
What is different is the connectivity many if these technologies enable. My curriculum is no longer bounded by my own knowledge.
I was able as a result of being allowed to conduct this research process to read and research across a range of related subjects. I am particularly interested in the current work in neuroscience that seems to be describing from a scientific frame the behaviors I have observed in my art classrooms over the year.
In my years at a school like Haverford (a school that describes itself as a “traditional, rigorous academic college preparatory school) I’ve often been put in a position of having to justify the place of the visual arts in that curriculum. As annoying as that has been it has kept me focused on being intentional in the development of real skills and knowledge in my students.
What of value are boys in my classes gaining by working on a painting?
So, my research was in trying to take my experience as an art teacher and an artist and see if it might be possible to describe what is often seen as intuitive or even chaotic practice of creativity, of making new things,
How can we “teach” or reinforce this essential practice such that it leads to greater metacognition and deeper and more transferrable learning”?
There are lots of diagrams people use to describe this process.
This is what we use. Certainly this is a simplification we could add feedback loops….
Too many of my students, high school mind you, have been duped into believing this is the diagram.
First Step is to understand the question.
I’ve moved away from “assignments” in favor of questions and problems as starting points.
I have abandoned doing full presentations based on all the research I had done for a project. Instead, I’ll present the question or problem and offer a few
Remember, “the one who does the work does the learning.”
Second step is the the usually frustrating time where things don’t work.
Greg talks about his 2 ½ Dimensions Project
Greg talks about his 2 ½ Dimensions Project
We’d move on, but it is those initial steps were most boys tend to rush through because they are so product oriented.
Then to get to the metacognition and deeper learning and transferability we instituted the practice of creating at least one blog post at each step of the way.
At each stage boys were asked to make at least one blog post describing what they are doing, how and why.
I provided, earlier on in the year, prompts to help them think about what they might talk about.
Boys could use classroom iPads to make their posts.
Students were also able to use their smartphones there’s a free Google Blogger app that runs on most devices.
Instead of my previous past practice of assigning a grade at the end of a project, grades were only applied to the individual blog posts. In this way helping to emphasize both the work over the outcome and the thinking and reflective practice as much as the making.
The results of this new practice is that in the course of the year, boys began to use a common vocabulary to talk and write about their work, their work, as a result of the increased emphasis on the early stages of development became much more personal, unique and divergent from initial starting points.
