This year I am a practicing, practicing teacher, which is to say I am a student teacher rehearsing my teaching practice in the classroom of another practicing teacher. Being a practicing2 teacher, there are certain limits to what I can attempt within my classroom. However, I have tried to include digital authorship, creativity, and student choice in every aspect of my teaching. What follows is a the digital authorship experiment foisted upon my unwitting students.
Badges VS. Hit Record
I had a blended learning panic attack when I first learned about badge programs like MacCarthur Foundation’s DIY. “ Leveling up,” a pedagogy based on the video game concept of levels, is frequently used by Kahn Academy, TenMarks Math and other web-based tutorial programs. My children have found the idea of level up programming very exciting and very accessible, but generally only for a short while. The extrinsic nature of the motivation rarely transfers into the intrinsic quest transforming a student into a lifelong learner. However, the DIY Badge program is more than a web-based tutorial. Students are given a great deal of latitude in choosing their area of study, they complete three challenges within their badge, then their work product is graded on a pass/fail basis by a person at DIY. The diversity of work at DIY may be difficult to monitor, scaffold and supply for a larger number of students, but it lends choice and authenticity to the assigned tasks. Whether creating assignment parameters that align with the standards of a subject area or using the badge economy to bolster summer student growth, DIY enables students to receive sheltered feedback from a community of people with a shared interest.
Badging has been a long standing method of motivating students, particularly within the real of scouting. DIY provides a safe online environment for learning that incorporates social interaction. The application has been used by after school programs as a way to engage students.
For middle and high school students to engage in a rigorous, long term project requires work and rewards that are authentic. Hit Record is similar to the DIY concept in that it provides choice and challenge, but instead of an invented badge economy, the student work has the authentic possibility of being published. In my experience, invented economies like the one in DIY or those in Kahn Academy will eventually need to be reinforced with some other more tangible reward. Yet, with Hit Record, just the possibility of publication has been enough to inspire members from three of my poetry, theater and ELA classes to submit their work to the process. Once submitted, their work can be seen online as a part of a community of creators waiting to be published to a much wider audience. They can receive feedback from that community and their work may garner further publication.
There are a quite a few things I really like about the Hit Record experience. First and foremost is the availability of choice. They have managed to organize the freedom to create anything. In doing so, they created a very exciting new collaborative outlet. Choice plays an important role in innovation and creativity. The sheer magnitude of "Records" available is staggering. It takes only a few minutes to find and master the searchable “Explore” tab. The tagging system inherent in the upload process allows a user to search across media, subject matter, artist, genre or any other category. If you find a project and you feel you can make a contribution, then you use your specific skills to add to the product.
I decided to jump in on a project called “Morning Monsters”. The project started as an idea. Several scriptwriters and illustrators made work contributions. The illustrations sparked a secondary idea, namely, creating an illustrated children’s book. The lead collaborator, at this point, had several poems written about the morning monsters attached to the project. The poems were then read out loud, creating a voice over to be animated later by yet another party. The project itself is starting to take shape as the result of at least six different artistic choices made by collaborating strangers.
The lead collaborator for Morning Monsters communicates with the collaborating world via video updates. In her latest update, she included several examples of the kind of footage she found useful for her project. She was looking for footage of children, ages 8-12 getting ready for school in the morning. I happen to have a plethora of children that age. The animated morning monsters will be added to the live action footage creating the complete scene. This footage will be part of a montage of meddling morning monsters wreaking havoc in the lives of school children everywhere. With her simple parameters in mind, my children and I set out to make our leap together.
Here is Logan’s leap: A slipper being commandeered by the as of yet unseen "Morning Monster."
Logan's Leap
Here is Maya’s leap: A towel, stolen by yet another "Morning Monster" to be added later.
Another advantage I see in using Hit Record in a classroom is that of brevity. From concept through editing, each project taught one on one with a middle school student took about 45 minutes to accomplish. While it may take longer to teach a group of children to accomplish the “Record”, it is much easier than creating an entire film short from scratch.
Not every “record” is included in the final collaborative effort. However, simply seeing their video posted to the Hit Record website was enough authenticity for my children to become very excited about the process. With older children, this may not be the case, but the "collaborative challenge" option allows students to accept a challenged already issued by someone outside of the classroom. Such an opportunity may give more closure to their concept of authenticity.
I did have a very Patricia Lange moment with my leap. My children were very excited to put together a video project on their iPads, yet do I really want my children to become part of a “Hit Record” video set somewhere? In the end, I decided the experience was worth the risk. As collaborators, we are supposed to cite and tag each work or idea we have used to build and remix our new product. As a teacher, I like the idea of citing other artists within a creative environment. As a parent, I am glad that the work my children created will be cited and I will be notified of the ongoing building process. What remains to be seen is, where will our record end up? I love an enduring mystery.
I created something - something at the beginning of its journey. I wonder where it will lead.
