A Guide to Documenting Learning

by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

  Taking the time to textually, visually, or audibly share one’s thinking with someone else or a small group is beneficial because it involves:

  Opening yourself up to instant comments and feedback regarding your ideas and concepts. Just watching a listener’s facial expressions can spark questions regarding your current thinking. Comments, clarifications, resistance, and questions posed by those listening add a dimension that could not happen if talking only to yourself.

  Articulating one’s thoughts beyond yourself requires the learner to generate stronger and clearer explanations and examples expressed through artifacts and accompanying conversations. Your mind will tend to assume your artifacts and thinking makes sense, when in actuality there may be gaps in your understanding’s reasoning, explanations, steps, or sequences.

  Presenting your work to an audience, especially someone unfamiliar to you, tends to produce higher quality thinking and work because you are “putting yourself out there.” You also tend to better articulate your reasons when wanting or needing to learn more about new information, whether intrinsically or extrinsically motivated.

  When Sarah meets with her small group, one of her friends, Andrea, suggests that they meet with a study group from another class period to see what they are thinking.

  When the students from both periods meet after school, Sarah has an interesting conversation with Jason, whom she has seen around school but never talked with before. They both share their annotations and Sarah shares her sketchnotes. Things get a bit heated over a disagreement concerning how the main characters’ relationship moves a specific plot point forward.

  After the meeting, when Sarah was walking home with Andrea, she shares in a huffy tone, “I don’t like Jason.” Andrea rolls her eyes and comments, “I heard the two of you talking. It’s not that you don’t like him. You just don’t like that he didn’t agree with your reasoning!” Sarah sighs and realizes Andrea is right, which causes her to want to dig deeper into her reading and thinking so that she can better defend her claim.

  Sharing Online—Increased Degree of Amplification

  Once a learner moves from sharing his or her ideas and thoughts with one person or a few people, moving to sharing online increases the amplification degree. It is important to note that simply placing documentation artifacts online does not instantly create a greater amplification, as was mentioned regarding Sarah’s first blog posts.

  To truly experience the power of online amplification, administrators, teachers, and stakeholders need to consider the benefits of connecting their students and their professional documentation artifacts with interested audiences and experts who can contribute to the learners’ documenting opportunities that are outside a closed digital environment. It is understandable that a school or district wants to, and in some situations are obligated to, protect the students in their care. The reality is that students are getting online outside of the school day. Given the now literacies are so important to be learned and practiced during the school day, keeping students isolated from online interactions during school hours does not benefit students. Teachers and administrators can use these opportunities to aid students in becoming digitally literate while coaching them through participating in authentic online learning opportunities.

  Due to privacy concerns, oftentimes students’ online artifacts remain behind protected sites and are only accessible by a limited pre-selected audience. Private Twitter accounts, closed learning management system platforms, and password-protected digital portfolios are a few examples of limited amplification degrees, even though the artifacts are shared online. Technically, these environments are not much different from sharing face-to-face with people the students and teachers personally know.

  Taking the time to share one’s thinking with online audiences is beneficial because it involves the following:

  Documenting with an audience in mind (e.g., purposeful use of a #hashtag in a Twitter post) to broaden potential interactions that will positively impact your or their thinking

  Connecting with people and groups that share in your desired learning and/or interests, as well as interact when conducting research

  Being aware of the power of actively participating and building personal learning networks (e.g., Facebook groups, Twitter chats, commenting on blogs)

  Embracing the reality that you have something worthwhile to share, even when others may have shared something similar because no one else will contribute the identical perspective, idea, or interpretation

  Conveying documentation to others that can be viewed from the moment it is shared to months and years later

  Obtaining crowdsourcing feedback that will strengthen your understanding, thinking, reflections, and conclusions related to your documentation focuses

  Creating an online presence as an educator, a network connector, and branding yourself as an ongoing learner

  Sarah’s teacher, Mrs. Watson, coaches her class on what is meant by sharing and amplifying their artifacts beyond simply publishing a blog post. She explains it is important to invite others, including experts, to engage in their work to add to or challenge their thinking.

  Sarah mentions her conversation with Jason during their after-school discussion. Her teacher asks her if it was beneficial having someone not agree with her reasoning. Sarah comments that it was frustrating at first, but then found it helpful. She mentioned that it caused her to think deeper about her reasoning and line of thinking.

  Later in the lesson, Mrs. Watson challenges the class to add a degree of amplification to their next blog post by continuing to (a) include their ongoing documentation and reflection on where they currently are in their personal understanding of how the main characters’ relationship is affecting the story arc, and (b) strategically

  including the author’s name, book title, and author’s website as a hyperlink, as well as include strategically chosen keywords in hopes that others who might be searching for the author, book title, or associated keywords will find their post in the search results;

  disseminating their post on Twitter by specifically mentioning the author’s @username;

  including the hashtag #comments4kids or an already established hashtag specific to the book title to attract a wider audience; and

  creating a networking conversation by reading and thoughtfully commenting on three peers’ posts from their own class, as well as three posts from another English class period.

  Mrs. Watson concludes the lesson by facilitating a discussion on what quality commenting sounds like by having the class read and reflect on examples and non-examples to aid them in their understanding.

  Sharing Globally—Extended Degree of Amplification

  Some might say that sharing online equals sharing globally. While this may appear to be so, sharing globally cannot include only sharing in one’s mother tongue or with people from one’s own cultural perspective.

  Documentation artifacts should not be shared with the mindset of only reaching out to those within one’s country’s geographic borders and regions or language. Sharing globally includes strategically reaching out to gain different and unique perspectives that can prove beneficial to a learner’s research, resources, examples, and anecdotes. If the desire is to share at this amplification degree, it is not enough to have learners place their artifacts and journeys online, it needs to include a purposeful global intention.

  Taking the time to share one’s thinking globally is beneficial because it involves

  understanding that deeper learning takes place when you welcome different viewpoints and perspectives that are unique to other cultures and languages;

  taking a step back to contemplate how global learners look at the same topic, idea, or challenge with different eyes, background knowledge, experiences, interpretations, and cultural variations;

  becoming aware and acknowledging your own cultural bias regarding learning (and teaching); and

  including an openness for receiving feedback from a gl
obal perspective.

  As Sarah continues with her class’s novel study, she is aware that there might be something more behind the author’s two main characters’ relationship than what she has been thinking and hearing from her peers. She knows that the book’s author grew up in China and the protagonist has a Chinese heritage. Sarah wonders if it could contribute to her understanding of this character if she could connect with someone from an Asian, or specifically Chinese, culture.

  She discusses the possibilities with Mrs. Watson of creating shareable content around her cultural wonderment to engage and get input from others. Mrs. Watson suggests Sarah speaks to a few Asian students first to aid her in her thinking. After doing so, Sarah begins to think about how she can reach a global audience and get the data she desires.

  The first thing that comes to Sarah’s mind is to create a Google Form survey. She picks four scenarios from the book where there is intense interaction between the two main characters and creates four corresponding open-response questions focused on how a Chinese cultural perspective may or may not influence the protagonist’s behaviors and choices. She also asks the surveyors to share their age and ethnic heritage.

  She asks for feedback from Mrs. Watson and the Asian students she initially approached. After making a few modifications based on their suggestions, she shares the survey strategically by

  asking some students from her class and the other class’s study group to complete a printed-out survey,

  reaching out to her online network using a tweet with a link to her survey, and

  asking another teacher at her school, Mr. Phelps, who has a large professional learning network to post a tweet with the embedded survey link as well.

  Sarah began to wonder if many people would complete the survey. She was pleasantly surprised when she received a large response from both the printed and Google Form surveys.

  To summarize the collective survey information, she creates an infographic artifact. The infographic highlights the protagonist’s significant reactions and actions when confronted by the antagonist. Sarah also includes commentary regarding the potential influence of the character’s cultural heritage.

  She then writes a blog post explaining her initial desire to dig deeper based on the book study’s learning focus (analyze how complex characters interact and advance the plot) from a cultural lens and embeds several hyperlinks, including one to Amazon books, in case someone is interested in purchasing the book she is reading; as well as to the author’s website. She also includes her infographic.

  Once she publishes her post, she and Mr. Phelps tweet about her latest blog and include a link to her post. Sarah looks forward to reading any comments shared and begins checking her post daily to see if there are any responses so she can interact with the commenters.

  It’s Time to Take Action!: Chapter 5 Action Step

  Look again at the Amplification Degrees image near the beginning of this chapter (Image 1.1). For a warm-up, think of an example for each sharing amplification degree that you have possibly done for a personal or professional learning experience.

  Now think of a passion-based learning opportunity you are engaged in currently. Utilize all four degrees beyond Sharing With Oneself to amplify your learning-thinking artifacts and reflections.

  Remember to use the #documenting4learning hashtag on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram; or by mentioning @documenting4learning on Facebook and Instagram, and @doc4learning on Twitter.

  Summing Up

  Many educational systems still do not fully understand the value and power of sharing and networking strategically among faculties, support staff, administrators, and most importantly, students. Likewise, when the realization is there, it does take time and support investment to make it a natural component within the system versus an event or occasional experience.

  In informal surveys with educators around the world, teachers have often shared reasons for not wanting to share or amplify the learning of their students or themselves:

  I don’t have enough time.

  I don’t have strong technology skills. I can barely use my smartphone.

  I don’t want to brag.

  I don’t have self-confidence in what I need to be doing.

  I don’t want to deal with the potential judgment of others.

  I don’t think anyone would think what I shared would be worth reading, watching, or viewing.

  I know I would have too many spelling and grammar errors. What needs to be put out there needs to be perfect.

  I don’t want to have to deal with haters or bullies.

  How do teachers and students overcome these fears or concerns? How can school or district administrators support a shift in their system to establish a connected sharing and amplifying community, given it is happening 24/7 outside educational walls?

  A perfect way is simply to begin. No one has ever overcome his or her fears by avoidance. It is important to acknowledge one’s fears and then figure out doable action steps to begin diving in. For some, this may mean researching and learning everything possible beforehand; while others find a reliable and trusted mentor to hold their hand and coach or mentor them on each step they take along the way.

  Time constraints are real in schools and our fast-paced world. But as a popular saying goes: Nobody is too busy; it’s just a matter of priorities. Teachers, schools, and districts who truly want to live their core values and mission, vision, or philosophy statements proclaiming support for their students must find time to practice what is being promised. It must be a priority. The more administrators and teachers, as learning leaders, are willing to model risk-taking, sharing, and highlighting learning successes, failures, and confusions by making them visible, the more students will feel comfortable, supported, and encouraged to do the same.

  These actions require risk-taking, problem solving, and critical thinking regarding the how-tos. As another popular adage states, “The best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time,” simply being cognizant of what degree(s) of sharing are taking place, or can begin to take place in your classroom is a great place to begin using your current curriculum and slight modifications to your instruction, activities, and assessments.

  Going Beyond

  To amplify your reading beyond this book’s pages, we have created discussion questions and prompts for this chapter, which are located at www.documenting4learning.com. To extend your thinking, reactions, and responses, you can connect with other readers by leaving comments on individual chapter’s discussion posts on our documenting4learning blog.

  We also invite you to contribute and share your artifacts in other social media spaces to connect with and learn from other readers around the world using the #documenting4learning hashtag on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram; or by mentioning @documenting4learning on Facebook and Instagram, and @doc4learning on Twitter.

  6 Documenting Phases

  There are two phases to a movie. First you shoot the movie, and then you make the movie.

  Generally, post-production is longer than filming.

  —Keenen Ivory Wayans

  The thought processes involved in making a movie are multifaceted: What is the purpose of the movie? How will we best capture the perfect shots, sequences, and dialogues? How will we optimally capture and edit the raw footage to transform the information into a meaningful message for our intended audience?

  There are many parallels in movie making and documenting learning. While the questions may be worded slightly different, the intent is the same: establishing purpose, capturing information, transforming information in meaningful ways for an intended audience, and sharing the message with the world.

  Given the numerous facets involved when learning something new or digging deeper in understanding, it is important that the documenting learning process is viewed as a natural part of the learning experience, not an add-on. While at first the process may feel time-consuming, it eventually becomes a ubiquitous pedagogical and heutagogical practic
e. As a colleague once shared with us, “It took a while, but I think of documenting using the three phases and routine as ‘learnigogy’ in my classroom.”

  The documenting learning process is viewed as a natural part of the learning experience, not an add-on.

  There are two components to this learnigogy. The first includes three documentation phases, similar to the phases Wayans mentions in the quote above, with the addition of a planning phase. While Wayans did not directly reference this phase, it is standard to plan when preparing for a simple or complex task.

  The second component involves the learningflow routine steps, which are explained and explored indepth in Chapter 7. Following these steps are similar to steps in a workflow routine in the business world: each step moves the work or project through from initiation to completion.

  Documentation Phases

  To make documenting opportunities more manageable, it is important to know how the phases play a role in the overall process (see Image 6.1):

  Pre-documentation phase

  Thinking critically about what is going to be documented and why

  During-documentation phase

  Documenting the learning moments now and over time

  Post-documentation phase

  Focusing on metacognition, and how to evaluate, use, and make meaning of the captured media and documented artifacts

  Image 6.1

  Pre-documentation Phase

  While documenting learning involves collecting evidence during moments of the learning, it does not mean collecting evidence of anything and everything. Think about what most people do with their mobile devices. Since there is essentially no cost associated with snapping hundreds of images or recording multiple videos, people often will do both without deeply contemplating the value of the photo or recording taken.