Image 7.2
The routine steps create a fluidity within the three documentation phases and are designed to create a flow from documenting initiation to completion based on the selected focuses and goals (Image 7.2).
Look for Learning
Teachers often feel overwhelmed with daily workloads, paperwork, and ever-increasing demands imposed on them. Many times, the covering of curriculum overshadows the much-needed uncovering of knowledge and understanding that promotes deeper learning and thinking (Image 7.3).
Look for learning means actively seeking the learning that will be taking place (pre-documentation phase) or is taking place (during-documentation phase). It is important to think of the term learning in this context as a verb (act of), rather than a noun (result of).
For many, evidence of learning may be perceived as the result of a test, quiz, or final product, such as an engineering diagram, oration, or narrative essay. While there is a place and time for these examples of learning evidence, the foundation to the documenting process is perceiving evidence of learning as the act of learning. What is taking place that leads to a final outcome, whether product or performance? Is it final, or just a moment in time to capture, reflect, share, and amplify where a learner is in his or her learning journey?
Image 7.3
Specific focuses with articulated goals born from standards, objectives, and desired skills are a good starting point to look for learning. Equally important is to plan how to best gather evidence of learning that makes a learner’s systemic growth visible over time (e.g., over weeks, months, years). Capturing and reflecting on evidence over a length of time allows a learner to analyze how he or she learns, as well as see trends and patterns in others’ learning.
Look for learning has learners incorporating multiple media platforms and tools through authentic applications. Considering the speed that technology changes in society and education, it is imperative that traditional teaching and learning methods evolve. The reality for many teachers continues to be time constraints and a feeling of overwhelmness caused by a cacophony of media platform and tool choices, which causes many to fall prey to, “I’ll use what I know.” This mindset can cripple the documenting learning dynamics.
Look for opportunities to try out and showcase new media platforms and tools is essential to providing authentic documenting opportunities. This is where orbits of ability can play a significant and purposeful role. Hale and Fisher (2013) explain:
An orbit of ability is a given person’s knowledge and talent, or expertise. When one person moves into another person’s orbit of ability, his or her knowledge and capabilities grow. Every teacher has his or her own orbit or orbits of ability that others can learn from. Accessing orbits of ability can take place during any interaction with colleagues, friends, family members, or even a new acquaintance. (p. 10)
Teachers and students need to actively look for expertise and people of interest in their orbits of ability who can aid them with new or unfamiliar media platforms and tools. It is not uncommon for teachers to work on a documenting opportunity in teams of two to four where one or two teachers have stronger content knowledge and the other teachers have a greater comfort level with the chosen media platforms and tools.
Another important practice in the look for learning routine step is to be conscious and respectful of how learners prefer to learn, access, and process information. When determining what is acceptable evidence when documenting, it does not have to be the same for all learners.
Documenters will find these questions helpful to ask during this routine step and throughout the documentation phases:
What are the standards, focuses, and goals involved in the learning? What are the connections among them? How could they be made visible in documentation artifacts?
How could you be sensitive to or aware of potential unrelated learning taking place?
What will be accepted as evidence of learning? How could the evidence include moving beyond traditional forms of evidence? How is learning begin expressed?
How well can you connect or translate different learning expressions to previously imagined learning outcomes?
What can you do to ensure you are prepared to capture learning once you found what you were looking for?
Capture Learning
The second routine step involves considering how to best capture the learning in the moment that has been determined and planned for during the pre-documentation phase.
It is important to remember that the look for learning step is naturally embedded in the capture learning step. What was determined to be acceptable evidence in the pre-documentation phase is now happening live, which means whoever is capturing the learning needs to be hypervigilant regarding how the learning is taking place, especially when considering that all the learners may not be displaying evidence of the learning in identical or similar ways (Image 7.4).
Documenters need to make these questions a common practice while engaged in the during-documentation phase and this routine step:
How can I best capture evidence of learning with the articulated goals in mind that makes the learning visible and audible to myself, other learners, and a wider audience?
How can I best capture evidence of my/the learners’ thinking processes, not just the end results?
Am I using the best media platforms and tools to capture my/the learners’ learning and thinking?
Image 7.4
One of the goals of the three documentation phases and learningflow routine is to transform educational teaching and learning practices, including the authentic use of media platforms and tools to capture the learning and thinking as it is taking place over time. Technology provides the ability to record experiences, moments, and events involving multiple senses, going beyond the capabilities of depending on just our own eyes and ears. Likewise, using a mix of media enables learners to gain insights and evidence from multiple locations and perspectives simultaneously. Technology also allows learners to capture a moment in time now that can be unpacked sooner or later. Captured artifacts can serve as memory triggers regarding what happened at a given moment in time or took place in a sequence of learning events.
Tasked with the responsibility of capturing learning while it is taking place, documenters need to practice and develop skills to look for learning with a strong critical eye to make better decisions about how the captured artifacts will best represent the desired learning evidence. In essence, they become more strategic in their planning by:
Having capturing devices readily available. For example, a smartphone often proves the most handy and versatile device to document and create artifacts. Having a cache of digital options and knowing how the devices can be best utilized is beneficial in the during-documentation phase.
Delegating and assigning tasks to collaborators with varying capture responsibilities (e.g., Photographer, Videographer, Microblogger, Backchanneler) to multi-capture the evidence of learning.
Embedding capture-oriented tasks as a natural component of a learner’s thinking process to deepen her or his learning experiences.
Reflect on Learning
A famous John Dewey quote, “We don’t learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on the experience,” is timeless and true. It is not by accident that the third routine step involves reflecting on the learning experience that took place in the during-documentation phase.
What distinguishes this step from the captured documentation in the previous step is that it now moves beyond display to begin conveying a learning narrative through a reflection process (Image 7.5).
As Krechevsky, Mardell, Rivard, and Wilson (2013) point out, “Interpreting documentation is essential to the practice of documentation and what distinguishes it from display” (p. 82). The reflection practice is an integral part of the documenting process as it opens further possibilities to make thinking, and consequently learning, more visible and/or audible.
Since reflecting on and interpreting the selec
ted artifacts takes learners beyond a display of the learning, this routine is a critical value-added practice that aids primary and secondary learners in making connections to previous learning, other learners, and outside perspectives.
Image 7.5
When reflecting in the after-documentation phase, taking time to ponder the responses to these types of questions adds a layer of going deeper as introspective learners:
How do the captured artifacts represent evidence of learning?
What is the meaning or significance of the artifacts in terms of my learning focuses and goals?
What are the connections I can make among different artifacts that have been taken over time, from different perspectives, or using different media?
What can I see or hear that surprises me? What did I not see or hear, but anticipated I would?
How will what I have learned through my reflection and interpretation of the artifacts impact my future learning?
Krechevsky et al. (2013) also note that,
It is critical that teachers and students go through the process of interpreting—making meaning—before moving onto the next practice—sharing.
The documentation we share should be selective—identified through the process of interpretation as having the potential to serve specific learning purposes for various audiences. (p. 87)
QR Code 7.1 Scan this QR code to read a reflection blog based on the reflections students made while preparing for their student-led conferences.
http://langwitches.me/slc
This step involves cognitive thinking, and metacognitive thinking, especially when a teacher as a secondary learner is reflecting on the reflections of his or her students. There is an important connection between student reflection and taking it one step further and using it for professional reflection regarding instructional practice and content. It is meant to be about students reflecting deeply, and their teacher reflecting deeply as well. For example, during a student-led conference some teachers asked their students to “go and reflect,” but never read their reflective blog posts intentionally or intently to learn from them and inform their own professional practice, while others dug deeply and were truly reflective about their students’ reflections.
It’s Time to Take Action!: Chapter 7 Action Step
For an upcoming learning experience (e.g., lesson, authentic task) where you will be a secondary learner, plan how your students will include a reflection for a text, image, audio, or video artifact based on their learning focuses and goals.
As you are planning, consider your responses to these questions:
What do I want my students specifically reflecting on related to this learning?
How can this reflection best be captured (e.g., analog or digital exit ticket, reflective audio or video response, visible thinking routine sketchnote)?
How will I capture my professional reflection as an artifact that summarizes my analysis and synthesis of their reflections?
The point of this action step is for you to take the time to look deeper at your students’ abilities to be meaningful and insightful self-reflectors, as well as deepening your own reflecting process when analyzing your student’s reflections.
The next routine step is share, which you need to do with your reflection artifact. Share your documentation with a colleague at school or a mentor.
The last routine step is amplify. If or when you are ready to share this artifact digitally beyond one or two people, remember to use the #documenting4learning hashtag on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram; or by mentioning @documenting4learning on Facebook and Instagram, and @doc4learning on Twitter.
QR 7.2 Scan this QR code to read a blog post by Silvia that may give you some ideas for how to beat capture your students’ reflections to prepare for creating your reflection artifact.
http://langwitches.me/amplify-reflection
Share Learning
Students and teachers benefit from others who are willing to share their teaching and learning practices and evidence of learning in person and online; therefore, it is imperative that this action is reciprocated.
The shift from a culture of consumers to producers is an important practice in sharing and disseminating one’s learning progress with others, including successes, failures, and lessons learned, with others.
Students embrace a digital culture of sharing. Educators need to acknowledge that this behavior is their normal outside of classrooms and take advantage of their desire to share with others when learning new information or exploring deeper what has been learned.
Therefore, learning in classrooms need to be social and collaborative (Image 7.6).
Having and growing professional learning networks is built on the concept of sharing. For an exchange to take place, someone must step up to the plate and first share. Without sharing, there is no network.
Image 7.6
Someone needs to give, and someone needs to take. If there are not enough givers, then there would not be takers, and the network would no longer function. In the Information Age where information is being generated at exponential speed, learners often rely on a network to filter quality and relevant information. It is imperative that students learn how to responsibly access, filter, and curate what is being shared, as well as think critically about what they will share.
While sharing commonly takes place using digital tools, learners can share their thinking using a mind map or sketchnote created with paper and pencil. The point is that the act of sharing takes one’s thinking and moves it from his or her mind to a visible and/or audible format so that others can see and/or hear the learner’s thoughts. There are three critical questions to consider when preparing to share:
Who is your audience? What and how a learner shares his or her edited or created artifacts, including reflections and interpretations, will depend on the intended audience.
From students as learners: Is the documentation intended for my peers? Experts in a field to aid me in gaining more knowledge or specific feedback?
For teachers as professional learners: Is the documentation intended for my colleagues in my school? My students’ parents and caregivers? Stakeholders? School community? My professional learning network?
What media platforms and tools are the best choices for sharing? Choosing media platforms and tools will depend on the intended audiences. Sometimes sharing proves best when using several platforms and tools to reach a maximum amount of people. The selected tools may alter who is reached and how many are reached (e.g., personal blog post versus Twitter with an intentional hashtag).
How can I best disseminate my evidence of learning? The ability to disseminate information is an increasingly important capability in today’s world. Network literacy does not necessarily mean having to know how the technology behind a network works, or knowing how to code. As mentioned in Chapter 2, according to Hellweg (2012), network literacy is about obtaining, “At least a basic understanding of network technology, crafting a network identity, understanding network intelligence, and knowing about network capabilities.” Hellweg states that network savvy users, as we do for learners who are preparing to share their documentation, need to understand that, “The capabilities of services, like social networks, and the differences and similarities between them.” This understanding contributes to making intentional decisions about how, when, and through what media platforms and tools will best disseminate the work and gain the desired interaction with the intended audience.
Amplify Learning
When thinking about the word amplify in a traditional sense, one might think of turning up the volume or increasing an intensity. For this routine step, it means creating a ripple effect of potential learning extensions.
By reaching out to a wider audience than oneself or a classroom, it opens the door to possibilities for network connections, multiple perspectives, expert feedback, and additional resources (see Image 7.7).
Image 7.7
Amplifying often boosts the learning
opportunity in ways that could not be planned for in the pre-documentation phase. It is oftentimes organic.
As with the other routine steps, posing questions aid in determining how the amplification’s intentional purpose could extend the learning related to the specific focus and articulated goals.
It is important to encourage students to share and amplify their learning with others beyond their teacher. Couros (2016) mentions an observation made by Rushton Hurley, “When students are sharing their work with the world, they want it to be good. If they’re just sharing it with you, they want it to be good enough.”
The four amplification degrees explained in Chapter 5 do not need to be followed in a sequential order. The key is that the amplification increasingly widens once a person’s initial thought, idea, or concept has been moved from his or her mind to a textual, auditory, or pictorial representation. A learner can skip from a slight degree to a greater degree of amplification simply by being strategic.
In this chapter’s opening quote, Carl Friedrich Gauss, a famous mathematician, observed, “It is not knowledge, but the act of learning; not possession, but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.” For learners, the greatest joy is when their amplified learning gets noticed by people locally and globally. It is the action of getting there—the personal investment of participating in the phases and routine that is affirmed when those from the great beyond care enough to respond and/or interact. This is true for student learners and educators as professional learners.
Summing Up
The purpose and intent of the documentation phases and learningflow routine steps is to be the heartbeat of the documenting learning framework. When learners are engaged in documenting OF learning, the learning involves the look and capture steps. When learners are engaged in documenting FOR or AS learning, all five steps: look, capture, reflect, share, and amplify are interwoven throughout the phases in a documenting opportunity (Image 7.8).
A Guide to Documenting Learning Page 15