SOLE Journal | Integration of Self-Organized Learning Environments in a Secondary Classroom v.2

Today, students in 9th grade biology seemed to have difficulty offering up their findings for others who were going around the room for ideas.  One group in particular seemed to be fighting to hide their work.  After the activity, we discussed how to share and why to share.  I offered the suggestion of trading ideas, or offering something you had found in exchange for what others had found.  I also stressed that ideas that were found on the internet could not justifiably be claimed as a group's own--in fact, that somewhat violates the whole concept of the internet, which is a marketplace of ideas shared. 

This was our second try at SOLE, and students have learned a great deal about being in a group, compromising, and sharing.  It's very interesting to continue to see the experiment evolve.  Already, students seemed to have less reservation and seemed to want to take advantage of some of he freedom of the rules.  Today, for the first time, students swapped groups.  Almost all groups sent people around to see what other groups were doing.  And several students chose groups that were different from their original ones because they didn't feel like their groups worked well the first time around.  In fact, some students who would consider themselves close friends with others chose to be in groups away from their friends.

A few observations regarding the survey completed by the upperclassmen in AP Biology.  Almost all of them said they did NOT enjoy the learning experience in the SOLE environment.  After analyzing the open-ended question, almost all of them said that they needed more time.  So they're willing to try it again.  One student was so frustrated because she claims to learn stuff better on her own.  Perhaps this is the reason she did not enjoy the learning experience.

I wonder if there will be a better reception for the 9th graders tomorrow.  To be honest, the AP biology class is somewhat of an academically homogeneous population.  These are kids who have been successful in classes in the traditional format--memorizing information, meeting stated expectations, studying on their own because they are self-motivated.  The ninth grade general biology classes are much different.  They are far from homeogeneous.  The diversity ranges from low achieving with learning disabilities to high- achieving.  Students come from a variety of backgrounds and degrees of access to the internet.  Many have tremendous experience with computers, others do not.  Some are curious about the natural world.  Most are not at all.  Several students in these classes have what most would consider "behavioral issues".  Many can not sit still for very long.  And almost all of them can not maintain attention for more than 3 or 4 minutes of a lecture.  Most are visual learners and not auditory learners.  I'm wondering if, if not predicting that, students in these classes will, for these reasons, embrace the format and freedom of the SOLE and accomplish amazing things.  Time will tell!

One of the things I am noticing about our first experience with SOLE in AP Biology is that the students are not necessarily so enthusiastic about trying it again, although most of them think they would know how to use their time more efficiently next time.  Still, they all agree that the activity format was more engaging than just simply taking notes.  One of the things I noticed, after reviewing Dr. Mitra's video below, was the element of encouragement.  In the next experience, I need to devote more time and energy to positively supporting groups as they build their learning.  This may help them to enjoy the activity a little more and see it less as an imposition.

6 students walked around to talk to other groups, two listened in on the discussion of another group

2 groups are using whiteboards, 1 drew a concept map, the other

1 student visited the bookshelf with resources

1 student actively searched for information on her cell phone

1 person looked carefully at the 6 + 1 Rubric

6 students voluntarily took notes

“They all say different things?!!”

“There are different models?!”

“I understand what they’re saying…

“So we can say…”

“So what we’re doing is describing how…” (one student talking to a student in another group)

“This is a hypothesis…”

1 group boasted that they had an animation.

“Now what I’m wondering is if…”

Very few side conversations

2 students walked quickly to and from the resource bookshelf

“We might include, like, a hypothesis that goes against the other one.”

Khalid took a picture of a passage from a book.

“There’s a fine line between [two paragraphs].”

“So how are you guys gonna organize this?”

Hadil read a passage from the internet and explained what she thought it meant.

Students passed resources from one group to another.

“Should I just…?”

“In three minutes, we’ll jump to the second paragraph.”

“Look at the rubric.”

“We have to make sure the topic is narrow, manageable, and focused.  We have to stay focused.”

The way SOLEs work is that students begin with a question, organize themselves into groups, and work to answer the question.  As Dr. Mitra suggests, the curriculum should be that of "big questions". 

In attempting to implement this framework into my classroom, I realized there was work to be done in fashioning questions for student exploration that met a few criteria.  First, the questions need to be intriguing enough for students to wish to know the answers.  I have attempted so-called "inquiry" projects at many points in the past in which I presented the students with a question, only to find that they really weren't interested, although they were willing to try to answer the question to ensure that they received credit.

The second is to design a question that is large enough for students to challenge students, but small enough to prevent them from becoming overwhelmed.  The scope of the question is what is at stake here.  A question that is too small would mean students would be finished answering it in a short amount of time.  A question that is too large would mean students may give up well before the time had expired.

The third requirement for a question is that it must be related to the standards students must become proficient at by the time they are done with my class.  So a question must have as its end the achievement of a level of proficiency on a given standard that is acceptable.  In other words, I need to design a question whose outcome is the proficiency on a particular standard.  I have toyed with the idea of simply giving students the standard, framed as a question, to solve.  But unfortunately, such a question may not meet the first two criteria listed above.

The questions for students in SOLEs must therefore meet all three of the criteria above in order for such a strategy to be effective in my classroom, and to meet the demands of my own integrity as a teacher of public school students.

For the last 14 years, I have been an experimenter.  Constantly seeking new ideas and ways to get students to learn, I regularly find a new strategy and can not wait to implement it in my classroom.  Occasionally, a strategy is a dud, and I am forced to relegate it to my list of things never to do again.  But many strategies have worked, at least initially.  In order to continue to work, these strategies need to constantly be evaluated, assessed, reflected upon, and adapted.  What I hope to accomplish with this journal is to chronicle the development of an idea, to track the evolution of a strategy I wish to implement in my classroom.

The newest strategy I'll be trying is a concept called Self-Organized Learning Environments, or SOLEs.  The concept was developed by a British professor of educational technology named Dr. Sugata Mitra.  I first came across Dr. Mitra in a video on the future of learning in a networked society on YouTube, which was published by Ericsson.  In the video, Dr. Mitra presented some fascinating paradigm shifts that have resonated with me ever since.  In fact, I watch the YouTube video often just for inspiration.

Dr. Mitra suggests things like "Teachers don't need to give answers anymore, because answers are everywhere.  ...A teacher's job is to lead you to ask the right kinds of questions."  This observation and others come, at least in part, from Dr. Mitra's fascinating experiment called "The Hole in the Wall".  In 1999, Dr. Mitra and his team placed internet-connected computers in kiosks in remote, impoverished villages in India.  The kiosks were designed to be accessed by the children of the village.  When Dr. Mitra returned to the villages several months later, he found that the students, self-taught with a networked computer that worked only in English, had learned astounding things.  He continued his observations and continues to try to increase learning opportunities for children in areas where, he suggests, "teachers would not want to go."

From his research, Dr. Mitra discovered that these self-organized groups were most effective at learning when they had approximately 4 students to a computer, could pick their own groups, could switch groups at any time, and could walk around freely to see what others were doing.  This is the foundation for my experiment, and for my action research on implementing the concept of SOLE into my classroom.