A Guide to Documenting Learning Read online

  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.

  4 Documenting Engagement and Learning Layers

  If people choose to engage on a one-dimensional level, that’s fine. But going beyond the surface can enrich ourselves as human beings.

  —Geri Halliwell

  For people to engage in learning, they need to have an intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, or a combination of both. Some are motivated by passion, interest, or simply the love of learning. Others are motivated by necessity, getting a good grade, earning a living, or trying to gain a promotion. When viewing motivation from learner engagement, the layers of learning take on an interesting perspective.

  Defining Learner Engagement

  Who is documenting versus who is doing the documentation? This question is not as simple as it may first appear. In any learning environment, there may be multiple learners in the room. In a classroom, it cannot be overlooked that the teacher is learning at the same time. Therefore, it is important to be aware that learner engagement is often twofold during a documenting opportunity (see Image 4.1).

  The Primary Learner

  When students document their own learning, they are actively engaged in the cognitive and metacognitive process involved in looking for and capturing evidence of the learning taking place. Therefore, the students are primary learners.

  Image 4.1

  When a teacher documents her students’ learning and shares artifacts with them so they can unpack the documentation by looking, reflecting on, and interpreting the artifacts, the students are the primary learners. This is especially applicable with younger students, since it is the teacher who will do the capturing and unpacking for the students to reflect on and analyze.

  When teachers or administrators are documenting their own professional learning, they are the primary learners as well.

  The Secondary Learner

  When artifacts that have been documented and unpacked by students are then shared with the teacher, the teacher is a secondary learner because she is looking at the learning through her students’ documenting perspectives. This teacher will gain valuable insights that can inform next steps in teaching, as well as deepen her own understanding about how her students personalize their acquisition of knowledge and understanding.

  Any time documentation artifacts get shared or amplified, the viewers or readers automatically become secondary learners, whether fellow students, colleagues, administrators, parents, community members, social media engagers, or globally connected professional learning communities.

  As Halliwell mentions in the opening quote, while being engaged on a one-dimensional level is fine, going beyond the surface level can be enriching and enlightening. Being thoughtful about who the primary learners and secondary learners are is beneficial when documenting because awareness of the two supports the ownership and sharing of learning. Likewise, when learners are conscious of their roles in a documenting opportunity, it often serves as a motivating factor.

  Documenting Learning Layers

  There are four documenting learning layers, each focused on a primary learner (see Image 4.2).

  Students Documenting Their Own Learning

  When students are documenting their own learning as primary learners, they collect, curate, and make their artifacts visible, shareable, and amplified using a variety of platforms and tools. Interacting with a local and global community of experts adds a dimension of authenticity that extends beyond brick-and-mortar classrooms. Students as primary learners can be viewed through a variety of learning perspectives (Table 4.1).

  Image 4.2

  Teachers Documenting Student Learning

  When teachers are documenting their students’ learning, they are not primary learners; they are documenting to help make their students learning process visible. By doing so, the students can study and analyze their learning journeys throughout a learning opportunity, as well as over time. Teachers documenting their students’ learning can be viewed through a variety of learning perspectives (Table 4.2).

  Teachers Documenting Their Own Professional Learning

  Teachers documenting their own professional learning, whether for a pedagogical or heutagogical purpose, make their classrooms become action labs. Most educators see themselves as lifelong learners and ascribe to the notion that they need to practice what they preach, which includes embracing and applying documenting opportunities to their own learning. Teachers documenting their own professional learning can be viewed through a variety of learning perspectives (Table 4.3).

  It’s Time to Take Action!: Chapter 4 Action Step

  Choose the Sharing and Amplifying perspective from Table 4.3 and one other professional-learning perspective from the same table to create a documenting opportunity based on a professional learning goal or passion. It may be one you are currently engaged in or one that you are going to begin for this action step.

  Next, determine the amount of time you will be officially engaged in your documenting opportunity (e.g., one week, one month, one semester).

  Based on what you have learned thus far from reading Chapters 1 through 4, engage in a document learning opportunity that includes the two professional learning perspectives. Remember that documenting will involve sharing and amplifying your artifacts and evidence of learning, including your mistakes, failures, and successes. This process invites colleagues and experts to provide you with feedback as you grow in your understanding and application over time.

  Note: If you are not comfortable with the thought of sharing and amplifying, you may want to first read Chapter 5 before beginning this action step, as well as seek someone who can aid you in the how-tos.

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

  Schools and Districts Documenting Learning as Institutional Memory

  Institutional memory for a school or district is a collective set of facts, events, best practices, learning experiences, values, and knowledge that represents who they are and what they believe in as an educational institution at a specific moment in, as well as over time. From an administrator’s school or district perspective, documenting can begin to replace traditional ways of communicating the teaching and learning taking place. When a school or district is willing to be transparent about its institutional processes and results of teaching and learning over time, all stakeholders benefit and grow.

  While many institutions have embraced displaying documenting OF learning artifacts (e.g., posting photos of the Science Fair, National Honor society award winners, and banquet highlights), it is entirely different when embarking on documenting FOR and AS learning experiences. At the onset of engaging in either of these types, it will feel scary and threatening. The documenting process is not about being perfect. It is about a journey toward improvement. And the reality is that these journeys will most likely have moments of messiness that could be shared. Just as teachers are asked to be risk-takers when beginning their documenting opportunities, the same is true at an institutional level. School and districts documenting their institutional memory can be viewed through a variety of perspectives (Table 4.4).

  Summing Up

  Documenting opportunities can be experienced through various engagements and layers.

  The innermost layer focuses on the student, as the primary learner becomes metacognitively aware of his or her learning process while the learning is taking place.

  In the next layer, the teacher learns much by taking advantage of the artifacts produced by himself or herself or the students in terms of how they are gaining understanding and visibly thinking about what is being learned. The teacher is also ab
le to better determine where students need support or facilitation.

  In the third layer, when a teacher documents his or her professional learning, it often feels risky to share and amplify. When willing to do so, the teacher is rewarded with insights and perspectives from local and global communities of learners. This layer also provides teachers with opportunities to take personal ownership in making their professional learning visible, which can become an integral component in teacher-observation cycles or accountability requirements.

  The final layer, which involves a school’s or district’s institutional memory, can utilize its teachers’ classroom or professional learning artifacts as a way to provide stakeholders and the community with what is believed and valued. It also involves an institution’s willingness to provide parents and caregivers with an awareness of new pedagogies or initiative implementations; areas in need of improvement; and making its educators and administrators’ ongoing professional learning transparent.

  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.

  5 Documenting With Sharing and Amplifying in Mind

  Social media is the greatest leadership tool ever invented. It gives you the opportunity to amplify your voice, extend your influence, and create a tribe of passionate followers who want to hear from you.

  —Michael Hyatt

  One perspective mentioned in the previous chapter asks students, teachers, and institutions to see themselves as action researchers. Using documenting when conducting action research includes sharing and amplifying one’s learning, including both struggles and successes with local and global audiences. By doing so, audiences can engage in the learning as well by improving their knowledge and understanding, or viewing what they know from a new perspective.

  Gerstein (2015) conveys her reasoning for educators sharing beyond themselves as modern learners:

  On a personal level, sharing assists the educator in becoming a better educator. The act of sharing requires reflection and preparation. The educator needs to reflect on his or her own practices to identify which ones they want to share and needs to put that sharing artifact into a form (e.g. writing, images, audio, video) that will be understood by an authentic audience. This process tends to help the educator improve instructional practices. . . . On a broader, more systemic level, sharing one’s experiences benefits other educators which, in turn, has the potential to advance the entire education field. It is the collective responsibility of all educators to create the change that they want to see in the education world. There really is no they in education. The they is really we-us. The we-us now have the means to have a voice.

  This is true for learners of all ages. Whether adults engaged in professional learning or students engaged in academic- or passion-based learning, the need to share and amplify elevates the learning acquisition that leads to gained knowledge, understanding, and application.

  Sharing and Amplifying When Documenting Learning

  Sharing and amplifying is about making one’s learning visible to others with purpose and meaning, which has its rewards and benefits, as Gerstein points out. It is also about taking one’s ideas, experiences, successes, challenges, questions, and resources and inviting others into the learning process.

  What Are the Connections Between Sharing and Amplifying?

  We find educators often have difficulty differentiating between sharing and amplifying because there are subtle distinctions between them in the documenting process. Table 5.1 explains the nuances in sharing versus amplifying.

  For an ongoing example to help differentiate among the degrees of amplification when sharing (see Image 1.1), throughout this chapter we will visit Sarah, a student participating in a documenting opportunity in her sophomore English class. The class is reading a contemporary book and focusing on its two main characters. After reading sections or chapters, the students are conducting a variety of tasks, as well as meeting for small-group discussions.

  One task Sarah is responsible for is publishing posts in her digital portfolio blog. Given her blog is online, her posts are technically available for the world to read. While Sarah shares her first posts pertaining to the documentation focus, there is no purposeful amplification because no one knows her blog’s URL. In other words, no one knows where to find her posts. Since people are not visiting her blog and leaving comments, Sarah does not have an opportunity to interact with others about her shared learning-thinking artifacts. Likewise, she is not strategically expanding her amplification reach through additional mediums (e.g., sharing her blog with someone in person, Twitter post with hyperlink, being referenced in someone else’s blog post).

  When sharing takes place with a purposeful extending the reach to an ever-widening audience, amplification increases, similar to sound waves expanding and growing louder.

  Image 1.1

  Sharing With Oneself—Slight Degree of Amplification

  Just because someone is fluent in the how-tos of riding a skateboard or driving a car, it usually takes a bit of thinking to explain the now ubiquitous actions step-by-step to others. This is also true when trying to explain one’s thoughts cognitively and metacognitively while learning new information.

  Learners constantly try to make sense of new facts and concepts, as well as how the new information relates to what is already known and how it applies to authentic situations. Needing to get it out of one’s mind is sometimes referred to as creating a model. Anderson (2011) notes, “The problem with mental models is they are just yours, and yours alone. They are inside your brain. . . . They are idiosyncratic, that means they are going to be different in every individual. And also, they are oftentimes incomplete.”

  Therefore, taking the time while engaged in the act of learning to ponder and express one’s thinking with oneself is beneficial because it involves the following:

  Requiring you to focus on what is taking place, what it means, and how it fits into your bigger picture of understanding

  Reflecting on what you think is accurate and having to articulate your thoughts and ideas

  Realizing that you may not understand as clearly as you thought inside your head when trying to explain or summarize key points or components

  While sharing with yourself registers as only a slight degree of amplification, it does involve making what can only be heard in one’s mind heard out loud and articulated—whether textually, visually, or audibly.

  Returning to Sarah’s learning: While reading the book’s chapters, she focuses on gaining insights into the relationship between the story’s protagonist and antagonist and how their relationship continually moves the plot forward. This is a new storytelling concept for herself and her peers. Many thoughts are coming and going in her mind as she comprehends the text, while simultaneously analyzing the two characters’ actions and interactions.

  To capture her thinking while reading she thoughtfully annotates and draws simple sketches in the margins of the chapters. This act of getting her mental-model ideas out of her head and onto paper forces her to think deeper about what she is reading and its meaning within the book’s context and learning focus. Her annotations can prompt her to make further connections when she revisits them during her small-group discussions, which involves the next degree of amplification.

  Sharing Face-to-Face—Low Degree of Amplification

  Once someone can articulate current understanding to himself
or herself via making it textually, visually, or orally visible, the next degree of amplification involves sharing the artifacts with someone else. This lower degree of face-to-face (F2F) amplification involves reaching out in person or digitally to someone or a small group who the learner knows well. For students, it may mean meeting during class time, later in the day at a coffee shop, or via Google Hangout. For teachers, it may be an informal discussion in the teachers’ lounge, a formal faculty or professional learning community meeting, or via Skype.

  To increase the face-to-face amplification degree, the learner needs to seek out people whom he or she does not intimately know. For students, it may mean meeting with students in another class or another school. For teachers, it may mean meeting with teachers in another building or district, during a conference workshop or breakout session, or meeting someone new using a virtual platform. This degree of amplification expands the ability to potentially stretch one’s thinking regarding what is being learned since the ideas shared by new people may require the learner to consider perspectives never thought of or considered before, or listen to feedback provided in the form of questions or pushback.