Web 5.0 and the Filter Bubble
I recently did a presentation on some of the reading I have been doing on web 5.0 the personalization of the internet. The whole filter video above is a wonderful introduction to the topic. If you enjoy the video and enjoy learning about new technology and the world we live in ted is an amazing organization which provides hundreds of educational videos to the curious and intellectual mind.
Apart from the video there are some good places to find concrete information on the topic. The first place I think you should all go is Eli Pariser's official website the filter bubble . If you are really interested and have a spare $12 dollars Pariser's book can be purchased at Amazon. I have a collection of three good articles: Mashable (a premier tech orientated news affiliate) TIME, and Slate
After you have done a bit of research on the topic you may want to know what can be done to eliminate the negative effects of the filter bubble. 10 things you can do is a practical guide to popping your bubble.
If you do follow the advice of these links and set your web experience free I congratulate you! To reward you here is a nice picture of Cats. (lets face it - this is what the internet does best)
Observations
Communication Climate and Learning Environment
I am observing Christine Hogue the 5th grade science and English teacher at Hollywood elementary. Every Wednesday I have the opportunity to observe three periods of science. (twice it was English) Each period has about thirty 5th graders, for approximately forty minutes of instruction. Mrs Hogue has used her classroom to create a healthy, positive, and effective teaching-learning environment. The climate is solidly supportive. Students seem to respect and appreciate Mrs. Hogue, and she in turn cultivates a positive relationship with her students. Communication follows a simple SMCR model. (Sender, Message, Channel, Receiver.)
Mrs. Hogue, the sender, uses her personal communication skills to convey the message to her students. Mrs. Hogue's attitude, knowledge, social system, and culture all play a role in the level of communication. Her attitude is positive and encouraging. It is clear that she posses both a strong material knowledge and a rigorous understanding of teaching methodology. Mrs. Hogue seems to share a common social system and culture with her students.
The message, or lesson, can be broken into five main parts: content, elements, treatment, structure, and code. Content comprises the topic of the lessons which is usually scientific in nature, but has at times covered English. Elements are the individual parts of the lesson, for example when we covered grammar she used lecture, overheads, and a worksheet. Treatment is how the message is packaged. Mrs. Hogue does a fine job with the treatment of the message, using positive language and clear descriptions.
Channels are the method through which the message is conveyed. Mrs. Hogue uses most of the senses within the classroom: seeing, hearing, and touching are all employed. When covering the laws of kinematics (science of moving) she had the students design tracks for marbles. The students were left to their own creativity but where given clear stipulations concerning the nature and purpose of the assignment. Mrs. Hogue sometimes uses a microphone when the classroom becomes rowdy, this helps increase the effectiveness of the hearing channel. The screen is also commonly used with a projector to display different lesson points and diagrams.
The students, or receivers, performed at a much higher level than I initially expected. Their master of communication through dialogue was superb. They also conducted themselves with a positive and respectful attitude. With a combination of Hogue's teaching and the students receptiveness a positive teaching-learning environment is clearly fostered.
Communication noise doesn't seem to pose much of a threat in the 5th grade classroom. Environmental noise is a minimum in both visual and auditory input. The classroom is generally quiet and tastefully lit. Mrs. Hogue is well organized and avoids organizational noise by having well structured class periods and assignments. Hollywood Elementary appears relatively uniform demographically, and most students share similar cultural and social systems. This effectively eliminates cultural noise.
The Teacher's Communication Style
Mrs. Hogue's communication style is easy, simple, and personable. When I first entered the classroom I was quickly welcomed and introduced to all the students. This created a warmer environment and dissipated distraction. I like to break styles of communication into four different types of communication and four different tones of communication. The types of communication are: clear and direct; clear and indirect; masked and direct; and masked and indirect. Clearly the healthiest form of communication would be clear and direct. The clarity and masked nature of communication refers to the message being transferred, while the directness and indirectness is the level of application to the audience. The tones of communication are: assertive, aggressive, passive, and passive-aggressive. Again the first one is the best, assertive communication is communication with positive language, respectfulness, and to the point.
I would label Hogue's communication style as: clear and direct with an assertive tone. When an assertiveness seems to fail, Hogue uses aggressive communication. Once when students wasted time on an assignment, after warning them once, Hogue's switched her tone to aggressive and informed them that through their mismanagement of time they would be missing a part of recess.
Teacher's expectations - Methods employed
The level of expectation caught me by surprise. Mrs. Hogue communicates without dumbing down her speech, she expects her students to act and communicate responsibly. She sets the bar high and is patient with the students, waiting for them to fully express their opinions before correcting them. She uses normal vocabulary. The students level of vocabulary is much higher than I expected. When students fail to meet her expectations she clearly expresses displeasure and disappointment, but does not pass judgment. She makes it clear that she expected more, that the students could have performed better. Then she works with them to try and improve on the failed concept or lesson. One clear example was when she was administering a grammar quiz, when it became clear that the students did not know how to complete the quiz she changed her lesson plan to better convey the material they were missing.
The diversity of teaching methods employed is excellent. Mrs. Hogue does her best to incorporate learning strategies to help the three main learning groups: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Some of the tools and methods I have seen include: technology, visual aids, lectures, small groups, discussions, questions, experiments, worksheets, quizzes, homework, report-back sessions, and brainstorming. The diversity of methods helps keep the classroom fresh and interesting. Interested students are naturally more responsive and engaged.
The Teacher's Immediacy
Immediacy is Mrs. Hogue's strongest point. Her students love her and seem to feel a very close, positive, relationship with her. Mrs. Hogue teaches four different periods of 5th graders throughout the day, and maintains a high level of immediacy with each classroom. She shows no unhealthy favoritism to her homeroom. Boundaries are broken through the use of positive and relational language. Mrs. Hogue calls her students by name, often by nickname. She increases immediacy through appropriate kinesthetics. She meets her students at an equal level. When talking to them individually she meets them at the same physical level, making level eye contact. She often uses physical proximity to close emotional distance.
Even with such a high level of immediacy there is room for improvement. One area where she may be able to increase classroom immediacy is with favoritism. Mrs. Hogue's identifies specific students as her "favorites" with relative regularity. These observations are always associated with a behavior that the student is performing. This is less damaging than identifying students as favorites without merit. It leaves the playing field open for any student to become her "favorite" by modeling "perfect" behavior. However teacher's pets will always alienate certain students who feel unable to attain that level of performance.
Teacher's Movement around the Classroom and influence on relationships
Teachers who move freely within their classroom can more easily control the flow and focus of their lessons. Classrooms should ideally be set up for ease of movement and student comfort. Mrs. Hogue class room is organized in a simple layout allowing her to move freely among her students. She does this often during group projects and worksheets. This provides students with an opportunity to ask her individual and private questions. It also decreases the distance between the instructor and student, increasing the level of immediacy. When Mrs. Hogue moves around the room she uses physical contact and proximity to shape her students behavior. This is as simple as moving towards students who are disruptive to high-fives with students when they finish assignments quickly and accurately.
During lectures Mrs. Hogue is usually stationary at the front of the room. She does this because of her dependence on a projector. Potentially this could lead to classroom management problems, but Mrs. Hogue uses direct questions and visual models to keep her students attention. She is devoted to providing visualization for her students that it greatly diminishes her ability to move while lecturing. I don't see any indication that this has had a negative impact on her relationship with the students. She makes sure to use movement during more appropriate times to build important personal relationships. I think it would be a fair assessment to say Mrs. Hogue's use of positive language, and movement has lead to her high level of immediacy.
Seating Arrangements, Learning environments, & Effects on communication
In the few weeks I have observed the fifth grade classroom at Hollywood elementary, I have seen the classroom set up in three different patterns. The classroom is furnished with individual desks and matching but separate chairs. I have seen the desks arranged in orderly lines and rows and grouped in sets of five or six. Twice, Mrs. Hogue had moved all the desks up against the walls and set up large tables for the students to do experiments on.
The day that all the desks where in lines and rows was organized for a quiz. The students worked on the quiz while Mrs. Hogue and I walked around to help with individual questions. The set up was intuitive and easy to maneuver. It allowed us to talk to students individually but still keep an eye on the classroom. When the desks where arranged in groups it is harder to reach individual students, however I think the students prefer this setup. It allows them a "space" and interaction with their peers. The worst setup for communication was by far the large tables. Students were in groups of five around five tables. Certain groups became animated and noisy while other groups wasted time and fell behind. However, this is the natural pitfall of an experimental laboratory setup. Mrs. Hogue purposefully left the kids to their own discovery and experimentation. I believe the lab could have been improved if she had used presence in the form of physical proximity to motivate students to stay on task. This would have allowed them to still have an organic laboratory experience, but would have helped them stay focused and actually complete the project.
The Teacher's Use of Positive and Negative Language
Mrs. Hogue uses overwhelmingly positive language even when students aren't performing well, or paying attention. This is one of the reasons that her immediacy is so high, her students never question her devotion and investment in their wellbeing. Only once did I observe Mrs. Hogue use negative language. She held the entire class in from recess for about 5 minutes for wasting time. I think that it was an effective use of punishment for discipline. It wasn't punishment for the sake of punishment, but just a natural consequence of wasting time. One of the reasons Mrs. Hogue has such a positive teaching-learning environments is because of how respectful and disciplined her students are. If she wasn't strict when it came to discipline she would ultimately waste much more time struggling to motivate students.
Hogue's use of positive or negative language steers the learning environment from defensive to supportive. Supportive climates encourage open, honest interaction, while defensive climates bread competitive and destructive conflict. Hogue's uses clear descriptions, spontaneity, empathy, equality and provisional statements to build a positive supportive dialogue. Though there are many dimensions of behavior that create either a supportive or defensive climate in the classroom, immediacy remains the most important tool a teacher has to shape the climate within the classroom.
The Teacher's Active Listening Behaviors
Listening is an important factor in the teaching-learning environment. If we remember back to the model I provided in my mid-term paper, we can clearly see that listening is important for both the teacher and student. Teachers need to foster an environment conducive to listening. This can be done by limiting communication noise. Teachers must also listen to their students, in order to track their growth, and to increase immediacy.
Mrs. Hogue does an excellent job listening. She reserves time at the beginning of class for students to ask questions and openly dialogue. This fosters a community of communication and trust. The students feel safe to ask Mrs. Hogue questions concerning any topic. During lessons, (lecture or small group) Mrs. Hogue makes it a point to individually address student's concerns or confusions.
Not only is Mrs. Hogue a good listener, she has cultivated a classroom climate which promotes listening. Her students are attentive and responsive. Mrs. Hogue teaches the fifth grade with four or five other teachers. Their success in molding respectful inquisitive students is clearly evident. Mrs. Hogue uses different methods and tricks to keep the attention of her class. During transitional periods she uses a microphone. This keeps the class from derailing while students look for books, pencils, or transition from one topic to the next. The class room organization and flow also helps to engage students early, and keep their attention and interest throughout the lesson.
Cultural diversity & how it affects content and attitudes
Diversity doesn't seem to have a large roll in the fifth grade class at Hollywood elementary. Most students seem to share a common racial, cultural, and socio-economic background. Each class is evenly divided between the sexes and there is no evidence of discrimination. Each class has one or two non Caucasian students, who appear to have integrated well and are treated equally. As far as I can tell there has been no adaptation of the lesson content to address diversity. Every lesson is well developed for diverse learning styles. Students who demonstrate signs of OCD are allowed to sit where they want. (most chose the isolated seats in the back, where they can create a "safe" space for themselves) I am not aware of any handicapped or disabled children in the classroom. This could indicate excellent integration or a non-integrated classroom.
Overview
I have been pleasantly surprised by the students and by the lessons I have learned from observation. When I started observing the fifth grade class I was cynical that nothing would transfer to a secondary setting. This couldn't be farther from the truth. I am enjoying seeing some of the backgrounds that my high school students will have. I am also seeing the universality of communication concepts. The same tools that I use with college students in lab works with fifth graders. I am surprised by the complex and positive relationship that Mrs. Hogue has with her students. She dances a brilliant line between professional and personal interaction. I am looking forward to integrating a lot of the concepts I have observed into my classroom.