Author Archives: Mica Pollock

May 5, 2011

Research Day: Exploring the Potential of Texting for Student-Teacher Communication

By Mica Pollock

On Saturday, April 21 from 10-1, ten young people and two teachers from Full Circle/Next Wave, Somerville’s alternative high school and middle school, came to a classroom at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. They joined Uche, me, and four other graduate students from the Ed School in “Research Day.” Our goal: to analyze texts students and teachers have been sending each other since the winter, in OneVille’s pilot of texting as a channel for rapid youth support.

We’ve been talking to students and teachers all year as co-researchers, about their experiences testing texting. We’d analyzed specific texts before with Ted and Mo, our teacher participants. But this was our first time sitting together with young people analyzing actual data. Reading transcripts taken from Google Voice (with participants’ permission and anonymized for analysis), students were immediately perceptive about “patterns in the data.” We talked in small groups, and then we shared ideas across the room. My small group included Mo (our Next Wave, middle school teacher), Shelia, Obens, “Juan,” and “Dan” (pseudonyms for initial blogging purposes!).

What we talked about most was how texting can enhance student-teacher relationships and so, students’ engagement with school.

Reading the transcripts, the students noticed first that students and teachers were noticeably polite to each other, texting “thanks and you’re welcome” after texts about permission slips, reminders, and personal check-ins on grades or life.

“The kids haven’t been crossing boundaries in any way – no one has been inappropriate,” Mo said later. Students agreed, saying that with texting, you’d just “give the teacher the same respect you’d give them in school.”

Over and over, students noted that texts demonstrated caring. And that students were grateful for it: “it shows you appreciate the person and you’re thankful they helped you out,” Shelia said. Mo added: “They appreciate (Ted, our Full Circle teacher) taking time out of his own private life to send these texts.” Obens said that texts from Ted had gotten him to school on time.

Wielding her highlighter, Shelia selected another text from Ted to a student as important evidence:

“you need to be in school way more my friend.” “I feel like it’s genuine concern,” she explained. “It shows connection,” Obens added. “It also shows courage.”

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February 16, 2011

Data display: working to show what administrators, teachers, parents, and students need to see

By Mica Pollock

We’ve prototyped a dashboard data view tool that would be a free, easy-to-use, and privacy-protected display of students’ basic info and progress on key benchmarks. Here’s an example of a view for an administrator (this is all fake data!). While this is a screen shot, the actual tool lets you sort the columns by language group, homeroom, etc. This was based on an initial Excel spreadsheet made by a Somerville resident, Greg Nadeau:

OneVille Family Dashboard Example

In the dashboard project, I’ve been thinking lately about one communication act technology affords: examining patterns (“sorting” the data), with the click of a button. Sorting children is always a fraught thing to do (a child is far more than the characteristics officially recorded in a district database!). But privately, administrators often need to sort basic data to find basic patterns to target interventions. Who is not coming to school? Who is struggling with math as measured on tests? What’s the correlation between students who aren’t coming to school, and those struggling with math on tests? Now, what are we going to do in response to the pattern we’ve found? One elementary school teacher looking at this prototype made a great point about a teacher’s similar information needs: a teacher at times also needs to sort his data to find patterns. (He wondered: which of my students are struggling with both attendance, and reading test scores? Or, which of my students are doing fine on grades/class assignments, but not on tests?) It’s this act of sorting that technology particularly makes possible. This teacher is technologically savvy, and so he already prints out spreadsheets on his class’s attendance, test scores, and more from Somerville’s current student information system. He does the math by hand to show changes in test scores over time (our next revision will do this too, and we’ll add/delete fields based on teacher/administrator/parent/student feedback). He colorizes these spreadsheets on paper with a highlighter so he can consider patterns. But he wants to sort the data from his class way more easily. We’re working to create a free tool that would make that quickly possible for him. (Most such tools cost districts lots of money.) And of course, what really matters is what people DO with data. That’s why we’re focused on the parent-teacher-student conference as a key moment where data would be discussed. We’re designing other data displays further with teachers and parents, to co-create tools useful for each partner. One is a multilingual, individual view of each student’s attendance, grades, test scores, and more. Another is a live version of Somerville’s elementary “report card,” with notetaking sections for teachers and parents. We’re asking: what information on student progress does a parent or student need to see privately, and how could it be displayed most clearly? How could data display tools go beyond just “showing” progress, to also allow partners to take notes on their plans for student success? This also relates to the eportfolio pilot project underway at Somerville High. (More on that soon.) An eportfolio can communicate “the whole student” in ways that more basic data display of test scores, grades, and attendance never can. So ideally, someday — here in Somerville, or elsewhere — these communication tools and strategies would all be linked together.

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December 10, 2010

Co-designing communication solutions

By Mica Pollock

A few nights ago I went to a great Literacy Night at my child’s school. It was organized by literacy experts at a local university. I got some really good reading tips. But there were hardly any other parents there. It’s true that people are particularly tired right now — tons of parents are working constantly on school redesign, for example — and that night was particularly cold. But did that paper handout in the backpack get missed? How about the fact that the school listserv gets info only to some?

Since that night, school parents have started working more rapidly on a solution for getting every parent an email account. How about school-home texting? We’re asking parents if they’d want it. Could we video the next workshop and put it online? Or are literacy tips best shared face-to-face? A teacher, another parent, and I brainstormed together about turning a typical parent breakfast into a Literacy Breakfast that would get the reading tips directly to parents who could ask immediate questions of teacher and literacy coach. And how about the same literacy night in Creole? A young Haitian-American woman pursuing her MA in Education just happens to be an afterschool tutor and is interested in exploring the possibility of leading the workshop.

This is the sort of community co-design of communication solutions that the OneVille Project is all about.

We’re doing what you might call participatory design-based research (building on Dede 2005). Students, teachers, parents, mentors, technologists, community organizers and researchers are co-designing strategies for getting the people in young people’s lives to communicate information, ideas, and resources that can support young people’s success.

We consider this work successful when a tool or strategy does the following:

  • helps ensure that sufficient communication occurs about every young person, regardless of income or social status;
  • helps to work toward the high level success of each young person;
  • helps ensure that more people have access to information that can support youth and families in the schools and community, across existing boundaries of tech access and tech knowledge and language.
  • unites people in new collective efforts to support young people.

It’s an honor to do this work here in Somerville.

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December 2, 2010

Information + sharing = community

By Mica Pollock

In the OneVille Project, partners of all ages are exploring the role of commonplace technology in improving communications about and with young people so they succeed.

Here’s a core question guiding our work:

Who needs to communicate what information to whom, through which media, in order to support youth in a community? Which barriers are in the way of such communication, and how might these barriers be overcome?

Here’s one thing partners of all ages in Somerville have been saying. To support young people in a community, people need to share various forms of information about students’ development and progress. That ranges from the data on test scores, credits, grades, and attendance that could be made available to parents and students on an easy-to-access “dashboard,” to the evidence of student interests and skills available only in a student-made “eportfolio,” to the updates about personal life perhaps available most easily through text messaging. They also need to share information about opportunities and resources available for young people and families. That ranges from event info that gets emailed out by the district or service providers, to afterschool enrollment forms given parents on paper.

I personally have come to see a community as an ecosystem of information — where all sorts of people need to share necessary information to support young people.

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November 4, 2010

OneVille efforts, 2010-11

By Mica Pollock

We’ve been busy! Here’s a public community report on the work we’re doing this year. It reflects ideas and efforts from people of all ages, and across Somerville.

OneVille_October_2010to2011_sharewithCOMMUNITY

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October 1, 2010

Supporting communication that can increase student learning and success

By Mica Pollock

A core goal on the OneVille Project is to encourage running communication that can improve student learning. After months of prep, we’re working to support a group of teachers and students at Somerville High this fall as they design and make ePortfolios.
Last year, the Somerville High School Improvement Council revised the school’s Portfolio Policy to expand and update portfolio assignments. Developing digital portfolios was one strategy identified and the OneVille Project is excited to support this work.  On our end, we imagine an ePortfolio possibly becoming part of a dynamite trio of tools to support the success of each individual young person in Somerville (see “supporting individual students” post below, September 7.) We’ll see which tools eventually come together in Somerville!

An ePortfolio can be a tool used by young people (and teachers, if they develop their own teaching ePortfolios) to display their actual work and skills. It has the potential to allow educators and students to communicate details of learning and growth, as well as to assess learning and development on multiple measures.

An ePortfolio can also support family members and even mentors, tutors, college representatives, and potential employers to check out specific examples of student work. This is part of the overall OneVille vision: to widen the number of community members who are well informed about ways to support student learning and engaged in young people’s development.

So, the ePortfolio project hopes to create a comment and assessment “team around each youth” that includes student and teacher participants, and the potential for including parents and any mentors that each student wants to include. (At OneVille, we are also developing a strategy for a rapid response “support team around every student,” in which youth and supporters, including teacher, could contact each other to jumpstart “anytime” personal and academic support.) In addition, two public presentations of in-progress portfolios will pilot ways of communicating publicly about what each youth (and possibly teachers) have accomplished.

A group of teachers representing the range of Somerville High School departments have already met and expressed enthusiasm and a very dynamic vision for ePortfolios.  They are identifying a group of diverse student participants.  A first meeting of the entire ePortfolio project team of Somerville High School teachers and students with our OneVille team is anticipated by mid-October 2010.  We’re thrilled to get started!

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September 7, 2010

Communicating about the success of individual students

By Mica Pollock

On the OneVille Project this fall, we’re piloting three tools that can support communication about individual students. We’ll report on each one as we go.

OneVille’s first fundamental idea is to create an intergenerational support team around each young person. We are convinced that technology can help, and we’re working closely with the Somerville Public Schools on three specific tools. In partnership with the Schools, we’re lining up three working groups of people who live and work in Somerville to design and test the following three tools for supporting individual students. Our vision is that these 3 tools could eventually fit together in a dynamite student-support approach!  We want each tool to support speakers of languages other than English and to be accessible by a cell phone, so people who don’t own computers can participate:

  • Working Group 1: “Team around kids.” Goal: test ways an on-call support team around every young person could communicate at any time. Lots of supporters help out students in Somerville. But what if a team of supporters was on call at any time to support a young person’s progress? Since this summer, we’ve been working with Somerville youth and educators to explore how texting and other social media could help every young person stay in contact with a “team” of supporters of the young person’s choice (eventually including parents, other relatives, and key friends, as well as educators, mentors/tutors, and program staff). We hope to pilot a “texting support team around every student” approach in one classroom this fall. We will ask students to list a parent/guardian and an out of school “buddy” or adult supporter who they’d want on their “team.” We’ll then test ways the student, teacher and “team” could text and communicate when the student needs support. We will add other team members (particularly, tutors and mentors) as we go. “Teams” will also talk face to face as needed about specific things that can support young people and their learning. By the end of the pilot, we want to know how an on-call support team could assist each young person in Somerville.
  • Working Group 2: Dashboard. Goal: create a tool showing youth and parents a simple, clear view of individual students’ progress, so that every student can plan for graduation and college.  To support young people, people need to stay informed about how young people are doing. “Data” needs to be clear and accessible to families and students themselves. A group of Somerville programmers, youth, and parents is designing and testing out a multilingual, community-friendly “dashboard” (a quick data view) that families and youth could use to discuss and easily keep track of how each young person is doing on getting to graduation and college. (“Teams” could meet in person to look at the dashboard to plan for the success of individual students. Community groups could also look at larger data patterns, to consider ways of supporting lots of young people.)
  • Working Group 3: Eportfolio. Goal: create an online place to privately display each student’s learning and work. Somerville educators and youth know that tests aren’t the only way to demonstrate student learning! Teachers and students at Somerville High, along with other respondents chosen by students (such as parents and mentors), will be working together to design a multimedia eportfolio for each student that will help students show what they can do — and support informed conversations about sparking and supporting young people’s learning.   (Eventually, teams could look at these together.) Somerville High already wanted to expand its portfolio work. We’re just supporting that desire!

OneVille3supporttools

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May 25, 2010

Bringing families together at reading night

By Mica Pollock

The OneVille Project is working to support people in Somerville kids’ lives to communicate and collaborate about strategies for student success. One of our pilot efforts is to hold academic family events where parents and young people get together to share strategies for improving kids’ learning.

In monthly Reading Nights we’ve held at the Healey School in Somerville, we get parents and kids together who share a Kindergarten hallway (3 different programs) to talk and work together on specific tactics for helping kids read. (We just attended an annual Math Night at the Healey that is a great model of getting kids and families together to enjoy math!) We build community by eating pizza together, learning skills together in some creative way, and then talking, as parents, about how our children are doing with reading. (Planning the Reading Nights has also created a diverse team of parents working together on OneVille and schoolwide efforts.) We invite teachers to share tips with us, and as parents, we share strategies that are and aren’t working in supporting our own kids to read better. Meanwhile, kids do fun reading activities.

We held a Reading Night on May 18, 2010. Children enjoyed a multilingual scavenger hunt for words in the Healey School’s garden (compost/abono/composto; soil/tierra/terra). Everyone then went into the school library to watch a video of a Healey K teacher guiding one of the K kids through reading. Older kids then read books to younger kids, while parents shared ideas about strategies and struggles with young kids’ reading. Parent-to-parent tips included: if the child can’t sound out a word, look at the pictures for clues. Read the pictures before they even start the book. Alternate: let the child read one sentence or page, and you read one sentence or page.

At the April 13th Reading Night, children from a K class performed a book about penguins, driving home the early reading skill of telling stories. Parents watched a video about phonemic awareness and then shared strategies that parents had seen work for kids’ reading.

Parent tips included:

  • Play games with the sounds in words (pig! dig! fig!) and spell words you find around in everyday life.
  • Tell kids long words they are struggling to read. Break words into syllables.
  • Find your child books that he really is interested in.

To end the night, one dad shared a Nigerian folk tale that he was told as a child to help him learn early literacy.

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May 11, 2010

Presenting the words of parents

By Mica Pollock

We’re about to post ideas from parents, collected at our parent forums. As a team composed of researchers, community workers, and media people, we’re experimenting with different ways of presenting this data to the public online. We’d like your feedback as we begin to present.

On the OneVille Project, we believe that education will work better for kids if people 1) talk specifically about what is helpful/harmful to them, rather than generically. We also believe that education will work better for kids if people 2) come together as a community to assist kids collectively.

So, how best to present people’s words after the fact? A whole transcript of uncategorized ideas is hard on the brain trying to analyze. So, we’re slightly categorizing people’s suggestions. That way, readers can walk away with a sense of specific things to think about.

At the same time, the human, community-building aspects of a face to face forum are hard to convey if you just categorize people’s “data.” When you read the entire transcript of a forum, you see people’s comments one after another and see diverse people sharing and struggling with ideas. That might better convey the sense of community-building that really did occur in our forums.

We’re also considering how best to present even critical feedback on improving schools in a way that clarifies Somerville parents’ deep desires to be partners with schools in children’s education.

So, let us know what you think when we post! Tell us how the presentation works for you – and let us know what you think of the actual ideas raised.

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May 4, 2010

21st century parent dialogues, continued

By Mica Pollock

How can community dialogues go from face to face to online, and back again?

On Saturday from 1-4 at the Mystic Activity Center, OneVille held a parent forum designed to support Healey parents to communicate their ideas for the future of the Healey. Our goal was to gather parent input face to face, and then share it out online so others can engage it. Translators from the community helped everyone express their thoughts.

Thanks to everyone who attended and participated on a beautiful day! We had a very productive event and will be posting all input from our parent forums this week. We’ve been considering best ways to format the input for others to view and respond online.

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