Tales from the Web Literacy Files: Geo Edition

Last week I sent a GIS news site a tip on a story since it was the sort of thing it might cover. The topic was in fact covered in the next issue. I was pleased to help, but disappointed to see no suggestion of where the publication heard about the story. Many media sites, from one person blogs to CNN, use H/T ("hat tip") or via ("via @adenas") to give credit to those who pass along such tips. There's even a movement to formalize this behavior with a Curator's Code (Wired UK).

Early this week I saw a link on Twitter for an educational geography resource on tornadoes. The tweet commended the analysis, so I was curious to read it. It turns out, the content was republished from Wikipedia. That's acceptable. However, the attribution was incomplete. There was no way a reader would know the content was not original, nor was the Creative Commons license used on Wikipedia respected. (Here's a blog post on how to do Creative Commons attribution by Molly Kleinman for those who need to read up on the topic.)

Finally, just yesterday a GIS news site pointed me to a new website with resources to encourage students and those in the job market to consider a career in geospatial technology. Those behind the website had the best of intentions and wanted to offer the content under a Creative Commons license. However, instead of stating that intention with a link to a specific license, the site developer simply put a link to the Creative Commons organization. (Here's the page about what the different licenses offer.)

To be clear, the websites and content I'm discussing were published by professionals in our field, not students. Somehow these individuals, and likely many of their peers, have not learned or taught themselves about these Web literacy and etiquette issues. I'm hoping renewed interest in all things open, both in and outside of geospatial technologies, will afford more opportunities to highlight best practices in these areas.

The State of the Flipped Classroom

I really love the idea of the "Flipped Classroom," where "lecture" is consumed at home and "homework" is done in class with the teacher at hand. It's one way to remove the "sage on the stage" and make the teacher the "guide on the side."

A Washington Post interview with Jonathan Bergmann, a chemistry teacher who has flipped his class and became a "flipped class" expert with a new book on the topic, highlights two key "lessons learned." One relates to the nature of the "lecture" consumed at home and the other to what subjects are most suited to flipping.

In most discussions of the flipped classroom the "homework," that is the "lecture" part of the learning, is described as "watching videos." But as Bergmann points out, video is not the only option.

They don’t need to watch my video. You just need to learn the material. Students need multiple ways to access content. A kid would say, “Hello, Mr. Bergmann, do I have to watch the video? Can I read the textbook instead?” We said, “You can learn it any way you like.”

Now that's a huge idea: The flipped classroom can give students multiple ways to learn the same material. How many ways can you learn to tape your bike's handlebars on the Web? I found videos (real life ones and animations), articles, step by step photo essays... The same is true for academic topics including how to multiply fractions! Bergmann explains that the teacher curates these, some of which may his or her own content, to provide a variety of options. Students can try one or more with the goal of understanding the topic well enough to try their hands at it the next day in class. I suspect this model has an added bonus: each student begins to learn about how he or she learns best! Via audio, video, text, interactive activities... That's very valuable! I'd even have older students periodically write essays reflecting on how they learn "best."

The article also addresses one question I've had for some time: Can every academic subject be flipped successfully? I'm thinking about teaching geography and GIS in this model. Says Bergmann:

We started it with the hard sciences, physics and math. It works for foreign language. But we’ve got some amazing teachers speaking at our conference who are English teachers. I always thought that would be harder, but they love it. I haven’t seen a whole lot of social studies and history, but there is a movement amongst them.

My hunch is any subject can be flipped but... you need detailed course objectives, a bevy of curated "lecture" options and engaging in-class problem sets/challenges/activities. I want to see a college level GIS course that had this homework assignment:

1) teach yourself what kriging is and how it works (I'd have college students do their own curation of content!)
2) state what resource you used to learn about the topic and explain how you found and selected it

Once the students arrived prepared for "Lab," they'd then tackle a kriging challenge with their peers and the instructor at their sides. I'd want to take that class. I'd even want to teach it!