A Guide to Documenting Learning

by Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

What details best express the evidence of learning?

  How did the media platforms and tools used during the documentation support evidence of learning?

  How will what I have now seen or heard influence the next learning action? Next teaching action?

  What patterns or trends emerged from the evidence of learning in one or multiple documenting opportunities?

  When wanting to look for patterns or trends, using a backchannel media platform tool, such as Today’s Meet, allows learners to reflect on their learning evidence over time. Students begin by collectively contributing their thoughts and ideas in the established backchannel. This can be done synchronously, such as during a classroom discussion or interview or while watching a video clip; or asynchronously, such as during a group research project, sharing insights throughout an election campaign, or communicating opinions and claims among several classes taking the same course focused on a particular topic, problem, or issue.

  Comparing the collective backchannel logs captured over time as an artifact is a powerful way to analyze trends, such as the increasing ability for a specific student or students to back up claims with relevant reasons and evidence, or the preciseness of the posts using academic vocabulary in a specific subject.

  When using backchannels to study patterns, questions can be posed such as: What is a particular student contributing, or not contributing, in the backchannel over time? Is a contributing student doing so in a purposeful manner? Another pattern study may involve analyzing backchannel logs through a digital citizenship lens: are the students consistently demonstrating respect for others views and opinions?

  Lastly, having individual students analyzing their personal contributions via studying the backchannel logs can provide insights into behavior patterns that may not be apparent to them without an introspective reflection time to study the backchannel context.

  Connect.

  Making connections is a natural next step after reflecting on documentation artifacts. The act of connecting includes making connections to prior knowledge and experiences and the current documenting opportunity. The learning-thinking becomes more explicit during this step.

  Guiding questions that can be explored when making connections include

  What occurred previously that is related to this learning?

  How is my work connected to someone else’s work?

  How can I connect to other perspectives?

  How did using multiple media platforms and tools support the evidence of learning documentation?

  How does a series of artifacts demonstrate my learning growth over time?

  For example, sixth graders under the facilitation of their mathematics teacher, Laurel Janewicz, had been learning how to analyze data and tell an informational story related to the collective data. The students specific focus included applying data analysis concepts to relevant school data. Two of their articulated goals involved their ability to communicate findings and conclusions visually (e.g., table or graph) and textually (e.g., script for video, blog post).

  Laurel provided her students with authentic data, which was the result of a survey taken by the previous school year’s sixth-grade students concerning their homework habits. By using this set of data, her current students would naturally make connections to their personal homework habits.

  Edit.

  The term edit can be defined as prepare for publication by correcting, condensing, or otherwise modifying. In a documenting learning context, the definition that best fits is prepare for publication by modifying.

  Consider a filmmaker being involved in editing the raw footage for a pivotal scene that was filmed from multiple angles, lightings, and dialogue exchanges. To convey the intended message to the audience, critical thinking and editorial decision making are paramount. What footage needs to be left out? What footage needs to be merged with other footage? What needs to be rearranged? The filmmaker may even need to call in some of the actors to do voiceovers, or a Foley artist may need to create certain sound effects.

  Editing is a critical step that cannot be overlooked or left out. It is during this time that the learning narrative comes to life. Critical thinking about one’s learning and the message that needs to be conveyed happens during this time. For example, when learners:

  edit a video artifact by deleting unnecessary footage,

  add annotexted explanations or spoken audio,

  create transitions,

  select a music track,

  create an appropriate title, and/or

  include any necessary credits,

  a new depth to their thinking takes place because the learners need to evaluate the evidence to create a meaningful artifact.

  A second example of editing could involve learners listening to an hour of audio recordings to summarize the key points of the learning and determine the most relevant sections to be included in a five-minute podcast they are creating.

  QR Code 6.12 Scan this QR code to view the Backchanneling-Movie Watching-Note Taking-Information Scribes blog post that includes the Backchannel Cleanup Role.

  http://langwitches.me/backchannel-cleanupr

  A third example can be students who are using a backchannel platform to collaboratively take notes where one student is designated the Backchannel Clean-Up Person responsible for editing the post-documentation backchannel log. He removes duplicate entries, double-checks for fact accuracies, and formats the collective notes to make them visually appealing and clear, not only to his peers, but also for a wider audience once the artifacts are shared and amplified.

  The editing process not only causes learners to consider the details related to the focuses and goals, it also causes them to make connections and confirm, reinforce, or disprove assumptions, which all deepen the learning. Learners need to use a critical eye or ear to ensure that an artifact’s details best articulate the evidence of learning. For example, an image (e.g., photograph of two plants on a windowsill with cardboard between the window pane and one of the plants) can be edited to become an annotexted artifact by adding arrows and text that conveys a knowledge concept (e.g., student annotates on the image the scientific explanation of the effect of sun versus no sun on the two plants’ growth photographed on Day 15).

  How the visible and/or audible thinking is added to, placed alongside, or created anew for the selected artifacts can vary greatly. Regardless of what shape or form an artifact takes, this step coupled with the create step is when transformation of learning evidence takes place.

  Create.

  Create is the highest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives and requires producing something new or innovating what exists. During this step, learners create a new representation (e.g., annotexted screencast, infographic) or a compilation of edited artifacts or representations (e.g., a blog post that contains hyperlinked text to supportive sites, an embedded annotexted video, and a conclusion that poses a thought-provoking question to encourage comments from a targeted audience).

  When creating a narrative that conveys one’s learning, it is important for a learner to consider the best platforms to digitally share and amplify their learning with a global audience. Let’s see this applied to Laurel’s sixth-grade math students. While each student was encouraged to self-select a media platform to create a new representation that documented his or her learning—such as infographics, images, videos, presentation slides, and animations—everyone was expected to create a blog post that included their creation, which was shared and amplified globally.

  It is important to note that there were two primary learners in Laurel’s students’ documenting opportunity—the students and Laurel, as she was documenting the difference between last year’s students, who did not have documenting learning experiences, and this year’s students, who have them. As part or her professional learning, she reflected on the differences she observed in the two group’s capabilities to personalize their standards-based learning. By evaluating what her students created in the cur
rent year, Laurel discovered that allowing her students to be documenters gave them a greater command of the mathematics and their abilities to justify their conclusions, communicate them to others, and do so using a viable argument. Not only did her students create evidence of what they learned, but Laurel was able to use the artifacts as evidence for her professional documentation.

  Share.

  Sharing documented learning with others adds an important dimension to the documenting process. As mentioned previously, if someone records his or her own reflections and creates artifacts as evidence of learning privately, he or she has less of an opportunity to grow as a learner. Sharing one’s knowledge—or lack thereof, which is equally important—provides a learner with opportunities for personalized feedback.

  Likewise, sharing one’s thinking about one’s learning process openly and transparently allows a learner to become a peer-colleague, expert, or role model for others. For example, to share the insights of Laurel’s own learning and the students’ evidence of learning, Silvia created a blog post to represent the multifaceted aspects and insights gained through the documenting opportunity. The post concluded with an invitation for readers to watch for an upcoming blog post Blogging in Math Class, which included student samples and a model lesson video of Laurel introducing her expectations for quality blog commenting in her math class.

  QR Code 6.13 Scan this QR code to view Telling a Story with Data blog post.

  http://langwitches.me/datastory

  Amplify.

  When learners share their documentation with a wider public audience through amplification, they invite new and previously untapped possibilities to extend the learning both as a contributor and as a seeker of new or deeper knowledge and understanding. As mentioned previously, amplification connects beyond the limitations of a zip code or language barrier. It involves taking advantage of belonging to a global learning network (or knowing someone who does) to access experts who can provide new perspectives or new information.

  For example, a third-grade class in Florida found an animal skeleton on their school campus. Naturally, they wanted to know what type of animal it was. Traditionally, they would have asked their teacher and the librarian, but the students were able to take advantage of Silvia’s global professional learning network, and she amplified their investigative reach in hopes of solving the animal mystery.

  The class composed a 280-character-limit tweet asking Silvia’s network to share resources to help them figure out what type of animal they found. They also attached images of the skeleton (see Image 6.12).

  Potential answers and inquiries quickly started flooding Silvia’s Twitter feed. Students were asked by responders to share specific information about the geographical area and habitat the animal was found in. They were also asked questions about specific details related to their originally posted images. They placed a ruler alongside the skeleton, took a snapshot and posted the image to provide responders with an accurate length and size of the animal.

  Image 6.12

  Tweet by tweet, the network responders guided the students closer and closer to a scientific conclusion (see Image 6.13). By sharing their curiosity about the animal skeleton with a global audience, the students extended their learning reach and opportunity. Their amplification created authentic accessibility to experts and researchers from around the world.

  QR Code 6.14 Scan this QR code to read the full CSI Twitter: Crime Scene Investigation blog post.

  http://langwitches.me/csitwitter

  Posing Contemplative Questions

  In their book, Learning and Leading with the Habits of Mind (2010), Costa and Kallick quoted Einstein at the onset of describing the Questioning and Posing Problems habit:

  The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. . . . To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advances. –Albert Einstein (p. 26)

  Asking deeper questions, searching new possibilities, and looking for a new angle or problem to explore is at the heart of posing contemplative questions. Questions, such as these, can open possibilities for new or deeper learning.

  How did the learning process unfold for me?

  What am I struggling with in my learning? What did I struggle with during my learning?

  What are the steps I am taking, or did I take, to gain knowledge and understanding?

  What resources or strategies am I using to gain knowledge and understanding? What proved to be the most relevant or irrelevant, given my focus and goal?

  How can I best share my learning with a global audience so I can gain other’s perspectives and feedback to help me grow in my knowledge and understanding?

  Image 6.13

  Summing Up

  The post-documentation phase is paramount to the overall documenting learning process. Without it, student and teachers never reach the depth of personalizing the learning given the nine steps requirement to think cognitively and metacognitively about what learning has (and, possibly, has not) taken place.

  The nine post-production steps (unpack, filter/select, organize, reflect, connect, edit, create, share, amplify) are critical for transforming the evidence of learning into meaningful learning stories based on the captured artifacts.

  As the Mystery Skeleton narrative expressed, the ability to amplify the learning beyond those who are in one’s physical reach, whether curiosity or passion, adds a layer to a documenting opportunity that students, and teachers, will never forget.

  A final note related to all three phases: There has been contemplative questions included in each phase’s section. It is important to the documenting process that cognitive and metacognitive questions need to be asked and reflected on:

  As part of the pre-documentation phase before a new documenting opportunity begins.

  Throughout the during-documentation phase, especially when considering what need to be captured in the moments the learning is taking place.

  In the post-documentation phase, and even at the conclusion of a documenting opportunity, as the responses may impact or inform the next documenting opportunity.

  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.

  7 Documenting Learningflow Routine

  It is not knowledge, but the act of learning; not possession, but the act of getting there, which grants the greatest enjoyment.

  —Carl Friedrich Gauss

  The documenting learningflow routine embraces students and teachers participating in the act of learning while the learning is taking place. Owning one’s learning takes on new depths and perspectives when the five learningflow routine steps are applied to purposeful documenting opportunities.

  Establishing a routine is like having a specific practice reach a point where it becomes a natural facet of whatever is being performed. For example, yoga involves building balance, increasing flexibility, and achieving mindfulness routines. Harvard’s Project Zero visible thinking routines is founded on four practices that aid students and teachers in extending and deepening their thinking: observing, recording, interpreting, and sharing.

  To ensure that a physical or mental action becomes routine, it must first become a habit. In keeping with the adage, “It takes 30 days to make a habit,” it will take time and effort for the learningflow step
s to become routine.

  Learningflow Routine Steps

  As each step is explained in this chapter, note that there are a few terms purposefully used in both the documentation phases and the learningflow routine. For example, the action of look takes place in the pre-documentation phase when determining the focuses and goals and considering what needs to be visibly or audibly collected as evidence of learning. Look also takes place when a learner is hyperaware of what needs to be captured in the during-documentation phase (Image 7.1).

  Image 7.1

  Another example is the duality of reflection. This term often evokes an it’s already happened feeling, as in reflecting on a summer vacation’s highlights or low points, or reflecting on when a child was young who is now full grown.

  While these two examples evoke a post-documentation phase and learningflow routine’s act of reflection, there are often in-the-moment reflections taking place in the during-documentation phase. For example, while on a SCUBA diving trip on the island of Little Cayman, Janet and her husband, Johnny, were sitting on a boat’s bow while speeding through the ocean’s waves toward a morning dive site. A warm breeze was blowing, the sun was shining brightly, and flying fish were soaring above the waterline in tandem with the boat. Janet thought to herself: Remember everything about this moment. It may never happen again. This was a during reflection, not a post-reflection moment. Janet was hyperaware of every aspect of what was taking place around her and reflecting on what was important in the moment to capture or remember.