The+Solebury+School

Solebury School Team
Solebury School is located in New Hope PA about an hour north of Philadelphia. We are a day and boarding school for grades 7-12 with 226 students this year. This is the second year we have had a PLP team from our school.

Our team members include: Steve Buteux (Director of Studies)


 * This is my 20th year at Solebury and 9th in this job as Director of Studies. I started here as a full time classroom teacher in English and History. Currently I still teachthe AP US History part of our American Studies course. I've always loved computers (it's odd to think of having been a teacher without one, especially with my handwriting) am excited to start playing around with this stuff. We sent a group to PLP last year and they came back revved up and pushing us to think about the ways we engage each other and our students. Away we go...

Erika Bonner (Department Head- Art)
 * This is my 6th year at Solebury School, my 5th year as Arts Department Head, I over see the Music, Theater, Dance and Visual Arts. I primarily teach the 3D arts Ceramics and sculpture, but I also teach Art History, Printmaking, Intro to Painting and Drawing, Silk-screening, and a host of misc. classes.
 * I was a proffessional artist and had my own Decorative Tile and Mosaic design business for 16 years before I came to Solebury.
 * I am one of the school's yearbook advisors, we use Photoshop and InDesign, and occationally Illustrator.
 * I feel overwhelmed when I see all of the possibilities technology presents us, which ones are the best. So many of the technologies are fads and quick to become obsolete and disappear.

Diane Downs (Department Head- English)
 * This is my 12th year at Solebury School, my 4th year as English Department Head, and my first year as co-director of a new community service/social entrepreneurship certificate program, Solebury Teach2Serve. If you want to learn more about that, check out the website at Teach2Serve.org. I currently teach English 7, English 9 and AP English.
 * I arrived at teaching via a long, circuitous route, but love it.
 * I am looking forward to learning how to use Web 2.0 effectively, but over the years, I have come to the conclusion that people who teach computer classes don't think the same way I do. I hope that will not be the case with this program.

Cari Nelson (Middle School Director, Science Department)
 * This is my 5th year at Solebury and my 3rd year as Middle School Director. I have a secondary education degree in Science and a master's degree in Cardiopulmonary Physiology. After working for several years in a hospital in cardiac surgery, I came back to teaching and love being back in the classroom. I currently teach 8th grade science and Anatomy and Physiology along with running the Middle School.

**Action Research Project**
**Team Name: **Solebury School **Team members **: Cari Nelson, Steve Buteux, Erika Bonner, Diane Downs

**‍School: **Solebury School **‍Abstract: ** We decided to look at the use of social media in our 7th grade English class while doing a unit on the script //12 Angry Men//. Throughout the unit we incorporated different uses of social media tools to get the students more active in covering the lesson and get them to be thinking deeper about characters within the play. They were also writing more with the use of the Ning instead of writing journal entries that the English teacher was the only one reading.

Social Media and 7th graders: A Mixed Bag **‍Problem, Issue, or Possibility: ** How does the use of social media affect the learning of the desired content?

**‍Objectives and Assessment: **
 * Enjoyment in English class
 * Writing more deeply about character development
 * Writing more content on the Ning site as their character

**<span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">‍Implementation of Plan: ** ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">To use a Ning site and a Google Doc for a 7th grade English class unit on the play //12 Angry Men//. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">We established a relationship with a charter school in Trenton, NJ and attempted to use the ning (primarily) as a way to connect to a relatively different student population. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Students were asked to adopt the persona of a juror (not necessarily one of the 12 in the play but an updated version of juror that would more likely reflect an average jury in a “northeastern city” as it’s described in the play) and respond to questions on the ning as their character would. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Begin with a survey to learn about students’ familiarity with social media. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Show students how to negotiate the ning, post general forum questions to answer (opinion and prior knowledge), have students set up a “my page” on which they describe and assume the character of a jury member whom they have made up, and have them write blog posts in character at the end of each act. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">End with a survey to learn the students’ perspective on this experience, any increased skills in social media, etc. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">This was a 6 week project on //12 Angry Men//.

**<span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt;">‍Evaluation and Results: ** ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">We realized early on that we weren’t getting a lot of participation from the other school and they’d go in and out of contact. Students still seemed more comfortable responding to the posts of people they know than to the students from the other school. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Students had more experience on various social networking sites and web 2.0 tools than we expected, including some with which we were not familiar. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">7th graders still need considerable oversight to stay on task. At one point we realized that the chat function was of much more interest to them than the Google Doc on which they were supposed to be working collaboratively.

<span style="color: red; font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Change your plan: ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">To make the experience less dependent on the other school, we modified the main project to be an internal collaborative effort at building a script via googledocs rather than between the two schools. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Since collaboration with another school was difficult, especially since we did not have much time to plan the lesson together in advance and the other school had scheduling and network problems, we switched to having the students collaborate with other students in class on writing a dialogue between two characters and then on combining those dialogues into a script for a play.

<span style="color: red; font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Watch and evaluate plan: ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Students are writing more in class, though this also could be achieved in other more traditional ways (journals, free responses, etc.). When the social media assignments transition more to being done at home, the writing would be a bonus to the classroom time. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Some students enjoyed the writing assignments more because of the novelty of the experience and/or it mimics how they communicate in their free time. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Students enjoyed the writing more when we relaxed on standard writing practices (i.e. complete sentences, grammar, and spelling). The challenge then is how to get buy-in and maintain academic standards without squelching what kids see as the cool stuff (one student loved posting images of Van Halen...). ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Beware of anything planned for class that is dependent totally on technology because it can be unpredictable. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Collaboration between students was more difficult for some students to handle than the independent work, possibly because it was a 7th grade class and many of these students are still used to the teacher overseeing/micromanaging every task. We found a correlation between proximity of teacher and student and their productivity. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Because these were 7th graders and they had not done anything like this before, we used class time together to do assignments on the ning (for example responding to each other’s blog posts) that ideally would have been done asynchonously and at home. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">As we hoped, using social media allowed some of the students who in a face to face environment typically are quieter or slower in processing and forming oral ideas to participate more. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The nature of the assignments and our interest in experimenting with new tools like the ning pushed us to be creative and develop assignments (for example the collaborative play) that definitely were not done in past years when the play was taught more traditionally. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">7th grade admissions for us is a wide funnel in that students come to us with a broad range of academic experience, background, skills, etc. Even a traditional classroom environment requires the teacher to individualize the experience to varying degrees. We anticipate that the added technology component will exacerbate the gap in the beginning of each year before we’re able to level the playing field. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Teaching //12 Angry Men// using the ning and trying to achieve collaboration with another school lengthened the time typically allocated to teaching this play (and thus cause something to fall out of the curriculum). We wonder whether the longer time was needed to teach kids ning skills and expectations. And if so, is it worth it? Or if they were to do this a second time, would the time required be more in keeping with what was traditionally allocated? ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Ultimately, did kids think deeper about the themes of the work or ask better questions than they might have otherwise? In at least one case, an emphatic yes. In one of the rare cases of collaboration with the other school, we learned that our students made no assumptions about the protagonist’s race whereas the other school assumed he was African American. This caused each class to have a discussion about why these assumptions were made (unfortunately neither school posted comments about to the ning).

<span style="color: red; font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">How do we improve our plan for next year? ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Coordinate with the collaborating school earlier in the year, especially with the counterpart teacher, so as to build common assumptions and expectations about what we’re trying to achieve. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">When building a classroom experience that involves another school, be sure to build it in such a way that collaboration is a bonus (rather than essential) because it’s not possible to guarantee the other school will ultimately have the same agenda, resources, schedule, technology, experience, etc. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Train students earlier in the year on the bare bones expectations of using social media in an academic environment (why it’s important to use full sentences and proper grammar and diction, balancing the fun aspect with the classwork, etc.). In a way, because students knew facebook, they thought they knew what to do and tended to blow off instruction. Also, it’s important to explain to students and get their buy-in to the value of this type of experience. ● <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Because we spent so much time having to train the students on how to use things like ning and google docs, we are going to build these tools into the fall 7th grade computer course so English time isn’t spent on teaching the use of the tool.

**<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Documentation: **

<span style="color: windowtext; font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Survey Monkey was used

<span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Ning Site: [|http][|://][|solebury][|-][|foundation][|.][|ning][|.][|com][|/]

<span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">You Tube videos were used <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">[] <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">[] <span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">[]

<span style="font-family: 'Cambria','serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Google Doc to write a script with new characters