Chapter 5: Documenting with Sharing and Amplifying in Mind
1. Which of the amplified sharing degrees are you already comfortable with? Which one or ones seem a bit overwhelming or complicated? Why? Who do you think you can reach out to in person or digitally to help you overcome your concerns?
2. Read through the following narrative. Determine which sentences relate to which sharing amplification degrees: oneself, face2face, online, globally. Share your thinking with a colleague or two and see if you all agree or find some conflicts in your decision-making. Discuss why you agree or disagree with one another based on your reasoning.
You just finished a series of lessons with your Biology students. They now need to review their notes for an upcoming quiz. You recently clicked on a Facebook link from another Biology teacher who shared how his students effectively use sketchnoting as a form to visualize and share their notes. You decide to give this a try with one of your classes by first sharing the link with them to view this teacher’s sketchnoting tutorial video; and second, assigning them to sketch their content notes for the quiz using the how-tos they saw on the screen while viewing the screencast video.
These students surpass all your expectations in their sketchnoting creativity, as well as their quiz performance. For your professional growth, reflection, and documentation, you take photographs of their sketchnotes, as well as compare the quiz-result statistics among this class period and your remaining class periods, who studied using traditional notetaking strategies. You also textually capture the oral reflections shared by some of your students in this class that surfaced during a classroom debriefing discussion.
You share your learning-thinking artifacts with a colleague in your department in the teacher’s lounge. Your principal is sitting in the room at the time and hears your conversation. She asks if she can join in the conversation. At the conclusion of your discussion time, she asks you to present your artifacts and reflections at the next faculty meeting. While preparing to present, you reflect further on the experience and end up creating a short visual presentation that includes images of your students’ sketchnotes. After presenting to the faculty, they ask you to upload your presentation and artifacts on the school’s internal shared drive. You then decide to publish your artifacts via a blog post, which includes your embedded presentation and a hyperlink to the Facebook post where you found the sketchnoting tutorial video and tag the original author-teacher.
3. Read the Amplification Degrees below. Match each degree with the appropriate Sharing Scenario listed on the right side.
Justify your matching reasoning with a colleague or colleagues who is reading this book with you. If you are reading it solo, share your thoughts with someone after he or she has read the bulleted sharing amplification degree characteristics in this chapter, or after you have summarized each degree’s characteristics for him or her. If you choose to digitally share and amplify your answers and reasoning, remember to use the #documenting4learning hashtag on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram; or by mentioning @documenting4learning on Facebook and Instagram, and @doc4learning on Twitter.
