The WikiSeat Project: Oranges and Books

Over the past two days, to begin work on this year's iteration of The WikiSeat Project, our 10th Grade American Literature class ate and examined an orange slowly over the course of 25 minutes and closely read through Ralph Waldo Emerson's The American Scholar (1837).  Here's a look at what students are saying about it in their blog posts, I think it speaks for itself.  I also have some notes, more from a teacher's perspective on the project, here. - Sean Wheeler

 * To read complete posts, click on the student's name.

"Have you ever eaten an orange for a half an hour? No? Well I did." 

- Sierra H

"This experience was pretty interesting to me because I never thought about looking at anything and examining it or really thinking about it. Like, where it came from, how it was made or how it smelled. It was an interesting day in class." 

- Kaitlin K.

"Books should not be there to read because we have to, but to be there to read because we want to."

 - Faith C.

"I discovered that under the white skin of the slice there are many small individual thin pieces filled with juice, probably about twenty or thirty of them. I never knew that, or bothered to see them before, and thought it was pretty cool."

- Alex M.

"It sounds really weird but, actually, it did make me think about taking my time with other things to appreciate their value more. Also, it was probably the juiciest, best tasting orange I've ever had." 

- Mercedes L.

"...and that books destroy the true beauty of people's thoughts and that you should go out and have adventures instead of reading, unless you have nothing else to do." 

- Mike J.

"I now try to take more time to eat things or do things so I can appreciate it more." 

- Augie S.

"Honestly, this was the best orange I've ever eaten. I've never taken twenty-five minutes to eat an orange. Maybe five minutes. But in that five minutes, I never appreciated it, thought about where it came from, or looked at the cells. Now, I've tasted the juice, smelled it well, and will probably not look at an orange the same again. I liked this activity because it showed me how to look at things in a different perspective." 

- Sara T.

"So how does an orange relate to English? Well, it doesn't, to me anyway. Mr. Wheeler has this idea, not his original idea, about how if we take time to experience things, they become better; more living.  Experiencing life in a slower manner helps you appreciate the little things, like oranges." 

- Gabi F.

"So many of us are afraid to speak our mind and "possess" more of our minds.  It's a real shame."

- Cynthia F.

"The American Scholar and eating the apple are very much related, if you don't go out of your way to experience life, you simply won't. You will not get all that you can get out of life if you shut yourself in behind books or the walls of your house." 

- Steven H.

"This got me thinking. What if I took music to this level of thinking?" 

- Nathan M.

"After everyone was done I thought about the connection with not only appreciation, but also with thinking about and analyzing things." 

- Monica T.

"In class one day my teacher was telling us how much better things are when you do something instead of just watching or reading it. When I first heard this I could right away relate to it. I just thought it was cool because I could actually relate to something in school."

- Victor S

"I know what you're thinking. "Who takes twenty-five minutes to eat a small orange that you can eat in five?" Well, we do. That helped me realize that, if you slow down and don't rush, you can see things in a completely different perspective. Now, when I see an orange, I think of that activity. It now reminds me to slow down. It may sound weird, and it may not sound like your average 10th grade English class, but that's what makes it fun. Because it's different"

 - Alexis H.

"Looking around at the kids in this class, I no longer see kids, I see futures." 

- Ashley P.

5,000 Students Can't Be Wrong: 6 Reasons Why You Should Support the Wikiseat Project

The idea is simple.  We want students to build chairs.  Lots of them. 

Why chairs?  Because chairs solve problems.

Solving problems is useful. 

So is learning how to solve them.
Right?

The Wikiseat Project started with 85 kids.  Now we have over 5,300 students on three continents signed up and waiting to build chairs, share the journey, and create a vast community of people doing what we think people do best.  People make stuff.  From little kids with blocks to the adults who produce all the things we come in contact with a million times a day, the process of design is constant and has been from our early beginnings.  We identify problems, create solutions, and share our work when we're done.  This is the very definition of progress, and we've built a 100% grass-roots effort to bring the experience of design to over 100 classrooms around the world in 2013.

 So what do we need from you?  Honestly?  We need $85,000 dollars to fund 5,300+ catalysts, pieces of angle-iron that serve as the basis for these three-legged seats, as well as well as the catalysts that will be given away as part of our reward system on the Indiegogo campaign we have set up.  Why should you do this?  Here are six reasons why you should support these students:

1. Transcurricularness

Real learning doesn't fit into nifty categories.  It's messy, problematic, and has an unpredictable outcome.  While I was able to align the project with my 10th grade English Language Arts content standards, and I do feel like this can also be done in other content areas pretty easily, this is a project that is about learning writ large, not confined by "subjects" and "classes". The design process, in which one mentally moves from identifying a problem, analyzing that problem, creating possible solutions, drafting, and finally production, is a process that is clearly necessary for today's world.  A close look at the 100+ innovative educators who have signed on to lead students through the Wikiseat process clearly shows that building chairs in school applies in a wide variety of curricular areas. 

2.  It Begins and Ends With The Audience.

Like all good design, the Wikiseat Project always has you, the audience, in mind.  Not only will students identify a place in their life where they could use a new seat and actually bring it to fruition, they will also be engaging with a whole wider community of peers, participants, and supporters.  The first group of 85 students were able to get their work displayed in a great local art gallery, complete with an opening night meet and greet session.  As an educator, I can't stress enough how proud I was as my students engaged a live audience gathered solely to hear kids share what they were learning in school.  What will the other 5200 students come up with this year?  Where will they share their work?  What size audience could that many kids reach?  Help us find out.

3.  It's the Future and You Want Futuristic Schools

Seriously.  Think about over 5,000 kids sharing the entire Wikiseat process together online.  Kindergarten classes in Newfoundland skyping with Master's Degree candidates in Australia.  Massive galleries of still photos, updated constantly, and providing a sense of community to both student participants and online supporters.  It's time we start to unleash our student's natural capacity to work and share collaboratively.  The days of having all school work handed to an audience of one are over.  Sharing is what happens when scarcity ends, and now that every kid has access to everything that everyone has ever learned via the internet, the kind of scarcity that has been the model in education for 100 years is done.  We don't have jetpacks like we though we would, but the future we wound up with is totally new and it's a super-exciting time to be in education.  

4.  We Need To Go Back.

All classes should be soulcraft, not just shop class.  And it's too bad about shop classes here in the US, they've been eliminated at the time when we could really use them the most.  This project is about a return to making things.  It's a reaction against throw-away culture.  It's about craft, and learning from mistakes, and physicality.  While the experience will be shared in a very modern way online, the actual construction process is entirely lo-tech. As much as we want to turn everything into a shared experience, we should pause and make sure that we also see value in the simple conflict between a human idea and a physical object.  Handing a kid a hunk of welded angle-iron is a very visceral thing.  It has weight, it's a bit greasy, and it makes an awesome thud as it plops down on a desk in front of a befuddled kid wondering how they are going to turn that into a chair.  Kids love the challenge of making things, and they also love to use the things they make.  I started this whole project because I realized that somewhere along the line I had given up on that love of making things I had as a kid.  I encourage you adults to contribute enough to get a catalyst for a Wikiseat shipped your way because I think there are plenty of people like me out there who'd love to feel that challenge of making something again.

5.  Kids Who Understand Questions Find Answers Better.

My kids have to take the same standardized tests that your kids do.  I don't really think about those tests much, though.  I'm making a calculated move towards the fundamental  premise that engagement is the most necessary element of any learning experience, and a calculated move away from this notion that content acquisition is the most significant goal of education.  By teaching my students how to think using a design framework, I am teaching them to not only find answers, but to appreciate questions as an opportunity to learn and grow.  My students approach those standardized tests with a desire to be measured, a desire to be put to the limit regardless how low or high the bar, and a desire to be done and get back to real learning as soon as that horrendous week is over.  They don't work for grades, they don't work for points.  They learn because they appreciate the beauty of moving from not-knowing to knowing, and they carry an appreciation of that beauty for the rest of their lives.  Oh, and they score quite well to boot.  

6. It's Just Cool.

This thing is as grass-roots as it gets.  Nic, Alaric and I had no idea that we'd put out a call to see if anyone was interested in building seats in school and get the response we got from students and educators all over the world wanting to come on board this crazy pirate ship we've got going.   This is something that wasn't possible a few short years ago, and now that we have the chance, we simply just have to follow through and get these hunks of metal in these kids' hands.  It's going to be incredible, and loud, and beautiful, and awesome.  

Whatever the reason, and I'd love to hear yours, please support kids who want to make things in school. 

- Sean Wheeler

I'd Advocate for More Soul.

My son doesn't like school anymore and it kills me.  Here's a kid alive with wonder, building entire worlds in his play time, always questioning the why's and what's of our daily lives, and he comes home every day with a different story that centers around "the loud kids" or "talking out of turn" or simply how boring it is to answer questions all day long in preparation for "the big test".  The disconnect between who my child is as a learner in the real-world, and who he is as a typical 5th grade student in America, is so vast that I wonder if school is doing him more harm than good.  When learning is a quantifiable end, and not a means to engage more deeply in one's curiosity or frustration, I worry that we're turning out a generation ill-equipped to solve real problems.

I have good reason to worry.  By the time kids like my son make it to high school they've learned the game, the rules, and how to best play at being a student.  This largely consists of not speaking in class, seeking minimum requirements, and avoiding any kind of frustration or annoyance.  Kids like my son work for points and grades.  Kids like my son turn into little test-takers and extra-point junkies.   They procrastinate, put their heads down in class, and get caught on their cell phones.  They hate school, and as well they should.

I became a teacher because I hated school.  It wasn't that my experience was particularly bad, it was just so boring.  After a few years of soul-searching in my twenties, I decided to re-enter the classroom and see if maybe I could go back and design the kind of learning space that I so sorely wish I would have had coming up.  It's been ten years, and I'm now more convinced than ever, we need to stop aiming at the test answers stored temporarily in our students' brains, and instead we should ignite the spark of curiosity and engagement that is innate in their souls.  

Souls aren't things you hear much about in the education debate, have you noticed that?  It's because the "stuff" of the soul is too difficult to quantify on paper and doesn't fit into the curricular categories we came up with 100 years ago.  My son surely has a soul, and whatever it contains within in it, whatever passion, curiosity and engagement he was given at birth, it is systematically being stamped out of him every weekday from 8-3.  The authors of my son's sad education narrative aren't primarily his teachers or his school, but the people at the top of the decision tree (politicians, billionaires, and profiteers) who favor the science of easy data over the art of stirring souls.

This wasn't meant to be a lament.  It was supposed to be about why you should donate to our Indiegogo campaign for the Wikiseat Project.  But I feel a need to share what is at stake here.  My children are at stake, your children are at stake, and I have decided to be unafraid when it comes to advocating for an education that is engaging, inspiring, and that taps into the potential that our current model of education seems all-to-willing to ignore.

- Sean Wheeler

Poster Design by Ben Barry.

Talking Through Tin Cans: A Podcast Program Focussing on The Wikiseat Project

Talking Through Tin Cans by Cory Sluzeswki.

Teaching Design: Finding Problems

 Some rights reserved by zachtrek

by Sean Wheeler

Problems are great.  They put us in uncomfortable places in our heads and hearts.  They frustrate us and gnaw away at us.  And it's because of this quality of problems, that they put us in what feels like a negative space, that problems get a bad rap.  But if we want our students to be ingenius, to be engaged, to be creative, we need to embrace the idea that the tension created by a problem fosters the kinds of growth we really need our kids to experience in our classrooms.

The problems we need, need to be different from the problems we're used to.  I think we've gotten used to pseudo-problems, problems that lack a real-context, and most especially, come ready-served without any of the aforementioned frustration.When my students used to write essays on Campbell's "The Hero's Journey" as applied to early Native-American oral tales, they weren't solving any mysteries, they were tellling me back everything I'd already taught them, but in a nifty MLA format.  However, when I asked a group of students a few years ago to go out and identify an environmental problem in our city and give a presentation to our class that persuaded me to care about the problem, they were using all kinds of observation and analysis skills that are sorely lacking from the pseudo-problem posed by my old Campbell/Native-American  essay.  After teaching my students persuassive rhetoric, they were able to use it to persuade not only me, but members of our local community, that these issues are important to my students.  The whole key to our success on that project was that I didn't walk into class on the first day and lay out "the problem" for them.   Instead, I asked them to find those places in their walks around town that frustrated them, that bothered them, and then I asked them to share these frustrations and work on alleviating them through invention, creativity, collaboration, and tenacity.

Last year, at the start of the Wikiseat project, I asked my 85 students to think about where they needed a seat in their life.  It sounds like an odd request for a homework assignment, but I asked students to think about moments of frustration in their daily routine that might be eased by having a chair to sit in.  One student told me that her little sister liked to hang out on her bed during homework.  The little sister was pretty squirmy, and it might be useful for the little sister to have a chair of her own.  That way she could still hang out, but wasn't squirming too much on the bed.  Another student told me that his mom worked two jobs, and in between jobs she'd sit on the back steps to put on her 2nd shift shoes.  He thought it would be nice for her to have a stool to sit on, so she wouldn't have to sit on the dirty steps and ruin her work uniform.  Other kids wanted a suped-up video game chair.  Another only cared that her chair matched her walls, because her current chair certainly didn't, and the clashing of colors was too much to bear.  The significant part of this whole process was that the students were able to identify a problem, and with that problem in their craw, they were able to start envisioning solutions.  I suddenly had students who were driven in ways that I'd never seen before.  By giving them the opportunity to work on the problems they saw around them, even something as trivial as building a seat for someone to sit on at home, they became engaged in finding solutions because the results actually mattered.

I'm really hoping to shape students who welcome problems with enthusiasm.  That's got to be as good as any content we'd serve up otherwise, right?  Teaching them how to think, using real problems as the means, seems significantly more important than teaching them what to think.  And when it comes to the answer-based tests that dominate our current education landscape, I want kids who love questions because they are the ones that want to give the answers.

Teaching Design: What Makes a Cup a Cup?

"What makes a cup a cup?

For your answer, please take some time to carefully consider the question and to compose a thoughtful response.  Each response will also need to include a legal picture of a cup (If you don't know what I mean by a "legal" picture, please see me.  You can also look up Creative Commons licensing.)

Your answer will need to be spelled correctly and it needs to be an example of your very best writing." 

- First online forum assignment of the Wikiseat project.  August, 2011.

In thinking about how to approach the Wikiseat project with a networked group of over 4000 students, I think it might be useful for me to go into greater detail about exactly what this whole thing looked like in my 10 grade US Literature class last year.  This way, as we begin to develop a network of teachers thinking about how to tailor the Wikiseat project for the learning needs of their students, we can discuss how to adapt, modify, and supplement what was done last year.

The "What Makes a Cup a Cup?" assignment was developed to get students thinking deeply about the notion that design solves problems, as well as introduce them to concepts of form and function.  On the day before we start this lesson, I ask students to bring a cup to our next class so that they'll have it in front of them as the lesson begins.  "What makes a cup a cup?" is actually a very difficult question to answer.  As you can see from the exchange below, students not only posted responses, but also engaged in a bit of argument, which, as a Language Arts teacher, allowed me to begin working on our evidence and support standards:

(And I guess I should start looking into this "onternet."  Oops.)

But eventually, students came to give responses like this:

After we began to classify aspects of student responses into descriptions of either form and function, students began to come to an understanding of how form and function work in other objects.  We looked at shoes, thermostats, audio speakers, and students desks, among other things, and students were quick to display a pretty firm understanding of the basic principles of design.  However, I was pushing for them to learn something more.

The follow up question in class for the day after the students posted their "What Makes a Cup a Cup? responses aimed to have the students begin thinking about what problem a cup actually solves.  Sure it has a form and a function, but why would anyone make it in the first place?  We had a bit of fun in class thinking about the person who invented the first cup.  I asked students to think about how that person must have felt about having to walk to a river, stream, or lake everyday to drink.  The students easily understood that the cup was invented out of frustration.  And then they came to understand that this frustration led that first cup inventor to find a solution to the problem.  I asked students to consider the ways in which the form and function of a cup serve as a clearly tangible solution to the "I-don't-want-to-have-to-walk-to-the-water-source-to-drink" problem.  Towards the end of class, we played a game in which I pointed to any man-made object in the classroom and they shouted out what problem the object solved.

I think a discussion about form and function as related to problem-solving is applicable in a wide-variety of learning situations.  A biology teacher could discuss the ways in which evolutionary traits are responses to environmental problems.  Maybe a history teacher could discuss how government systems are formed and function to solve issues of a civic nature.  I look forward to how the growing network of teachers working on the Wikiseat project will adapt, modify, and add to what was an exciting first step in what my students accomplished last year.  I'd appreciate any comments or questions that help us to think about how this would look in classrooms around the world.

Next Post:  So what problem will your Wikiseat solve?

Catalysts for a Change.

by Sean Wheeler

"Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote these books.  Hence, Instead of Man Thinking, we have the book-worm." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

In perhaps the most provocative line in his "American Scholar" speech, given in Cambridge, Massachusetts on August 31, 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson makes a distinction between two conceptions of education.  On one side, that of the "book-worm", students are to go about the work of studying greatness.  ON the other side, and the one engaged by the WikiSeat project, is a conception of education that promotes thinking and the actual potential for greatness of the students.

The Wikiseat project begins with what Nic Weidinger has called a Catalyst.  A Catalyst is a welded support structure that forms the beginning of what will eventually be made into a functional Wikiseat.  It's been one year since I first placed a set of Catalysts in front of the eighty-five students in our 10th Grade American Literature classes, and as I approach a second go at this project with a new batch of students, I find myself drawn to this distinction made by Emerson in 1837.

I want my students to become thinkers, not book-worms.  I want students who not only study the views of those who have gone before them, but also students who put forth views of their own.  In this digital age, with all of these outlets for speech and expression, I want students who can think critically about information, issues, and problems. I then I want them to communicate, collaborate, and create. And I want them to learn all of this by making a Wikiseat.  

At the core of this project, is a lesson in the design thinking process.  Students learn to identify a problem or need (Where could I use a chair?), and then move into considerations of form (What should my chair look like?), and function (What should my chair do?).  They then sketch, prototype, build, test, and finally, produce their Wikiseat.  Students are encouraged to freely collaborate regarding materials, access to tools, and ideas concerning each other's work and progress.  Whether this be for a first grade classroom or a high school one, teaching students the iterative process is fundamental in helping students learn how to be thinkers and makers.  

As a Language Arts teacher, I found ways to both work in some great literature, as well as use that literature to inspire and spur on students as they began actually constructing their Wikiseats.  We sat with our catalysts in front of us and read Whitman, Thoreau, and mainly, Emerson.  I was able to gauge student reading comprehension, and they had a purpose for reading in that the actual content served the overall purpose of their work on the Wikiseats.    It isn't difficult to imagine tie-ins to other curricular areas.  A math teacher could use the triangle inherent in a three-legged Wikiseat as an opportunity to talk about angles and measurement.  A biology teacher could link the design thinking process to the scientific one.  And a history teacher could find a way to take form and function into thinking about government systems and historical innovation.  And maybe a few groups of teachers could try all of the above with an elementary school classroom.  

And as students begin to share their work with other classrooms, the Wikiseats will begin to tell a new story about what our students are capable of, of what we should actually be measuring, and what could change when given the right catalyst.