Angry Fishing
I just tweeted that having your son in Murray, Kentucky at Murray State University had its advantages; one of which is getting to spend the day on Kentucky Lake fishing for Crappie. Heath picked such a beautiful place in the world for college. We had a great day that started at 5:30am. It’s always great to spend the day doing anything together with the boy. We have been blessed to make so many memories doing a variety of things together. I’ve always said that raising this kid has been the single most important and rewarding thing I am doing.
Today, we had the opportunity to use some of the latest computer vision technology for fishing. Thus the title for this post: Angry Fishing. It was truly like a video game, at times, that I would call Angry Fishing (referring to Angry Birds). As always, I was fascinated with the technology and learning how to use it. I was also amazed at how being able to use the technology, in much the same way a video game does, enabled me to improve my fishing skills.
We were fishing for Crappie today and they require a very patient technique, but you must be quick to set the hook at the right time. With the video technology we could literally watch the fish going for the bait. I’m not going to lie, I missed several today because I got caught up watching fish going for Heath’s hook and him catching them. We were able to, in real-time, just like when playing Angry Birds, know what adjustments to make in our techniques. And the great part about Angry Fishing (real life fishing like we were doing) is you get to do it over and over, just like you can when playing Angry Birds. It was fascinating!
This was a reminder of how we need to always employ ways to give students, or anyone we are teaching for that matter, immediate and usable feedback. Today, I was even able to begin to self diagnose areas for improvement and make those changes immediately. Another reason we need to always be teaching using real-world and relevant contexts. We all, no matter what our age learn best when we are using adaptation. We need to be applying across disciplines, thus why I am right now applying this day of fishing to doing a better job of teaching and professional development. This also gives us the opportunity to apply the learning to real-world predictable and unpredictable situations. I talk about these same things when using Angry Birds as a throughline for discussing high impact teaching strategies.
It is also my hope, and I believe they are, that these technologies can be a catalyst for transformation of fishing and fishery policy. Under a sustainable approach, where we satisfy the needs of the present without compromising the resources of future generations, technological innovations like my son and I used today offer an opportunity to improve the fishery and seafood industries; as well as protect the environment. Electronic monitoring systems and computer vision technologies combined with artificial intelligence machine learning is being used to improve the cod fishery and preventing overfishing of halibut in the Pacific.
I continue to be amazed and hungry to keep learning the technological innovations that can help us all learn more effectively and continue to make the world a better place. The possibilities are as vast as the great bodies of water we love to fish on. Join me in continuing to explore and learn!
FACE Is Social Currency
Saving Face: How to Preserve Dignity and Build Trust by Maya Hu-Chan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is one book that you will want to put on your “to read” shelf and then move immediately to your “currently reading” shelf. While reading this book there were many things that became immediately applicable and usable. This, to me, is the greatest of compliments. There were also times when, as I read, I would literally say, “So, that’s why I screwed that up so bad.” “Face,” as Maya Hu-Chan said is like social currency. The more you have, the easier and faster you can get things done.
Immediately after reading my advanced copy of the book I had the opportunity have Maya be a part of a professional development webinar I put on for teachers. Maya and I used Angry Birds as the throughline for presenting the professional growth. We actually watched part of the first Angry Birds movie and picked the part of the movie where Red is asked to be a leader and he says, “I’m not a leader.”
“I’m not a leader!” ~ Red
This provided a great springboard for Maya to connect the teachings of her book. One of the things she discusses in the book is using the Platinum Rule instead of the Golden Rule (not that the Golden Rule is bad, mind you). The Platinum Rule is, “Treat others the way they want to be treated.”
Think about how just doing this would improve relationships – “face.” Needless to say, Maya’s teaching is a huge hit with educators.
One of the most impactful parts of the book dealt with psychological safety. Hu-Chan posited that, “At the very heart of creating psychological safety in an organization is the ability to honor face, save face, and avoid situations where someone loses face.” Psychological safety is one of the number one variable for team performance. Psychological safety allows for moderate risk-taking, speaking your mind, creativity, and sticking your neck out without fear of having it cut off — just the types of behavior that lead to ideas, creation, and breakthroughs.
Finally, Maya also taught us the BUILD model in the book. BUILD stands for Benevolence, Understanding, Interacting, Learning, Delivery. By putting the BUILD model into action in our lives we will be able to live a life of significance while saving face. As you can see, you are going want to start reading this book right now.
View all my reviews
Angry Teachers 2
Today we started the second part to a great professional development webinar that I am calling Angry Teachers. The title of this webinar is “Angry Teachers 2: Interactive Lessons and Engaging Tools.” The through-line of the webinar is the game Angry Birds. At the beginning of the webinar I always say, “Everything you need to know about teaching you can learn from Angry Birds.” In Angry Teachers 2 we pondered the question, “Many people believe that learning should feel like work.” We then discussed the Finnish model of education where learning looks like play.
During the gathering, we actually play the game and we do a “design the solution” activity where the participants actually design a lesson while playing Angry Birds. At completion the groups had to answer the following:
- Explain your lesson’s objective(s) and standard(s) covered.
- Explain what teaching strategies will be used.
- Explain why you chose what you chose.
With over 25 groups in some of these webinars time does not allow for all groups to share out. So, I offered to the groups that if they would send me their designs I would post them in a blog. Since I’m facilitating six sessions of Angry Teachers 2, I will add to this after each session. So keep coming back to check it out for the next week or so. Here is what has been sent in as of 04/28/2020:
Group 7 (04/28/2020
7th Grade Geometry
Group 4 (04/23/2020)
- Small groups based off of levels (scaffolding of groups with high, medium, low in reading and math)
- Social and Emotional (ok to make mistakes, but we have to learn from them our next chance and how to recover from failure)
- Rewards chart (every so many levels gained, trip to treasure box on Friday’s)
- Balance of wanting to play, but must get work done first
- I Do (model on board, discuss elements), You Do (choose children to go to board and take 1 turn), We Do (small group break up)
- Respect (each bird is a different shape and size, but have their personal strengths, so they work together as a team for best practice of the task ahead of them)
- Build on lessons taught (can go back and retry lessons to practice a skill needed in level)
- Feedback (given as an OREO method (GLOW, GROW, GLOW))
- Include cross curricular ideas
- Rigor (levels get harder the further you get, so have to use critical thinking skills)
- Incorporate the 4 C’s (collaboration with group, critical thinking of what to do next, creativity to beat the level with what birds are given, and communication amongst group members to help those struggling succeed)
Group 5 (04/23/2020)
This group made a great Doodly® of what their lesson would be. Check this out:↓
Doodly® created by Dawn Eibel of Manatee Charter School in Bradenton, FL
Group 11(04/23/2020)
- characterization
- social-emotional: anger/empathy/hidden feelings, etc
- compare/contrast video game with movie segments
- mapping/sequencing/ordering (steps to get most boxes, etc)
- groupings of characters by traits
- writing a backstory event for a character – a childhood moment, embarrassing situation, etc
- LOTS of writing: setting, events, characters, develop themes or moral of story
Our objective had to do with a 3rd grade standard of sequencing order of events. The objective specifically stated that SWBAT provide a sequence of events in order for each level of the Angry Birds game that they have gotten through.
This quickly turned into what we said could eventually be a “strategy guide” of sorts that the students could collaborate on because we don’t do work just for ourselves but we are creating for the world to see and consume. An extension activity that we thought would be beneficial is if the students could do a STEAM ativity to where, over time, they create a real world Angry Birds level to test out different scientific principles.
On a personal and professional note I have enjoyed your PD’s so much because I’ve been a proponent of looking at different mediums to promote and incorporate into education. I actually started a You Tube Channel for parents that covers different pop culture references and relates it back to education. If you have any amount of time please check it out. www.youtube.com/c/jeremywhiteeducation (It’s called LIFT Tutoring)
I hope your blog post for this specific idea of incorporating Angry Birds into the classroom is beneficial to a lot of educators as we continue to rethink what education is, especially during this time of remote learning.
Angry Teachers
If you follow my blog you know that I am a fan of Angry Birds; both the game and the movies. I have blogged about Angry Birds on four different occasions: Teaching Like Angry Birds, Angry Birds University, The Angry Birds Effect, and “I’m Not A Leader!” ~ Red. Now I am adding a fifth post about this Rovio Entertainment created phenomenon that I love to use as a guide to great teaching and leadership.
This week I did a professional development for Mevers School of Excellence on student engagement. I have been working with this school’s teachers on professional development by customizing a series of professional development units using teacher walk through data and student data. These teachers are phenomenal and deserved a great finale to the year long work we have been doing. So, this professional development unit was titled “Angry Teachers.” Catchy, don’t you think? We certainly don’t want our teachers to be angry, but we do want them teaching using the principles employed by Rovio that have made this game such a phenomenon. The only homework prior to the evening’s professional development was to have the Angry Birds Classic game downloaded on one of their devices.
I led off with the statement, “Everything you need to know about teaching you can learn from Angry Birds.” I think some were skeptical, but I really do believe this statement. Then, of course, I had them play the game with the volume turned up and take notes about what they learned. Needless to say, they had so much fun. I had them take notes on what they were learning that could be applied to great facilitation of learning. Here is what we talked about:
- Make it easy to start the task.
- Show, don’t tell.
- Give useful and immediate feedback.
- Make it easy to recover from failure.
- Complicate the task gradually.
Think about it; if a teacher is getting just those five things done he or she is on the way to providing great facilitation of learning. Then after playing a little more I broke them into groups and had them develop the learning even further. Here are the graphic representations of their learning the 10 groups came up with:
Pretty amazing work! Now, consider the following:
1. Angry Birds involves practice without penalty.
2. Angry Birds offers the opportunity to constant feedback.
3. Angry Birds inherently teaches that different tools have different purposes.
4. Angry Birds has a built in mechanism for knowledge transfer.
5. Angry Birds rewards perseverance.
6. Angry Birds gives no time limit.
No wonder we are all addicted to this game! Now if only we could ensure that our
classrooms are always safe spaces to practice new strategies, offer students a range of possibilities for how to succeed in their learning, give our students constant feedback, and support knowledge transfer within and among our courses. So, do you agree? “Everything you need to know about teaching you can learn from Angry Birds.” Our students deserve us to be “Angry Teachers!”
Teaching Like Angry Birds
I am not a big game player on my phone, but I love Angry Birds. I have blogged about this game twice before in The Angry Birds Effect and Angry Birds University. Just in case you aren’t familiar with Angry Birds, it’s simple: the pigs have stolen the birds’ eggs. This has made the birds angry. Therefore, they allow you to slingshot and catapult them into the pigs’ fortresses. The birds love every minute of it.
The thing that still amazes me about Angry Birds is that a person can download the game and be playing in 10 seconds. You are given small pieces at a time in a way that makes it possible to master a level in 30 seconds. In education we call this chunking. I always wonder why we can’t create learning management systems (LMS) in education the same way. Instead the first thing that has to happen with a new LMS is to take a training on how to use. With Angry Birds this is done real-time as you go.
In Angry Birds the learning is paced and is scaffolded just like in a great classroom. Once you develop foundational skills you are given new birds with different abilities. At the same time different scenarios are introduced. This is a very engaging and developmental path to mastery.
The game also has a very well structured star ⭐️ system. And remember you are able to play over and over making improvements to reach mastery. We need to operate more like this in education. Players are also able to earn badges. I love the way schools are adding badging to their e-portfolios.
Another very cool addition is that of tools that can be used. These tools include an earthquake, a scope, extra power sling shot, bombs, and more. These really teach creativity and problem solving because you only get so many. Therefore, the player must decide the right time and how best to use these limited resources.
As you can see, Angry Birds supports many learning principles and best practices. Rovio just continues to make improvements. I last blogged about Angry Birds in 2014 and this game continues to improve and be a relevant example of how to lead learning.
Byron's Babbles 
leave a comment