Posts Tagged critical thinking
This post is part of a series about the Building Blocks for Personalized Learning. The building block of Critical Thinking helps to construct a firm foundation for personalized learning. In many classrooms, teachers don’t provide the time necessary for critical thinking in order to develop original solutions to problems. Many of the problems that are provided to students also have only one possible right or wrong answer and don’t encourage true critical thinking. When students are given the opportunity to utilize all of the resources available within a classroom (including their own ingenuity) to solve problems, they can be challenged to personally connect to their learning and construct new understanding.
Strategies for Promoting Critical Thinking
Provide Time for Reflection – After being presented with unfamiliar content and ideas, students need time so that they can accommodate that new information within their previously developed schema of that topic. This process involves making sense of new concepts by constructing or reconstructing personal frameworks of thought. Solely telling students to accept the information and moving on to new content doesn’t enable them to work through this process. Students can reflect in a variety of ways, and an effective practice for reflection is for students to learn what ways best help them to make sense of new information. Some strategies could include drawing an illustration; creating a mind map or graphic to understand how concepts are interrelated; or restating information in your own words and making a recording for playback.
Ask Open-Ended Questions – Essential questions proposed at the beginning of a lesson can set the stage for new learning and helps students focus on the core components of a concept or process. This practice helps students answer why they should be learning this information and explains why they should give it their attention. Personalizing the questions will again help students become more connected to that content, so they should also learn how to ask their own questions about topics. Effective questioning for both teachers and students requires practice. Closed questions have one right or wrong answer, and it is virtually impossible to connect to those questions personally. Open questions provide students with opportunities to answer them in a variety of ways based on personal experiences and understandings. Encourage students to provide evidence to support their thinking as they answer open questions to reinforce the connection between personal experience and new content.
Design Rigorous Assignments – So much time in school is spent doing rote types of assignments and activities that involve answering closed questions – completing worksheets, taking notes, etc. Rigorous assignments are those that stretch student thinking with complexity, intricacy, and divergency. Even when teachers have students complete projects or hands-on activities, many of the steps for completing those assignments are pre-determined by the teacher and often stifle true critical thinking. Having students design their own strategies for showing their thinking adds rigor to an assignment. Exploring and discovering new processes for using tools (such as technology) can also add complexity to learning tasks – and promotes effective digital learning, rather than just digitized learning. This practice is often a struggle for many students, especially because many of them are unused to being asked to really think in school. Initially, teachers may have to model the process of critical thinking for students in order to scaffold steps for completing a rigorous assignment.
Expect Every Child to Contribute – When posing questions to students, teachers sometimes rely on the first few responses from a couple of students and proceed to additional concepts. Struggling or introverted students begin relying on others to answer all of the questions in class while they remain silent. This practice keeps them from thinking critically about the content. Every student needs to grapple with the information and contribute to the collective understanding of each concept. Using a student response system can provide each student with a voice and assist in sharing ideas. Likewise, synchronous and asynchronous participation in discussion forums can also serve to help students process their thinking about what they are learning. Even having students turn to each other and discuss new information or to answer an open question and then share their thinking with the class provides a greater opportunity for participation.
Provide Multiple Ways to Show Understanding – Having every student utilize the same application or complete the same process to show their understanding can limit opportunities for critical thinking. Providing multiple ways to show understanding can enable students to think through the process or the application that better meets their individual needs or capitalizes on their personal strengths or interests. Again, it can be daunting for students to learn all of the possible ways that they could show what they know, but teachers can help facilitate this process by providing choices, modeling thinking, and being open to a variety of learning strategies. Engaging students in the process of developing a rubric for evaluating their thinking and assignments can also support personalized learning.
There are many more strategies for encouraging critical thinking in classrooms, but teachers can begin utilizing the five strategies described above for personalizing the learning experience for students. As with any strategy implemented with fidelity, on-going practice and support will also help both teachers and students develop more expertise in critical thinking.
Almost two years ago, I wrote an article for eSchool News entitled, “The Advantages of the BYOT Classroom.” At the time, I was the Coordinator of Instructional Technology for Forsyth County Schools in Georgia, and the advantages that I listed were the qualities that I had observed in classrooms that effectively utilized Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) to transform teaching and learning opportunities with students’ personal technology tools.
Now, I’m collaborating with several schools and districts around the country that are beginning to implement Personalized Learning to better connect students with engaging academic content; to facilitate the development of digital age skills; and to utilize technology to provide access to anytime, anywhere learning. These benefits occur as districts, schools, and teachers recognize that students have unique strengths, needs, and interests that must be considered within the design of instruction. The methods for addressing student individuality may differ, but they include the same hallmarks of the BYOT classroom. In the illustration above, I refer to these as building blocks, as they collectively construct a firm foundation for personalized learning.
Within each of the blog posts linked below, I focused on the concepts included within the illustration of the building blocks to highlight why they are essential, foundational components for personalizing learning. I also included strategies or described necessary qualities for encouraging the development of each building block within your own personalized learning implementation plan.
Building Blocks for Personalized Learning Blog Posts
- Critical Thinking
A Note from Tim: Forsyth County Schools in Georgia is beginning its sixth year in implementing Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT). In this post, Instructional Technology Specialist at South Forsyth High School, Carla Youmans, shares her experiences of facilitating BYOT in the SFHS Media and Instructional Technology Center.
Many school systems and businesses have started to permit students and employees to use their own computer devices within school or at work. It saves money, allows for a certain level of comfort, and ensures that more individuals have the capabilities of working digitally. Many people refer to 21st Century Learning in a BYOT/BYOD environment. Perhaps we should begin saying BYOT/BYOD in a digital, personalized learning environment. Our educational system, parents, and society expect high rigor for and from all students. Since more students are taking AP or IB courses than ever before, more students must be capable of high performing work. Therefore, in a BYOT/BYOD digital learning environment we must create a space where students learn and develop skills that set them apart from each other (creativity, problem-solving, innovation, etc).
Steps in the Process
We follow five simple steps in our Media and Instructional Technology Center. The first step is to read. We want students to read for information — to understand, to question, and to infer. As they read, the next step is to collect valid, accurate and reliable information. Many students immediately want to create a new product; however, they have no data or research to support the reasoning for the new product. So, once they have read and collected information, we want them to critically think — What have I learned? What more do I want to know? What can I share? What do others know? How could we together build something greater? This is where the fourth and fifth steps come in: to collaborate and to create.
When we can help students understand this process and follow it then we believe we have pushed them out of their comfort zone where great things can happen.
Empowering Students to Drive the Learning
Encouraging teachers to use BYOT/BYOD in our digital learning environment is best achieved through a project-based learning approach. We teach with a “use what you have to show what you know” mentality that empowers students to drive their assessment by encouraging student choice and student voice in as much of the projects as possible. What does this really mean? It means: possibly having 30 totally different projects submitted by 30 different students to assess the same exact standard. WOW! What a shift from the much discussed “differentiated” classroom to a “personalized” classroom. Imagine all of the students in your classroom learning the way that is best for them? AMAZING!
Transforming the classroom may be scary for some teachers. First of all, teachers are known for writing great directions that explain “exactly” how they want a project to be completed. When we give students packets of directions to create a project, we take away all of the problem-solving, creativity, and innovative pieces that they may add. Secondly, high-achieving students who typically receive a 99 on an assignment and ask “why didn’t I get a 100?” may be caught off guard when they “use what they have to show what they know.” Our current system has molded them to be step-by-step direction followers rather than inquisitive problem solvers and creators.
We never stop learning. Surprise yourself and your students. Allow them to create their own assessments and watch your project based BYOT/BYOD turn into a phenomenal student-centered digital learning environment.
A Note from Tim: Forsyth County Schools in Georgia is beginning its sixth year in implementing Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT). The first year was spent on developing the infrastructure, and the last four years have focused on piloting the initiative, developing personal and professional capacity, and eventually spreading the practice of encouraging students to learn with their personal technology tools throughout the district. In this post, fourth grade teacher, Brooke Hagler, shares her experiences of facilitating BYOT within the framework of the Thinkers Keys.
When I began the journey of implementing Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) in my classroom, I wanted to make sure it had a positive impact on student learning, rather than just for presenting information or playing games. Don’t get me wrong these aspects of BYOT do have their time and place in a classroom. I just did not want them to be the only ways my students used their technology. With the potential of technology for engaging students and preparing them for the future, I wanted to make my students truly think beyond what our culture tells them is possible. This capacity creates the future adults who test, question, and invent for the next generations to come.
In order to create deep thinkers in my classroom, I use a resource called the Thinkers Keys developed by Tony Ryan. The keys are twenty strategies that can be used to help students think critically and creatively. As you learn how to implement each key it becomes very clear that they are an easy resource to use in all areas of learning. You can find more about the Thinkers Keys and Tony Ryan at his website.
The Thinkers Keys with BYOT
I began to integrate the Thinkers Keys by introducing the students to one key at a time as it fit into the curriculum. I modeled the key with students by using Socrative or join.me. The students participated and collaborated using BYOT, school technology resources, whiteboards, or paper. By using Socrative and join.me, I was able to model a key for the class as a whole group or in a small group and receive instant feedback about who understood the content we were studying at a deeper level. Another reason I used these websites is because the person answering could be anonymous to the other viewers, so the students who would never answer before felt free to take risks and give answers.
Once students became familiar with the key I incorporated it as one of their centers with any content. They could choose how they to turn something in. They often chose to use technology to complete the assignment and either printed out their work or emailed it to me. Not all of the keys involve writing down answers; however, sometimes students had to build models and then used their devices to take pictures to explain what they built. Other keys encouraged students to conduct research, and students would use kid friendly websites on their technology tools to find more information. After conducting research, students created presentations. I did not limit the students’ choices about how they chose to show what they had learned, and they often chose to use ActivInspire, PowerPoint, Prezi, or Wixie. My rule for presentations was as long as students knew how to use the technology and could meet all requirements of the rubric for the assignment, then they were encouraged to create with whatever medium they liked.
Thinking Differently with Thinkers Keys
Here are some Thinkers Keys that I used regularly in my classroom. I used the Consequence Key during our class meeting time and with our ecosystem unit. During our class meeting time, we discussed possible scenarios and the students had to respond with their own consequences. For example, I asked them how bullying affects everyone when a student picks on someone on the bus. They continued giving consequences until they saw that not just the bully and bullied student are the only ones affected. Then, I carried this same thinking into our ecosystem unit. After students learned about different ecosystems, they used BYOT and school technology resources to go to Discovery Education for science explorations and virtual experiments. They were asked to explore what consequences population growth and decline have on a desert environment. Once they viewed the explorations, they presented their group’s findings. Then the group completed a virtual lab and predicted what the consequences for a fish population would be by placing a hiking trail, parking lot, or playground around a pond. The students wrote a lab report at the end of their experiment that explained if their findings agreed or disagreed with their prediction. The simple fact that students understood that consequences can have a ripple effect could them academically and also socially.
Another key that I implemented was the Question Key. It caused students to think backwards through a process, which I found out for my fourth grade students was not easy. I used this key in all content areas, but I liked using it the most in math. It let me know quickly if students truly understood a concept or if they just went through the motions of completing the math process. I gave the students an answer like seven thousand, three hundred forty-eight and asked them to write five problems that reached this answer. To make it more challenging, I set guidelines. They had to have at least one addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problem. Three of the problems had to be written as a word problem. And finally one problem had to have multiple steps to get to that answer. In the beginning, this assignment blew my students away, but with repeated modeling and practice they were able to write and solve word problems more easily by the end of the year. Not only could they solve math problems with more ease, they were using their ability to think backwards in all academic areas. To think backwards through a process is a hard but valuable skill that we, as adults, take for granted, but it can be taught to students and then they will have that skill for life.
The keys can be taught in isolation, like above. However, they are ultimately designed to get students to work with them in connected sequences. I do not recommend beginning with sequencing the keys until you as a teacher have a full understanding of what each key is designed to do. When students use the keys in sequence, they are designed to help them solve problems, analyze, etc. I have been working with the Thinkers Keys for two years now, and this past year was the first year that I used the keys in a sequence. Here is the first rubric I created and used this year with sequencing the keys. It was a very powerful learning experience for my students and me, and I still have much to learn and experiment with this step myself.
The Thinkers Keys allow you as a teacher to tweak them and make them useful for your classroom. Just stay true to what they ask the students to do so that they keep their power. I could go on forever about how powerful the keys in combination with technology are as learning tools. They don’t just help the students learn the content in the classroom. They help them prepare for life in our competitive society. They prepare them to be our future leaders and thinkers of the digital age.
Learning at Liberty Middle School in Forsyth County, Georgia, begins with a focus on inquiry in its newly remodeled media center. Through a combination of school funds and the ingenuity of the instructional technology specialist, Kim Simshauser, the media center has been reimagined into a hub of digital age learning. In fact, Kim refers to the new space as “The 4C’s Café” in reference to the skills of collaboration, creativity, communication, and critical thinking evident throughout the school. Students are welcomed into the media center to begin learning before the start of the school day.
School personnel and volunteer students act as baristas (much like Starbucks) and serve up hot chocolate, decaffeinated beverages, and instructional advice while students browse the book collection, use their personal technology tools for research, study individually or in groups, or watch the news being streamed over two monitors. Kim notes that since the changes have been made that the learning environment is being used more than ever by teachers and students, and now the media center is packed with activity from morning until the end of the day.
The classrooms at Liberty Middle School also support inquiry through guiding questions and learning projects that are facilitated by the students’ personal technology tools. Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) has been implemented school wide. Students are encouraged to bring their own devices to school, or they may use the school’s technology resources to develop their digital age skills. Principal Connie Stovall provides a scaffold for this emphasis on inquiry by working with her staff and students to develop an inquiry-based team or iTeam. The teachers and students in this seventh grade team applied to participate as trailblazers in the school’s inquiry initiative. They work with each other, their students, and Kim Simshauser to plan lessons that empower the learners. The iTeam students realize that they have a big responsibility to be leaders throughout the school, and their teachers were recently named Team of the Year by the Georgia Middle School Association. In the 2013-2014 school year, the seventh grade team will loop with their students to eighth grade, and new sixth and seventh grade iTeams will be added. The eventual goal is to implement inquiry-based teams throughout the school.
Teachers and students at Liberty Middle School discover that inquiry can be more easily facilitated when students bring their own technology tools to school. Guiding questions can lead to in-depth research, and students can explore new ways to show what they have learned about a topic. These explorations surpass typical standards-based performance tasks and content. They become authentic representations of real-world problems in context. One goal of inquiry is to lead to more questions that become even more relevant to students as they become interested and passionate about a subject.
Here are some additional links and resources related to inquiry-based learning:
I recently participated in the Family Online Safety Institute’s (FOSI) Annual Conference in Washington, DC. My 13 year old son was fortunately able to go along for the trip, and as a history buff, he was eager to tour the notable sites in DC. I arrived the day before the conference and was able to explore the city with him and my wife. We took the DC Metro, and he immediately searched for a possible app for his iPhone to make navigation easier. He discovered that there were several mobile apps for that purpose, and he decided on DC Rider. With that app, he was able to see the arrival times of the different trains and to compare possible routes for each trip. He owned this whole adventure, and I found myself following his lead as he directed us along the path to each destination. Sometimes he selected some clever and creative ways for us to arrive at a site, when I might have chosen the direct route, but the journey became as essential to him as the final, planned location.
Later I reflected on this experience through the lens of the Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) classroom. It is necessary for teachers to know when to make suggestions in order to guide students, but it is often more essential to understand when to get out of the way and encourage students to lead. Students usually know more about their own technology than their teachers, and with BYOT they can use these tools to access all of the information that exists in the world. They can explore authentic problems and discover creative solutions and design innovative products. It is fine to have a destination in mind, but there really is no end of the line in the process of learning, and teachers and students should enjoy exploring all of the alternative paths along the way.
Finally, I realized the next day, as I had to navigate the DC Metro without my son’s assistance, that I had become dependent on his leadership and skills. I floundered for a little bit until I was able to orient myself. I decided that next time I would try a little harder to learn from and with him as he used his technology instead of just being a passive observer and follower. Then we could both be learning from the journey with BYOT!
I have sometimes heard the misconception that before a school begins implementing Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT), students need to be trained in the acceptable use of technology that has been predetermined by the district; however, many of the digital age skills that students are developing as they use their devices at school occur just in time as they are needed in the course of the process of learning. Just in time learning entails that as a specialized strategy is necessary to solve a problem or share a solution, then that skill is learned and utilized in a relevant way within the context of the work. There are several just in time skills that students begin to acquire within the BYOT classroom.
Just in Time Digital Citizenship
We have all heard of students making mistakes with technology or using it inappropriately, often with devastating consequences. Many of these issues occur because students are self-taught or peer-taught in how they should use their devices without the just in time guidance of a teacher. When students are empowered to bring their personal technology devices to school to assume more control of their learning, they can be coached in responsible ways to use technology. Students in the BYOT classroom, have the advantage of learning how to use their devices for instructional purposes with the facilitation of their teachers. Students continually practice and refine digital citizenship in the BYOT classroom as they learn with each other through the use of the same technology devices that they use at home. Skills in netiquette, the appropriate ways to communicate with others online, as well as strategies for ensuring Internet safety, can be encouraged by the teacher within the BYOT learning community.
Just in Time Technical Troubleshooting
As devices and applications continue to change, there is no one consistent method for resolving technical issues. Technical troubleshooting and instruction must occur just in time in the BYOT classroom according to the pertinent needs of the situation. Teachers and students learn how to use new technology tools and programs while they are being utilized, and students often provide the technical training for their peers and their teachers. Since students are utilizing different devices for instruction, they will have to become proficient with the technical aspects of their own tools and usually become recognized for their particular areas of expertise. In this way, students and teachers can develop critical problem-solving strategies for working and learning within a digital world.
Just in Time Collaboration
Learning how to work with others to achieve a common purpose is essential to the BYOT classroom because students are bringing different devices to school, and those devices have different capabilities. The students also possess different knowledge, abilities, and interests, therefore, they have to pool their resources and intellect and negotiate responsibilities for the learning. Groups need to be dynamic and fluid as students work together and with their teacher to share information and make decisions. Many Web 2.0 sites can be used to develop online collaborative spaces, including Edmodo and Wikispaces. Just in time collaboration can occur synchronously or asynchronously and capitalizes on the potential strengths of everyone in the learning community.
Just in Time Critical Thinking
Critical thinking with BYOT involves being able to distinguish among conflicting information and facts as students conduct research with their personal devices. Recognizing propaganda and determining the accuracy of content are other essential critical thinking abilities required by the digital age. Students need to develop the capacity to use reason as they formulate opinions based on what they already know and on what they have learned from their classmates and in online searches. Students learning how to make these decisions just in time can be nurtured by the classroom teacher through modeling, practicing, reflecting, and questioning. A great tool for posing questions to students is Socrative. It works across multiple devices and incorporates various types of questions, and teachers can easily create follow up questions to responses that students have texted and shared with the rest of the class.
Just in Time Communication
In the traditional classroom, communication is often one-way – directed from the teacher and toward the student. In the BYOT classroom, there is a potential shift in communication as students use their devices to discuss content they are learning with others, set goals for themselves, and share new concepts. This communication happens just in time as the students are encouraged to communicate, whenever and wherever, as a function and expression of learning. The lines of communication are now multi-directional and extend beyond the classroom as students can web conference through Skype with other students in classrooms around the globe. They can instantaneously publish their ideas by blogging using Edublogs or through other blogging tools. Blogs can become a lasting portfolio of student work, and this process of authorship helps students to develop an authentic and beneficial digital footprint.
Just in Time Creativity
With the abundance of free and inexpensive applications for mobile devices, students are able to develop new skills in creativity. In the BYOT classroom, teachers can help foster creativity as students utilize their personal technology tools to invent and design original products. These inventions are often constructed just in time as solutions to problems or for students to illustrate what they have learned in imaginative new ways. In this manner, students aspire to become producers of content that they find relevant rather than solely being consumers of static information that has been predetermined as meaningful for students. With netbooks and laptops, students can download the free, open source, program Audacity to develop podcasts and recordings, or they can record straight to their handheld devices. Students can also use the camera tools on their devices to take photographs and easily turn these photos into new creations with the use of iPhoneography apps (my favorite is Pixlr-o-matic). VoiceThread is a web tool (with an app for mobile devices) that can enable multiple users to upload their original photos and comment on them collaboratively.
One more note… Just in Time
By the way, just in time professional learning opportunities also emerge for teachers in the BYOT classroom as they learn alongside their students and discover new interests, skills, and strengths in the use of personal technology for instruction.
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has developed a Framework for 21st Century Learning that identifies key learning and innovation skills, otherwise known as the 4 C’s: Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication, and Collaboration. In the Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) classroom, facilitating the 4 C’s becomes a logical extension of classroom instruction as students are connected to their learning and each other with their personal technology devices. With their own tools, students are able to practice and develop the 4 C’s as the teacher coaches, scaffolds, and models the learning. Of course, the students are the experts in their own devices, but the teacher has to create an environment that is conducive of exploration and inquiry so that students have the opportunity to learn how to learn with their technology. One way the teacher can encourage this type of environment is by learning alongside the students.
Another strategy for implementing the 4 C’s within instruction is to promote them with the use of web tools and project-based learning. Although there is some overlap among the 4 C’s depending on how the tools are being used, I have provided some specific examples below:
Creativity – VoiceThread
A VoiceThread is an online slide show that enables students to upload and present images, documents, and videos and then share comments by writing or recording messages. They can also draw on the slides in order to annotate them during the presentation. Although VoiceThread is a great tool for supporting all of the 4 C’s, it can encourage creative expression with the students’ devices. Students can take their own photos and create presentations to demonstrate what they have learned, and the other students can provide creative comments. For example, in a study of similes (comparisons using like or as), a student can take a photo of an object with an iPod Touch and optimize it in a free photo app (one of my personal favorites is Pixlr-o-matic). The student then saves the photo and uploads it into VoiceThread. The other students can then provide interesting similies in their responses that involve the object in the photo. There is an app for VoiceThread that can be downloaded on the iTunes store for iPods and iPads, or VoiceThreads can be created online on Macs or PCs.
Critical thinking – Socrative
Socrative is a web-based student response system that enables teachers to ask multiple choice, true/false, or short answer questions that students answer on their own devices. Teachers can also create and save quizzes ahead of time for students to complete, or they can begin ad-hoc sessions during class discussions with students. One aspect of Socrative that promotes critical thinking is that after asking an open-ended short answer question, the teacher can easily choose to have student vote on their answers. Teachers can also have students participate in an activity in Socrative called Space Race in which students can compete in random or assigned teams to complete a teacher-made quiz and be the first to get their team’s rocket to the finish line. I have seen this activity increase collaboration even in a high school AP Calculus class as the students worked in groups to solve problems and answer the questions. It works effectively even if every student does not have a device because the students can take share a device to answer questions and the new concepts are more likely to be retained as the students learn them in groups. The short answer option can be useful for the students to text in their own questions, and the teacher can then pose these questions back to the class or use them in a future quiz. Socrative also provides a preset Ticket Out the Door to assess student understanding of the learned content. There is a teacher app for Socrative (iOS, Android) as well as a student app (iOS, Android), so teachers are able to conduct the session from their smartphones or laptops, and students can participate via smartphones, laptops, or desktops.
Communication – Edublogs
With Edublogs, teachers and students can develop blogs for education that help to provide opportunities for communication in the classroom and in a global community. When students have their own blogs, they are able to publish the results of their project-based learning and collaboration and share what they have accomplished with others. Writing becomes more authentic as students have a purpose for their writing assignments, and students are able to customize their blogs according to their personal learning interests and styles. Although a blog is useful for publishing creative writing, it can also be used to communicate technical concepts like the steps in a scientific process accompanied with photos of the activity. Edublogs also publishes an annual list of the best blogs in education as well as additional web tools and apps on The Edublog Awards Blog. This list can be a useful resource for teachers and students as they begin developing their blogs. A teacher can sign up each student in the class for a blog, even in elementary grades, because an email address is not required. There is no app for Edublogs, but blogs can be edited through the Internet browser on smartphones, tablets, netbooks, and laptops.
Collaboration – Wikispaces
A wiki is a collaborative space for teachers and students to construct their learning experiences together. Teachers can develop class wikis in Wikispaces and easily upload all of their students, even if they do not have email addresses. In the wiki, the teacher and students can encourage a sense of community in the classroom by sharing files and creating content. As the students edit their work within the wiki, the teacher can track who made all of the changes to determine student participation. Like a blog, a wiki makes a good launchpad for encouraging BYOT. Since the students are working independently or in small groups, the wiki gives them a place to continue their projects or assignments while the teacher is learning alongside and coaching other students in the class. One example of how a wiki was used in a middle school math classroom, is that the teacher divided the students into groups to explain particular problem solving strategies and mathematical concepts. In this manner, the students in the class actually produced their own math “textbook” as an on-going project that they were able to use as a resource. Although, there is no app for Wikispaces, the students are able to edit text on the browser of their handheld devices, and they are able to use tablets, laptops, and desktops to complete all of their other editing in the wiki.
Some final thoughts…
The above resources are currently free, at least for individual teacher accounts, or a district may choose to subscribe to them in order to receive analytics or more customization. Their use in the BYOT classroom can be a good way for teachers to begin implementing BYOT and encouraging students to bring their own technology tools to school to facilitate their learning.
What other tools and strategies can be used to promote the 4 C’s in today’s digital age classrooms?


Children's Television Act
The Children's Television Act is a rule that was enacted in 1990 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States, which was designed to increase the amount of educational children's programming on television. The Act requires full-service television stations that offer children's television programming to serve the educational and informational needs of children through their overall programming, including programs that are specifically designed to serve these needs (or "core" educational programming). In August 1996, the FCC adopted new rules to strengthen the enforcement of this statutory mandate. These new rules were:
- Adopt several public information initiatives designed to give parents greater information about the core educational programs being aired by television stations (these initiatives are explained in greater detail below).
- Set forth a clear definition of what type of programs qualify as core programs: they generally must have serving the educational and informational needs of children as a significant purpose; be aired between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.; be a regularly scheduled weekly program; and be at least 30 minutes in length.
- Establish a guideline that calls for every full-service television station to air at least three hours per week of core educational programming.
A central goal of the rules in the FCC's revision to the Act is to provide parents and other members of the public with greater information about educational television programs, in order to help parents guide their children's television viewing and also encourage an ongoing dialogue between the public and television stations about the station's performance under the Children's Television Act. To help accomplish this, the 1996 revision to the rules implemented by the FCC require commercial television stations to identify core educational programs at the beginning of the program (such as with a verbal announcement or an icon), and to provide information identifying these programs to publishers of television program listings (either print or electronic).
The rules also require commercial full-service television stations to complete Children's Television Programming Report (Form 398) every quarter regarding their educational programming, and to make these reports available to the public via their studio facilities, public libraries, and/or the station's website.
History of children's television regulation
Concern over the impact that television had on children began when television was still a new entertainment medium. During the 1950s, many individuals, particularly parents, asked their legislators to do something about the potential effects of television viewing on young people (such as their susceptibility to claims made in advertisements). There has been academic research that has been initiated since this time to monitor, analyze and explain the relationships between television and children, although the impact of television on academic performance continues to be debated in scholarly research.
The first attempt to address these concerns were during Congressional hearings in 1952 that addressed violence. Besides Congress, there were government commissions that also pursued this agenda. Included in these discussions were the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and advocacy groups formed by concerned citizens. The FCC intended to change a number of policies regarding children's programming, but no serious action took place until the enactment of the Children's Television Act in 1990.
The Children's Television Act was drafted to enhance television for young viewers. Some research reveals certain downsides to the act; for example, after the Act was passed, although there was more programming geared towards children, stations actually provided less diverse educational shows than they had before. To prevent this problem, the FCC required television stations to keep logs that described in detail why the shows were educational and/or informational. However, many stations failed to keep these records or have any method for accurate recording. More than 25% of television stations in the U.S. failed to record the time, date, or length of programming considered to be educational in content. The FCC did little to regulate these logs up until 1993, but later on, came up with certain rules and regulations such as the safe harbor provision in order to regulate content for younger audiences.
In addition, Congress provided little direction towards the implementation of the Act, only dictating that programming had to be specifically designed to serve the educational and informational needs of children. According to a 1998 report by the Annenberg Foundation, the number of network television shows deemed to be "highly educational" dropped from 43% prior to the enactment of the Act to 29% in the eight years since it went into effect. A research report from Georgetown University said that one issue contributing to this was that what constituted educational television programming was defined too broadly, as programming that was only academic or that covered pro-social issues, for example, counted towards station requirements. Another issue was that traditional ideas of what should be taught to children, such as the alphabet or number systems were lost. There was also a reported increase in the amount of programs focusing on social issues. Writers for these programs wrote stories that often were not academically sound for young viewers, because they were not trained in writing for this audience. One show that was an exception to this rule is The Magic School Bus, as it combined effective writing and educational content for children.
Another result revealed in the report was that as a result of the Act, many local broadcast stations dropped their locally produced educational shows and purchased blocks of pre-produced children's programs from the major networks. This was largely due to the fact that the rules in the Act stated that stations only had to meet the minimum requirement to provide three hours of educational programming content on a weekly basis. Many of the stations thought in terms of profits and eliminated their own shows, which had more educational content than the programs they acquired via syndication, to reduce monetary costs that would be incurred in producing their own educational programs and still meet the minimum requirements to qualify for the renewal of their broadcast licenses.
Programming for profit
A report by Scott Conley published in the Syracuse Law Review showed that the average child will have watched between 10,000 and 15,000 hours of television programming, and over 200,000 commercials by the time they are 18. His research showed that commercials typically were for the interest of advertisers and had no concern for the needs of children.
According to the Act, commercials had to be geared towards children 12 years of age or younger. The amount of commercial advertising allowed to air per each hour of children's programming was restricted to no more than 10½ minutes on weekends, and 12 minutes on Monday through Fridays. Cable systems were required to keep records of their following of the advertising rules so that regulators such as the FCC, and the public were allowed to monitor their behavior. The main reason for this restriction was due to research which demonstrated that young children have difficulty distinguishing between the program they are watching and commercials, with most having little or no understanding of commercials' persuasive intent, and as such, children are highly vulnerable to claims and appeals by advertisers. Commercials for food products make up a large percentage of advertisements geared towards children. Marketers are interested in youth as consumers because of their spending power through their parents, their influence, and their retention as adult consumers in the future. Many techniques and channels are used to reach children, starting when they are toddlers, in order to establish brand building and purchasing behavior. One study found that food advertisements accounted for 47.8% of all television commercials. These advertisements advertised food products that were high in fat and sugar content. Compared with data collected before new regulations took place, children now watch more shorter-length commercials.
Other actions that networks took in order to increase their profit via advertising while implementing the Act included selecting programs based on their marketing value. Producers selected series more often when they were related to a hit movie or pop culture icon, such as if the show featured a character that could be sold as a marketable action figure. A researcher for the Nickelodeon series Dora the Explorer discussed how preschoolers interact with new episodes of the show. Among other methods, researchers try to determine whether children are paying attention or interacting with the program, and also try to figure out what draws kids' attention to the show, and what elements can be adjusted to increase potential viewership. Elements such as adding more close-ups of the main characters, called "money shots", are intended to embed the face into children's minds; in turn, this can increase product sales. This information is considered highly valuable to researchers, since shows such as Dora sell millions of dollars worth of merchandise annually. According to Judi Cook, an assistant professor at Salem University, there were issues with the amount of commercials for these marketable products targeted at children that were aired in the Boston television market. Cook watched programs on one of the stations for a particular calendar day, and learned that 80 out of 97 advertisements appeared before or after children's programs.
By the 2010s, most major networks had phased out traditional children's programming from their schedules in favor of live-action educational series, which broadcasters have legally declared to be aimed towards viewers between the ages of 13 and 16, rather than 12 and under. The Children's Television Act dictates that programs aimed towards viewers 12 and under are limited in the amount of advertising they may carry per-hour, and may not broadcast commercials for products related to a program or featuring hosts or characters from the program ("host-selling"); however, a footnote states that this does not apply if the program is aimed towards viewers older than 12 years old. Deadline.com noted that the live-action educational programs produced by Litton Entertainment frequently contained brand integration with underwriting sponsors, such as Norwegian Cruise Line (Dream Quest is set on the company's ships), Electronic Arts (Game Changers is promoted as being presented and sponsored by EA Sports, and contains a segment focusing on the development of an EA Sports video game), and SeaWorld Entertainment.
Claudia Moquin, daughter of the CTA's main supporter Peggy Charren, criticized these practices for contravening the original intent of the CTA, by exposing children to a level of advertising and sponsored content that the CTA was meant to prevent. Litton defended these practices, stating that they were "a far better alternative" to ads for junk food and toys, and argued that the company has "led the industry in aspirational storytelling that meets child psychologist-developed standards that did not exist prior to 1990".
Recent changes to the act
In 2006, the Federal Communications Commission passed rules related to website references during children's programs. Under the guidelines, there were a number of criteria that the website must meet: these include requirements that it offer non-commercial related content; the page has to clearly divide commercial and non-commercial content into sections; that the website being directed to viewers can not be used for e-commerce, advertising or other commercial advertising; and the prohibition of displaying the website address if it advertised characters from a program that was airing alongside it.
The Academy of Political and Social Science found in a report covering the state of children's television content between 1996 and 1997 that only 38.8% of programs targeted at that demographic could be considered "high-quality"; 23.2% were found to be "moderate" quality, and 37% of programs were found to be of low quality. The research on programming quality took into account both educational content of shows and also the reactions of the children and their parents.
At the Senate Commerce Committee hearing in July 2009, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski spoke about the new landscape of digital video media and television. He recommended empowering parents with tools and information to determine the appropriate video content for their children rather than government regulation of video content.
At the same hearing, James P. Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense Media (a non-partisan, not-for profit organization that advocates for educational children's media content), said that there were ways to regulate children's media content without limiting broadcasters rights to free speech.
U.S. television networks with E/I-compliant children's programs
In American television, a digital on-screen graphic or "bug" denoting the program as "E/I" is placed in a corner of the screen indicating a children's television program that meets federal guidelines defining it as having educational and informational content for younger audiences.
Current children's programming blocks
- CBS Dream Team (CBS) – Debuted in September 2013 and produced by Litton Entertainment under a time-lease agreement, the CBS Dream Team provides three hours of unscripted live-action children's programming on Saturday mornings that meet E/I guidelines.
- Litton's Weekend Adventure (syndicated exclusively to ABC affiliates) – Produced by Litton Entertainment and launched in September 2011, the block provides three hours of unscripted live-action programming aimed at family audiences that meet E/I regulations.
- NBC Kids and MiTelemundo (NBC/Telemundo) – Produced by Sprout and launched in July 2012, the two blocks air weekend mornings (the English language NBC Kids airs Saturdays on NBC, while the Spanish language MiTelemundo airs Saturdays and Sundays on Telemundo). Sprout operates as a 24-hour standalone channel available to cable and satellite providers. In February 24, 2016, NBC announced that NBC Kids will be discontinued with its final airing date on September 24, 2016 as NBC Plans to replace NBC Kids with Litton Entertainment's The More You Know E/I Block, which is an expansion of NBC's public service announcements of the same name. The new block will air on October 1, 2016 on NBC, though Telemundo will continue to air its MiTelemundo block with Spanish-dubbed children's programs from Sprout.
- One Magnificent Morning (The CW) – Debuted in September 2014 and produced by Litton Entertainment under a time-lease agreement, the block provides five hours of unscripted live-action programming aimed at family audiences that meet E/I regulations. The network's broadcast and cable feed for smaller markets, The CW Plus, also offers a separate lineup of E/I-compliant programs acquired off the syndication market that air immediately after One Magnificent Morning.
- PBS Kids (PBS) – PBS broadcasts live-action and animated (mostly scripted) children's programming for up to twelve hours every weekday, most of its member stations also air such programs on weekend mornings. Some PBS member stations operate a 24-hour digital subchannel service carrying children's programs broadcast by PBS or syndicated to individual public television stations.
- Qubo (Ion Television) – Qubo is a three-hour children's program block airing on Sunday mornings on Ion Television (which was rebranded as the Qubo Kids' Corner in January 2015); until July 2012, additional blocks under the brand aired Saturday mornings on NBC and Saturday and Sunday mornings on Telemundo (the latter featuring Spanish dubbed versions of the shows seen on the Ion and NBC blocks). Qubo Channel is a separate 24-hour multicast network that airs on Ion Television's owned-and-operated stations and certain affiliates, featuring some programs featured on the Ion block as well as other (primarily imported) programs carried solely by the channel. Qubo Channel is not currently available on all cable providers, although Ion Media Networks has sought must-carry status for the channel.
- Xploration Station (syndicated mainly to Fox affiliates) – Produced by Steve Rotfeld Productions, the block provides two hours of unscripted live-action children's programming, usually airing on Saturday mornings, that meet E/I guidelines.
Former children's programming blocks
- 4Kids TV (formerly FoxBox) (Fox) - Aired Saturday mornings from 2002 to 2008. The block was syndicated to other television stations in markets where the Fox affiliates (or in some cases, owned and operated stations) did not air the block. The block was replaced by the syndicated paid programming block Weekend Marketplace in December 2008 (only shows within the first hour of the block featured shows that met E/I criteria).
- ABC Kids (formerly Disney's One Saturday Morning) (ABC) – Aired Saturday mornings from 1997 to 2011; in its last years, the block aired programming from basic cable network Disney Channel. Some series within the block were pre-empted by select ABC affiliates (including those owned by Hearst Television, Cox Broadcasting and Allbritton Communications Company) due to a lack of E/I content.
- CBS Kidshow (CBS) – Aired from 1997 to 1998; the block featured children's programming on Saturday mornings from Canadian production company Nelvana.
- Cookie Jar Toons (This TV) – Aired daily from 2008 to 2013; the block featured children's programming from Cookie Jar Group (E/I programs aired under the "Cookie Jar Toons" banner, while non-E/I shows aired under the sub-block This is for Kids). It was replaced by a three-hour block of syndicated E/I shows on Sunday mornings after Tribune Broadcasting assumed part-ownership of This TV from Weigel Broadcasting in November 2013.
- Cookie Jar TV (formerly KOL Secret Slumber Party and KEWLopolis) (CBS) – Aired Saturday mornings from 2006 to 2013; the block provided three hours of entertainment-based live action and animated children's programming from Cookie Jar Group that met E/I guidelines; was replaced by the CBS Dream Team in September 2013.
- Cookie Jar Kids Network (formerly DiC Kids Network) (Syndicated) – Aired from 2002 to 2011; marketed as a syndication package of entertainment-based live action and animated children's programming from DiC/Cookie Jar Group.
- Discovery Kids on NBC (NBC) – Aired on Saturday mornings from 2002 to 2006; the block provided three hours of both edutainment and strictly entertainment-based live action andanimated children's programming from digital cable and satellite channel Discovery Kids that met E/I guidelines.
- Disney's One Too (UPN) – Aired on weekday and Sunday mornings from 1999 to 2003; the block aired animated programs sourced primarily from Walt Disney Television Animation (which originated on ABC's Disney's One Saturday Morning) and later included shows acquired by Disney through its purchase of Fox Family Worldwide (only certain programs within the blocks met E/I criteria).
- Fox Kids (Fox) – Aired from 1990 to 2002; originated as a block of children's programming that aired on weekday and Saturday mornings. The block provided entertainment-based animated series and a limited amount of live-action series (only a limited number of shows, particularly those airing as part of the Fox Kids Cubhouse sub-block aimed at preschoolers from 1994 to 1997 as well as reruns of The Magic School Bus met E/I guidelines); was replaced by FoxBox in September 2002.
- Kids' WB (The WB/The CW) – Aired from 1995 to 2006 on The WB and from 2006 to 2008 on The CW; originated as a block of children's programming that aired on weekday and Saturday mornings; the weekday block was dropped in December 2005, and the remaining Saturday morning block moved to The CW when it debuted in September 2006 (only certain programs within the weekday and Saturday blocks met E/I criteria); was replaced by The CW4Kids in 2008.
- Nickelodeon en Telemundo (Telemundo) – Aired from 1998 to 2000; the Saturday morning block provided Spanish-dubbed versions of children's programming from Nickelodeon.
- Nick Jr. on CBS (also known as Nick on CBS) (CBS) – Aired from 1998 to 2006; the Saturday morning block featured children's programming from the basic cable network Nickelodeon; some programs, particularly those sourced from the channel's Nick Jr. block, met E/I criteria.
- PAX Kids (Pax TV) – Aired from 1998 to 2000; this block featured religious and secular children's programs and aired on Saturday and Sunday mornings, most of which met E/I criteria.
- TNBC (NBC) – Aired on Saturday mornings from 1992 to 2002; the block provided three hours of entertainment-based live action sitcoms and some drama series (primarily produced by Peter Engel Productions and NBC Productions/NBC Enterprises) that met E/I guidelines through the incorporation of social issues relevant to the block's target demographic of adolescents; was replaced by Discovery Kids on NBC in September 2006.
- Toonzai (formerly The CW4Kids) (The CW) – Aired from 2008 to 2012 and produced by 4Kids Entertainment under a time-lease agreement; this block featured children's programming for five hours on Saturday mornings (only the first hour of the block featured shows that met E/I criteria).
- UPN Kids (UPN) – Aired on weekday and Sunday mornings from 1995 to 1999; this block provided animated children's programming on weekday and Sunday mornings (only select programs met E/I criteria).
- Vortexx (The CW) – Airing from September 2012 to September 27, 2014 and produced by Saban Brands under a time-lease agreement, Vortexx provided five hours of children's programming on Saturday mornings (with the exception of the first hour of the block, most shows do not meet E/I criteria).
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- Meg James (July 24, 2013). "CBS partners with Litton Entertainment for Saturday teen block". Los Angeles Times. Tribune Publishing. Retrieved March 24, 2015.
- "NBC and Litton Entertainment Announce Fall 2016 Line-Up for The More You Know Programming Block". The Futon Critic. August 8, 2016. Retrieved August 8, 2016.
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Last Tree Standing
By the time John Muir and his trusty mule Brownie splashed across the Marble Fork of the Kaweah River in the fall of 1875, the Scottish-born naturalist had already seen his fair share of California grandiosity: Yosemite Valley; the high Sierra; Mariposa Grove. Muir had a thirst for exploration and a talent for storytelling. He founded the Sierra Club and dubbed its synonymous mountains the “Range of Light.” When Muir sauntered upon a montane plateau in what is now known as Sequoia National Park on that autumn day, he found a very large stand of very large trees. Drawing his poetry from the obvious he named it, quite simply, the Giant Forest.
The dominant feature of the Giant Forest is the giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum), the biggest tree on Earth. Thousands of them grow in this 2,300-acre grove, including five of the ten largest specimens in the world. They reach heights of nearly 300 feet; their trunks can span more than 30 feet; and they’re nearly impossible to miss if you’re tromping beneath their canopy. “In every direction Sequoia ruled the woods…” Muir waxed in Our National Parks, “a magnificent growth of giants grouped in pure temple groves.” And yet, at 4:00 a.m. on a warm August morning, our hearty group of scientists and climbers is having a tough time finding the damn things.
“I feel like we’ve gone too far,” says forest ecologist Wendy Baxter, 36, stopping the group. The ivory glow of a full moon offers enough illumination to hike without fear of face-planting, but it makes for a poor navigational beacon.
It’s the fourth day of two weeks of fieldwork led by Baxter and fellow forest ecologist Anthony Ambrose. Scientists at UC Berkeley’s Dawson Research Lab, the two are part of Leaf to Landscape, a program in collaboration with the United States Geological Survey, the National Park Service, and the Carnegie Airborne Observatory, that is focused on studying and managing the health of the giant sequoias.
California, of course, is in the middle of a historically punishing drought at a time when there’s never been more demand for water. According to the United States Forest Service, 62 million trees have died in California this year alone. Since 2011, a total of 102 million trees have perished, with tens of millions more on death’s doorstep. California’s forests generate fundamental ecosystem services by creating healthy watersheds, providing wildlife habitat, and sequestering atmospheric carbon, and they’re dying at unprecedented rates. Even the great giant sequoias are showing concerning signs of stress. It’s Ambrose and Baxter’s goal to collect and analyze tree samples to understand how the sequoias are faring under these rapidly changing conditions, and what might be done to protect them. But first we have to find them.
“Have we come to any intersections at all?” asks Ambrose, 48, whose attention has been focused on answering my questions instead of spotting landmarks.
“I remember this tree, for sure,” someone chirps, a sentiment that seems more appropriate as an epitaph on a lost hiker’s headstone than as a vote of directional confidence. After a brief parley, we correct our course up a gentle rise, down into a shallow basin, and past a pair of landmarks, unmistakable even at this dark hour.
The path splits twin sylvan towers standing inches apart and hundreds of feet tall. It’s still too dark to marvel at their height, but the base of each tree inspires awe enough, gnarled and bulbous and swelling with woody knuckles the size of a Toyota Prius. A few hundred yards farther, the trail continues through the hollowed-out center of another sequoia. Fire, the great creator and destroyer, Kali of the Giant Forest, raged here long ago, burning out the tree’s core. The wound is enormous, 40 feet tall or more and nearly the size of the tree’s entire 12-foot diameter. Yet the grand monarch survived the blaze, which also would have cooked off the thick layers of duff that choke seedling growth, offering tiny sequoias a chance to one day touch the sky and survive their own infernos.
The group splits apart at the meadow, each climber heading to the tree they’ll be sampling. The scientists have targeted 50 sequoias for study—“the biggest, gnarliest trees in the forest,” Ambrose says—and this morning he’ll climb a 241-footer. In most other forests a tree like this would be a star attraction with an honorific name and perhaps even a viewing area. Here, it’s simply known as “tree 271.”
Ambrose has striking blue eyes and wears a woodsman’s beard with a chinstrap of white whiskers. He slides on his climbing harness and tugs the rope anchored to the crown some 24 stories above. He’s been studying trees for more than two decades, first with a focus on coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) as an undergraduate and master’s student at Humboldt State University, and then on giant sequoias for his doctoral and post-doc work at Berkeley. “From an aesthetic perspective to a biological one, these trees are some of the most spectacular organisms on the planet,” he says with the enthusiasm of a boxing promoter. “They are the pinnacle of what a plant can become. They force you to think about life and your own place in it.”
He clips on a pair of jumar ascenders—mechanical devices that attach to the rope and allow him to pull himself up. “You can’t really understand the true character of a tree from the ground,” he says. Ambrose turns off his headlamp, cranes his head toward the canopy, and begins the long, dark climb into a world of mystery.
The giant sequoia has dominated its landscape for millions of years and captivated global imagination since the mid-19th century when rumors of trees the size of fairy-tale beanstalks came roaring out of the Sierras. One of four redwood species, the giant sequoia is not the world’s tallest tree; that crown belongs to its northern cousin, the coast redwood. But in terms of sheer volume of biomass, no living organism ever to walk, swim, fly, or stand on this planet comes close. They are of such stature that people struggle to describe them and so compare them to other very big things: blue whales, 747s, dinosaurs, the Statue of Liberty, elephant herds, space shuttles. Giant sequoias make mice of them all.
More than 100 million years ago, when the planet was warmer and wetter, the sequoia’s earliest relatives thrived across much of the Northern Hemisphere. Redwood fossils have been found everywhere from Northern Mexico and the Canadian Arctic to England. During the late Miocene, some 10 to 20 million years ago, the closest direct ancestor of the giant sequoia lived in what is now southern Idaho and western Nevada. As the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range continued its uplift and the climate became drier, the giants’ range shrank. Today, the last remaining sequoias are limited to 75 groves scattered along a narrow belt of the western Sierra Nevada, some 15 miles wide by 250 miles long.
Giant sequoias are among the longest-living organisms on Earth. Though no one knows the trees’ absolute expiry date, the oldest ever recorded is 3,200 years old. Muir claimed to have found a stump with 4,000 tree rings, one per year. During their early years the trees are subject to predation and the volatile whims of nature. Once they reach adolescence after a few centuries, however, sequoias become well-nigh indestructible. Their bark is soft and fibrous and contains very little pitch, qualities that make the trees extremely resistant to fire. The tannins that give their wood a rich cinnamon hue also repel insects and fungi.
When a mature sequoia does die, mortality is usually a function of its marvelous size. Root rot can deprive a tree of a solid anchor and fire can undermine its base, but rarely will either actually kill a 30-story monarch. Gravity is the ultimate culprit, for a giant sequoia with an uncertain foundation faces a violent and certain end. The persistent tug of gravity can pull an unbalanced tree to the forest floor with such a thunderous crash that the reverberation can be heard miles away. The sequoia’s fate is an Icarian allegory, met not by flying too close to the sun, but by stretching too far from its roots.
Thanks largely to their ability to withstand disease and drought, it’s extremely rare for a giant sequoia to die standing upright. “You don’t get to be 2,000 years old without surviving a few dry spells,” Ambrose tells me. Which is exactly why United States Geological Survey forest ecologist Nate Stephenson was so alarmed when, in September 2014, he went for a walk in the Giant Forest and saw something unexpected.
“I had been saying with confidence for decades that if you hit a big drought, the first signs of climatic changes would show up in seedlings,” recalls Stephenson, who has studied trees in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks since 1979. “I was completely wrong.”
He surveyed an area that had burned a few years prior, where seedlings had taken root. Crawling around on his hands and knees, Stephenson was surprised to see that the seedlings were rigid and full of water, their leaves a vibrant blue-green. This was the third year of drought in California, and the summer of 2014 was particularly brutal. There should be some evidence of drought stress, he thought. Sitting on the ground, he leaned back, craned his head toward the heavens to ponder the mystery, and found his answer.
Above him stood a grand old monarch. The crown of the tree was almost entirely brown, a scale of dieback he’d never seen. He searched for other trees displaying similar stress and when he found one with branches close to the ground, he touched it. The foliage crumbled off. In more than 30 years of studying these trees Stephenson had only seen two die on their feet. Five years into the current drought, he’s now seen dozens of standing dead.
Stephenson quickly assembled a team to survey the 2014 dieback before autumn storms could blow away the evidence. The National Park Service (NPS) enlisted Ambrose and Baxter to begin their fieldwork in 2015. While the NPS and scientists working in Montana’s Glacier National Park might already be resigned to a glacier-free future as the climate changes, no one is ready to consider the possibility of Sequoia without its namesake trees.
“Headache!!!” Ambrose yells.
His warning, the tree-climbing vernacular for plummeting deadfall, fills the forest moments before a branch whooshes passed, inches from my head. It happens so quickly, the broken limb has already hit the ground before I have a chance to move.
“And that’s why we wear helmets when we work around trees,” he explains to the small group of us standing at the base of the sequoia.
The lessons come quickly on our first day of fieldwork. We set up on a steep hillside and Baxter demonstrates how to prepare the rigging for a climb. Tall and lean with a strong jawline and a soft voice, she’s as comfortable doing stable isotope analysis in the lab as she is setting a 600-foot static line in a tree. “I love the combination of physical exertion and intellectual stimulation,” she tells me. “It’s a struggle to get to the top of the tree. You’re sweating and huffing and puffing, but that’s when you start collecting your samples and the science begins.”
In 2015, Baxter and Ambrose did much of the work themselves, identifying and rigging 50 trees, making six climbs a day, and collecting samples and measurements from each one. Their days began at 2:30 a.m. and ended at 10 p.m.—if they were lucky. “That was brutal,” Baxter recalls.
They have more help this time around. Over the course of two weeks, more than a dozen volunteers—students, professional arborists, climbing junkies—will rotate in and out. The schedule, while not nearly as frantic as the previous year, is aggressive. We wake up at 3 a.m. and begin our hike from the Crescent Meadow parking lot into the Giant Forest an hour later. After climbing trees and taking and analyzing samples all day, we head back to our campground for some R&R before collapsing into bed.
The immediate goal is to understand the severity of water stress the trees are facing, the water content in the leaves, and the amount of the stable carbon-13 (13C) isotope the tree uses during photosynthesis, which offers additional insight into how the trees are coping with drought. With that information, scientists and park officials can assess the trees’ health and begin to think about ways to protect giant sequoias through practices like controlled burns, which clear the ground for seedlings and eliminate less fire-resistant trees that compete for water.
Ambrose’s first exposure to forest management came as a wildland firefighter following his senior year of high school in Chico, California. The experience, he recalls, involved “hours of boredom followed by long stretches of terror,” and gave him a first-hand look at how a policy of aggressive fire suppression can have an adverse effect on forest ecosystems.
For more than a century, the government’s approach toward forest fire has been one of suppression. But indiscriminately stamping out frequent, less intense, naturally occurring fires disrupts the natural process of consumption and rejuvenation that species like giant sequoias need to thrive. It also allows dangerous levels of fuels to pile up—until one explosive holocaust vaporizes everything. “You get these large landscape conversions, conifer forests turning into brush,” Ambrose says.
In 2013, the Rim Fire swept through the Sierras, consuming more than 257,000 acres. It was the third largest fire in California’s recorded history and burned for 15 months. It never reached Sequoia National Park, but it did sweep through parts of Yosemite some 100 miles north. As a precautionary measure, officials even set sprinklers around some of Yosemite’s giant sequoias in case the fire got too close.
Giant sequoias, like all trees, play a central role in the hydrologic cycle. Storms drop rain and snow, which giant sequoias can chug to the tune of 800 gallons per day—more than any other tree. As the trees draw water out of the ground, the air surrounding the leaves draws water through the trees and, eventually, back into the atmosphere. That process, called transpiration, creates tension within the tree’s water columns. The drier the atmosphere and the less groundwater available, the higher the tension. Under extreme drought conditions, when that tension grows too high, those columns of water can snap like a rubber band. Gas bubbles form, creating an embolism that prevents the flow of water up the trunk. If this happens enough, a tree will shed its leaves and can, eventually, die.
To measure water tension and other biological processes, climbers sample each tree twice a day, once under cool pre-dawn conditions when the tree is least stressed, and once under the heat of the midday sun. The scientists clip foliage from the lower and upper canopies, which allows them to assess conditions at different parts of the tree.
After the safety talk and rigging demonstration, Ambrose grabs a laminated map from his pack and assigns the climbers to their trees. Pulling on a forest-green arborist harness, he clips a pouch onto each hip to carry his samples. Then he steps into the foot straps attached to the ascenders and begins the climb.
Stretching hundreds of feet into the air presents some very real physical challenges for giant sequoias. See how these massive trees have overcome gravity to become giants of the forest.
Numerically speaking, giant sequoias constitute a small portion of California’s forest. A few weeks before my foray with Ambrose and Baxter, I hopped on a survey flight with Greg Asner, principal investigator at the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO), to get a better understanding of what’s happening to trees across the entire state and what that might indicate for the future of the sequoias.
Asner, 48, runs a flying laboratory called the Airborne Taxonomic Mapping System, a Dornier 228 airplane tricked out with $12 million of custom-built equipment that allows the CAO to measure the composition, chemistry, and structure of a forest in detail and efficiency that, not long ago, was relegated to the realm of science fiction. “In California,” said Asner, “we have exact numbers on 888 million trees.”
We met at 7:30 a.m. at Sacramento’s McClellan Air Park. Dressed in snappy black flight suits, Asner and his four-man team were going through last-minute checks and waiting for the sun to climb higher in the sky, which would allow for more accurate measurements. The goal for the day: map a 3,600-square-mile section of northern California forest.
Collecting such voluminous amounts of detailed data requires a unique toolbox. The plane itself is geared toward special mission work with its high-payload capacity and short takeoff and landing capabilities. An imaging spectrometer, resting atop a hole cut in the belly of the plane, absorbs light across the spectrum, from ultraviolet to short-wave infrared. It allows the CAO to measure 23 different chemicals in the trees, including water, nitrogen, and sugar content. To work properly, internal sensors within the imaging spectrometer are kept at -132 Celsius, atomically cold temperatures.
A laser system next to the imaging spectrometer fires a pair of lasers from the bottom of the plane 500,000 times per second, creating a three-dimensional image of the terrain below, and every tree on it. A second spectrometer, this one with an enhanced zoom capacity, allows the team to take measurements of individual branches on a tree—from 12,000 feet up. Finally, a piece of equipment known as an Internal Measurement Unit records the X,Y, and Z axes as well as pitch, roll, and yaw of the plane to ensure that its positioning in the air doesn’t compromise the accuracy of the data it collects from the ground. “This unit is the same technology as what’s in the nose of a cruise missile,” Asner explained. “Because of that, the State Department has a say in what countries we visit.” The CAO studies forests all over the world—Peru, Malaysia, Panama, South Africa, Hawaii.
Once airborne, we dismissed the sprawl of the Central Valley for the coastal mountains. To the naked eye, the Shasta-Trinity National Forest looked splendorous, 2.2 million acres of rivers and mountains. Mount Shasta, a 14,179-foot active volcano, was still holding on to a handsome cap of snow and the landscape was vibrant and green. Asner’s spectrometer shared a different story. “Visual assessment doesn’t tell you much,” he said. On his computer screen, the green trees below were all reading red. They were dead. We just couldn’t see it yet. “A lot of this was not here last year,” he said with the clinical efficiency of a doctor diagnosing a cancer patient. CAO’s statewide findings suggest tens of millions of trees might not survive another dry winter.
Sugar pine (Pinus lambertiana), a species that grows in large, contiguous groves and can live 500 years, has been hit the hardest, accounting for some 70 percent of the mortality, but cedar, fir, and oak are all suffering as well. It’s not just the lack of precipitation that’s killing these trees; it’s the cascading effect of climate change. Water-stressed trees make easier targets for mountain pine beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae), which lay their eggs in the trunk and eat the trees.
Asner shared a map of the Giant Forest. The sequoias were a cool, comforting shade of blue, demonstrating high water content. Water seeks its low point, Asner explained, and the Giant Forest sits in a plateau cup. “It’s an oasis, a refugio. Right now, those trees are of least concern.” It was bittersweet news, like celebrating the last house standing after a tornado.
“Drought is a cumulative process,” Asner explained as the plane made a long bank off the western slope of Shasta. “Forests have biological inertia. We don’t know where the physiological tipping point is. Currently, we’re losing carbon from the forest.”
Forests are supposed to absorb carbon, so I wasn’t sure if I’d heard Asner correctly over the communication system. I tapped my headphones to make sure they were still working. “I’m sorry, did you just say the forests are releasing carbon into the atmosphere?” Automobiles, coal-fired power plants, cattle production—those are all carbon sources. But the mighty forests of California?
“That’s my guess,” he said. “It’s hard to imagine the forests are still carbon sinks.”
Using data collected by and visualizations generated by the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO), scientists and forest managers can see both the current and future impacts of drought on Sequoia National Park. Learn what CAO scientist Greg Asner sees in this image.
Of the hundreds of feet it takes to climb to the top of a giant sequoia, the first six are invariably the most difficult.
After two days on the ground watching the rest of the team sliding up and down the sequoias, I ask Ambrose for a tutorial. Over the years, I’ve spent enough time on rock and rope to scratch my way up a 5.10, but tree climbing—beyond the scampering variety, anyway—is new territory.
It looks easy enough. Ambrose has been powering into the canopy in minutes, and Baxter has a fancy one-legged technique that looks like she’s hopping on air. I, meanwhile, can barely get 12 inches off the ground. Those charming fire caves that serve as a window to ancient battles? They’re actually hazardous overhangs that cause a climber to pendulum into a cavern of charred pith. The two feet of duff piled up on the root system? That makes it just hard enough to get the clearance from the tree trunk needed to begin a comfortable climb. I’ve never done the splits, but with my feet strapped into the stirrups I find myself spinning, spread-eagled in endless, dizzying circles. Then I sprain my knee.
If Ambrose and Baxter climb their ropes like graceful inchworms, I look like a marionette having a seizure. Eventually I reach the lower canopy but my knee feels like a water balloon in a pressure cooker and I’m a long way from mastering Baxter’s hop-along trick. I descend in the interest of doing more climbing later in the week.
Back on the ground, I limp over to Ambrose and tell him of my failed attempt. “It’s tricky the first time. You want to avoid gripping the ascenders too tightly. And really, you shouldn’t be using your upper body very much at all. You mostly want to use knees and core.” Translation: The exact opposite of what I was doing.
A few days later I get my chance on another pre-dawn climb. The tree is one of the largest individuals in the world—220 feet tall and 20 feet in diameter at the base—all the more impressive considering it’s growing in shallow soil atop a plate of granite. Underground, the tree’s been waging war with its rocky substrate for millennia, its roots probing every crack and fracture in a tireless search for water. I clear the first few feet without issue and begin the long journey to the top.
The sequoia is shaped like a giant barrel, tall and fat with hardly a taper. For the first ten stories, the trunk is a sheer wall of wood with an uninterrupted profile. I pass the crown of a neighboring 90-foot pine before even reaching the first branch of the sequoia. As I enter the sprawling branch network of lower canopy, the climb shifts from a smooth glide to a bruising slugfest. I work my way over, around, and between branches, each the size of a normal tree. About half way up, a pair of branches five feet thick shoots out from opposite sides of the trunk and up in an L-shape, like two arms flexing in a proclamation of strength.
Finally, the top. After 40 minutes of climbing, I take a seat to catch my breath. The crown is gargantuan. On one side a half dozen branches converge to create a bench wide enough for a square dance. It’s easy to get lost in the scale, but as my heart slows and the morning brightens, the subtleties stand out. Thousands of green cones the size of ping-pong balls hang from the branches like chandeliers. Unlike the lower sections of the tree, the bark here is smooth and seamless with a purple tint, and etched with fine lines like topographic contours. A menorah of knobby vertical branches, called reiterated trunks, sprouts out of the crown. I scamper up the last 10 feet and perch on the stumpy tip of one of the spires.
The crowns of sequoias punctuate the tree line like bushy, green exclamation points. Surrounded only by a warm breeze and empty space, I find myself completely exposed and suffering through an emotional paradox. There’s freedom up here with the birds, a glorious release from anything familiar. But it’s a narrow liberty. The laws of gravity and my seismic discomfort of heights dissuade me from any spread-eagle “I’m King of The World” moments. A western tanager (Piranga ludoviciana) lands on a branch and swivels its bright red head toward me, confused by the interloper in its realm. On the forest floor, a black bear (Ursus americanus) lumbers about for breakfast. More people have summited Everest—more people have probably walked on the moon—than have stood atop this noble tree.
“There is absolutely no limit to its existence,” John Muir wrote of the sequoia in Our National Parks. “Nothing hurts the big tree.” The sunrise, however, reveals an unsettling future. Even here, in the country’s second-oldest national park, the horizon is the sickly yellow of a cigarette butt, a vaporous mixture of Central Valley smog and forest fire smoke from the myriad infernos burning across the state.
Muir’s hyperbole is understandable. The tree I’m sitting atop probably took root before Athenian democracy sprouted in ancient Greece. It has lived through the rise and fall of many of the world’s great civilizations, from Romans to Mayans to the British Empire. Its long shadow has fallen over this forest for three millennia, but that can’t obscure the exhaust of human progress. As I clip my climbing descender onto the rope and begin the journey to the forest floor, I can’t help but wonder: Will this tree stand long enough to witness our own fall? Or will it fall first?
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