It’s presentation day in John Koncki’s sixth grade social studies class. While a few students have opted to work with longtime class project staples, like construction paper, cardboard and a whole lot of glue, those like Akash Pulinthanathu have decided to step outside the box.
“My presentation has three parts to it,” he says, dragging the cursor of his district-provided Acer Chromebook around the screen to open up a web browser. “I even made an icon,” he says – and he’s not overstating his work. He literally made an icon, linking his computer’s desktop to a website he designed specifically for this presentation, coding and all. He proudly shows his scripting work before launching into an explanation of his icon design, which represents the evolution of ancient Indian society, he says.
Akash isn’t the only standout — he’s one of the many kids in his class to produce great work, his coding and web page part of a lineup featuring animations, clever slideshows, activity books and board games. Each of the project is part of Koncki’s effort to engage his students, to help them “learn how to learn” and, most importantly, how to beat the textbook.
That Koncki’s students were doing textbook work in 2015 resembling what he was doing as a sixth grader in 1981 seemed, at the very least, odd to him.
“These kids all have Chromebooks. They all have access to all the information in the world. We’ve got to be able to do a better job,” he said. “One day I walked in and said ‘You know what, guys? We can do better.’”
Thus, “beating the textbook” was born.
After teaching for 21 years, Koncki’s learned something: “When kids are engaged in what they’re doing, they’re learning.” Giving students the freedom to create a project about their subject allows them the opportunity for engagement, and gives them an opportunity to show off what they know.
It’s that concept that led to the two-minute animation created by students Eduardo Rosales and Renzo Rodriguez. Their work took them the better part of the last two weeks to script and storyboard out, using the education-focused version of a program called “GoAnimate” to bring the final product to life, Rosales said.
While not every student went the multimedia route, each project brought a bit of the each student to the forefront — partners Hazel Brown and Monti Allison produced a workbook full of word searches, puzzles, games and information on Ancient India that stood out from the standard textbook form for having a voice behind the information, creating a study tool that kids wouldn’t hate to use.
But the key to the day was student Junhinio Paniouchkino, the guide for the exhibition, and the reason that the room was filled with visitors that day. Paniouchkino invited the media, district administrators, school board members, Adams principals and other members of the public to check out his classmates’ work.
Above all else, that’s the key to beating the textbook: teaching kids how to take information and do something constructive and useful with it, rather than just spitting it back onto a page. “If we’re not able to sell our ideas, we’re dead in the water,” Koncki says. “If you can’t pitch an idea, you can’t prove [what you know], then in an age of information, you’ve got nothing … Memorizing is no longer a skillset that plays; it’s about knowing how to use information to convince people.”
“To be honest, I don’t teach social studies, I don’t teach language arts, I teach kids. I help kids learn how to learn,” Koncki said. “I think in this day and age, that’s what we should be doing.”
