Areas the state department says we need to do:
- talk with our community stakeholders
- do professional development (do you have a plan)

MY THOUGHTS: WHERE ARE THE EXAMPLES OF COMMON CORE PD PLANS FOR OTHER OKLAHOMA SCHOOL DISTRICTS? WHERE IS THERE A SPACE TO SHARE LINKS TO DIFFERENT COMMON CORE TRANSITION PLANS IN OKLAHOMA? WHERE ARE CURRICULUM MAPS ONLINE?

How are you providing the big picture of who, what, when, where to everyone

The 6 areas are posted, we are going to do a ‘hosted carousel activity’
1- Professional Development
2- Assessment
3- Instruction
4- Curriculum
5- Stakeholders
6- Overview

What are you doing NOW to do these things?

HERE ARE THE PICTURES I TOOK OF OUR BRAINSTORMING IN THESE AREAS

Transition Timeline for Common Core

- June 2010: State Board adopts common core state standards

Transition: 2010 – 2014 teacher development, local curriculum revision, test development

Transition complete: 2014

New standards for math and language arts for Common Core
- there are literacy and other changes
- math and language arts are the only tests that will change

Very important that our students have informational texts to use

Resources
- See sde.state.ok.us
- click Common Core State Standards
- REAC3H Network

Common Core website: http://corestandards.org

CCOSA http://ccosa.org

K2 Center websites
- http://k20center.ou.edu
- http://k20alt.ou.edu

Presentations:
- K20 to the CORE

Park website (park.cc) will be in charge of questions, they are periodically publishing questions and asking for feedback

Very important that students are writing across the curriculum

Key lesson for teachers: good teaching practices and high expectations are the most important elements of Common Core

Strategies:
- Comintas (?)
- lots of focus on students discussing things and being able to communicate their ideas in both written and oral forms

Also K20 offers sessions on Core Tools and Core Design (lesson plan development)
- we are seeing teachers get really excited about these changes

MY COMMENTS: MOST OF THE IDEAS WHICH WERE SHARED TODAY, THAT I HEARD, WERE MORE AWARENESS-LEVEL THINGS. WE NEED BREAKOUT SESSIONS LIKE THIS WHICH ARE MORE FOCUSED ON IMPLEMENTATION SPECIFICS. HERE ARE QUESTIONS I HAD IN THIS SESSION WHICH WENT UNANSWERED:
- WHERE CAN WE DIGITALLY ACCESS LESSON PLAN TEMPLATES WHICH OKLAHOMA SCHOOLS ARE USING WITH TEACHERS FOR COMMON CORE ALIGNED LESSONS?
- HOW ARE TEACHERS WHO ARE TRANSITIONING TO COMMON CORE THIS YEAR (AND WE HAD ONE AT OUR TABLE) CHANGING THEIR LESSON PLANS FOR CCSS?
- WHERE CAN WE DIGITALLY ACCESS DISTRICT TRANSITION PLANS FOR CCSS IN OKLAHOMA?
- WHERE IS THE OKLAHOMA LESSON PLAN DATABASE FOR PUBLICLY SHARING (UNDER CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSES) CCSS ALIGNED LESSONS?
- WHAT SHOULD WE TELL TEACHERS WHO ARE TEACHING A COURSE WITH AN EOI (END OF INSTRUCTION EXAM) WHEN IT COMES TO COMMON CORE? (IT SEEMS TO BE THE GAME HASN’T CHANGED AT ALL FOR THEM AT THIS POINT AS LONG AS EOI’S REMAIN.)
- WHERE CAN WE DIGITALLY ACCESS WALKTHROUGH RUBRICS FOR OKLAHOMA SCHOOLS WHICH ARE COMMON CORE ALIGNED?
- WHERE ARE VIDEO RESOURCES AVAILABLE FOR TEACHERS TO SEE ‘BEST PRACTICE’ LESSONS FOR COMMON CORE?
- WHERE ARE SCHOOL DISTRICTS SAFELY PUBLISHING STUDENT WORK ONLINE IN AN INTERACTIVE ENVIRONMENT?

LOTS OF QUESTIONS. NOT MANY ANSWERS. YET.

Technorati Tags: oklahoma, ccss, common, core, commoncore, oaesp, oaesp12

What’s So Common About Common Core? originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 19, 2012.

This sixth episode is an interview with Dr. Leigh Zeitz, or “Dr Z.” Dr. Zeitz is an Associate Professor at the University of Northern Iowa, and is passionate about (among other things) helping K-12 teachers as well as students create compelling digital portfolios. He blogs on drzreflects.com. Digital Portfolios Made Easy and keyboardingresearch.org are also his websites. In this interview, I ask Dr. Z to share about his ISTE 2011 sessions as well as his philosophy for helping K-12 learners develop compelling and useful digital / electronic portfolios.

Technorati Tags:
digital, iste, portfolio, leigh, zeitz, portfolios, iste2011

Voices of #iste11 – Dr. Leigh Zeitz (Dr Z) on Digital Portfolios originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 29, 2011.

In addition to posting these photos and audio recordings to my AudioBoo channel, I also used AudioBoo as we recorded these to Tweet out links and cross-post each AudioBoo page via email on our family learning blog, “Learning Signs.” This two-part sharing process took literally 10 seconds each after she recorded each writing sample.

Sarah can read very expressively, and it was not only fun to review her writing progress over the years tonight, but also remember together many of the things that have happened since we moved to Oklahoma from Texas five years ago. Without a doubt the most touching essay Sarah read tonight was “Yellow Cards.” It made us both cry. In it, she recounts a story about Kent Wilson, who was a member of our church and Sunday School teacher who was very dear to Sarah. It is precious to have this story recorded in her voice, at age 10.

Initially I was going to use the Cinch app (also free) on the iPad to record and share these audio recordings with accompanying photos. For some reason, however, the app was crashing on my iPad. I already had AudioBoo downloaded and configured. It worked great for this purpose!

By the time we finished recording all these essays, after about an hour, Sarah was pretty tired! This was my favorite photo of the evening, as she used one of my shoes as a microphone stand for the iRig mic.

As school wraps up here in the northern hemisphere, consider ways you can digitally document some of your students’ work and the work of your own children or grandchildren from the past academic year. Digital portfolios are wonderful assessment resources, and can provide a rich window into the skills, perceptions, ideas, and knowledge of learners. Mobile devices like the iPad which take photos, record audio, and allow immediate online sharing of those files make the creation of media-rich digital portfolios more “doable” than ever.

For more information about using a free Posterous site to cross-post to a blog, as we did tonight with Learning Signs, see my May 9th post, “Configure Autoposting to a WordPress Blog from Emails via Posterous.”

Technorati Tags:
audio, audioboo, edtech, learning, record, school, portfolio, eportfolio, document, assess, 5thgrade

Digitizing an Elementary Writing Portfolio originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 26, 2011.

http://www.irvingisd.net/mediafair/
http://www.irvingisd.net/
Middle Schoolers Out to Save the World (MSOSW)
Project RED Research (on 1:1 learning)
Storychasers

Video reflection from North Texas originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 26, 2010.

We often consider the technologies we use to be beneficial for teaching and learning, but how do we REALLY know? This session will focus on the use of action research as a strategy that teachers can use to examine (and find evidence for) the impact that cloud based tools, or whatever technology you are implementing, has on learning and teaching. We’ll also look at the process for submitting a proposal for the Action Research Award from MACUL, which was developed to share findings about implementation efforts and their effect of students

Sandra Plair is @miztech on Twitter

MACUL Action Research Award

Action Research:
- Allows for self evaluation and assessment
- can be very effective to share what works in our classrooms

Action research is teacher research, investigating their own practice

Manfra in 2009 cited in Hendricks observes action research began back in the 1950s

Action research is a spiral and content specific
- taking action, studying consequences, studying what happens and then sharing the results

Australian educational action researchers define the process this way:
- Questioning
- Planning
- Implementing
- Observing
- Reflecting
- Re-planning

Consent from children and parents is always important for action research

Control groups not required but can be very helpful

There do NOT appear to be many teachers and university educators now doing action research and publishing findings on blogs
- couldn’t find common tags for action research on delicious.com

Practitioner journals
- MCTE, MAME
- Educational Leadership
- THE Journal
- The Clearinghouse
- Learning and Leading with Technology
- MACUL Journal

We want MACUL to be the go to organization about research in educational technology
- action research can share results faster

Award is $500 that goes into your pocket
MACUL Action Research Award
Deadline this year is 15 Dec

Recommended resources:
- “What Works: A Practical Guide for Teacher Research” by Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater and Bonnie S. Sunstein
- Action Research Journal
- Journal of Curriculum and Instruction, Jan 2009 issue dedicated to action research www.joci.ecu.edu

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Action Research: What Do We Know About Learning in the Cloud? originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 22, 2010.

Part 1 of 2: This podcast is a recording of a presentation by Wesley Fryer on June 16, 2010, in San Antonio, Texas, at the summer administrative leadership conference for Northeast ISD. This was a 2+ hour presentation, so the recordings have been separated into two parts. See the podcast shownotes for links to referenced videos and resources. (Audio from shared videos has been edited out of this recording.) The session description was: Much of the world has gone digital, so must learning at school. Creativity is vital, and good leadership matters. Stagnant, accomodation-level technology integration makes technology investments in our schools a waste of money. School leaders can and should encourage teachers to use digital learning tools in transformative ways to open new doors of opportunity for students as well as parents. By focusing on creating, communicating / sharing, and collaborating, principals can help develop a shared instructional vocabularly with teachers which is focused on student engagement. Without creation, there can be no creativity. How will you let your students create? How will you give students choices? How will your students teach the curriculum? These are essential questions to ask together with teachers, as we seek to effectively (and legally) “talk with media / pictures” and leverage the constructive power of digital media tools for learning inside and outside the classroom.

Show Notes:

1. Part 2 of this presentation shared as an audio podcast
2. Referenced videos and links
3. Presentation slides and videos on SlideShare

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Podcast350: Leading Schools with Digital Vision in a Bubblesheet World (part 1 of 2) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 16, 2010.

Presentations from the past three days were also Ustreamed live and archived. Check them out! I’m quite honored to be included as a speaker with this distinguished and august lineup!

Tuesday Dr. Helen Barrett spoke about digital portfolios.

Wednesday Dr. Sylvia Martinez focused on project-based learning.

Today Dr. Gary Stager presented on 1:1 learning.

Technorati Tags:
1to1, based, education, learning, pbl, portfolio, project, school, technology, workshop, california, eportfolio

Live and archived Ustream recordings from the Castilleja Summer Learning Institute originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 10, 2010.

A book called Art and Fear shows how indispensably failure is tied to learning. A ceramics teacher divided his class into two groups. One group would be graded solely on quantity of work– fifty pounds of pottery would be an “A,” forty would be a “B,” and so on. The other group would be graded on quality. Students in that group had to produce only one pot– but it had better be good.

Amazingly, all the highest quality pots were turned out by the quantity group. It seems that while the quantity group kept on churning out pots, they were continually learning from their disasters and growing as artists. The quality group sat around theorizing about perfection and worrying about it– but they never actually got any better. Apparently– at least when it comes to pottery– trying and failing, learning from failure, and trying again works a lot better than waiting for perfection. No pot, no matter how misshapen, is really a failure. Each is just another step on the road to an “A.” It is a road littered with imperfect pots. But there is no other road.

The book Ortberg is citing was written by Ted Orland, and is titled “Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking.”

How are you inviting your students to CREATE as a regular part of your class? Students should have regular opportunities to create content and share their ideas with both analog as well as digital tools. Just as “quality time” usually only takes place between parents and children when there is “quantity time,” the same can be said for creativity in multiple domains. Quantity is critical.

Let’s get creative!

photo credit: r_neches

Technorati Tags:
creative, creativity, education, leadership, learning, quality, school, quantity, pottery, ceramics, failure

Want to Inspire Creativity? Invite LOTS of Opportunities to CREATE originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 8, 2010.

Whereas the authors of A Nation at Risk concerned themselves with the quality and breadth of the curriculum that every youngster should study, No Child Left Behind concerned itself only with basic skills. A Nation at Risk was animated by a vision of good education as the foundation of a better life for individuals and for our democratic society, but No Child Left Behind had no vision other than improving test scores in reading and math. It produced mountains of data, not educated citizens. Its advocates then treated that data as evidence of its “success.” It ignored the importance of knowledge. It promoted a cramped, mechanistic, profoundly anti-intellectual definition of education. In the age of NCLB, knowledge was irrelevant.

As an advocate for higher order thinking, creativity, digital literacy, project-based learning and engaged, hands-on learning, I’m acutely aware of the damaging influence of NCLB in narrowing the curriculum. NCLB communicates to administrators, teachers, and parents that the only metrics of educational excellence which matter are student scores on standardized reading and math tests. This is a lie.

There are SO many other things which matter in learning, education, school and life. It is incumbent upon us as citizens and voters who care to not only work for the repeal of NCLB, but advocate for more differentiated, comprehensive approaches to assessment. NCLB was a tragic mistake, but thankfully we live in a republic. We can change our laws, and we should.

For more of my thoughts on Ravitch’s book, see my recent posts:

1. Schools must be data informed: NOT data driven
2. NCLB has killed creative teaching and energetic learning about science (at least before state testing)
3. NCLB was designed to define public schools as failures
4. Will Race to the Top Hurt Kids and Make Charter School Entrepreneurs Rich?

Also check out my phonecast from last week (recorded with iPadio) “Public Schools Are Not Businesses – Why Educational Sharing Matters.”

Since I started blogging in 2003, I’ve written 145 posts which reference NCLB. If you really want to step back in time, check out my April 2005 post, “NCLB may be a stealth agenda to allow corporations to take over our schools.” I’d also recommend the February 2008 post, “A contrary view of education and NCLB” (which is an admitted rant in response to a “State of the Union” address) and my April 2006 post, “Troubles for NCLB: It may not be improving achievement and it corrupts the profession.”

Creative Commons image by Colin Purrington

Technorati Tags:
assessment, book, diane, education, nclb, policy, politics, ravitch, reform, review, school, test, testing, critique, criticism, improve

NCLB damages US education by narrowing the curriculum originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 5, 2010.

This is not a HUGE pain, but it seems unnecessary. WebCT / Blackboard developers should make ALL instructor comments part of the “audit log” for a particular course. I’m not sure if this is something newer versions of WebCT/Blackboard have addressed or not. UCO is currently using WebCT Campus Edition 6.

If I teach this course again in the fall (which is likely) I may use Moodle instead of WebCT / Blackboard. It will be interesting to compare the quiz features, and especially the audit log features of Moodle to those of this EXPENSIVE learning management system.

Technorati Tags:
comment, distributed, education, elearning, learning, record, student, quiz, webct, blackboard, moodle, audit, feedback, lesson, saving

Saving feedback for students in WebCT / Blackboard originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 10, 2010.

I wonder if Moodle is a suitable platform for what I want to do?… I teach HS Physical Education and also head up the department. Here is what we want to do:

• for each of grades 9, 10, 11 and 12 will have an electronic portfolio into which students will enter goals, results, reflections etc
• the portfolio will be published by the department as a template which will be protected. There will be boxes, tables, etc where individual students can enter their own response
• the teacher will have access to the individual student portfolio so that they can monitor and comment using convenient links on the portfolio
• the portfolio will be stored on-line and will follow the student through all four years of high school
• the teacher will be able to see on one page links to all their students’ portfolios
• the teacher will also have a real-time notice board showing when students have last made submissions

Is this something that Moodle can do?  Any suggestions off the top of your head?

Here’s my response:

Moodle is definitely a flexible platform, and it can be adapted for a myriad of uses as a content management system. Since you are specifically wanting to develop an online portfolio system, however, I’d recommend that you look into Mahara. Like Moodle, Mahara is open source, but it is specifically geared toward the development of electronic portfolios. Your IT department would need to install, configure and maintain your Mahara installation like they would with Moodle, or you’d need to do this with an ISP or web host. I know that Remote Learner is a company  providing hosting and support for some of our Oklahoma schools using Moodle. (They are based in Virginia.) I don’t know of companies currently providing a similar service specifically for Mahara, but would guess there are some out there.

When I was in New Hampshire last month visiting Deerfield Community School, I learned a bit about the statewide pilot project their teachers are in through a grant and the State Department of Education’s Instructional Technology Division. They are using Sakai, which is billed as a more “enterprise-level” open source learning management system similar to Moodle, to develop teacher electronic portfolios as well as student portfolios specifically aligned to the ISTE National Educational Technology Standards. (NETS) These are some photos I snapped of the interactive white board during a demonstration of this Sakai-based eportfolio system shared by Deb Boisvert. Deb is the technology director / coordinator at Deerfield. Without a login guests are limited in what is visible. Their eportfolio site (linked from their school homepage) is sau53.sakaizone.org.

The portfolio options visible to a user depend on their assigned rights. Deerfield has organized student portfolios by graduation year.

This is a view of Deb’s professional portfolio interface. As you can see, various forms are required for different phases, and columns are provided for each year the portfolio is maintained.

This is a view of a student ICT portfolio, which is aligned to the ISTE NETs.

As you can see from the publicly-accessible “features” page of the Deerfield online portfolio Sakai site, there are a LOT of available functions and features within Sakai. These are similar to Moodle, and other commercial learning management systems like BlackBoard/WebCT and Desire2Learn. A big  issue, however, is if you have FUNDING, time, expertise, and support personnel to develop AND SUSTAIN your own ePortfolio system. Moodle is really configured for multi-week courses, although like Sakai it can be customized to fit other needs. Some schools (including yours, from what I learned in September during my visit) DO have IT staff members with the expertise and wherewithal to support customized, open source, server software installations. I’m thinking  you all have a homegrown, custom-built content management system / learning management system. I don’t know all the politics (and those certainly come into play when teachers ask for a new CMS or new CMS functionality) but I’d really encourage you to look to Mahara first if you’re going to develop an ePortfolio system from scratch. It also may be possible for you to functionally define what you want the system to do, and have your IT department built it within your existing learning management system. That may be politically and technically the best path forward for you. I’m not sure.

One of the biggest concerns I have with developing student portfolios exclusively within a “walled garden” environment like Moodle or Sakai is that other people (without a login) often do NOT have access to the content published there. If students move to a different school, it makes sense that their online portfolio should follow them. From what I understand, ePortfolio guru Dr. Helen Barrett recommends the development of ePortfolios using Google Sites. (This is her sample professional portfolio created with Google Sites.) I recommend students as well as teachers use a variety of openly accessible wiki tools including Google Sites, WikiSpaces, PBWorks, WetPaint, Weebly, and other sites. Knowledge artifacts embedded, created, and linked from these sites can then be linked from whatever ePortfolio system the school uses.

A variety of commercial ePortfolio systems exist today, and I’ve been familiar with several of these through my work for and with different colleges of education over the years. At the University of Central Oklahoma’s College of Education, where I’m currently an instructor for the undergraduate “Technology 4 Teachers” course, they have just transitioned from “Chalk and Wire” to “PASS-PORT.” 99% of undergraduate education students at UCO do NOT continue to PAY for their professional portfolio after graduation, so these commercial services are essentially just beneficial to the institution for its accreditation requirements, NOT to students. At both the K-12 and university level, I think it’s important for institutions to embrace open source and free portfolio options which do NOT require students to individually pay or keep paying to maintain their portfolio.

A student’s ePortfolio should reflect and encompass their individual digital footprint. When an ePortfolio is built entirely in a walled-garden, password-protected environment, the opportunity to create and shape a digital portfolio on the open web is squandered. I recognize everything we create for school classes and on our own should not necessarily be published on the “global stage” (using Marco Torres‘ term) for the world to see. I am concerned, however, that in many schools we are NOT providing coaching and guidance to students about their digital footprint. Creating and maintaining ePortfolios for assessment purposes can provide that opportunity.

I’m very concerned that in many of our 1:1 schools in Oklahoma and elsewhere, school leaders are embracing Moodle and therefore essentially denying students as well as teachers access to the power and benefit of open web publishing. In so many educational contexts, our natural tendency is to “keep it secret.” We need to share our work and our ideas much more freely, and I see closed-system content management systems as oppositional to the goals of the open education movement. When it comes to assessment in schools, too often we insist that EVERYONE LOOK THE SAME. We don’t look the same, and we should stop trying to impose uniformity and standardization on everyone. I’m not saying we shouldn’t have standards and expectations– of course we should, but everyone’s ePortfolio shouldn’t be required to look the same. In that kind of a model, creativity can’t thrive, and creativity as well as sharing should be hallmarks of high quality educational assessment.

I share delicious bookmarks from time to time with the tag “eportfolio,” and you may find more resources / ideas there. (That list is also mirrored on Diigo.) I hope these thoughts are helpful. My last recommendation is that you check out the following three presentations from the 2009 K-12 Online Conference, which all address ePortfolio issues and solutions.

Moogpal in Action by Chris Fitzgerald Walsh

Googlios: A 21st – Century Approach to Teaching, Learning, & Assessment by G. Alex Ambrose

Whither ePortfolios by Drew Buddie

Please keep me posted on how your digital portfolio / ePortfolio work progresses, and let me know if I can be of further assistance.

FOR ANYONE: If you know of other ePortfolio resources and examples you’d recommend, please share them here. I’m convinced ALL our states and schools need to implement ePortfolio systems for student assessment, to include (among other standards) the ways students as well as teachers are meeting the ISTE NETs. Without creation, there is no creativity. The current tendency of many U.S. state departements of education as well as school districts to simply utilize multiple-choice assessments (even when they require some performance-based responses by students) to assess student mastery of ISTE NETS is MISDIRECTED. We don’t need to simply give kids technology vocabulary tests. We need to implement ePortfolio systems which require that learners CREATE digital content, and demonstrate their CREATIVE capacities using technology tools. We’d never ask a dancer or a musician to demonstrate their skills without PERFORMANCE and a portfolio. The same logic should applied to digital learners in the 21st century, using technology tools.

H/T to Sylvia Martinez, whose writing and advocacy continues to strongly influence my views on student ePortfolio issues and other topics related to engaged digital learning.

Online Student Portfolios: What Tools Are Best? originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 25, 2010.

Results in learning: What are ways we can assess the impact to teaching and learning? Jen Sigrist, Director of Teaching and Learning, Van Meter CSD. Will highlight some different assessment initiatives occurring in the district.

Addition 21 Feb 2011: An audio podcast recording of this session is available on Fuel for Educational Change Agents.

40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes

OH I LOVE THIS VIDEO!!! WOW. I AM REALLY FIRED UP NOW FOR THIS SESSION

When we are talking about changing education, I often go back to this video

As the director of teaching and learning, I am frequently asked questions like:
- How will the computers make a difference to student achievement?
- How will we show the return on investment?
- What ways are the computers preparing kids better than before

1to1schools.wikispaces.com/why

Right now in K-6 we don’t have laptops
- we don’t tell parents “it’s about the computers” (MY PARAPHRASE: IT’S ABOUT THE PEOPLE, THE LEARNING, THE HIGH EXPECTATIONS, THE ENGAGEMENT)

Reasons to go to a 1:1 from CASTLE’s website
- none of these are to increase ITBS scores

We look at education at VanMeter as a whole new system
- our system needs to fit our kids, rather than trying to force our kids to fit the system

Van Meter’s Direction
- we envision a new educational system
- personalized learning
- connections, collaboration and creativity
- flexible in time and structure
- helps kids prepare for any post secondary option (join the military, become a plumber, go to college, etc)

If my kids can design iPhone apps to pay for their post-secondary education, so much the better

Very important book: Daniel Pink
- talking about the right brain skills

Tony Wagner: The Global Achievement Gap
- critical thinking and problem solving
- collaboration

Angela Maiers
- imagination, curiosity, perseverance, self-awareness, courage, adaptability
- filter, learn, unlearn, engage, network, trust

Our traditional system does a poor job with many of these skills

Discuss: What ways are you thinking about learning
- collaboration is becoming so important
- thinking globally
- kids taking control of their learning
- timing: it can be anytime throughout the day

GOOD DISCUSSION IN THE BREAK ABOUT WHETHER WE NEED TO TAKE UP LAPTOPS DURING THE SUMMER
- HOW CAN WE TAKE AWAY LAPTOPS FROM KIDS WHO ARE USING THEM AS FUNDAMENTAL PARTS OF HOW THEY LEARN

harnessing the natural creativity of students

I’ve been out of the classroom 5 years
- I really thought my role as a Social Studies teacher was for them NOT to embarrass me if Jay Leno interviewed them (it was all about me, that was my old way of thinking)

Where do you start?
- Determine your goal
- What does it look like?
- Make connections
- Empower

Our focus: THINK, LEAD, SERVE: What’s your passion?
- engage students with higher order thinking and tasks (notice we didn’t say “increase technology literacy with Apple applications”)
- a big pot of assessments
- professional learning communities (PLC’s)

Next year our focus will be PLCs (for all our teachers)

Our big pot of assessment is BALANCED ASSESSMENT
- Data collection and tests: Univ of Maine studies are probably best
- behavior data, attendance rates, graduation rates, achievement scores (writing, reading, math and science)
- Technology literacy *(NETS rubric)

We have 100% graduation rates now
- our ACT average score last year was 24.6 in math, we’re above state average in ACT and ITBS scores now
- those weren’t the reason we went 1:1

In Iowa you get to determine what the test is, and what the proficiencies are, for measuring 8th grade tech literacy
- we’re looking at using the NETS rubric now

THEY NEED TO FOLLOW THE LEAD OF NEW HAMPSHIRE AND USE ONLINE, DIGITAL PORTFOLIOS TO ASSESS TECH LITERACY

What do you think?
- what data do you currently collect
- what tests do you give?
- What thinking are you assessing?

From Julie Graber (a participant, during our conversation in the session)
- Discussing Grapplings Technology and Learning Spectrum (developed by Bernajean Porter)
- Jerry Valentine’s “Instructional Practices Inventory”
- measures engagement
– do 100 walkthroughs and assess levels of use
- also an assessment from METRI: Technology Integration Assessment

A lot of these assessments for kids can get really EXPENSIVE

now showing draft of ISTE rubric

IS THIS REALLY A RUBRIC, OR IS THIS MORE STANDARDS WITH MORE ELABORATION?

in our balanced assessment, we also look at Perceptions and Beliefs
- student perceptions, parent perceptions, 1 and 5 year post VM (graduate survey)
- administrator reflections on professional learning
- teacher reflections on professional learning

Our question: How do you know the $100K you are spending each year is making a difference?
- so strange: How we ever assessed how well your pencil is working, your overhead projector, your electronic whiteboard?

This kind of qualitative data is still very valuable in showing the picture

Questions for discussion:
- What ways do you ask learners to reflect on their learning?
- How do students feel about their learning experiences? How do you know?

Asked about how you see your students collaborating after school
- story from a participant: 7th grade parent went up to their son’s bedroom in the evening, and he was having a 3 way video chat (on iChat) about that day’s math assignment

MY COMMENT IN THE SESSION: SO YOU NEED TO GET YOUR KIDS TO MAKE VIDEOS ABOUT STORIES LIKE THIS, AND THEN SHARE THEM ONLINE, AS WELL AS WITH YOUR COMMUNITY

Big takeaway: You cannot quantify the type of learning you see kids doing
- you have to be a PR manager for your district

Participant comment: We have a TNT Night at our school (Tips and Technology)
- kids share for parents, they get extra credit
- that gives kids a stage

Product and performance assessments
- administrator walk throughs (aligned to Iowa Core Curriculum – Characteristics of Effective Instruction)
- Instructional Practice Inventory (Jerry Valentine work)
- student examples
- student and teacher digital portfolios

We were trained on “eWalk”
- there are some templates out there
- we go as 4 administrator teams
- teachers as well as students have now gotten used to large numbers of classroom visitors (regularly)

Big question: What does it really look like when students are engaged?
- How do you know if you saw differentiated learning / differentiated instruction

Our staff is still nervous about all this observation: Most want to know (like the kids) “What was my grade?!”

Seeing examples of “essential questions” on classroom wiki of teacher
- bringing teachers into walkthroughs as administrators has been VERY valuable in terms of how

This research out of Univ of Missouri College of Education on Instructional Practices Inventory is CRITICAL
- you can be disengaged with or without a computer
- it may be more visible with a computer
- classroom management takes on a different

IPI Observation Rubric (in PDF format)

Walk Through Template
- Teaching for Understanding
- Student-Centered Classrooms
- Rigorous and Relevant Curriculum
- Assessment for Learning
- Van Meter DNA
– 21st Century Skills from Iowa Core Curriculum
– Integration of Technology to enhance learning
– Cross-curricular
– Evidence of CRISS strategies (scaffolding, graphic organizers, author’s craft, etc)
– Evidence of CRISS principles (background knowledge, metacognition, purpose setting)

THESE LOOK LIKE GREAT RUBRICS FOR WALKTHROUGHS!!! JENNIFER HAS THIS ON GOOGLE DOCS. I’D LOVE TO GET A LINK TO THE FULL DOC.

CRISS strategies are about helping students become independent learners

Great discussion questions:
- how do you assess creativity?

I SHARED WITH JULIE OUR OKLAHOMA CREATIVITY PROJECT. I DON’T THINK WE’RE DOING A GOOD JOB IN OKLAHOMA, HOWEVER (EVEN GIVEN THIS GREAT PROJECT / INITIATIVE) HELPING EDUCATORS ASSESS CREATIVITY, UNDERSTAND CREATIVITY, SUPPORT CREATIVITY…. WE NEED TO WORK ON THIS.

Participant sharing the value of a student video/iMovie about their passion, what they love

Technorati Tags:
#i11i, creativity, edtech, i11i, integration, school, vanmeter, #vanmeter, assess, assessment

Results in learning: What are ways we can assess the impact to teaching and learning? #i11i #vanmeter originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 7, 2010.

MY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS BELOW ARE IN ALL CAPS

All of Darren’s METC 2010 presentation resources are available on his wiki: dkuropatwapresentations.pbworks.com/METC-2010

#2 search engine today: YouTube

Example video: help with bowdrill set

Darren showed foldplay.com to show how to make personalized kaleidocycles

Stuff kids made for me 5 years ago on paper doesn’t exist anymore
- that’s not the case for a lot of digital content
- is it really ephemeral? Some digital artifacts are more permanent

4 people in a group is not a working group, it’s a social occasion (keep collaborative group sizes limited to 2 or 3)

create the problem, solve the problem
- publish it online using any way you like

DEV: Developing Expert Voices
- Developing Expert Voices (capstone projects)

Blog: Developing expert voices
- students linked to our housed all their digital work on this project
- usually started by 2nd or 3rd week of term, students worked on this all semester

If you can use a pattern you identify which underlies
- mathematics is all about patterns

Blog: Mathematics is the Science of Patterns
- project done in HALO

MITSOP Episode 1 video

Advice: Don’t do all of this NOW
- always ask: how can I get the students to do this work?
- I just started with my blog, which at the beginning I was just reading and writing
- it’s not like you will go back to school and do all this next week
- now you are ideally situated to be the model for others
- big danger of giving presentations: People say “you can do it” because of A, B, C and D
- five years ago I did not have these skills
- I evolved, I grew into using these skills
- there are certain underlying patterns in the way things

3 most revolutionary technologies of our time (IMHO – Darren)
1- The hyperlink (so now you and a person in Azerbaijan are neighbors!)
2- Tags: when you get your head around tags and how tagging works, combined with hyperlinks can be used together, it’s amazing what can be done
- knowledge is no longer organized hierarchically, it is organized organically via networks (folksonomies)
3- RSS: the glue that holds it all together (via RSS you can take my Flickr stream, and have it beamed over to you)

Great quotes about learning and change Flickr group

Reasons to publish student work:
- you need to create ways for students to look inside each other’s heads
- Good things happen when you publish
- you’ll know they know when they create content that educates

“A computer is an instrument whose music is composed of ideas”

Web 2.0 Cool tools for Schools wiki

Be careful not to post your email address online b/c of spambots

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learning, technology, remix, google, maps, googlemaps, collaboration, math, lesson, school, darren, kuropatwa

Notes from a Canadian Yoda: Darren Kuropatwa at METC 2010 originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 8, 2010.

Back in February 2009, I wrote an enthusiastic review of the iPod Touch / iTouch and iPhone applications gFlash and gFlash Pro. These apps permit anyone to create custom flashcards using a Google Docs account, and then access that flashcard data (and share it) with anyone running gFlash. I’ve shown my own kids how to use gFlash/Google Doc flashcards I created, and this summer my 11 year old son created his own custom flashcards to practice multiplication problems which were most challenging for him, on his own iPod Touch. The functionality of these software programs really is terrific. All you need is the app on your iTouch / iPhone and a free Google Docs account to create new flashcard sets.

The same disclaimer I shared on that post applies here: I do NOT think creating flashcards or multiple-choice assessments is the ultimate use of mobile technology devices– but I DO recognize the value and need for applications like these. I personally think it is GREAT the software company (gWhiz) is continuing to integrate their application functionality with Google Docs, and I see lots of possibilities here.

In mid-September gWhiz released a new application and software subscription model for the iTouch/iPhone called gWhiz Mobile Learning Assessment (MLA.)

This three minute YouTube video provides an overview of the application and how it works with both Google Docs and the GWhiz servers for authentication.

It is notable that audio clips can be used/integrated in the questions as well as answers, as shown in the above video. Images online can also be easily integated in questions as well as answers too. There are good possibilities here for accessibility, foreign language classes, etc. I also like how questions can permit sequencing and open answer responses, rather than just multiple choice responses.

Similar to gFlash, with MLA a teacher can create a test / quiz / assessment as a Google Spreadsheet first. A Google Spreadsheet template is available which can be copied and modified, or for demo purposes a webform template can be used. (To access the Google Spreadsheet, users must request access via a provided Google access request link.) I created an assessment using the webform template, which created the Google Document for me in my account. I did have to provide my Google login credentials to gWhiz over an open / nonsecured (not https) webpage to do this.

Unlike gFlash, however, which directly opens the flashcard set from Google Docs, with gWhiz MLA the teacher needs to share the Google spreadsheet with the school / organization’s “master” Google account to which MLA is licensed. A demo mode is available, but all created assessments are accessible to all demo users worldwide. (That account is gwhizmla@gmail.com – be sure to share your template spreadsheet with this address and grant EDIT rights, not just VIEW rights.) Educators can get a 90 day trial account also. After a student enters the school’s master email account / Google account, s/he enters their name and selects the assessment to take. Data passes through the gWhiz servers and is directly recorded into the teacher’s Google spreadsheet.

This is a different model for iTouch / iPhone application licensing than I’ve seen previously, but it makes sense from a vendor’s perspective. iTunes permits an application (free or purchased from the iTunes Store) to be copied / synced and used on an unlimited number of iPod Touches / iPhones from the same iTunes account. (I think it is only possible to sync multiple iTouches simultaneously from Apple computers, however. If you have a Windows-based computer, I think you have to sync each iTouch separately. Please correct me if I’m wrong on this.) Because of this “sync as many mobile devices to iTunes” feature, a company like gWhiz that wants to offer per-device licenses has been in a challenging situation. By using their own servers as a gateway / intermediary for the authentication process to a Google Docs account, gWhiz has figured out a licensing process which permits them to offer the MLA application as a free iTunes download, but license the iTouches which access and use their software solution. Without a license code (or use of the demo account) the MLA iTouch/iPhone application can’t work.

If you have a cart of iTouches at your school or in your classroom to use, consider giving MLA a try. I think programs like this can be most useful as STUDENTS create and share assessments tied to curriculum and standards. I would hypothesize gWhiz is working on integration from Google Spreadsheets to learning management systems like Blackboard and Moodle, so student assessment data can be easily ported there when desired.

I’d love to see gWhiz or another company take this same idea and make a web-based / browser based assessment tool which makes Google Forms more user-friendly on mobile devices. Rather than presenting an entire Google forms survey on a single page, like gWhiz MLA it would be good to have each question presented separately and provide users with the option to review and change their answers if desired.

I created a sample quiz titled “Videoconferencing” that you’re welcome to try. Remember to use the demo account “gwhizmla” and you should see it after you click “Register.” The program will show students their final score at the end, but they cannot review answers to see which problems they missed and correct answers. If a student takes a test more than once, the system overwrites their previous submission and does not create a new entry. There does not appear to be a way to prevent a student, at this point, from retaking a gWhiz MLA quiz or test.

Overall, the idea of integrating assessment tools with Google spreadsheets / forms is a superb idea. Like other electronic response / audience response systems, however, this software requires that teachers take time to both create and load assessments “into the system” / following specified procedures. Before jumping on the bandwagon of mobile assessment in your classroom and school, it’s important to evaluate those time requirements and insure staffing support is in place to assist teachers. As I mentioned previously, I think one of the best ways to use mobile assessment options like this is for STUDENTS to create and share assessments which are tied to curriculum and standards.

If you’re aware of or have experiences with gFlash MLA or similar student response programs tied to Google Docs/Spreadsheets, please let me know.

Technorati Tags:
apple, assess, assessment, docs, google, iphone, ipod, itouch, mobile, spreadsheets

Individualized Assessment on an iPod Touch Using Google Docs – via gWhiz MLA originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on September 23, 2009.

This podcast is an interview with Scott Carter, superintendent of schools in Kingman, Kansas. Scott is continuing to lead his district to implement a bold strategic plan which was collaboratively created three years ago. The district’s top priority is to support “learning connected and related to the real world through the use of integrated curriculum.” The second priority involves orienting education and curriculum to the interests and abilities of students. Priority three is informing and engaging the communities [served by the school district] through coordination with all city  and county entities, and the fourth priority is to be a leader in using technology as a leaning tool. These strategic goals are being operationalized in several ways in Kingman, including a focus on administrative expectations for effective technology integration (utilizing the LoTi framework and H.E.A.T. analysis tools) and a new middle school one-to-one learning initiative in 2009-2010 utilizing Lenovo netbooks. Thanks to Scott for sharing background information about the work of educators in his district to prepare students to thrive in the 21st century. I also included a shout-out to Scott Elias and Melinda Miller for their fantastic podcast, The Practical Principals, which I listened to today on my commute to and from Kingman. If you’re a school administrator, don’t miss “The New Administrators Wiki” project they showcased in their episode from April 2009. See the podcast shownotes for links!

Show Notes:

1. Scott Carter on Plurk (Superintendent, Kingman Schools, Kansas)
2. USD 331 in Kingman, Kansas
3. Kingman, Kansas (WikiPedia)
4. LoTi: Levels of Teaching Innovation and H.E.A.T.
5. My notes from our LoTi workshop in Kingman: Part 1 and Part 2
6. Turning up the “HEAT” in Education by Dean Mantz
7. Story Centered Curriculum by Roger Shank
8. Lenovo S10E netbook
9. Total Traffic Control content filtering by Lightspeed
10. The New Administrators Wiki
11. Practical Principals 19 – Wikified
12. What they didn’t teach me in my admin program by Jim Connolly

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Podcast325: Implementing a Shared Vision for Digital Learning in Kingman, Kansas originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 3, 2009.

Dean’s July 23, 2009, post “Turning up the ‘HEAT’ in Education” is very important to understand what we are discussing today

LoTi levels 0-3 are very much teacher controlled
- LoTi levels 4a – 6 the teacher is becoming the facilitator

Big shift to level 5 is connecting outside of the classroom, bringing in outside resources with places like ePals, Skype in Schools, Global Education Collaborative, etc. (more links on this available)

National average of LoTi survey is just 2-3

talking with teachers about “dressing up lessons” with not only technology but also this focus on the first three parts of HEAT

Now looking at the LoTi Sniff Test

Now looking at Tracie Skoglund’s lesson on the Promethean website

What is the relationshiop between HEAT and LoTI?
- LoTi is the framework for designing your lessons
- as LoTi levels increase, your HEAT levels increase
- HEAT is used by administrators for walkthroughs and feedback with teachers following classroom observations

Now watching “Out of This World: Students Take an Eco-Friendly Field Trip to Mars” from EduTopia

How amazing, Mrs. Campbell (the teacher) has created with her husband a bike that is connected to a wind turbine
- key in her mind: helping get the kids curious
- carefully crafted, interdisciplinary lesson
- fun learning experiences for students

ISTE observation tool focuses more on time spent using technology tools, doesn’t include the instructional elements

LoTi surveys are free and resources are free
- there is a charge if you want to see the LoTi survey results

Dean is using Filesanywhere to access files for our workshop

This was a GREAT day of PD and I’m really looking forward to the follow-up activities and interactions on the LoTi Moodle. I recorded a podcast interview with the Kingman superintendent, Scott Carter, which I’ll edit and post as a podcast here soon.

Technorati Tags:
education, kansas, loti, school, technology

Notes from LoTi Administrator Institute led by Dean Mantz (afternoon) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 3, 2009.

My part 2 / afternoon notes are also available.

For content filtering Kingman is now using “total traffic control” by Lightspeed
- were tired of dealing with Two Trees as a content filter, when they asked to unblock a website the IT folks at Two Trees were asking “why?” and requiring them to justify the unblock as the tech content company
- does support differentiated content filtering (different filtering for students and teachers)
- gets Windows userid and filters based on that
- does show reports of where laptops have gone online, even when they are home and off the school network/content filter
- they don’t have this tracking turned on for teacher laptops
- this cannot be integrated into the parent student informational portal at this point

when you track laptops based on MAC address you have double duty: both wireless and ethernet MAC addresses
- this is a disadvantage of tracking via MAC address

In one of the schools represented here (small, near Wichita) they’ve had 5 PCs in each classroom for 15 years, but teachers still just use them primarily for email and as student rewards after their work is done
- perception of teachers is, “we just have 5 computers, but I have 20+ kids, so I can’t do much with them”
- teachers score very low on LoTI survey of technology use, don’t know how to use computers to emphasize higher order thinking in their lessons

Kansas has adopted ISTE-NETS for Students and Teachers also, like Oklahoma has
- there are NOT any separate tech standards for Kansas for technology
- Kansas SDE endorses LoTI

This LoTi Administrator Institute is normally a two-day workshop, but this time we are doing a blended model
- 1 day today face-to-face
- the rest will be done on Moodle

Scott Carter, superintendent in Kingman
- scarter on Plurk
- starting with grades 6-8 netbooks this year (WinXP, have 20 MB Internet connection for district of
- smartboards grades k-5
- moving to netbooks k12
- hopeing to get administrators good info to make these technology investments worthwhile
- goals for LoTI: change the learning culture, where we are using technology as an instructional tool, provide tools for those conversations betw

Rick Henry, principal
- rhenry on Plurk
- looking for a systematic way to evaluate technology integration in individual classrooms
- looking for a way to speak the

Bill Kelly, athletic director at Kingman HS

Deena Walrich
- elementary principal in Kingman
- want to see more active, engaged classrooms
- more interaction, not just teacher standing at the front, not just the typically quiet classroom – a healthy, active classroom

Dean references Lisa Parisi has a great example of project-based learning, healthy, active classrooms

Leon Albert, assistant supt in Kingman
- always looking for ways to improve quality of instruction, improving the instructional process
- are seeing a big focus now on student engagement through technology

Max Clark, elementary principal in Kingman (PK-5)
- lots of challenges in elementary level, how does technology use become as expected as the use of a pencil and paper
- have teachers remembering we have to teach kids how to read, write, and do math
- have to educate parents, ref that conversations with the active, engaged classroom
- sometimes have parent complaints because they perceive an active classroom as a chaotic environment, communication with that parent is important but parent communication with their own children is important too

Brent Garrison, middle school principal in Kingman (6-8)
- are getting Netbooks in the classroom this year
- want use of the netbooks to be effective, have had computers in students hands a lot
- I want to be able to note better instructional practices of what is appropriate use (dealing also with down times, games, a “filler”)
- I want it to be effective instruction

Dean references some other districts that have gone 1:1 but just

Melinda Tilley from Greenbush Education Service Center
- mtilley on Plurk
- school improvement specialist, based in Topeka in NE Kansas
- see lots of connections
- facilitated tech-rich classrooms, used LoTi model with teachers to focus on the learning, higher-order thinking

Kim Davis, instructional technology director for Wichita Public Schools
- are wanting to see stronger integration and use of technology
- here to get ideas to get technology a more integrated piece of what we do
- new supt in districts seems very tech oriented
- wanting to see technology not just viewed as an add-on

Jackie , assistant supt in Wellington, KS
- working with tech director, want to help our administrators look at effective practices for tech integration and not just state assessments
- has been involved with Prairie Grant that did some assessment, but that was not sustained after grant funds expired (that was 10+ years ago)

Kay Tibbs, tech director in Wellington and instructional
- started at Wellington last year
- tech integration is my passion, used Palms in the classroom
- was one of those teachers who got accused of not teaching because kids were all over the room learning
- students did so well, my last year of teaching 5th grade students earned “standard of excellence” achievement
- students were given instructions on what to do, when they would ask questions I would ask them questions back
- using Palms, students learned to think for themselves, weed out information that wasn’t right or needed, etc – it certainly did
- working with Palms gave students lots of confidence themselves
- they had to collaborate with each other

Address for our Moodle: http://www.loticlassroom.com/
- we have 45 days to complete the Day 2 activities
- resources that are available for us

Today we are going over LoTi Sniff Test
- current instructional practices

LoTi surveys are being validated (formally) this month (Aug 2009)

HEAT: Higher-Order Thinking, Engaged Learning, Authentic Connections, Technology Tools
- you will hear us say, “ignore the technology when you do the HEAT survey, focus on the the learning”
- new survey is mapped to Marzano, Webbs(?), Daggett Partnership for 21st Century Skills,

Cool Tools from Intel (free)
- Seeing Reason Tool
- Showing Evidence Tool
- Visual Ranking Tool

Kingman did 40 hours of training with Intel (Teach to the Future)
- last year all inservice had two foci: PLCs and Intel
- dedicated 100% of our inservice time to that
- I know we need to collaborate (that is what PLCs are)
- since we bought all our teachers laptops last year, we wanted them to have a framework for using those laptops
- Intel provided an initial framework
- we are looking at LoTi going beyond that and continuing that learning track for teachers

In past this was “Levels of Technology Implementation” – now it is “Levels of Teaching Innovation”
- want teachers to see technology as a tool, not a separate add-on

TONS of video examples available on the LoTiClassroom Moodle

Video 212 degrees talking about “The HEAT”
- from website simpletruths.com

Comments on this video from participants
- this needs to be our mindset (for every teacher)
- our kids deserve this

LoTi framework comes in to help you reach the next “degree” with all the demands coming in at us
- LoTi is there to help guide you

Some classroom teachers in Kansas have just taken the LoTi surveys but not used them at all after that, to get where they want to go

LoTi Framework:
0- nonuse
1- awareness
2- exploration
3- infusion
4a- integration: mechanical
4b: integration: routine
5- Expansion
6- Refinement

LoTi HEAT:
- Higher order thinking
- Engaged learning
- Authentic connections
- Technology use

Kids in schools tend to be very focused on: what do I have to do to get an A, to get out of this class?
- focus is often NOT on learning

Student is suing her college for 70K because she hasn’t gotten a job yet
- where is the ownership there?

Aside: to tweet this I was able to bypass our local school filter using Hootsuite

LoTi Observer 2.0 for iPhone and iPod Touch

5 C’s of Instructional Leadership:
- Cultivation
- Courage
- Creativity
- Commitment
- Communication

GREAT question for administrators:
- Is there a correlation between the level of student engagement and the level of student achievement on standardized tests?

we recommend choosing a focus for a strategic plan, and then taking it on for three years

Question for discussion following two video clips:
- What is 21st Century Learning?

[MY THOUGHTS ON THIS IS THAT GOOD LEARNING IS ONE AND ONE, COLLABORATIVE, JUST IN TIME, CONSTRUCTIVIST. IT IS NOT INSTRUCTIONIST. THAT PART AND THE NEED TO CHANGE IT IS NOT "21ST CENTURY." THE OVERLAY OF DIGITAL, COLLABORATIVE TOOLS IS WHAT CAN MAKE LEARNING "21ST CENTURY"

a participant is saying "we have to maintain rigor and relevance" (William Daggett)

information, media and technology skills
- information literacy
- media literacy
- ICT literacy

Book recommendation: Brain Rules by John Medina

Life and Career Skills
- flexibility and adaptability
- initiative and self-direction
- social and cross-cultural skills
- productivity and accountability
- leadership and responsibility

[AGAIN I UNDERSTAND HOW MANY PEOPLE SEE THESE UNDER THE BANNER OF 21ST CENTURY SKILLS. I AGREE WE HAVE WORKFORCE NEEDS TO PREPARE GLOBAL COLLABORATORS AND COMPETITORS. MANY OF THESE LIFE AND CAREER SKILLS ARE TRANSCENDENT AND HAVE DEEP HISTORICAL ROOTS, THO, THEY ARE NOT "NEW" TO THE 21ST CENTURY.]

From a participant: the students graduating in 2010 will have never known a world without the Internet

In Kansas, in some schools the tech-rich classrooms are really the exception to the rule
- because of high stakes assessments, many teachers are just treading water

Question: what is the temperature of teaching and learning in your school?
- can look at survey results at individual level, campus level, district level

Knowledge level activities/expectations do not typically “have much HEAT”
Knowledge level action verbs:

Comprehension level action verbs
- explain, describe, summarize, associate, discuss, distinguish, extend, express, defend, restate, generalize, paraphrase

from Bloom’s taxonomy critical thinking wheel
- from mentoringminds.com
[I HAVE HEARD OF THIS BUT DON'T HAVE IT. GREAT TOOL]

Analysis level action verbs
- analyze, differentiate, classify, distinguish, compare, categorize, examine, separate, subdivide, separate, point out

Thinking about Bloom’s, watch this video and create two questions (using the sticky pad) which are ones you’d ask your students about that video

In Wichita Public Schools, the union is so powerful there is NO WAY that the teacher observation and evaluation instrument used by administrators could be changed to utilize something like these questions from LoTi

[WOW. I WONDER HOW MANY SCHOOL DISTRICTS ARE IN THAT SAME BOAT WITH THEIR UNION?]

Now we are doing a “question makeover” activity after viewing a video clip from Spider Man

[THIS IS A GOOD ACTIVITY GETTING TEACHERS (AND IN TODAY'S SITUATION ADMINISTRATORS) THINKING ABOUT BLOOMS]

I THINK A LOT OF THIS LESSON REDESIGN STUFF TO FOCUS ON HIGHER ORDER THINKING SKILLS (HOTS) IS IDENTICAL TO THINGS WE SEE GIFTED/TALENTED (GT) TEACHERS DOING AND LEARNING HOW TO DO IN PD, BUT THE POINT HERE IS THAT ALL STUDENTS SHOULD BE DOING LEARNING TASKS LIKE THIS– NOT JUST “QUALIFIED GT KIDS”

Video from ALI of hotel design
- may be “creation level” on Bloom’s, but just a LoTi level 3 or 4 based on how much choice the students have in the learning task (is it all scripted or pre-definied, or do students have some choices about what they do)

What is the difference between student engagement and student involvement?
- with student involvement, they are defining many pieces of how they are going to do something

engagement and involvement can be two different things

- Kay discussed how “student involvement in the learning process” can mean students being involved in even creating the learning tasks, having choices with what they are going to do / how they are going to represent their learning

terminology here is very important
- what is being enthralled in a lesson?
- what is being involved?
- what is being engaged?

you can be involved but not thinking (compliant, active)

Now watching a video from “Legally Blonde” on complex thinking, original video on YouTube is 7 min 38 sec, Dean’s version with Tubechop is 1 min 41 sec.

[I WISH THE LAST SLIDE DEAN SHOWED HAD NOT GONE BY SO FAST]

Now looking at authenticity

shared “Learn & Live: Engaging in Real-World Projects” video from EduTopia

Here is an EduTopia article providing more backstory about this video: Connecting School to Work: Preparing Early for a Career
At Shorecrest High, these two students joined the school-to-work program — with some outstanding results.

Now analyzing Allison Berry featured lesson on Promethean’s website

“it makes learning fun, meaningful, and active”

This is an example of video analysis where something held up as “best practice” which really is not

do not ASSUME anything when watching and analyzing these videos

Now watching “Dollars and Sense: Kids Invest in Funds — and Their Own Future” from EduTopia. I saw Chris Moersch share this at NECC 2009 in his session, “Teaching 2.0: Engaging the Interactive Generation”

Lunch discussion:
Dr Jeanne Patterson at Wichita State University doing a lot of oral history
- at one time Parsons had its own black school
- doctoral field study group is going to Parsons and collecting a lot of stories

[I NEED TO FOLLOW UP ON THIS WITH DR PATTERSON! WE NEED TO GET A CELEBRATE KANSAS VOICES PROJECT GOING!]

Technorati Tags:
assessment, education, leadership, learning, loti, school, technology, administrator

Notes from LoTi Administrator Institute led by Dean Mantz (morning) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 3, 2009.

States can use up to 5% of funds for “state-level activities:”

Funding will be distributed to states by formula, and states don’t have to submit a revised ed-tech plan to qualify. The report says states may use up to 5 percent of their total EETT stimulus allotment for state-level activities. Any funds that are not reserved for state-level activities must be awarded as subgrants to local educational agencies (LEAs).

Not more than 60% of those “state-level activity” funds can be spent for administrative costs. [That seems pretty high to me.]

As in the past for EETT (Title IID) funds, 25% must be spent by districts on professional development:

As with EETT funding that is distributed through the traditional appropriations process, school district recipients must use at least 25 percent of their EETT stimulus funds to provide ongoing, sustained, and intensive professional development for their staff. This training should focus on the integration of advanced technologies into the curriculum and instruction, and on using these technologies to create new learning environments.

There are five key goals for which ARRA funds should be spent:

1. Drive results for students [Ugh. I just despise the word "drive" used in this context.]
2. Increase capacity [to raise test scores]
3. Accelerate reform [as articulated in ARRA documents, which IMHO really isn't any change in the status quo we've seen with NCLB "reforms"]
4. Avoid the “funding cliff” and improve productivity [be sustainable]
5. Foster continuous improvement [evidence required to show impact]

Among other things, the following should be emphasized in ARRA initiatives:
- public-private partnerships
- promote parental involvement and foster communication among students, parents, and teachers
- preparing one or more teachers as technology leaders who will help other teachers
- bonus payments to technology leaders

State reporting requirements fall into four categories for ARRA funds:

(1) the percentage of districts receiving EETT funds that have effectively and fully integrated technology; (2) the percentage of classrooms with internet access in high- and low-poverty schools; (3) the percentage of teachers who meet their state technology standards; and (4) the percentage of students who meet state technology standards by the end of the eighth grade.

— end of summary from eSchoolNews article —

Here in Oklahoma, I’m not sure how we’re going to ask schools to measure that they’ve “effectively and fully integrated technology.” Unlike Texas, which has campus-level as well as teacher “STAR charts” to measure technology integration, we don’t have anything similar. The STAR chart is criticized in some quarters because it is self-reported data, but at least it provides a framework for looking at technology integration on both the individual teacher and campus levels. Bottom line: It provides DATA. In Oklahoma, we don’t have anything like the STAR charts. I’m going to a LoTI Administrator’s workshop in Kansas next week on Monday and will be thinking a lot about these issues, I’m sure. Dean Mantz wrote a good post last week about the ways LoTi has been redesigned as “Levels of Teaching Innovation.” I’m eager to learn more in person Monday.

I’m also uncertain how we (in Oklahoma) are going to meet reporting requirement four, measuring “the percentage of students who meet state technology standards by the end of the eighth grade.” To my knowledge (again unlike Texas) we don’t have state technology standards. We do have a few technology standards scattered throughout the 3000+ other grade level and content area standards for students, but we do NOT have “technology standards.” Perhaps it’s time we established some in Oklahoma?

I really don’t think the establishment of more standards is the path we should take in seeking to advance the learning revolution. I still have mixed feelings about our federal push to spend our way out of our recession (see my May09 post on this as well for more background) but I’m pleased we’re seeing more money for educational technology in my own state.

We desperately need more funding for educational technology resources AND professional development in all of our districts. (Boy could I and other facilitators of our COV project tell you some stories…..)

Texas announced their T3 grant program for ARRA funds back in May. Here in Oklahoma, we haven’t seen our edtech competitive grant RFP released yet. I’m expecting that now we have these federal guidelines, we should see it soon.

Whatever the content of that RFP and whatever districts receive these funds, let’s hope they choose to utilize them “well.” In my view, that means far more than simply purchasing more electronic whiteboards and student response systems. Instead, it means focusing on the 3 C’s of 21st century literacy: Creating, Communicating, and Collaborating. It means purchasing technologies and investing in professional development with teachers which encourages truly student-centered learning, where teachers are facilitators and not simply lecturers, worksheet managers, and prison guards. It means 1:1 learning for students and teachers, with an accompanying pedagogical revolution in teaching practices.

The hour of the learning revolution draws nigh. Who shall answer the call?

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arra, edtech, loti, oklahoma, texas, funding, funds, measure, assess, assessment

Federal Guidance for ARRA Funds Released originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 29, 2009.

First, “The Back of the Napkin” by Dan Roam.

Second, “Made To Stick” by Dan & Chip Heath.

I’ve already read (and LOVE) Sir Ken Robinson’s book, “The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything.”

Both “Back of the Napkin” and “Made to Stick” look like quick reads that would be great catalysts for thinking about learning as well as engagement. Key quotations cited by Ric:

Memory is the residue of thought.

also:

The four Cs of an effective story: Causality, Conflict, Complications, and Character. All of these wrap around action wherein the storyteller shows rather than tells a story.

Bring forth thy storychasers, catalysts of the learning revolution.

Technorati Tags:
book, change, creativity, education, leadership, learning, reform, stories, storytelling, books, visualization, memory

Learning, memory, stories, and books to read originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 21, 2009.

This podcast is a recording of Dean Mantz and Brian Richter’s presentation on May 2, 2009, at the PodStock 2009 conference titled, “Integrating Podcasting into the Classroom Using Moodle.” The session description was: How you use podcasting in the classroom-Integrating them into the class using moodle. This will include a quick lesson on how to do a Drop.io cellphone podcast. Dean’s bio in the PodStock09 program was: Dean Mantz is currently at USD 376 in Sterling, Kansas as their Network Coordinator. One of the biggest benefits of taking this position is getting to work with my wife and be in the same school district as both of my children. As a teacher I was responsible for developing an Exploring Technology module class. I also taught American History. In 2000, I assisted in the development of the Rice County Technology Academy. The academy provided opportunities for students to enroll in a variety of career curriculums. Students could participate in A+ training, Webmaster curriculum, and develop themselves as Certified Cisco Network Associates. I have truly enjoyed my time working with kids and teachers on how to integrate technology. Brian’s PodStock09 bio was: Brian Richter has taught at Sterling High School since 1989 in the Social Science department. During that time, he has focused much of his time integrating the teaching of economics into world and US history. He has served as a staff teacher and consultant for the Kansas Council on Economic Education for the last six years and also serves as an Adjunct Professor at Sterling College in Sterling, Kansas. He was selected as the Kansas Economic Teacher of the Year in 2006. Brian graduated from Emporia State University in 1989 and earned his Master’s Degree in Teaching Social Sciences from ESU in 1995. He is following his father’s footsteps; Don Richter of Syracuse was elected to the Kansas Teacher Hall of Fame class of 1995.

Show Notes:

1. PodStock Session Notes from Dean Mantz on the PodStock Ning
2. Moodle
3. PodStock Ning
4. NiceNet
5. Sterling Online Learning Community
6. Blue Snowball
7. iPod Touch and Thumbtack mic I would suggest either audiomemos or iTalk (free applications).
8. SanDisk Sansa m250 2GB MP3 player
9. Skype and Supertintin or Pretty May Recorder
10. Tony Vincent’s Podcasting Booklet Podcasting_Booklet.pdf
11. Podcasting Rubric TnC Podcast Rubric.pdf
12. Pre-service student PSA podcasts These are pre-service podcasts created based on public service announcements based on educational issues.
13. Interviews with students about technology and their projects.Mantz’s Mission podcasts
14. Podcasting and Education – January 2008 article from Campus Technology magazine
15. Mantz Mission: Dean’s Blog
16. Dean Mantz on Ustream
17. Dean Mantz on Twitter
18. Dean Mantz on Classroom 2.0
19. Sterling College
20. USD 376 in Sterling, Kansas

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Podcast319: Integrating Podcasting into the Classroom Using Moodle by Dean Mantz and Brian Richter (PodStock2009) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 1, 2009.

Our current economic crisis could be “the perfect storm” for educational technology, open source solutions, instructional design, blended professional development models, etc.

all kinds of discussions and research today on communities of practice
- links to whole language
- the middle school concept: groups, pods, group planning
- we’ve been doing these sorts of things for awhile

We now have this technology thing” going on, students interacting, trying to engage them, and those two things coming together as PLNs (personal learning networks)
- I heard some people ask about PLNs yesterday, so here is an explanation

Look at formal (peer-reviewed) and informal literature

P = professional and personal

L = learning

N = network, community, environment

Plurk seems to be stronger here in the Kansas educator network

brainstorming characteristics from participants:
- self-forming
- ad-hoc
- just in time
- explosive
- resource library
- tribe
- online

Can exist both F2F and online
- referring to this in “plurksburg”

Benefits of PLNs to Educators
- I would not be here but-for Plurk
- Plurk in my experience is a tighter-knit group

the loss of isolation is a BIG benefit

I joined Twitter 2 years ago, and hated it initially
- initially I wanted to be very private, signing things as “Clif’s Notes”
- story of printer problem responses from tweet
- that is when I thought: this will be what you make of it
- I had seen plenty of people sharing what they are eating for breakfast on twitter
- I realized if I wanted to have conversations about education on twitter, then I would have to find those people

I work with the teachers directly at our university
- in prior life, I was an elementary teacher
- we had a faculty of 60 but just 1 other male
- I was very familiar with the isolation that can happen in schools

Twitter and Plurk level the playing field

I THINK THESE TOOLS CAN REALLY HUMANIZE COMMUNICATIONS

The PLNs have fast forwarded my learning in so many ways

From participants:
network is non-judgemental: ask questions, people respond
- you don’t have to always ask the stupid question, others ask them too!

filtering idea comes up a lot
- I don’t have to keep up with everything going on, I just watch it to come through my PLN, best things bubbles up to the top

lesson plan help
- on Sunday night I put out what I am teaching that week
- on Tuesday I look for results and all the ideas that come out
- so with a 48 hour timeperiod, I get a ton of help and resources
- really helps on not re-inventing the wheel!

Traditional Student PLNs may be the next frontier for us in educational technology
- we’ve used these for years: pods, teams, the school itself, classrooms, these can be PLNs in the traditional setting

anytime we are talking about impacting learning, we want to move up Bloom’s Taxonomy
- we find that a lot of our teaching happens at the fact/recall level of Bloom’s

for lesson plans, what’s on paper is one thing, people intend to move up beyond lower levels, but in practice we tend to fall back to this
- it’s easier to assess
- students don’t fight us as much (IT IS PASSIVE AND EASIER FOR EVERYONE!)
- we should be striving for the higher levels

Andrew Churches has reworked this as Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy

One thing you can do with your online PLN is publish
- you know there is an audience out there
- when you start publishing, kids get more engaged in the process

from audience:
- kids can tend to self-assess more and raise their game for the audience
- kids really willing to draw others into the network, want to share
- kids tend to be more willing to do the work when they are publishing for an outside audience
- kids are actually writing all the time
- when kids write and publish for their peers, that makes a huge difference
- kids bringing writing to the teacher and asking, “Do I sound smart here?”

kids take ownership of their learning
- I don’t mean to oversell this because worksheets (specifically in math) do have their place
- the key, however, is that those aren’t the only strategies that we should be using
- I’ve never seen a child take ownership over a multiplication fact sheet in the same way they take ownership over writing and publishing online
- we are hearing more talking today about “higher order teaching” not just “higher order thinking”

I am skeptical that we ever REALLY know what someone knows, we just see what is demonstrated

When something gets published, we can start witnessing the process they go through
- it is like a data trail
- we can see the decisionamking they are going thru
- decisionmaking typically gets into higher order thinking
- there is a lot in that direction we should and will explore more

Whole idea of critique: comment, DIGG (voting/rating), starring system
- all of that is critical thinking

what happens with middle school students when things go public and they know they will start looking at each others work
- the critique dynamics change, can be in some positive ways but also negative

did a project where kids designed a game on paper with storyboards, and then developed the games back at school
- then brought developed games back to kids
- kids got to play them, share them, add ideas
- kids wanted to refine and improve their own games
- this is the kind of thing we are seeing in our own PLNs

Benefits of online PLNs to students

Lisa Thumann (@lthumann on Twitter)
- sharing an audio recording from Lisa talking about how we’ve generally valued and used experts to bring in their voices and perspectives to the classroom

someone discussing edmodo and other networking tools, giving other students that may not typically share their ideas/voice being empowered to do so with digital PLN tools

From Ginger Lumen:
- gives learning in the classroom not just an x/y axis but also the z axis
- much more depth

I wish I could have grown up learning in this world
- I grew up on the farm, and my dad was a carpenter
- I learned math hands-on, outside the classroom
- the physical setup of schools tends to box us in physically and mentally

YES, I THINK THIS IDEA OF GETTING OUT AND TRANSCENDING THE TRADITIONAL BOUNDARIES OF THE CLASSROOM IS A REAL KEY

Ability to individualize learning
- filtering things that meets your learning style

“I has a cheesburger” is a big part of some people’s PLNs today – not mine

Indivualizing your PLN is key

Multiple representations of understanding is key
- I promised a friend that I would share this

I grew up in the Mississippi delta, went away for college, came back there to teach
- most of my kids from very tough situations
- had a student I had taught the year before in math, he didn’t pass, and I was irate about it, he had already repeated twice, as a 6th grader was repeating for his 3rd time
- the next year I persuaded the teacher to get that student again for both math and science (state law encourages student to NOT get the same student so teaching is repeated)
- story of circuit switch kids, this student and his partner finished first
- I was blown away with his understanding of how to create circuits and how well he understood it
- his self esteem was in the floor generally
- I asked him to help others with their circuits around the room
- later that week I gave the test, graded them, and the student had failed miserably with something like a 20%
- I did know about his background and home life
- I thought maybe he was up all night at home, something going on
- I slowly realized that he was not failing my class, I am failing him, because he understands this topic but can’t represent it in the medium I’ve chosen for assessment
- at that point I promised myself (this was a paradigm shift) that I/we acknowledge how people express and understand things in different ways

THIS IS A GREAT STORY AND A POWERFUL WAY TO MAKE THE CASE FOR DIFFERENTIATED LEARNING AND ASSESSMENT

one more thing about multiple representations
- if you are going to let students express themselves in multiple ways, we as teachers are really going to have to design instruction carefully
- what ARE the objectives you want to achieve?
- do students have to write something as a paragraph? could they do a YouTube video or a podcast?
- this is going to challenge us as designers to become better and more purposeful as we design our lessons

Favorite benefit of online networks: Together we know more
- crowdsourcing

convergence of digital technologies becoming seamless with teaching and learning
- less separated: like we used to do with MS office, “today we are going to teach PPT”
- those tools are becoming (and will become) more seamless where we focus less on the tools
- bring in that PLN element where we can collaborate, publish, critique together
- can really boost higher order thinking in the classroom

Examples of how you can setup your own PLN in the classroom
- Ning
- Fliggo: setup your own video network
- Edublogs
- PBworks
- wetpaint
- seesmic (like twitter with video, you get 60 seconds, similar to 12 seconds)
- Edmodo and ShoutEm – make your own private, school-based Twitter network

can make your network completely private or public
- safety and digital citizenship go hand in hand

what lies ahead
- the highlight of my day will be going to hear these young men talk about what they are doing with Wiis and hacking
- I am NOT a gamer
- I spent the Christmas break wearing out our new Wii with my kids
- I think we have yet to discover what gaming will mean for school learning
- all these social aspects

The smartphones
- there are others in addition to the iPhone
- what these will mean for our classrooms, our PLNs, we will have to wait and see

Other things discussed by participants:
- cloud-based computing
- geo-caching
- SecondLife
- PS3 has something similar to SL called “Home”

OK, CLEARLY WE NEED TO GET MARIO-KART FOR OUR WII!

Semantic web: web 3.0
- filtering, so things likely to be of interest to you show up more intuitively

closing thought: it will be what you make it
- it would be possible that you could bring in many of these things, and still JUST challenge kids at the knowledge/comprehension level of learning
- we are still going to have to be very purposeful with learning
- responsible digital citizenship, safety issues
- you get to customize and individualize it
- how restrictive you are as an administrative

Special thinks to Michael Grant from Univ of Memphis also

Join my PLN and let’s learn together! clifmims.com/pln
- I am a big diigo bookmark user

Question on how to impact pre-service teachers and faculty
- from @dmantz: let others

from Kevin Honeycutt: some of our new teachers are resentful when you ask them to change their PERSONAL space (facebook) into a professional space
- young people have been free-range learners online
- many young people don’t view Facebook as a personal learning network

From Michael Grant: we have to help “young ones” leverage these tools beyond entertainment

Many not sure what this means to look professional online

Literature shows people need a personally meaningful connection to the tool when we teach edtech
- in my past course, in the same 3 hour course I had to do lesson planning AND technology integration in the same course, lesson planning wasn’t anywhere else in their 128 hours of required courses (undergradate)
- it was really hard to get that personal experience: putting together a slideshow about their vacation, a PPT about their boyfriend, etc – without those experiences they don’t ‘get it’ or get hooked
- I am a big believer in FLOW theory (Mihály Csíkszentmihályi)

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pln, clifmims, #podstock09, education, technology, learning, wichita, kansas

Using Digital Technologies and Personal Learning Networks to Enhance Learning by Clif Mims originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 2, 2009.

Choose the right tool to get the job done
- we have used VoiceThread and Mixbook a lot more this year

Study on “Blood on the River” with VoiceThread
- teacher-created Voicethreads, recorded markers throughout, asking students to make predictions throughout the book or make a reflection on what we had just read
- collaborated with another classroom via our Polycom videoconference unit

Kids used free Mac program Skitch to create their icons/avatars in VoiceThread

Kimberly Herron’s MobileMe website: Herron’s Happenings (6th grade)

Tamara Padfield’s MobileMe website: Padfield Publications (5th grade)

Linley Voboril’s MobileMe website: Voboril Vibes (5th grade)

Seamless integration was a big goal for us when we went 1:1 in our classrooms
- engagement is the key
- hands on learning experiences like dissecting owl pellets have been big for us as well

Colonial Commercials project
- we used the green screen feature using PhotoBooth on our Macs for the first time
- with Leopard or newer you can do it
- got a big piece of green material

Had the “Granite Awards 2009″ project this year
- gave kids rocks and they did many different kinds of tests
- big assembly, like a fashion show for rock re-enactment, with music, DVD created

End of year 6th grade project: Virtual Museum for 6th graders with Google SketchUp
- awareness of audience really led kids to realize they could not plagiarize, copy/paste others ideas
- easybib and bibme.com are great for formatting bibliographies

link is on my website to the Ancient Civilizations project
- Project directions included different roles for each group

Students were assigned into 8 groups of 5.  Each group consisted of a/an      Author – wrote an elementary level book on government and social classes using mixbook.
Geologist – created a hands on and online game about the daily life, resources, and landscape using Smarttech Notebook.
Cartographer – Created a map of civilization, located 3 architectural locations researched by architect in Google Earth, and created flight tour of locations inserting map pic and weblinks in Google Earth.
Archaeologists – Created a podcast in Garageband of 3 artifacts researched relating the artifacts with the civilizations culture and religions.     Architect – Created a webpage using iWeb telling about the architectural structures and resources used to make them relating their importance in the culture and religions of the civilization.

Biomes Project

Letters to the President Project
- students asking for a law to stop people cutting down the rain forest trees
- story of a student who is normally not a fluent reader in front of the class, asking to record his letter on his own with his Macbook so it could be included in the teachers’ keynote presentation, the student asked to do this, and his audio file was fantastic!

IT WOULD BE INTERESTING TO JUXTAPOSE A LETTER LIKE THIS WITH A DISCUSSION WITH STUDENTS IN BRAZIL, DISCUSSING DEVELOPMENT, HEATING AND COOKING IN VILLAGES WITHOUT ELECTRICITY, ETC.

Recognizing the importance of role models in the classroom
- started a community connections project
- contacted local leaders and
- started as a lunch once per month
- talking about “8 keys of success,” part of the Quantum Learning Model, also Boys Town social skills
- Bently (our tech integrator who has been with us for 2 years) suggested doing this as a geo-caching activity, students went to see and visit each community mentor who talked with them and gave them something, quotation, information – was a great way to start the school year

Had a veteran note writing project
- Veterans were so touched by students taking time to contact them
- Christmas letters to Veterans

Now planning a “Got Canvas?” project on going green
- our platform is reusing canvas shopping bags
- our research has been very eye opening on usage of plastic bags
- key is reduce: not just about recycling
- we spent an hour picking up trash in our community
- 5th grade field trip yesterday was to the dump / landfill: with all this background knowledge the kids had was so eye opening, how much we waste
- McPherson Kansas produces 100 tons of trash per day! (200,000 pounds of trash, every single day!)
– is that not just staggering?!

We are really excited to not only see what happens at the end of this year with this, but also what the 4th graders coming up next year as 5th graders will want to do
- if you can get kids involved in things like that, where they are passionate, you are going to change their lives

Technorati Tags:
#podstock09, podcasting, technology, inman, kansas, essdack, pbl, project, based, learning, elementary

Get Out of Your FUNK, Cut the JIVE! Make Your Classroom Come Alive!!! originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 1, 2009.

This podcast is a recording of my opening keynote session at the 2009 eTechOhio conference, held in Columbus, Ohio, on February 2, 2009. This is the audio-only mp3 version, a video podcast version is available on the eTechOhio09 portal in iTunesU Ohio. Check the podcast shownotes for a direct link to iTunes. The official conference program description for this session was: As Thomas Friedman persuasively argued in this book “The World is Flat,” we live in a very different and rapidly changing economic and cultural environment. Schools need to change to prepare students for the dynamic opportunities of the 21st century workforce. Collaboration in most of our schools today is still called “cheating.” Our factory model of transmission-based education must be transformed into one where learners regularly collaborate, access and “remix” digital information, and extend their learning beyond the traditional bell schedule. One to one laptop initiatives, where every student and teacher have wireless computing devices; schools and libraries becoming community learning hubs offering public wireless and wired connectivity to the Internet; and the deregulation of education which frees learners to spend time in real-world, problem-based and project-based learning need to become hallmarks of education in the 21st century. This presentation shares this vision for reinventing education: Designing School 2.0, and offers suggestions for how civic leaders can move toward this vision at local levels.

Show Notes:

1. Presentation slides (PDF)
2. Presentation slides on SlideShare
3. Presentation Video Podcast on iTunesU Ohio (498 MB – 82 min)
4. Presentation Resources and Referenced Links

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Podcast312: Reinventing Education for the 21st Century (Designing School 2.0) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 19, 2009.

Two nights ago, Sarah wrote a post on our family learning blog about the impending 3rd grade state mandated tests without prompting from anyone. That night at dinner, and again last night, it was apparent she was upset and really feeling anxious. We discussed her feelings and how she could deal with those feelings. Her brother reminded her that “It’s a just a test of the minimums that everyone should be able to do.” I think that is a good perspective to have, but it didn’t seem to help Sarah.

Today at school, Sarah called in the morning that her stomach was hurting. She ended up coming home and spending the day there. She actually threw up shortly after she got home, but she didn’t run a fever or show any other subsequent, outward signs of being ill. She stated she thought the problem was her worries about the test. Unfortunately, the tests aren’t given for another two weeks. I actually go into school in the morning for parent volunteer training as a test monitor. Sarah is going to have to deal with these anxieties, but so far I don’t think we’re providing her with very good suggestions for how to do that besides giving her love, support, and encouragement.

Some kids have test anxiety, and some kids don’t, or at least some show few if any outward signs of their anxieties. Sarah has a wonderful teacher, and my wife visited with her today after school about the situation. I am confident Sarah is going to receive some extra support and TLC at school, and hopefully that will help. We all need to have high expectations for our kids when it comes to their achievement at school and their learning, but it is unfortunate that our current climate of high stakes testing can become operationalized in the lives of children with anxiety that leads to things like today.

Test Anxiety Woes originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 1, 2009.

Last night, Alexander asked me to review his paperwork for the week and sign his folder. He was particularly proud of a very challenging social studies test which he’d aced, as well as a writing assignment he completed: A time-capsule letter to a future student at his school in 10 years. After reviewing all his papers and grades, we spread them all out on the floor of our living room. Several of these documents were multi-page, stapled together. This is a week’s worth of worksheets from his school, sent home this week in the “Thursday folder.”

Alexander and his sister DO attend a wonderful school, but in many ways it defines “a worksheet school.” The students DO participate in wonderful musical programs, participate in memorable class-wide events like the re-enactment of the Oklahoma land run, and participate in living history museums. They also have time each day for recess, which is more than the Texas school we left three years ago provided for students in grades three and above. (That was due to high-stakes testing pressure – The school was “exemplary” but they still didn’t have time to let 9 year olds have recess during the day.)

At our current Oklahoma elementary school, “learning evidence” from the week is communicated to parents almost exclusively via the “Thursday folder” and the worksheets it contains. Our school is very common in following this procedure in Oklahoma. This is what kids do in most schools today in 2009: worksheets. This is how most schools communicate with parents about the “learning” their children are allegedly doing in class each day: by sending home worksheets.

My problem with this situation? It’s twofold. First, many of these worksheets are stupid, irrelevant, busy work. Second, worksheets tell me VERY LITTLE about the things my child understands, perceives, knows, and wonders about. Worksheets are almost useless to me as a parent interested in the learning activities and developmental progress of my child, compared to alternative forms of assessment. It’s good to see how Alexander’s writing skills are developing, including his handwriting. But it saddens me to see worksheets like this which he’s spent HOURS in some cases completing.

There are SO many more valuable ways to spend heartbeats than completing word search puzzles. This is busy work, and I think assignments like this contribute very little, if at all, to meaningful learning experiences for my children inside and outside of school.

Included in the assortment of worksheets sent home this week in the Thursday folder were several pages about science and the unit on light they’ve been studying. I asked Alexander if he’d done any experiences during the unit on light. He said yes initially, but further questioning revealed HE had not done the experiments, he had watched the teacher demonstrate some things in front of the class. He had not formulated ANY hypotheses and tested them with experimentation and observation. How is my son supposed to learn the scientific method and become the engineer he aspires to be, if his school does not provide him with REGULAR opportunities to learn the scientific method by PRACTICING the scientific method? (David Thornburg’s message from CoSN09 burns in my mind when I ask these questions.) The answer? Like many things (including writing with social media and learning about hyperlinked writing) it’s up to us as parents to teach these things at home. What about other kids whose parents are not focused on these issues? Who is going to “turn these elementary age kids on” to science? If we really care about STEM, why are we not insisting on a hands-on approach to science in our schools which involves regular experimentation instead of endless note taking and worksheets?

Alexander recorded this short, 90 second video explaining about his Thursday folder and demonstrating what happens at the end of Thursday night after we’ve looked at the pile of worksheets: They get thrown into the trash can. (We did save his social studies test he was so proud of, however, and put it on the fridge.)

I dearly wish our school district was willing to embrace the constructive potential of social media to help students “show what they know” and more meaningfully document their journeys of learning with images, audio, and video than anyone can ever do with mere worksheets. After Alexander shared his “time capsule” letter with me last night, I asked him to quickly record it onto a short, three image VoiceThread for which he selected the photos. This took five minutes for us to do together, and I posted it to our family learning blog. His grandparents in Kansas were able to listen to him and watch this today, and told us on the phone they loved it. They hadn’t realized he’s planning to major in robotics at Kansas State in college! I hadn’t either until I read his essay. Without this technological documentation of his learning, there is little chance his Kansas grandparents would have EVER seen, read, or heard this letter. Thanks to technology sharing tools like VoiceThread, however, they did and now you can too. This is extremely important and valuable stuff to Alexander and to our family. And, it’s free to do.

We need to get digital tools into the hands of ALL our students in grades three and up as soon as possible, as well as our teachers. This morning I had a chance to briefly examine a $200 Lenovo S10 Netbook owned by James Deaton, and I marveled at the size, capabilities, and price point of this device.

Hat tip to Dawn Danker for taking the first photo in this series of me with the netbook.

When are my own children going to be able to use technologies like these IN SCHOOL here in Oklahoma? The clock is ticking. They’re learning plenty about how to use technology tools here at home, but we have much more limited opportunities to digitally create, collaborate, and communicate compared to what could be accomplished during the school day.

I have my fingers crossed that our state’s educational technology stimulus money will be used in an innovative way to empower students in a few more Oklahoma school districts (in addition to Crescent, Howe, and Lowery) to learn in 1 to 1 environments.

Meanwhile, we’ll continue to watch the stream of worksheets come home each week in the Thursday folders.

Technorati Tags:
assessment, learning, edmond, oklahoma, school, science, stem, hypothesis, handson, thornburg, lenovo, s10, netbook, technology, voicethread, onetoone, 1to1, pbl, assess, measure, worksheet, folder, thursday

The Thursday Folder and Worksheet Measured Learning originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 27, 2009.

4 options to sabotage Wes’ keynote tomorrow
- when you hear the terms “pedagogy” or “digital native” get up and whoop!
- big boxes will be by the stage, shortly after the keynote starts they will get up and leave
- 2 minutes before the keynote: the video “Dancing Man” will go on the big screen
- then we can all dance to Matt’s video

Allanah King’s Collaborative Dancing project (on YouTube)

900 teachers and kids around the world are joining in

My school: 5 teachers, about 100 kids, 2005 started ICT cluster group, at that stage I had a computer at home for email
- and Google searches!
- went to a workshop on learning management systems, put us in buzz groups and took a photo, in the time it took for us to come back he’d used Blogger to put our photo on the Internet

I can do this sort of thing well
- now I working with kids to help them discover what they do well

THIS IS WHAT SIR KEN ROBINSON IS TALKING ABOUT IN HIS BOOK “THE ELEMENT”

Then connected with a teacher in Wales
- through audio podcasting
- 12 hour time delay makes things difficult
- worked things out very early or late
- blogging together

Woman in New York wanted to learn about web 2
- last week of school for us
- videoing water going down the toilet in the northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere

A few years ago, someone shared a link to becoming an Adobe Educator
- got to go to Australia for several days, there are 3 of us from NZ
- last year was in SF, I just had to pay airfare
- lots was over my head, it can be very good to be with people in over your head tho
- free tablet from Wacom, free copy of Adobe CS4 for me
- this is where I come from

We are moving to a digital portfolio at school
- we want it to be accessible
- so we are going to PDF format, with a free reader you can use it with any platform

Then I found out if you buy Adobe Acrobat Pro you can do very clever things with your PDFs
- normally PDFs are just text
- but with the Pro version, you can embed videos in it

Talk with a neighbor with your experiences with using PDFs

You know as an Apple user life is easy, you know on the dark side of the force things are more difficult…

Office 2007 has free download for PDF creator, but it is not a true PDF, it is a Microsoft XPS format so as soon as you start talking about embedding video that is broken with the Office exporter
- CutePDF is a Windows-based

Man at Edsoft at the conference says $115 for full Adobe Acrobat version in NZ

After opening PDF in Acrobat
- click on Multimedia tab at the top for 3D tool, Flash tool, Sound tool, Video tool
- example doing video: select a movie, Acrobat converts it to Flash format and embeds it
- example inserting mp3 audio file (makes an embedded audio player on the document

My latest and greatest find for $80 – Cytek makes this
- EZspeak
- it is yellow and fun
- you can record

Acrobat has an option to create a PDF from a webpage
- you can actually save a website as a PDF, if it is a big website it can take a long time
- very cool for my students to be able to take a snapshot of their websites/blogs and add that to their learning portfolio

THIS IS LIKE WEB WHACKER USED TO BE: IT HAS AN OPTION TO CAPTURE MULTIPLE LEVELS
- THIS IS A GREAT WAY TO ADDRESS THE CONCERN THAT CERTAIN WEBSITES WHICH CONTAIN STUDENT INFORMATION MAY NOT STAY/REMAIN

Features I use of Adobe Pro
- create from website
- add comments
- add multimedia

Next step is the digital portfolio side of things

At Appleby School we are now using Google Apps for our domain
- so we log into Google by logging in with our school email accounts

Showing how you can upload a PDF and share it via Google Docs
- embedded videos in PDFs only play after you download them, they don’t play directly in the browser as you look at the document in Google Docs

We are a five teacher school so we don’t have a lot of extra money for commercial solutions, we are saving only to Google Docs at this point for many things

THIS WORK IS REALLY GOOD. IT REMINDS ME OF THE NEED FOR AN INTEGRATED LEARNING MANAGEMENT SOLUTION WHICH WILL SHOW A TIMELINE OF WORK. RECOVERY.GOV IS A DRUPAL-BASED SITE THAT IS USING AN OPEN SOURCE TIMELINE TOOL THAT HAS SOME PROMISE IN THIS REGARD. I THINK USING ACROBAT PRO IN THIS WAY IS GREAT, BUT THIS IS A TOOL FOR CREATING DIGITAL ARTIFACTS. GOOGLE DOCS DOES NOT AGGREGATE CONTENT AND ENABLE A TIMELINE-BASED PORTAL FOR CONTENT. www.allofme.com IS A WEBSITE THAT CREATES A TIMELINE-BASED VIEW OF PUBLISHED CONTENT. THIS IDEA NEEDS TO BE INTEGRATED INTO A WEB 2 PORTFOLIO SOLUTION.

http://fairfieldintermediate.wetpaint.com IS AN ELECTRONIC PORTFOLIO-CLASS WIKI WHICH ERIN FREEMAN HAS CREATED AND USING USING WITH HER YEAR 6-8 AGE STUDENTS. HER CLASS BLOG IS ON http://ffis.blogspot.com. I AM GOING TO TRY AND GO TO HER SESSION THIS AFTERNOON.

GREAT JOB ALLANAH!!!

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Creating and Managing Digital Portfolios Using Adobe Acrobat by Allanah King originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 25, 2009.

Pam’s website is:
www.hooked-on-thinking.com

In preparation for this presentation, we asked for and collected a diverse and rather dodgy collection
- now showing a video
- going to start

When you put an ampersand between two words you actually change the words
- hards to think about learning and places of learning without teaching
- learning comes to be something you get
- teachers are people who help you get it
- schools are the places you go to get
- this is an unfortunate view, because it privileges that form of learning
- in reality learning is everywhere, it is not just our domain
- in privileging it, we contain it

I’ve been extremely fortunate to spend time the last few years visiting and learning at the Bob Reed Dementia Unit at Ranfurly Veterans Home in Auckland

We (as educators) are working with kids who are developing

Learning with my 92 year old grandpa, an incorrigible flirt
- he was having to learn to walk again
- resistant to the use of technology
- can get frightened and angry
- desire to do things independently

So with grandpa sitting in the chair what could I do?
- medicate him
- force him to move
- or do what the caregivers do: hold hands and say follow my breasts, and follow my ….
- this is not a strategy I suggest to use with your students, it did work however with my grandpa

So how do we work with students who are frightened

Often we get fretful when things go wrong and we’re not sure how to attack disengagement
- high levels of students leaving who are not literate

Survey question: When teaching and learning is not going well in the institution, should we?
- get rid of school
- get rid of teachers
- find a ‘new way’ of doing school
- introduce a re-vamped curriculum
- change the teaching and learning interactions within existing schools
- go for something we have yet to imagine
- deny … deny … deny

I know…
- Teachers are people given authority by the institution, they decide what is valid and legitimate knowledge and sanction how it might be obtained
- ICTs or eLearning allow young people to bypass teachers altogether

REfer to whitepaper that has just come out: “Living and Learning with New Media:. Summary of Findings from the. Digital Youth Project” (PDF)

Should we tilt at:
1- schools without teachers?
2- Responsibility and obsolescence?
3- Increasing the reliance on peer feedback?

Many of you have students doing peer assessment with good results
- should we do this with teachers

Hattie, J. Visible Learning 2009
- problem is 80% of student-provided feedback is incorrect

I know school is a technology and IST is a technology
- we are trying to crunch two technologies together

Postman argues that technology is never neutral
- so perhaps we should not ask “how is this enhancing things” or how is it harming

Keynote yesterday said

Problem of the media and media narratives
- quote from Sherry Turkle

Report on critical thinking skills dropping, visual

John Hattie’s research on effect size really fascinates me
- says just “fronting up with kids” is enough to get a 1.5 effect size (any intervention can cause a change)
Visible Learning 2009 p. 220 – 236

When I hear people complain they do not have an interactive whiteboard, sometimes I say aren’t you lucky

my desire for ICT is that it would connect people

we still have sexism, racism, homophobia and bullying behaviors
- they continue to thrive

technology allows us to distance ourselves from others as much as it allows us to connect
- also allows us to go into an echo chamber, and can corrupt our sense of what is right and happening

reference to article “I Pay Them to Leave” about Charlie Sheen

I know I don’t know…
- how kids can leave with so little learning with so much compulsory teaching going on

NZC Essence Statement for Science: “In science, students explore how both the natural physical world and science itself work so that….”

Look at research results “Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) data on the science achievement of 4th – 8th grade students”
- media makes it look like our students are actually doing worse

How the ministry describes how we are doing: worse than half
- Author Robyn Caygill, NZ Ministry of Education, Dec 2008

What did interest me was how many of the kids who could not even reach the baseline

Now doing a demonstration with teachers standing up, first two rows, then the first four rows
- asking are we happy with that many people “not getting it”

so now with about 8 rows on one half of our room standing: are we happy with this many people as a percentage not getting it

We have an education system where 13% of our kids can’t get basic sciences after 5 years with us, and we have 15% of kids not getting basic maths

Key Competencies: Capabilities for living and lifelong learning
- The New Zealand Curriculum identifies five key competencies…

The fact remains the data is there and we are skeptical about it

“There is nothing right in my left brain, and nothing left in my right brain.”

I really don’t think you can reduce learning to so many decimal points like John’s effect size studies

When we look to things we so deeply believe in our practice, there is no reliable data and evidence for it

We should be thinking critially about everything

It is very comfortable to talk with teachers about class sizes
- when you start to talk about what I should change about teaching and learning, that is much less comfortable
- when we start to talk about how we can use evidence to lift kids reading 40 – 70% increases
- making what we are doing thoughtful and not based on anecdotal

Just suggesting we should have success criteria for teachers is a dangerous thing to propose
- that is a shame

Effect size: teacher as an activator vs teacher as a facilitator

From “Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analysis relating to achievement” by J. Hattie 2009

We need a practice based on evidence not on antidote

I AGREE WE NEED MUCH BETTER ASSESSMENT. AN IMPORTANT KEY IS WE NEED TO NOT SIMPLY FOCUS ON THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE EASY TO ASSESS AND MEASURE

We need to ask if the school is the best place to earn

“A sixth of a GCSE in 60 minutes”
- an intense powerpoint repeated 3 times, interrupted by juggling, using that method kids are having better test results

YET WHAT IS THE LONG TERM LEARNING IMPACT FOLLOWING THAT TEACHING METHOD?

ICT changes the way students assess themselves outside of the school

Like edubloggers which rise to the top, give them identify
- how could we use that in school
- how could their identities be shaped by external comments

Now we will look at the “revamp curriculum” approach
- the new NZ curriculum is a way to look at our practice
- I love the way it starts with a vision, and starts with non-negotiable principles
- says all instruction should be consistent with these non-negotiables

Collaborative wiki: Ideas for developing a school-based curriculum aligned to the NZC Principles

hooked-on-thinking.com/wiki/doku.php

So how do we help students learn to learn?
- better know themselves as learners?

The “L” word
- we’ve been all around the country now asking teachers how do you know if your students are learning
- common cute answers, we all have different shifts on this
- how helpful to students is this?
- “learning is doing something new” etc

If you ask kids what learning is sometimes they are better at this than adults
- everyone is different
- if you want to bring clarity to this..

Some say we just need to focus on the NZC curriculum
- others suggest a toolbox approach

Now I think the most powerful argument is: help students look at their strengths and weaknesses as they are learning

Effective teaching and learning occur when BOTH my students and I can exmaplin
- what we are doin
- how it is going
- what we can and should do next

Each one of these parts are sufficient but not

We want a brutal way of looking at learning: use the solo taxonomy (Biggs and Collis 1982)
- a structured overview of learning outcomes

THIS IS A REALLY INTERESTING KEYNOTE. THIS DOES NOT HAVE MUCH TO DO WITH TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION. PERHAPS THIS IS GOOD TO HAVE THE FOCUS ON LEARNING RATHER THAN SIMPLY THE USES OF TECHNOLOGY. THIS IS NOT WHAT I WAS EXPECTING FOR A KEYNOTE, HOWEVER. INTERESTING. LOTS OF TEXT AND DIAGRAMS ON THESE SLIDES. SOME USE OF LARGE IMAGES TO HIGHLIGHT IDEAS. LOTS OF TEXT SLIDES… I AM WONDERING WHAT PAM’S RELATIONSHIP IS TO THE NATIONAL EDUCATIONAL AUTHORITIES?

Now sharing the solo taxonomy
- this is not Pam’s link to this, but summarizes this approach I think: www.learningandteaching.info/learning/solo.htm

Now showing videos of students and teachers talking about the ways they are using the SOLO Taxonomy to identify learning outcomes
- a method for students to identify their own learning outcomes, themselves

Need to develop a common language across our schools to help students co-create rubrics, be involved with assessment
- look at all the thinking strategies
- use self and peer assessment using HOT Maps and SOLO coded rubrics and success criteria
- these can all provide ways to help students to learn

THEN we can pick up ICTs, as we understand our learning outcomes
- then we can use Xtimeline or VoiceThread
- then ICT can really leverage our ability to reach these learning outcomes

Then we can get effect sizes even bigger than those you see in John’s research

Then make sure you teaching planning includes activities coded in these ways
- relational learning experiences
- extended abstract learning experiences
- more

Then our kids in NZ can learn how to learn, and can be free from the ampersand thing we talked about at the start

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learningatschool, Learning@School09, L@S09, #lats09, technology, learning, pamhook, assessment, education, newzealand

Hooked on Learning by Pam Hook originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 25, 2009.

…I haven’t pored over the various state standards at this point, but it seems to me that there are two possibilities: they are substantially similar, or they are substantially different. If they are similar, this is a trivial problem. Sit some folks down and make a database mapping them to each other and propose a unified consensus document. There is plenty of money floating around to do it, if it is possible. But if they aren’t very different anyhow, why does this make such a big difference?

From what I know and have been told, the answer is state standards ARE very similar. Certainly there are marked differences when it comes to state history requirements, but when it comes to core content areas the standards “map out” in very similar ways.

Some of the best people to ask on this subject are the developers of aligned, national digital curriculum tools and website resources like NetTrekker and Thinkfinity. I had a conversation recently with a vendor representative who said the projects they’ve done involving national curricular alignments definitely revealed that Algebra or Language Arts standards in Michigan looked a lot like they do in Florida or Texas.

Who benefits from the diverse array of state standards we have currently? I don’t intend to sound like a broken record, but I think the answer is the same as I cited in my reference to online testing beneficiaries in the post “Since when is a “D” Grade considered good and improving in Oklahoma?” from last week. Pearson. I’d hypothesize they love the fact individual states continue to pay them money to develop customized testing solutions for THEIR state standards. The taxpayers fork out the cash, the commercial testing companies rake in the cash, and the kids lose by being cheated out of individualized learning experiences in which creativity, imagination, expression and authentic assessment are valued. Am I oversimplifying things too much here?

I had a visit with a former KIPP teacher several years go who shared some interesting insights into the “scalability” question and issue with KIPP. His point, as I recall, was that you can’t codify and mandate visionary leadership as well as teaching passion. For the KIPP schools which are very successful, leadership and passion are key elements in the learning recipe. Every policymaker would like to discover, invent, or simply champion a “magic formula” for solving the problems which face schools and make all of them wonderful. The problem is, we don’t need a standardized “one size fits all” solution for our schools, because the students we serve are diverse and unique. What we need and our children deserve is a system which truly provides individualized education and learning opportunities. This DOES require visionary, caring, and passionate educators.

The “dead wood problem” which is discussed by Tom as well as Feinberg and Levin in their Washington Post op-ed piece is one of the biggest challenges facing educational reformers. It’s a fact: Some teachers remain in the classroom not because they love their jobs, love their kids, or are passionate about learning, they remain for the steady paycheck and the three months off in the summertime. Anyone who has spent a length of time teaching in our public schools has run into these types of teachers. It’s quite ironic that in our current economic climate, the “employee at will” nature of many business-world contracts is strikingly visible outside of schools, and the challenge posed by “dead wood teachers” who are unlikely to ever be fired or replaced in their jobs is as glaringly obvious as ever.

When I spoke with Will Richardson prior to the MASSCUE conference this past November, we briefly discussed the issue of national standards. At that point (and I assume still) he’s inclined to support the idea. I could support national standards, but under very limited circumstances. The conditions outlined by Dr. David Berliner in April 2006 are on the right track:

1. Teachers are involved in making them.
2. Educator professional organizations are involved in making them.
3. There are a small number of standards in each grade.
4. Standards are revisited often.

Unfortunately, however, I think conditions 1 and 2 above are operationally at cross-purposes with condition 3. Ask a group of math teachers to outline what kids need to know in their content area, and it’s very unlikely you’ll get a short or simple list. Perhaps this is because we’ve asked educators to create TACTICAL rather than STRATEGIC educational goals and standards. What we’ve ended up with is a confusing and ridiculously lengthy morass of requirements which it’s doubtful many people have ever even read in their entirety or understand fully.

This past Friday at our Celebrate Oklahoma Voices advisory committee meeting, we got into a discussion about whether or not submitted teacher and student videos should be correlated to state standards. Some attendees very strongly supported the inclusion of standards, because that is how many Oklahoma teachers design their lessons today and teach: Not by the curriculum or by the textbook, but by the standards. We have come to a place in education where in many classrooms, the standards have become the gospel. I was shocked to learn that in our state, we have about 3200 different standards across the K-12 grade spectrum. Imagine. Over 3000 different standards. Who do our legislators think they are kidding in passing these ridiculous laundry-lists of requirements? I would much rather have my students attend a school and live in a classroom where teachers as well as students strove to learn by the “Habits of Mind” of the Coalition of Essential Schools (CES) than by a laundry list of hundreds or thousands of standards. The CES Habits of Mind are:

The habit of perspective: Organizing an argument, read or heard or seen, into its various parts, and sorting out the major from the minor matter within it. Separating opinion from fact and appreciating the value of each.

The habit of analysis: Pondering each of these arguments in a reflective way, using such logical, mathematical, and artistic tools as may be required to render evidence. Knowing the limits as well as the importance of such analysis.

The habit of imagination: Being disposed to evolve one’s own view of a matter, searching for both new and old patterns that serve well one’s own and other’s current and future purposes.

The habit of empathy: Sensing other reasonable views of a common predicament, respecting all, and honoring the most persuasive among them.

The habit of communication: Accepting the duty to explain the necessary in ways that are clear and respectful both to those hearing or seeing and to the ideas being communicated. Being a good listener.

The habit of commitment: Recognizing the need to act when action is called for; stepping forward in response. Persisting, patiently, as the situation may require.

The habit of humility: Knowing one’s right, ones debts, and one’s limitations, and those of others. Knowing what one knows and what one does not know. Being disposed and able to gain the needed knowledge, and having the confidence to do so.

The habit of joy: Sensing the wonder and proportion in worthy things and responding to these delights.

QUESTION: Can we change our schools in the early 21st century into the learning centers our children deserve and need?

ANSWER: Yes, we absolutely can.

QUESTION: Where do we begin?

ANSWER: One logical place is in REDUCING the number of curricular mandates we place on teachers as well as students.

Could we please elect state leaders who support the goal of SIMPLIFYING the challenges of teaching in the 21st century classroom? Let’s begin by slashing the number of mandates and standards our legislatures lay at the feet of our teachers. Like Dr. Berliner, I support reasonable and limited standards for learning, testing, accountability, and assessment. I certainly do NOT support the myopic focus we’ve had in our nation on summative assessments and high-stakes accountability, however, and I support state and national leaders who will work to end the destructive learning cultures these political foci have ushered into our schools.

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It is time to drastically slash the number of state educational standards originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 11, 2009.

This podcast features a recording of the January 2, 2009,  live morning radio show interview in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on CJOB|68 with Darren Kuropatwa, minus the news and advertisement breaks. The conversation focused on Darren’s utilization of scribe posts by his Calculus and Pre-Calculus students at Daniel McIntyre Academy in Winnipeg, the imporance of numeracy as well as literacy, and the power of online learning communities to support as well as motivate students inside and outside the classroom. Darren was joined in this series of interviews by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Dean Shareski, and Wesley Fryer, who along with Darren are co-conveners of the free and global K-12 Online Conference. K12Online is an online conference for teachers, by teachers, amplifying the possibilities for using digital technologies as well as online learning communities to support engaged learning. Mark Rabena, one of Darren’s former students also joined in our discussions. Many thanks to radio program host Richard Cloutier for sharing these stories with radio listeners around Manitoba as well as the world! We had about 35 educators in a backchannel chat room (via Chatterous) discussing these conversations, listening to the radio program live as it was streamed over the Internet. Kudos to Darren not only for his outstanding leadership for educators in his school and nation, but also for his work in bringing about this mainstream media radio interview in Canada. I hope this is the first of MANY more mainstream media interviews we’ll see in the months and years ahead about the K-12 Online Conference and the innovative ways digital technologies are being used by educators like Darren to engage students in the learning process.

Show Notes:

1. A Difference – Blog of Darren Kuropatwa
2. The K-12 Online Conference
3. Student Mark Rabena’s posts to the AP Calculus AB (2007-08) blog
4. CJOB|68 Radio in Winnipeg, Manitoba
5. 21st Century Learning – Blog of Sheryl Nussbuam-Beach
6. Ideas and Thoughts of an EdTech – Blog of Dean Shareski
7. Moving at the Speed of Creativity – Blog of Wesley Fryer

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Podcast298: An Interview on Manitoba Morning Radio with Darren Kuropatwa about Numeracy, Literacy, Student Summary Blogging, Digital Learning and the K-12 Online Conference originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on January 3, 2009.

Blooms Digital Taxonomy v2.12

Technorati Tags:
assessment, learning, leadership, blooms, taxonomy

Differentiated instruction and digital storytelling originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 10, 2008.

photo credit: sideshow_nyc

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assessment, evaluation, video, project

Tips for digital story evaluation originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 9, 2008.

We actually found this recipe again by reading last year’s blog post about sausage ball cooking! It is fun to compare how Rachel’s voice and vocabulary have grown in the past year, using these two VoiceThreads. Unlike last year, Rachel needed very little prompting to narrate each of these slides. We did re-record several times, when she repeated statements like “it’s so fun” or “it’s so cool,” and I encouraged her to elaborate specifically on the picture and what is happening in it.

Of course this was just a fun activity to do together and share, and not for a class assignment, but I do think it powerfully demonstrates how even young children can begin creating a comparative portfolio of work which reflects their literacy and communication skills in very transparent ways. The tools are here. “Regular accounts” on VoiceThread.com remain free for K-12 educators. Ed.VoiceThread.com is available for small fees and permits students to have their own accounts, publishing within a VoiceThread “walled garden” environment. If you’re having trouble viewing VoiceThreads at school because of firewall or content filtering issues, share this VoiceThread blog post with your IT gurus.

Technorati Tags:
cooking, cook, holiday, sausage, balls, assessment, literacy, communication, voicethread

Comparing oral fluency at ages 4 and 5, discussing sausage ball cooking originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on December 2, 2008.

This podcast is a recording of the keynote address I shared at the Massachusetts Computer Using Educators educational technology conference in Sturbridge, Massachusetts on November 19, 2008. The official conference program description of this session was: U.S. educators in the early twenty-first century face formidable challenges but are blessed with access to unprecedented tools and opportunities for shared professional learning. As teachers we must help our students master content area knowledge and skills, but also develop and refine a set of important 21st century literacy skills that are not measured on traditional, multiple- choice examinations. How can we effectively and realistically enable our students and teachers to meet the learning demands we have inherited from 20th century legislative mandates, and simultaneously embrace and encourage the development of 21st century skills? A focus on creating and collaborating within a context of project-based learning offers hope in the face of these challenges. Let’s explore together practical ways students and teachers are using digital tools to create and collaborate together, reaching new heights of student achievement and documentable learning.

Show Notes:

1. Session wiki links
2. Presentation Slides (PDF – 2.4 MB)
3. MASSCUE 2008

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Podcast293: Creating and Collaborating: The Keys to 21st Century Literacy (MASSCUE 2008 Keynote) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 20, 2008.

I was impressed that about half the attendees brought laptops to the conference! There were some wireless network options in the hotel, but I wasn’t able to connect to any of them prior to my keynote, so I connected to the AT&T cellular network with my 3G data card and then shared that connection openly with participants. I’ve used this configuration previously with my family members on trips and in the car, but this was the first time to do this at a conference event. It worked well.

I’ve created a wiki link for the Gabcast voice reflections shared by participants, the VoiceThread I created at the end of the day in the closing session integrating many of those reflections, and links to my own presentation materials.

I posted about fifty photos from today as a new Flickr set. Here are a few of the highlights.

It was great to see, briefly visit, and hear presentations from both Charlene Chausis and David Jakes today.

I was also glad to meet Ben Grey, a former teacher and now technology director in Barrington, Illinois, who is the proud new owner (he actually got it yesterday) of a BRAND new MacBook Pro. It was/is very slick looking.

Here’s his computer with our conference Chatzy backchannel displayed:

Several folks were proudly using a few different mini-laptops as well. This one is from ACER:

This was a EeePC:

I didn’t see anyone running Linux today, however, and no one had an OLPC. I should have brought mine, but I didn’t think to before I left home.

This is one of my favorite photos of the day: Administrators in my session “Guidelines & Instructional Applications for Cell Phone Use @ School” using Gabcast to record some reflections about their learning points during the day:

All our Gabcast-recorded reflections (there are currently 14) are available on the free Gabcast channel I set up for the TechCon08 conference. At the start of my keynote I asked how many people had laptops, pencils or pens, and cell phones. I shared the toll free number for Gabcast, our channel number and password, and had participants write it down. Then during the day people recorded reflections. Many of these were recorded during my session on cell phones for learning, but others were recorded at different times. I suspect the experience of actually using GabCast firsthand was memorable for participants.

I was a little concerned that my keynote and presentations at the conference were a little too curriculum-focused for the audience, which included technology directors, principals and superintendents, but also included CTOs and business office administrators. The ideas seemed to be well received, and feedback was positive, but I still wonder.

I did learn some sad news about the fate of the technology immersion pilot initiative in Illinois. The project lost funding after two years, and evidently the evaluation phase which was to begin in year three never started. Politics, politics. Because the laptops purchased for the immersion pilot all have Absolute tracking and theft recovery software installed on them project administrators know exactly where all the laptops are (thanks to WiFi triangulation technologies) and the fact that over 1000 of them are not being used AT ALL currently. In some participating schools, lots of bureaucratic roadblocks stopped the laptops from being even rolled out to teachers and students until March of the first school year they were to be deployed, and the professional development plan teacher-leaders from the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy were prepared to share never was fully implemented.

On a positive note, I did learn about a great Ning social network for Illinois administrators created and managed by Rich Voltz, the IASA Associate Director:

As I shared in the opening keynote for the conference, for many topics our peers are our best assets when it comes to ongoing learning. It’s great to see so many Illinois educators are finding ways to bring the power and benefits of social networking technologies directly to administrators. Hopefully positive experiences with these social networking environments will eventually “trickle-down” as more open policies for moderated social networking environments being available for teachers and students in Illinois schools.

My other two blog recommendations for administrators which I didn’t mention in my sessions but should have are LeaderTalk and The EdJurist blog. Of course I did share and promote participation in the free K-12 Online Conference, which has already started with the pre-conference keynote and gets underway fully this coming Monday. I didn’t get to the slides for K12Online08 in my keynote but did talk it up in my closing session.

One of many highlights from today was meeting and visiting with James Gerry of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, who was formerly the school’s chief technology officer but now is heading up a new group focused on creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and designing a new collaborative space at the school to foster creativity. I didn’t know previously the inventors of both PayPal and YouTube are IMSA graduates. Many IMSA grads work for Google. James recently visited Google to gather ideas about how to design the new collaboration and creativity spaces at IMSA. He worked at Bell Labs for ten years, so he certainly has a fantastic background to lead a team which is imagineering new learning spaces for schools. I’ll publish my interview with James here soon as a podcast.

To learn more about IMSA, besides visiting their website I’d recommend listening to my podcast interview at NECC 2008 with Scott Swanson and April Hope. IMSA’s website byline is:

Igniting and nurturing creative, ethical scientific minds that advance the human condition.

Does that sound like a GREAT place to teach and learn or what? I hope the next time I’m in the Chicago area I’ll be able to bring at least one of my kids to IMSA for a visit and tour. The idea of one of my kids not living at home for high school does NOT appeal to me at all, but who can say where creativity and innovation in a school like IMSA could lead? The sky’s the limit.

Many thanks to all the educators in Illinois at TechCon08 for a fantastic day of learning!

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Images and Experiences from TechCon 2008 near Chicago today originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 18, 2008.

Last year I think I submitted seven proposals and had two accepted. In addition to those shown in the picture above, Karen Montgomery is submitting one on district social networking policies and Lance Ford is submitting a workshop called “Kids in Control: Top Tools for Empowering Student Directed Learning” in which I hope to co-present.

I certainly don’t expect all these to be accepted but hopefully a few will be. The most out-of-the-box proposal I submitted this year was definitely “The Power of our Family Learning Blog.” The short description is:

The best assessments provide sustained and differentiated windows into student understanding and performance. Our family learning blog meets these criteria well. Come learn how.

The longer description is:

Blogs are misunderstood by many educators, parents, and administrators as simply personal diaries. This undervaluation is unfortunate. Blogs permit students and teachers to maintain (with relatively few “clicks” and effort) a running record of student learning. Our family learning blog provides a mechanism for our children to “show what they know” with interactive digital stories (using VoiceThread as well as GarageBand-produced podcasts), text posts about books they are reading and topics they are studying, and hyperlinked references to other online resources of interest to them. In this session we will demonstrate and show how a family learning blog can be created to complement assigned homework and in- class assignments at school, and provide a rich digital portfolio of student learning with extends beyond a single school year. Our family learning blog is active on http://learningsigns.speedofcreativity.org.

Outline: This session will be presented primarily by my two children, 11 year old Alexander (5th grade) and 8 year old Sarah (3rd grade). They will explain how they use our family learning blog to post text, create hyperlinks, and embed interactive media files including VoiceThread digital stories to demonstrate to their teachers, their grandparents, and other interested parties the things they are learning and exploring inside and outside of school.

Of all the proposals I submitted I hope this one is approved most of all, since it would be a blast and thrill to present in D.C. this summer with my two oldest kids. Now it’s time to sit back and cross my fingers!

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necc09, necc, necc2009

NECC 2009 proposals are in! originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on October 9, 2008.

THIS IS ONE OF THE BEST PRESENTATIONS I’VE HEARD TO DATE ABOUT SCHOOL REFORM, WHICH I RANK AT THE TOP OF MY LIST WITH PRESENTATIONS FROM DR. DAVID BERLINER, DR. STEPHEN KRASHEN, DR. ROGER SHANK, AND DR. STEVE WYCOFF. PRACTICAL, TO THE POINT, AND SPECIFIC, THIS IS AN OUTSTANDING PRESENTATION FOR ANYONE TO HEAR INTERESTED IN THE ISSUES OF SCHOOL REFORM IN THE UNITED STATES.

When employees of Apple are designing a new product, they don’t just look at existing products and their functionality
- they strive to imagine something completely new and different and don’t want to be bound by existing models and ways of thinking
- we need to apply this same idea to schools as we reimagine schools for the 21st century

We know many children today do not benefit from access to a high quality education
- NCLB does provide transparency, schools can’t hide subgroups of underperforming or underachieving kids now like they might have done in the past
- all kids must learn, and this is good

The real measure of how good schools are is how we/they do with the kids who actually need help (not just the affluent kids with educated parents, who really can do most of the learning on their own)
- metaphor: Lots of our schools today are like doctors who are only good with healthy people
- the problem is not the kids, it is the way we treat kids
- the problem is the way we often limit kids based on our inability to see their potential and cultivate their talents

We are 25 years out from “Nation at Risk” now

Read the 2006 Gates report “The Silent Epidemic: Perspectives on High School Dropouts” about our real dropout rates in the United States

International school testing comparisons show the U.S. is lagging behind in math, science, and basic literacy compared to many nations

MY THOUGHTS: I’M QUITE SURPRISED DR. NOGUERA REPEATED THESE HEADLINES WITHOUT EXPLAINING THAT ONE THING OUR NATION DOES DO DIFFERENTLY FROM MANY COUNTRIES IS EDUCATE EVERYONE. WE SHOULD PAY ATTENTION TO THESE INTERNATIONAL COMPARISON STATISTICS BUT WE ALSO NEED TO UNDERSTAND THEM IN CONTEXT, NOT TO MAKE EXCUSES FOR LOW PERFORMING SCHOOLS AND KIDS THAT CAN’T READ, BUT TO REALIZE THEY OFTEN PORTRAY A VERY SLATED STORY (A PARTIAL STORY) BECAUSE WE EDUCATE EVERYWHERE WHILE MANY COUNTRIES STILL JUST EDUCATE THE ELITE.

Sick kids don’t do well in school
- we keep ignoring the fact that conditions outside of schools have a great deal to do with conditions inside of schools

The adult literacy rate in Barbados is 95%, in the US it is close to 80% (that is a 6th grade reading level)

Problems with our educational system go back to basics and the way we attract or do NOT attract the best into the teaching profession
- typically we attract the lower one-third of college graduates into the teaching field
- this is a function of money and dollars
- Linda Darling Hammond says correctly that we don’t have a shortage of teachers, we have a shortage of people who want to work in these schools (the poor, often low-performing schools)
- we have an allocation gap when it comes to finances and school funding: we continue to spend the most money to educate the wealthiest children who need the least help from our schools
- those who say money doesn’t matter usually have a lot of money

Challenges we face
- changing demographics due to immigration and backlash against immigration in many communities
- when you treat people like fugitives you make it harder for their children to get an education
- when you do this, you create a permanent underclass
- Latinos have the highest employment rate of an ethnic group in the United States and the highest poverty rate
- they are disproportionally stuck in the lowest wage jobs

We have an illogical debate going on in our country today with respect to immigration

we have an unfortunate history in our nation’s schools and in our country of believing that the primary function of schools is to rank and sort kids based on their genetic gifts

funding for public education in our nation is at risk right now
- if you don’t realize that, you are or have been asleep
- there are more people than ever clamoring for vouchers, for home schooling, and for not supporting public education

I AGREE WITH THIS VIEW, I HAVE CONCLUDED (ALONG WITH OTHERS) THAT A PRIMARY STRATEGIC FOCUS OF NCLB AND ACCOUNTABILITY REFORM IS TO DISCREDIT PUBLIC EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES SO THE COFFERS OF PUBLIC EDUCATION DOLLARS CAN BE OPENED UP TO PRIVATE, COMMERCIAL INTERESTS– TO DISMANTLE OUR PUBLIC EDUCATION SYSTEM BY PROVIDING STANDARDS OF ACHIEVEMENT WHICH ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO REACH. SEE MY FEBRUARY 2008 RESPONSE TO THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS, “A CONTRARY VIEW OF EDUCATION AND NCLB” FOR MORE ON THIS.

Despite all its faults, we must support public education
- public education is the only group in our entire society which accepts all children: even undocumented, homeless children

I AGREE WITH THIS 100%

If we lose our public education system in the United States, our democracy would truly be at risk

Seymour Sarason‘s 1972 book “The Culture of the School and the Problem of Change” was a very important work
- he pointed out that many times we’ve run into problems with proposed school reforms because we have viewed reform as something that could be like a cookbook: simply follow the prescribed recipe and everything will turn out great
- we often fail to contextualize solutions
- we must change beliefs, attitudes, expectations and relationships in our schools for meaningful reform to take place
- this is a complex challenge

My father who was a policeman for many years was fond of saying “Common sense is really not that common”
- certainly we see that is often the case with school reform movements
- it is never 1 thing
- it is always a complex set of issues and needs
- it is never a silver bullet: vouchers, testing, phonics
- we need good leadership, good teaching, parent support, and student engagement

We do see signs of good news in both Atlanta and Miami showing when you empower and support local campus leaders, provide extra incentive funding for teachers and focus on small class sizes, you can change the culture of low SES urban schools and move them forward positively
- Kipp Schools are right at the top of those top performers in these places

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school, education, reform, blc08

Notes from Dr. Pedro Noguera’s Keynote at BLC08: “Changing the Culture of Schools: Creating Conditions that Promote Student Achievement” originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 21, 2008.

Had I lived in a bygone era, I feel certain I would have been drawn to work around or on railroads when they were the primary “connecting technology” which brought people together and made geographic places seem far closer. I’ve reflected several times in the past on the similarities between physical railroads and the virtual connections which we ride and build to connect our thoughts together in the Internet aether. My 4th podcast in August 2005 titled “Trails, Trains, and T-1s,” my November 2005 post “The flat world is real,” and my May 2007 video “Roads of Learning in the 21st Century” are all past examples of this metaphor in my thinking about education, learning, technology and change. I uploaded that May 2007 15 minute video to blip.tv this evening, since I had not uploaded it to any video sharing websites at the time I created it.

Two weeks ago our family had an opportunity to attend the XIT Rodeo and Reunion in Dalhart, Texas. The father of my father-in-law (I’m not sure what official family title that should give him) was a pipe fitter with the Union Pacific Railroad in Dalhart.

Dalhart was a major railroad hub as two different lines met there, and a roundhouse was in Dalhart where trains were repaired. Interestingly, the current WikiPedia article for Dalhart does not make any mention of its railroading past. We found the original location of the Dalhart roundhouse when we were there visiting.

The building is gone and some rails remain. Evidently as train technology switched from coal burning to diesel engines, the repair house at Dalhart was no longer needed and trains were fixed in Chicago.

Whether you are teaching in the northern hemisphere and either starting or preparing to start a new school year, or teaching in the southern hemisphere and already in the midst of your winter term, I think it is worthwhile to consider how many different pathways of learning our students have today in our classrooms. Like the following photo of railroad lines in Dalhart, I believe our students should have many choices for their “learning tracks” in school.

In traditional classrooms, as David Warlick pointed out in his pre-conference keynote for the 2006 K-12 Online Conference “Derailing Education: Taking Sidetrips for Learning,” teachers don’t give students many choices. Students tend to all be seated in identical desks, facing the same direction, and doing the same thing. My oldest two children started the 2008-2009 school year today here in Oklahoma public schools, and to a large extent their learning experiences tend to follow the same, traditional models of the past. Here are a few questions I’m asking myself as I prepare curriculum and work with both teachers and students in Oklahoma this year on oral history and digital storytelling projects, which relate to these ideas about railroads and learning.

1. THE ROUNDHOUSE OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The roundhouse was a place where trains could be repaired, obtain new equipment, get turned around if necessary, and undergo other preparations for the grueling challenges of cross-country rail lines. How are we providing REGULAR and SUSTAINED opportunities for our teachers to come into a “learning roundhouse” for new ideas, recharged enthusiasm, and encouragement from peers? Consider utilizing content and connection opportunities from the free October 2008 K-12 Online Conference in your local “roundhouse of professional development.”

2. MULTIPLE TRACKS OF DIFFERENTIATED ASSESSMENT

Here in the United States, our policymakers continue to focus our attention on end-of-year summative assessments as well as end-of-course examinations. The purposes of the time we spend in formal educational classroom settings go far beyond simple test preparation, however. As Dr. Pedro Noguera stated in his BLC08 keynote, if special education worked as it was designed every parent would want their child in a special education program with an individualized education plan designed to meet the specific needs of their child. Each learner IS different, and to the greatest degree possible as educators we should strive to provide differentiated learning experiences for our students. Differentiated learning does not simply mean different ways to explore and consume content, it also means DIFFERENTIATED ASSESSMENT as learners are provided with choices about the ways they demonstrate their mastery and understanding of knowledge and skills. Technology tools like voice recorders as well as websites permitting audio recording over the phone (like Gabcast and Gcast) can be used in powerful ways to provide learners with multiple “tracks” of assessment choices.

3. BUILD VIRTUAL CONNECTIONS TO OTHER LEARNERS

Every lesson you teach this year cannot necessarily have a digitally interactive component, but set goals now to build virtual connections to other learners in other places which you’ll be able to “ride” and on which you can make multiple connections during the coming months. Utilize online learning communities for educators like Classroom 2.0, the Global Education Collaborative, ePals, the CILC, the K-12 Online Conference, and StoryChasers to make safe, asynchronous initial connections with other teachers via email and later synchronous connections via videoconferencing.

It’s a big world out there, and it’s always been a big world, but the virtual connections we build to each other with digital tools can and do make it seem like a much smaller world all the time.

Last piece of advice for this post: Add a free ClustrMap to your classroom website this year if you have not already. As you make virtual connections with other learners across the country and around the world, invite your students to watch the digital footprint of your classroom learning community grow. It’s a small world after all.

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railroad, classroom, connection, learning, collaboration, technology, digital, advice, virtual, videoconferencing, k12online08

Railroads and virtual connections originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on August 20, 2008.

1. It is free so when I show it to someone and they say, “Boy that’s cool, I’d like to do that” my answer can be, “You can! Just use your Google Account and go to Google Documents.”
2. It is easy to share access with others, whether you want to collaborate or just provide read-only access.
3. Data in the spreadsheet is easy to aggregate, analyze and graph either online or in a downloadable Excel or Open Office Spreadsheet formatted file. We want students to understand the power and possibilities latent in data-driven decision making– There is no better way to do this than empowering students to become data gatherers and utilizers with a tool like Google Forms.
4. Asking even a small number of people to email in responses to a series of questions can quickly become cumbersome. It is so much easier to ask folks to submit a quick online form. (Lee Lefever’s “Google Docs in Plain English” video is a good visual explanation of how this can get complex and unwieldy fast with a newsletter, but the same applies for other bits of info you need to collect from others.)
5. You feel VERY powerful and uber-connected when you realize you have the power at your fingertips to share links to customized online forms anytime, anywhere.

Google forms now allows you to REQUIRE that folks enter certain fields before submitting the form:

As before, you can have text fields, text area fields, multiple choice, and other field types. I LOVE the language at the top of the page when you start creating a Google spreadsheet form: “Results will be magically entered into this spreadsheet!”

Isn’t that so true! All technology at some level is “magical.” Some people have more words to describe what is happening and how it works, but there is still an aura of magic and mystery around many technologies which can be at times hidden, and at other times very overt.

I love Google Documents, and especially the fact that access to them is free!

Magically entered data originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 28, 2008.

Welcome to episode seven of the Technology Shopping Cart podcast where educational innovation thrives on the food of creative ideas! This episode was recorded on July 1, 2008, in San Antonio, Texas, at the National Educational Computing Conference. Karen Montgomery and Wesley Fryer were joined by Brad Gessler of Poll Everywhere to discuss mobile applications for learning: Specifically Poll Everywhere and iPhone Web Apps. This is part two in our Cell Phones and Mobile Devices for Learning podcast series. (We apologize it has taken so long to get this second part recorded and posted!) Refer to our podcast shownotes for links to the resources and websites we discuss in this show.

Show Notes:

1. Referenced links from this episode on our wiki
2. Poll Everywhere: Easy Audience Polling (via cell phone text messaging / SMS)
3. Poll Everywhere Mobile
4. HomeWork Web App
5. JustUpdate Web App
6. Phishing (WikiPedia)
7. AntiPhishing Working Group
8. iWeather Web App
9. Google Reader for the iPhone version 2
10. LatLong iPhone for GeoCaching
11. iGeoCacher Web App
12. Podcaster 2.0 Web App
13. Posterous (the place to post everything)
14. Mobile pics posted from the top of Eagle’s Peak (Colorado) by Wesley in 2005
15. iPhone Web Apps
16. Podcast248: Technology Shopping Cart Podcast06 – Cell Phones and Mobile Devices for Learning (Part 1 of 3)
17. Homepage of Brad Gessler (co-founder of Poll Everywhere)
18. Informatics (WikiPedia)
19. Gomeric Hill: Blog of Karen Montgomery
20. Thinking Machine: Presentation and Workshop Curriculum of Karen Montgomery
21. Follow Karen Montgomery on Twitter
22. Follow Wesley Fryer on Twitter
23. Top 25 Web Apps for iPhone (Rev2)
24. Top 10 iPhone Web-Apps (IntoMobile)
25. Wesley’s iPhone webapp links on del.icio.us
26. Karen’s iPhone links on del.icio.us

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Podcast263: Technology Shopping Cart Podcast07 – iPhone Web Apps and Poll Everywhere in Education (Part 2 of 3 in our Cell Phones and Mobile Devices for Learning series) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on July 12, 2008.

According to the current WikiPedia entry, it was unveiled in 1946 and cost approximately $500,000.

ENIAC was designed and built to calculate artillery firing tables for the U.S. Army’s Ballistic Research Laboratory… ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. It weighed 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 8.5 feet by 3 feet by 80 feet (2.6 m by 0.9 m by 26 m), took up 680 square feet (63 m²), and consumed 150 kW of power… The ENIAC used four of the accumulators controlled by a special Multiplier unit and could perform 385 multiplication operations per second…..

I remember the ENIAC mainly for its size and relatively paltry computing capabilities compared to personal computers and supercomputers today. It was in “continuous operation” until 1955. When I think of the early days of computing, I immediately think of the ENIAC.

I mentioned in my post “The benefits of unplugging” that our family visited Los Alamos, New Mexico, last week. Los Alamos is home to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Each time we’ve driven through Los Alamos, I’ve wondered what millions of our tax dollars are up to there– paying scientists and engineers to continue developing new technologies for the US military and our weapons systems. This evening, reading the news on our Wii as I waited for my son to teach me how to play “Rayman Raving Rabbids,” I read today’s AP article “Scientists develop fastest computer.” For a total cost of $100 million, scientists and engineers worked six years to create a supercomputer reminiscent of the ENIAC but vastly greater in its physical size as well as computing capabilities. For the first time the computer has:

…performed 1,000 trillion calculations per second in a sustained exercise… To put the computer’s speed in perspective, it has roughly the computing power of 100,000 of today’s most powerful laptops stacked 1.5 miles high, according to IBM. Or, if each of the world’s 6 billion people worked on hand-held computers for 24 hours a day, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner computer can do in a single day.

So if everyone on the planet was using an iPhone 24/7, how many years would it take us to replicate a day’s work of “the Roadrunner?”

The size specifications of the Roadrunner dwarf the ENIAC as well. According to the same article:

The interconnecting system occupies 6,000 square feet with 57 miles of fiber optics and weighs 500,000 pounds. Although made from commercial parts, the computer consists of 6,948 dual-core computer chips and 12,960 cell engines, and it has 80 terabytes of memory housed in 288 connected refrigerator-sized racks.

80 terabytes of memory… Is that all? Will my kids have that much storage capacity in their handheld computers when they start attending college in about a decade? Quite possibly.

I don’t intend to trivialize this computing achievement with attempted levity. On a more serious note, I recognize the pivotal role funding by the US government for military computing applications continues to play in the development of computing and supercomputing capabilities. The ENIAC was originally designed to make more accurate and thorough calculations for the US Army’s artillery units. The Roadrunner is ostensibly being used “to assure the safety and security of our (weapons) stockpile.” Do we really need a supercomputer with petaflop performance capabilities to do that? I thought the nuclear football, developed during the administration of Eisenhower, did that for us? I think it’s fair to hypothesize the actual military uses of the Roadrunner are barely touched on in today’s AP article.

A petaflop is 10 to the 15th power “flops: FLoating point Operations Per Second.” Can I begin to comprehend a number that large? That challenge is similar to trying to understand the distance the Andromeda Galaxy (our closest neighbor galaxy) is away from our own Milky Way galaxy: Approximately 2.5 million light-years away. I can say that number, but I can I really comprehend it? I don’t think so.

The speed of change we are witnessing today, in our lifetimes, when it comes to information technologies and telecommunications truly IS staggering. An SR-71 was fast (when it was operational) but blog-powered communication is faster. At the speed of light, packets of data traverse our planet and magically permit our ideas and thoughts to interact and influence each other. Who could have dreamed of such a day?

$100 million for a petaflop of performance. Wow. What does that mean? Are we approaching the moment of technological singularity? We’re certainly moving in that direction.

Amidst such change, it is ludicrous and sad to see our political leaders in the United States continuing to emphasize a 19th century approach to education via standardized assessments which place zero value on digital literacy or 21st century skills. We can be frustrated with NCLB, we can be mad about high stakes testing, but more than anything else, I think we can justifiably be sad at the glaring lack of vision and understanding for the dynamic communications landscape of the 21st century which it reflects.

In a few months, citizens of the United States will have an opportunity to cast votes for a new chief executive. When the reins of power are transferred, I hope we’ll be pleased with new educational vision in the White House which supports the development of both traditional as well as digital literacies in the classrooms and homes of our nation. If we’re paying $100 million for a petaflop of performance today, we’ll probably be paying $1000 for that same performance capacity in a decade. Are we equipping our current generations of learners to thrive in an environment replete with such computational capacity? No. Sadly, we’re still arguing about whether or not cell phones should be permitted in schools at all. Are people of all ages going to continue making poor choices with the tools at their fingertips, including cell phones? Of course. The solution is not banning them and condemning students and teachers to a 19th century learning environment devoid of opportunities for digital interaction.

Is this “glass” half empty or half full? I prefer to see it as half full. We live in a day ripe with opportunity for visionary and inspired leadership. Let’s hope our next chief executive signs landmark educational legislation framed by an electronic whiteboard or at least a laptop computer, rather than a chalkboard.

Perhaps such an image will inspire educators around the world to stand up and cheer, rather than fall to their knees and weep.

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$100 million for a petaflop of performance originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on June 10, 2008.

Stephen Murdoch is the author of “IQ: A Smart History of a Failed Idea” and shared a presentation about IQ at The Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on April 16th, 2008. The complete video of his presentation is available from FORA.tv. I listened to a brief excerpt of it on my iPhone while driving in the car today, and several things Stephen said piqued my interest. (I subscribe to the free FORA.tv – Daily FORAcast (short form) podcast.)

According to WikiPedia:

An Intelligence Quotient or IQ is a score derived from one of several different standardized tests attempting to measure intelligence.

We’ve all heard of IQ tests and many of us have likely taken them, and/or had our students or our own children take them. As an aside, I remember that my mother (who was an educational diagnostician) would never tell me what my own IQ test score was. As I recall, I think that is because she didn’t want my perception of that score to shape my own ideas of my capabilities and intelligence. I’ve always been glad she made that decision, because I resonate with the idea that as a human being I can exceed the performance expectations and valuations which others may attempt to place upon me. This podcast reinforced that view, to a degree.

In his presentation, Stephen discussed the criminal law case of Daryl R. Atkins, which was ruled on by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2002. During the series of trials which led to a ruling by the highest court in our land, Atkins repeatedly took IQ tests and his scores increased seventeen points over a period of several years. From a criminal defense and prosecution standpoint, this was very significant, since Atkins’ IQ score went from a 59 (below 70, which was considered “mildly mentally retarded”) to 76. With that score, Atkins was “competent to be put to death under Virginia law.” He was eventually sentenced to life in prison (rather than executed) for reasons other than his IQ test scores, but the stakes of his IQ tests could not have been higher.

Why did the IQ test scores of Daryl R. Atkins increase over time, when educational diagnosticians (at least those who are fervent disciples of IQ test integrity and value) might argue they should not have done so? Stephen Murdoch suggests that perhaps:

1. The more times Atkins took the IQ test, the better he got at the test, because he become more experienced and used to the test. (Does this sound familiar in states which have been subjecting students to high stakes testing for years?)
2. Atkins may have actually received a better and more worthwhile (authentic) education during the years of his trials and trial preparation than he received in formal school environments, and those experiences actually helped him to become smarter.

I find both these suggestions worth pondering. I had a conversation this past weekend with someone who staunchly defended the regime of high stakes testing in Texas and now across the United States thanks to NCLB, because “clearly they have raised test scores.” My response was, even if the test scores have improved, what does that really MEAN? Have the drop out rates gone down? What can the students who are graduating from our schools actually DO in terms of their skills? How can we place faith in aggregate test scores, when the tests themselves are highly variable state-to-state and are regularly changing even within most states?

Conclusions about aggregate test scores are different than conclusions about an individual’s test scores, however, and this case DOES seem to suggest that something significant had taken place cognitively with Atkins over the course of his criminal trials. I found Murdoch’s second suggestion quite thought provoking as well. Perhaps a criminal trial procedure provided Atkins with more opportunities to develop his vocabulary and capacity to both understand and communicate in our world than his years of formal educational had. What expectations did Atkins’ teachers have of him, being “the student in the room with a 59 IQ?” When I taught fourth grade, one year I taught a student who also had an officially measured IQ of less than 70. I was told, “He is too low to qualify for special education.” It was a real challenge to help him stay engaged and focused in class, but I think the fact that he had regular opportunities to learn with and interact with other students his age was a great benefit. Mainstreaming is not always beneficial for every child with special needs, but often (as the law prescribes) the “least restrictive environment” for children is the one with the most educational opportunities. Whether in a mainstreamed or pullout classroom setting, however, I think the EXPECTATIONS of the teacher are critical in shaping the sorts of learning and interactive opportunities to which students are given access. I am a big fan of real-world problems solving contexts and project-based learning environments for students. Whether classified as “gifted and talented,” “special needs,” or “too low to qualify,” I think all people learn best in real-world contexts where the relevance of learning tasks is immediately apparent rather than elusive and simply theoretical. This is a key element of constructionist learning, as I understand it. Let’s not just talk about things in theoretical terms, let’s actually make things. Let’s make stuff. In making “stuff” together, particularly in engineering solutions to problems and challenges which learners can readily understand and relate, learning becomes much more situated and therefore impactful.

The final issue raised in this presentation excerpt from Stephen Murdoch regards the issue of “cognitive development.” For years, from what I understand, scientists and doctors believed that the number neurons in our brains was finite, and as we grew older we we progressively lost more and more brain capacity. This is a pretty depressing conclusion, but it is one most scientists and doctors held for years.

Today, however, we understand that neuroplasticity means our brains are far more flexible than we had previously believed to adapt and change. Even when we are very old, our brains still have the capacity to make new neural connections as we are exposed to novel experiences and have opportunities to experience growth via different experiences, especially cognitive dissonance. In his presentation, Stephen Murdoch stated that it is ridiculous for elite private schools to use IQ tests on young children to measure their actual and potential intelligence, because those young people are still experiencing “cognitive development.” If I am understanding current brain research and ideas like neuroplasticity correct, however, it seems that none of us are ever entirely “finished” with our cognitive development unless we choose to stop learning, or we are placed in such a controlling and limiting environment that continuing cognitive development is impossible. (Solitary confinement in prison for years might qualify.)

I have read and heard that average IQ scores have been rising around the world for many years, but the jury is out about “why?” Perhaps our access to greater levels of information and new ideas is permitting us, as adults, to continue our cognitive development beyond the levels which were “normal” for the everyday citizen (as opposed to a cultural elite) in previous eras? I’m not sure. In any event, I certainly found Stephen Murdoch’s presentation excerpt to be thought provoking, and I look forward to hopefully hearing his entire presentation online or on my portable audio and video player sometime soon.

As the recently released North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL) report “Blended Learning: The Convergence of Online and Face-to-Face Education” concludes, blended learning is one of the only instructional reform proposals which can genuinely help educators reclaim the #1 most precious resource in their day today: TIME. I was not in San Francisco in April to hear Stephen Murdoch share this presentation, but I was able to hear part of his message today in my car as I drove across the plains of central Oklahoma. It is a blessing and a gift to live in our present age of digitally-powered blended learning experiences. The educational and learning opportunities which lie before us are astounding to both contemplate and personally experience. Armed with content like this lecture from FORA.tv, I’m sure my own cognitive development can continue indefinitely as long as my physical body cooperates. The web is empowering new opportunities for distributed learning which prior generations of educators, learners, and leaders likely never imagined were possible. This environment is ours to both enjoy and to shape.

It is no understatement to say we’re on an incredible journey.

Technorati Tags:
iq, intelligence, court, atkins, murdoch, stephenmurdoch, learning, expectations, distributed, FORA, foratv, distributedlearning

Reflections on IQ, cognitive development, and distributed learning originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 27, 2008.

It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.

High expectations are essential for high levels of student achievement, which most educators as well as parents would agree is a desirable outcome of a student’s years in K-12 education. NCLB has failed miserably to inspire students and teachers to have high expectations, however, because the initiative is all about minimum standards. (See my February 2008 post, “A contrary view of education and NCLB” for more of my thoughts along these lines.)

As I continue my work as a 21st century educator, I grow increasingly convinced that the fundamentally coercive nature of our public education system in the United States must change in basic ways. We, as a society, have grown accustomed to an educational system which is compulsory and therefore fundamentally coercive in its nature. This coercive side of education becomes most clearly unmasked in May, as we draw closer to the end of school. Students sitting in class a week from the end of school may understandably ask, “Why are we here?” After my presentation about safe online social networking and Internet safety today in an Oklahoma elementary school just south of Oklahoma City, I walked by a classroom of silent students watching a video on the television while the teacher sat at her desk and worked on paperwork. I am certainly not averse to teachers working on paperwork while students are working and learning in school, but the scene struck me as absurd because of the learning and fiscal dynamics at work before me. Although teachers, students and parents are ostensibly focused on test scores and minimum performance standards, state legislatures like ours in Oklahoma continue to pay schools for SEAT TIME. How many days have you had students warm seats in their classroom? Based on this formula, state funding dollars are allocated to our schools. If an adult was honest with the students sitting quietly watching a video in that Oklahoma classroom today, in response to the question “Why are we here?” that person might respond:

We are here so our school gets paid for you sitting in your chair and warming your seat. It really doesn’t matter what you do or do not do, as long as you are not disruptive or hurtful to others in our classroom. Since it doesn’t matter what you do, we are going to do the easiest thing possible from a teacher and administrator perspective today: We are simply going to show you full length videos. No matter that we are violating both the spirit and letter of US intellectual property law in showing you full-length commercial movies which we have obtained under the auspices of private, home-only viewing or limited uses for purposes of critiquing excerpts of the film for authentically educational purposes under fair use provisions of copyright law. We are not showing these films to inspire you to think critically or analyze the more poignant issues raised in the movies, we are simply trying to keep you quiet and happy like cattle or pigs in a feed pen. If you are entertained, that is fine, but our main goal is to keep you here and keep you quiet. Since our state tests are over, we are not focused on helping you become more educated or literate. Like prisoners in a prison, we are all here “doing time” until the clock and the calendar says we can all go home. Our school will not receive the money we need unless you are here, and we are focused on minimum standards. So: Please stop asking questions, please stop thinking critically, please stop talking and thinking AT ALL and go back to sitting quietly, watching the movies we are showing you like the good, passive, compliant students we have done our best to condition you to be this year at our school.

I haven’t ever heard an adult actually share that answer with students, because the harsh truth in those sentences is possibly even more cynical than some educators are willing to voluntarily acknowledge. Of course this generalization is NOT appropriate or fitting for all classrooms, in all educational contexts. It IS accurate in many settings, however, and I find the prevalence of this situation both disturbing and personally motivating from an educational advocacy perspective.

Coercive schooling is quite often BAD schooling. Let me be clear: I am NOT advocating that we abandon all rules and boundaries in our schools, or that we let every student do exactly as he or she pleases inside or outside of school. That would be anarchy. Advocates for more student-centered approaches to learning are too often mistaken for social anarchists, I think. Last week when I presented at ESC10 in Richardson, Texas, I talked with a technology director about his perceptions of the video, “Learning to Change, Changing to Learn” from COSN. He responded by saying he was really “old school” and “traditional,” and thought that kids needed to be MADE to learn and follow rigid rules in the school. I had just watched the same video as this technology director, and I did not understand the authors to in any way imply or suggest that schools should abandon their rules. What I DID hear the contributors say, again and again, is that schools must become more truly learner-centered and empower students to develop the type of independence and initiative which is both valued and expected by employers in the 21st century workforce. Schools need to help students develop and cultivate relevant skills, and stop focusing so much attention and coercive effort on making students memorize and regurgitate facts.

Coercive school culture is revealed clearly at the end of the school year in other ways besides teachers simply showing students full-length commercial movies in class. In one nearby school district, students are being required to attend class the Tuesday after the Memorial Day holiday. The enticement to get students to school that day? Report cards are being withheld unless students come to class.

Another recent example of coercive school culture involves “AR.” The Accelerated Reader (AR) program from Renaissance Learning has been used well but also used poorly by teachers in many different schools since its inception in the 1990s. The formula for helping students join “the literacy club” and become lifelong learners who love reading and literacy is well established in educational research focused on student literacy, according to Dr. Stephen Krashen, and does NOT have anything to do with computer technology or book quizzes. The formula for lifelong readers is: Provide students with robust access to diverse types of literature, and provide them with lots of TIME to read. As students self-select texts and select texts with the assistance of peers and teachers, they will grow in their abilities to not only read but also to write– because the research supports the contention that we learn to write better mostly be reading. The AR program, which involves students taking a computerized comprehension test after they read a book successfully, by its very nature encourages an instrumentalist attitude toward reading which focuses on extrinsic rewards. It is true some students are motivated by these extrinsic AR rewards, but it is misleading to suggest that students are best served by giving them carrots for reading– which is an experience that INTRINSICALLY holds and provides its own rewards. After students leave a coercive classroom environment where they are given toys, prizes and even parties including jumping castles for reading books, they will rarely (if ever) encounter a similar environment again. In the world of business and work, being literate and well-read certainly has its rewards, but they do NOT come in the form of shiny prizes or food bribes.

I was recently in an Oklahoma elementary school where students who have not earned “enough” AR points at school are not allowed to go outside and play for recess. Instead of going outside to play (being afforded the precious gift of unstructured time in a natural environment) students are PUNISHED by being forced to read. Some educators claim “this is not punishment” since the kids are being allowed to read books of their choice, but the perception of the children in this case is the key determinant. The kids perceive this forced reading as “punishment” since they would rather be playing at recess. I think we all should be encouraging people of all ages to read more and more often, but the last thing we should do in our schools is use READING as a punishment. This is as stupid and ill-founded from an educational research standpoint as using WRITING as a punishment, which is also still sadly common in some of our schools. Yes, we are living in the 21st century, but in some of our classrooms, the methods employed to ostensibly MAKE students learn and “get what they need” for life success is coercively medieval.

I deeply desire change in these sorts of coercive and harmful educational environments. Rather than being forced to sit quietly and watch movies in class the last week of May, like every other week of the school year teachers should be inviting and challenging students to engage in meaningful work for an audience which extends far beyond the four physical walls of the classroom. Rather than acting like prisoners and prison guards, students and teachers in our schools in May and every other month of the year should fulfill the role of this wonderful sign, which I blogged about last year in August:

We must move beyond our current school finance systems which pay school districts based on seat time. We must embrace political leaders who inspire learners of all ages to strive for high expectations, appropriately differentiated to the interests and abilities of individual students. We must find ways to completely transcend the coercive nature of public education, and replace that culture with one where innovation, creativity, and inspired excellence can thrive. To fail in this task is to fail our children, their future and our own. We simply must do better than we are in many cases in our U.S. public schools.

Technorati Tags:
education, school, reform, change, web2, learning, leadership, coercion, punishment, acceleratedreader, krashen, stephenkrashen, literacy, research, politics, nclb

Looking beyond coercion, tests and seat time originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 19, 2008.

Keynote: The Assessment Menu in our Web 2.0 World
- Slides (PDF) (3.9 MB)
- Wiki links
- Video

Breakout session: “Web 2.0 Tools Which Can Be Used For Assessing Student Learning”
- Wiki links
- Video

Technorati Tags:
assessment, learning, education, web2, school, wiki, wikis, voicethread, googlenotebook

Presentations from Richardson, Texas this morning originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on May 15, 2008.

This podcast is a recording of a conversation on December 5, 2007 with Judy Beaver, director of instructional technology at the Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii, about their 1:1 laptop learning initiative. Judy discusses how she utilized research findings from Dr. Robert Marzano’s noted book “Classroom Instruction that Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement” when she made the case to the Punahou leaders for their 1:1 project nine years ago. She also discusses how they have effectively utilized those learning strategies in a digitally immersed environment, empowering key teachers to serve as coaches and models for other teachers as exemplary digital learning facilitators. Project based learning has been a key instructional focus of educators at the Punahou School. Many thanks to both Judy as well as Chris Watson for facilitating this conversation! I was able to meet Judy and Chris when I was in Hawaii last December for our USS Oklahoma Memorial Videoconferencing and Digital Learning Project.

Show Notes:

1. Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii
2. “Classroom Instruction that Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement” by Robert J. Marzano, Debra J. Pickering, Jane E. Pollock
3. Chris Watson’s blog: Watson Common
4. USS Oklahoma Memorial Videoconference (6 Dec 2007)
5. Oklahoma World War II Digital Learning Project
6. Wes Fryer: The Case for 1:1 Computing in Schools (TCEA 2006)

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[tags]laptop,learning,onetoone,punahou,hawaii,podcast,ibook,apple,marzano[/tags]

Podcast247: Transformative Project Based Learning in a 1:1 Laptop Initiative: 10 Years of Lessons and Best Practices at Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on April 18, 2008.

Put bluntly, we have asked too little of our students and ourselves and we have reaped what we have sown. The increasing public lament about high school and college graduates is that they cannot write or speak well (thinking made public), cannot think critically, and that they graduate with a sense of entitlement with little self-discipline or the humility of knowing that there is so much one does not know. We are not doing justice to the enabling of our human capital, the most precious civic and economic resource in meeting the challenges of the 21st century.

Part of the answer to this situation, Hersh writes, is empowering and supporting teachers to construct NEW assessments which both require content knowledge as well as the critical application of that knowledge in authentic contexts. He continues:

The answer, of course, is for teachers to develop learning objectives and assessments that simultaneously require the mastery of appropriate content and the ability to reason–to apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate data in cogent and coherent ways.

While the College And Work Readiness Assessment (CWRA) (Which Hersh helps coordinate) is currently available for schools commercially at $40 per student, I would love to see a state government embrace this assessment in lieu of the battery of multiple-choice, high-stakes (and simplistically graded) evaluations now mandated for students at many levels. How much money is your local school district and state government spending on summative assessment for students today? I’d like to know that figure for Oklahoma students, but I don’t. Are we spending more than $40 per student now on summative assessment? What is our real return on that investment?

Federal guidelines for assessment of learning outcomes should provide leaders at local and state levels with a menu of choices, rather than a script of steps which must be followed. Our nation already has “report card” assessments like the NAEP, which are more valuable tools for comparing traditionally measured academic achievement across the nation than the various types of state assessments now in place across the country. Our current crop of high stakes academic assessments do NOT meet the requirements to prepare students for our 21st century workforce, IMHO. I will admit I have not personally taken the released PASS tests here in Oklahoma, but I probably should to be able to address this issue with more knowledge and credibility. Unlike Texas, which has released the full versions of past state mandated tests in different content areas and grade levels (as a result of litigation by parents, I think) Oklahoma does not seem to be publishing full copies of past tests. So, even if I wanted to take the time to take an entire “exit level” battery of exams which Oklahoma students have to take to graduate from high school, it does not appear I could readily do so today.

In some ways, I think many of the materials and statistics we see which relate to state and federally mandated testing are a smokescreen for a broad failure to change educational practices. Many people will agree with the idea that “Our schools should be changing to help prepare students with the skills they need for success today and in the future,” but most of what I’ve seen with respect to mandated assessment (by federal and state governments) indicates we’re still focused on preparing students for the 19th century, not the 21st century. A framework for skills required in the 21st century is VERY important, and that is an important role fulfilled by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and the framework of the partnership.

As I mentioned in the introduction to my podcast recording of Dr. Hersh’s keynote at COSN last week, simply replacing current assessments with new ones is not a “magical fix” that will solve all the problems we face in our schools. We do, however, need to think differently (in many areas) about assessments. Rather than look to the “elites on high” to write and send out the assessments our students have to take, I like Dr. Hersh’s contention that we should empower TEACHERS to create and develop these assessments locally. This meshes well with Phil Schlechty’s central thesis in his book, “Working on the Work: An Action Plan for Teachers, Principals, and Superintendents.” The proper role of the teacher in the 21st century classroom should be properly understood NOT as merely a conduit of content and information, but rather a designer and architect of engaging work for students. If we understand and utilize assessments properly, as Dr. Hersh explains as he describes what we know about excellent educational assessment practices, we can more readily support this redefinition of the teacher’s role as well as the role of assessments:

[We know that]…learning assessment is crucial in providing appropriate and timely feedback to students and teachers; that the most effective teaching requires tight coupling of objectives, curricular materials, pedagogy and assessment. In short, testing is most powerful when it serves a diagnostic instructional function in the context of everyone understanding what is expected to be learned, linked to appropriate curricula and pedagogy, and linked to learning assessment that does justice to the complexity of the learning required. Put another way, a good assessment measure ought to give both students and teachers an adequate and accurate sense of learning objectives, standards of excellence, and achievement.

Assessments which fit this mold cannot be bestowed upon the plebeian masses by the academic elites filling the hallowed halls of commercial companies now profiting handsomely from our myopic focus on summative, simplistic, high-stakes assessments. Teachers need to be empowered to construct and administer these assessments at a local level. To ignore or oppose this need is to deny the professional capabilities and capacities of certified educators in the classroom. Unfortunately, I agree with others who have noted the agenda of NCLB seems to be focused intentionally on discrediting professional educators. I oppose that agenda, however, and support the formal redefinition of the teacher’s role in the 21st century classroom. Changing our perceptions of and implemention strategies for assessments is a key element of that sea change.

Technorati Tags:
testing, assessment, cosn, cosn08, cosn2008, nclb, politics, education, school, workforce, skills, 21stcenturyskills, partnership, schlechty, hersch

Raising expectations for learning and assessment originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 20, 2008.

This podcast features a recording of Dr. Richard Hersh’s comments on March 10, 2008, at the COSN Conference in Washington D.C. in the opening keynote panel discussion. Dr. Hersh currently serves as the Co-Director of the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) the College and Work Readiness Assessment (CWRA.) He is focused on encouraging educators (as well as the legislators who write policy which dictates many of the roles and tasks of the 21st century U.S. classroom) to embrace assessments which move far beyond the lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, at the knowledge and comprehension level, and instead assess critical thinking skills. This is a challenging task, but an extremely important one. Of all the presenters I heard at COSN 2008 this year, Dr. Hersh stood out as the most thought provoking and challenging speaker. This recording also includes some commentary from Dr. Chris Dede of Harvard University, who was also on the opening keynote panel. The description of this session in the conference program was: There is a growing awareness that students need new skills to succeed in our global economy. In addition to traditional core subjects, students need critical thinking, creativity and collaboration skills. Yet how do we embed these new skills in student’s education? How can these new skills be assessed? What role might technology play to enable and support this new learning environment? Hear from a leading large scale global assessment expert and U.S. educational researcher and practitioner as they explore this critical issue.

Show Notes:

1. The College And Work Readiness Assessment (CWRA)
2. Teaching To A Test Worth Teaching To In College And High School (PDF) by Richard H. Hersh
3. Assessing Cricital Thinking, Analytical Reasoning, Problem-Solving And Writing In High School (PDF) by Richard H. Hersh
4. The Consortium for School Networking Conference (COSN)

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[tags]education,learning,assessment,testing,highstakes,accountability,test,tests,thinking,criticalthinking,richardhersh,cosn,cosn08,cosn2008[/tags]

Podcast239: 21st Century Learning: Embedding New Skills and Assessments by Dr. Richard Hersh (COSN 2008 Keynote) originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on March 19, 2008.

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs indicates the perception of a safe environment, along with basic physiological needs, are pre-requisites for the development of higher order needs eventually culminating in self-actualization. This podcast focuses on our ethical obligations as moral educators to speak out and take action when pedagogic crimes are taking place in our schools against students. The specific pedagogic crimes I address in this podcast include verbally threating elementary school children with the loss of their entire summer vacation if they don’t work harder and score better on high stakes tests, and the departmentalization of students in first grade. Neither of these actions are supported by educational research as ways to enhance student achievement or promote the sort of school culture in which learners of any age can thrive. Both of these actions have been and are being taken in a Texas elementary school, whose identity I am not disclosing for reasons I explain in the podcast. These reprehensible actions are NOT taking place everywhere in all our schools, and I am not wanting to further erode public perceptions of teachers and our schools in general by sharing these stories and ideas. I do believe, however, that cultures of fear are more prevalent than ever in many of our public schools today because of NCLB and our predominant, destructive political culture emphasizing high stakes accountability. As moral human beings in our communities, we have obligations to speak out when children are being harmed both physically and verbally, even if those actions are being taken in the name of “raising student achievement,” “improving test scores,” or “getting our kids ready for high school.”

Show Notes:

1. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs on WikiPedia
2. Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse on WikiPedia
3. Enron article on WikiPedia
4. Whistleblower article on WikiPedia
5. “The Power of Reading, Second Edition: Insights from the Research” by Stephen Krashen
6. Website of Dr. Stephen Krashen
7. “Classroom Instruction that Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement” by Robert J. Marzano, Debra J. Pickering, Jane E. Pollock
8. “Working on the Work: An Action Plan for Teachers, Principals, and Superintendents” by Phillip Schlechty
9. Leadership Applied: Building Powerful Learning Communities by Dr. Tim Tyson @ Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference 2007
10. The Blogging School by Dr. Tim Tyson @ Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference 2007
11. Website of Dr. Tim Tyson
12. Podcast of Dr. David Berliner’s 2006 presentation: “High Stakes Testing is the Enemy”
13. “The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and “Tougher Standards”" by Alfie Kohn
14. Podcast of Dr. Allan L. Beane’s 2007 presentation: How to Create Bully Free Classrooms and Schools

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[tags]learning,school,education,nclb,reform,schoolreform,classrooms,research,bullying,alfiekohn,timtyson,marzano,robertmarzano,schlechty,maslow,safety,berliner,politics[/tags]

Podcast228: Pedagogic Crimes Against Students originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on February 12, 2008.

Our focus as educators and learners should be helping students become LITERATE and actual practitioners, not simply pretenders, of the content area expertise we require them to study. Learning tasks should help students authentically demonstrate their own knowledge and skills as mathematicians, scientists, writers, readers, oral communicators, and historians. Rather than completing study guides and seatwork which bores everyone, students should be challenged to work in teams (as part of project-based learning tasks) and create authentic, creative knowledge products which reflect their understandings of content and ideas in novel ways.

When we measure “success” of educational reform initiatives, we have to pay attention to the anecdotes. Teachers who self-reported that they remained in the classroom, rather than retiring from the profession as they had previously planned, to participate in their Pennsylvania school’s innovative learning initiative is a HUGE flag of impact.

Technology does not offer a panacea for the challenges which face education, but a forward looking pedagogical vision focusing on student COLLABORATION and CREATION of knowledge products WEDDED TO appropriate technologies is often transformative. When synergy develops around students’ expectations of engaging learning tasks along with teacher expectations of student learning and behavior, the results can be exciting and positive.Give a listen to what Holly shared with David. I’m inspired!

Technorati Tags:
education, school, change, reform, educationreform, school2, davidwarlick, hollyjobe, pennsylvania

Changing expectations of learning originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 19, 2007.

First, I will note that the “simple answer” is not always the best or “right” answer. That said, I also think simple answers which are effective can sometimes be the most compelling. As BJ states, we don’t always seek simplicity as human beings. In music, in art, and in intellectual discourse, complexity is often an important element which defines something as valuable, enjoyable, and worth experiencing. When it comes to learning tasks, including assessments, often teachers DO seek simple paths which are not preferable. I’m fond of saying now that “It’s easy to teach poorly.” It’s easy to hand out worksheets, lecture from the front of the room using 19th and 20th century technologies like the chalkboard and the overhead projector. It’s easy to hand out a study guide and reinforce an educational focus on short-term memorization. Those learning activities are SIMPLE because they are easy and convenient, not because they are the best for learning, supported by research, or truly engaging or enjoyable for learners. Simple is not always best.

In the context of educator professional development, however, I find myself often seeking “simple solutions.” Of the six elements which BJ identifies in his framework for defining and understanding simplicity, the first four are all directly applicable to professional development settings, especially where technology is involved. If an application or idea saves time or takes relatively little time, is free (requires no money,) requires little physical effort, and requires relatively few brain cycles to complete– teachers are likely to view that application or technology use as “simple” and therefore adaptable. When it comes to teacher professional development, I am VERY focused on the goal of changing behavior. What works to effectively change teachers’ perceptions and actions? This is a challenging question, because as Dr. Larry Cuban has observed, the “logic of the classroom” is an overwhelming obstacle to most “good ideas” that people introduce about educational change or innovation in learning.

The last two elements of BJ’s framework, “social deviance” and “non-routine” are also interesting in the context of professional development and technology integration. When we consider Everett Rogers’ famous “diffusion of innovations” model in the context of teachers, I think those open and willing to embrace learning methods which involve “social deviance” and “non routine” learning procedures are relatively few. These are the innovators and the early adopters, generally NOT those in the early and late majority, or the laggard groups:

Take educational bloggers, and more specifically educational Twitter users as an example. Using Twitter involves quite a bit of “social deviance” and “non routine” behavior when it comes to the activities of typical classroom teachers, in my estimation. I visited with a doctoral student from the University of North Texas several years ago who was studying the relationship between a teacher’s willingness to take risks (instructional and otherwise) and their persistence in trying to integrate technologies into their curriculum after taking the “Intel Teach to the Future” workshop series. Personality factors DO play a role in teachers’ willingness to try new things and integrate technology into the teaching and learning process, I think.

Dr. Fogg’s framework is also thought-provoking in the context of digital storytelling. I continue to be amazed at the simplicity as well as power of VoiceThread as a digital storytelling technology and environment. My then 3 year old’s VoiceThread “Getting a New Haircut” has been viewed 2141 times and has 54 different comments, including 9 of her own. This is amazing! If this was not a “simple” and therefore approachable and reasonable application for a 3 year old to use (with some limited assistance from Dad)– those statistics wouldn’t be possible.

VoiceThread includes all the six elements of BJ’s simplicity framework, I think, and as a result (perhaps) has greater potential for broader implementation and use in K-20 classrooms than other digital storytelling alternatives.

Check out BJ’s thoughts on a framework for understanding simplicity and leave him some feedback on Facebook. Don’t have a Facebook account yet? It’s time you did! After you leave BJ a comment, stop by and write on my comment wall! I like the simplicity of Facebook and it’s clean look. Much better than MySpace. And hey, now we’ve all learned it’s a cool place to share videos for feedback!

Technorati Tags:
facebook, simplicity, education

Thinking about simplicity in the context of professional development originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 14, 2007.

So teachers and administrators need to purchase this product so they can “start teaching again?” If that is true, or could be true, how would the authors of this marketing advertisement describe the activities which are taking place NOW in the classroom, WITHOUT the benefit of this great product which can purportedly restore, single-handedly, the opportunity to “start teaching?”

I really thought that was an advertisement laden with assumptions and contentions, which may or may not be defensible.

I love this sign. I saw this in a school district’s instructional technology office recently. Great advice, in a short and sweet format.

“Achieving perfection?” This was an article from October 31st about one of the wealthiest school districts in our state. Certainly the students and teachers there are working hard inside and outside of school, but I think this headline is hyperbole. PERFECTION? The article is about a school which, for the third year in a row, maxed out the state’s mandatory assessment test. Did this test reflect student creativity or problem solving skills? Did this test reflect digital literacy skills? Media literacy? Any type of digital information literacy at all? Of course not. Yet the author of this article is calling that performance PERFECTION?!

Here are some alternative headlines which might have been more appropriate:

• TEST SCORES PROVE AGAIN THAT WEALTHY KIDS OUTPERFORM POOR KIDS (AS A GENERAL RULE) ON STANDARDIZED MEASUREMENTS!
• MINIMUM STANDARDS REACHED AGAIN – IT’S TIME FOR DANCING IN THE STREETS!
• WE’RE PERFECTLY PREPARING STUDENTS FOR SUCCESS IN THE 19TH CENTURY – NO DIGITAL TOOL USE NEEDED FOR OUR KIDS!

Please note I am NOT writing these comments as a specific “dig” or criticism at the school district highlighted in this article. Rather, I’m being critical of the headline, the perceptions and assumptions it conveys, and the general idea that standardized test score performance is the highest value in public education today. Ugh. Headlines like these make me ill.

On a much more positive note, I thought this was a superbly thoughtful and fun idea for a preschool silent auction. If your child loved this teacher last year or loves her this year in school, how wonderful would it be for her to come at bedtime with cookies to read and tuck in your child? That was one of the prizes at this preschool’s silent auction. Talk about a creative, special gift!

You can’t tell from this photo that Lance Ford is SUPER passionate about helping students create content (in this case podcasts) and safely collaborate with other learners around the planet via videoconferencing, can you?! My text notes from Lance’s great session at ODLA last week are online, and I’ll be publishing an audio recording of his session as a podcast later this week.

Photographs can convey a great deal which words may or may not accurately capture. Consider using some photographs like these this week with your students to discuss the messages which are OVERT and those which are COVERT or not as directly stated, but might be logical given the content and context of what’s in the image.

Technorati Tags:
image, visual, literacy

Overt and covert messages in signs originally appeared on Moving at the Speed of Creativity on November 12, 2007.