Content Items for My Graduate Education Classes. Much of this I write personally for my students to provide needed perspective on the state of Instructional Technology AND Contemporary Education. I'm currently teaching for Touro College (Integrating Technology for School Leaders) and New York Institute of Technology; I've taught for Fordham, Lehigh, and others in the past.
"Hamburg Central is adding 39 “teacher leader” positions in the fall to serve as liaisons with administrators.
The new positions are based on elementary, secondary and district wide needs, with individual departments selecting leaders based on proven expertise in a level or content area, as well as a teacher’s capacity to support district-level and building-level instructional goals. The teacher leaders, who will be teachers already in the district, also will work with their colleagues to identify staff development needs.
“We are fortunate that our teachers continue to work cooperatively with us, and that we have been able to come together to strengthen the collaboration and communication on curriculum, assessment and instructional matters,” Superintendent Michael Cornell said.
“Teacher leadership is a critical element in student achievement,” said Colleen Kaney, assistant superintendent for student services, curriculum and instruction.
The School Board, during a special meeting Monday, approved a memorandum of agreement between the district and the Hamburg Teachers Association creating the positions for the 2015-16 school year.
There will be 10 leaders in the high school, 10 in the middle school, 16 at the elementary level and three district wide. The teachers will earn a stipend of $1,600.
Areas for the leaders include English language arts, library media center, academic intervention services, math, science, social studies, special education, language other than English, music, art, business, technology, physical education, health, family and consumer sciences, prekindergarten, kindergarten, psychologists, counselors, social workers and related services..."
"Massive open online courses looked like they were on their way out—and then researchers discovered something curious about who’s participating.
Tami Chappell / Reuters
Back in 2013, the New YorkTimes columnist Thomas Friedmanwrote that MOOCs—massive open online courses—were about to change everything:
Nothing has more potential to lift more people out of poverty—by providing them an affordable education to get a job or improve in the job they have. Nothing has more potential to unlock a billion more brains to solve the world’s biggest problems. And nothing has more potential to enable us to reimagine higher education ...
MOOCs have since lost their hype, undergoing flameouts and suffering from poor participation and competency rates. A University of Pennsylvania study of 1 million MOOC users who participated in 16 of the school’s Coursera classes, for example, found that only about half of the registrants viewed even a single online lecture and that the average completion rate was just 4 percent.
Even so, it may not be time to write them off. An unexplained phenomenon in early MOOC data, now illuminated by another recent study (this one from Harvard and MIT), could help the courses live up to the education-reform hype after all—but with a somewhat ironic twist. Perhaps one of the overlooked values in MOOCs is not in sharing Ivy League wisdom with the masses, but in teaching educators—and, in turn, improving traditional K-12 schools.
From the outset, analyses of MOOC students showed that enrollees were already overwhelmingly educated. According to various MOOC enrollment data, including that contained in the UPenn study, a majority of those registering for the free classes (between 70 and 80 percent) already had college degrees. That’s about double the rate of the U.S. population at large. And in other parts of the world—where free online college classes were envisioned as tools of social mobility—the portion of already-educated students was even more dramatic. Last year, a piece of commentary that ran in TheTimescited a study showing that in countries such as Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa—where just 5 percent of residents have college degrees—more than 80 percent of MOOC students had one.
Although there wasn’t a lot of hard research to support it, many analysts pegged the high percentage of already-degreed students in MOOCs to an interest in freshening up job skills. Meanwhile, some MOOC backersattributed the lack of degree-seekers in the free courses to limited broadband access among lower-income populations.
Then, earlier this year, Harvard and MIT released what’s ostensiblythe largest study to date of MOOCs and their participants. The joint study examined 68 courses offered by the two institutions though the edX platform, covering 1.7 million participants and more than 1.1 billion “events”—what the study defines as each participant “click” recorded in the edX servers. The report not only confirmed that MOOC students tend to be college-educated, but it also demonstrated that a striking percentage of those students are educators themselves. “What jumped out for me was that ... as many as 39 percent of our learners [in MOOCs overall] are teachers,” said Isaac Chuang, one of the study’s lead researchers. In some of Harvard’s MOOCs, half the students were teachers. And in “Leaders of Learning”—a course out of its Graduate School of Education—a whopping two-thirds of participants identified as such.
This makes sense. Teachers devote their lives to the arts and sciences of sharing information and imparting skills. That they would voluntarily participate in an online-learning experience focusing on a field they already know isn’t that surprising; as practitioners of education, teachers may also have an interest in the processes and applications of MOOCs, studying how questions, assignments, and tests are handled in online teaching environments, for example. Nor is it surprising that teachers are interested in pedagogy—watching and learning how an applauded instructor delivers a lesson. Educators may want to see how an esteemed Harvard professor, for instance, teaches topics they cover in their own classrooms. Or they may want to appropriate the learning resources used in the MOOCs.
And if teachers are flocking to MOOCs to observe their more-accomplished colleagues or pick up new ideas to apply in their own classrooms, this trend could accelerate a needed renaissance in professional development for teachers.
Nationally, professional development—the process of keeping teachers up to date on subjects and teaching methods—is a costly and (arguably) futile endeavor. Every state requires some form of ongoing education for teachers; the U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, hassaid the United States spends about $2.5 billion on it every year. “But when I say that to teachers they usually laugh or cry,” Duncan said. “They are not feeling it. We have to do better with professional-development money.”
And that’s probably an understatement: Teachers don’t seem to be “feeling” professional development at all. According toa 2009 study from the Center for Public Education, when asked about their experience in professional development, most of the teachers surveyed “reported that it was totally useless.”
For the full article go to its source: The biggest such effort is the EngageNY website created by that state's Department of Education with federal funding. The free site includes complete K-12 English Language Arts and math curriculums, including downloadable lessons that can be printed out.
"Years into Common Core, teachers lament lack of materials"
The learning standards were new. The textbooks were not.
So curriculum director Tammy Baumann and her team took the books apart, literally. Then they rearranged lessons, filled in holes with outside material and put it all together in what will be the K-2 math curriculum in the fall at her district in East Lansing, Michigan.
It was a time-consuming but necessary response, Baumann said, to what appears to be a near-universal lament of teachers as they page through textbooks and websites: a lack of high-quality teaching materials aligned to the Common Core Learning Standards that have been adopted by most states.
"We literally created our own curriculum ... essentially creating it from scratch - creating the homework, creating the student achievement challenges," Baumann said at the end of a school year spent collecting feedback and refining the materials.
Five years into the implementation of Common Core, standards meant to steer students from rote memorization toward critical thinking, 45 percent of school districts reported "major problems" finding good aligned textbooks, and another 45 percent reported "minor problems," an October survey by the Center of Education Policy found.
"The need for standards-aligned curricula is undoubtedly the most cited implementation challenge for states, districts and schools," said a May report by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.
Publishing industry executives said some education publishers produced materials more quickly than others, but other factors have been at play. Most significant are the shift to digital learning and the lingering effects of the recession, which left many school districts without money to replace textbooks published before the new standards took hold.
Nevertheless, the appearance that standardized tests were aligned to Common Core more quickly than textbooks has added to the distrust of the more rigorous standards, which teachers largely support, said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
"Overwhelmingly," the union leader said, "the biggest cause of stress among teachers is not just class sizes but mandated new curriculum that are imposed without any real materials or training."
"If you're changing to standards that are eliciting deeper thinking and more rigor and asking kids to explain what they've learned, then you have to create curriculum and curricular units that are aligned with that and are engaging," Weingarten said, "and then you have to give teachers the time to work with them and tailor them to their classes."
Even some textbooks that say they are Common Core-aligned aren't necessarily so, analyses have shown.
"Not only do they not cover what they should, but they cover a lot of stuff that they shouldn't," said William Schmidt, director of the Center for the Study of Curriculum at Michigan State University's College of Education.
Schmidt's analysis of 34 widely used math textbook series found that those released after 2011 were, predictably, better aligned to Common Core than older ones but still left out about 20 percent of the standards.
Such findings have given rise to a nonprofit website funded in part by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, EdReports.org, which reviews materials for alignment and quality.
Schmidt and others said publishers appear to have been slow to fully invest in Common Core, perhaps while waiting to see whether the standards would last, especially given the political debate that has led some states to drop them.
"I'm sure there were publishers who did say, `Let's think about this,'" said Jay Diskey, executive director of the PreK-12 division of the Association of American Publishers, "but others went quickly into the Common Core transition," developing instructional material off of the grade-by-grade standards.
"Frankly, the prospect of the entire nation, schools in all 50 states, swapping out reading and math for new Common Core materials represented the largest market opportunity ever in United States K-12 education publishing," Diskey said. "It hasn't fully materialized yet, simply because of some of the political issues and the still-lingering effects of the recession in some of these school districts."
In the meantime, the so-called OER movement - short for open educational resources - continues to take hold, with anyone from teachers to states making curriculum available for free or for sale online.
The biggest such effort is the EngageNY website created by that state's Department of Education with federal funding. The free site includes complete K-12 English Language Arts and math curriculums, including downloadable lessons that can be printed out.
State data showed more than 20 million downloads of material from the site as of early June, with a third of downloads initiated from outside New York as districts like Berkeley, California, adopt it.
"That, to me, is a pretty good proof point that no matter where you are, teachers and school districts are just not that happy with the quality of material that's available to them through traditional commercial publishing routes," said Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the Fordham Institute.
AFT's teacher-fed "Share My Lesson" site has attracted 750,000 teachers and has seen more than 9 million downloads of materials since launching in 2012...
"A district using modular digital content could search for a lesson on amphibians, and find an array of options—from a Magic School Bus video in the media player, to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt content on the panels under Lesson Snapshot.
—Courtesy of Safari Montage"
"Educators want more choices in the digital curricula they use in their classrooms, and they want that content accessible in bite-sized chunks more than ever before.
That leaves digital-content providers with a dilemma. Often, they've invested in creating an all-inclusive product with a scope and sequence specifically designed for a certain subject and grade level. But now districts are asking to access only parts of those all-inclusive online packages so they can mix and match with selections from other content providers, material that teachers and students have created, and open educational resources.
The emerging trend is often compared with the ..."
"Survey: 93 Percent of Teachers Believe That Personal Devices Connect Students to Real-World Learning
A recent national survey from University of Phoenix College of Education found that 93 percent of K-12 teachers believe that personal tech devices can link classroom learning to real-world activities, and 89 percent expect they will be used in most classrooms in the next five years. The survey of more than 1,000 K-12 teachers from around the country was conducted online by Harris Poll.
Other responses to the survey included the following:
Seventy-nine percent of K-12 teachers have allowed students to research subjects using the Internet in class.
Sixty-two percent have used games to simulate and supplement learning.
Forty-nine percent have used web-based tools to help students improve writing and comprehension skills.
Thirty-six percent have allowed students to use tools to produce their own video content.
Twenty percent have used have used wikis, blogs or social media to spur student dialogue.
Fifteen percent have connected their students to students in another school, city, state or country.
Eleven percent have used Skype or other technology to bring in experts who otherwise would not have been able to join their classes.
Kathy Cook, Dean of Technology for University of Phoenix College of Education, said, “Today’s teachers are increasingly tech-savvy in both their personal and professional lives and are enthusiastic about using technology to keep students engaged and excited about learning.”
"Inspired By Serial, Teens Create Podcasts As A Final Exam"
"Three students talk into a microphone to record their final exam podcast."
"In the months leading up to the final exam, 10th grade teacher Alexa Schlechter struggled. She’s an English teacher — an educator of stories told through the written word. But instead of focusing solely on classic books read in the 10th grade, she and her students at Norwalk High School in Connecticut were immersed in a teenage story about murder, set in the 1990s, detailed in blog posts, communicated in audio: Serial, the hit podcast from the producers of This American Life.
After spending months listening to Serial and talking about it as a class, a two-hour sit-down final seemed pointless, irrelevant and an inaccurate gauge of all the learning that had taken place throughout the year. But learning as we know it in schools must be assessed. How else would adults know what kids have learned? So Alexa pursued an end-of-year assessment, possibly worthy of MailChimp (Mail Khimp?), in the form of a podcast.
While driving to school one day, thinking about Serial host Sarah Koenig’s frustrating evolution over the course of the series, Schlechter had what she calls an “aha moment.” Her students would draw on the skills they learned while listening to and studying Serial. They would work in groups (imagine Koenig, Dana Chivvis, Julie Snyder, the engineer who came up with their theme song, Ira Glass). Students would create a series of podcasts told from the point of view of a memoirist they’d read earlier in the year, such as Alice Sebold.
“’You’ve lost your mind,’” Schlechter recalls her students saying when she introduced the assignment. But by breaking the project into discrete steps, and emphasizing the particular skills the students needed to demonstrate, Schlechter made the assignment come alive in her classes.Each group would discuss a central idea from Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which the classes had recently analyzed, and ponder that theme as if they were the author of the previously-read memoir. Throughout, students were to integrate the priority standards from the Common Core into their work, including analysis, writing, collaboration and logical reasoning.
Already, the students had spent months discussing themes and central ideas in literature; this part of the project would be easy. But the final assignment forced them to consider literary themes from another’s viewpoint and work together to present these findings in a thoughtful podcast. And how to find common ground among memoirists as diverse as Elie Wiesel, Piper Kerman, Michael Vick and Dave Eggers? “Once they found what their memoirs had in common, I helped them figure out how that connected to a central idea in To Kill a Mockingbird, and then it was up to them to develop an idea for a podcast,” she says. “The sky was the limit in terms of creativity,” she adds. Two students from Norwalk High School record their memoir author’s biographical information for their podcast final. (Alexa Schlechter)The podcasts the students created varied widely in style and tone. One group of students named their podcast “The Silent Struggle,” referring to women’s repression in history. Memoir “authors” Al Michaels, Jeannette Walls, Cupcake Brown, Farrah Abraham, and Go Ask Alice diarist Alice Smith discussed their own troubles with drugs and drinking, and interviewed To Kill a Mockingbird character Mayella Ewell about her alcoholic father.
In “The Maycomb Zone: A Twist on the Twilight Zone,” another group analyzed the human tendency to make sense of the unknown by resorting to prejudice and bullying; some of the participants included Drew Brees, Muhammad Ali and Augusten Burroughs.
Other students aimed at humor. In studying the long-term impact of youthful friendships, “memoirists” in one group recounted a funny story from their childhoods, and then discussed revelatory experiences of Mockingbird children Dill, Scout and Jem. Reflecting the creativity the assignment inspired, another collection of 10th graders turned their podcast into a radio call-in show, featuring Nelson Mandela and “Ron Burgundy.” Students discuss ideas for their final presentation. (Alexa Schlechter )As demanding as it was, the assignment involved more than group podcast presentations. To stay on top of daily assignments, every student was required to write a paragraph assessing how she and her group performed that day. Before sharing their podcasts in class, students also needed to come up with a five-minute biographical presentation on their memoir author, using any kind of medium they preferred; some kids recorded raps, while others produced short movies and commercials. And on the last day of class, every pupil had to hand in a two-page reflection paper on the experience.
Adding to the students’ challenge, they all needed to be proficient in Google Classroom, Google Forms, Edublogs, and Soundtrap.com, an online site that allows students to record and create their own music..."
Flipped learning empowers educators to engage
students.
It’s a movement that’s proving the value of
student-centered learning, but it’s also a teaching style that requires
professional learning and expertise.
Nearly 80 percent
of those who have purchased Flip Your Classroom, the first
book on the topic, say they were able to implement the strategies they learned
in the book.
As one reader put it, “Flipping allows us,
as teachers, the opportunity to meet each student where they are, identify their
personal learning style and guide them to a better understanding. This book
gives the design, encouragement and answers necessary to complete the
transformation.”
ISTE has educators covered on all
fronts with a series of flipped learning books available now.
Flipped Learning for Science
Instruction
Learn how to apply the popular and proven flipped classroom model to
teaching science, both in the classroom and in the lab, with this new book from
flipped classroom experts Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams.
Choose this workbook if you’ve considered flipped
learning but wondered if the model can work for you. Get hands on and delve into
key elements of flipped learning, such as finding and creating videos, designing
a flipped lesson, preparing for change and working with
administrators.
Move to the next level in flipped learning with this installment
covering what happens post-flip. You’ll learn how to advance your flipped
classroom to a place that is truly student centered, giving you the ability to
engage with students at the individual level.
This is the book that started it all. Learn what the flipped
classroom is, why it works and how to start your flip. You’ll also learn about
the flipped classroom mastery model that gives students even more opportunities
for personalized education.
Open Educational Resources: What K-12 Officials Need to Know
After years of spending heavily on commercial textbooks and digital content, some districts are now attempting to break out into the "open"—the realm of open educational resources, that is. Over the past few weeks, I've written a batch of stories about efforts to use and share open educational materials, which are basically defined as free resources created on a license that allows users to share, revise, and repurpose them as they see fit.
The stories have probed the issue from a number of angles, including the rise of large-scale open educational projects aimed at bringing the resources to potentially...
"Report: 6 of 10 Millennials Have 'Low' Technology Skills
Digital natives aren't as tech-savvy as they think they are — at least, not according to their bosses. American millennials (those between the ages of 16 and 34) may be the first generation that grew up with computers and Internet access, but all that time spent glued to a small screen hasn't translated to technology competence. While they spend an average of 35 hours every week on digital media, nearly six out of 10 millennials can't do basic tasks such as sorting, searching for and emailing data from a spreadsheet.
Those are the findings of a research project that analyzed data from an assessment of adult competencies that tests cognitive and workplace skills. Change the Equation, a consortium of business and education organizations, hired the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to analyze raw data from the 2012 Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), a household study conducted by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.
AIR specifically examined results of "Problem Solving in Technology Rich Environments" for 5,000 test-takers in the United States, aged 16 to 64. Those questions assess how well the person can use digital technology, communications tools and networks to get and analyze information, communicate with others and "perform practical tasks."
Based on how well a person did in that portion of the PIACC, he or she was given a score between zero and 500, which was used to define what level of technical proficiency he or she possessed: below level 1, level 1, level 2 and level 3. Those who score below level 2, as an example, couldn't solve a multi-step problem that required more than one computer application. Then the various levels were used to understand characteristics of the test-takers in each category, such as average earnings. Fifty-eight percent of millennials fell into those lower levels.
The results of the analysis, shared in the four-page report, "Does Not Compute: The High Cost of Low Technology Skills in the U.S. — and What We Can Do About It," found that although 91 percent of millennials consider a lack of computer skills irrelevant to their job prospects, employers think otherwise, A survey by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, found that only 37 percent consider recent college graduates well prepared to stay on top of new technologies.
That gap could impair millennial earning power. As the report noted, a person ranked at the lowest skill level earns nearly 40 percent less on average ($2,920 per month) than a person at the highest level ($6,622), even when other characteristics that affect earnings, such as race, gender or skills in math and literacy, are held constant.
"Our findings go against the assumption that America's first generation of 'digital natives' are tech savvy," said Change the Equation CEO Linda Rosen. "If we continue to leave young people to their own devices — quite literally — their low skills will become a dead weight on individual opportunity and American productivity...."
Good piece from EdTech Magazine... It's always useful to figure out what's down the road...
"Report: Is it Game Over for Gamification?
"A preview of the upcoming K–12 NMC Horizon report gives classroom gamification the axe."
"Gamification has been around for several years. According to Merriam-Webster, the term's first known use was in 2010. But it's still being flagged by some spell-checkers as a typo.
Gamification — or incorporating elements of games into learning to drive engagement — has thrived in other industries like business. But NMC CEO Larry Johnson said it hasn't quite taken hold in the classroom.
In a presentation Friday about the upcoming report, Johnson explained why the concept didn't make the cut in this year’s report.
"We don't see it making the mainstream," he says. "For most people, it's just too hard to integrate and there are no tools to make it easier."
The NMC Horizon Report gathers input from experts across a wide range of industries, including educators, futurists, information technologists and the news media. They’re each tasked with ranking high-tech trends in education and how lasting their impact will be.
Some of the fundamental concepts of gamifying learning may yet live on. Digital badges are one of the latest Horizon report's growing trends, slated for mainstream adoption within four to five years.
The full K–12 Horizon report will be published online June 29, during ISTE 2015.
A handful of key takeaways from the upcoming report were made public during CoSN 2015 in March, including predictions for when trending tech is expected to reach mainstream status. The full report will contain detailed breakdowns of each trend and how they are impacting K–12 classrooms.
Here's a great opinion piece from Forbes - I love the irreverent tone and zest for taking on sacred cows you feel in this one. Still, I've written so many of this sort of article myself that I see it as calculated while still being insightful. Definitely worth a good read, though, especially if you've indulged in this sort of EdTech "Future of Education" sort of "cult speak" yourself....
"4 Fundamental Problems With Everything You Hear About The Future Of Education"
"Education conferences are like church. Therefore, I must be devout. I attend at least one education conference a month. And although I do enjoy these gatherings—and I will continue to speak at, participate in, and live tweet these events—I also need to be honest: sometimes they feel more like religious rituals than opportunities to share ideas and learn new things.
It is not just the education sector. The same is true about conferences in every sector. Modern thought leaders are like secular clergy, convening gatherings and delivering sermons that are really just moral pep-talks dressed up in TED-style vesture. They guide audience participants through a certain set of ritualized thoughts, motions and actions which mostly just reinforce established ways of thinking. The story usually involves a heroic narrative through which a group of underdogs position themselves against the “mainstream”—they call for an exodus from the status quo. There is no communion wafer, but folks clap their hands and nod their heads furiously as speakers say things we’ve all heard hundreds of times before. Hallelujah!
In education, the mantra is tired: Testing is bad. We’re stuck in a factory model of education. We need to focus on critical thinking and problem solving. Schools are late to the game when it comes to embracing technology. More making. More inquiry based learning. More video games. Etc. Certainly I agree with the message. But I’m beginning to feel like the repetition is self-serving and not leading toward real results.
On the other hand, I’m happy to see that some parts of the liturgy have already been shed. For example, a great deal of the discussion around character skills and badge-based gamification has dissipated. Thank goodness! I was always troubled by words like “Grit.” I was also an outspoken critic of that trend which really just pushed teachers to create hyper commoditized learning experiences—codename: GAMIFICATION. Watch this video to understand the difference between Game-Based Learning and Gamification. Some psalms are inherently problematic.
Recently I’ve noticed a few more fundamental problems with the way experts have been talking and writing about the future of education. So here are four more refrains I think we need to remove from the education conversation.
1) Kids are bored and technology will provide better ways to engage students. It sounds convincing. But don’t believe it. Engagement is NOT an issue—at least it is not an issue for everyone. I’ve been in and out of a lot of schools in the past few years and there are tons of classrooms in which students are interested, the content is vibrant, and the instruction is dynamic. I’ve seen this in classes that are very traditional. Heck, I’ve even seen enviable student engagement in some classrooms that employ a traditional sage on the stage lecture format. Don’t believe Sir Ken Robinson; all classrooms are not an-aesthetic. The truth is: it all depends on the teacher. Some great teachers use new technologies and some don’t. But at the end of the day it has little to do with tech in itself. It is all about the teachers.
The real problem is that, on average, better teaching seems to be commonplace at schools that serve more affluent communities. Students most likely to suffer through boring teachers tend to be folks with low socio-economic standing. Therefore, we shouldn’t believe anyone who tells us we should embrace technology—even video games—because it will increase student engagement. This point of view imagines that technology can replace bad teachers and implicitly suggests that the poor kids should end up with engaging screen time while the elite retain their already exceptional real-life faculty. It imagines that making good teaching scalable is the same as syndicating a television sitcom.
) More data-based adaptive technologies will lead to child-centered curricula. If only this were true things would be so simple. But it is not. We are not lacking adaptive curricula. There are already so many great teachers that provide differentiated and inquiry based instruction. Great teachers already meet students where their interests lay; they contextualize the material masterfully so that it appeals to each individual in the classroom. Johnny likes soccer, so I use soccer metaphors. Jennifer is a musician, so I teach Beethoven alongside the French Revolution.
I know folks would like to blame poor read-from-the-PowerPoint teaching on the state, arguing that standards make it impossible to practice flexible “child-centered” differentiated pedagogy. But I’ve seen plenty of schools that follow rigid state standards but don’t “teach to the test.” Here too, it often seems to correlate with privilege. Schools that serve more privileged communities seem to support teachers in ways that enable them to be imaginative and thoughtful despite standards-imposed limitations. These schools provide financial resources, professional development, and encourage experimentation. Other schools and districts treat their teachers like fast-food workers, trying to make education teacher-proof. Remember, quality teachers aren’t born that way; they are nurtured into superstars by supportive districts and administrators. If we want more of them, we need to create opportunities for compassionate young idealistic teachers to grow into seasoned masters. We can’t just expect technology to fill in the gaps.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I think adaptive technologies are great. I’ve seen some early prototype adaptive software engines that are going to be game-changers for teachers—enabling us to our jobs with more precision, equity, and efficiency. But none of these technologies are going to solve the socio-economic injustices that lead to inequitable distribution of faculty support. If we believe that precise data tied to adaptive textbooks will fix everything, we will inevitably end up with poor kids staring at screens while rich kids continue to build robots with mentors (dedicated mentors equipped with awe inspiring amounts of detailed learning data).
Of course, if our goal is to continue tracking certain populations into prison cells and fast-food jobs, it is working just fine. Adaptive technologies, without teachers, will allow us to do it cheaper and more efficiently.
3) Video games will finally contextualize academic content. I fear I may have been somewhat responsible for spreading this misconception. I’ve spent the last four years traveling around the world explaining how game-based learning contextualizes learning. I wrote the Mindshift Guide to Digital Games and Learningin which I continually emphasized how games but content in context. But I may have been misunderstood. Please allow me clarify my intention. My audience for that guide mostly consisted of dedicated teachers who needed to be convinced that video games constituted a valid classroom tool. I was trying to explain that video games do what all great teaching materials and activities already do. I wanted to convince teachers that video games were worthy additions to their pedagogical toolbox...."
Nice review of fun learning APPS from T.H.E. Journal...
"8 Absorbing Apps and Websites for Informal Learning
Instructables Grades: 8–12 Price: Free Concepts: Following directions, brainstorming, innovation, making new creations, part-whole relationships Instructables is a slick DIY app and how-to Website full of cool projects and contests for older teens. Projects range from making a giant sun jar to baking maple-bacon-cheddar-garlic biscuits to building a homemade arc welder. Contest topics include jewelry, puppets and bikes, and registered users can vote for their favorite topics. Attempting an "instructable" means applying information, testing meaning with real-world objects, making inferences about part-whole relationships and thinking critically. Projects are well-described and empower kids to be successful in their own attempts, building confidence for them to keep improving and learning as they engage in fun, thinking-outside-the-box projects. Read the full Graphite review.
Ansel and Clair's Adventures in Africa Grades: K–3 Price: $4.99 Concepts: Animals, ecosystems, cultural understanding, geography Ansel & Clair's Adventures in Africa is a geography and culture app that introduces kids to the three major regions of Africa: the Nile, the Sahara Desert and the Serengeti. Kids help Ansel (an alien) and Clair (a robot) gather their lost spaceship parts scattered over Africa. They tap interactive objects, listen to the explainers, play learning games and add photos to the in-app journal along the way. By being in charge of their own learning, kids become deeply engaged with the content. The app is an information-packed, beautifully crafted tool that introduces students to the vast continent of Africa, including its habitats, animals and cultures. Read the full Graphite review..."
"...This week, my ninth and tenth grade students had shark tank app presentations. As the culmination of a six-month effort that started with more than 30 ideas, the final seven apps were presented to a panel of "sharks." We initially had funding to put one app live on the Apple and Google Play stores. (Now we can afford two.) Each team had five minutes to present their apps, websites, and app trailers in a last-ditch effort for the rights to "go live."
Now, some would think that choosing only one was hurtful to the other teams. It wasn't. Each team was incredible in a unique way, and the feedback from real-world judges made the whole experience more meaningful than ever.
7 Ways to Inspire
As a teacherpreneur, I work to create unique experiences for students that supercharge learning and increase engagement. Let’s dive into what teacherpreneurship looks like in the classroom and how you can show the craftsmanship of teaching every day.
Tip #1: Foster Social Connections and Appreciation for Each Other's Unique Strengths
"Students don't learn from people they don't like,” says Rita Pierson in her TED Talk Every Kid Needs a Champion. The research agrees. Margaret Wang analyzed 50 years of educational research. Interestingly, the overwhelming results rank social interactions between students and teachers much higher than their academic interactions.
But a teacherpreneur's social interaction extends between students. Clear team structures help students relate and understand responsibilities. Titles such as Project Manager and Assistant Project Manager help them own their aspect of the project. Students need to see the structure and function of groups. Otherwise, someone else (their teacher) manages their teams.
As the teacher points out strengths, students start spotting them and become better leaders. Don't expect all students to know their strengths. Use a tool like YouScience (based on the Woodcock-Johnson test) or another strengths-finding method.
Great teacherpreneurs develop a strengths-finding mindset in their classroom that helps students engage and perform at high levels.
Tip #2: Model Mutually Beneficial Relationships
Great relationships in our business and personal lives are mutually beneficial. As humans, I think most of us are naturally selfish. As a teacherpreneur, we want students to see us respecting the needs of others.
For instance, many teachepreneurs with tight budgets forge win-win relationships. Companies get valuable feedback from a teacher and students in return for a discount or donations of software.
But can we model this with any connection? For example, earlier this year, my students connected with Andrew Cohen, CEO of Brainscape, who shared his story of creating a startup. Before we were done, we turned off the Google hangout recording, and my students presented feedback about his product.
Teacherpreneurs have an attitude of creating win-win experiences for students and those who interact with them.
Tip #3: Make Student Feedback Frequent and Valued
Teacher Matt Farber treats his classroom design like the user interface design in a video game. Matt is always asking his students questions to determine what is and isn't working. There are many ways of getting feedback from students, but you must also help them give feedback that is actionable.
Here's how I teach my students to give constructive feedback. I have them write three headings on a page:
What do I like?
What needs improvement?
How can it improve?
This constant feedback loop has propelled my in-flip classroom forward this year. Every few weeks, I'd ask for student feedback on movies, course layout, and how I was managing the learning environment. Every few weeks, they'd see me improve and level up.
Like successful entrepreneurs, teacherpreneurs know that "feedback is the breakfast of champions." (Ken Blanchard)
Tip #4: Model a Growth Mindset and Own Your Classroom Environment
Some say fail forward and fail faster. I’ve rethought this after reading an interesting finding in Shane Snow's Smartcuts. When heart surgeons were applying a new technique, those who failed at the procedure and killed the patient did not improve from their failure at all. Researchers found that those who performed the surgery and succeeded continued to improve. Interestingly, those who watched someone else fail improved the next time they performed the operation. The conclusion was that somehow those who failed made external excuses (such as the patient's condition) for why they failed.
You might think this odd, but if you relate this to Carol Dweck's findings in Mindset, you'll recall that those who adopt a fixed mindset think "failure," putting improvement beyond their control. Those with a growth mindset believe that they can learn how to improve, and therefore they do.
Interestingly, Todd Whitaker, in What Great Teachers Do Differently, found that teachers who accept responsibility for their classrooms improve and level up. There is also a profound difference between accepting responsibility and accepting blame. Accepting responsibility means that you will take action to improve your classroom.
Heart surgeons who frequently kill their patients and teachers who never improve have one thing in common: they do not accept the responsibility that their actions have a massive impact on their success. They lay blame and justify instead of learning and growing.
Teacherpreneurs understand and teach the growth mindset. In Wang's research (cited above), metacognition is one of the top ways of helping students improve. Therefore, this growth mindset approach is one of the most important things we can model and teach.
Tip #5: Set the Expectations for Struggle, Tenacity, and Grit
A recent Harvard Business Review article shared the importance of mentoring new CEOs, including the psychological boost of previous CEOs' "war stories." Perhaps this is why programs like Classroom Champions see such positive results among students.
I frequently tell my class, "We will live and learn on the leading bleeding edge. Sometimes we lead and sometimes we bleed, but either way, we learn." I let my students see me struggle with hard tasks. For example, while learning to program apps this year, I almost gave up at least three times. Each time, I'd be open with students about my struggles and where I needed help figuring something out. Each time, they'd come up with solutions that I hadn't seen.
You can't have grit when you always quit. Sure, there are times to abandon something because it didn't work. But as we look at the 8 Habits of Mind for Creativity (PDF), "engage and persist" is right up there. Way too many teachers and schools quit right before the breakthrough.
Teacherpreneurs know that the best way to help students develop grit is to help them persist at work worth doing. Teacherpreneurs live grit and don’t always quit.
Tip #6: Create a Haven for Creative Expression
Do things to help students feel comfortable experimenting. You can keep a costume box and use drama in the classroom. Keep excellent creations from past classes and share them as you start new projects.
When students brainstorm, require teams to come up with at least 50 ideas before deciding on one. (I've found that breakthroughs happen when groups go past 20 ideas.) Just remember that when students create, you enter subjective territory. Be careful not to interject your opinion as definitive fact.
As a teacherpreneur, you're the coach, not the commander. We are providers of resources, not the ultimate source of knowledge.
Tip #7: Allow Real-World Risk and Reward
This past week, my students presented their apps in front of more than 200 people. They were ready because they had leveled up with previous presentations.
A teacherpreneur uses the real world to teach, but levels up students gradually. Simply put, students flap their wings in the nest before they're pushed off a cliff and expected to soar. The real world isn't perfect, and my job isn't creating the real world every day in my classroom -- it's getting students ready for the real world. When they're finished with me, they're ready for college and the business world..."
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