Drowning In A Sea Of Teaching and Learning Resource Possibilities

copyrighted material/Mark Gura/2018

Drowning In A Sea Of Teaching and Learning Resource Possibilities

Part 1 Background

Back in the seemingly pre-historic days of the solely, hard copy-driven classroom (think: notebooks, textbooks, lined – 3 hole paper, pencil sharpeners… remember those?, etc.), access to content and materials was ALWAYS an issue; the loss of a single copy of the text book that drove the vast majority of planning and activity of a teacher’s class could send that teacher and class into a tailspin. Some teachers assiduously culled relevant items from magazines and paid for photo copies of class sets to supplement or make up for shortages (and try to imagine life BEFORE the availability of photo copy machines J  In short, before tech, when all there was, was hard copy, most teachers had to contend with a condition of teaching in which content was hard to come by and precious and that very seriously limited the possibilities of what could be taught and learned!

FACTOID 2: In 1976 (42 years ago) one of the world’s first attempts at a personal computer, the Apple Computer 1, was released by the Apple Computer Company (now Apple Inc.). Within a few years, a few visionary teachers began to use this relatively low cost and relatively portable computer in their teaching in public schools. At first. this was considered by almost the entire field of Education to be a novelty, a curiosity, and most educators couldn’t imagine what a computer might have to do with teaching and learning.

FACTOID 2a: In 1994 I was drafted by the Division of Instruction of the NYC Board of Education (now Department of Education) to work as part of  a small team of  ‘specialists’ to promote the use of computers in teaching and learning. Many schools had computers at that time, although far from all (can you imagine a school without any computers for instruction, whatsoever?) This was before the WWW and school computers used software that ran on their ‘hard drives’ or perhaps were connected to a small, ‘local network’ of computers (a lab classroom) to share software. There was no connection to “The Internet” which most teachers had not heard of yet. As was true of hard copy-driven classrooms, software was scarce, hard to come by, and precious. This seriously limited the possibilities of what could be taught and learned!

FACTOID 3: In 1989 (29 years ago, as I write this now) English scientist, Tim Berners Lee English  invented the World Wide Web. He wrote the first web browser in 1990 while employed which was released to the general public on in 1991.

Within a few years of the popularization of the WWW, it exploded and all of a sudden there was content and resources ‘aplenty’ to be had. Virtually every organization on the planet either had a website in which it offered information or it had plans to create on soon or wished it knew how to do that. This was the start of one of the very most profound changes in the development of the human intellect. With the rapid proliferation of low cost personal computers, and the Web through which vast amounts of content and resources were made available to all, the human race (including teachers and students) went from a condition of content scarcity to content surplus. Fast forward a few decades and that surplus has become an overwhelming condition! 

Part 2 – Teaching and Learning Well in the Content Deluge

We have gone from scarcity to extreme overabundance! Is that a good thing? If so, how do we cope with and extract the extreme benefits that are possible due to this???

Here’s a Google search I just completed:

Above, 3 screen captures from my Google search for Social Studies instructional resources



Fortunately, Google presents its search results in a hierarchy of relevance and so we don’t have to delve through all of the 190 MILLION search results it turned up on our own to determine which might be of use to us!

I think that by now just about all teachers are aware of the massive amount of material ‘out there’ that’s available, whether the school pays for it or one’s search must be confined to free items..

The question set therefore becomes (below a sampling of possible concerns to guide the thinking of school technology leaders):

• 1.      Which resources are good? And WHY?
• 2.      Which have been vetted to assure that they can be used with confidence? Are they aligned to standards that are approved for teaching? Is there research that supports the quality and relevance of the materials? Etc.
• 3.      Are the materials ‘implementable’? In other words are they designed to be compatible with  the type  teaching practices that are part of the school/district Instructional Culture? For instance, if the school has a ‘No Homework’ policy, does the curriculum in question require homework? Or vice versa; does the school require it but the resource in question not provide it? Or perhaps, the resource involves small group work, a practice that the school may frown on….
• 4.      Does the (digital) resource require, for implementation, technology that the school has? Or doesn’t have?
• 5.      Will the teacher(s) who will be implementing the curriculum (or resource) know how to do that? Or will it require a significant amount of PD?
• 6.      Will the use of the digital resource be cost effective? Most cost effective compared to others?
• 7.      Is it the ‘best of breed’? In other words is it the best of a wide variety of resources available (digital and/or traditional) available to address a specific need?
• 8.      Other considerations and criteria? ___________________________________________

Part 3 – Articles to Shed Light on  Finding and Evaluating Digital Resources
(there are many more to be found out on the Web)
NOTE: Some of these may address purchasing instructional resources - some, hardware. However, there is some crossover of understandings between purchasing (or simply selecting) hardware and content and instructional resources.
(Highlighting, below, to facilitate the course's focus on Instruction)

1. 
   

-          ISTE: ISTE Launches Free Diagnostic Tool, Resource Library for Schools and Districts Navigating the Road to Technology Integration

https://www.iste.org/about/media-relations/news-details/2014/10/27/iste-launches-free-diagnostic-tool-resource-library-for-schools-and-districts-navigating-the-road-to-technology-integration

-          Edtech Advisor: a platform that gives ISTE members insight into which tools, technology and apps will best meet their learning objectives.

- https://edscoop.com/iste-announces-new-edtech-evaluation-platform-for-educators
How do you choose an open educational resource? | Education Dive
https://www.educationdive.com/news/how-do-you-choose-an-open.../504110/
Sep 25, 2017 - What are some of the best places to find high-quality OERs? ... because we have to be sure what we're choosing has the best impact for kids.".
-          Getting Started Using Open Educational Resources (OERs) | Schoology
https://www.schoology.com/blog/getting-started-using-open-educational-resources-oers
 Aug 9, 2017 - Learn what open educational resources (OERs) are, how they differ ... of a ladybug, she may choose a traditional "all rights reserved" copyright 

- How Should Schools Purchase Ed. Tech? - Education Week
https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2016/.../how-should-schools-purchase-ed-tech.html
Apr 12, 2016 - ... basis of marketing rather than careful analysis, writes Harold O. Levy. ... classroom-management systems, and other software services for schools in the United States. ... low-income students—to comparison-shop, learn from each other, ... Resources, like those that appear on the carefully curated website ...
- Why Schools Make Bad Buying Decisions | EdSurge News
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2013-10-08-why-schools-make-bad-buying-decisions
Oct 8, 2013 - Software can amplify great teaching but it doesn't turn mediocre teachers ... Harold Levy served as New York City's chancellor of public schools ...

-          Tips To Help You Identify Classroom-Ready Tools
The Common Sense Education team is constantly searching for the best tools for digital teaching and learning. Our experts have rated and ...
eSchool News


-          Tools target districts' tech interoperability
School districts with fully interoperable computer systems will be better able to use technology to improve student learning, according to the Consortium for School Networking. The group released two tools to help assess and support more interoperability, including an online self-assessment and a maturity model.
EdScoop (9/14) 

-          Online teaching materials can make lesson planning more efficient, help educators save time and support teacher retention, asserts Kelly Burnette, assistant principal of instruction at a Florida high school. In this commentary, she shares how teachers at her school have benefited from Teachers Pay Teachers for Schools' online resources.
The Hechinger Report (7/27

-          Making the Best Ed Tech Decisions For Your District
While browsing a souk during our honeymoon in Istanbul, my wife and I were taken in by the most dazzling sales pitch for a Turkish rug. It wasn’t until we got home that we understood the difference between artisan high-quality and shoddy work that leaves your floors stained. We learned the hard way the importance of asking the right questions and negotiating. This may sound familiar to ...edCircuit

copyrighted material/Mark Gura/2018

Redefining Best Practice in the Age of EdTech

Best Practice:

When I first published the piece below, I was surprised to find that my students (Graduate Education/EdTech Leadership courses) weren’t as familiar with the basic concept of ‘Best Practice’ as I had expected. Accordingly, here’s my definition of this term as the appropriate, re-targeted starting point for this reflective exercise.
 
Best Practices arrive at this status by virtue of agreement and consensus by master practitioners, often through and under the aegis of prominent professional organizations and by virtue of appearing in popular professional literature over a period of time. 

Best Practice is an essential, guiding concept in the field of Teaching. It is indicative of, and achieves the following:

1. Embraces and embodies the philosophies and values of a consensus of practitioners in the field, often facilitated by prominent professional organizations.
2. Provides examples of practices for which a significant number of theorists and master practitioners in the field agree can serve as such and of which colleagues can have confidence in when selecting practices to implement with students.
3. Provides models on which other practices may be based. These may function as a touch stone and guide and inspiration for spin-offs or new practices that embody the same concepts applied to other instructional goals.

copyrighted material/Mark Gura/2018
Often I find that the perfect article for a concept I want to present doesn't exist... and so I write one of my own. I wrote the following piece with my Touro College students (EDIN 653 Technology Integration for School Leaders) in mind. My students are invited to respond by using the comments section below but are not required to! All readers of this blog are welcome to add their own thoughts on this topic, as well.
Redefining Best Practice in the Age of EdTech

Educators use the concept of Best Practice for several crucial purposes. For, one, teachers (among others) often seek out additional practices to add to their repertoire of practices and selecting one that is deemed a best practice is reassuring. In other words the label Best Practice is something of a stamp of approval or verification that the approach or activity is of high quality.
 
Educators also feel that Best Practices can serve as models for developing additional practices; that by applying the elements and characteristics of a best practice in creating a new one, they are securely on firm ground.
 
Similarly, by aggregating a body of best practices we may begin to define the state of Teaching and Learning.
 
When we deconstruct best practices, that is, when we look at their elements or facets we may gain insight not only into what works, but why it works. For instance Project Based Learning requires students to create a product (or performance) but that alone isn’t what defines it as a best practice. PBL also involves student investigation; something it has in common with inquiry-based learning, Problem Based Learning, Challenge Based Learning, and other progressive approaches to instruction.  Thus, it is the element of Inquiry (among others) that makes PBL work, giving meaning to the creation of the product.

But what about Technology?  Does the presence of technology in a learning activity do more than give the sense that the learning is happening in a modern, digital age setting and context, or does it redefine the learning experience and by extension contemporary best practice?

Alas, in the rush to appear to be in compliance with state or district mandates to have a technology program in implementation in a school, administrators sometimes set guidelines that technology must be included in lessons and learning activities. However, including technology for the sake of doing so doesn’t accomplish much, other than perhaps to make the use of technology something teachers are familiar with, even if it tends to demonstrate that its inclusion carries no particular meaning other than something else required of them.

On the other hand, it is very often the case, currently, that true instructional best practices include technology. If we discount the idea that it is simply the presence of the technology itself that makes a best practice, then it is a useful exercise to deconstruct technology-supported best practices to understand what it is about their technology dimensions that contributes the high quality of the instructional experience.

From among a great many examples, let’s take a look at a few “Killer Applications” of Technology to the Improvement of Teaching and Learning that will shed light on this.

Research – Knowing what others have discovered and done on a given theme is an essential element of study and learning. A couple of decades ago doing research meant students had to go to a library to access hard copy books and materials. This required scheduling and travel and once there, a complex set of skills in how to locate hoped for materials. All that has changed with the Web. And one of the more startling changes is that student research has transformed from a formal activity to a very casual one in which teachers and students, sensitized to teachable moments, can deepen their knowledge about something casually by following a suggestion that comes up spontaneously.

Virtual Math Manipulatives obviate many of the problems that come along with the advantages of encouraging students to explore numbers and geometric figures and their relationships by moving and combining easy to comprehend visual representations.  The use of manipulatives has been popular and effective for many decades and is a perennial favorite approach for teaching math. The digital, virtual equivalent eliminates getting bogged down, though, in sharing, losing, finding storage space for, or expending time setting up and putting away little colored pieces. Further, students may use them at home or elsewhere beyond the classroom.

Simulations – Real world examples are often the very best way to have students see, visualize, and understand things. However, field trips to accomplish that, for instance, can be highly impractical, dangerous, expensive or impossible. Through the use of animated simulations though student can not only visit places like an erupting volcano, the bottom of an ocean, the inside of an atom, etc. But they can experiment with the dynamics of such environments and scenarios. Thus performing actions like dissecting a frog, raising or lower segments of a roller coaster to adjust car velocity, testing the way a ship may float or take a wave, etc. are made not only possible, but easy, fun, and highly engaging.

Writing Process/Drafting – We’ve long had the Writing Process, a series of steps that students can follow as a support for their writing. The process guides students through finding a theme, gathering material, organizing it, writing an initial draft and then refining that draft through editing and revising until their written work is ready for an audience.  The process is very well thought out and works very well. However, the physical mechanics of handwriting or typing a version or two of an outline and then several drafts that include revisions of language and placement of verbiage can be so labor intensive as to be discouraging to the young writer. Word processing though, with its ability to save an infinite number of trial drafts and retrieve them easily; with the ease of copying or cutting and pasting to move words and phrases around at whim, to instantly check spelling, grammar, and punctuation, and other features, eliminates the drudge work aspect and affords students an ease of making important changes on their way to a finished piece.

Student Publishing/Sharing of Work/Peer Feedback – The final step in the Writing Process, by the way, is generally considered Publishing, which of course makes sense as that would be true for a professional writer, too. Before the advent of classroom technology, though, the step of Publishing generally meant that the student would produce a best handwritten copy which, if his or her work was of high quality, would be hung on the classroom or school hallway bulletin board or perhaps sent home to mom to be affixed to the refrigerator door with a magnet. In our media driven world, though, this cannot garner much interest, respect or enthusiasm from today’s students.  With class blogs, school websites, and social media platforms (like Edomodo, for instance, though, it is a very short distance from student publishing to what commercial online content providers make available. With these platforms student work can be shared in school and beyond; can draw the attention of peers and audiences of interested strangers, and can elicit peer feedback and responses in abundance.  Student Publishing is authentic publishing.


Quick reflection or perhaps, Googling up an example or two of the above practices should easily illustrate that what’s best about how these best practices are accomplished currently has a great deal to do with what technology can do to make them more effective, meaningful, relevant, and engaging…  and not simply because they have a new set of flashy bells and whistles and are in some undefined way, distant cousins of video games.  It is not that technology is some sort of digital icing on an otherwise unpalatable, dry  cake, but rather, technology adds functionality to make a richer,  more nourishing , better cake: best practice because of the ease and efficacy, and the richness it brings to the learning experience.
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After reviewing my students' responses to the above reading assignment (sorry, their responses are posted privately in our class BlackBoard area) I concluded that it is important that I address the issue of Technology Supported BEST PRACTICE vs. (simply) Meaningful Technology Use.

My conclusion is that we (both my students, who are EdTech Specialist certification candidates in NYS) and The Field in general,  have moved beyond the simple conceptual duality of Meaningful Tech Use vs. (seemingly meaningless) Tech Use for the Sake of Tech Use!  (see illustration, above.)

My (next to) last words and thoughts on this issue (see below for last)… Below is a sampling of some of the instructional approaches and frameworks currently considered most highly important for, and indicative of, teaching and learning that is appropriate for 21st Century Students. These represent the foundations on which today’s best practices sit!

I believe that while we might stretch a point and formulate ways to implement the following without technology, for these to be practically and most meaningfully implemented, technology is an essential resource set:

- Project Based Learning (+Problem Based,Challenge Based, etc.)
- Student Voice and Choice
- Maker Based Learning (hands on, active learning, etc.)
- Authentic Learning Experiences (rooted in Real World Experience)
- Personalized Learning
- Flipped Classroom / Flipped Instruction
- Global Education

Care to add to the above list? Use the comments section, belowOK, here's the Last Word on the issue: "Why is it important to see that Technology Use goes far beyond Good Practice and now defines BEST Practice?"... Because technology, seen this way is very clearly essential for learning environments... and it is clear that those who establish and shape learning environments without this understanding, and acting on it by making technology a very prominent part of that environment, are missing a crucially important fact of contemporary learning!
copyrighted material/Mark Gura/2018
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Please share your reflections on the above OR your own examples of how technology makes for Best Practices in the comments box, below....