Ed Tech Citizen

"Exam Layout" By mikecogh

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of listening to Chris Lehmann speak.  This morning I had the pleasure of reading a great article written by Will Richardson. The focus of both encounters was the same, evangelize the power of agency in learning.  Chris Lehmann flatly admitted that this was not a new idea, Dewey figured it out over a hundred years ago.  Sadly, these ideas were lost to the factory model of education and haven’t gained significant ground since.

I sit here swimming in the ideas posited by Chris and Will.  I also find myself actively fighting to stay positive.  It is easily to be dismissive of progressive thoughts, even though I fully agree with them. I think that dichotomy says something, I’m not entirely sure what it is, but I’m going to explore it here.

At one point, Chris pointed to an image of a classroom neatly arranged in rows, not unlike the image selected for this post, and added, “If we all know that this is not the best way teach, why does it still exist? Because it isn’t the worst way to teach, either.”  It’s a mediocre middle where the system can guarantee that the learning won’t be horrible.  And so the factory model persists.  Will described amazing examples of students who were able to able to pursue curricular goals through passion based learning, carefully managed by a teacher mentor. I want that for my children, so what is needed to make that happen?

The first thing I think of is time.  What kind of time does a teacher need in order to really support a child in such a individual pursuit?  What is a realistic case load?  Secondary teachers in my district can work with over 120 learners, can the situation described by Will exist in that context?  Chris described how they work towards a “culture of caring” at SLA; each teacher at has 20 students that they advise until graduation (including Chris.)  This relationship is valued and as a result, two 50 minute periods are scheduled each week for the teachers to meet with their cohorts.  I think the SLA mentor-ship is more about humanist support, but perhaps passion-based learning could be a part of a advisor/advisee relationship, too?  The simplest, and most complicated, solution would be to change the culture of learning in a school.  If teachers from each subject area participate, student passions could be supported by the teacher best-suited to help.  Class time would be transformed into the penultimate in constructivist learning.

This vision of school is exciting, but the harsh reality of high-stakes testing creates a hard sell.  Although Will’s son would make more meaningful and indelible connections to math through basketball (basically, he would actually learn) it is hard to imagine that he would acquire all that the Common-Core is mandating, especially in the order in which the standards will be tested.  To the classroom teacher, who will be evaluated on the test results and could even loose a job, the fact that Tucker was dialed in is secondary to his performance on the test.  It’s ridiculous, it’s wrong, and it’s true.

Will makes several valid points about the role of technology in differentiation.  I agree that today’s technological landscape makes personalized learning more possible than ever before.  I appreciated Will reminding us of the distinction between personal and personalized learning. I wish he had taken the difference farther.  Passion-based learning is personal while using software to differentiate is personalized.  Personalized learning is useful, easier to attain, expensive, and not about agency in learning.

I think well designed computer-aided instruction provides an amazing opportunity to reach students at all levels.  In my district we have been using several platforms that have worked well, Dreambox Learning is one example.  Dreambox is a well developed program that helps students see math, literally visualize math, in a different way.  The learning is personalized based on student performance – even the time between clicks is factored in; when a student takes time to solve a particular challenge, the next challenge is easier or has more scaffolding.  It is well done and a great supplement for the classroom teacher.  While useful, software like Dreambox is not the solution, a teacher is still needed to make the connections that Will described.  Other tools, Will specifically mentioned Blogs and Google Docs, are more in line with facilitating personal learning but are much harder to systematize.  They require teachers to take a risk when higher stakes are signalling them to hunker down.

Without a rethinking of education policy, we will have isolated change but nothing systemic.  At SLA they have made decisions to run a school based on inquiry.  They craft the schedule to reflect what they value and don’t bother with things they value less.  It’s interesting that there are no AP courses at SLA.  That is not to say there aren’t high level courses, they just don’t care to be boxed into the constraints of an assessment.  They are an inspiration.

Our country is moving into a knowledge based economy yet our schools still follow a format that was created for the factory floor.  The Google Plex looks nothing like the Henry Ford’s assembly line but classrooms still have neat rows of desks, textbooks, and worksheets.  We need real courage to change education policy and I hope Chris Lehmann or Will Richardson will run for office. They have my vote.

Photo credit: sota-k

I’ve got to give the new Delicious credit, they have been returning the functionality that was lost during “The Great Migration of 2011” while building in new ideas.   I had resisted experimenting with stacks, the new Delicious way to publish collections of links.  I had dismissed stacks as repackaged bundles, but now I see that they could be something more.

I just created my first stacks, collections of free web-based games aligned to the math Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for grades 2 through 5.  The result is a lot nicer than the old bundles and provide a easy way to make an attractive product that you can publish and share.  Details like choosing a picture for the header, images for the links, and a staggered layout create a user experience that just feels more substantial.

There is still room for improvement.  Links in a stack do not seem to update when you edit the original link in the regular Delicious account.  This was a problem when I decided to add the CCSS cluster numbers after I added them to the stack. The stack did not update with my changes.  As a result, it was easier for me to delete the stack and make a new one.  Fortunately, no one had chosen to follow the stack – that would have been awkward.  I also found that adding links from my saved list was pretty slow.

Problems not withstanding, stacks are a useful addition.  I can see myself using stacks for teacher workshops and student projects.  Students can build stacks to study from and to augment other projects. I would love to see a collaborative element added to stacks so that different users could build stack together. What d’ya say, Delicious?

Edit: Big thanks to Delicious for commenting on the post and making me aware that they added collaborative functionality last week!  I have to say, this is pretty huge and worthy of it’s own post.  I am going to use this with our students this week, lets see how it goes.

Photo by Simon Shek

Many commentators have written about Apple’s textbook announcement.  I have to agree that it seems expensive and proprietary: only the most affluent schools would be able to make the model work.  I do appreciate that Apple has rekindled the conversation about the next generation of textbooks.  At one point (say – five years ago,) the edtech-o-sphere was a-buzz with predictions about how Wikis would replace the textbook.  Does anyone remember the California Open Source Textbook Project?  It was great idea, but it didn’t get off the ground. Personally, I have also had mixed results with wikis.

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First, a success:
A wiki project that made an impact in my previous district asked third grade students to create a guide for children new to their school. Each student had a responsibility, such as describing a game played during recess, interviewing teachers, or writing sympathetic narratives sharing accounts of first day jitters. Students were encouraged to edit pages other then their own and often did. These children were thrilled to collaborate together and it was exciting for me to watch them work together towards a common goal. First grade students read the wiki with their teachers, and then again at home with parents. It became a successful way to ease fears and build our school community. Students took enormous pride in creating a guide that would help others, and I was proud of them for their altruistic enthusiasm. Visit the Morse Guide here:http://morse-guide.wikispaces.com/

Now, a failure:
I created a wiki when I came to my current district as a place to warehouse learning from workshops. My dream was to build a Community of Practice that allowed teachers to share lessons and experiences. The wiki became a good place for me, personally, but like the COSTP, failed to create a community. Instead, teachers emailed me their files and I uploaded them – defeating the whole purpose. I have all but abandoned the wiki, but it’s vestige remains here.  I have have since moved the content to a Google Site, and hope to build a CoP with Google Groups – wish me luck.

Lessons I’ve learned:
Wikis aren’t for everybody. They take a lot of up front thought and organization from the teacher, or a highly motivated group of participants. Wiki projects do not make themselves. The Morse wiki was a success, but failed when I left the district – it was too complicated to continue for the classroom teachers alone. My PD wiki required too much from teachers already overwhelmed with work. If you apply the Technology Acceptance Model to the Wiki format, I think you would find that the tool just isn’t easy enough to gain widespread acceptance.  That might be where Apple can change things.  They have a unique ability to make things easy and fun.

Apple revolutionized the smart phone with beautiful design.  Then they “schooled” tech world by creating a gorgeous tablet.  Apple’s forays into these markets sparked inspiration that has improved tablets and phones by every manufacturer.  Although I am underwhlemed by the details regarding the Apple iBooks, I am excited to watch their involvement move the conversation forward.

As I sit here procrastinating on my dissertation work, I find myself reflecting about why I love having Google Apps in my district.  There are many things, it’s a technology that has changed learning in our district more in 3 years than anything else has in the last 30.  It is student centered and owned.  It is adaptive, a canvas with great paint that is as good as the artist.  But as I sit here pondering, my next realization is that it lets me GET. THINGS. DONE.  I’m in a semi-large district and it is hard to get things accomplished quickly.  Google Apps allows me to own projects and see them through myself.

In a previous post I shared a simple dream of changing the desktop pattern to help organize links for my younger students and their teachers.  I saw it as a simple way to make things work a little smoother.  That was then.  Now I’ve come to discover that Windows 7 (we just migrated) has made it enormously more complex to edit the default user profile in a network.  Our tech guys just couldn’t get it to work and don’t have the time right now to try.  I don’t fault them, they tried hard.  I tell myself, “Be patient, it could happen next year. We’ll start sooner, maybe in February, and figure it out.”

I just blogged about a custom toolbar that I hope to pilot this week.  I’ve been working on that for months, on and off.  It’s just another simple idea to make the lab run smoother without support (Teacher Assistant positions in the labs have been cut.)  I hope it will go smooth, but it will require pushing the toolbar over the network, editing registry files, unpacking .MSI files.  Or, I could install it manually for the pilot, which may happen, but leaves out 10 other elementary schools which brings us back to the network problem.  I tell myself, “Be patient, it’ll happen soon. Maybe in January, we’ll figure it out.”

With Apps, I am in control of my ideas.  I am not reliant on anyone.  I can make a PBL for Social Studies.  A website for keyboarding.  A curriculum portal.  The AVOS Delicious migration messed up some API Gadgets on the curriculum portal.  So what?  I can fix them with RSS.  It is in my power, my control.  Using Apps I get things done.

The same is true for our students.  They are getting things done too, without teachers getting in their way.  Some of our middle school students created an assignments doc that the class maintains themselves.  During the day it is a schedule, with homework due dates and other expectations.  At night it transforms into a study group with students asking for and giving help.  One of our Biology teachers, Heidi Bernasconi, encourages students to use docs for collaborative notes.  Inspired by this post on Hack College, Heidi created a doc template for Cornell Notes where students can assume the roles of Vocabulary Finder, Questions Maker, and Note Taker.  Mike St. John, a Social Studies teacher, asks students to collaboratively author a study guide using a single Google Presentation, essentially building a text book for the class.  They are getting things done.

It is frustrating to downshift into the world of networks and the difficulties of scale that are inherent there.  Everything is complex when working within the network.  The toolbar will be a challenge to install.  A student can’t access their paper from home.  A team of students can’t work on their collaborative project at the same time.  Apps changes all of that for us, now things get done.

This is the third post in a series about our revised Google portal.  This post explains our new Year at a Glance Documents.

A CCSD ELA Curriculum Home Page

Year at a Glances (YaaGs) are great.  Every year we meet with grade level teams to reflect on the previous year.  Each team member opens the Google YaaG and a point person edits the document during the discussion, adding and removing time where teachers think it’s necessary.  Together, we try to build a more realistic schedule for the following year and the product of this conversation becomes the home page for the curriculum site.

The ELA YaaG

An example of our ELA YaaG

We created two different YaaG spreadsheets to accommodate different scheduling needs.  The ELA Schedule uses a more flexible design because teachers  gauge for themselves  how much time to devote to each unit; their only requirement is to teach certain units in each Trimester.  The YaaG is simple as a result, but does feature a nifty progress bar for the year.  This visual cue tells the teacher exactly how many weeks are left in the Trimester.

You can download this simple YaaG from the Docs Template gallery here. The “Directions” sheet explains the progress bar.

The Math YaaG

An example of our Math YaaG

The Math YaaG solves a few problems that we have experienced in the past and makes it easier to plan for the following year.  Row 5 includes an automatically calculated duration for each unit, so “Decimals and Percents”  is scheduled to last 3.6 weeks.  But instructional time can be misleading when time off is not brought into account.   “Decimals and Percents” occurs over the winter break, so the holiday needs to figured into instructional time.  This YaaG calculates the time between unit start and end dates, then subtracts holidays and professional development days to provide a real account of instructional time (using the NETWORKDAYS function.)  The start date for any consecutive unit is automatically set after the end date of the previous unit.

The end date is the only date that needs to be changed, making it really fast to edit a schedule. The date cells use conditional formating to determine the trimester.  Trimester one units are automatically Yellow, Trimester two are green, etc.  Using this YaaG we are able to build consensus with 30 Math teachers during one 45 minute workshop!

You can download a Math Template YaaG from the Docs Template Gallery here.

Have fun getting ready for 2011-12!

This is the second post in a series about our revised Google portal.  This post explains the basic formatting changes we made during our revision.

By the Spring of 2010, we had been living with our Google portal for a year and it became clear that we could do better.  I guess technology can be like that: new problems are found when others are solved.  In this case, where teachers once felt disconnected with the curriculum, now they had too much to sort through.  I read Steve Krug’s book, “Don’t Make Me Think” and surveyed our teachers.  Based on Krug’s recommendation, I also performed some informal usability testing and observed teachers as they used the portal.   By last summer I had learned several key things.  Things were not organized enough, we need to create more specific sections.  We had too much scrolling and too many resources.  Pages were cramped and it was difficult for teachers to find the resources “just in time.”

“A good visual hierarchy saves us work by preprocessing the page…” (Krug, 2006, p. 33)

Our original portal had an overview page, and assessment page, and unit pages.  Our assessments page was cluttered and over populated.  Teachers had trouble finding what they needed.  When we revised our portal we created Trimester Pages and nested the Unit Pages under them.  Files that apply to the whole trimester now have a place, previously they were either repeated on the unit pages or dumped on the assessment page. The trimester pages host rubrics for the report cards, benchmark assessments, and other trimester specific material.   It is a lot more organized and there is no redundancy.

“Some Web pages give me the same feeling I get when I’m wading through my letter from Publisher’s Clearinghouse trying to figure out which sticker I have to attach to the form without subscribing to any magazines” (p. 38)

Our Unit Pages also needed streamlining.  The page navigation is horizontal instead of vertical, saving a lot of space. We were using a two column format in our first portal design, the other formats did not exist yet.  Our Atlas Curriculum map was fed into the left column and related resources were  added to the right.  This made the map too compressed to read comfortably and the resources extended for several page scrolls.  Although it was better than dusty CDs sitting on a shelf, we could do better.  Our new Unit pages use a single column.  The map extends from left to right making it a lot easier to read.   We’ve reorganized the resources with tabbed RSS readers; with one for assessments and another for planning materials.  There is a lot less scrolling and everything is a click away.

Our sidebar on the original version was a simple list.   Our new sidebar is organized by trimester and keeps the titles short so there is less ragging to a second line.  We also linked the content areas to each other, allowing a teacher to hop from one subject to another easily.  Finally, we include a link to a bug report form, so that teachers can let us know if something is not right.

Next week I will go into more detail about the Trimester pages. I am looking forward to sharing templates and examples of our rubrics and YAGs.

Krug, Steve. Don’t make me think!: a common sense approach to Web usability. 2nd ed. Berkeley, Calif: New Riders Pub., 2006. Print.