Exploring Innovation in Education

Close your eyes. Imagine a classroom where every student comes through the door wanting to be there and wanting to learn. What does it look like? What is happening? Now for the more important question… Could you create this classroom? I am willing to bet that many of us immediately jump to listing the obstacles that would prevent us from creating this type of learning space. The students would have to change. The administration would need to be more supportive. I don’t have enough time in the class period, prep time, etc.

Wait… slow down. Ignore the obstacles for a few minutes and consider what we can do. Most of us are after all the Supreme Ruler in our classroom and can do most anything in that space. So if we start by asking what motivates our students and then start changing the things that fall within our scope of influence… maybe we could build a different learning environment that engages our students to do more than collect points and score well on quizzes.

So what motivates our students? Consider for a minute that our students are typically being acted upon instead of being decision makers. Most of the time there is some adult who is laying out for them what to do and how to do it. What if they could exercise some control? Being in control even in a heavily scaffolded environment could provide the students with an internal drive. Control could be shared by setting the final outcomes of the unit and letting the students explore how to obtain the skills and content necessary to successfully complete the final outcome/assessment. You could also create opportunities for students to build the assessments. They could write the quiz questions, build the rubric, design the project, etc. Weekly or biweekly class meetings where as a class decisions are made about the schedule, homework, etc. could be a powerful tool for sharing control and in turn creating intrinsic motivation for learning.

Sharing control is just one way to get students more engaged in our classrooms. Motivation is a tricky thing. What motivates us often depends on the type of task so maybe it is so not much about what we could do but more about what we shouldn’t do. For example, providing extrinsic rewards like extra credit points, no homework nights, class treats, etc. can actually have the opposite effect. *see Daniel Pink’s Drive So the goal would be to create activities that have their own inherent reward. This is where the zone for proximal developement (Vygotsky) and flow (Csikszentmihalyi) apply. Students can find intrinsic reward in completing an activity is there is the right balance between challenge and ability.

So I propose that we bring together Lev Vygotsky’s ideas about scaffolding and the zone of proximal development, Daniel Pink’s study on motivation in his book Drive, and Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational to better understand our students needs and motivations. If you are interested in examining these ideas further and looking at one model of these ideas in practice, come to NCAIS Innovate on March 11th and 12th at Cary Academy in Cary, NC.

’tis the season… not just for holly, mistletoe, and goodwill but exams. So as we begin reviewing, cramming, and stressing out I thought it would be beneficial to share two examples of relatively stress-free exam review.

The first stop is a AP Environmental Science where Mr. Derrick Willard has been using a class blog to have his students write “scribe posts” all semester. The definition of scribe posting that follows is from Darren Kuropatwa, an amazing educator from Canada.

The original assignment was simply to post a brief summary of what happened in class each day. A different student is responsible for the daily scribe post and they end their post by choosing the next scribe. The first scribe was a volunteer. My daily involvement is limited to updating a post called The Scribe List which is at the top of the links list in the sidebar of each class’s blog. For all three classes this takes less than five minutes of my time each day.

Derrick has effectively applied Darren’s scribe post model in his science classroom.

Here is why this model is a great end of semester review tool. Students have access to student created daily summaries from class. These daily postings have links to additional resources, embed maps, charts, and links to current news articles. There are also comments posted that correct or add additional content to the daily summaries. The pressure of knowing that your peers are relying on your work to help them review combined with the rotating schedule that minimizes your nightly homework allows students produce high quality summaries.

In addition to srcibe posts, students post questions about class content and their peers answer the questions. Mr. Willard only needs to chime in when the conversation strays off point or misses the point. Students have shared that the very act of creating the summaries helps them retain the information and allow them to act as experts on those section of the course. These notes and summaries are always available online.

The next stop is a Middle School English course that has been using a wiki to collect resources to assist with review as they went along. Students decided that they want a page for chapter summaries of Steinbeck’s The Pearl. They create a page for their own examples of literary tools when they felt that their teacher’s examples were out dated and obscure. On the same page are links to definitions of literary terms. They found videos of Poe’s Cask of Amontillado and The Raven which some students are watching to refresh their memories. They collect links to resources for parts of speech including an embedded mad lib game. The wiki is used in class each day for 20 minutes in small groups to focus on the area they feel needs attention. Students work together with teacher to identify new tools and clarify how to use the tools to study. By working in groups, students are able to model good study behaviors for each other and share study tips.

Hope these two examples perhaps create a opportunity to reduce your and your students’ stress this exam season. Don’t forget that these are the types of ideas shared at NCAIS Innovate on March 11 and 12th.

I am worried that my system admins will see this commercial and create yet another server password than no human can remember.

Found interesting article in NYTimes oped discussing the philosophical & psychological approaches to character. The psychological approach, as discussed in Kwame Anthony Appiah’s, a Princeton philosopher, book “Experiments in Ethics” challenges the traditional philosophical approach that we all have ingrained character traits. Appiah and others suggest that we don’t have one thing called character but instead a multiplicity of tendencies that are applied in different contexts. In other words, we are not always dishonest or honest but react to each situation individually. In reflecting on this approach, I wonder if it helps us better understand our students and their behaviors. What do you think?

I know it sounds wrong to claim that a potential pandemic has an up side, but it does – instructional continuity planning. I have been asked like many of you to plan for

three possible scenarios related to the potential disruptions caused by H1N1.

1. High rates of extended students absenteeism (7-10 days)
2. High rates of extended faculty absenteeism (7-10 days)
3. School closure initiated by County Board of Health

All three of these scenarios lead to discussions about the role of distance learning tools, social media tools, wikis, blogs, and even cell phones in maintaining instructional continuity. In planning and sharing our instructional continuity plan with faculty and school leaders, I have participate in some of the most innovative, open, and frank conversations about new learning tools. These conversations are encouraging teachers to see the benefits of these new tools outside of the framework of flu preparation planning especially since we are encouraging teachers to explore these tools before the flu arrives in full force.

H1N1 has create more buzz about new learning tools than my team and I have been able to generate over the last two years. Even our most resistant teachers are concerned about how to keep our students engaged and learning while recuperating at home. The potential need is driving the exploration but I am continuing to hear teachers commit to using the tools regardless of flu season or high absentee rates.

So to all of my comrades in our learning rebellion, now is the time to push new learning tools and promote social media tools. Use H1N1 and instructional continuity to gain a foothold then dig in and hold your ground. Let’s use this one possible silver lining to the H1N1 flu season to encourage innovation, exploration, and engaging new learning models.

If you are interested, please visit Providence Day’s H1N1 Instructional Continuity Planning Blog. If you have any comments or suggestions about the site, please forward them to me.

This 2006 painting by Dai Dudu, Li Tiezi, and Zhang An is in fact an image map with titles and wikipedia links — click on the image to visit the painting online, and explore the many stories it contains.

Discussing the Divine Comedy with Dante

Joe Graba’s above quote grabbed my attention and it still hasn’t let go. I am struggling with understanding the truth of this statement. All Educators surely want what is best for our students so why are we often the obstacles preventing the improvement of our schools?

If you don’t agree that the general Education model is out of date then the remainder of this post may not work for you. I am a believer that our current model with its agrarian calendar and the industrial assembly line structure needs change. I also believe that educators in the classroom are the most important element in creating lasting, meaningful change. This is why I become so concerned when I witness examples of teachers acting as obstacles to growth based on it will impact us, the adults.

I readily concede that teachers have extremely large work loads and that the majority of us are dedicated professionals. My concern is that the heavy workload and multiple roles of our positions create an environment where we so concerned about our needs that we overlook the needs of our students. It is easy to believe that if the current model work for me then it should work for my students and the reality is that so many of us are in survival mode that considering changing our instructional practices is overwhelming. The evidence is everywhere that proves that we must set all that aside. We need to stop being obstacles.

Let’s face it. We all teach the subject or grade level that we know best. We don’t typically change because it would remove us from our comfort zones. We like being in control and being masters of our environments. Change threatens our comfort zone. In the world outside of the classroom, success is about being dynamic, flexible, agile, and innovative. These are not traits that promote status quo. They are traits that encourage risk taking and experimentation. Hard to do from within your comfort zone.

So let’s start a conversation at our organizations. The conversation needs to be about learning and creating opportunities for students to actively engage in learning. To often, especially after they leave the younger grades, students are passive recipients of information. Below is an example of how Southern Methodist Univeristy is struggling with a new model where students are asked to be participants in class and teachers are being to active engage their students. Our current model is the reason why students expected to just be spoon-fed.

from When Computers Leave the Classroom, So Does Boredom|
article in The Chronicle for Higher Education

The conversation about this type of change is not new. In fact, there are many places where we can find the inspiration for new instructional models. From Dewey to Pink to Robinson to new understandings of learning based on brain research, we can find many places to start. The trick is to stay focused on first building solutions then adjusting to make them manageable. Too often the conversation gets derailed by logistics, the “realities” of daily life, and the lists of reasons why not. we must be prepare to build something different. If we believe that our students need a better system that let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work by building learning communities where schools once stood. Let’s get out of our own way but more importantly, out of the way of our students.

More to think about…

Will Richardson’s Tinkering toward Utopia post

The Chronicle’s article on Transforming Instructional Practice by removing powerpoint

eschoolnews article on Brain Research and Classroom Practices

Dangerously Irrelevant blog post on teachers’ motivation to self-educate

Chris Dede: Disrupting the Traditional Classroom from Education Week on Vimeo.

I would have to agree with Professor Dede that innovative online education will begin to cause changes in traditional classroom practice. However, I would like to know more about his ideas on customization of education. There needs to conversation about what customization should and can look like. If you refer to Dr. Willingham video about the misapplication of learning style theory in the classroom you can find at least one example of poor customization. Does customization mean that we will be able to focus more on skill acquisition while letting students explore content relevant to them? Does it mean that we can focus on the needs of each student and help them grow? I don’t have the answers but believe that we need to being exploring this idea. The new technology tools are the pieces that will allow us to begin to put together the “elephant” that Professor Dede spoke about, but we need to collaborate on how the pieces fit together.

Steven B. Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good for You and Mind Wide Open, wrote the cover piece for Time Magazine on June 15th. It was about Twitter, but more importantly about innovation. He proposed that there is a unique innovation surrounding Twitter. This new model of innovation goes beyond people finding a new use for an existing tool. It involves the end user re-designing the tool itself. This means that Twitter becomes a platform that allows end users to build and create.

You can read his article for more details but here is my area of interest. What if this model of social creativity and end-user innovation was infused into our Educational settings?

The first obvious issue is control. Evan Williams and Biz Stone, Founders of Twitter, must be fairly comfortable with end-user innovation and why not? It is working for them. Hashtags for searching and 3rd party tools for accessing Twitter are just two ways that Twitter is being constantly improved from the outside in. Imagine that model in the classroom. As a teacher, could you create an environment where your students were actively engaged in re-designing instructional practice or assessment? Could we maintain the course and direction while allowing students the opportunity to set methods or design the project? What would end-user innovation look like in our classrooms?

Next Johnson tackles that idea that modern innovation is so rapid that we cannot continue to fall back to old metrics for measuring success. His example is using Ph.D.s and patents to measure US innovation as compared to other countries. By this metric we are falling behind, but if you explore measuring success in terms of “actual lifestyle-changing hit products” the US is out in front by a mile. So now let’s talk about the classroom. Are we using the right metrics to measure success or future success? Daniel Pink, Sir Ken Robinson, Stephen Heppell, and Tony Wagner would suggest that perhaps we aren’t. While the world around us is changing, adapting, and innovating, we are still using the same models of assessment from 20, 30, and even 40 years ago. What would assessment look like if changed the metric to include creativity, collaboration, symphony, etc.? Would it change the way we assess? Assessment needs to move toward performance based assessment while retaining the strengths traditional assessment to adapted to the changing global economy and to meet the needs of our students.

Finally, the new tools and resources at our fingertips are providing opportunities for new methods of communication and conversation. Johnson’s article begins with the story of a conference on Educational Reform. The basics of the story are that there was a real-time, real-world conversation going on in the back channel – twitter, live blogging, etc. Not only were the participants able to participate by voicing their ideas, but they were able to tweet links to additional resources related to the topic. Eventually, the community outside of the conference was able to respond to the posting of those in attendance. Now I understand that when you put a laptop in front of a student or faculty and then proceed to discuss an important topic that there is a high probability of off task behaviors. I admit it but let’s explore this idea anyway. Would it be possible to have students actively engaged during a lecture tweeting additional resources or links to pertinent information to back channel for the class? Would it be a useful tool for students to have the record of the tweets or live blog account to use to reflect on the lecture? Let’s go up one more step. If students were tweeting about the lecture, would it be possible to invite others – experts in the field, interested parents, community members -to add their experiences to the back channel? It could be a way to encourage active participation in an environment that often leaves students in the role of passive recipients.

I know that this whole conversations makes some folks uncomfortable and it is understandable. There aren’t many clear cut, black and white answers for how we should adapt and innovate. New or modified instructional practices supported by decades of research and expert studies are not sitting on shelves waiting for us. How could they? Some of the very tools that we are exploring have only been around for years. Twitter, for example, just turned 3 in March of 2009. It is time, however, for us to at minimum get engaged in the conversation about the future of education. All of us need to lend our strength and problem solving skills to building a new, innovative model of Education designed for the purpose of preparing our students to improve their future.

Click here if interested in a pdf of article with my notes.