May 20, 2013 Leave a Comment

Define Learning

Continuing the rant from last week about educlichés, our department focus document1 also includes several instances of another vaguely defined phrase: "digital learning".

In fact, our job is not to help teachers understand the concept or make it part of the curriculum. The task is to…

Develop a definition of Digital Learning in [the OLSD2], identify how it impacts teaching and learning, and articulate why it is important to students’ learning.

Interesting. From reading that charge, I would have to conclude that Digital Learning is a separate idea from the learning that students do, and apparently from the process of teaching as well.

It’s certainly possible to learn without the use of digital tools. But is learning with digital tools fundamentally different than without them? Do we need a discrete phrase like "digital learning"? Or is it in the same class as 21st century learning – an oft repeated cliche linked to a collection of vaguely defined ideas?

Anyway, we will not be working alone in the effort to develop that definition. Over the next few weeks the district is holding a series of public meetings asking parents, students and other members of the community to contribute their ideas to the mix.

It will be interesting to see who shows up and what they have to contribute. I don’t expect large numbers since community sessions like this only draw big crowds for issues like boundary changes but I’d love to be surprised by some enthusiasm for issues related directly to instruction.

Stay tuned while we solve the mysterious identity of Digital Learning.

1 I’d love to link to the page but it’s super secret and locked behind the district firewall.

2 OLSD is, of course, our beloved overly-large school district.

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May 19, 2013 2 Comments

Setting a Path Early in Life

A recent post by one of our elementary principals has been stuck in my head for a couple of days, and I’m not entirely sure why.  It’s about an activity in her school called “College Begins with Kindergarten” in which the kids learned about various “helper jobs” in the community (examples offered: doctors, nurses, teachers).

Now I certainly believe a basic understanding of those roles should be part of the school experience from the very beginning. But then students were asked to consider what they might study in college and to create their own future diplomas, complete with a statement of the subject in which they would major.

While there are two pieces to this assignment that I find troubling, the first is more of a question than a quibble. I wonder if the kids in this particular class were asked to consider more common but less stereotypical “helper jobs”, ones someone in their family might hold, such as plumber, auto mechanic, or store clerk, or even one unique to the DC area, lobbyist.

However, beyond the potential lack of inclusiveness, what bothers me more is that an activity like this seems to be telling kids at the beginning of their formal schooling that college is the only acceptable path to follow at the end of that path, more than a decade later. Are we starting the traditional college-is-the-only-way indoctrination too early, long before kids have any kind of clear understanding of their own talents and interests?

Having never taught elementary students, I’m sure someone can tell me why I’m wrong about this rant.

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May 14, 2013 Leave a Comment

Learning 16th Century Skills

Although the language of education changes over time, some educliches just seem to endure far past the point of holding any real meaning. And one my favorites* seem to be making a big comeback around here: 21st century skills.

Recently our department here in the overly-large school district was given the areas on which we are to focus in the coming year (and maybe beyond, depending on how long the current big boss is in his position), and listed in several places is that phrase. Associated with it is our task: “Identifying strategies for teacher to use to integrate communications, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity skills into the curriculum”.

Beyond the constant use of a vaguely defined phrase that is at least 12 years past it’s expiration date, there are two major problems with this particular element of our discussion.

First, none of those skills are unique to the 21st century. A successful person at any point in human history was skillful at communicating, working with others, critically assessing the world, and finding creative ways to deal with new situations. They also made use of whatever technologies were available at the time to do all that. We want our kids to do the same throughout their lives with the most effective tools they have at hand.

An even larger issue is that last part about integrating all those skills “into the curriculum”.

Our curriculum, as in most K12 institutions in this country, is still very much a teacher-directed, fact-driven relic of the previous century. Or maybe even from the 19th. Everything is laid out in the “program of studies” and “pacing guides”, scripts that set the content and direction of learning from day one through day 180.

However, there’s a big disconnect. Those so-called “21st century” skills (aka the “4 C’s”) are best learned by doing. By interacting with ideas and solving problems that don’t necessarily have one simple answer. By finding and assessing information, and then creating new ways to use and communicate it.

If we are really serious about students learning these “new” skills, the current curriculum is largely worthless. It is chock full of easily googleable trivia and the primary skill being taught is how to play the testing game, to analyze packaged questions and select the “right” answers.

We need to totally rethink the definition of what is essential for students to know and be able to do when they graduate and that will not come from trying to graft a collection of cliches to the antiquated process we now call school.

* If by “favorite” you mean I want to scream whenever someone uses it.

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May 7, 2013 Leave a Comment

Lecturing in High Def

At the risk of being declared obsessive, I have one more rant about the educational philosophy of Bill Gates based on the Fast Company interview with him. This time, his vision of that classic instructional tool: the lecture.

That’s one more goal: to revolutionize the lecture in terms of cost and quality. The idea that you can store video essentially for free should mean that anyone can watch the best lecturers in the world. Rather than a student getting one of 3,000 people across the country who try to teach beginning physics or statistics or remedial math, through a process of comparison, competition, and improvement, you get someone who is pretty special and has the budget to do something fantastic. Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.

Transform lecturing by giving them better production values.

The high-budget video of a concert may look and sound better, but you’ll probably learn more about music by actually singing with your family around the piano. I’m betting Gates didn’t learn computer programming by watching someone talk about.

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May 6, 2013 Leave a Comment

Howl About These Numbers Instead

In the article that triggered the previous rant, both the writer and the subject, Bill Gates, make reference to the frequent howl of politicians and corporate types, that students in US schools have fallen far behind their counterparts in other countries. The line has been repeated so many times that it has become accepted as fact.

Except Alfie Kohn has some evidence-based arguments to use in response to those claims that are far more clichéd talking points than truth.

As always, his essay is very good, well worth saving for your next discussion with someone from the all-testing, all-the-time fan club.

However, this is probably the most important point Kohn makes about improving student achievement in the US, no matter how you define that term.

4. Rich American kids do fine; poor American kids don’t. It’s ridiculous to offer a summary statistic for all children at a given grade level in light of the enormous variation in scores within this country. To do so is roughly analogous to proposing an average pollution statistic for the United States that tells us the cleanliness of “American air.” Test scores are largely a function of socioeconomic status. Our wealthier students perform very well when compared to other countries; our poorer students do not. And we have a lot more poor children than do other industrialized nations.

More than 20% of American children are living in poverty, a rate that puts the US 34th out of 35 industrialized countries, the same ones frequently used in test score comparisons.

That ranking should be far more upsetting politicians and corporate types than the numbers generated from largely irrelevant multiple choice tests.

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May 6, 2013 2 Comments

Don’t Worry, Bill Will Be Fine

In their current issue, Fast Company, a business magazine that focuses on technology and design, presents an interview with Bill Gates, in which he “offers his cure for what ails the education system”.

Although the intro section includes a little criticism, it’s pretty clear from the start the writer has no intention of asking anything that might be considered push-back. The editors even include a sidebar with a list of Bill’s “favorite edtech startups”, all of which are more about the technology and data management than they are about learning.

The whole interview isn’t very long and offers none of those “cures” mentioned in the subhead. But Gates’ answers to two questions stood out as especially shallow.

At the top, the writer asks him what he sees as the “ultimate challenge in education”. Gates replies that we must “get more out of $600 billion a year”, the amount he says the US spends on education. Spoken like a true billionaire money manager.

Then towards the end of the article comes this excellent question.

You’ve said that when you were in high school, you followed your own interests, taking on independent study, working on computer programming day and night. Is there room for that kind of student-driven learning in a highly rigorous, metrics-based environment?

Gates’ response is both disingenuous and clueless.

People who are as curious as I am will be fine in any system. For the self-motivated student, these are the golden days. I wish I was growing up now. I envy my son. If he and I are talking about something that we don’t understand, we just watch videos and click on articles, and that feeds our discussion. Unfortunately, the highly curious student is a small percentage of the kids.

As so many education “experts” do, Gates’ is extrapolating his personal experience to every student in the country. But unlike him, I don’t believe the highly curious kids are a small percentage of the whole. There are many more than he can see who are very self-motivated, just not by the narrow goals dictated by a standardized test-driven system.

Let’s face it, we don’t give our students many reasons or resources to express their curiosity and self-motivation during the time they spend with us in the formal process we know as school. Maybe fixing that would be a better way to spend Bill’s money.

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May 4, 2013 Leave a Comment

Buyer Beware

As I’ve mentioned in other rants, I speak to many groups on the topic of managing information while on the go and using multiple devices to do it. While each person needs to figure out the process that works best for them, almost everyone now depends on interconnected services and applications that can sync to some kind of storage in the now-legendary cloud.

It turns out those web-based services are not yet to the point of being completely dependable. Case in point, back in March Google pretty much lopped off one of the cornerstones of the information management process I use and advocate when they announced the shutting down of Reader, their service that is the "cloud" behind (above?) many, if not most, RSS aggregator applications. Which means that millions of us who depended on Reader (plus more than a few software publishers) are looking for alternatives before July 1.

Last week my process potentially took another hit when the developer of Instapaper, another application I depend on every day, posted that he was selling the popular read-later service. Considering how many small web/app companies have disappeared lately because their new owners wanted the people and technologies* but not the product, I had reason to be concerned.

However, there’s a big difference between this announcement and Google’s. Instapaper’s owner was very up front and transparent about the sale. Between posts to his blog and discussions on several podcasts, he made it clear that his first concern was for the users of the service. A core part of the deal was that the development of Instapaper continue.

It remains to be seen if everyone involved follows through on this plan, but this situation illustrates the big difference between Google and this individual developer (other than one is an 800 pound gorilla).

Google’s business is selling advertising and it’s users (and the data they generate) are the product being sold. The shutdown of Reader is one more sign that leaders of the company have decided anything not generating revenue must be changed or deleted.

Maybe not something to worry about but certainly something to consider before you begin to rely on a product, service, or app (from Google or any other company) that may disappear on short notice.

*One of the latest examples is Posterous, a simple blogging site that was bought by Twitter in 2012 and shut down a few days ago.

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