May 20, 2013 2 Comments

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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April 9, 2013 Leave a Comment

Getting The Picture

Sometimes it's difficult to illustrate in this space just how big our overly-large school district really is. Maybe a picture will help.

That's a meeting of all our school principals. No APs, no central office folks (other than our outgoing superintendent addressing the crowd for the last time). All 200+ of them in one room.

Minus a few who managed to skip the mob scene for some reason.

 

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February 25, 2013 3 Comments

Words Are Far More Important Than Word

BYOD rolls on here in the overly-large school district. Now in our second year, the progress is not as fast as the very-impatient me would like but at least the direction is forward, so I remain optimistic.

While our middle schools and even some elementary schools are doing some great work with integrating student devices, many of the high schools are doing a lot of foot dragging. A recent short discussion with an assistant principal revealed one reason why.

When I asked about BYOD at his school he told me they really hadn’t done much about it. Following up on the why, he gave me some of the usual discipline, “we have no control over what the kids might do” excuses, and I pushed back on all of them.

Then he told me that, aside from all that, students probably wouldn’t come with the right software on their devices making them useless for instruction.

“Right” software?

Yeah, like Word and PowerPoint. “They really can’t get anything done in their classes without those programs.”

I wish I understood the reverence felt towards the Microsoft Office package. Most people know don’t use more than 20% of the capabilities of Word, maybe a little more in PowerPoint, less in Excel, and I can’t name anyone who willingly opens Access.

Anyway, I didn’t have time to explain the error of his approach, one that I expect is pretty common.

However, what this AP and other educators need to realize is that it’s far more important to define what it is we want students to be able to do with their devices rather than to think in terms of brand names.

When it comes to BYOD, kids should be able to use their devices for writing, accessing and reading information, taking and editing images, and moving their work somewhere. The exact software that gets the job done is irrelevant.

I know many teachers are nervous about this lack of consistency and loss of control in their classrooms. Get over it.

Let your students be responsible for the technology and concentrate instead on what you want them to learn from and do with those devices. As should always be the case, the learning is far more important than the device.

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November 25, 2012 1 Comment

Resistance is Futile

I’ve been thinking about data a lot recently. It’s pretty much unavoidable here in the overly-large school district, where the rising tide of collecting and analyzing student data is starting to overwhelm everything else.

We start with Virginia’s standardized testing program, similar to those in other states, which replaces most learning activities in the late spring. Plus a variety of other required “assessments” for various purposes that students must take throughout the rest of the year.

However, most of the growth in student data collection comes from a combination of “professional learning communities” and our home-grown online practice testing system.

For the past three years at our annual Leadership Conference (the August kickoff for school administrators and others), the superintendent has decreed that everyone will participate in PLCs. Which would be a good thing if they were actually focused on learning and were communities of learners that had developed organically.

In most cases, they are neither.

Teachers discussing their required PLCs normally refer to them as “meetings” (assigning all the high regard most of us have for such events) rather than communities. The primary purpose of these meetings in most schools is creating “common assessments” for student to take and then, once the assessments are administered, sifting through the data as a group to make meaning out of it.

Increasingly that data is coming from our assessment reporting tool, which essentially is a big database that makes it easy to spit out multiple combinations of SOL-type* questions for kids to respond to. Twice a year the database also provides required “division-wide assessments” in many subjects for students in most grades.

The tests data just keep coming.

Of course, all this demand for data comes at a price. Collecting it subtracts from limited instructional time. Building the tests and analyzing the results syphons from limited teacher planning time.

And then there’s the question of whether any of these tests are valid assessments of student learning. Or whether the knowledge being tested is what students need in the first place.  Obsessing over data diverts attention from any real discussion of the changes that need to be made in our educational structure.

But none of that is important. The data is all that matters.

* SOL = standards of learning, the nickname for Virginia’s standardized testing program.

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October 31, 2012 Leave a Comment

Textbook Crisis

We have a textbook crisis here in the overly-large school district.

Ok, “crisis” is probably too hyperbolic for what’s going on but there’s still lots of chatter around the topic of the electronic versions, and most of it isn’t positive. Plus the superintendent has heard from some loud and influential parents on the matter, which in turn makes the situation a “crisis” we get to fix.

The story started a few years ago when our school board decided we needed to begin using digital textbooks with an eye to replacing the paper editions, the price of which is steadily climbing. So, they waved their magic wand and told the super to make it happen.

As a result, last year social studies teachers in upper elementary and middle school got online texts for some of their classes, ones that are little more than enhanced pdf files embedded in a really crappy interface that both teachers and student found difficult to use.  But we moved on anyway and this year we have online math books which include a combination of Flash, pdf, and web-based materials.

So, what’s wrong with that?

I don’t have time or temperament to cover all the problems so let’s just hit the highlights.

First, the books are online and cannot be put on a stand-alone reader, which means they won’t work on the most affordable devices available like Kindles and Nooks. Also making the materials inaccessible in places without an internet connection, like school busses, and difficult to use in homes with multiple people all trying to access a single machine.

Then there’s the matter of the Flash and Java-based content which isn’t playable on iOS devices and, it turns out, is inconsistently supported on Android devices running a variety of different versions of the OS.

I also find it interesting that the publisher’s tech support centers close around 6pm. How many kids do you know that even start their homework before that time?

Then there’s the lack of equipment available for students to use at school, especially during times when it must be dedicated to testing. And that’s becoming all year round with our increasing craving for data (aka practice tests), a rant for another time.

However, the biggest problem has nothing to do with any of the technical problems. Or with the publishers, and the fact that they are far more interested in “protecting” their products than in providing quality instructional materials.

The worst part of this crisis is that our school board and administration are so short sighted that they continue to buy what the publishers are selling: generic, unmodifiable crap that’s written at a slightly higher interest level than most Wikipedia articles, with mediocre graphics and worksheets containing the same rote process problems that have been around for decades, if not centuries.

Math instruction in K12 needs a major overhaul and we should start by throwing out the generic textbooks (adding video and animation is just window dressing) and then take a serious look at what math skills kids need to have when they graduate.

A good chunk of what we do is irrelevant and useless, not to mention boring, just like the textbooks, digital or otherwise.

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