Consider the climate created in blogs and twitter when users blast each other’s ideas and put writers down with sneering, sarcastic snips. Negative comments and sniping tweets fuel a competitive duel of intellectual one-upmanship. It isn’t pretty.
It’s toxic.
I’m immersed in social media — facebook, twitter, plurk — and the exchange of ideas often generates lively and impassioned debates that feed our minds. But the informational feast suffers a rude guest when an intellectual bully sits at the table and starts flailing insults and overpowering the conversation. The effect of the bully’s domination is like a sloppy food fight ruining everyone’s good time.
Hey, you!
Just because you know something about a topic doesn’t mean you know it all. And just because you have a different opinion than someone else about a topic doesn’t mean your opinion is superior. You are not the only person with worthwhile thoughts.
Can we please just try to get along when we discuss ideas?
Message to self: Put relationships first and ideas second. Relationships will last; ideas will come and go.
It all comes back to manners, which should always attempt to preserve dignity and show respectful regard for others. My mother often repeated the reminder: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” Later, when learning about teacher mentoring techniques, I was taught a corollary: “Sandwich constructive criticism between two compliments.”
When participating in discussions, my hope is that I will always strive to preserve a friendly and open-minded relationship, even among strangers in a virtual meeting place. Put-downs and condescending tones do not belong in an intellectual exchange of ideas.
photo: “Wednesday” by the cherry blossom girl: www.flickr.com/photos/26959633@N05/3247608608
This blog expresses the personal opinions of the author and is not affiliated with nor representative of any company, employer, or other entity. Posted on June 13th, 2009 by Sharon Elin
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If you haven’t used VoiceThread before, you’ll see that is a creative way to collaborate on a slideshow.
(Click here if you want to open the viewer in a larger size)
Below are some other examples of VoiceThreads to demonstrate more uses for the application.
VoiceThread is a free Web 2.0 application, but you can subscribe for higher levels to obtain more accessibility and features.
The site also offers an educator’s account that allows special access to a limited number of related accounts (private and protected) so that a class of students can interact without having to sign up with individual emails.
Imagine the rich possibility of discussions when students become participants in an online forum as visual and interactive as this!
Other Examples:
Transition project from Year 6 to Year 7 involving schools from the UK, Australia and Thailand. Teacher Steve Kirkpatrick:
Meg Swecker uses VoiceThread to connect her students’ questions with her scuba diving trips. You can find more examples than this one on her website, Giant Stride, on her “Ocean VoiceThread” post.
VoiceThread is also useful for staff development and to encourage online Professional Learning Networking, not just within a district, but regionally, nationally, or globally.
This blog expresses the personal opinions of the author and is not affiliated with nor representative of any company, employer, or other entity. Posted on May 30th, 2009 by Sharon Elin
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Imagine slicking up a Twister mat with baby oil, spinning around in fast circles with your eyes closed for three minutes, and then trying to play the convoluted balancing game without sliding or falling. If you’re an educator trying to figure out how to navigate copyright laws as they pertain to school projects, lessons, and presentations, you might feel as tangled and tied up in knots as Twister players feel when they slide and slip on a slippery field like this. Add to the confusion the defensive yet elusive concept of “fair use,” and you will probably land on your backside in a tumbled heap with the other players. Everyone is confused.
I’ve been collecting resources on copyright laws as they apply to educational use for several years, and as soon as I think I have a solid grasp on the legalities, my understanding shatters by someone else’s interpretation or explanation. On April 25, 2009, I listened with interest to the Classroom2.0 Live’s session on copyright with guest Kristin Hokanson. So many resources were shared in this session that it would take a college textbook to summarize the topic here. Instead, I will share Kristin’s resources and links for your more convenient exploration. The collection is a treasure worth keeping!
Kristin, along with librarian extraordinaire Joyce Valenza, opened my eyes to the surprising fact that copyright laws were not originated as a gestapo attempt to restrict the public from using art and text. In fact, copyright laws were meant to encourage creativity and artistic enterprise by ensuring recompense for artistic expression. Even so, many teachers, media specialists, and administrators are either paralyzed in fear when it comes to using published art and text in the classroom, or they are so overwhelmed that they fall into the opposite camp — they look the other way and shrug as students and colleagues blatantly google images and Xerox book pages for classroom use.
Indeed, there are limits to what we can use. On the other hand, there are defensible situations in which we can break those limits. But few teachers have the time or legal resources to determine those limits when they are presenting a lesson or guiding their students through a research project.
I find it easier and — even better, more creative – to encourage teachers and students to produce their own materials and / or to make creative use of the resources they already own. When technology integrators in my district help students with digital storytelling projects using MovieMaker or PhotoStory, we teach them how to use — gasp! — clip art, along with their own photos, as original and expressive art. That eliminates the possible hours of internet surfing for the “perfect” picture, and it neutralizes the legal fears of compromising copyright restrictions.
I know we are not alone in this, but our school district is not particularly progressive. By that I mean, we are not a 1:1 school district, and we are not a Mac district. Not only are we a Windows district, but we are behind a few years in our operating systems: We still use Windows XP, and even Windows 2000 in some of our 64 schools! To add insult to injury, our district is extremely security-driven, and the firewalls are insurmountable. Students are blocked from searching google images or flickr, so resources for art are severely limited compared to typical internet harvesting.
Given those limitations, I decided to put together a presentation that demonstrates many of the tricks and tips our integrators use when helping students and teachers find unique ways to use our limited resources to illustrate their multimedia projects.
Twister image from flickr
Image title: ‘IMG_2148′
www.flickr.com/photos/31788279@N00/2532580926
This blog expresses the personal opinions of the author and is not affiliated with nor representative of any company, employer, or other entity. Posted on May 3rd, 2009 by Sharon Elin
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Education is a noble and honorable enterprise — well-meaning, respectable, geared toward progress and success. For all its lofty intentions, though, we have a few glaring problems in education here in America. One of the most pernicious is the dark truth that the profession currently includes too many ineffective, lame, or even neglectful and abusive teachers. They make us all look bad, and, frankly, I’m ready to either clean house and get rid of them or find more assertive methods to remediate their training until they improve.
The first step is to identify weak teachers so we can address their shortfalls. How do we do this? Some districts are judging teachers by their students’ progress, tracking standardized test scores. While this seems to make sense statistically and objectively, this assessment is a shallow, superficial, and misleading measure of a teacher’s effectiveness.
Standardized tests reveal what students know about a collection of facts and concepts, but they can never reveal whether students are rising to their full potential, whether they’re creatively and intellectually stimulated, or whether they are becoming civic-minded, future-oriented, productive citizens. They can never gauge the reach of a teacher’s inspiration or the pull of a teacher’s encouragement. And they can never look inside a classroom to see little Sally-Lou celebrating with Mrs. Jones when she finally has the “aha!” moment and understands fractions and decimals, finally able to complete math problems on her own that she missed on that standardized test.
Conversely, standardized tests do not show the abusive sarcasm that some teachers use, or the drill and kill rote memorization that they inflict like punishment on their students. They cannot uncover the boredom and the desire for flight from school that such mediocre teaching produce. And they cannot reveal the crushing criticism and put-downs that some teachers carelessly dole out, nor the deflated and demoralized emotions that students suffer as a result.
A few weeks ago, an informal poll on my blog asked how teachers should be evaluated. The most popular answers produced a fairly respectable tie between peer observation and administrative observations. No surprise, because I began my teaching career in a district that encouraged peer observations (although they were difficult because of scheduling constraints) and made common practice of following a formal observation procedure that was tied to staff development and provided consistent feedback, similar to the recommendations in this ERIC document or in Charlotte Danielson’s model of a teacher professional development continuum. It was so common to be observed that students no longer blinked an eye or thought anything of it when a principal, teacher, or school board administrator came in and sat down in the room.
Was my experience with observations typical elsewhere? Curious, I asked a few teachers in a couple of the schools I visit whether their teaching has ever been observed in their classroom. More than one answered that she’s never been observed by the principal! Cursory walk-throughs by assistant principals often were the only classroom visits these teachers had experienced. Their evaluations at year-end were often based on workplace norms (”shows up to work 170 days out of 181″ or “attends staff meetings”) instead of being focused on the actual teaching experience or pedagogy.
In my opinion, whoever stands in front of a classroom to teach or walks among the students as a leader and guide should face both planned and unannounced classroom observations, followed by discussion, feedback, and reflection — and these evaluations should be conducted by both administrators and by peers.
One caveat that bears emphasis: The administrators who conduct teacher observations and evaluations should be model teachers themselves. Too often, mediocre teachers escape the classroom by rising to the administrative ranks. These “leaders” are not the ideal role models and instructional leaders that teachers need. They are as much a bane to education as poor teachers are themselves.
Two steps further
I want to go two steps further, however. Yes, teachers need regular formal evaluations and observations by their administrators. Yes, teachers need to emerge from their isolated classrooms and begin visiting each other’s classes frequently to share ideas, critique each other’s styles, and support each other as a professional community.
But what are the best mirrors of teacher performance? There are two more.
One of the most effective is videotaping and self-reflection. How often have you watched yourself teaching and, even more importantly, analyzed your teaching effectiveness? Watch yourself, listen to yourself, and watch the students’ reactions. It’s an eye-opening experience! Going through the process of becoming a National Board Certified Teacher requires videotaping lessons as part of the judging but also serves as a means for deeper and more analytical professional reflection. According to a publication by the NEA and the AFT, videotaping “will show the ‘total picture’ of your classroom. You want your video to convey—to the extent possible—the classroom climate, student engagement, interactions (both verbal and nonverbal), and your role in promoting classroom discourse.” (p. 35)
I know an administrator who carries a Flip camera to every observation, and records the lessons he observes, filming the students’ reactions as well as the instructor’s delivery. He shares the film with the teacher to reflect on the lesson, and then deletes the footage to protect the students’ privacy.
The second honest mirror is one that is rarely included but is often the most telling source of information — the student, who is a captive audience several hours a day with the teacher. What would happen if students were asked to evaluate their teachers? Would their opinions be useful? Sounds scary, doesn’t it? The worst-case scenario conjures images of vengeful students snickering as they write derogatory, inflamed accusations against their teachers, hoping to get them in trouble or even fired.
But what if negative reactions were rare, and students more often were honest in their appraisals of their teachers? What if their responses to a questionnaire about their teacher were kept private, seen only by the teacher if that were his or her choice? And what if these questionnaires were only used as a formative assessment, not as an evaluation that would “count” or decide a teacher’s fate?
Every year, I gave my students a such questionnaire and held my breath as I tallied the anonymous responses. The students were ruthless with their honesty but helpful with their suggestions. It only hurt a little bit to discover I needed to slow down my rate of speech, avoid micromanaging (stop constantly suggesting changes to their projects and rewording their text), or that the air freshener I plugged in was nauseating and it wasn’t fair that I drank sodas in front of them. I gained valuable insight into their perspectives about my teaching style, their feelings, and the quality of the classroom climate. Best of all, the questionnaires opened frank discussions with my classes about our learning processes. This generated ownership of their learning, an important tenet for my middle schoolers.
Here is a version of my questionnaire that you are welcome to use. You may look at the survey form that the students fill out, and if you want to gain access to the Google Document the form will generate, you have my permission. If you decide to use the questionnaire, please make your own copy so you can generate answers to your own spreadsheet.
Get honest. If you welcome administrators’ and peers’ observations as constructive evaluations, if you videotape your class to picture yourself more accurately as a teacher, if you ask students for their honest opinions, chances are you will see something to be proud of and value. Yes, you might see something you don’t like, but that’s when you put on your big-kid pants and set a path to make things right.
If we start with ourselves and learn to recognize our own weaknesses and work to strengthen our own instructional practice, then we can start organizing professional communities to put pressure on the slackers. It’s time to appraise the ranks and weed out the goldbrickers.
Photo of student with raised hand:
clickart collection
Photo of student with head down:
‘resting’ www.flickr.com/photos/75016602@N00/199276257
This blog expresses the personal opinions of the author and is not affiliated with nor representative of any company, employer, or other entity. Posted on April 19th, 2009 by Sharon Elin
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I learned a new word this week: sciolism. It’s my new favorite word. Learning about it slapped me in the forehead with a V8 moment, reminding me not to settle for shallow busywork or entertaining (but brainless) activities in my lesson plans.
It reminds me to get to the point.
Don’t ramble. If there is an objective or goal in mind, point toward it, focus, and head that way. Meandering and wandering are leisure activities, meant for aimless relaxation.
And if you’re going to make a point, make it a point that probes deeply enough to make an impact. Eliminate the trivial riffraff and brush off the fluff. Let’s aim for the jugular.
Are you guilty of sciolism?
Many of us who integrate technology into our instruction have an especially difficult time staying focused on learning objectives and digging deeply enough for rigor, even if we don’t like to admit it. It’s the nature of our jobs. Since we work with entertaining, dynamic tools, it’s too easy to become playful and veer off the track, overlooking the learning objectives.
We often inadvertently mislead the students. We don’t mean to do it, but they end up thinking that the objective of the lesson is to master the application or tool. We fail to emphasize that their purpose is to learn a concept, explore a topic, or synthesize what they’ve learned. The tool is not the lesson.
Knowing how to produce a claymation movie is impressive, and its production certainly requires many technological skills, but the more critical question is whether that project effectively demonstrates academic achievement– for example, can a student demonstrate through the animated characters that he understands the theme or main ideas of the story he is retelling? Can a student read a series of stories by one author and create an original claymation story modeled after the author’s unique style and genre?
We don’t only mislead our students about the purpose of the projects; we might also mislead ourselves about the quality of the students’ work. Sometimes we’re so impressed with the students’ glitzy results on a project that we tend to grade them by the wow factor rather than by the actual evidence of mastery or learning.
Before you create a technology project, always ask yourself, “What’s the point?”
And before you grade a technology project, ask yourself, “What was the point?”
We should never forget the standards. They are the point!
In order to challenge students and bring rigor to lessons, teachers must continually tweak and refine their projects and infuse them with academic, curricular objectives — like it or not, these state-prescribed, content-area standards are the true “goals” of the lesson.
On the other hand, the activity should remain so engaging and well-designed that students learn the concepts almost surreptitiously and vicariously. In other words, although students are aware they’re learning, they shouldn’t really notice that you’re able to systematically check off a list of bulleted learning objectives along the way.
It takes dedicated effort to add academic rigor and challenge to projects that use technology. They’re just too doggone fun! Although projects and products are enjoyable, they should be purposeful and focused. Furthermore, they should be graded and assessed against a rigorous scale or criteria, using detailed rubrics, critical peer review, and/or authentic global exposure and feedback through the internet (as in student blogs, published films, or wikis).
If you have a point, your lessons will make a difference!
I recently attended a dynamic presentation by Dr. Tim Tyson, who spoke about transforming the way schools operate and maximizing potential. He asserted that although No Child Left Behind claims to raise the educational standard, it actually stresses minimum standards. Truly effective teachers and progressive schools do much more than expecting minimum achievement. They maximize their students’ abilities.
In reforming Mabry Middle School in Atlanta to the status of a model educational facility, one of the projects Tyson spearheaded encourages students to produce multimedia presentations that educate audiences about a topic of social concern. Students are taught that what they do makes a difference — not just in their grades, but in the world.
One group, for example, was curious about the lesions on elephants at the Atlanta Zoo. “What are these?” a student asked, and a teacher responded, “I don’t know. Why don’t you find out?” This led to a student-produced film documenting the effect of overcrowding and unnatural conditions on elephants and other wildlife at the Atlanta Zoo. As a result of what they learned, students boycotted field tips to the zoo until the animals were given better conditions.
Tyson increased the rigor and challenge for the students by bringing in a professional movie producer to help students critique their multimedia projects. This expert was brutal with his criticism but, interestingly, the students didn’t wither or wilt from his honesty; they accepted it without complaint.
His first question whenever he looked at their storyboards and scripts was, “What’s the point?” And if the point wasn’t obvious, he balled up the paper and threw it aside like trash. “Start over,” he would say, “and show me your point.”
He reminded the students that with their films or podcasts, they had only a few moments to convince an audience to do something about a topic they cared about.
The same is true when we plan a lesson or organize a technology integration for a classroom project. We only have a short time to engage our learners and convince them that a concept is worth learning. It is during this critical period that we have an opportunity to hook our students’ imagination, curiosity, and involvement.
What is the point you’re trying to make? Start with the objective and stay on it, even if your activities allow room and time for your students to wander on their own branched paths. What are the learning goals? What is it that students should be able to do or understand as a result of this lesson, and how will the students demonstrate their comprehension?
This “backward design” of lesson planning — beginning with the end in mind — is the basis of Understanding By Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, a model of lesson planning and implementation that focuses on identifying a “big idea” as a main point and stepping through it systematically. I’ve collected a few links here for a quick study, but I highly recommend reading the book thoroughly and adopting its tenents. We should strive to plan lessons and design learning units that make a point and stay focused.
How many times have you heard a student ask, “Why am I learning this?”
What they’re really asking is “What’s the point?”
We owe them an answer.
Oh, and by the way, I like today’s “Word of the Day,” too. Make sure your lessons aren’t edentulous.
This blog expresses the personal opinions of the author and is not affiliated with nor representative of any company, employer, or other entity. Posted on March 24th, 2009 by Sharon Elin
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Misconceptions about teaching keep on thumbing their noses at us. As educators, we’re branded by stereotypes that shrug us off and insult us until we splat onto on the continuum of professionalism somewhere between babysitter and beach bum. As Rodney Dangerfield quipped about his constant plight of being dismissed, we just can’t get any respect.
How many times have I heard comments similar to this editorial response to an article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch (“Chesterfield schools could lose 525 jobs” January 28, 2009)?
Many teachers (I used to think it was about 50% but I think it is significantly higher than this now) are not good teachers, they are not effective nor do they care a hoot about their students. Many struggling students simply fall through the cracks. Teachers do not want to differentiate for diverse learners, they don’t want to do this or that, and they want more money. They want summers off and they want to leave with the buses each day. Well, if my husband who worked in the private sector behaved in this manner, he would be out of a job rather quickly.
Sadly, this is not an uncommon sentiment about teachers. Not only does it reveal a snide disregard for teachers’ motivations for choosing their profession, but it also hints at a dark, understated opinion that teachers are not professionally worthy of status or respect.
Even sadder, these insults about teaching carry the danger of an unexpected backlash. How many college students or career switchers ironically buy into the myths and choose to go into teaching — not because they feel passion for the learning process or feel compelled to improve the education of the next generation, but because teaching seems like an easy lifestyle?
And even more sinister and detrimental for the next generation of students: how many of these mediocre, dispassionate teachers then clog up our schools like stagnant nonintellectual pools, perpetuating a self-fulfilling prophecy and actually giving credence to the myths?
In an earlier post (”Starting a New Year as a Teacher? I Have Good News and Bad News” August 2008), I expressed a few of the honest truths about teaching that weren’t so pleasant, such as the amount of time a teacher must spend on the job — and also listed the compelling reasons that I feel teaching is so worthwhile and so fulfilling as a career in spite of these truths.
Only people who feel a genuine pull to the classroom will tip the balance between the pros and the cons toward the positive side.
To anyone who is not called to the teaching profession by a higher standard or a love of learning, the negative features drown them in the classroom like a deadweight sinker, because the demands of teaching — good teaching — are sacrificial at best and completely life-changing at least.
So let’s explore some of the myths that give teachers a negative reputation and the misconceptions that may draw the wrong kind of people into the teaching profession.
Work only a few hours a day, home by 3:30
Wrong and confused! Teachers spend more time than most professionals working unpaid overtime. Go into a school and watch a teacher for more than a few minutes. Follow a teacher for a day or, even better, a week, and watch how much and how diligently and with what dedication and sacrifice he or she does his job. Don’t just glance or assume: really watch the teacher do his or her job. The workday for a teacher does not end when the school day ends. Most teachers I know work more than 60 or 70 hours a week, spend their own money on supplies, accept below-average salaries (especially in relation to their own level of education), and yet consider their profession an honor.
Teachers are with their students in the classroom 180 days or so a year–the amount of time students are required to attend school–and they usually have the same scheduled holidays and summer vacation, but very few teachers spend their holiday vacations and summers lounging about doing nothing. Most classroom teachers spend this time preparing lessons, processing grades, researching topics, creating materials, networking with other professionals, and working in committees to target curriculum goals with other team teachers and school system colleagues.
Other “vacation” activities might include taking regular college courses to maintain certification, participating in professional development seminars, attending conferences, and researching trends and teaching methods in their particular academic content-area conferences.
Do teachers enjoy some days by the pool in the summer and celebrate surprise “snow days” in winter? Absolutely! These are well-deserved breaks and benefits — recompense for work that is difficult, demanding, and all-consuming … which brings me to the next well-worn myth.
Easy work and low stress; similar to babysitting
Teaching isn’t about entertaining a class of 20-30 students for a day. It isn’t about managing them for a day. It isn’t about keeping them busy, i.e. out of trouble, for a day. Anyone who tries to do one or all of these knows the futility of treating students like a herd of animals.
First of all, none of these approaches actually works for that many students for that long a period of time (not even for individual periods or blocks of time) — just ask any teacher, or better yet, ask any substitute teacher who has tried any or all of these approaches.
Secondly, learning does not occur when the students are being handled as if they are mute dolls sitting on a shelf. Worksheets and book work will not fill the day nor fill students’ minds with knowledge. They will merely dull the senses, as seen in the 1983 movie, Teachers:
Effective teaching is about capturing the minds and hearts and spirits of students, waking their senses and focusing their attention on concepts that build layers of related knowledge, like foundational brick and mortar, that will continue to grow past the school day. It’s about exciting students’ imaginations. It’s about engaging students in meaningful activities that sharpen their thinking skills, develop their repertoire of information and resources, and connect ideas.
Not to sound too spiritual about it, but good teaching is about magic. I’ve been in teacher’s classrooms where I felt actual chills, watching students so enthralled that you could almost see their minds expanding.
And magic, by the way, is hard work and does not happen automatically. It takes training, planning, practice, and uncanny ability to pay attention to a hundred factors at once — from Johnny’s frown betraying his confusion to Eva’s sidelong glances at Sue in their hidden nonverbal conversation — without missing a beat
… That touches on the complexity of teaching on the front lines, in the classroom. Take a look behind the scene, and you can see the hidden ninety percent of the iceberg. Teachers’ responsibilities never end. They include administrative tasks such as recordkeeping, grading, creation and production, planning, contacting parents, tutoring, special education meetings, committee meetings, state-mandated test proctoring, and various other duties that always seem to be overlooked when people accuse teachers of having an easy job. Let’s not even begin listing extra-curricular activities such as coaching, music direction, drama, and others.
Effortless work: Prescribed curriculum and textbooks provide lesson plans and materials
Canned teaching — in which lesson plans and materials are pulled out from musty file cabinets and dog-eared textbooks — is hopelessly bland and ineffective. If teachers who rely on a textbook were to look up at their class occasionally, they would probably see a room of glazed eyes and typically a few heads down on the desks in morose boredom or dead-to-the-world sleep. Effective teachers know that textbooks are a reference and a resource, but they are not the only tool to use in a classroom.
Good teachers also know that a curriculum is only a framework, a guide, a map; it is a guide showing “what to teach” and not a tutorial showing “how to teach.” Memorable teachers are creative enough to develop their own activities and materials so their lessons cover the prescribed objectives without drilling them like rote, empty facts. They use activities that are fun, engaging, and relevant to the students’ world, and if they’re efficient, they share with a network of teachers to pool ideas and swap materials.
To be honest, most of the teachers I know laugh at the thought of using a textbook as a teaching tool anymore. It is similar to an experienced chef serving Hamburger Helper — there’s nothing wrong with Cheesy Mac, of course, but the gourmet meal offers better nutrition, more seasoned taste, and best of all, the joy of cooking and the pleasure of dining.
When it comes to gourmet cooking, what counts is the process as much as the product, and the same is true about good teaching.
I challenge anyone who says teaching is easy to try it for one marking period. If you want to quit before the end, I’ll understand. On the other hand, if you make it through the trial period and think it’s not really so bad, please consider becoming a teacher. You may have a gift for teaching, and we need you here with us!
This blog expresses the personal opinions of the author and is not affiliated with nor representative of any company, employer, or other entity. Posted on March 18th, 2009 by Sharon Elin
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Imagine a farmer giving up his John Deere tractor to go back to the hand plow. It’s much cheaper, and he knows how to use it (it’s been used for generations) and it gets the job done. At quick glance, the farm looks like it runs just fine. But watch the comparison with the farm a mile or so away that is still using the tractor and other technologically advanced tools and methods. Guess which farm will have more profits, more productivity, and more time and opportunity for research and development? Which farm will be able to compete globally and will maintain status in the farming community? And which farm will get left in the dust?
The danger in cutting technology in the schools is the same as the risk in returning to the use of a hand plow and trying to compete against tractors. Education will take steps backward. The old ways may save money, but they waste time and squelch progress.
Some policymakers are making compromises, trying to straddle both worlds. They see the value of technology and do not want to eliminate it entirely, so they trim it back severely, like the farmer using his tractor only once a year. These decision makers in the educational systems are cutting the number of instructional technology integrators in the schools to trim the budgets, and they’re rationalizing that teachers should be able to use the technology without the specialists’ help. But a farmer can’t learn how to use a tractor immediately, nor can he learn how to farm efficiently by having a tractor parked in the barn.
Educational technology is not something you learn once and never need to learn again. It is an ongoing, continually evolving progression of skills and methods.
Policymakers who sacrifice technology integrators to reduce or remove employees from the school systems cling to misguided beliefs. While they may admit or give voice to the philosophy that technology is important to emphasize 21st Century skills, for example, they may believe that integrators are “extra support” and should be phased out as teachers learn how to incorporate technology into their lessons themselves.
School boards and superintendents are often naively unaware of the scope, depth, and complexity of instructional technology — and the explosive speed and volume at which new applications are developed and introduced. They may not consider or understand the learning curve, including the profundity of pedagogy and instructional design that must go into the implementation of these tools to be successful. Nor do they comprehend the continual support that is required before teachers can become independent users, not to mention keeping up with the research and mastery of the rapid upgrades and new introduction of software applications.
Many instructional technology integrators earn credentials through graduate-level coursework that specifically teaches the value and the means of assessing, choosing, and integrating technology to supplement or deliver instruction. These additional degrees or certifications are earned in addition to professional teaching credentials. If policymakers think teachers can take all of that specialized knowledge on themselves, develop expertise & skill in the use of various software applications, and keep up with the onslaught of new developments without support (in addition to keeping up with the demands of their classroom), they are (1) overlooking the available wealth of expertise, insight, and skill represented by instructional technologists, (2) undermining their specialized value, and (2) adding overwhelming extra helpings to teachers’ plates without fair compensation in money, time, and supportive resources.
I wonder if teachers realize the implications of these cuts — that they are expected to integrate technology without any help or, at best, with reduced help? Perhaps teachers think they’re off the hook and they aren’t required to use technology because of the reduced number of integrators, but most school boards and superintendents still expect teachers to use technology — only now they expect teachers to be savvy enough to use it without help. This is worth serious consideration and review. Are teachers really ready to do this?
Have most teachers integrated technology without help yet? Not in my experience. There are some teachers who are rocking the technology world with their classroom integrations without any help — but these are exceptions to the rule. Most teachers simply aren’t ready, and the world of technology bewilders, overloads, and distracts them as they expend their professional energy on their classroom responsibilities.
… I think they’re going to miss us when we’re gone.
John Deere photo by Chris Inside (on flickr); used with permission
This blog expresses the personal opinions of the author and is not affiliated with nor representative of any company, employer, or other entity. Posted on March 7th, 2009 by Sharon Elin
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Are you an educator who sometimes feels overwhelmed?
Ever grumble about the way things ought to be?
Ask most teachers what they would like to see changed about education, and the answers will differ, depending on where they are when asked. What teachers might say behind closed doors in the faculty workroom probably is not what they say at a faculty meeting. Teachers understand that if they speak too freely in public, they may face repercussions and reprimands from administrators.
Education remains a top-down system, driven by local and state mandates that are carried out by district-level leaders and building-level administrators. This is a system in which the “lowly workers in the trenches” (the teachers) have little voice and no control over curriculum and policies that govern their schools or their professional practices. And so, in helpless frustration, teachers often grumble privately to each other, although if anyone ever listened, teachers undoubtedly could share valuable insights for educational reform.
My friend, Kobus Van Wyck, a fellow educational technologist in South Africa, works tirelessly to improve the educational system in his country. In response to being “tagged” (i.e. invited to participate), he responded to a discussion question, “What 5 things would you change about education?” In this discussion meme, each “tagged” person has scrutinized education for areas of possible change.
The discussion has grown into a provocative wealth of ideas for improving education. Dr. Bill Graziadei, Professor Emeritus and (e)Learning Consultant at State University of New York, also shared his ideas and tagged me. Like those who perpetuated the meme before me and passed it my way, I will pass the gauntlet after posting my 5 suggestions for change. I look forward to reading everyone’s ideas!
The rules of this discussion meme were set by its originator, TJ Shay:
“List FIVE changes you would like to see in the educational system. Your responses should represent your perspective and your passion for learning and students…Tag people…from a variety of perspectives. If you have been tagged, tag as many people as you choose, but try for a variety.”
Here are my five suggestions for changing the educational system.
1. Administrators should be accomplished teachers with at least seven years’ experience, and they should be widely recognized for their successful “best practices” in the classroom. In addition, at least one-third of any district’s school board members should also be experienced educators.
A powerful leader should be able to perform any job his or her followers are asked to do, and furthermore, should be able to do it better than they can. No mediocre teacher should be allowed to rise to the ranks of school leadership. I’ve known countless exemplary administrators who are exceptional, but some administrators are, sadly, not particularly dynamic teachers themselves. In fact, often they are individuals who disliked teaching and wanted to get out of the classroom and/or were lured by higher salaries; they never experienced any true “calling” to teach.
As instructional leaders, administrators should be able to pass their passion on to their faculty. They should be able to mentor teachers, model techniques, and identify weaknesses and strengths in their teaching staff. Their first love — their calling, their passion — should be the students and the educational process, above all, not their own career advancement.
Likewise, local school boards should include more than one token educator among its members. Education is unique and specialized, and the people who govern the districts should include the experienced perspective of seasoned educators. We can’t keep trying to run school districts like businesses or like political legislative bodies, in which the status quo is preserved at any cost and the newest members strive to make the community comfortable while ignoring the realities of the school system and the gritty, nuts-and-bolts needs of the teachers.
2. Tear down the ivory towers.
Beware the “ivory tower” syndrome! Both school board members and administrators should venture out of their offices to interact with teachers and students in the halls and in the classrooms. Otherwise, they fall out of touch with the reality of their constituents’ world. Such distance isolates them, making them less likely to build a trusting relationship that would allow a natural dialogue between school leaders and classroom teachers.
3. Stop using tests as the main measure of learning! Move toward more formative assessments that truly check for understanding and steer instruction to deeper levels of learning.
In a March 2007 Edutopia article, Milton Chen quoted an educator from India who questioned the American emphasis on standardized testing: “Here, when we want the elephant to grow, we feed the elephant. We don’t weigh the elephant.”
Effective teachers do not spend their time and energy on issuing grades; they create learning opportunities that are rich and meaningful — knowing that if the learning is relevant and effective, the passing grades will naturally follow. This is because effective teachers know the difference between formative and summative assessments. (In a crude nutshell, formative assessments show us what the students are learning during instruction so the lesson can be tweaked to focus more effectively, while summative assessments grade what the students learned after the unit.)
Any teacher who rightfully focuses on student learning will naturally lean more toward formative assessments to guide his or her instruction. Summative assessments, however, drive the politics of education. State mandated tests are standardized and norm-referenced, intended to fairly assess the “success” of a school system’s progress over time and across localities. In order to ensure accountability, standardized testing forces districts to meet minimum requirements and test all students the same way on the same concepts.
Although these are well-intentioned initiatives, I think they’ve played out in disastrous, exaggerated proportions. I’m not entirely against prescribed minimum standards of learning: We need ways to ensure that teachers are teaching the “meat and potatoes” and not just the fluffy-fun-stuff when it comes to academic content.
But we cut into instructional time to administer standardized tests too frequently and too widely! In our district, we give benchmark tests every quarter (4 times a year) and also administer end-of-year state tests. The benchmark tests were originally intended as formative guides to let teachers know whether students are learning the prescribed information; in reality, though, most benchmark tests end up treated as summative, graded tests that are rarely reviewed for instructional tailoring.
Not only do schools scramble to book the computer labs for these tests (blocking the use of the labs for other learning activities), but we steer off-target and develop tunnel-vision instruction. Teachers spend hours of test-driven review to prepare students for the tests. The potential test items — not the big-picture concepts — drive instruction. Students “learn” via shallow memorization of rote facts, a process which is short-lived and unconnected to authentic applications or relevant learning.
4. Sitting in desks can be torture, not to mention counterproductive.
Kevin Honeycutt posted this picture on flickr and commented about it on Plurk.com. He complained that he had to sit in this desk for a couple of hours while judging a forensics competition. Imagine the torture of being a student sitting in this desk for 6 hours, day after day — especially if the student is large, tall, ADHD, or left-handed! Brain research has shown that students learn more effectively when they are not stationary, when they are active and interacting with each other. Recently, innovative designers created desks that allow students to stand during their school day. I found in my classroom that when I switched to tables with chairs that could be moved around, my students were much more engaged and alert than when I had used standard desks in rows. The climate was more conducive to learning and collaboration, and generous workspace led to more creative products as well as happier students.
5. Provide open access to technology for both teachers and students so the classroom can become a rich learning environment related to the real world.
I’ve saved one of my biggest educational pet peeves for last. Today’s culture is inundated with technology. From cell phones to Wii to PC to iPod, students and teachers use technology daily in every facet of their lives …. but when they come through the doors of the school, they usually are required to shut them down and switch to old-fashioned tools such as pen and paper.
Even if the Internet is available in schools, for example, students (and teachers) are usually monitored carefully and even blocked from a long list of sites that have been flagged automatically by programmed firewalls as inappropriate, dangerous, or unrelated to academic objectives. Too often, these blocked sites are actually not dangerous at all. Many are simply “social” web 2.0 sites in which students would be able to post material on the web and register to be members of a virtual web community — sites that are rich in learning possibilities and can encourage students to explore, participate, and create material with an authentic worldwide audience.
Sadly, the reasons students are blocked from web 2.0 sites are based more on distrust and suspicion of the students, not the potential dangers of the internet. I heard a person in my district’s Technology Department say that we must block access to wikis and blogs on the World Wide Web because students will post obscenities or sabotage the sites and we must guard against this type of intellectual abuse by preventing their access. My goodness! That kind of lockdown is usually reserved for pernicious prisoners who are being punished and who are considered a safety threat! We’re talking about the open exchange of ideas and information, such as posting digital storytelling projects, not the exchange of instructions for building bombs and other weaponry!
In addition to free access, I believe schools need to provide teachers with continual specialized training and exposure to technological advancements. The world of technology is exploding by the minute with new applications, new hardware, and new ways to use them instructionally. Keeping up is a full-time job, and it is not a one-shot initiative. It is a perpetual need because of the continuous, daily innovations in technology. Certified teachers who understand the pedagogy of instruction and who have gained extra credentials in Instructional Technology should be hired in school systems to help introduce, train, and support teachers in the use of new technology.
Teachers who learn how to use technology for classroom instruction grow in their educational reach and find that they are able to engage their students more relevantly. In the high-stakes arena of modern education, in which American schools are falling behind in the global standings, we need all the support and all the tools we can muster. We shouldn’t continue doing things the same way, only to fail at the same levels.
… And now I pass the pen and ask these thinkers for their own ideas. (If you are in this list and have already been tagged, please pass on the invitation to someone else!)
In what 5 ways would you change our educational system?
This blog expresses the personal opinions of the author and is not affiliated with nor representative of any company, employer, or other entity. Posted on March 1st, 2009 by Sharon Elin
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Google is a monster search engine with enormous capacity. I’m still learning fun tricks about refining my searches to isolate the exact results I need, and it remains my favorite research buddy… but simple searching aside, the variety of other applications developed (and acquired) by Google is staggering. The more I delve into the collection of useful tools and software, the more I find. Google offers layers and layers of choices in an ever-growing array of software goodies.
I’m reminded of my husband’s magic culinary specialty, hometown spaghetti (the kind he used to cook at the firehouse for all the hungry firefighters). That plate of endless spaghetti has magic powers — it seems to start growing when I consume it, until, after eating for five minutes, the plate is still as full as when I began. In the same way, Google keeps increasing its offerings. Just when you think you’ve finished exploring the Google collection, more pops up.
Google Docs and Google Groups
I’m a newbie when it comes to exploring Google Apps (the name for the collection of Google software), but I’ve been jumping in to explore and use the system. I’m heady from the experience — such amazing stuff! For example, these applications allow users to interact online and widen their reach.The best part for education, in my opinion, is that Google allows user interaction and peer sharing/editing. For colleagues in the workplace or for teachers and students, this means text documents no longer need to be emailed back and forth to review and/or edit. Now a document can be posted on Google docs and shared online by as many people as necessary, or a discussion can be started in Google Groups and, with permission, anyone can participate.
I made the following presentation as a way to introduce Google Apps to a panel of community college educators. Limited to only 10 minutes, I pared down the list of applications and focused only on two: Google Docs and Google Groups, although I mentioned more. I was also required to speak about the pedagogy of using Google Apps, so a few slides touch on the needs of 21st Century learners and how Google Apps speaks to those needs.
This blog expresses the personal opinions of the author and is not affiliated with nor representative of any company, employer, or other entity. Posted on February 14th, 2009 by Sharon Elin
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My school district is locked-down tight and fixated on security when it comes to internet access for students, which frustrates me. After seeing so many references on twitter and plurk about web2.0 sites being used in education by other educators, I was curious whether similar restrictions were nation- or even worldwide. I posted a survey via google docs last month (this link gives you viewing access to the spreadsheet), and 77 total participants answered questions about websites in their districts.
Although the results were interesting, this survey is far from being representative of the nation’s or world’s schools, for several reasons. First, the survey was not widely dispersed. It was accessible on twitter and plurk, as well as on my blog, which implies that only educators who already use social networking sites or blogs (and, furthermore, only those who have contact with me or my friends online) would have responded. This leads me to believe the survey “sang to the choir.”
Responders’ comments, which I have interspersed between the graphed results below, clearly demonstrate this bias in favor of web 2.0 online websites. I would love to see a more balanced view, showing answers by educators who do not explore social networking sites. The responses here left me wondering how many districts are not represented fairly, such as those who physically have little or no internet connectivity or those who pedagogically have vague interest in using the internet for classroom activities. For example, the responder from South Africa clearly indicated a problem with accessibility of internet sites:
Another reason this survey can be considered only as an informal glimpse and not as a full-color portrait is that only twenty-seven states and six countries were represented. Of the 27 states, 10 included only one response. The international responders included one each from Australia, Canada, England, Hong Kong, and South Africa. The map below shows the 27 states. California led the responses with 9, Kansas had 7, Michigan, Texas, and Virginia had 5, and Illinois had 4.
Rather than interpret the results, I am sharing the data here for subjective interpretation. Now that I am releasing the results, I am eager to hear your opinions, reactions, and ideas about the comments and data.
This blog expresses the personal opinions of the author and is not affiliated with nor representative of any company, employer, or other entity. Posted on February 11th, 2009 by Sharon Elin
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