How Larry Page Changed Meetings At Google After Taking Over Last Spring (GOOG)

Crosspost with my G+ account. thx to @eecastro for the link

Imagine applying #flipclass principles to meetings as a whole. Most meetings, even decent ones (ha!) are a series of isolated info.dump with hesitant discussion as feelings are spared and people aren't really sure how others will react.

After the meeting, there is a flurry of one on one discussion, negotiation, opinion polling and ultimately a decision is made. In the worst of environments, this is made official at another meeting (in the absolute worst environments, the decision is "arrived at" during the second meeting -- nudge, wink.

#flipclass theory would seem to argue that the info.dump and initial position setting could be done asynchronously and that the negotiation, argumentation, and decision making would be better placed in-meeting.

How Larry Page Changed Meetings At Google After Taking Over Last Spring (GOOG):

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Ed Tech Reflections: Caught in the Middle of a Growing Trend

don't ever be fooled by my egotistical ranting. There is power in partnership. @40ishoracle reflects on BYOT:

Ed Tech Reflections: Caught in the Middle of a Growing Trend: Well, Bring Your Own Technology/Device movement is certainly picking up pace! JD and I were contacted by the second reporter in a month wri...

The Myth of Transforming Curriculum through Fancy Assessment Tools: A Rant in One Part

File this one solidly in the RANT category.
Enough so that I am taking a break from the “Form Follows Function” blog to do so.

My second grader got her report card yesterday. Improvements in a number of categories. A letter grade drop in math. The culprit? math-facts speed tests. She gets them right, but not enough of them in two minutes. The solution: electronic flashcard program for the tablet...Start memorizing, my dear. But while that is frustrating and not uncommon, it is not enough to warrant a rant.

I was reading through eschoolnews.com’s list of “Readers’ top ed-tech picks for 2012 and noticed a disturbing trend that leaves me cold. mixed in with some excellent choices (Google Apps for Education) and some interesting tools that warrant further investigation (PTC Wizard - online scheduling for parent teacher conferences) and a few jokes awaiting a punchline (need a tablet less useful than a Kindle Fire? buy Kineo) is a growing number of websites and software packages that claim to teach through assessment. They often use glowing buzzwords like value-add and gap-identification and talk about the seamless process of identifying and challenging students with problems as they are ready. The most complicated of these packages promise to aggregate data for use in teacher assessment so that schools and districts can engage in long-range planning.

(cue the music)

As teachers and professionals, we need to start calling foul.

Rather than rant about the problems with drill-and-kill apps or programs that address what Gary Stager refers to as the low-hanging fruit of education (see this excellent recent post), I want to focus on the claim that these tools will be transformative for education.

Even if I accept the premise that these value-add measuring tools give data to administrators that can be used to make decisions about teacher performance and effective learning (note: that is a HUGE “if”), the data that is given is almost useless in terms of educational reform. Here is why:

Teacher A and B both teach a class of similar students (yes, we have already entered the world of fantasy, just go with it).

Teacher A and B both use magic-corporate-out-of-the-box-assessment tool and finds that there are 500 super-duper assessment points of value add in Teacher A’s column. Teacher A gets the top-tier band bonus and a gold star. Teacher B gets and extra duty period and a remedial teacher app for his iPad.

In terms of long range pedagogical change, though, what did the assessment tool tell us?

Is teacher A a superstar lecturer?
Is she running a Montessori-based experiential program?
Does teacher B sit in the back of the classroom while students do worksheets -- i mean math apps?

Ultimately, the assessments give us no data on what actually works and what doesn’t. It gives a mystic aura to the individual teacher but does nothing to guide schools on pedagogy or curriculum redesign in a broader sense. What is ironic is that the same political schools-of-thought that encourage the die-by-assessment measurement of teachers end up glorifying certain teachers and rebuking others without clear explanation about what was done wrong or right by either educator.

Assessments are about measuring ends.

Effective educators can interpret these assessments to create new learning experiences and opportunities for students to improve their knowledge and skill base. They focus on creating new and significant means by which students achieve. That is difficult to quantify and takes practice and patience to replicate in any true way.

Put another way, It’s like Education is an Art, not a Science.
-- and computers don’t do art

Unorthodox education predictions for 2012 - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

It is not often that one of the PREDICTION lists will make me laugh out loud, but this is a beautiful piece of writing...prophetic and chilling? yes.

Unorthodox education predictions for 2012 - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post:

'via Blog this'

Form Follows Function in Education (Part I): Rearranging the Media Center

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic,Of all things physical and metaphysical,Of all things human and all things super-human,Of all true manifestations of the head,Of the heart, of the soul,That the life is recognizable in its expression,That form ever follows function. This is the law.[2]

     - Louis Sullivan, “The Tall Building Artistically Considered” (thx Wikipedia)

The above article was written at a time in architecture when the old rules were no longer providing adequate usefulness in the design of a building. Sullivan, inspired by his mentor Wright, adopted this maxim as universal, but in our everyday life, it is not being applied that way. In 1896, the challenge was to ask what would influence the design of a building if tradition was not the template to use? The answer was to shape the building so that it maximized its purpose:

FORM (the shape and design) follows FUNCTION (the purpose) as opposed to the tradition (what came before).

This has been going through my head A LOT this past year as I consider education on big scales and little ones. It has been combined with a corollary that I have, at least in my mind, always attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright: FORM can influence FUNCTION.

A simple illustration: my daughter finally got the skateboard that she had been asking for and spent an entire afternoon with her sisters wearing pads and learning the basics. One day later, after getting ready (a process when factoring in knee and elbow pads, wrist guards, and a helmet) and riding to the park that served as her practice rink (with baby-sister-in-wagon-in-tow) , she was finished in 10 minutes and asking to go home. What had changed her basic desire to skate, her FUNCTION? The weather (FORM) had dropped to near freezing. The structural design had changed so much that it quelled her desire.

Skateboarding: Day 1

I submit that the same is true in education:

Consideration One: The Media Center:

As we prepare to welcome students back from a long deserved break, they will be returning to a library that is the same in size, shape, and furnishing with a few significant differences. We switched the place that held the study carrels with the place that had tables more designed for quiet group work. We removed some of the seating to increase space between the tables.

Libraries are multi-use spaces. There is a need for quiet study and a need for collaboration which occurs amidst the traffic to find books and resources. The same space in which a librarian presents to a class the topic of effective information filtering techniques is being used by students on a break to find and begin reading HUNGER GAMES before the movie comes out. it is a place that is almost the definition of chaotic. And yet, effective libraries are places of order.

Compound this issue with library space that was designed for a school population of around 500 (the school currently has almost 800 students). Increase the pressure by making it a space that was built before collaborative learning was the norm (no small conference rooms) and has been adapted to hold computers and other technology (further reducing multi-use space and creating new traffic patterns). Tensions among students and the library staff had risen a point where neither group was happy and the gains in increasing library use and function in the school were threatened by the sheer number of patrons.

And so we took a step back. We watched how the library was being used. What sections of the library were most likely to become pockets of distraction. Where were students policing themselves and what was the difference?

Ultimately, the changes we made followed a few basic patterns and rules:

Increased space between tables, place away from "quiet zone"

Put places where students were likely to talk in areas that were already high traffic and less conducive to quiet study. In our case this mean placing the group study tables near the computer carts that constantly have a come-and-go traffic pattern. It also placed the laptops nearest to the tables where they were likely to be used the most.

Study carrels were moved farthest away from the entrance 

Keep the most quiet places (the study carrels away from the entrance of the library (it was fascinating to watch students speak at full-volume at the door to the library and gradually quiet down as they went deeper inside. We spent one day quieting students 20 feet from the entrance and watching the impact it made on the overall tone of the library: impressive).

The original "Collaborative Spaces" created in 2010

Separate areas of talking. Noise begets noise. If a group of four students are placed next to another group of four students, they will naturally increase the volume to talk over the white-noise of the other table. The result is dueling volume increases that destroys the collaboration of both tables and others. Putting a plant,a bookshelf or even enough space can keep each pocket isolated enough to continue whispering.

Will these efforts be successful? We are hopeful. We are working to communicate the reasons behind the changes openly and honestly and solicit feedback from the students, who are the main patrons of the space.

The biggest change of all though is one of mindset. We broke from tradition (those study carrels had been in the same place for over 15 years) and instead asked ourselves how the design of the library could best influence the multiple functions that happen within the space.

Had your own experience of FORM and FUNCTION? 

Feel free to drop a comment, share the page, or tweet me at @jdferries. 

Feedback is always appreciated. 

In the next post, I’m going to try to apply the same concept to some more abstract parts of education: Flipped classrooms and Social Media.

On Assessing Technology in Projects: Avoid the Blind Spot

Yesterday, Brebeuf Jesuit hosted its 1st annual Jingle Bell Tech Conference. Four schools from around Indianapolis came. It was a small gathering but had great content and discussion, which is about all you can hope for this close to Christmas. Special thanks to @40ishoracle who conceived of it, did the planning and ran the show and @tcockrum who once again played guide about the #flipclass.

The topics covered included Google Apps for Education, Adapting a classroom for BYOT, Flipping your classroom, and Assessment strategies. Any of these topics are worth a few blogs, but, as is normal, the best part of the conference occurred when teachers began to discuss and share, in this case, on the subject of assessments.

Assessing Technology skills is difficult on a number of levels. This is highlighted in an age where many schools are doing away with “tech” classes in favor of an integration strategy. Even schools that have a technology focused class have raised the expectations that all teachers will integrate technology and, presumably, evaluate it. Some of the difficulties:

• Students are more comfortable with technology so they are able to “dazzle” the teacher with effects that are not really all that difficult or representative of actual skills.
• Students are able to (as one teacher put it on our ever-present chalktalk poster boards) “pull one over” on the teacher by blaming technology for procrastination or failure to implement.
• Teachers feel unqualified to grade “tech” but obligated to because of the ever-present specter of expectation
• Students replace learning material through repetition or practice with technological shortcuts so that the "shiny pretty" obscures the assessment of learning objectives

This mix of vague expectation, separation of skill from learning objective, and general dis-ease with the topic leads to the creation of Evaluative Blind-Spots. for the purpose of this rant, Blind-Spots are evaluation categories that are vague, generalized, and often skew the overall grade positively without necessarily assessing any actual learning objective.

In our experience, they often use terms like “creativity” or “use of technology” or “overall”.

Not sure if something is a blind-spot? ask yourself these questions:

• Does the category come at the end of the rubric?
• What is the link between this category and the content/skills being evaluated overall?
• Do i feel qualified to evaluate this category?
• Am i willing to drop someone a letter grade because of this category? Two letter grades?
• On a five-point scale, can i visualize what a “1” would look like? a “5”?
• Have i ever assessed someone “below average” in this category? is it just free points?
• If i ignored this category, could i still assess the primary learning objectives?

If the questions above indicate that you a) don’t really care about this category or b) are not sure how to assess this category objectively (yes, i said it), then eliminate it as a part of the evaluation. 

You will save yourself time and stress and let the students focus on the sections of the rubric that are related to the primary learning objectives. You also eliminate the possibility that the category is just a placeholder for your opinion on the quality of the project and avoid the inevitable comparison of grades and discussion of your “fairness”. (This is not to say that the teacher opinion shouldn't be factored, but that it is already being factored in categories such as “organization”, “clarity”, “mechanics”, “research”, “analysis”, etc -- poor quality should be declared as more than an "opinion").

You might find that the blind-spot is a misnamed category for something else. “Use of Technology” might be a place holder for “ability to communicate a message” or “aesthetic design”. Those are more exacting terms that might be easier to expertly evaluate. after all, that awful “keyboard type” transition in a PowerPoint is a “use” of technology, but three slides of it and the only thing that is being communicated is death wish. tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.

Is a blind spot the end of the evaluative world? probably not. few students ever complained about easy points. but if our ultimate goal in assessment is to give feedback on accomplishing specific learning objectives, demonstrating skills, showing acquired knowledge, then we owe it to ourselves and our students to measure that.

Dreaming Big: The Software I need for my "flipping" classroom

This one has been brewing in my head for awhile which means that it will probably go long, but i think the time has come for educators to start laying out what is necessary to take classrooms from analog to digital...the legislators had their chance and they give us contradictions like creativity-through-standardized-testing. In the spirit of the season, Bah Humbug.

Context: One of the best presentations I saw this year at ICE (Indiana Computer Educators) was a session on FLIPPED CLASSROOMS put on byTroy Cockrum (@tcockrum), Brian Bennett, and Brett Clark (@Mr_Brett_Clark). In this session, they outlined a simple method of teaching that could be considered innovative in some ways and a refinement of good teaching practices in others. Rather than going into details on “what is a flipped classroom” I will refer you to the livebinder @40ishoracle and I have been sending people to this year, my pearltree on the topic or suggest you follow @jonbergmann.

In summary, the #flipclass idea centers around displacing traditional classroom activities, including lecture, to the “homework” timeslot, freeing up that time period for one-to-one check-in, discussion, clarifying, activities, etc. In its simplest form, the teacher becomes available to “help” with homework problems that classically deterred students from doing their work.

This brings me to software: while it is a misconception that numerous flipclass teachers write about to say that it is all about “video taping the lecture”, when you think about the types of activities that can be displaced (reading chapters, listening to lecture, walking through a power point, taking notes), lecture pops to the top of the list in terms of what can be done.

There are a number of software solutions out there for recording screen casts, teacher video, etc. Many of our teachers have experimented with paid (like Camtasia) and free solutions and this is not an analysis of those.

Instead, i became intrigued by thinking about what software would look like if it were specifically designed to help the flipping teacher (i love the adjective wordplay). As is the case with most things, if there is an education need, there are companies who are working to fill it. I got to meet with Senthil Premraj of www.flippedlessons.com. While this company is not yet creating the software that i am about to describe, it was a phenomenal discussion and i encourage people with experience in flipping classrooms to talk to them about what you would like to see.

So here it is...My dream software for supporting the flipped classroom:

1. Web based (and only web-based): If I have a browser, it should be able to run this software. If I have a webcam or a microphone, it should be able to interface. Test it on a chromebook.
2. The ability to import, upload, embed from a variety of resources. There are too many effective videos and demonstrations out there for teachers to not have access to them. We are experts in curation, but the mechanism to bring a video into my flipped lesson should be seamless and simple
3. One Stop Video Creation with simple editing. I do NOT want to export to edit. I want one tool and one screen. So what would this entail?
1. A simple drag and drop timeline. that can include videos that we have uploaded and embedded, videos that we have created through a webcam.
2. A separate audio-only timeline for doing voiceovers.
3. A third timeline for captions, callouts, etc.
4. Want to win the special prize? give me a fifth timeline to do sideXside or picture-in-picture.
4. Teacher control: Teachers pace their lectures, display a variety of media, choose when to joke and when to be serious. Canned lessons are bad out of the textbook and bad off the web. Let the educator do the work. (yes, i heard the gasps. I am not a total liberal)

[Part of me understands that i am shooting for the moon here, but this would be the service that, as a school i would pay money for.. Besides, aviary.com already figured this out for web-based podcasting.]

5. The ability to export the final “movie” product. Teachers should be able to keep the fruit of their efforts even if the school stops paying for the product.
6. a simple mechanism for giving fair-use copyright credit. we need to be better models of this for our students. (this would be a simple piece to add to the upload/embed dialog. Where did this come from? what date? and then create a credit slide at the tail-end of the “movie” or a credit page that can be clicked on).

So on the teacher interface side, we are looking at a simple layout with timelines, audio/video bins, a callout/caption interface, a question option interface (see below) and some well-designed dialog boxes.

On the student side,

7. A system for inserting questions as a “listening check” for students. Bonus points if there is a self correcting option and if the teacher can get feedback so he/she knows going into class where students struggled with the lesson the night before.
8. A “Question” box where students can leave notes and questions for the teacher as they are going through the lecture so that they do not “forget” the questions the next day.

Finally:

9. Help me demonstrate the value add. Give the administrator statistics on numbers of teachers, numbers of lessons, number of students accessing. I want lots of numbers and data in charts and graphs.
10. Make the login interface logical and simple. Do not require a class list import or at least give me a variety of options such as a classroom passphrase that is entered after the student logs in.
11. Keep the cost reasonable. Google Docs is free. Microsoft is becoming affordable. Camtasia costs under $300. Dont price a brilliant product out of the market.

And that is it. 

My dream software. 

If you have already invented, please feel free to call me with a quote. if it hasn't been invented yet and the ideas are useful, toss a little credit to Brebeuf Jesuit, a school for all your flipping needs :). If you make millions, I want to talk to you about a library renovation.

(In all seriousness, i wouldn't be blogging about it if i didn’t want to see this happen. Prove me right, Internet, make the magic happen)