Why We Teach: the 50,000 ft view of accountability in education

This may just be a shorter or bigger picture rehash of the last blog. But it also might be important

In the last blog, I drew a distinction between the different ways of measuring efficiency when thinking about EDUCATIONAL technology. Namely that, since we don't produce widgets, it is difficult to use the usual "X widgets produced per Y man-hours" formula. I proposed that instead we focus on how much the technology contributed to building relationships between students and teachers.

Wow. That was short sighted.

This is not just about Educational Technology.

It is the heart of Catholic education. And maybe education as a whole...but i'm going to premise off the Catholic part.

Yesterday while eating lunch with Alan Mensel, religion teacher extraordinaire, and Michael Christiana, SJ we were discussing a the concept of the "the classroom as hallowed ground" (40ishoracle blogged about the inspiring article a few weeks ago). In that discussion, we started discussing the teachings of Jesus.

• He never said "convert this many souls"
• He never worried about the profit margin of the ministry
• He never counted the sins

He asked people to love one another. And to love God. He told people to give to the poor and encourage those least fortunate among us. Jesus figured if we were to do all of those things, the whole "getting to heaven" things would take care of itself.

Flash forward a few thousand years.

In my last blog, I talked about those special teachers that we all remembered.

• They didn't worry about solving 56 math problems in two minutes.
• They didn't keep value-add averages of their students on high-stakes test scores
• They didn't peg their evaluation rating and payscale to tests or grades

What great teachers did back then, and continue to do today, is cared about students and their education. They struggled to make a subject that they cared about come alive fore the students. They crafted lessons that would provide experiences that students could reflect upon and gain knowledge from. Those great teachers figured if they did all of those things, the whole "good test scores" thing would take care of itself.

In asking educators to take more time to pay attention to the numerical goals (test scores, college entrance rates, etc. -- which may or may not be a reflection of the ultimate goal), we are asking them to take away from the process of building relationships, caring for students, and creating amazing learning experiences...the very pathways that have to be opened to get us to the promised land.

This has been coming up in a lot of different venues. I think @40ishoracle is tackling some of this from a different perspective here. I would invite your comments and thoughts.

Note: let @40ishoracle know that not all of my blogs are 4pgs long.

Learning and Leading - February 2012 - Page 22-23

The @40ishoracle is famous! Before BYOT got off the ground, she integrated the school's teaching method and the NETS. Mission based decision making at its finest!

(now if only we could cut 250 more words from the Book Chapter That Wouldn't End!)

Learning and Leading - February 2012 - Page 22-23:

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Relationships: Rethinking Efficiency in the #edtech paradigm

Imagine a school where the decisions about technology were not justified by claims to increase test scores?

Last night I was invited to a supper club sponsored by Ice Miller about the topic of "Technology in Education." There was a phenomenal mix of vendors, technology software producers ranging from App developers to major players in the LMS game, foundations, and even some educators. It was a great night with fantastic food and conversation.

While a few topics seemed blog-worthy and might get some time later (I am gearing up a MathNinja rant), I think it would be more useful to start at the conclusion. One of the challenges that was identified early on was the need for EFFICIENCY. Efficiency and Technology are like peanut butter and...well, peanuts. Sure you can do other things with them, but why would you want to? We all know that peanuts exist to make peanut butter. Ask my three year old.

If Technology does not yield efficiency, it is not worth the investment. This has been true in almost all areas of business. And yet, for the most part, it is not true in education. While there have been incremental time savers such as electronic gradebooks (no more calculators and pencil scratches) and longer term time-savers (Make a PowerPoint and revise rather than constantly writing on the board), none of these have led to the great hallmark of business efficiency: a reduction in labor. No principal ever made the connection "now that our teachers have saved so much time on grade entry, we can increase class size and reduce one teacher."

(Rant Drumroll)

So, it should not be surprising that movements like robo-graders and distance learning lectures to virtual lecture halls full of plugged-in students get traction. If one teacher can lecture one time and that lecture can be broadcast to thousands of students over the next five years, you can start to see less need for a lecturer in-building. If that lecture can be assessed, scored, and recorded through an automatic test, than you reduce the need for a in-building grader as well.

But (and its a big one)

School aren't factories. Students aren't widgets. Teachers aren't cogs in the industrial wheel.

And (this too, large)

Everybody knows this.

Take away the politics that has warped the image of teachers into summer-lazing fat cats in an effort to reduce the strength of the union vote and every politician will call to mind that one special teacher, the one who did not grade by rote, who did not stand at the front of the room and lecture all the time. That one teacher who cared. Inevitably this is a teacher with whom the student had a strong connection.

(Rant Concludes)

Back to the dinner.

One of the most impressive educators around the table is the head of the Oaks Academy here in Indianapolis. He pointed out that his school (an iPad school, but not until the eighth grade) had the same impressive results with the same underserved populations that some newtech schools had reported without the gadgets in the lower levels. His claim was that the relationships between the students and teachers were the key to success.

And the table fell silent, because he had named, at a crowded table full of technologists, the secret to good education and maybe the key to that elusive measure of efficiency.

If we measure efficiency as the most number of widgets (students) produced uniformly by the fewest number of line workers (teachers), we, and i mean the big inclusive social "we", all lose. But if we re-frame efficiency to be that which gives teachers and students more time to build relationships with each other, that could be magic:

• Flipclass increases the one-on-one time between student and teacher. Check
• BYOT creates an environment where students and teachers discover and apply technology and learning together. Check.
• Social Media supplements the live-time relationship and humanizes the teacher while providing another positive influence in a new social environment. Check
• Interactive white boards...never mind.

St. Ignatius, early in the founding of the Jesuit schools, wrote that the connection between the teacher and learner was a fundamental key to the discovery of truth.

If the technology purchase does not fundamentally increase the ability for the teacher and student to form a stronger relationship, and thereby increase the opportunity for real and substantial learning,  it is not directed toward efficiency.

Imagine a world where every technology vendor had to justify the purchase based on improving the Student-Teacher Relationship?

Cross Post "BYOT: Update - Brebeuf Arrow"

You have heard a lot from myself and @40ishoracle about the Brebeuf Jesuit BYOT program. Thought we would give you a chance to read what the students are saying as well. This article was released in this week's THE ARROW. There were also articles about SOPA, the new library design, and Cyber-baiting. It was a good tech issue :)

BYOT: update - Brebeuf Arrow

A #flipclass diary: Adding a little BYOT Goodness

Someone on FB asked me about this line from the #flipclass diary 

blog, so i thought i would make it into an entry: “spent the next day refining skills and learning the practicalities of codecs and embedding video”

I am not sure how to classify this one. It is a little bit of constructivist education, it was made possible by the #flipclass format that allowed students to move at a faster pace in the classroom, and it is a great shot of #BYOT in action.

The students were using the Microsoft Training Courses to learn some of the features of Office 2010. We have started using these as supplemental material since it allows students to self-pace and gives them another learning option. Almost all of the students skipped the first few lessons (create a slide, add text, etc.). At one point, midway through the class, almost every student was working on adding videos.

Student A: Where do I get some videos to add? You Tube?

Student B: No, youtube is different you need a file.

Student A: Mr. Ferries-Rowe, where could we get video?

Me: I don’t know. Where could you get video from? If only there were some device in this classroom that could take video. What a wonderful world that would be.

Student C: (picking up on my sarcasm): Ooh! my phone can capture video!
Student D: Mine too!
Student E: Oh Yeah!
Student F: Siri, can you take video? [editor’s note: there is no student F]

(pause for film goodness)

Student A: ok, now what?

Me: you tell me.

Student A: I have video but it has to be on this computer in order to put it in the PowerPoint.

Me: True.

Student A: I don’t have my cord

Me: If only there were  a convenient way to transfer files from one device to another...as if through a cloud.

Student C: You could email it.
Student G: No, the flip video. He talked about Dropbox

Student A: I have that app on my phone!

Student H: there is an app?
Student I: Yeah, I have it to...

(Pause for App downloading, account registration, etc.)
(Pause for Transferring files to dropbox and retrieving it from the web)
(Pause while student inserts video to power point)

[Editor’s note: see how much pausing there is? it’s awesome]

Student H: it worked!
Student K: mine too!

Student A (poor student A): Mine says there is a codec error

Me: What’s a codec?

Student I-don’t-remember: Instructions. Like a language. (someone watched the flip)

Student C: We need a program to translate it. I use AVI
Me: but the mean techs at school won’t let you install programs. Next?
Student C: is there a web-based translator?

…

By the end of the class, students had real-world problem solving experience. Understood (to some degree) the issues presented by different codecs and (to a greater degree) how to work around them. They had used a variety of tools, cloud-based and personal, to enhance presentations, and worked collaboratively to solve problems.

That’s a good day.

PowerPad 16 USB station charges your iPad and 15 others -- Engadget

A issue in BYOT: once you have technology in the hands of everyone you have to keep the devices powered....check?

PowerPad 16 USB station charges your iPad and 15 others -- Engadget:

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#flipclass diary: a form-follows-function story

Abstract: Flipped Classrooms rock.


Been taking a week or so off of the blog to finish a #BYOT book chapter with @40ishoracle, get the debate tournament season started and teach a class. It is that class that i wanted to write about today...more of a gush than a rant, so pull out the handkerchiefs, i may get sappy...nah. File this under a continuation of form-follows-function: Designing classes that meet the learning needs of the students.

Context:
Brebeuf Jesuit is a private secondary school that follows the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (you can read a lot more about technology in the context of the IPP in @40ishoracle’s article that was in LEARNING AND LEADING WITH TECHNOLOGY “Give your old-school curriculum a NETS makeover” -- shameless plug...link not available yet).

In this system of education, the emphasis of learning is in...
Reflection (careful consideration and thought) on
Experience (actual activities that the student in which the student has engaged) within a
Context that includes both the student and the subject matter as a foundation.

One of the struggles I have had as an Ignatian educator is balancing a whole lot of foundational context about technology and a wide variety of foundational context from students.

• Have you had the student who sits in your class bored over the lecture because they already know the material (and you know that they know)?
• Have you, at the same time, attempted to teach other students who struggle with the material because they have no frame of reference in which it makes sense?
• Felt hampered by the sheer amount of material you had to cover to get students ready to do an activity?
• Felt inadequate to the task because all of the really good questions that had to be set aside because it was time to move on to the next lesson?

This was my experience as I prepared to teach a revised computer science curriculum that would emphasize the skills and characteristics of a “Digital Citizen” and de-emphasize the push-button Microsoft curriculum. I decided that the best way to do this was a flipped classroom.


Experience:
"The History of Computers" was often a lesson that I presented traditionally. While I created an excellent and engaging lesson (of course) about the history of computers I often found it to be a bore. It was built around "themes" which provided the students a framework other than the passage of time: “Smaller, Faster, but not all that different”; “Getting Connected”, etc. I incorporated activities like making each student a “member” of the original Arpanet so they could experience delivering messages in the early internet. It was about as good a lesson as I could manage given the subject.

As I began to evaluate activities that required live interaction between the teacher and student, I also distinguished between what was necessary content and skills that i would evaluate and what was “fluff” -- I began to re-think the entire lesson. The “themes” were the important content takeaway, not the dates or the terminology. This general ideal could be combined with an introduction to research-as-a-skill and making-effective-presentations-as-a-skill, two subjects on which high school students can always use practice. The lesson began to form and I made the flip:

	Traditional	Flip
Introduction of the “themes”	Lecture	Video Homework
Examples of the themes in history	Lecture	Keywords given in flip video and on Presentation notes as homework Examples and evidence generated by students in class
Research for Presentation	Homework (or “extra” periods of classtime)	Classwork the day after the flip
How to make a Presentation	Lecture with Guided Demonstration	Video Homework with hands-on experiment module in class
Assessment	Make-a-presentation Homework	Make-a-presentation in class
In-Class Presentation	In Class	In Class

* Classtime is in green. Same number of days, different activities.



Students watched the flipped video lesson that night with only a few hiccups. There were “did-you-watch” action steps so that students, after a brief Q&A, began their research in groups (each group given a different time period) on the Themes from the lecture.



It is important to note two things: First, students were not given a full-blown history lecture as video. They were given the themes, a few general “things to look for” and some getting-started keywords. Second, prior to this year, I had never watched students research -- that was the homework AFTER the lecture.

A Few Examples:

Student A: Begins research by opening up internet explorer and Microsoft PowerPoint. After typing in keywords, clicks on the Wikipedia link (first one) and copies the first paragraph into a PowerPoint slide.
Me: Why did you open PowerPoint? that is an odd note-taking vehicle
Student A: you said we were going to do a presentation on this.
Me: What information did you just paste over?
Student A: I don’t know, I just copied it. It’s about one of the keywords you gave us.



Student B: Types into Google: “History of Computers Getting Connected”. Student is frustrated that this does not yield a wikipedia article. When asked to refer to the keywords that she was given as part of the lecture or questions she had developed, she sighs over the difficulty of the assignment.



Student C: Can I use wikipedia?
Me: I don’t know. Is it a valid source?
Student C: Lot’s of teachers hate it. It’s OK, I can use something else (turns around).


Reflection: What a difference a FLIP makes.
My first reaction was just sheer amazement over their (lack of) research skills. But the more i thought about it (multiple sending schools, young students, a class that is not typically research oriented, etc.), this should have been expected. More importantly, it was likely what has always happened, but the traditional format did not afford me the opportunity to see research-in-action. In a flash, I was not frustrated with the poor quality of work from "these kids today...ugh". I was given a clear indication of learning deficiencies that could be illustrated and which could improve research for the long term.


Action:
I made a list of what I had noticed and what proper research techniques would be necessary to address the areas of concern. The next two days were set (they watched a FLIP video preparing for PowerPoint and spent the next day refining skills and learning the practicalities of codecs and embedding video). That night, I assigned another FLIP video.



Their assignment the next day was to try again, with a more focused topic (depth beats breadth on everything except standardized tests). The results were amazing: More focused research, Questions that came from research instead of from the teacher, collaboration in discovery and answering -- all from a ten minute video that addressed the common mistakes that were being made by the class as a whole.

The flipped demo featured a split-screen browser and OneNote

Students watched a live demonstration, starting at a keyword (i used the Commodore 64). They watched as I moved in-demonstration from making questions, doing preliminary research, copying links and pictures, taking notes, forming more questions. Along the way, I was able to address the importance of linking evidence and claim, using notes during research instead of bypassing directly to the presentation, and taking time to think and reformulate new questions.



Evaluation
This is an extension of the form-follow-function in education argument. If I believe in the premise that reflection-on-experience is the place were learning occurs, than it is essential that the teacher be present during the experience for observation, guidance, etc. The passive part (lectures, videos, and to a lesser extent note-taking) is contextual foundation for the learning. The important part to watch is when the neurons are firing in the learner's brain. That is when teaching, even if it is just a nudge in the right direction, is fundamental.
If I were not a fan before, the ability that the #flipclass format affords the teacher in giving a window into the work habits and processes of the students is enough to justify the extra time and effort. The strange thing though, is there is not much more of either.



More on that later...