teachers

Could/should some of these things be leveraged in the public schools as well?

On 09/17/2015, in attention, digital learning, education, education reform, education technology, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning spaces, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, using teams, youth, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
I don’t care for the title here, but there are some valuable items that can be found by digging around in this article entitled, “Silicon Valley billionaires are appalled by normal schools — so they’ve created this new one” — from businessinsider.com by Melia Robinson

Excerpts:

A typical day at Altschool, the Bay Area-based school system that raised $100 million in venture capital in May, is anything but typical.

Kids take attendance on an iPad, complete a “playlist” of activities, and learn 3D modeling software to design a playhouse for the class pet.

Founder and CEO Max Ventilla previously helmed the personalization team at Google, where he helped build Google+ and other products that make the internet feel more personal.

His latest venture aims to transform the outdated, early-1900s model of elementary education for the digital age.

In May, we spent the day at AltSchool‘s Fort Mason location in San Francisco to see its revolutionary teaching style in action.

From DSC:
Is there anything here that public schools would find attractive and/or could implement?

AltSchool divides students between the ages of 4 and 14 into three groups: lower elementary, upper elementary, and middle school. There are no traditional grade levels.
A typical day at AltSchool begins with attendance. As kids arrive, they sign in to the school’s attendance app on a dedicated iPad.
The attendance app is one of a dozen or so tech tools developed by the school’s 50-person product team, which includes former employees of Apple, Uber, Zynga, and Ventilla’s alma mater, Google.
The PLP is the foundation of the AltSchool experience. Teachers collaborate with families and students to design a set of goals for the learner based on the student’s interests, passions, strengths, and weaknesses.
Each child receives a weekly “playlist” of individual and group activities that are aimed at achieving those goals. This student is writing an entry for his blog on coin collecting.
Teachers pick activities for their students by creating items in their playlists or searching the My.AltSchool library to find items that other teachers have made.
This 8-year-old demonstrates a game of Pac-Man using MaKey MaKey — a simple circuit board that transforms everyday objects into touchable user interfaces …he attaches alligator clips to four mounds of clay and tapes one clip to himself. When he taps the clay and completes the circuit, the computer interprets the input as arrow key actions.
This streamlined instruction time frees up the teacher to walk around the classroom and interact face-to-face with students.
The lower elementary students spend the morning knocking a shared item off their playlists: “writing the news.” These guys are chronicling a recent trip to the park.

Many of the younger kids wear headphones during playlist time to drown out distractions.
Technology isn’t necessary to complete all activities, but it is used to document students’ work. This student takes a picture of her news clipping using an iPad and uploads the image to her playlist.
The classroom, like the tech, fosters AltSchool’s individualized learning approach. Students sprawl across the room on carpets, beanbags, and even lofts of their own construction.

Classrooms are treated like stations, rather than designated areas for particular grade levels, and students move from room to room throughout the day. It’s especially important for micro-schools to maximize space so that a four-room schoolhouse doesn’t feel cramped
Craft and cleaning supplies are stored where the smaller kids can reach them, giving them a sense of agency.
After lunch and PE in the nearby park, students put aside their playlists and work on more integrated group projects.
The middle-school students were tasked with a classroom redesign. This 11-year-old, who was wearing an Iron Man T-shirt, built a parkour course. He’s writing a parent permission slip on his Google Chromebook now.
His classmate learned from online tutorials how to use the 3D-modeling software SketchUp, and she designed an urban-garden-inspired seating area for the unused deck on the second floor. There’s an obstacle course inside the benches for a class rabbit to tunnel through.
Another student, who wants to be a veterinarian, lawyer, writer, and manga comic-book writer, grew an indoor tea garden. She says she loves how the assignments “bend to your ability.”
If Silicon Valley’s favorite elementary school has its way, personalization will remain king.

The future of education demands more questions, not answers — from edsurge.com by Jay Silver; with thanks to EDTECH@UTRGV for their Scoop on this resource

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Technology alone can’t educate students. It’s not some mystical, magical ingredient one sprinkles over core curricula like salt on a meal. The magic is inside the child.
…
A Pedagogy of Answers
Too many schools apply a paint-by-numbers approach to tech: “Let’s cover this fixed information, in this exact way, in this set amount of time, and judge ourselves as educators and students based on standardized test results.”
…
A Pedagogy of Questions
Our national teaching model has for too long been a pedagogy of answers. In its place I’d like to suggest a new pedagogy of questions—one that prizes interest-driven, project-based, exploratory studies. Personal gardens of learning with no single pathway through them. More open play and less rote memorization. More learning by discovery than following set instructions.
…
As an inventor and father, my advice to those looking to make digital in-roads into our nation’s schools is this: promote learning that encourages kids to choose their own problems and solutions rather than a single, siloed system.
…
Tech isn’t the answer, but it can help us create a new pedagogy of questions.

From DSC:
I can relate to Jay’s thoughts and perspectives here — we need to provide our young learners with more choice, more control. More play. More time for experimentation. More project-based learning that’s based upon what students want to learn about.

How many parents wouldn’t give their left leg (well…almost) to hear their kids say, “I can’t wait to go to school — I love going to school! I love learning about new things that I want to know about!”? To see such excitement, engagement, and a love for learning would be mind-blowing, right? If your son or daughter has that perspective, I’d guess that you value that attitude and that learning situation a great deal.

This morning a faculty member said something that’s relevant here. [Paraphrasing what he said:] “There’s a paradigm shift occurring these days in how to get information. We need our students to understand and react to this paradigm shift and we need to help them make that shift. They need to be more proactive in how they get information; and not go along with the “Feed me! Feed me!” approach.”

A final comment here…my kids balk at having to learn so many things that they have little interest in; it’s force-fed learning surrounded by — and shaped by — standardized tests. The list of things they actually want to learn about is either very short or non-existent (depending upon their grade levels). I understand that they are at different stages in their ability to make judgments about what they need to learn about; they need foundational skills to build upon…and that they don’t know what they don’t know. That said, it would be an interesting experiment for each of them indeed, for them to be able to self-select/choose some more topics, projects, and assignments and then pursue them on their own or with other small groups of other students. How might that impact their engagement levels? How might that improve their views of learning? Perhaps I’m off here..and too Hallmarkish, too Pollyannaish; but I’m tired of hearing the moaning and groaning again about having to do this or that piece of homework.

————–

Addendums on 9/16/15:
I just ran across this item from Larry Ferlazzo out at edutopia.org that has a section in it — Autonomy — that addresses ways that more choice, more control can be introduced.

Strategies for Helping Students Motivate Themselves — from edutopia.org by Larry Ferlazzo
Excerpt:
My previous post reviewed research on extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and described the four qualities that have been identified as critical to helping students motivate themselves: autonomy, competence, relatedness, and relevance. In this post, I’ll discuss practical classroom strategies to reinforce each of these four qualities.

The idea of asking better questions doesn’t just belong in K-12. Check out Jack Uldrich’s posting, A Framework for Questioning the Future.

Excerpt:

In today’s era of accelerating change, “answers” about the future are becoming more scarce. As a result, a premium is being placed on asking better questions about the future.

Unfortunately, because most business leaders, CEO’s and senior executives view themselves as action-oriented “problem-solvers,” they have a bias for “answers” instead of “questions.” As such, they don’t really know how to ask better questions.

In an effort to help individuals and organizations overcome this bias–and in the firm belief that it is better to have an imprecise answer to the right question than an exact answer to the wrong question,–I have put together a simple framework to help companies, businesses and organizations begin asking better questions about the future.

The eleven questions posted below are design to jumpstart the thinking–and questioning–process:

From DSC:
The following app looks to be something that the “makers” of the programming world might be interested in. Also, it could be great for those learners interested in engineering, robotics, and/or machine-to-machine communications; using this app could help start them down a very promising path/future.

From their website:

Programming re-imagined for the connected world.
Learn to program Arduino, drones, robots, connected toys, and smart home devices, all wirelessly. Tickle is easy to learn, fun to use, and 1000x more powerful!

Easy to learn, yet incredibly powerful!
Start learning programming the same way as Computer Science courses at Harvard and UC Berkeley. Tickle is used by makers and designers around the world to create custom robots and interactive projects, including Stanford University computer scientists.

Spark your imagination.
Create stunning games and interactive stories using our library of animated characters and sounds. With the ability to program devices to interact with other devices and virtual characters, the possibilities are limitless.

1000X the super (programming) power.
If you’ve tried Scratch, Hopscotch, Tynker, Blockly, Scratch Jr, Kodable, Pyonkee, mBlock, or Code.org, now you can go beyond the screen and program your own connected future.

From DSC:
Right upfront, I want you to know that I am not being paid for this posting. Rather I want to pass along some valuable information for those folks out there who want a powerful screencasting and video editing tool for the Mac. You should check out ScreenFlow from Telestream.net. The tool can record your desktop, your iPhone, and/or your iPad as well as can record audio from multiple sources.

From their website:

Screenflow is award-winning, powerful screencasting & video editing software for Mac that lets you create high-quality software or iPhone demos, professional video tutorials, in-depth video training, and dynamic presentations.

The timeline-based editor reminds me of the editing interface within iMovie 6 (one of the most intuitive interfaces I’ve seen in iMovie throughout the years). In our Teaching & Learning Digital Studio at Calvin College, the feedback from clients has been very positive.

And you can export your creation to multiple outlets:

It’s a solid tool; check it out.

What the Future Economy Means for How Kids Learn Today [Price]

On 09/10/2015, in attention, economics, education, education reform, future, global / globalization, K-12 related, motivation, open courseware and systems, participation, student-related, teachers, youth, by Daniel Christian

What the Future Economy Means for How Kids Learn Today — from kqed.org/mindshift by David Price

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

While this myopic and somewhat irrelevant argument takes place, the gulf in motivation between the learning that our students have to do, and the learning that they choose to do, grows ever wider. Meanwhile, the implementation of standardized testing and high-stakes accountability leaves a devastating legacy of what Yong Zhao calls side effects: increasing student (and staff) disengagement; perceived irrelevance of formal education; and the loss of autonomy and trust in the teaching profession.

If we want to re-engage learners, re-professionalize teachers, and re-think how we prepare students for a globally competitive working life, we need to follow the learners, and develop more open learning systems.

“The bridge between what researchers have been saying about learning & what teachers and students do in a classroom is spelled HTML5.”

On 09/02/2015, in active learning, curriculum, digital learning, digital textbooks, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, online learning, online media, pedagogy, research, teachers, teaching & learning, trends, by Daniel Christian

Is There an Uncrossable Chasm Between Research and the Classroom? Part 2 — from thejournal.com by Cathie Norris, Elliot Soloway
HTML5 is the bridge!

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

The bridge between what researchers have been saying about learning & what teachers and students do in a classroom is spelled HTML5.
Do we hear a “HUH?” Okay, buckle up. Here goes…
…
Put another way: When curricular resources are implemented in HTML5 (or its derivatives), the dream of BYOD is no longer a dream: Students can bring virtually any computer device into the classroom and a teacher can count on the fact that the learning activity for today’s lesson will be executable on all of those devices.
…
Yes, HTML5 is that big a deal. Why? Because it has come along at just the right time. Curriculum and pedagogy are changing; new curricular materials are being developed that meet CCSS and NGSS. If those materials are developed in HTML5, then the curriculum developer and the teacher can expect those materials to work in her or his BYOD classroom or his or her iPad/Chromebook/laptop classroom. And, for the researcher, there is the opportunity to influence curriculum development and have those research-based ideas embodied in curricular resources that virtually every learner in the U.S. can use on their computing device! Holy Toledo indeed!

Start the School Year by “Awakening Your Dreamers” — from edutopia.org by Suzie Boss

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

When your students return to the classroom this fall, how many will bring along the interests, talents, and dreams that inspired or delighted them over the summer months? Will they see any connection between school assignments and their own passions?

Bernajean Porter (@bernajeanporter), a longtime advocate of digital storytelling and engaged learning, has a suggestion to get the year off to a good start: “What if your first project was about getting to know the hopes and dreams and talents of your kids?” By investing time to build a positive classroom culture, while also introducing project-based learning practices, you’ll set the stage for more meaningful inquiry experiences all year long.

Imagination Plus Research
Porter has developed and field-tested a classroom resource called, I-imagine: Taking MY Place in the World that guides students on a multimedia journey into their own future. After a series of guided writing and reflection exercises, students eventually produce “vision videos” in which they star as protagonists of the lives they are living, 20 years into the future.

From DSC:
Along these lines of trying to figure out what one’s passions, gifts, and talents are — as well as seeing the needs of the world around us — I recently read a book entitled, “Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good.” One of the key questions from that book is:

Knowing what you know about yourself and the world, having read what you’ve read, having seen what you’ve seen, what are you going to do?

Here are some of my notes from that book, in case you know of someone who is trying to ascertain their purpose in this world…someone who is trying to find out more about their calling. It’s a good book, prompting deep reflection.

Reflections on “Can we interest you in teaching?” [Bruni] & “Teacher shortages spur a nationwide hiring scramble (credentials optional)” [Rich]

On 08/13/2015, in 21st century, Daniel S. Christian, education, education reform, future, K-12 related, leadership, strategy, teachers, teaching & learning, United States, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Can we interest you in teaching? — from nytimes.com by Frank Bruni; with thanks to Jim Lerman for his Scoop on this

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Teaching can’t compete.

When the economy improves and job prospects multiply, college students turn their attention elsewhere, to professions that promise more money, more independence, more respect.

That was one takeaway from a widely discussed story in The Times on Sunday by Motoko Rich, who charted teacher shortages so severe in certain areas of the country that teachers are being rushed into classrooms with dubious qualifications and before they’ve earned their teaching credentials.

It’s a sad, alarming state of affairs, and it proves that for all our lip service about improving the education of America’s children, we’ve failed to make teaching the draw that it should be, the honor that it must be. Nationally, enrollment in teacher preparation programs dropped by 30 percent between 2010 and 2014, as Rich reported.

To make matters worse, more than 40 percent of the people who do go into teaching exit the profession within five years.

Also see:

Teacher shortages spur a nationwide hiring scramble (credentials optional) — from nytimes.com by Motoko Rich
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
ROHNERT PARK, Calif. — In a stark about-face from just a few years ago, school districts have gone from handing out pink slips to scrambling to hire teachers. Across the country, districts are struggling with shortages of teachers, particularly in math, science and special education — a result of the layoffs of the recession years combined with an improving economy in which fewer people are training to be teachers. At the same time, a growing number of English-language learners are entering public schools, yet it is increasingly difficult to find bilingual teachers. So schools are looking for applicants everywhere they can — whether out of state or out of country — and wooing candidates earlier and quicker.
…
In California, the number of people entering teacher preparation programs dropped by more than 55 percent from 2008 to 2012, according to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Nationally, the drop was 30 percent from 2010 to 2014, according to federal data. Alternative programs like Teach for America, which will place about 4,000 teachers in schools across the country this fall, have also experienced recruitment problems.

From DSC:
Teaching is very difficult. If you doubt that statement, you probably haven’t taught in a while (or ever). Finding ways to engage 25-35+ students at once — while trying to provide a personalized, customized learning experience for each learner — is no small task.

I’m grateful for the solid teachers I had growing up. We need solid teachers. This is our future – no matter what nation that we’re talking about. Yet, as the article mentions for those of us in the United States, “It’s a sad, alarming state of affairs, and it proves that for all our lip service about improving the education of America’s children, we’ve failed to make teaching the draw that it should be, the honor that it must be.”

This is a major shot across the bow. We need action. We need to listen to the teachers/administrators/reformers out there now, and we need to listen to — and address in concrete fashions — the former teachers who have left the profession. Why did they leave? What would they recommend changing? After listening, we need to take action.

But even as I write this, I get a glimpse of the immensity and difficulty of the task. For example, who has solid ideas? What are solid ideas? Which direction should we go in? How will we get enough people on board with the proposed changes?

I’m grateful for all of those folks out there who are working to address this situation. Who work day after day to implement positive reforms and address these concerns — who are helping prepare our students for the future they will inherit. To those folks, I say thank you and may you come across reasons to be encouraged today.

“The whole point of things like curricula and classroom instruction, for example, is to prepare students for what they need to know tomorrow, not what yesterday’s students needed to know today.”

Source

Some great applications of AR: “How Blippar Education supports special needs students to improve learning”

On 07/28/2015, in accessibility / UDL, assistive technologies, Augmented Reality (AR), Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, history, ideas, machine-to-machine communications, neurodivergent/special needs, science, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, by Daniel Christian

How Blippar Education supports special needs students to improve learning — from blippar.com

Excerpts:

Firstly, high school teacher Katrine Pinkpank’s class made individual, blippable posters for their Earth Day projects in April. When passers-by blipped these posters – all of which were hung in beautiful frames in the hallways – they were taken to a video of the students doing their Earth Day presentation in front of the class. One student in the class is legally blind, so the braille on his poster was used to trigger the blipp. These hallway boards have become living, breathing, 3D tributes to the work of our students.

In Room 407, students used Blippar in many different ways. Wendy Thompson, an early adopter of the technology, used it for a Women’s History Month project where students created an app-smash between Blippar and Trading Cards. The students created trading cards about famous women in history – such as Ella Fitzgerald, Frida Kahlo, and Mary Shelley – then used Blippar to add photo galleries, hyperlinks, and videos so people passing the bulletin board could scan the cards and view pop-up content about these remarkable women.

Secondly, the class made the school newsletter blippable.
…
Using Blippar and Tellagami, the students created talking digital avatar videos that illustrated their post-secondary and transition goals.

From DSC:
Though this posting focuses on the use of Blippar, an augmented reality app, I also think beacons (such as from Estimote), machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, and apps like locly could be used to relay information from students, teachers, and faculty members who could record and provide presentations concerning their work — with pieces of their work being located out in the hallways or actually anywhere on a campus. When someone approaches a piece in the hallway, a pre-loaded application on that person’s mobile device — such as locly — would be activated to display a “card”/link to the video describing that piece. The author, creator, designer doesn’t need to be physically present in order to tell people about their work.

Also see:

4 Great Augmented Reality Apps for teaching Science
Excerpts:

Elements 4D
ZooKazam
NASA’s Spacecraft 3D
Anatomy 4D

Matching pedagogies with technologies — this is the type of interface that could help!

On 07/24/2015, in accessibility / UDL, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, ideas, interface design, neurodivergent/special needs, parents/guardians, personalized/customized learning, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, youth, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
The folks who worked on the Understood.org site have done a great job! Besides the wonderful resources therein, I really appreciated the user experience one is able to get by using their site. Check out the interface and functionality you can experience there (and which I’ve highlighted below).

We need a similar interface for matching up pedagogies with technologies.

DSC-NeedThisInterface4SelectingTechs4Pedagogies--July2015-flat

Also, there are some excellent accessibility features:

From DSC:
When you read the article below, you’ll see why I’m proposing the aforementioned interface/service/database — a service that would be similar to Wikipedia in terms of allowing many people to contribute to it.

Why ed tech is not transforming how teachers teach — from edweek.org by Benjamin Herold
Student-centered, technology-driven instruction remains elusive for most

Excerpt:

Public schools now provide at least one computer for every five students. They spend more than $3 billion per year on digital content. And nearly three-fourths of high school students now say they regularly use a smartphone or tablet in the classroom.

But a mountain of evidence indicates that teachers have been painfully slow to transform the ways they teach, despite that massive influx of new technology into their classrooms. The student-centered, hands-on, personalized instruction envisioned by ed-tech proponents remains the exception to the rule.

Hackathons as a new pedagogy [Zoras]

On 07/24/2015, in 21st century, collaboration, computer science, design, experimentation, higher education, innovation, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, maker movement, pedagogy, programming, project-based learning, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, user experience (UX), using teams, by Daniel Christian

Hackathons as a new pedagogy — from edutopia.org by Brandon Zoras

Excerpts:

Students are coming out of school expected to solve 21st-century problems and enter into occupations that haven’t even been imagined yet. Schooling is not designed in this manner, so we wanted to give students an opportunity to solve problems in authentic contexts, using 21st-century skills and collaboration techniques. We wanted to break down walls between classrooms and have students use interdisciplinary skills to solve problems with teams of their peers, with mentors, and with industry professionals.

Why a Hackathon?
Hackathons have become a new way of doing business, creating products, advancing healthcare, and innovation. The energy is high, and so are the stakes. Can you turn an idea into a product over the course of a weekend? But let’s move beyond that. Let’s look at the teaching and learning within a hackathon. Hackathons are really the ultimate classroom.
…
It is within hackathons that students are utilizing their skills and knowledge to solve problems. It’s project-based learning, inquiry-based learning, and STEM all wrapped up into one activity! It’s about design thinking and truly a 21st-century learning opportunity. Students are working collaboratively within mixed-ability groups to examine problems and come up with solutions.
…
Benefits For Students
A huge learning factor is failure. Often, school protects students from failure, and students always manage to mix A with B to get C. The hackathon, though, enables a support system where, once an obstacle or failure throws a wrench in students’ plans, they work as a team to get around it.

From DSC:
Swivl allows faculty members, teachers, trainers, and other Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to make recordings where the recording device swivels to follow the SME (who is holding/wearing a remote). Recordings can be automatically sent to the cloud for further processing/distribution.

My request to you is:
Can you extend the Swivl app to not only provide recordings, but to provide rough draft transcripts of those recordings as well?

This could be very helpful for accessibility reasons, but also to provide students/learners with a type of media that they prefer (video, audio, and/or text).

“A whole new trend is about to explode in the educational app world.” [Clare]

On 06/26/2015, in active learning, Augmented Reality (AR), cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, creativity, education technology, educational games / serious games, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, future, K-12 related, play, teachers, teaching & learning, trends, youth, by Daniel Christian

Tech Toys (and Tools) for Learning – from edutopia.org by Jayne Clare

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

A whole new trend is about to explode in the educational app world. You may be familiar with the new tech that allows for apps to interact with tangible objects. This enhanced interactive technology is undoubtedly one that will change educational apps as we know them. Soon, the pairing of augmented reality with extensive curriculum guides will be commonplace in the classroom. Indie developers are producing a wide range of products that focus on spatial awareness, language development, number sense, problem solving, and motor skills, as well as an introduction to literacy, math, and the sciences.

What I find most exciting about this trend is the ability to get manipulatives back in the hands of children while simultaneously allowing them to interact with digital tools. As an educator, I’m relieved to know that learning through virtual technologies is able to occur in conjunction with physical play, all while fostering creativity. Suddenly there has emerged a balance between digital play and physical, imaginative, and cognitively engaging play. Kids have always learned best when they have the ability to engage all of their senses during play. The most powerful learning happens when the integration of body, mind, and brain are incorporated simultaneously. Promoting active learning can teach and model concepts and skills; children can then generalize those skills into real-time experiences and their daily routines off-screen.

Learning Ecosystems

Categories

Tags