K-12 Schools | Educational Technology and Change Journal

Bring the World to Your Classroom: Videoconferencing

Posted on August 28, 2017 by JimS

By Bryan A. Upshaw

My worst grade in high school was in Spanish I. Our teacher was tough, and the pace was blistering. I struggled to learn the vocab, grammar, and odd verb conjugation charts. I found the culture interesting, but the rest of the class was just frustrating and seemingly pointless to my future. Guess what subject I mainly teach now? That’s right – Spanish. What turned my worst grade and most frustrating class into my career?

Getting to see the world outside my little East Tennessee community and building relationships with people who at first seemed so different from me changed the way I saw the world. I was inspired to travel abroad, learn a language, join a local Hispanic church, and live with an undocumented family my last semester of college. Those relationships and experiences made language learning fun and transformed pointless grammar exercises into real-world challenges that unlocked boundaries that separated people.

How can I show them the world when we can’t leave our classroom?

I share my stories with my students and perhaps it inspires some to consider traveling one day, but how can I motivate students right now? How can I show them the world when we can’t leave our classroom? In my opinion, one of the most underused tools in education is videoconferencing. While expensive systems with fancy cameras and monitors can make it seamless, most teachers already have the resources to videoconference. If they have a smartphone, tablet, or computer, then they probably have everything they need!

As a foreign language teacher, I use videoconferencing in my classroom in many different ways. For example, my friend in Nicaragua, Emanuel, converses with my students. My sister shares stories about her semesters abroad in Nicaragua and Honduras. Another friend, Garret, has talked from Germany about his year abroad in Argentina and how it helped him to learn German and get a job with BMW. My students love hearing stories from guest speakers projected in the front of the classroom. They have fun asking questions and always learn something new. Continue reading →

Filed under: Ed Tech, High School, K-12 Schools, Language Learning, Mobile Technology, Multimedia, Online Learning, Technology, Trends & Issues | 1 Comment »

5 Back-to-School Teacher Tips for a Brilliant Year

Posted on August 28, 2017 by JimS

By Angel Rutledge
CMO and COO of SignUpGenius

With young minds to inspire and lessons to plan, every moment in your day is valuable. As you prepare to welcome your new students, plan ahead for the year. By tackling organization before classes begin, you’ll ace the back-to-school transition and be ready for what’s next. Check out these tips to save time and stave off stress, and you’ll get the year off to a genius start.

1. Think Beyond Back-to-School

Sounds simple enough, but planning ahead can help you focus on the things that matter most throughout the year. Create a back-to-school checklist for the first month of school and a master calendar with holidays, vacations and important dates such as parent-teacher conferences, field trips, teacher training and early release days. Plan your curriculum around the calendar, and jot down ideas for classroom décor, bulletin boards, and fun activities.

Don’t wait until the sniffles strike to prepare for a substitute. Get a general plan together so things will run smoothly if you’re out sick. Include a few ideas for icebreakers, books for story time, and some games to review previous lessons.

2. Start Out with Strong Parent-Teacher Communication

Building trust with your parents is key to a successful year. Reach out to parents the first week of school to encourage questions and share your preferred method of communication. Invite your room parent for coffee, discuss a plan to accomplish your goals and ideas for the year, and communicate needs such as classroom volunteers.

When creating a wish list of classroom essentials or scheduling parent teacher conferences, forget the chain of reply-all emails. Instead, use an online sign-up service. That way you won’t have to worry about whether parents saw an email and the sign-up can be updated in real time as time slots are taken and lists are filled. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools | 1 Comment »

‘A Child’s Relationships with Technology’

Posted on July 22, 2017 by JimS

Students Visit Other Countries – Without Leaving NZ from RNZ, 23 June 2017

High school students in New Zealand are piloting a virtual reality foreign language app. They can visit other countries and learn languages without leaving New Zealand.

When ELA Tools Can’t Adapt to Students’ Native Language by Jen Curtis, EdSurge, 29 June 2017

Curtis looks at some of the issues involved in creating translated online materials for English language learners. She focuses on Spanish/English and the difficulties of translation between these two linguistically different languages. Edtech companies are trying a variety of solutions, but even with good translations, there can be problems. Sometimes the level in the translated version may be beyond that of the original English text. Another issue is that some learners may not be literate in Spanish despite being Spanish speakers. Some online platforms have decided that good support in English is more useful than translations that may not be accessible to learners.

Navigation of Computer-Based Tests Matters for Young Students, Study Finds by Benjamin Herold, Education Week, 30 Apr. 2017

Herold reports on a research study conducted by American Association for the Advancement of Science, which found that while high school and college students showed no significant difference, elementary and middle school learners did not perform as well on computer-based tests that did not allow them to “skip, review and change previous responses” as they did on computer-based tests that do allow this and on paper-pencil tests.

The Role of Relationships in Children’s Use of Technology by Jeremy Boyle, The Fred Rogers Center, 23 Feb. 2017

Boyle looks at how the conversation about children and technology has shifted from whether children should use it to how they use it. Since the Fred Rogers Center focuses on relationships, Boyle makes the connection to a child’s relationships with technology and with other people.

Filed under: ESOL, K-12 Schools, Language Learning | Leave a comment »

3 Reasons Apps Foster Effective Learning

Posted on July 22, 2017 by JimS

By Marie Mérouze
Founder and CEO of Marbotic

As technology continues to evolve, it’s not surprising that apps are starting to be incorporated into daily classroom activities. With more than 80,000 apps considered “educational” in Apple’s app store, educators will never have a shortage of applications to use with students while teaching various lessons.

And, while most educators welcome the regular use of applications in classrooms, some educators and even parents are hesitant to leverage technology to support curricula. However, when used in the right way, apps can complement lessons and help teachers. A recent study found that the use of tablets and apps improved both classroom learning and engagement. There are many reasons, and here are three:

Enjoyment

It’s been proven that the release of dopamine has an effect on students’ desire to learn. Dopamine is released when students are engaged in an activity they enjoy. For example, when they play an app that is fun, the released dopamine encourages them to keep learning to maintain the level of enjoyment. When learning feels like a chore, many students lose interest in the lesson. With apps designed as games, learning is no longer a chore but, rather, a fun activity.

In order to avoid apps that are solely for entertainment, I recommend apps that are not distracting to the learning environment. When classroom apps are carefully reviewed, students will have fun and look forward to playing games while learning at the same time.

Diversity

These days, educators are stretched thin. They’re working to provide the best possible classroom learning experiences for children, but the problem is that students learn in different ways. What works best for some children might not work for others. Thus, the introduction of a variety of applications provides different ways for students to learn.

Some students learn best by writing things down. Others, with visual games. Still others, with tactile activities. Because apps are so versatile, they can address various learning styles without the need for educators to print a wide range of worksheets.

Repetition

Repetition is not only a key component of learning, but it reinforces it. Contrary to popular belief, repetition doesn’t have to mean doing the exact same exercises again and again but, rather, engaging in practices that work the same skill group.

On the one hand, while worksheets are a prime practice tool for lessons, they’re typically a “one and done” activity. On the other hand, apps are meant to engage students again and again. Beyond being environmentally friendly, apps provide reinforcement each time they’re played – especially apps that automatically adjust difficulty levels to match ability. Quality apps for the classroom usually incorporate a wide range of activities for different levels, providing fun, new ways for students to grow again and again.

At the end of the day, apps aren’t solely about entertainment. They can be helpful in the classroom, too! When looking for complementary activities to support lesson plans, don’t forget to consider apps and how they can positively enhance the learning environment.

Filed under: Games, K-12 Schools | Leave a comment »

NZ Education Minister Proposes Reform to Launch Schools Into the 21st Century

Posted on August 26, 2016 by JimS

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

It was just a matter of time, and it’s now finally happening. The online revolution is breaching the walls of K-12 schools. New Zealand Education Minister Hekia Parata is behind an Education Amendment Bill, introduced in Parliament this week, that will make it possible for “school-aged children…to do all their learning online.”¹

“The fact of the matter is,” says Parata, “young people now operate in a world where technology and being connected is a norm for them. We want to make sure our legislation going forward provides for those options.” She adds, “Because this is the 21st century we want to make sure New Zealand kids are digitally fluent and they can take advantage of technology.”

Hekia Parata, New Zealand Education Minister, and Karen Sewell, Te Kura board of trustees chair.

Karen Sewell, Te Kura board of trustees chair, strongly supports the amendment. She says, “Students could choose to learn online or face-to-face, or a mix of both, and have access to a much broader range of subjects regardless of the size and type of school they’re attending.”

Needless to say, many in the traditional school establishment are alarmed and up in arms. Angela Roberts, Post-Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) president, says, “There are two wildly incorrect assumptions that underpin this idea. One is that online learning can substitute for face-to-face, and the other is that a more competitive market in education is going to lead to better results. Both of these fly in the face of all the evidence.”

The outcome of this bill is yet to be decided, but I’ll be watching its progress closely. At this point in time, whether it passes or not is not as significant as the fact that the process of online reform has begun at the national level in a noteworthy school system.

Vigorous opposition from the status quo is to be expected, but the world is changing rapidly and traditional classroom-based models are becoming increasingly difficult to justify for a school-age population that’s been immersed in technology from birth.

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¹ All quotes in this post are from Jo Moir’s “Government Education Reform Focuses on School-aged Children Learning from Home,” Stuff, 23 Aug. 2016.

Filed under: K-12 Schools, Online Learning, Trends & Issues | Leave a comment »

80 Percent of K-12 Schools Now Using Digital Content

Posted on April 1, 2016 by JimS

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

A study by ASCD and Overdrive, Inc.,¹ is being released today (1 April 2016). Digital Content Goes to School: Trends in K–12 Classroom E-Learning is available for download here. Here are some of the highlights:

1. More than 80 percent of K-12 schools and districts are now using some form of digital content — including eBooks, audiobooks and digital textbooks — in the classroom.

2. Of the 80 percent of respondents who report using digital content in their schools or districts, four out of 10 are using it as part of their curriculum.

3. Devices used for digital content: laptops (75 percent), tablets (62 percent), personal computers (49 percent), and smartphones (17 percent).

4. Contributors to this growth include recognized benefits such as the ability to deliver individualized instruction, allowing students to practice independently, and greater student attention/engagement.

5. As digital content continues to transform the classroom, the concept of a personalized, individualized model of schooling becomes more feasible, according to the report.

6. “Devices bring more knowledge to students’ fingertips than the teacher can give, so the traditional lecture model is no longer applicable. We want content that will engage students and the ability to introduce flipped classrooms with content that students can access at any time, at any place” (Kahle Charles, executive director of curriculum, St. Vrain Valley Schools, Longmont, Colorado).

7. The two issues cited most often were equity concerns about lack of Internet access at home and the fear of teachers not wanting to go digital, including teachers not comfortable or effective with digital learning.

8. Across the board, teachers most desire English/Language Arts (ELA) content in digital format (74 percent), followed by science (62 percent), math (61 percent) and social studies (56 percent).

9. Survey respondents report that digital content currently occupies about one-third of the instructional materials budget and the use of digital content continues to grow.

10. This report is based on a survey of more than 2,000 administrators at the school or district level in the U.S.

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¹ Overdrive, Inc., is a provider of eBook and audiobook platforms for schools.

Filed under: Ed Tech, K-12 Schools, Online Learning, Professional Development, Teacher Training, Trends & Issues | 1 Comment »

English on the Internet, Game-based Learning, Kids’ Coding

Posted on March 9, 2016 by JimS

English is losing its status as the universal language of the Internet by Leanna Garfield at Tech Insider 1/3/16

Leanna Garfield makes the point that the presence of the English language on the Internet is dropping from about 80% in the mid-1990s to about 45% today. She proposes that translation tools and a greater web presence by other languages “could create a more democratic web in the future.”

Other interesting stats: “Chinese, the most widely spoken language, makes up just 2.1% of the internet. The world’s second most widely spoken language, Spanish, encompasses 4.8% of the web. Hindi, spoken by 260 million people, makes up less than 0.1% of the internet.”

Game-Based Learning Has Practical Applications for Nontraditional Students by Marguerite McNeal at EdSurge 1/20/16

McNeal reports on a study, “The Potential for Game-based Learning to Improve Outcomes for Nontraditional Students,” which focused on whether game-based learning helped nontraditional students improve outcomes. One finding of the study is that game-based learning is more effective when it is part of an integrated curriculum, not just as a stand-alone strategy.

A Kids’ Coding Expert Says We’re Making Computer Class Way Too Boring by Anya Kamenetz at nprED 12/11/15

Schools in the UK and Australia want to expand kids’ use of computers to go beyond fun and games in the classroom. Michael Resnick, head of Lifelong Kindergarten Group, associated with MIT’s Media Lab, says that “Coding is not just a set of technical skills. It’s a new way of expressing yourself. It’s similar to learning to write — a way for kids to organize, express and share ideas. But instead of putting words into sentences, now they can create animated stories.” He cautions, however, that what schools are doing is too simplistic to the point of being boring. “Many popular apps for teaching programming are structured more like games, with a simple set of instructions to reach a predefined outcome.”

Filed under: Games, K-12 Schools, Nontraditional Student, Programming | 2 Comments »

Creating Community: Part 3 – Hard Conversations in an Online Classroom – ‘Heart of Darkness’

Posted on February 25, 2016 by JimS

By Judith McDaniel with Tim Fraser-Bumatay, Daniel Herrera, and Ryan Kelly¹

Thinking about Heart of Darkness

The questions we were left with at the end of the Othello discussion included one that came up again later in the course. I asked, how do we know what we do not know — or how do we know we have a cultural bias/perspective in order to shed it? We usually don’t, except for our relationship to others and their perspectives — when we can say, Oh, right, I missed that. And I rarely hear students say, Oh, sorry, I was thinking like a white person or thinking like a patriarch. So we need to know the context in order to think intelligently about our own constructed world-views, don’t we?

Daniel Herrera, Ryan Kelly, Tim Fraser-Bumatay, and Judith McDaniel.

Along with the Conrad story, we were reading an article by a professor who advocated banning it as a racist text. Ryan found this account amusing. “While he cites the fact that Heart of Darkness is racist and offensive and because of that he no longer sees the value in teaching it, what resonates from this piece is actually his point that proves the opposite. He describes how marked up his book is and explains how each time he read the novel as a student he found new things to underline. The time, the place, the teacher, and the lens changed, and as each did he was able to look at the novel in a new way and gain a different piece of valuable insight into it’s meaning….”

“For me,” Ryan continued, “this is the true test of a novel’s worth. The reason we reread things in the first place is because we always notice more the second time around. Once we generally understand the plot of a story we can focus on other elements and find deeper meaning, and Heart of Darkness seems to be one of those stories where those deeper meanings are fluid and can change with the times. While it may be true that Conrad was a racist, I don’t think that’s enough to invalidate this text.” Continue reading →

Filed under: Ed Tech, Higher Education, K-12 Schools, Online Learning, Teacher Role | Leave a comment »

Creating Community: Part 2 – Hard Conversations in an Online Classroom – ‘Othello’

Posted on February 23, 2016 by JimS

By Judith McDaniel with Tim Fraser-Bumatay, Daniel Herrera, and Ryan Kelly¹

The four of us are all teachers in face-to-face classrooms, and we have all needed to have difficult conversations about race with our students in those classes. Some teachers would maintain that it is “better” to have these conversations in person in order to monitor how the students are doing and ease them over the rough spots.

All of us have also been part of an online classroom in which we needed to have those conversations about race and ethnicity as we discussed Shakespeare’s Othello and Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Is one format — online or in-person — better than the other? While our response won’t be definitive, we can say that our online discussion did succeed in creating an “immediate and vital community of learning” as we insisted in Part 1 of this series. And for each of us, the learning in this class carried over to the face-to-face classes we teach.

Daniel Herrera, Ryan Kelly, Tim Fraser-Bumatay, and Judith McDaniel.

Thinking about Othello

In addition to reading Shakespeare’s play, I assigned several critical articles that discussed race in the play. Kim Hall’s “Beauty and the Beast of Whiteness” and James Aubrey’s “Race and the Spectacle of the Monstrous in ‘Othello’” seemed to be the most provocative.

The issue of beauty, virtue, and monstrosity

The discussion prompt for the question about Othello asked whether Hall’s portrait of “beauty and the beast of whiteness” gave the reader a path into considering Othello as an Elizabethan might have seen him. Tim’s immediate response was “[Yes,] an in-depth look at style would tread upon the contextual setting of the play’s conception, for if one were to question why Shakespeare chooses words such as ‘beast,’ ‘horse,’ and ‘ram’ to describe Othello, it would inevitably lead to 17th century cultural opinions of Africans.”

Alongside that view of course is the parallel portrait of Othello as the most noble and honorable man in the Duke’s court. When Shakespeare introduces the “Moor” himself, he presents “an intriguing character who breaks from the stigma; he is calm, courteous, and even noble.” Continue reading →

Filed under: Ed Tech, Higher Education, K-12 Schools, Online Learning, Professional Development, Teacher Training, Trends & Issues | Leave a comment »

To Belong

Posted on February 20, 2016 by JimS

By Glen Luecke
Student at Kapi’olani Community College
University of Hawai’i

Staring at my reflection in the mirror, I realize I’m comfortable with who I am and, more importantly, where I came from. I didn’t always feel this way. At the age of nine, to quote C.K. Williams, “Weightfully upon me was the world.” I had just started to accept that my father, who had left a few years prior, was not coming back. My mother, burdened with the task of raising four kids, did her best to provide for us. School had become my sanctuary, the one constant that I grew to love.

Over the previous four years I had built up a cadre of trusted friends, and, when needed, I discovered that I could pick up a book and be transported to places that I knew I would never see in person. That changed in 1974 when, in the fourth grade, I was accepted to attend the school on the hill. Not knowing how I would fit in with the privileged few, I tried my best to remain invisible, pretending to belong.

I screwed up. I knew it the moment I heard the crack and felt the snap in my pocket. I kept my anger in check and remained seated, not wanting to draw attention. I slowly lifted my white shirt away from my waist, hoping no one would notice my movement. The dark blue dot stared back at me and began to spread on my khaki pants. A wave of shame started in my gut and slowly crept toward my chest. I reached into my pocket and with two fingers gingerly extracted the broken pen. The tip had snapped and was barely attached by a sliver of sharp plastic. Thick blue ink coated the barrel. I ripped out a piece of folder paper to hide the evidence. The stain on my khakis had grown to the size of a quarter. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools, Private School | Leave a comment »

Blended MOOCs, Online Remedial Courses, Nevada’s ESA

Posted on July 18, 2015 by JimS

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

At Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, three courses will be blended with MOOCs,¹ adding yet another variation to the alphabet MOOCs — bMOOC.² The MOOCs are required, and MOOC performance affects course grades. They’re adding flip into the mix by devoting interactive F2F class time to topics covered online. This innovation is in response to the shortage of qualified faculty in higher ed.

* * *

Community colleges devote huge chunks of their budget to remedial learning, and a sizable amount of the cost is in constructing and maintaining onground facilities such as learning centers, labs, classrooms, and staff offices. An alternative that may be long overdue is to shift remedial learning online via online courses and MOOCs. In a study last month, Furqan Nazeeri, Jared Moore, and Nathan Benjamin³ suggest that “Offering remedial courses online rather than on campus has the potential to provide time and cost savings” (p. 6).

This is just one of the implications they discuss. Their approach is interesting. They lump MOOCs into the larger category of online courses. This is both accurate and insightful. However, it’s a source of confusion throughout the report when it’s not clear whether the reference is to MOOCs or for-credit online courses or both.

Their division of online courses into four models — For-Credit, Research, Pre-Matriculation and Post-Graduation — is typical of the confusion. This scheme seems appropriate for MOOCs but not for online versions of traditional courses. Even for MOOCs, the categories are more inclusive than exclusive, blurring the distinctions. For this study, perhaps MOOCs and online courses based on traditional course parameters should have been treated as separate models.

* * *

Lance Izumi⁴ advocates “Nevada’s recently enacted nearly universal education savings account (ESA) program.” This is how it works: “For parents earning above the low-income level, the state will deposit funds totaling 90 percent of the average statewide support per pupil, or roughly $5,100, into an individual education savings account for each child.” The amount rises to 100 percent and $5,700 for low-income parents. “Parents can withdraw funds from their ESAs to pay for a variety of educational services, such as private school tuition, distance-learning online programs, and tutoring.”

Sounds like a good idea, until it smacks into the brick wall of reality, in this case, the high cost of private schools.⁵ Still, with wise management, diligence, and luck, parents could find affordable alternative schools or even home-school their children with the money.

Considering the rest of the nation, Nevada’s $5,700 cost per pupil figure seems low. According to Allie Bidwell, “Nationwide, states spent an average of $10,667 per student in the 2011-12 school year – a 2.8 percent drop from the $10,975 they spent in 2010-11, according to a report from the National Center for Education Statistics.”⁶

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¹Rozelle Laha, “IITs, IIMs use technology to fight faculty crisis,” Hindustan Times, 15 July 2015.
²Not to be confused with the Barcelona School Bmooc, a business training platform.
³A Framework for Online Learning Revenue Models at Universities: Research and Opportunities, ExtensionEngine, June 2015.
⁴“Why Your State Should Copy Nevada’s School Choice Plan,” Heartland, 7 July 2015.
⁵Geoff Williams, “Can I Afford to Send My Child to Private School?” U.S. News, 3 Feb. 2015.
⁶“How States Are Spending Money in Education,” U.S. News, 29 Jan. 2015.

Filed under: Higher Education, K-12 Schools, Learning Center, MOOC, Remedial Learning | 1 Comment »

Digital Privacy, ELL, Smartphones and GPA, Language and Smell

Posted on April 9, 2015 by JimS

Bill Would Limit Use of Student Data by Natasha Singer in the New York Times, 22 Mar. 2015
Singer looks at some of the issues raised by the Student Digital Privacy and Parental Rights Act, a bill to place limits on how “companies that operate school services — like online homework portals, digital grade books for teachers or student email programs —” can use or disclose “students’ personal information to tailor advertisements to them” and “bar them from collecting or using student data to create marketing profiles.”

Digital curriculum targets ELL learning gap from eSchool News, 19 Mar. 2015
Middlebury Interactive Languages has developed English Language Learner programs which “are modeled after Middlebury Interactive’s world language courses and, like those programs, integrate research-based learning techniques, cultural awareness and project-based activities into blended learning classrooms.”

Increased Smartphone Use Equals Lower GPA Among College Students by Brian Heaton from from Government Technology, 17 Mar. 2015
This study from Kent State University about the effects of smartphone use on grades is sure to cause a stir. Even controlling for certain “known predictors, the group still found the relationship between cellphone use and GPA was ‘statistically significant and negative.’”

Does speaking English limit our sense of SMELL? The ability to identify and describe odours depends on the language you speak by Richard Gray for Mail Online, 30 Mar. 2015
While this article is not technology and educated related, it does look at the science of language from a different perspective as researchers describe the relationship between the language we speak and our sense of smell and our perception of colors.

Filed under: K-12 Schools, Language Learning, Smartphone | Leave a comment »

Videos on Demand: Education Week ‘Leaders to Learn From’ 2015

Posted on April 2, 2015 by JimS

On 18 March 2015, Education Week recognized 16 exceptional district-level leaders at an exclusive event in Washington, D.C., featuring presentations and discussions on leadership and education policy. Featured speakers included Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Education Deborah S. Delisle and Adviser to the Premier and Minister of Education in Ontario, Canada Michael Fullan. Watch the videos from the event.

Recognition Presentation: Meet the Leaders To Learn From (Part I)

Recognition Presentation: Meet the Leaders To Learn From (Part II)

Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools, leadership, video | Leave a comment »

MOOC Sightings 007: The Battushig Factor in College Admissions

Posted on March 24, 2015 by JimS

The difference between SAT scores of students from the lowest (<$20K) and highest (>$200K) income brackets is approximately 400 points. This point difference is mirrored in comparisons between the lowest (<high school) and highest (graduate degree) parental education levels.¹

Battushig Myanganbayar

This correlation seems immutable. Parental education and income levels impact SAT scores and determine who gets into the most selective colleges. Then along came Battushig — Battushig Myanganbayar of Mongolia, that is, “The Boy Genius of Ulan Bator” — who, in June 2012, at 15, “became one of 340 students out of 150,000 to earn a perfect score in Circuits and Electronics, a sophomore-level class at M.I.T. and the first Massive Open Online Course, or MOOC.”² His accomplishment didn’t go unnoticed, and he is now a research student at the MIT Media Lab.

Battushig is, of course, a rare exception, but his success adds to the already enormous potential of MOOCs and raises the possibility that they could become a factor in college admissions. In an editorial yesterday, Pitt News broaches this very idea: “Universities sometimes directly accept a student that excels in one of their MOOCs…. If not, the student may still choose to list the MOOC on his or her resumé under skills or relevant education. A completed MOOC is a valuable asset, comparable to a week-long leadership conference.”³

The message for parents and students is clear: MOOCs are poised to clear their current wildcard status and earn credibility as a key factor in college admissions.
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¹ Zachary A. Goldfarb, “These Four Charts Show How the SAT Favors Rich, Educated Families,” Washington Post, 5 Mar. 2014. Also see Josh Zumbrun, “SAT Scores and Income Inequality: How Wealthier Kids Rank Higher,” WSJ, 7 Oct. 2014.

² Laura Pappano, “The Boy Genius of Ulan Bator,” NY Times, 13 Sep. 2013. Also see her “How Colleges Are Finding Tomorrow’s Prodigies,” Christian Science Monitor, 23 Feb. 2014.

³ “Massive Open Online Courses Better Depict Student Potential,” op-ed, Pitt News, 23 Mar. 2015.

Filed under: Accessibility, Higher Education, K-12 Schools, MOOC, Trends & Issues | Leave a comment »

Digital Equity and Social Justice

Posted on March 21, 2015 by JimS

By Vic Sutton

The challenges of digital equity and social justice were recurrent themes in two recent meetings looking at ways to leverage technology to improve education.

“Digital equity” is shorthand for the bundle of problems that prevent many from accessing online resources, in particular the Internet.

Some would-be users live in areas that do not have broadband access. Other users, even in areas where there is high-speed broadband, cannot afford it. Yet more people have simply not gotten around to getting online.

As Dr. Louis Gomez of UCLA put it, we are facing “epic inequality.” The U.S. education system, Dr. Gomez maintained, “is marked by racial and class inequality.” He added that poor educational performance “has persisted for decades for large swaths of the U.S. population.”

Dr. Gomez was speaking at this year’s Cyberlearning 2015 conference, organised by the Center for Innovative Research in Cyberlearning (CIRCL) and held in Arlington, VA, on 27-28 January. Continue reading →

Filed under: Accessibility, K-12 Schools | 1 Comment »

Ed Week Free Livestream 3/18/15 at 8am ET: Delisle & Fullan

Posted on March 10, 2015 by JimS

Meet This Year’s Most Innovative Education Leaders
Brought to you LIVE on Wednesday, March 18, 2015,
from 8:00 AM to 12:30 PM (ET), from Washington, D.C.

Deborah S. Delisle, Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education, and Michael Fullan, Adviser to the Premier and Minister of Education in Ontario, Canada.

Learn the secrets. Repeat the results. Register today for FREE live access to this exclusive event, featuring keynoters Deborah S. Delisle, Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Education and Michael Fullan, Adviser to the Premier and Minister of Education in Ontario, Canada.

Join us live from Washington, D.C., as the Leaders for 2015 reveal the keys to their successes through engaging presentations, discussions, and Q&A.

As a virtual attendee you’ll view the action live from your computer and takeaway all of the insights on what it takes to make huge impacts in school systems from San Francisco to rural Georgia.

Filed under: K-12 Schools, Livestream, Professional Development | Leave a comment »

Secretary Duncan’s Discussion with Maryland Teachers to Be Streamed Live 9:50AM (ET) 2/18/15

Posted on February 17, 2015 by JimS

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will visit Maryland on Wednesday to highlight the progress that the state’s schools and students have made through the hard work and leadership of parents, teachers, principals, as well as local and state officials.

He will visit two schools and then end his day with a speech about the importance of local and school-level leadership in continuing efforts to improve education. In his speech, Duncan will talk about the need to support states’ efforts and expand investments, progress and opportunity for all children through reauthorizing a new Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Earlier in the day, Duncan and State Superintendent of Schools Lillian Lowery will visit classrooms at Ducketts Lane Elementary School and meet with teachers from there and Thomas Viaduct Middle Schools to hear how teaching and learning is changing during the transition to higher standards and how that has contributed to schools’ and students’ success in Maryland. The discussion with teachers will be streamed live on the Howard County Public School System website, www.hcpss.org. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools, Trends & Issues | Leave a comment »

Literacy, Bullying, North Korea

Posted on December 8, 2014 by JimS

Literacy Through Photography for English-Language Learners by Tabitha Dell’Angelo in Edutopia (12/1/14)
The author explores the link between imagery and language and promotes a broader definition of literacy.

Digital literacy an elementary skill by Ellen Ciurczak in The Clarion-Ledger (11/30/14)
The teachers at Petal Upper Elementary School believe that you can’t start too early teaching students how to acquire a variety of skills using computers, from Internet safety to keyboarding skills.

A valuable lesson on bullying in observer-reporter.com (11/30/14)
Bullying and cyber-bullying are serious problems that many young people have to deal with. Elissa McCracken, Miss Ohio 2012, chose cyberbullying as the issue she would focus on during her term because she was a victim of bullying herself.

North Korea’s Cyber Skills Get Attention Amid Sony Hacking Mystery by Elise Hu at NPR All Tech Considered (12/4/14)
A rather bizarre hacking story related to Sony, North Korea, and the soon-to-be released movie, The Interview.

Filed under: K-12 Schools, Trends & Issues | Leave a comment »

Video Games, Smartphones, Language Learning, Technology and Learning

Posted on November 26, 2014 by JimS

Playing High-Action Video Games May Speed Up Learning, Studies Say by Sarah D. Sparks in Education Week 11/13/14
Sparks reports on a study in the December issue of Human Movement Science that contradicts earlier research which connects extensive video game play to attention-deficit disorders and other impulsiveness disorders. The authors contend that “game playing can improve students’ attention control” and create better learners.

Smartphone addicts: A project-based learning activity by Alexandra Lowe in TESOL blog 11/5/14
Lowe describes how she used the idea of a Smartphone survey to move English language use outside the classroom. In groups students developed and conducted surveys about Smartphone use.

Learning languages is a workout for brains, both young, old by Victoria M. Infivero from Science Daily 11/12/14
Using MRI scans, researchers at Penn State have demonstrated that even the adult brain grows and changes when learning a new language. They are also using “virtual 3-D-like environments with situation-based learning to help the brain make some of those new connections more effectively.”

Report Urges Caution on Approaches Equating Technology in Schools with Personalized Learning by William J. Mathis and Noel Enyedy, from NEPC 11/24/14
This policy brief addresses the increased use of technology in schools and questions its effectiveness. The authors point to a number of factors, including the fact that teaching practices and learning outcomes often have not changed.

Filed under: Games, K-12 Schools, Mobile Technology | 3 Comments »

MOOCs, Skills vs. Tools, Games, Learning in the Digital World

Posted on November 9, 2014 by JimS

Impacts of MOOCs on Higher Education by Allison Dulin Salisbury, from Inside Higher Ed
Although she comments that they are much criticized, the author focuses on positive outcomes of MOOCs such as the increased awareness by institutions of higher education that the digital age is here to stay. Read the comments, too, because a reader takes her to task for ignoring some data and this sparked a lively discussion.

When Students Get Creative With Tech Tools, Teachers Focus on Skills by Jennifer Carey from MindShift
All students need to learn how to use reading, writing, speaking and listening skills. The skill(s) the teacher wants the students to work with should be central to any lesson, including one infused with technology. Carey reminds readers that focusing on the skills rather than the tools results in effective learning. Digital tools should be used like any other teaching strategy; identify the skills you want your students to learn then decide how they will do it.

Latest games are finally unlocking the key to making learning more fun by Emmanuel Felton from Hechinger Report
Kids learn from games without realizing they are learning. Some educational game developers assert that gaming can go beyond using games to students’ actually designing and building games, using higher order thinking skills as they work collaboratively.

What Are the Most Powerful Uses of Tech for Learning? By Katrina Schwartz from MindShift
In order for technology to be an effective learning tool, the learner first needs access. Then they need the knowledge to go beyond just being a consumer of information to being an active participant in the digital world. Teachers can be and are at the center of this type of deeper and more meaningful learning.

Filed under: Games, K-12 Schools, MOOC, Trends & Issues | Leave a comment »

The Future of Tablets — and More

Posted on October 30, 2014 by JimS

By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

Recent news of a drop in iPad sales¹ by Apple triggered some thoughts. Reporting that educational sales of iPads are still on the rise prompted more thinking. Then, I found that some of our customers had a very interesting response to our queries about this area.

We deliver our software as HTML5, making updates unnecessary and allowing for the software to run on any platform: iPad, iPhone, Android device, Chromebook, MacBook, MS Surface, Linux desktop, etc. We can readily convert the software to an iOS app and to an Android app. The question we asked is, “Should we?” The answer, at least from schools, was as resounding “No!”

Making predictions is a very risky business, if you care about your credibility. I am going out on a very long limb by making two predictions for the future. Any number of new developments can make these predictions wildly inaccurate or could cement their certainty.

The first prediction is that iPads will continue the decline in sales and eventually level off. There will be some bumps in this path, of course, but the overall process is one of stagnation at best. The article gives some reasons. For example, people are not upgrading their old iPads as quickly as Apple had anticipated. An iPad is not an iPhone and does not engender the mass hysteria with respect to new versions that you see with such a constantly visible status symbol as your cell phone.

Those tablets also don’t have as many preferred uses as many had predicted. Most who can afford an iPad also have a “real” computer that they use for power applications such as word processing. The tablet is mostly used for videos, music, email, texting (when not using the cell phone for that), and so on. In brief, tablets are not supplanting computers in large numbers. Given a computer and a cell phone, with screen size growing apace, the tablet is the “middle child” and is unnecessary to everyday functioning. It’s too large to carry in your pocket and too small for many serious uses.

The above is not to suggest that tablets will vanish, only that they will settle into a niche market until someone radically changes the interface. The touchscreen is magic for young children and some applications. My grandchildren took to them like kids to candy, even at ages 3 and 5. Still, a touchscreen interface can only take you so far. Adding three-finger gestures really doesn’t make it that exciting. The problems lie in two primary areas: screen size and computing power (CPU and memory). The apps for them have been designed to use what’s available. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools, Mobile Technology, Multimedia, Programming, Tablet, Trends & Issues | 2 Comments »

Global Literacy XPRIZE Invites Comments

Posted on September 30, 2014 by JimS

By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

On Monday, September 22, the XPRIZE Foundation announced the Global Literacy XPRIZE in New York City. This newest XPRIZE may, in some ways, be more ambitious than the previously announced $30 million Google Lunar XPRIZE. It seeks to bring literacy to more than 300 million children who cannot read, write, or do arithmetic.

The XPRIZE Foundation, in the last part of its proposed rules, says, “At XPRIZE, we don’t believe that we have all the answers, but we believe passionately in inspiring and incentivizing people to find solutions to our Grand Challenges… But we want to hear from you… You can email us your feedback at global.learning@xprize.org…” This article summarizes my comments and should stimulate readers to provide theirs. If you have comments for the XPRIZE Foundation, please leave a reply here, in the discussion at the end of this article, for all of our readers to see. Likewise, should you have remarks about my comments, I would love to hear from you. The following comments are my own opinions informed by my own experiences. A good argument may well persuade me to change them. In any event, I look forward to an excellent discussion.

Quickly summarizing the competition: Teams will compete to develop software solutions to learning literacy that can be applied worldwide using Android tablets with nearby servers. Literacy includes reading, writing, and numeracy. The language to be learned will be English. The software will be open source. The software and content, ready for trial in the real world, must be completed within 18 months of selection of the finalists. The overall time frame from announcement to final award is 4-1/2 years. Read the official guidelines for all details.

I’ll begin by praising the XPRIZE Foundation for this bold effort to eliminate illiteracy across the entire globe. Education may well be our most serious problem today because a well educated world (really educated and not just schooled) will address all of our other problems such as clean water, climate change, terrorism, poor nutrition, preventable disease, ocean health, renewable resources, and so on. The Foundation is approaching problems that others ignore or give up on but that must be solved. Their competitions to date have energized entrepreneurs and those with entrepreneurial spirit to attack serious, nearly intractable problems. The technologies being developed are likely to have an impact far removed from the competition in which they are created.

I think that the “Proposed Guidelines, V.1” for this Global Literacy XPRIZE competition, have a number of controversial parts and am highlighting the ones that I believe should be altered. While the comments below are intended to be constructive, they are also definite, blunt, and tough. I feel that they should be if they are to get any attention. The controversial parts I see are: open source, teaching English, writing, and the Android platform. I wrap up with two comments: a contrarian view and literacy as fire.

1. OPEN SOURCE

The rules require that the five finalists, each of whom receives $1 million dollars and a chance at the $10 million grand prize, place their software source code in open source. This requirement is unusual in XPRIZE competitions. I think that it creates problems. Here is what the guidelines say:

An essential component of the Competition design is a commitment not only to open source software solutions, but also to an open source development process. In order to maximize the potential for the growth of this solution beyond XPRIZE, the Finalist Entries will be released under permissive licenses allowing both commercial and non-commercial use.

Software must be released on the Apache License, 2.0. Content and assets must be licensed under the Creative Commons CC BY (4.0) license. In essence, all work must be made available to anyone anywhere for free. Anyone can use the sources to build a copy and load it onto tablets without paying any fee at all. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools, Mobile Technology, Programming, Tablet, Trends & Issues | 1 Comment »

Seven Fallacies of Teaching Programming in K-12

Posted on September 16, 2014 by JimS

By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

Many educators seem to be promoting the benefits and even the necessities of teaching computer science courses before high school graduation. I have not seen any of these people suggest which courses to eliminate to make room for this new course. Despite this, many suggest that computer science (mostly translates to computer programming) be a required subject.

I have seen some say that writing software should begin in kindergarten. Others decry its absence from middle schools. Finally, quite a few lobby for adding it to high school curricula. As you might expect, the origin of each is from practitioners in each. Exposure to the basic concepts of computers, what you might call the “nature of computing,” is a good idea, but the rising din of voices telling us to add computer programming classes throughout our public education system should be tempered by reality.

Much of the pressure comes from just a few arguments and assumptions. Most of these are fallacies. I list some below and explain them.

1. There is a huge job shortage and high demand for computer programmers.

This may be the most recurrent theme for those promoting computer programming in schools. There are two problems with this argument. Large businesses, the ones making the most noise, are inflating their numbers to further this bit of misinformation. Also, the numbers do not indicate the level of programming skill required for these jobs.

The reason for the inflation is simple: H1-B visas. By importing computer programmers from other countries, these huge companies can keep costs down in two ways. They pay those H1-B programmers very low wages. You’ll find the workers sharing small two-bedroom houses with as many as ten people in them. Secondly, low wages for the immigrants help to keep wages of our citizens low as well. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools, Programming | 6 Comments »

Free Reading and eReaders Can Raise Achievement

Posted on September 16, 2014 by JimS

By Lynn Zimmerman
Associate Editor
Editor, Teacher Education

In Valerie Strauss’s Washington Post blog, Answer Sheet, guest writer Joanne Yatvin, in “Why Kids Should Choose Their Own Books to Read in School” (8 Sep. 2014), makes an impassioned defense of reading for pleasure. Yatvin is “a one time Principal of the Year in Wisconsin and a past president of the National Council of Teachers of English.” In today’s test-driven school climate, free reading has been replaced with reading that focuses on developing test-taking skills. Yatvin says, “Consumed by the urgency to raise students’ reading scores, policy makers and school officials have forgotten that children learn to read by reading.” She goes on to talk about balanced literacy and the benefits of independent reading.

Reading such as that needed for academic work and test taking definitely has a place in schools. Students develop analytical skills by reading for details. However, reading for pleasure and being able to choose your own reading materials also has a place in the classroom. Pleasure reading, also called extensive reading, promotes learner autonomy; improves general language competence, not just reading skills; helps students develop general knowledge; promotes vocabulary growth; helps improve writing; and motivates students to read more.

These claims are supported by research in literacy and in second language acquisition. One of the strongest proponents of free voluntary reading is Dr. Stephen Krashen who sees the importance of light reading as a bridge to more challenging reading. He also contends that not only does reading improve reading skills, it is also necessary for developing good writing skills. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools | 2 Comments »

Out of School STEM Learning Summit: National Academy of Sciences

Posted on July 30, 2014 by JimS

By Bonnie Bracey Sutton
Associate Editor

What I liked about this summit was that it was representative of various places in the US and very diverse. It was interesting that all of the researchers used terminologies that even I did not know, but I learned during the process.

This seminar was basically on extended-learning projects and outside organizations that aim to further STEM education. The authors call these joint efforts “STEM learning ecosystems,” and they can deepen student understanding and engagement and broaden access to a well-rounded education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. I had to get used to the terminology and wondered if people who are interested would be scared away by the eduspeak. I think people at the Summit heard the terms often enough to finally be comfortable with “learning ecosystems.”

I looked online because I still, at the end of the day, did not have a fluid understanding of ecosystem in this context. This is what I found that may be helpful so you don’t have to puzzle the term.

They share this common term: Learning Ecosystem.

Click image to enlarge.

After school programs come in many varieties. Since we were dealing with understanding of a variety of groups, museums, networks and other providers, I thought that the diagram above would aid understanding. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools, STEM | 1 Comment »

Unite or Die

Posted on May 5, 2014 by JimS

By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

For at least two centuries, education has been divided up into separate compartments. In most recent educational history, the so-called core compartments or “subjects” have been social studies, English (now known as English language arts or ELA), mathematics, and science. Along side these have been physical education and a number of other artistic or artisan activities such as music, drama, art, and woodworking.

A great number of educators have noticed that this separation has made less and less sense as time has passed. Similar issues exist within these disciplines. For example, my own area of science was divided up long ago into physics (the original natural philosophy encompassing motion, light, and other physical phenomena such as electricity and magnetism), chemistry (changes in matter), and biology (study of living things that was mostly limited to classification in its earliest days). Biology has changed enormously and now no longer depends on classification. Understanding chemistry requires plenty of physics and often heavy-duty mathematics. And so it goes.

If we are to educate our youth, we must break down the artificial barriers between the compartments formed so long ago. They make little sense these days.

For example, mathematics and science are kept separate in our schools, and their teachers are trained separately. Yet, mathematics, as taught in grades K-12, is mostly applied mathematics at its heart. It was created for commerce, engineering, and surveying. Calculus was created for science. These connections are lost in most mathematics courses. Once you’ve learned to count, that is, learned the names of the numbers, the rest follows logically as you begin to figure out the world around you. Were science and math merged into a double-period class, it could make much more sense to students — especially if engineering is included in science, and commerce is included in math. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools, STEM, Theory | 1 Comment »

GIS Helps School District Extend Facilities Management Beyond the Physical Plant

Posted on April 23, 2014 by JimS

By Jim Baumann
Esri Writer

The Garland Independent School District (GISD) is located in north-central Texas, adjacent to Dallas. The district encompasses approximately 100 square miles and serves the Dallas suburb cities of Garland, Rowlett, and Sachse. With an enrollment of about 58,000 students, it is the thirteenth-largest school district in the state of Texas.

The GISD has a “district of choice” policy. This policy allows parents to choose where their children will attend school, based on established criteria for ethnic balance. Annually, the district has a one-month selection period for both secondary and elementary schools. Once the selection period ends, the district’s Student Services department begins the process of assigning students to campuses based on building capacity, grade-level capacity, and seat availability. Other criteria, including campus demographic data, are considered before making the final decision on school placement.

To help with student travel and support the district of choice policy, the district’s GIS (geographic information system) department developed a Flex application for distance routing. With this application, officials can determine the location of a student’s home and local schools within the immediate vicinity.

Converting AutoCAD Files to Geospatial Data

Garland maintains 7 high schools, 12 middle schools, 47 elementary schools, and 2 pre-K schools, as well as a number of administrative offices and special use facilities. Managing these facilities for compliance with governing standards, current use, past maintenance data, and potential renovation or remodeling projects became increasingly difficult, and it was decided that an automated system was needed to prepare plans and data for quick and easy access.

For several years, the district used Autodesk’s AutoCAD for facilities management. The district’s AutoCAD facilitator, Kelli Daughtry, was responsible for converting all paper drawings into AutoCAD and maintaining facility floor plans during the district’s $385 million bond program. Approximately four years ago, the facilities department began implementing a GIS to be used in conjunction with AutoCAD. The district retains all facility floor plans in AutoCAD while using GIS to provide easy access to site plans, floor plans, room numbers, and data referenced to them. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools, Science | Leave a comment »

Understanding the Brain, Flipped Teaching, Suicide Prevention, Common Core Shifts

Posted on April 23, 2014 by JimS

University of Chicago MOOCing in a big way… a free MOOC, Understanding the Brain: The Neurobiology of Everyday Life (Coursera), begins on April 28. According to Hannah Nyhart and Steve Koppes, “enrollment for [the] course has reached 27,000 and climbing” (“Neurobiology Online Course to Attempt World’s Largest Memory Experiment,” Medical Press, 4/23/14). Last fall, the university’s Asset Pricing MOOC enrolled 41,000 and Global Warming, 15,000.

Getting What You Pay For? A Look at America’s Top-Ranked Public Universities (ACTA, April 2014) is available for download. Here’s a quote from the 75-page document: “In a 2013 survey of over 300 employers, 93% of the executives responded that critical thinking, clear communication skills, and problem solving ability are more important to them than the undergraduate major. A majority called upon colleges to put more emphasis on writing, science, and mathematics, and over 40% called for greater emphasis on foreign language proficiency” (8). If you’ve been following studies such as this, you’re probably thinking, So what else is new. Seems the year is interchangeable, with the results remaining constant.

In an email conversation earlier this morning re this ACTA report, Harry Keller said, “At least in K-12 education, we should … merge these into a single curriculum that reaches into ELA, math, and science and that uses, as necessary, art, engineering, history, etc.” I agreed with Harry. The separation of subjects to fit schooling is unnatural. In the real world, they’re all part of a whole. Teachers have tried team teaching and interdisciplinary approaches to simulate an integrated approach, but these are always awkward and, IMHO, not sustainable. The integration has to be within the teacher. The implication for schools is flipped teaching — instead of teaching from the inside (classroom) out, they would be teaching from the outside (real world) in. This would also mean a whole new breed of teachers, with significant background in the arts and sciences as well as skill in bringing the different disciplines together in seamless learning activities in a way that’s similar to the project-learning approach.

Engaging College Students in Mental Health Awareness and Suicide Prevention (Kognito and Active Minds)… “a free one-hour webinar to discuss best practices for engaging and training students in gatekeeper skills” and suicide prevention. Scheduled for Wed, Apr 30, 2014, 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM EDT. A second webinar is scheduled for Fri, May 2, 2014, 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EDT. Hopefully they’ll include a segment on detecting the need for help among students enrolled in online courses.

The Most Challenging Instructional Shifts in the CCSS for English/Language Arts (Education Week)… a free webinar with an emphasis on changing the way students think as well as instruction and administration. “Four of the most challenging shifts” are: Emphasis on Academic Vocabulary, Complex Text, Close Reading, and Greater Emphasis on Informational Text. Scheduled for May 1, 2014, 2 to 3 p.m. ET. As an online teacher, I’ve learned that the ability to read, correctly interpret, remember, and apply textual information is the most important skill for students in online classes.

Flipping Without Flopping: A Three-Year Study. Real Results (Echo 360)… a free webinar. Two separate sessions, May 8 for US/Europe at 11am EDT and May 14 for ANZ/Asia at 11am AEST. Review the research.

Filed under: K-12 Schools, MOOC | Leave a comment »

Proposal for a Holistic Emphasis in K-12

Posted on November 24, 2013 by JimS

By Bob Hoffmann*

[Note: This article was written in response to Harry Keller’s “Acronym in Cheek: STEM, STEAM…” (11/11/13). -Editor]

Thanks for your insightful article.

This exact question was presented as New Business Item (NBI) #43 to the delegates of the National Education Association (NEA) Representative Assembly (RA) in terms of “ways to integrate the arts into STEM.” The Vocational, Career, and Technical Educators’ Caucus (of which I am a past-chair) looked into the claims by supporters of the “Put the Arts into STEM” (STEAM) initiative and found that the motion would give an NEA endorsement to massive changes in our courses. We organized an effective response, which defeated the motion among the 9000+ delegates.

The STEAM Initiative advocates claimed that “art is used everywhere in STEM,” from the Fibonacci series in math and nature to the “Harmony of the Spheres” of the solar system orbits, from design in architecture to the “form factor of the iPad in your hands.” We should certainly recognize that this is true in specific historical cases, yet our challenge now is to encourage similar innovations from our students, keeping in mind that such grand new ideas are the exception, not the rule.

The maker of the proposal, Mr. Tom McLaughlin, identified the source of many of their arguments for STEAM as a book by Robert S. and Michele M. Root-Bernstein titled Sparks of Genius: The Thirteen Thinking Tools of the World’s Most Creative People. While the authors clearly support the integration of creative thinking skills with the arts, the inverse does not seem to hold — that students must learn the arts to become creative thinkers. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools, STEM, Trends & Issues | 1 Comment »

The Finnish Education System May Not Be the Answer to Our Woes

Posted on November 17, 2013 by JimS

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

Pasi Sahlberg¹ talked about the Finnish comprehensive public education system at the University of Hawaii at West Oahu on 14 November 2013 (Essoyan²). The system ranks among the highest in the world in PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) and other international tests. It is free for students from preschool through higher education and is considered a model for the rest of the world.

Pasi Sahlberg at the University of Hawaii at West Oahu on 11/14/13.

Features of the system have been widely covered for years³, so I won’t go into them. What’s worth highlighting in Sahlberg’s talk at West Oahu, however, is his caveat that “‘what works in Finland doesn’t necessarily work someplace else.'” In other words, we can’t and shouldn’t simply port Finnish practices over to the U.S. and hope for the same results.

Sahlberg presented “slides showing that the more unequal the distribution of wealth in a country, the lower the test scores tend to be.” The United States, he said, “has high inequality and relatively low academic performance, while the reverse is true for Finland.” According to Sahlberg, the U.S. is “‘one of the most unequal countries in the developed world. There is a big gap between those who have and don’t have.'” He characterized Finland as a lot more egalitarian. “‘Somehow,'” he said, “‘the equity and excellence go hand in hand'” (Essoyan). Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools, Trends & Issues | 11 Comments »

Is the LEAD Commission Right About Education Technology?

Posted on June 17, 2013 by JimS

By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

The Leading Education by Advancing Digital (LEAD) Commission was created in March 2012 and is co-chaired by Lee Bollinger (President of Columbia University), Jim Coulter (Co-Founder of TPG Capital), Margaret Spellings (Former Secretary of Education) and Jim Steyer (CEO of Common Sense Media). – from “Paving a Path Forward.”

The LEAD Commission¹ has published a five-point plan for a national technology initiative. The points are:

Solve the infrastructure challenge by upgrading the wiring of our schools.
Build a national effort to deploy devices
Accelerate the adoption of digital curriculum
Embrace and encourage model schools
Invest in human capital

These are great-sounding goals, especially given the state of today’s technology and the poor learning opportunities in too many of our schools. Due to a recession and extensive government budget cuts, our country’s entire infrastructure continues to deteriorate. There’s much to do here, but are these the right goals, and are they properly articulated? Let’s take them one at a time².

THE INFRASTRUCTURE CHALLENGE

Having visited a great many schools across the country, I can sympathize with the wiring issues. In many classrooms, a complete class of 30 or so students cannot operate with the wireless access available and have reasonable response times. Frequently, this problem results because of a “computer cart” with an inexpensive router that cannot handle the traffic. Sometimes, it’s the building’s central routing hardware. Occasionally, it’s the school’s connection to the Internet.

I’ve seen cases and heard of more where the problem is that a school’s administrative load on the bandwidth swamps the educational access. Most schools have provided a priority to administrative access and left teachers and students in a second-class position with respect to Internet bandwidth. This seems to be a reversal of priorities in this writer’s opinion. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools | 3 Comments »

Technology Bang for Buck

Posted on June 17, 2013 by JimS

By Harry Keller
Editor, Science Education

A recent article¹ from the Center for American Progress analyzes data from NAEP, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The summary bullet points seem reasonable enough.

Students often use technology for basic skills.
States are not looking at what sort of outcomes they are getting for the technology spending.
Students from disadvantaged neighborhoods are less likely to have access to more rigorous STEM-learning opportunities.

The explanations may veer widely from rational thought. After explaining that the first point means that technology is used more for drill than for real learning, the report goes on to address science classes and STEM education.

Our analysis showed that 73 percent of students, for example, reported regularly watching a movie or video in science class. By contrast, far fewer students used computers in their science classes — just 66 percent of students reported regularly using a computer in science class.

What’s wrong with movies? Some are excellent explanations and visualizations of natural phenomena, far better than a lecture by the typical science teacher. On the other hand, is using a computer in science class synonymous with better learning? I’d say not. It’s entirely dependent on the software being used. These statistics say nothing about the quality of education. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools | 1 Comment »

The Winds of Change Blow Young: K-12 Reform

Posted on June 13, 2013 by JimS

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

Got up this morning and ipadded the local news. A Microsoft store is opening at 11AM today in the Ala Moana Center (Honolulu). This news is interesting, but not half as much as the buzz generators.

A crowd of mostly the young gathered the night before to be among the first to enter and win concert tickets. How did they hear about it? According to Jenn Branstetter, a Microsoft social media team member, via the corporation’s Facebook and Twitter pages.

Microsoft Store Facebook page.

Microsoft Store Twitter page.

And the concert tickets? They’re for Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. Their song, “Thrift Shop,” is at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart. How did it get there? YouTube, where it has had 340 million views and counting. Neon Trees will also perform.

So, what does this have to do with change in education? A lot, that is, if we’re really paying attention. First is that we may need to shift our eyes and ears to our children, our students. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube — the media associated with this Microsoft event — are all social media. And all are easily accessible via their smartphones.

Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools | 3 Comments »

Sugata Mitra, MOOCs, and Minimally Invasive Education

Posted on March 26, 2013 by JimS

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

Sugata Mitra, winner of the 2013 TED Prize, reminds us that, as educators, we may be so consumed by teaching that we ignore learning, that there’s a fundamental difference between teaching-centered and learning-centered. Mitra is his own best model for his vision of education, or SOLE, for self-organized learning environment. SOLE is a more formal school-based version of Mitra’s earlier hole-in-the-wall (HIW) street learning environment. Both, however, are grounded in his theory of minimally invasive education (MIE).

Mitra is, by training, a physicist, but by temperament, a self-organized learner. The heart of his gift is curiosity, and his scientific training provides the rest. He didn’t begin by studying teaching. Instead, he studied learning. He placed a web-connected computer in a kiosk in a Delhi slum, left it on, invited children to play with it, stepped away, and watched. The question, simply stated, was: Can students learn without teachers?

He was amazed to learn that, yes, they can. They learn individually and in small groups, and they teach one another what they have learned. Out of his observations, he drew implications, and the most important is that both teachers and computers are technologies, or media for learning. That is, children can learn from either or both. With this awareness, he realized that in cases where schools and teachers are scarce or unavailable, computers could suffice. The question that remained, however, was: What does this mean, if anything, for traditional models of learning that rely on schools and teachers? Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools, Teacher Training | 2 Comments »

An Online Physical Education Class

Posted on March 26, 2013 by JimS

[Note: The following was first posted in the ETCJ listserv on 25 March 2013. It was prompted by a discussion in the WCET listserv on “a new online theater course” earlier that morning. -Editor]

It can actually be surprisingly easy to create effective online courses in the “trouble” areas. More than a decade ago the school I directed had an online physical education class. People would pooh-pooh it as ridiculous, and then after I described the content, they would usually say, “Wow! Can I take it?”

A lot of the course was academic, teaching concepts related to fitness. Students started the class with a fitness test. They set goals for improving their fitness, and they set a personal path toward those goals. It was possible that no two students would be doing the same activities. They had periodic tests along the way to check their progress, and they then adjusted their goals and their plans appropriately. There was a final test to see how they had met their goals, and they had to write a reaction and a self-evaluation. What they ultimately learned was how to apply principles of physical fitness to their lives for the rest of their lives. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools | 2 Comments »

Don’t Blame Teachers for the Poor State of STEM

Posted on March 25, 2013 by JimS

[The following is a response to colleagues’ comments, in ETCJ’s staff listserv, re the need for change in the way science is traditionally taught. The discussion was spurred by the 2 Feb. 2013 report, “For Each and Every Child: A Strategy for Education Equity and Excellence,” by the Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission. -Editor]

You have to remember, I got thrown out of schools for doing all of the things that we talk about that are going to be the future. I worked with the White House. The principal called me in and said, “You can’t do this technology stuff in Arlington Schools if you want to stay.” That was not a choice to me. Teachers who did what they were told are still probably working. I was not what the schools wanted, an innovator using technology. You are preaching to the wrong person.

I can’t demonstrate my skills right now. I don’t have a place to do it. Tracy Learning Center in Tracy, CA, is where I worked to help establish advocacy. My benefactor died.

Nysmith School in Herndon, VA, and a few other schools and projects do what I love. NCLB took the steam out of STEM, the science out of the classroom, and the focus away from what was called SMET, now STEM. NCLB took me out of the classroom. I will always remember the discussion.

I was with people who are STEM evangelists in the Nysmith School, which I visited in the NIIAC times. We as a council visited the school back then. Both of the schools are not mainstream. Tracy School is a charter school, K-12, mostly minority kids, very minority. Because the school has a longer day, with another month in the school year, it has to be a charter school. We had a plan. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools, Science, Teacher Training | 1 Comment »

More Than Morale at Stake: Teachers in the U.S. Need to Take the Lead

Posted on February 21, 2013 by JimS

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

(On 21 Feb. 2013, Bonnie Bracey Sutton, ETCJ associate editor, shared Valerie Strauss’s “U.S. Teachers’ Job Satisfaction Craters — Report” [Washington Post, 21 Feb. 2013] in our staff listserv. In response, I posted the following comment, which I’ve revised for this publication. -js)

Thanks, Bonnie, for sharing these stats. With teacher morale so low, the outlook for U.S. schools is bleak. For me, the elephant in the room is the impact of poverty. As a nation, we can’t continue to blame teachers for the consequences of poverty. We can’t expect them to resolve the causes of poverty. This is and always has been a social issue — not a pedagogical one.

What’s the answer?

For me, reading between the numbers, it means we ought to stop pushing highstakes testing and the common core. We need to allow teachers to do their job. They’re trained to determine where their students are and where they could be in terms of their classes, and for each student and each class, the profiles vary widely. This “diagnosis” is not only academic. In many if not most cases, it includes affective factors. Thus for variable portions of their classes, the teacher’s challenge may be motivation, attitude, rather than academics. For example, in writing instruction, the hurdle may be pull rather than push. How to attract students to writing may be the primary question — not how to push them toward earning higher scores on a standardized test that purports to measure writing competence.

To generate pull, teachers may decide to put their red pencils down and work with the language that students bring from their homes and neighborhoods. It may not be pretty in terms of common core standards, but it’s the reality. Preliminary goals may be to simply get students to enjoy writing and sharing their interests and concerns, in their most intimate and affective language. Giving them personally meaningful reasons for learning to write may be the fundamental pull that’s necessary to gradually incorporate the pushing of our beloved standards. We must find ways to recognize and reward teachers who are able to pull, to motivate, to change attitudes rather than simply move the needle in standardized tests. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools, Teacher Training | 2 Comments »

What Happens to Schools and Teachers in the Digital Age?

Posted on February 4, 2013 by JimS

By Frank B. Withrow

The purpose of schools is to transfer the skills, knowledge and history of one generation to the next. In the past this was most often done through apprenticeships. About five thousand years ago writing of the spoken word was developed. This allowed mankind to transfer knowledge over both time and space. The printed records in books and libraries transferred information across generations and across geographic boundaries.

Learners had to develop moral, literacy, scientific and most importantly self-government qualities and skills if they were to serve as citizens in a modern scientific participatory democratic society.

For many years knowledge was transferred via apprenticeships. With the printing press and libraries modern schools could be developed where learners came together with teachers to learn in a classroom in a school. Knowledge and history were stored and retrieved via books and libraries. Teachers guided learners through the books. The apprenticeship model of learning gave way to classrooms and teachers. Learners were brought together in classrooms within schools to be guided by teachers through the stored knowledge of the society. In the 20th century learners could be gathered together and guided through the knowledge and experience retrieved from books and libraries.

In recent history, films, videos and computers have supplemented books as the storehouse of human experiences and knowledge. In the last few years the digital age has transformed the way we store and retrieve all information. As print on paper has been transferred to the digital format we now have vast libraries of full motion color videos, printed materials and even interactive simulations accessible to the learner. A student studying World War II can not only read about the speeches of Churchill and Roosevelt, but they can see and hear them. They can see videos of the battles and in addition they have access to fictional movies about the war. In addition, there are German and Japanese primary resources available. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools | 1 Comment »

Failed Expectations: The Problem of P-12 Online Programs

Posted on January 26, 2013 by JimS

The teacher was stunned. His online Advanced Placement English students, students from many different participating schools, had just turned in their first writing assignment. Many of them showed the high quality expected from AP students, but some were terrible. The students showed little understanding of the topic, and their writing skills were abysmal. He contacted their schools to see what he could learn about those students.

He learned that the students who had done so poorly had never done well in English classes in their lives — some had never passed a single one. Some were second language students who struggled to read and write English at all. What on Earth were they doing in AP English? In all the cases, the guidance counselors had decided that the students had no chance of passing a regular English class so they decided the new online AP English class was just the ticket. It was an online class so it had to be easy.

In successful educational experiences, all parties involved approach the experience with realistic expectations. Students assume that with reasonable effort they will pass the class. Teachers expect students will work within the rules, the curriculum will be appropriate, their administrative duties will make reasonable demands on their time, and they will be compensated for their work at an acceptable level. Administrators expect students and faculty will complete all required tasks on time.

In the traditional school system, this works pretty well since, after thousands of years of classroom evolution, everyone knows what to expect. In P-12 online education, however, even veterans are still trying to figure out how it works.

The model used in many P-12 online programs throughout the world is very different from what has gone before. In many of the most common models, a school district either sets up a small online program using some of its own staff teaching online courses or outsources some or all of the courses to an outside vendor. In the case when an outside vendor is used, the vendor’s teachers will have students simultaneously in a number of schools and even a number of states. This model brings the advantage of pooling students in low enrollment classes and allowing them to take classes that would otherwise not be available to them. In this early stage of its development, though, it also brings on problems that spring from the unrealistic expectations of its participants. When reality and expectations do not agree, problems are sure to follow.

The most common problem is the one cited above — just about everyone seems to think online courses are easy. When students, guidance counselors, and parents enter a challenging online program with the expectation that they are getting a free ride, the consequence is educational disaster. But that is not the only example of unrealistic expectations in online education. The mismatch between expectation and reality often occurs at every level of participation. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools | 2 Comments »

Are Schools Ready for Today’s Five-Year Olds?

Posted on January 3, 2013 by JimS

By Frank B. Withrow

Over the Christmas Season I have had the opportunity to spend some time with my great grand children. It makes me wonder if schools and teachers are ready for today’s digital kids. Alina, my almost five great granddaughter, is fluent in both English and Spanish. I might also say she manages my dog better than either Anne or I do. She commands and George follows. Therefore she must also speak dog.

However, what is more impressive is her command of her iPad. She told me my iPad was old fashion since it did not have a camera. So much for being the first to have a technology. She demonstrated for me her favorite programs on her iPad that can take pictures. She knew what she wanted to show me and how well she could use her favorite games and stories.

She likes my Eloise stories on my website because they are in both English and Spanish. She also likes an art program and she draws very good pictures with it.

Her three year old sister is comfortable with the iPad if not the Master user. She did not look down on my iPad but found some of my artwork of cartoon characters that she found delightful.

Both little girls were completely at home with the technology and by the time they reach preschool will be Masters of the iPad. Alina wants Anne and dog George to visit her at her home. I am assuming she would welcome the old man also. She was able to locate, using the GPS, the directions from our house to hers. So we have no reason not to visit them.

They got a set of engineering building blocks for Christmas, and they build several structures with Uncle Bill on the living room floor. There were illustrated plans, which Alina followed.

My kids and grandkids like to play Scrabble and have bitter challenges that they look up in the old faithful unabridged dictionary. Scrabble yes, dictionary no. It gathered dust on the side table. Challenges were immediately looked up in their iPhone dictionaries.

We have a German made vacuum cleaner that needed a new bag. The kids immediately found three stores in the area on their iPhones. The GPS system on their iPhone directed them to the store for replacements.

The little girls also played matching games on their iPad.

I must ask the question: Are preschool teachers and schools ready for iPad five year old experts? The digital world belongs to them. It is their second nature.

Filed under: K-12 Schools | 7 Comments »

The Sad State of Teaching Thinking in Our Nation’s Schools

Posted on December 3, 2012 by JimS

[Note: This article is a response to Harry Keller’s “Need More Software Engineers? Teach Thinking Skills Better” (ETCJ 11.29.12). -Editor]

I usually do not disagree with Harry. But I can tell him that he has no idea of the weaknesses of math and science in the grades where students begin to think about careers, hobbies and joining clubs. Education is a voyage of discovery. Some people never invest out of boredom or inadequate opportunity. They may be seduced by the media, but for things other than education and learning.

We also live in a world that supports entertainment and sports over academic performances for the most part. We glorify sports at all levels and also the entertainment industry most of which is very shallow. The news hardly reflects anything of importance of a thinking nature.

Education is like fashion. It depends on the whim of the politicians in Washington and the local school leaders. And there is no punishment for mistakes like those of the No Child Left Behind era when those of us who were teaching thinking-based learning were pushed into using test-based evaluation and modifying anything innovative, creative or science-based.

I went to Catholic schools where we were tested in the beginning of the year and the end of the year so the legacy of who was teaching well or not teaching well stopped at the source, the teachers from grades 1-to-8 who did the work and did the teaching.We did not have PE or science. I hate it that I missed the opportunity to grow into loving science until after my formal training. Thank god for museums and museum educators and courses for teachers. I had the Smithsonian as a learning playground.

We have in the US this testing that purports to measure a whole year and it starts in midyear, February in many instances, when in fact there are chapters and levels of knowledge still to be taught. I have been told that the statistics make up for the fact that we have not taught subject x, but I do not believe it. Continue reading →

Filed under: K-12 Schools | 1 Comment »

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