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Leaders today and tomorrow

Great leadership is inclusive leadership, yet the largest stakeholder group in schools is often forgotten — students.

Those of us who believe the modern technology is the way to change schools must also realize that this digital generation has more direct experience with technology than any other group–if we were listening. When students aren’t included in the effort to improve education with technology, we lose more than their technical know-how, we lose the opportunity to shape the ongoing conversation and cultivate the leaders of tomorrow.

While we wonder where the future leaders of the educational reform movement will come from, there they sit in front of us everyday, being ignored. Thinking that “school” doesn’t understand what their lives are like outside of the classroom. Wondering what their role will be in changing the world. Wishing that someone would give them the opportunity to make a difference.

Enabling youth voice in K-12 schools isn’t simple. They might not say what you expect; it takes time to teach them how to speak their minds effectively and work collaboratively. And they keep growing up and leaving, so it never ends. I’m not talking about the kind of token youth panel you often see at educational technology conferences, where students who can be counted on to say acceptable things are trotted out for an hour, everyone nods and feels good about listening to youth voice and then lunch is served while the kids are conveniently bussed back from whence they came.

This is a lose-lose situation. We lose their input, convince them we don’t care, and miss the teachable moment. We enable dependence in youth by not allowing them to participate in the process of school decision-making. And technology is only a small part of this. The curtailing of student press freedom and the blocking of online discussion creates fewer opportunities for student voices to be heard in every avenue and less opportunity to practice these skills.

It’s not just about leadership in educational technology, we should be worried about where the leaders of tomorrow will learn how to be informed, involved citizens of the world.

Related Download: From Vision to Action: Including Student Leadership in Your Technology Plan (PDF) This 8-page guide contains research, sample language, practical suggestions, 6 models of student involvement, and a planning worksheet. Print it out and give it to your favorite tech planning committee members!

Sylvia

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Kid Power

Kid PowerKid Power: The Oak Hills Local School District’s eKIDs program reverses traditional student/teacher roles in the pursuit of technology knowledge.

We love to see our schools get the recognition they deserve!

“When I heard about the program, I wanted to do it,” says Allie Schaefer, a Bridgetown seventh-grader who joined eKIDs in August, at the start of the 2011–2012 school year. “Usually, teachers teach kids. But with eKIDs, the kids teach the teachers. That’s pretty cool.”

Read more >>

Sylvia

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Games, technology, creativity, and creative reporting

A new study came out from Michigan State University this week – Information technology use and creativity: Findings from the Children and Technology Project by Linda A. Jackson , Edward A. Witt, , Alexander Ivan Games, Hiram E. Fitzgerald,  Alexander von Eye, Yong Zhao.

First problem – it’s behind a paywall. It costs $19.95, or becoming a subscriber of the journal, Computers in Human Behavior. Well, sure, I could pay for it, or better yet, I “know people” and could probably get it free, but then I can’t post it, and worse, I can’t link to it and therefore we (me + you out there) can’t talk about it. Even the links in the abstract to what the tests of creativity are based on do not go anywhere (see the funny little anchors?). The only other information from MSU is the press release.

Abstract
“This research examined relationships between children’s information technology (IT) use and their creativity. Four types of information technology were considered: computer use, Internet use, videogame playing and cell phone use. A multidimensional measure of creativity was developed based on and test of creative thinking. Participants were 491 12-year olds; 53% were female, 34% were African American and 66% were Caucasian American. Results indicated that videogame playing predicted of all measures of creativity. Regardless of gender or race, greater videogame playing was associated with greater creativity. Type of videogame (e.g., violent, interpersonal) was unrelated to videogame effects on creativity. Gender but not race differences were obtained in the amount and type of videogame playing, but not in creativity. Implications of the findings for future research to test the causal relationship between videogame playing and creativity and to identify mediator and moderator variables are discussed.

Highlights ► Positive relationship between videogame playing and creativity. ► Relationship held across types of videogames (e.g., violent, interpersonal). ► Despite gender and race differences in videogame playing, there were no gender or race difference in creativity.”

Already the abstract has got my antennae tuned. Did they really call videogame playing “Information Technology Use”? I mean, I see what they were going for – do the things kids do with common technology correlate to measures of creativity?

But it really makes me want to see the actual study. I wonder what the correlation was between the three other types of “information technology use” – computer use, Internet use, and cell phone use. What kind of “use” did they test? Was it a survey? What did they ask? Was it just hours? What were the kids doing?  What was the difference between Internet use and computer use (isn’t one a subset of the other?) Questions, questions, questions.

Plus, if ed tech enthusiasts are happy that creativity is linked to videogames, what does it mean that computer and Internet use did not show the same link? For learning game enthusiasts, what does it mean that the link to creativity didn’t depend on what kinds of games the kids played.

Next problem – the press picks up the story, reads the abstract (if we’re lucky) and proceeds to write a story that really isn’t what the research says. That’s true even just reading the abstract.

USA Today Headline – Research: Video games help with creativity in boys and girls starts off, “Here’s another reason to include The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword on those holiday shopping lists: children who play video games are more creative.”

OK, so the headline implies that video games are responsible for making children more creative – but the article is fairly carefully worded about assuming that playing videogames MAKES children creative.

The Register (an IT site from the UK) headline – Kids! You get back in front of that Xbox right now: Playing videogames makes kids more creative. “Positive news for gamers, and their parents. Hours in front of the glowing box hammering zombies as a youngster can make you more creative.”

Several commenters point out that correlation does not equal causation, but there are an equal number of commenters who believe that videogames cause children to be violent, so therefore we will have a lot more creative axe-murderers due to games. So it’s not like you can really look to the comments for wisdom.

There are lots of headlines that get it right, or at least use some caution, using words like “linked” or “tied” to connect creativity to videogames, but from my brief survey, plenty more that get it wrong.

Play More Video Games, Be More Creative? – Parenting.com
Study: Playing Video Games Promotes Creativity
Video Games Are Making Your Kids More Creative
Study Finds Games Make Kids More Creative

Repeat after me… Correlation is not causation!

Sylvia

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What makes a lesson constructivist? Engage first, explain later

This is a guest post from Don Mesibov of the The Institute for Learning Centered Education

This post will articulate a major distinction between a lesson based on constructivist theory and a lesson as it has been traditionally planned and taught. The secret lies in the initial activity of the lesson or unit immediately following the bell ringer, launcher, anticipatory set or whatever brief activity a teacher uses at the very beginning of the lesson.

In a traditional lesson, the teacher begins to speak about what he wants the students to learn. It seems logical. I know what I want you to learn so I will tell you what I want you to know, understand or be able to apply. THIS IS WRONG!!!!!

Don’t begin your lesson (following your opening activity) with a lecture. Don’t begin with a Power Point that is the equivalent to a lecture. You can make a few opening comments to introduce the lesson or give directions (two minutes at most). You can post a Power Point if it is to keep directions in front of the students as they work or if it is to highlight something students may need to reference, but DO NOT use a Power Point to replace a lecture. I have sat in the back of a room listening to a teacher try to transmit her information to a student and it doesn’t work. Students don’t pay attention because they can’t grasp the significance of what the teacher is saying. If the nature of the information is complex enough to justify teaching it then it is also difficult for anyone to understand before they have experiences engaging with the information. If students are able to grasp what the teacher is saying it is only to memorize information they can regurgitate on a test for a good grade, but we don’t understand information until and unless we engage with it.

ENGAGEMENT MUST PRECEDE EXPLANATION

What should an effective teacher do??

Begin your lesson with an activity that engages students with the information you want them to learn. Here are some examples:

  • Prioritize: If you are studying the Bill of Rights ask students (individually, in pairs or small groups) to put the ten amendments in the order of importance to them. They cannot possibly do this without thinking about and studying each of the amendments. If you lecture them on the Bill of Rights, how can you possibly know if they are thinking about what you are saying?
  • Jigsaw: Divide the lesson into four or five parts, create groups and give each group one of the parts of the lesson to study and then teach to the others.
  • Project: Give the students something to do that can only be accomplished by effective use of the information you want them to learn.

Sometimes the lecture (or Power Point) you are tempted to give at the start of the lesson will be much more effective toward the end because, at that time, students have enough knowledge about the information to understand what you are saying. In other words, your lecture can be a good form of review or can generate meaningful reflection. Since we often hear that teachers should become coaches (“Guides on the Side”) this is the way it can happen. A sports coach gives her lecture during or after a practice or a game when there are shared experiences to talk about and reflect upon. Teachers need to create shared experiences BEFORE they lecture so the lecture (like a coach’s chalk talk) can be in reference to something the students have done.

There is one more reason to begin a lesson (immediately after your launcher, bell ringer, ice breaker or anticipatory set) with active engagement with information instead of a lecture: if you launch your lesson effectively then students are beginning to think “Maybe this class will be different; maybe I will actually enjoy this.” When you follow a successful start to a lesson with a lecture it takes all the air out of the balloon. It causes you to lose the positive momentum that you created. It is like a play that grabs the audience at the start with an exciting opening scene and then loses the audience almost immediately when the next scene is a dud.

We call the opening five minutes of a lesson an exploratory activity. But whether you call it a bell ringer, launcher, anticipatory set, ice breaker or something else, don’t follow it with a lecture. ENGAGEMENT MUST PRECEDE EXPLANATION. It’s logical, it’s valuable and, most of all, it’s good pedagogy. Doesn’t a coach begin by throwing the players into a practice and then discussing with them what went well, what needs to be improved, and why????

Please know that your work in the field of education is as meaningful to our society as anything anyone can possibly do. Thank you for caring about the future of our children!!!!

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Teacher Training, Taught by Students

Teacher Training, Taught by Students

“In a role reversal, Ms. O’Bryant and other teachers at Brick Avon Academy are getting pointers from their students this year as part of an unusual teacher training program at 19 low-performing Newark schools.

The lesson learned by Ms. O’Bryant? “It makes you think about really hearing the kids,” she said. “You can learn from them. They have their own language.”

The training program, which is supported by a federal grant, is being run by the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education, a nonprofit group based in Syosset, N.Y. During a daylong workshop, teachers were instructed by the group’s trainer, Eyka Stephens, to watch their students teach mock lessons, study their methods and language, and discuss together what works (and what does not).” (Read more…)

Why does this work? It’s not because the kids are delivering the content better – it’s because of the sense of community and collaboration that’s developed as the learner/teacher roles blur.

Sylvia

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Games in Education Resources

A lot of people know that in a previous career I was a video game designer. That means that I get asked all the time about educational games. So here’s a wiki I’ve just created with some of the resources about that topic, including a 20 min presentation. I think that there is a lot of hype about games in education, and it’s important not to just take it so literally.

My hope is that educators take the time to really explore what games can offer in the classroom – not because games are going to “save” or “revolutionize” education, but that they offer a metaphor of what learner-centered education can be.

By learning more about games, educators can decide for themselves if a particular game is something they want to introduce into their classroom because it supports their beliefs about learning, not because it’s all the rage. Or, they can learn how games carefully balance frustration with success to create engaging challenges.

Finally, I always say that the best way to bring games into the classroom is to let students design their own games. It puts the agency even further into the learner camp. Playing games is fun, but you are always playing by someone else’s rules. Making your own game means that you are in charge, and that’s where real learning can happen.

Games in Education Resources

Sylvia

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In Praise of Tinkering – Time magazine online

Time Magazine online : In Praise of Tinkering: How the decline in technical know-how is making us think less

Annie Murphy Paul has written an opinion piece about how tinkering is essential to learning – and I’m quoted! How cool is that?

“If we want more young people to choose a profession in one of the group of crucial fields known as STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — we ought to start cultivating these interests and skills early. But the way to do so may not be the kind of highly structured and directed instruction that we usually associate with these subjects. Instead, some educators have begun taking seriously an activity often dismissed as a waste of time: tinkering. Tinkering is the polar opposite of the test-driven, results-oriented approach of No Child Left Behind: it involves a loose process of trying things out, seeing what happens, reflecting and evaluating, and trying again. As Sylvia Martinez, a learning expert who spoke about the value of tinkering at a meeting of the National Council of Women in Information Technology earlier this year, puts it: “Tinkering is the way that real science happens, in all its messy glory.””

Paul, the author of Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives is at work on a book about the science of learning

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Ten Lessons the Arts (and STEM) Teach

In researching my talk for the Arts & Education Symposium last week I ran across Ten Lessons the Arts Teach from the National Art Education Association. Since my talk was about the intersection of arts and STEM education, I thought it might be interesting to look at these lessons in that light. The ten lessons are in italics, my comments follow each one.

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

It is not just in art that children need to make judgments about qualitative relationships. I know that many people think that math and science are all about “right answers” and cold logic. However, real problems (not textbook problems) are often messy and need to be solved with insight. Models of the real world aren’t perfect, but can be used to explain and predict the world in useful ways. Neat textbook problems give the false impression that judgment is not important, and in turn, teaches children that their own reasoning is not valid. The real world of science and math needs people who have learned to trust their judgment to solve problems that don’t have obvious solutions.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.

Again, math and science have traditionally been taught in a way that emphasizes one solution and one process. It’s not that simple.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

When children are allowed to think through math problems, they will come up with many different paths to a correct answer. The purpose of school should be to encourage children to develop these skills. Instead, we spend a lot of time telling children they are wrong, and then expecting them to just accept that and try again. Lessons that allow a child to rethink and revise give a child autonomy, and the ability to trust themselves to be problem solvers, even if their path to success is different than everyone else’s.

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

This is especially true in science – the history of science is full of serendipity and mistakes that turned out to be great advances. Being open to these unanticipated possibilities is what makes a great scientist. We do children a disservice by pretending that the “scientific method” is a step-by-step recipe that they just follow from beginning to end.

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

One of the problems with math and science education in this country is that we teach the end product first. The history of math and science is full of interesting problems that people have tackled over centuries. Often, people solved these problems with brute force methods, building buildings that collapse or launching voyages into unknown lands with little information. Some problems were solved with elegant solutions that seemed impossible to translate to the real world, yet centuries later these solutions became concrete. The world is full of crazy, weird, seemingly unexplainable things that push the boundaries of imagination yet some child living today will figure out the answer. Yet we teach as if all problems are solved and the steps are fixed. It’s as if we taught music theory but never allowed them to hear or play actual music.

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects. The arts traffic in subtleties.

This is why I believe it’s so important for arts and STEM to be combined. The arts traffic in subtleties and sometimes there are subtleties in the world that can be manipulated to your advantage. I think that when learned together, students have a greater chance of making things that are beautiful and lasting for themselves and others.

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

The arts focus on the use of materials should be incorporated into STEM learning as well. “Doing” is learning, and the materials we allow students to work with allows them to go further into making learning real. This is why I believe in using computers for all subjects. The computer is the most important “material” of so much of what makes up the world today. It’s a “protean device” that can be used in every subject area to give students the ability to make or do almost anything.

8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

I know some people don’t believe this, but for many people who love math or science, making things work is a poetic experience. Programming is as close to making a work of art as anything else in the world. Combining the arts with STEM means that children can express themselves in even more variations.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

Experiencing the profound joy of creating something that has never existed before is not only found in the arts. And I think that when you allow children to experience this feeling, we do them and the world a great favor.

10. The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.

The arts’ position in school is slowly being eroded by an emphasis on what’s being called math and reading. However, much of this is simply out of context skills in numbers and letters. True numeracy, scientific thinking, and support for esthetics are all being eroded in a push for “achievement” (code word for higher test scores.) We are communicating that adults value “accountability” over all – that all we see in children is a balance sheet where money goes in and future economic success comes out. The arts are not the only thing we are losing in this accountability madness.

Let’s put the A in STEM – STEAM is a good thing!

Sylvia

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Arts and Education: Experiential Learning

I had the opportunity last week to participate in a symposium on Arts & Education last week in Harrisburg, PA. I spoke on a panel about Experiential Learning. My main contribution was to connect the arts and sciences through a hand-on approach.

So my point of view is not focused on technology, but uses technology as a lens to change the culture of a school – to encourage collaboration between teachers and students where the learning is being co-created – to give students opportunities to do meaningful and important work, and what schools can do to encourage those kinds of learning environments.

A prevalent view of education is that young people are empty vessels and schools simply open up their heads and pour in knowledge. Unfortunately this is a vision of education that is not serving us well in the 21st century. For a few students, this clearly works, but for many, this is a futile effort — made worse by an increasing focus on testing a few subjects at the expense of high-interest subjects like art and music.

Project-based and experiential learning has been around for a long time. You might say that the classroom is the new-fangled technology here. You certainly don’t see lion cubs sitting in desks in rows. For thousands of years people learned skills through apprenticeship and showing that they could do simple tasks, and gradually more complex ones until they became the masters.

Projects are not simply longer versions of traditional school-work, nor are they crafts. The presence of glue and scissors does not create a project. Nor is a project simply following a recipe.

It’s interesting that the word “project” is used both for the process and the finished product. And it’s important that it remain true to both. The process – the planning, production, construction, sharing is crucial. A project needs to be personally meaningful to the student – more than just for a grade. Having an audience that extends beyond your classmates and teacher is great for this. A project should not have a right answer (or one answer).

One question from the audience asked how arts could be incorporated into projects. My response was that students will naturally incorporate their own aesthetic into projects they care about. Respecting that is crucial.

Arts teachers know this, but it’s hard to articulate. Our culture places arts on a lower level than “academic” work. Like art, projects require judgment to assess, which means that the teacher has to be trusted to make those judgements.

Our experience with Generation YES  is that when kids are challenged and guided with expertise, they rise to the challenge and exceed expectations. In our schools we ask students to shoulder the burden of changing education with technology. It’s not a surprise to me when these students step up and regard this responsibility with great seriousness. PBL needs to be a school-wide culture shift – don’t forget that students are the key stakeholders. You can’t change culture by just telling teachers to change.

One problem with PBL is it can get very burdensome to the teacher. Share the burden. Allow students to help with the logistics, planning, even assessment. Don’t let yourself be the bottleneck that leads to being overwhelmed and then to failure. Good intentions go out the window when you have 300 projects to grade and you are the only one looking at them.

Students should be asked to be allies, advocates and leaders in our collective effort to make civilization better. They want to help. They need our guidance and wisdom, and we need their enthusiasm, passion and buy in. We make each other better.

Sylvia

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Drama! Why adult concepts of cyberbullying don’t mesh with teens

It’s an unimaginable tragedy for any person to commit suicide. It’s a family’s worst nightmare and a problem that society must address. In recent months, more and more news stories are surfacing about very young people committing suicide and tying the cause to bullying, especially in online environments – cyberbullying.

Campaigns have started to find ways to reach youth with media and school anti-bullying programs. Of course people want to do the right thing. Of course adults want to help young people. But what really does help?

Alice Marwick and danah boyd, both highly respected social media and youth researchers wrote an op-ed for the New York Times today – Why Cyberbullying Rhetoric Misses the Mark

It’s based on a new paper – The Drama! Teen Conflict, Gossip, and Bullying in Networked Publics

You should read these, both of them. Why? Because the authors talked to teens, and listened. For six years. Across all kinds of kids, all kinds of socio-economic groups and geography. What they heard was that teens do not use the same language as adults. What an adult might label “bullying”, teens call “drama.” And in the paper, the authors distill what that means and how it plays out in real life (both online and off.)

It’s not just a different word for the same thing. The authors listened to youth about the motivation – why would teens engage in drama? What do they get out of it? It’s a fascinating read.

One of the big takeaways for me was the relationship of adult bullying solutions to the issues of youth agency. When we ask young people to accept adult definitions and solutions to the problems of their lives, adults often ignore the fact that this is asking them to put a label on themselves. If you are being bullied and adults tell you “tell an adult”, it’s meant as a friendly, supportive gesture. However, for a young person, that means first accepting that they are a victim. This is a big ask for a young person building their own identity.

I hope you take the time to read both the article and the full paper. They are worth it!

Sylvia

Paper Abstract: While teenage conflict is nothing new, today’s gossip, jokes, and arguments often play out through social media like Formspring, Twitter, and Facebook. Although adults often refer to these practices with the language of “bullying,” teens are more likely to refer to the resultant skirmishes and their digital traces as “drama.” Drama is a performative set of actions distinct from bullying, gossip, and relational aggression, incorporating elements of them but also operating quite distinctly. While drama is not particularly new, networked dynamics reconfigure how drama plays out and what it means to teens in new ways. In this paper, we examine how American teens conceptualize drama, its key components, participant motivations for engaging in it, and its relationship to networked technologies. Drawing on six years of ethnographic fieldwork, we examine what drama means to teenagers and its relationship to visibility and privacy. We argue that the emic use of “drama” allows teens to distance themselves from practices which adults may conceptualize as bullying. As such, they can retain agency – and save face – rather than positioning themselves in a victim narrative. Drama is a gendered process that perpetrates conventional gender norms. It also reflects discourses of celebrity, particularly the mundane interpersonal conflict found on soap operas and reality television. For teens, sites like Facebook allow for similar performances in front of engaged audiences. Understanding how “drama” operates is necessary to recognize teens’ own defenses against the realities of aggression, gossip, and bullying in networked publics.