Category: education reform

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The disconnect in science education

Every year, Project Tomorrow administers the annual SpeakUp survey of students, parents, teachers, and administrators. Every year, we hear from U.S. students that they are fascinated by technology, love learning, and want more. Results from the over 300,000 participants in the 2008 survey should be available soon.

While we wait, let’s look at some interesting data from the science questions from 2007.

In the U.S., STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) is a hot topic these days. Pundits bemoan the lack of basic science literacy, blame American students for apathy, and predict we will be crushed by global competition. But who ever asks students what they are interested in or how best they learn?

In looking at the report, Inspiring the Next Generation of Innovators: Students, Parents and Educators Speak Up about Science Education, you immediately see the glaring inconsistencies in how students learn, what fascinates and excites them, how teachers want to teach, and what’s actually happening in classrooms. What does it mean for the future when less than 40 percent of these students see learning science as important for making informed decisions in the future? How does that square with the same students reporting that they “…are open to learning science and pursuing STEM careers—intrigued by opportunities to participate in hands-on, group-oriented, “fun” experiences, as well as by opportunities to meet with professionals and use professional-level tools.”

It’s obvious that students are experiencing a disconnect. They are interested and intrigued by science — but not in school.

  • Students report that their especially fun or interesting learning experiences using science and math have been hands-on and group-oriented.
  • Students are interested in pursuing careers in STEM fields — when they know about them.
  • When asked about the essential features of their imagined ultimate science classroom, the leading answer for students in grades K-2 and in grades 9-12 was “teachers excited about science”. Students in grades 3-5 were more interested in “fun experiments” (69 percent). Other highly essential features for students in grades 3-12 were “real tools” (standard lab and technology-based tools) and being able to do “real research,” including online research on computers.

Imagine that — students want teachers who are inspired and inspiring, who bring the classroom to life with real world tools and examples. These teachers are out there, students want and need them, but apparently are getting them too rarely.

This disconnect is reflected in the teacher responses as well.

  • Just 25% of teachers say they’re using inquiry-based methods with their students; methods that both educators and researchers argue are essential for the development of scientific literacy.
  • Only 16 percent of teachers reported they are assigning projects that help students develop problem-solving skills.
  • Teachers report that 21st century tools and projects would help — but lack the time and funding to implement them, and feel constrained by mandated curriculum.

But the biggest disconnect is that most K-12 school administrators don’t see this problem. Here’s the percentage of each category that gave a passing grade to their school for preparing students for jobs of the future.

K-12 Administrators: 57%
Teachers: 47%
Parents: 47%
Students: 23%

This perception gap is a crucial indicator that we are not only failing our students in providing the relevant, inquiry-based, hands-on science education they hunger for, but that we are fooling ourselves about it. What’s worse?

Full report (PDF)

Sylvia

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Technology Literacy and Sustained Tinkering Time

Yesterday I was reading a handout by Dr. Stephen Krashen called 88 Generalizations about Free Voluntary Reading. It summarizes the research and benefits to literacy of Sustained Silent Reading (SSR), also called Free Voluntary Reading (FVR). You give kids books, and time to read them, and they read.

Dr. Krashen is an activist for giving students more access to books, more time to read, and less coercion to do so. His credentials are impressive: professor emeritus at USC, a linguist and expert on literacy, language acquisition and reading. He’s in the International Reading Association’s Reading Hall of Fame.

I have no trouble admitting that his articulate positions and research resonate with me.

It struck me as I looked at this list that it’s a lot like what I believe about children and computers: that student choice, plus time for unstructured access to lots of different computing experiences is crucial to developing literacy and fluency with computers. My vision includes a teacher or mentor modeling passion, collaboration, interest in the subject, and offering experiences that challenge students without coercion, tricks, or rankings. If I had to come up with a catchy acronym, I’d call it Sustained Tinkering Time (STT).

Picking through his generalizations about reading, it occurred to me that some of them are very applicable to students using computers, and some seemed not to translate too well at all.

Hallmarks of Free Voluntary Reading (FVR) (adapted by me from Krashen’s list)

  • Free access to lots of different kinds of books
  • Comic books and magazines are OK, hard and easy books fine, minimum censorship
  • The teacher reads too
  • No tests, book reports, logs, comprehension quizzes
  • Comfortable space to read
  • More often and short is better than long, but rare
  • For all kids, not a reward or remediation
  • Supplement with interesting experiences about reading – trips to library, discuss literature, conferences, etc. (not skill building)
  • Good readers tend to be narrow readers (they stick to one genre)
  • Look for “home run” books

So, looking at this list, there are some things that seem really relevant to the kind of computer fluency I would like all students to have. Wouldn’t it be great if students had:

  • Free access to lots of different kinds of books software and hardware
  • The teacher reads works on computer projects too
  • No tests, book reports, logs, comprehension quizzes
  • Comfortable space to read work on computer projects
  • and that this was for all kids, not a reward or remediation?

I’ve skipped over some hard questions…
But not everything seems to perfectly translate. In FVR, the students are allowed to read pretty much anything (within reason). But for technology, I certainly would hope that aimless surfing or watching random YouTube videos isn’t what happens.

Is this being hypocritical? Is this just a way for me to pass judgement on applications that I like and think are “important” vs. ones I deem trivial and a waste of time? If I say, “no games” – am I just doing the same thing as a teacher demanding that kids only read “good” books for SSR, and thereby undermining the process?

I know in my head what I’d like to see – mindful interaction with the computer, making good things, focused collaboration, working on projects. Something that rises above drill and practice, clicking on stuff, or just watching. But what about chatting? Looking at email? What about playing “good” games? If you want technology literacy, does it matter if one student becomes fluent in making Wordles and another learns to program?

What’s the verb?
What is it that the student is doing that’s equivalent to reading? If you show language literacy by reading and writing, you show technology literacy by … what? Computing? Touching a mouse? Technologizing?

There’s something I’m trying to capture here that goes beyond the mere physical presence of a child sitting in front of a digital device. I really think this elusive concept is at the heart of what many have been struggling with as we all try to define “technology literacy.” Especially if we try to make the definition more than a checklist of skills.

You can smell collaboration in the air (especially in middle school)
There are other pieces of Sustained Silent Reading that really don’t work for technology, like the “silent” part. Sustained Silent Computing sounds terrifying. When I think about the kind of collaborative technology experience I’d hope to see, the kind I’ve seen in too few classrooms, it’s anything but silent. It’s purposeful, joyful noise, and you can tell the difference. But how do you articulate that?

It’s simply not good enough to say, “I know it when I see it.” But I’m not sure what to call it without tying myself up in semantic knots.

Pinning these experiences down with precise language deadens them like a pithed frog. (I was going to say a pinned butterfly, but when you can use pithed frog in a sentence, I believe it’s mandatory.)

What do you believe about learning?
And even if we got the words right, would it actually result in improved technology literacy? Would the lack of coercion raise the general level of technology literacy or lower it? In SSR, if one student is reading a comic book and another a chapter book, do they influence each other?

And is that part of the teacher’s job – to offer other activities that generate interest in more complex work? To model curiosity and trying new things? To facilitate collaboration and challenge students?

Without technology literacy skill tests, lessons on tools, and assigned projects, will students take more risks and try more complex things? Or will they do the least amount possible? I think this boils down to what you believe about learning – is it natural or does it have to be coerced.

Depth, not breadth
If you’ve stuck with me this long, do you see the technology corollaries to:

  • Good readers tend to be narrow readers (they stick to one genre) – is this about depth? Letting kids explore one application or theme deeply rather than the usual if-it’s-tuesday-it-must-be-spreadsheets overview of office products?
  • Look for “home run” books – is this about helping kids find the thing they really like to do? If a kid LOVES Comic Life, do you let them use it exclusively? Does the positive experience then open the door for that student to attempt other things? Or does it narrow the range of what that student will ever figure out how to do?

Yes, you…
So I’m throwing this out there to you, the dozens of folks who read this blog. Does looking at FVR help with defining technology literacy?

What would Sustained Tinkering Time look like to you?

So many questions…

Sylvia

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Games that encourage student teamwork and collaboration

Freechild Article | “Why Play Games…” By Adam Fletcher.

Here’s another fabulous article and set of resources from Adam Fletcher of The Freechild Project. The article is about playing games with students and youth groups to encourage teamwork, model constructive, collaborative behavior, and develop a shared sense of mission.

Games can be a catalyst that brings both cohesion and energy to any group, and a welcome addition to a teacher’s “bag of tricks”. Two categories of games are especially helpful in setting a tone of collaboration and teamwork for students.

Cooperative games emphasize participation, challenge, and fun, rather than sorting out winners and losers. These kinds of games teach teamwork, empathy, and trust.

Initiative games have players attack a problem and solve it. They teach leadership, problem solving, and collaboration.

“Why Play Games…” is more than just a list of games. It includes practical information about how to choose them, how to introduce them, how to create reflective activities that further magnify the impact of the game itself, and tons of additional resources.

Teachers who lead student tech clubs know that the success of the group depends on much more than tech skills. Teamwork and a sense of mission result in the “we” being more than the “me” and can take a student tech team to the next level.

This isn’t just for student clubs either. If you want students to unlearn the competitive habits that have been drilled into them and work cooperatively, these games will work in classroom situations too. Collaboration and communication may be “21st century skills” but having students play them out in game situations is a timeless idea.

Give this short article a read and I guarantee you will learn one new thing today! “Why Play Games…” By Adam Fletcher

Selected additional resources (there’s a lot more if you click on the article link):

  • Brand-new (and free) guide, The Freechild Project Guide to Cooperative Games for Social Change by A. Fletcher with K. Kunst. “This insightful new guide will help community workers, teachers, activists, and all kinds of people find fun, engaging, and powerful activities that promote teamwork, communication, and social justice.” Click here for a free download.
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The Parent-Teacher Talk Gains a New Participant – NYTimes.com

The Parent-Teacher Talk Gains a New Participant – NYTimes.com.

Today’s New York Times features an article about student participation in teacher-parent conferences. Good news: good facts and stories woven into a compelling article that supports student empowerment by including them in their own education. Bad news: it’s not new, and leaves out the mountains of research and practice about student conferences.

But, Google to the rescue! Here’s a great collection of resources from Education World (and hurray, recently updated) about how to plan and implement successful parent-student-teacher conferences.

Sylvia

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Words are just words

Speculation on Obama’s choice for Secretary of Education is flying fast and furious. Several governors, superintendents of big school districts, an education professor, and a couple of businessmen are rumored to be in the running.

The language being used in the press is interesting to watch. As Alfie Kohn points out, in a new article in The Nation, Beware of School “Reformers”, the word “reform” has been stolen. It seems to have been co-opted by people wanting to bust teacher unions and test kids more.

Several education blogs have expressed their feelings on this Orwellian turn of events. I urge you to read Deborah Meier, Scott McLeod, Tim Stahmer, Gary Stager, Doug Johnson, David Warlick, Mike Petrelli, and I’m sure more I’ve missed.

What occurs to me is that every time we allow simplistic slogans to do our talking for us, we run the risk of having them stolen, misinterpreted, and co-opted.

Now, this is hardly as momentous as whether reform is really mean-spirited test prep factories or happy places for children to learn — but I think that “21st century skills” and “___ 2.0” have essentially become meaningless.

People use empty words for a reason, because it’s easier to use an evocative phrase that has no true meaning. The listener does all the work, adding their own imagination of what the phrase means. Then, voila!, the speaker has just concocted a brilliant metaphor that everyone can agree with because there are no messy details involved.

Marketers call these words, “empty vessels“, because in advertising, you want the consumer to imagine your product is perfect. What better way than to sell them their own imagination.

When I talk about teaching with technology, I intend it to mean giving students access to tools and teaching them to find answers to tough problems that challenge them. I want kids to be able to think and act, construct, compute, solve, share, and more. There are nuances and details that paint the complete picture of what I think teaching and learning should look like in the 21st century. And sure, many of these are simply aspects of what a good education should have provided in any century.

But I often hear people talk about “21st century skills” and invariably someone will immediately say, “Oh yes, we’ve bought active whiteboards for all our classrooms.” When you’ve been in as many classrooms as I have, you know that the vast majority of these whiteboards are being used as a projection screen and most of the rest are pushed awkwardly into a corner with boxes stacked up in front of them. Something didn’t translate. Obviously no one “planned” this, but somewhere between “We’re moving into the future!” and “Where can I roll this stupid thing so it won’t block the bulletin board,” there was a big failure to communicate.

Any idea that involves how human beings learn is complex, and complex ideas don’t make pretty speeches and zippy headlines. I wish I knew how to fix that.

It’s hard to know what Obama really believes about learning and what he believes will work for public schools. His own choice for his children’s school stands in direct contrast to statements he’s made about “accountability”. But soon we’ll see if he believes what’s right for his kids is the same as what’s right for everyone else.

We’ll see.

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NAEP Technology Assessment 2012

I’ve just found out I’m going to be part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Technology Assessment development (see the E-school News story: On the way: Nation’s first tech-literacy exam: Tech literacy to be added to Nation’s Report Card beginning in 2012).

The recent NAEP developed assessments for science and math have generally been well received, and I’m looking forward to being a part of the effort to create something similar for technology literacy. Of course I’m curious to see how this will play out, since technology literacy is not a subject or a discipline like math or science.

I’m hoping that part of the solution will be to increase opportunities for students to study real engineering, design and programming in K-12. My background as an electrical engineer is no doubt part of that hope.

There are two committees working on these frameworks, a steering committee and a planning committee. I’m on the planning committee. The first meeting is next week in Washington, DC, and I’ll know a lot more after that. One question I will definitely ask is how transparent the process will be. The last NAEP assessment planning was done before blogs became as ubiquitous as they are now. The eschool news story says there will be public input and hearings, and an extensive review process. Let’s hope this extends out as far as the net reaches.

Update – I’ve been asked to remove the names of the committee members for now…

Stay tuned! – Sylvia

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Heavy-handed filtering is a problem, not a solution

I recently saw an email on the WWWEDU listserve by Nancy Willard, executive director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, that I thought really needed to be shared. Nancy has given me permission to reproduce it here. Nancy is one of the sanest and smartest voices regarding youth and online safety. Her latest book on Cyberbullying (available at Amazon) is a must read for parents and teachers. I really respect her knowledge on this subject and feel that her approach, based on real data and work with real kids is far superior to the current climate of fear and scare tactics surrounding education in an online world.

In this email, Nancy answers questions about filtering and school responsibility for online safety.  If you are an educator dealing with unreasonable filtering that hampers your ability to teach, I urge you to explore her website and buy her books.

We must use knowledge, not fear, as our guide to face the opportunities and dangers of the 21st Century.

Sylvia

—————– The rest of this post is all Nancy —————–

We will NOT be able to effectively prepare students for their education, career, and civic responsibilities in the 21st Century if the technical services directors in schools throughout this country continue their heavy handed filtering.

It is essential to shift how the Internet is being managed from a primary reliance on filtering to more effective monitoring – in an environment where education – not social – use of the Internet is expected, and supported with effective professional and curriculum development.

Q: Dear Nancy, does the law specifically state how tight the filter has to be set. Do we have to set it at its most restrictive setting can’t it be at its least restrictive setting?
A: All you have to do under CIPA is set it to block pornographic material – obscene material and material harmful for minors. There is NO liability for schools if they choose not to set it to block an area and something “inappropriate” happens to appear on that site. The CIPA regulations mentioned the understanding that filtering is not perfect.

There is absolutely NO justification under CIPA for the heavy-handed filtering that is preventing effective instruction in schools today. The problem is that schools are overly reliant on filtering when they should be shifting to more of a focus on monitoring.

The other problem is the non-research-based fear-mongering about internet risk. Just about everything you hear in the press – or from politicians – about online sexual predators is not supported by the research data.

They are not targeting children. They are not tracking down teens based on personal contact information they post. 1 in 5 or 7 young people has not been contacted by a predator. There are not 50,000 predators online at any given time prowling for victims. There are legitimate concerns of adults who are preying on emotionally vulnerable or “seeking” teens. But the arrest rates for sexual abuse of minors have actually been going down in the last decade.

Q: Our district (actually most of the state) went to web washer and we are even more restricted now than we were before.
A: No one at the filtering companies is held accountable for the decisions that are being made. 8e6 has a close relationship with the American Family Association!!! Think of the objections if the American Family Association was the organization deciding what books would be allowed in schools. No one knows what biases the other companies might have.

It is OUTRAGEOUS that tech directors and administrators would think that these companies are better at selecting sites for their appropriateness than librarians and teachers!

Q: The person setting the filter is not an educator but an IT tech with little or no classroom experience.
A: This is a major concern. The people who are making content based decisions on what categories should be blocked should be the librarians and curriculum specialists. The IT folks should be involved only on decisions related to security and bandwidth issues.

Further EVERY librarian and ed tech specialist in the schools should have the authority to override the filter and provide access to a site that has been inappropriately blocked – based on the educational determination of its content!

Further, EVERY counselor, administrator, and school resource officer, should also have the ability to override to investigate online material that presents safety of student well-being concerns. (And they may need some help from more tech savvy folks to be able to do this.)

I am working on professional development resources to address both youth risk online and effective Internet use management for a Web 2.0 World. Should be available January. These will be narrated slides presentations with reproducible handouts – with CLE credit available.

Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D.
Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use
http://www.embracecivility.org/
http://cyberbully.org

Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats: Responding to the Challenge of Online Social Aggression, Threats, and Distress (Amazon)

Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens: Helping Young People Learn to Use the Internet Safely and Responsibly (Jossey-Bass) (also at Amazon)

SaveSave

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There’s still time for Student Speak Up

Speak Up BannerJust a reminder, Speak Up 2008 is going on through Dec 18, 2008.

Since inception, Speak Up, the national online research project facilitated by Project Tomorrow, has collected the viewpoints of over 1.2 million students, educators and parents on key educational issues and shared them with local and national policy makers.

This is your opportunity to have your students, teachers, administrators and parents participate in the local and national dialogue about key educational topics including: technology use, 21st century schools, science and media/information literacy.

For registration information, click here.

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Time to share your big ideas for education

From David Warlick: Big Ideas — Bring Education Back into Focus

Big Ideas logoDavid has launched a project to quickly collect some ideas for education that will be presented to the new administration in Washington. The project features four phases (these are copied from David’s introductory blog post).

  • Phase 1 -Spend about two-and-a-half days composing and posting clear and succinct (140 character limit) priority actions for a U.S. Ed Department aimed at promoting and empowering a system that better prepares today’s children for their future.
  • Phase 2 -The Big Ideas web site will change, consisting of a list of the items that were posted. We, will collectively match up similar items into the basic foundation topics. Nothing will be deleted, only linked.
  • Phase 3 -The basic topics that emerge will be listed, with associated items linked in, with a request that education bloggers and micro-bloggers post their insights about specific topics of interest.
  • Phase 4 – Finally, the main topics will be listed, with links to an aggregation of associated blogs and micro-blogs. Educators will then be asked to visit the list and prioritize the list by order of importance and logical sequence.

Click here to launch the Big Ideas site.

OK – this means you
Two and a half days means that you have until Tuesday, November 11 or so. So get busy! It’s only a sentence or two, so you have to get the bottom line really quickly. C’mon you GenYES and TechYES teachers, let’s talk about authentic student work and trusting students and teachers. Have your students input their thoughts. You may be thinking that no one will listen to you, but you know what the last 8 years has done, and people need to hear the real voices of educators and students as we move forward.

If you don’t speak up, someone else will.

Sylvia

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Community of interest or community of practice?

I’ve been seeing a lot of talk around the edu-blogs and at conference sessions about online learning communities, or building a personal learning network as part of a educator’s professional development. Often, these are referred to as “Communities of Practice” – a term coming into common use only a few years ago. Many educators were introduced to the term in grad school through the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, who wrote Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation.Learning in Doing: Social, Cognitive and Computational Perspectives (Amazon link) in 1985.

Their book explored how natural learning that takes place in apprenticeship situations, and profiled several different Communities of Practice (CoPs) from around the world. The “practice” part of CoP is the work they do, and the learning takes place in context, or situated, in the common work. These groups of people learn to do their work not by lectures, but by everyone working together, from experts to newcomers, and most importantly, by talking about their work together.

The concept of “Legitimate Peripheral Participation” is key to the idea of communities of practice. This is when newcomers learn needed skills by doing work that is on the periphery of the community, and as they prove their competence, being invited into more important roles. The other part of legitimate peripheral participation is how newcomers move into the community through talk. The shared stories of the community, particularly war stories told by experts, are part of the experience. Newcomers learn to participate by learning the traditions and vocabulary of the group, first by listening, then by trying out their new verbal skills within the group, and if their words ring true, by moving from the periphery and becoming more central to the shared expertise of the group.

It’s obvious that this sounds similar to what happens to educators as they break down the walls of their classroom and use new technologies to find and participate in new communities.

I think, however, that we confuse different kinds of communities. Specifically, I think that educators who come together in online communities, or even temporary real life groups, are more often than not, communities of interest, not communities of practice.

I’m not just being picky about semantics here – the problem is that calling any community a “Community of Practice” presumes that it will have similar benefits and impact.

In Second Life, for example, a teacher may meet educators from around the world who are doing similar things in their classroom, have similar hopes about the future of ed tech, and share similar frustrations. They may find the interaction refreshing, educational, and maybe even inspiring. These professional collegial interactions are too often missing from teacher’s lives. And Second Life is just an example. This could be Twitter, or a social network, an online group created for a graduate school class, or even people you meet face to face at a conference.

However, just having similar work doesn’t mean that this is a community of practice. They really aren’t doing the same work. Once this interaction is over, they have to go back to their real place of practice, their classroom and school. The benefits of shared vocabulary, shared experiences, shared stories are all gone. Now these teachers have to sit in meetings where no one is on the same page, frustrated that everyone isn’t seeing the light.

In fact, these outside communities of interest may serve to pull teachers away from their local communities of practice, distancing them from the colleagues whose mindshare would be vital to real local change. It’s an all too convenient place to vent about everyone who “doesn’t get it.”

It’s hard for me to imagine any kind of educational change that doesn’t draw on the participants at the ground level, meaning the people in the school. That’s why I advocate for student participation in education technology initiatives. Changing a community means involving the stakeholders, all the stakeholders, in the process. Building a healthy community of practice in the place of the actual practice is a first step to change.