Category: professional development

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Can students record a lecture?

Bob Sprankle writes a very interesting post on the Tech+Learning blog this month – Who has the Right? where he asks a lot of very good questions and offers some advice about the use of a LiveScribe pen to record audio from the classroom while taking notes.

But there are still lots of questions about this. It’s really more than just about this one technology – you can ponder about any recording device in the classroom from video cameras and phones to many laptops that have this capability.

Some questions this brings up:

  • Should a teacher be asked before recording? Does the law require consent, or merely notification?
  • What if the student has special needs for recording and playing back? Does it matter if there is an IEP in place or not?
  • Does a teacher have to have a “valid” reason to say no? If they simply don’t like the idea, does this negate the student’s right to an accessible education? A teacher couldn’t take a student’s glasses away just because they don’t like them.
  • Do wiretapping laws apply?
  • What if other students in the class are recorded? Is that fair/legal? Might it stop open classroom discussion?
  • If a student does record a lecture, does anyone (administrators, parents, etc.) have the right to ask for that recording?
  • Are there restrictions on what the student can do with the recording, such as post it online or give it to other students?
  • Are there any restrictions for teachers recording their own class? Do they need student/parent/school permission? Who owns that recording and what can it be used for?
  • Can a teacher record their own lecture and put it online? Can they sell it?

Common courtesy and knowing the law may not be enough to answer these questions!

Sylvia

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“Don’t we need balance?” and other questions about Khan Academy

Note: this is Part 3 of a 4 part blog series on Khan Academy and math education. This post is an imaginary Q&A about what I’ve said in Part 1 about math myths and learning theories and Part 2 about algorithms, practice, and autonomy. The following questions are made up from what I’ve heard people say about Khan Academy. I am solely to blame for the answers.

Isn’t it best to offer a balance of all different kinds of learning opportunities for students?… Can’t we have open-ended problem-solving AND show the kids how to do the hard parts when they get in trouble?
Now, I would never tell a teacher what to do, it’s too easy for me to type a bunch of words and I don’t have to be there every day. But I think you have to consider the unexpected consequences of striving for balance between two opposing theories of learning – instructionism and constructionism.

To illustrate this, let’s imagine a playground game of hide and seek. On Monday, when everyone has hidden and the seeker finishes the count, he or she looks up… and at that moment, the teacher steps in and points out where everyone is hiding. On Tuesday, the teacher stands back and says nothing. On Wednesday, the teacher helpfully points out the hiders, on Thursday, says nothing.

What do you think happens on Friday?

I’m pretty sure that the seeker would immediately look to the teacher and ask where everyone is hiding. Or maybe everyone would just refuse to play since there’s no point to it. On the previous days, the teacher has trained them how to get the answer. Even with the “balance” in game play, one outweighs the other. There is no balance possible, because the teacher’s authority causes the balance to permanently shift. It’s the very essence of disempowerment. Teacher power and authority is the 800 pound gorilla siting on the end of a see-saw.

I believe that for many of the same reasons, the attempt to explicitly show students how to solve problems becomes a roadblock when you suddenly turn around and demand that they figure things out for themselves. It just sounds like a trick, and if they wait long enough, you will give them the answers and move on. Children are pretty pragmatic about these things.

I still think you need balance…
I could almost go along with the “balance” argument if the world of U.S. school math weren’t so unbalanced. I would guess that 95% of all math taught in all classrooms across the US is direct instruction aimed at the “skill” level and memorizing the right algorithm to solve problems most likely to be found on standardized tests. So there’s no balance there to start with – the only way to achieve “balance” is to do more open-ended, student-led inquiry about math, solving real problems (not textbook or test prep problems), not telling students what the right answers are, etc. And do LOTS more of it. Then we can talk about balance.

But at least the ability to stop and replay the video gives the student control – isn’t that what we always look for in student-centered learning?
Here’s the tradeoff – is student control over the pace worth losing student control of the entire process? They get to choose how quickly they are force-fed someone else’s representation of a process instead of creating their own representation in their heads. Asking the student to give up control of their own thought process to absorb a one-size-fits-all delivery of information requires a large degree of compliance on the student’s part. In my book, the ability to control the pace pales in comparison. I think a teacher would have to weigh these very different kinds of control and whether the trade-off is worth it.

Why shouldn’t we teach students a good way to solve a problem, what’s the point of letting them fumble around?
When we tell a student the “right way” – we are really telling them that math ability is primarily about compliance. This is about power, and we lose a lot of students in these power struggles.

Margaret Mead said, “emphasis has shifted from learning to teaching, from the doing to the one who causes it to be done, from spontaneity to coercion, from freedom to power. With this shift has come… dry pedagogy, regimentation, indoctrination, manipulation, & propaganda”. (thanks to Ryan Bretag for this quote)

What we call “good students” are compliant students who don’t call this power structure into question. (By the way, this was me – even when I saw other ways to solve problems I knew not to say anything. I amused myself by solving problems in alternate ways, then would write down the answer the way I knew the teacher wanted.) If you don’t think students are acutely aware of the power structures in school, you are underestimating students.

Students “fumbling around” is actually where the learning happens – and there’s no shortcut for this process.

Why waste time letting students “discover” everything. They aren’t going to re-invent the Pythagorean theorem by themselves.
It’s a straw man argument about inquiry-based, constructivist education that it’s “illegal” to lecture. Whenever I hear this I imagine a scene where the constructivist police burst through a classroom door and wrestle a teacher to the floor who was just explaining to a student how to do something. The difference is that explanations should serve to naturally move a problem-solving process along, not be the whole lesson.

In this kind of classroom, the teacher’s role is crucial – by posing problems that lead to big ideas and steering a class as they solve problems. By “being less helpful” as Dan Meyer says. (He doesn’t say don’t help at all!) This is not wasting time, it’s letting the students build the knowledge in their heads and acknowledging the fact that this takes time. It also takes time to learn how to teach this way. It’s not the case that the teacher is off taking a smoke break while the kids do this on their own. The teacher’s role is crucial – it’s difficult work and takes years to master.

This exact question is discussed by Piaget as related in a brilliant essay by Alfie Kohn – What Works Better than Traditional Math Instruction from his book The Schools Our Children Deserve. (I can’t improve on his explanation of why traditional math instruction is failing our children – please read this essay.)

So isn’t this the “flipped classroom” that Khan Academy proposes?
People are associating Khan Academy with the “flipped classroom” – something I talked about in this post (‘Teach Naked’ and complacency natives). In a so-called flipped classroom, the lecture takes place outside the classroom and classroom time is spent on discussion and problem solving. Students might watch the video at home (or in the car, bus, or anywhere) and then there would be a lot of classroom time freed up for discussion, working on individual problems, or whatever else needs to be done. That’s the theory, anyway.

So, first off, do you believe:

  • Students will actually watch the lecture?
  • The percentage that do watch the lecture will be any different than those who currently do their homework?
  • The percentage of kids who zone out, multi-task, or don’t understand will be any different than during a classroom lecture?

But I’m willing to let all these assumptions slide so we can move on. Let’s pretend that most of the students will listen/watch a math lecture on their own time.

Can you disconnect the lecture from the problem solving? Khan Academy videos have no context outside of class – other than that they match the standardized tests. As Derek Muller points out (see Part 1), these videos may have the unintended consequence of cementing incorrect models as students assume that they understand, thus making the teacher’s job that much harder.

Swapping the timing of certain teaching practices seems a minor logistics issue, at best. Moving the timing of the lecture doesn’t change the fact that it’s still a lecture, and not even a lecture about interesting stuff. Most of these “lectures” are simply worked out example problems. Do we think that a student who doesn’t “get it” in the classroom is more likely to “get it” on the bus? The main issue is the reliance on information delivery to trigger understanding.

This also assumes that you are replacing one lecture with no feedback with another lecture with no feedback. That’s pretty insulting to LOTS of teachers. I won’t assume that ALL teachers who lecture are bad, or that there aren’t a thousand ways to intersperse lecture with checks for understanding. There are no raised hands in the Khan Academy, no questions, no teachable moments, no interesting asides. You have one interaction, and one interaction only — the ability to play, stop, and rewind.

If I were a huge fan of making videos about how to solve problems, I’d certainly try to make it more student-centered by allowing students to make the videos. The process of figuring out how to clearly explain a concept would give a student time to reflect about the process in depth. They say teaching is the best way to learn, so why let Mr. Khan have all the fun!

But seriously, here’s a conundrum — the art of leading a productive learning discussion is much more difficult than lecturing. Are we to expect that the teacher who couldn’t even do the lecture part is suddenly going to be able to lead a productive discussion about math? It would seem to me that the teachers most likely to see Khan Academy videos as a good substitute for their own lectures are also the least likely to be able to take advantage of the classroom time for any substantive discussion that would help students.

Let’s not even talk about what happens if 3, 4 or 5 teachers each assign a 40 minute lecture to listen to every night – so if this model actually works… it’s impossible. Don’t you love models of teaching where successful adoption assures failure?

Nothing like this has ever existed before, it’s so exciting!
Really now? Didn’t you ever watch Donald Duck in MathMagic Land or Sunrise Semester? The amount of acclaim for Khan Academy is, in my view, way over the top and only reflects our acceptance of math myths as drivers for pedagogy and wishful thinking that there is a easy answer for learning.

I’m just glad to see that technology is finally useful in education.
I’ve seen Khan hyped as a transformative use of technology, but. I can’t even begin to understand how turning the computer into a VHS player is seen as transformative. I know, I know — he’s got quizzes too. Answer ten questions and you can resume playing the video. Brring, brrring… 1988 called and they want their CAI (Computer Aided Instruction) back.

But the Khan Academy videos show students how to solve the math problems that will be on tests – don’t we want students to do better on tests?
That is the heart of it – do we care about kids learning math or doing well on tests? They aren’t the same thing.

These videos have millions of hits on YouTube – it proves that students need this help and are searching for it.
Yes, it does. It shows that many students really do want to do well, and doing well is defined as passing tests. We have a nation where lots of students are working their hardest to do something that matters little. Imagine if we asked students to do math that was actually useful and interesting!

My teacher is terrible and these videos help me.
I’m sorry. I’m glad you’ve found something that helps. Nobody is trying to take away something that is helping you.

Salman Khan is a master teacher and shouldn’t everyone get the best teacher?
Salman Khan obviously has a gift for clearly explaining how he understands complex computations. Being a teacher, however, is more than explaining stuff. When a student has misconceptions, they often need to talk through them, and a teacher SHOULD be an expert in recognizing those misconceptions and steering students through those rough waters. There SHOULD be a lot of listening involved. I’m not excusing bad teaching practice – far from it.

You’ve cherry-picked your research and sources.
Absolutely true. I said at the beginning this wasn’t going to be a literature review. I’ve included a few quotes and references that influence my thinking. Kamii, Papert, and Kohn appear often. Between them they have decades of work, dozens of books, and research to support it all. If you disagree, I hope at least you’ll read further. Their ideas form a connective network with other great educators from Piaget to Dewey to Vygotsky to Freire and many more.

Just to pile on, I’m looking forward to Alfie Kohn’s new book, Feel-Bad Education . . . And Other Contrarian Essays on Children & Schooling. I’m also loving his recent column, What does education research really tell us? He relates new research about how studies done in the short term often support the use of traditional teaching practices (like direct instruction and homework for practicing skills). However, as these studies are refined and the students followed for longer periods (months or years instead of weeks), these traditional practices have zero, or even negative results. Yup, I <3 Alfie.

I like teaching in a more open-ended way – but no one understands.
Many teachers struggle with these math myths and the cultural expectations of how math should be taught. Even if they want to teach in more open-ended way, they are often alone, facing off with parents, colleagues and administrators. Any attempt to teach math as less skill-based is met with skepticism, if not outright hostility. Even research is met with a “… yes, but, I believe it’s important” as if it’s a matter of opinion. It’s almost impossible not to give into that pressure, and as a consequence many teachers give up.

I for one would never encourage a teacher to martyr themselves in a no-win situation, especially with the overemphasis on standardized testing and current punitive politicized atmosphere.

As far as parents go, though, I think that most parents really do want what’s best for their children and many can be convinced. Teachers may find allies among parents who are at their wits end with battles over math homework or with parents who watch their children go into school natural learners and come back hating it. Some parents are going to buy fraction flashcards for their kids no matter what you say or do, that won’t change. Try showing them this: Finland’s Educational Success? The Anti-Tiger Mother Approach

Find allies wherever you can. Teachers are doing amazing things all over the US and around the world. These days, it’s possible to develop colleagues who you may never meet in person, but might be your pedagogical soulmates.

You must not know much about real schools – haven’t you seen the list of standards that math teachers have to meet? The expectations for the test? The 400 page textbook? We have to get the kids through this stuff and there’s just no time for exploring, discovery, or anything else. Hoping that things will change someday doesn’t help me or my kids today.
You are right – the need for Khan Academy is completely fits the way we assume math has to be learned and taught. The “if it’s Tuesday it must be exponents” model is failing us. That has to change.

I’ll say a bit more about this Monday… Someday dilemma in my next (and last) post of this series.

Part 1 – Khan Academy and the mythical math cure
Part 2 – Khan Academy – algorithms and autonomy
Part 3 – Don’t we need balance? and other questions  (this post)
Part 4 – Monday… Someday

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Khan Academy – algorithms and autonomy

This is part 2 of a 4 part series on Khan Academy and math education, specifically American math education. Part 1- Khan Academy and the mythical math cure set up the context, my point of view, and a bit of learning theory. It also discussed one prevalent myth of American math instruction, that math is a discrete set of sequential skills. It wrapped up with some research on effective multimedia in math and science instruction. And of course what all these things have to do with Khan Academy.

I’ll continue with another American math myth — that math is best taught by having students practice step-by-step procedures that lead to the right answer.

The prevailing theory goes — experts figure out the best set of steps to solve any problem, we show students these steps, then they practice the steps until they can easily solve problems. If you believe this myth, it follows that if students don’t learn math: 1) it’s the teacher’s fault for not being clear enough, or 2) it’s the student’s fault for not practicing enough.

Khan Academy fits this myth perfectly. Here’s a quick (and even better, free) way to help with both of these. Replacing or supplementing a teacher with a video solves #1. It solves #2 by saying that these videos should be watched outside of class, thus freeing up time for more student practice in class.

But here’s a question… What if it’s not the teacher’s fault or the student’s fault? What if the assumption that people learn math by watching and practicing the pre-determined steps is wrong?

Alfie Kohn has famously said that you can’t practice understanding. The confusion is that we think math is similar to tennis or other skills that demand muscle memory and reptilian-brain reaction.

“By contrast, when students are simply told the most efficient way of getting the answer, they get in the habit of looking to the adult, or the book, instead of thinking things through.  They become less autonomous, more dependent.  Stuck in the middle of a problem, they’re less likely to try to figure out what makes sense to do next and more likely to try to remember what they’re supposed to do next – that is, what behavioral response they’ve been taught to produce.  Lots of practice can help some students get better at remembering the correct response, but not to get better at – or even accustomed to — thinking.” – Alfie Kohn Do Students Really Need Practice Homework?

And worse, assuming that practice creates proficiency backfires in the worst way with students who are furthest behind. Students who understand the material and made to complete a lot of practice will be, at worst, bored. But students who do not understand are being drilled into desperately guessing, never quite sure why they get some answers right and some wrong. It develops into a feeling of dread, of never being sure that they are doing anything right, but mostly that they just aren’t cutting it, and never will. Students who develop a deeply-held belief that they are not “good at math” may never overcome this.

The trouble with algorithms We double-down on the assumption about “learning by practicing” by breaking problem-solving into bite-sized chunks. We teach children specific ways to solve types of problems – tricks, mnemonics, and step-by-step processes (algorithms) like borrowing, carrying, or FOIL. We prompt students to look for clues in word problems, like if you see the word “more” it means to add. At the end of the day, this trains kids not to think, but to quickly try to guess the hidden rule and move on. All the help is well-intentioned, but reinforces a guessing game approach to math.

“Algorithms are harmful to most young children for two reasons: (1) They encourage children to give up their own thinking, and (2) they “unteach” what children know about place value, thereby preventing them from developing number sense.” Constance Kamii and Ann Dominick – The Harmful Effects of “Carrying” and “Borrowing” in Grades 1-4 (also in PDF, sometimes the Google doc doesn’t seem to work..)

This quote is from a research study that found that teaching carrying and borrowing to children significantly damaged their ability to solve addition problems. This is a must-read from 1998 that points out that despite numerous research studies that confirm the damaging effects of training children in carrying and borrowing algorithms, we continue to do so in most U.S. classrooms.

“The Harmful Effects of Algorithms in Grades 1-4” was published in 1998, four years after Kamii (1994) had published even more data. But 15 years later, most curricula still include the teaching of “carrying” and “borrowing.” When educators use research to inform practice and teach mathematics as a sense-making discipline, we will have a much better chance of helping all children be successful in mathematics.”

Our beliefs, even when refuted by research, allow us to continue to hope for magic wand solutions that make our beliefs real. Math myths keep us on the lookout for an easy answer that isn’t there. When something doesn’t work, myths allow us to ignore evidence and keep doing the same things because we “believe” in them. (If practicing isn’t working, practice more!)  It makes us less willing to do the hard work of actually dealing with students individually and grappling with deep and difficult questions about how best to teach math. It’s all too easy to say, let’s push play on the video! Hurray, all our problems are solved.

The problem with “problems”
Additionally, we confuse solving problems with answering test questions and textbook exercises. Khan Academy deals with the later – specific steps for finding the right answer to “problems” that students are mostly likely to find on tests and in textbooks. (Some good examples of the differences between the two can be found in this blog post: Khan Academy is an indictment of education by Frank Noschese, a physics teacher and blogger.) This tricky word swap is confusing, because we DO want kids to have good problem-solving skills, but we certainly mean more than just answering textbook exercises. If we break a student’s confidence by imposing someone else’s problem-solving algorithm, when they encounter a real problem, one that isn’t made up for a test, they lack the confidence to explore their own solutions once they’ve gone through the list of algorithms we’ve had them practice with such fury.

The curse of the right answer
 Math is viewed by many people as being logical, somewhat cold, and very rigid. Math is seen as the one subject where there are cut-and-dried right answers. But we forget that there are many ways to the right answer, and exploring these different paths helps strengthen existing mathematical understanding. Instead, we give kids lots of problems to work on so they can show us that they can get right answers quickly. It becomes about the product, not the process.

What ends up happening is that we spend a lot of time telling kids they are wrong, hoping that they will “get it” and start being right. Constance Kamii, an eminent math educator and a protégé of Piaget, says that this is completely the wrong approach – that if you destroy a child’s sense of autonomy and self-confidence, they will never recover that. She says that you should allow children to solve problems and LISTEN as they do, preferably in a group setting, as they discuss their answers. Let them convince each other based on their own observations and problem-solving ability. Let them defend their answers – even when they are wrong. Because it is destructive to tell a child they are wrong, but constructive to let them move from their first answer to an answer they come to like better.

I wrote a post about seeing Dr. Kamii do professional development with math teachers using this model – Questioning assumptions with Constance Kamii. Constantly telling children they are wrong creates a sense that right answers are simply mysteries that appear out of nowhere, and some people can guess them and some people can’t. And if you fall into the “can’t” pile, you are doomed forever.

This is not a made-up, one-off fantasy
You may be thinking, well, I’m sure a few teachers here and there do this, but not at the scale we need in this country! (You can also read my thoughts about the scaling question – Big problems require small solutions.) Take a look at this one national example (there are others). The New Zealand Numeracy Project encourages flexible strategies for solving numerical problems, and discourages reliance on standard computational algorithms. The project supports teachers with professional development, resources, and coaching. It gives parents information so they understand why their children aren’t being taught the same problem-solving rules they were taught.

Here’s just one evaluation done on it – The Algebraic Nature of Students’ Numerical Manipulation in the New Zealand Numeracy Project showed that, “…that students who participated in the Numeracy Project solved numerical problems that required manipulation with more success than did students who had not participated in the project.” Why are they doing this? Because New Zealand decided to pay attention to research about how children learn, not myths.

Autonomy shmatonomy
Americans have a bi-polar view of youth autonomy. We want them to be empowered AND to do what we (adults) tell them to do. We want them to find their voice AND sit still and listen. We want them to think outside the box AND bubble in the right answers. We are fooling ourselves if we believe that we can tell children that math is fun and creative, but only if you do it MY way. We must be able to answer “why do I have to learn this” with something better than “because you’ll need it in grade n+1” (where n = the grade they are in now.) This just reinforces the message, “… shut up and do what I say.”

When we think about how students learn math, it’s all too easy to discount how they feel about themselves as math learners and users. We want them to just do the work, pass the test and move on. There are students who are compliant and do just that. But there are many many students who get caught in extended power struggles with teachers, parents, and the school system. Some of these power struggles are overt, some quiet, but it’s a waste of potential all the same. (I can’t think of a better book about this than Herb Kohl’s I Won’t Learn from You and Other Thoughts on Creative Maladjustment.)

Constance Kamii has this quote front and center on her website, “A classroom cannot foster the development of autonomy in the intellectual realm while suppressing it in the social and moral realms.” Why would a math educator care so much about autonomy? I would encourage anyone exploring this question to take a look at some of the videos on her website that show classrooms where great care is given to this question.

In other words
Teaching math is not like Teach Me How to Dougie.

Part 1 – Khan Academy and the mythical math cure
Part 2 – Khan Academy – algorithms and autonomy  (this post)
Part 3 – Don’t we need balance? and other questions
Part 4 – Monday… Someday

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Syracuse here we come!

I’m heading to Syracuse, New York next week to keynote the March ITD TALK series at the Central New York Regional Information Center (CNYRIC) on March 17, 2011. We have a really special day planned for all the attendees, because after my talk, there will be presentations by students and teachers from local GenYES and TechYES schools.

So if you are in the area and want to see student technology leadership and literacy in action, be sure to register and come by! I’ll be setting it up in the morning talking about how we must expand our narrow view of technology professional development to include more than one shot, one-size-fits-all, “sit and get” sessions.

GenYES and TechYES in Action
Teachers and students from Jamesville DeWitt High School and Baldwinsville’s Ray Middle School will be on-hand to discuss their experiences with the GenYES and TechYES programs in their respective schools. GenYES is the only student-centered research-based solution for school-wide technology integration. Students work with teachers to design technology-infused lessons and provide tech support. In TechYES, students show technology literacy by creating projects that meet state and local technology proficiency requirements. As part of TechYES, a structured peer-mentoring program assists the teacher or advisor, and provides student leadership opportunities that serve to further strengthen the program and enrich the learning community.

Hope to see you there!

Sylvia

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Educon 2.3 – a new kind of education conference

Next weekend in Philadelphia will be the fourth annual Educon conference. I’m happy to say I’ve been to all of them so far, and it’s grown into one of my favorites of the year.

There are several things I love about Educon:

  • It’s small. Capped at 500 people, it’s intimate enough that you get a “sense” of what people are thinking and the shifts occurring in real time.
  • Authenticity gives it voice and shape. Held at the Science Leadership Academy, a public magnet school with a progressive philosophy in the center of Philadelphia, the vibrancy of the school (both from teachers and students) shines through the event.
  • It’s not a trade show. So many educational conferences, even the ones with academic roots, have morphed into what Gary Stager calls “boat shows.” The focus on sales creates a different kind of atmosphere. Educon is about educators thinking out loud together without the carnival barkers.
  • Conversations, not sessions. At most conferences, people always wonder why discussions of new ways to teach and learn are held in old style lecture halls, and the interesting conversations are the ones in the hall. Educon has tried to bring those conversations to the forefront.
  • It’s centered in practice. Being in a school is not just about the building. The teachers and students are full participants in the conference and model collaboration, non-coercive learning and empowerment throughout. You can tell it’s what they do on a regular basis and it raises the bar for everyone.

I’m leading a conversation this year about gaming in education, “If Games are the Answer, What’s the Question?” Games in education are a hot topic these days, with all the usual mix of reality and hype that goes along with that. I definitely have strong opinions (which I’ll share) – but not the whole time. I hope to have a lively discussion where we’ll look at some games and talk about what makes them “good” for learning or not. Ultimately, perhaps we can come to some conclusions about what to look for in games for different subjects and classrooms.

I’d appreciate any input here or on the Educon page for this session about any particular games that people are curious about and want to discuss. I’ll try to have some screen shots prepared since there really won’t be time to download and play a lot of games AND have a discussion.

If you are coming to this session in person or via the live web streaming, please come with a downloaded game to share, or post suggestions here.

Sylvia

Previous posts about Educon

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Learning @ School – Keynote

I’m excited to be heading off to New Zealand next month to keynote the Learning@School 2011 conference in Rotorua (Feb 23-25). It looks like a wonderful conference, with some really interesting themes and strands.

I’ll be talking about student leadership and empowerment – and the way we can structure learning environments to offer those opportunities. Putting students into positions of responsibility for what and how other people learn teaches them that what they do matters, and gives them new insight into how they (and others learn.)

People always say, “you learn so much by teaching” – so why not have students learn AND teach. Combining this with technology, for which students today have a natural instinct and interest,  just makes sense. Students can teach other students, teach teachers, support technology professional development, help with technical set up and support, and much more. It creates natural collaboration opportunities, provides challenges at many levels, and is really useful. Giving students this kind of responsibility creates a win-win situation where students are valued for their expertise and hard work – real, needed work!

I’ll also do a follow up session to talk about the “how tos” of student technology leadership programs, and then another one about games in education.

I also hope to get some time visiting the famous geysers, boiling mud pools and thermal springs of Rotorua!

Sylvia

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Buzzword alert. What does formative assessment really mean?

Education Week: Expert Issues Warning on Formative-Assessment Uses.

Education Week has an excellent (and short!) article about how formative assessment is not a well-understood concept. I seem to be hearing the words “formative assessment” with greater frequency, perhaps moving into the “buzzword” category. But what does it really mean?

“Margaret Heritage, the assistant director for professional development at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing, or CRESST, at the University of California, Los Angeles, appeared on a panel here last week to discuss a new paper intended as a reminder of what formative assessment should be.”

“Referring to a body of work that sought to define formative assessment during the past two decades, including the influential 1998 article, “Inside the Black Box,” by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam, she said formative assessment is not a series of quizzes or a “more frequent, finer-grained” interim assessment, but a continuous process embedded in adults’ teaching and students’ learning.” (emphasis mine)

Lately, I’ve been hearing summative assessment as if it means “the test at the end” and formative assessment is testing leading up to that. This is clearly not the case. Take a trip around vendor booths at any educational conference and you will see that formative assessment is being sold as mini-quizzes that are supposed to give the teacher “feedback” about how the student is doing so “adjustments” can be made before the final test. This is a terrible corruption of the meaning of formative assessment and strips it of its power.

“Teachers use formative assessment to guide instruction when they clearly define what students should know, periodically gauge their understanding, and give them descriptive feedback—not simply a test score or a grade—to help them reach those goals, Ms. Heritage said. Students engage in the process by understanding how their work must evolve and developing self-assessment and peer-assessment strategies to help them get there, she said.”

Turning formative assessment into more little tests is a deceit aimed at selling more testing products and making them easier to invent, administer and catalog.

To do formative assessment, teachers have to talk to students and look at student work. They have to have a relationship with the student so that the feedback is meaningful and useful. With good professional development and a supportive school culture, teachers can learn to do formative assessment. It doesn’t take more time to do it right.

What takes time is testing that focuses on catching students at what they DON’T know for the purpose of collecting more data points. Those gaps in understanding could have been caught in the context of learning. Missing those teachable moments is a lost opportunity that can’t be regained.

“Ms. Heritage’s comments echo others’ concerns that the meaning of formative assessment has been hijacked as the standards movement has pressed states into large-scale testing systems. The result, Ms. Heritage said, is a “paradigm of measurement” instead of one of learning.”

“A teacher quoted at the end of Ms. Heritage’s paper captures the essence of the paradigm shift Ms. Heritage has in mind.

“I used to do a lot of explaining, but now I do a lot of questioning,” said the teacher. “I used to do a lot of talking, but now I do a lot of listening. I used to think about teaching the curriculum, but now I think about teaching the student.””

Doing real formative assessment is not impossible, and shouldn’t be dismissed as “too difficult” or “too expensive.”

What’s really expensive is to do cheap things that don’t work, waste time, and discourage student/teacher relationships.

Sylvia

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The Future of Education interview – Sylvia Martinez

Last week I had the opportunity to be interviewed by Steve Hargadon for his Future of Education web event series. It was a great conversation (Steve is an amazing interviewer!)

We touched on a wide variety of subjects, including: “myths” of technology integration, student voice, gender issues in technology, technology literacy and of course, education reform.

Link to replay interview (when you click this, it will launch Elluminate and replay the entire event, chat window and all.)

Be sure to check out the upcoming events in “The Future of Education” series – there is something for every interest!

Sylvia

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Students teach teachers how to create a podcast

This video from Brett Moller (Blog: 21st Century Educator) shows a student produced tutorial about how to create a podcast using Garageband.

YouTube – Dylan Teaching the Teachers How to create a basic podcast.

If you have teachers who need help, why not let students create tutorials for them? Students have an authentic project, and teachers get help with the exact hardware or software, not some generic tutorial. This is a win-win for everyone involved.

And think about this – if you are teaching a technology applications class, or asking students to pass technology literacy standards, why not have the projects the students do actually do some good? Why not have student projects that have an authentic purpose – helping teachers (or peers, or the community, for that matter).

One of the most important parts of project-based learning is having a sense of who your audience is – and the audience for student work does not have to be one harried technology teacher.

These can be useful additions to any school’s suite of tech support tools, plus, create a climate of student ownership. Brett says, “They did a series of five this year – they’re now training next year’s group to continue! Teachers love them.”

Sylvia

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See you in Phoenix?

This week I’ll be in Phoenix at the T+L conference. T+L is the Technology + Learning conference of the National School Board Association. This year it’s in Phoenix, Arizona, October 19-21.

NSBA’s T+L conference is one of my favorite conferences of the year. It’s unique in the fact that whole school teams come to the conference, not just technology folks. This provides a terrific range of perspectives and experience that can’t be matched in conferences that focus on one job title or subject area.

Generation YES is a co-sponsor of the T+L conference, and we’ll be down in the co-sponsor booth area, number 907.

If you are there, I hope you’ll attend a session designed to get everyone thinking about how to “grow your own” resources for technology learning and support in any district. I’m also co-presenting this session Thursday morning with Jeff Billings of the nearby Paradise Valley School District.

Creative Capacity Building for 21st Century Schools
Thursday, 10/21/2010 8:00AM – 9:00AM , Room 222BC
Schools are faced with diminishing technology and training budgets, yet ever increasing needs for technology integration, training and support. Finding cost effective ways to provide these essential ingredients for effective technology is no longer a goal, but a requirement.

Hopefully there will be a T+L Tweetup too – if you’d like to connect, please follow me at smartinez and let’s get together.

See you in Phoenix!

Sylvia