Teachers won't participate in statewide task force on school accountability reform

The situation referenced in the title of this blog post is the headline of an article printed in the Wisconsin State Journal last Friday, July 22. I missed the article when it was first published because I was still in South Dakota, but I have since become aware of the situation it reports. More importantly, the article has been unavoidable on the Madison.com website because it still ranks at the top of the “Most Commented” list with 396 comments, more than triple the article in second place.

Wading through the comments is an interesting endeavor and can siphon an enormous amount of time from one’s day. Most of the posts are the same old rhetoric, but there are moments of insight hidden like gems among the rubble. Frankly, it is difficult to blog about this topic because I still have trouble forming an opinion that I am comfortable expressing on the topic. One of the first things I wondered was if WEAC will not have a representative on Scott Walker’s committee tasked with developing a statewide school accountability system, who will be on the committee? Well, here is the list:

• Governor Scott Walker
• Superintendent Tony Evers
• Senator Luther Olsen, Senate Education Committee, Chair (Republican)
• Representative Steve Kestell, Assembly Education Committee, Chair (Republican)
• John Ashley, Wisconsin Association of School Boards (the organization has long sought more power and flexibility in dealing with teachers and their unions)
• John Gee, Wisconsin Charter Schools Association (charter school advocacy group)
• Matt Kussow, Wisconsin Council of Religious and Independent Schools
• Jim Lynch, Association of Wisconsin School Administrators
• James Bender, School Choice Wisconsin (representative of the school privatization industry)
• Gary Myrah, Wisconsin Council of Administrators of Special Services
• Miles Turner, Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators
• Woody Wiedenhoeft, Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials

Reading the list, I identified Walker himself, a state senator and representative, both members of the Republican Party, pro-charter school and business lobbyists, administrative union leaders, and Tony Evers. The lack of balance in the ranks of the committee is obvious, but is that any reason for the teacher’s union to take its ball and go home? Union leader Mary Bell says that “we simply do not have the necessary trust or confidence” to be part of the committee. That makes some sense, I suppose, because a committee whose members harbor blatant political or economic agendas will not likely listen to anything they are obligated to disagree with.

However, Bell also says, “anytime you have the voice of educators at the table, you do better.” So, will she resist offering the voice of educators simply to punish Walker and the committee? If teachers could help improve the system the committee will create, the very system which will judge their success as professionals and the success of their schools, why not sit down at the table? It is likely that the other committee members would plug their ears, ignore Bell’s input, and do what they want to do regardless. But rather than criticize the plan from the outside looking in, criticism that will surely be dismissed by anyone not already in lockstep with WEAC, why not attempt to be part of the process? If the collaboration fails, the WEAC representative could then speak with authority about why it failed. Reform is coming, and I guess I have decided that it would have been better for teachers to swallow their collective pride and try to make a difference from the inside.

To be proud and inaccessible is to be timid and weak. - Jean Baptiste Masillon

A vacation from my problems

While I feel a bit impertinent churning out these book blogs, I want to mention my recent “vacation” with my dad. A few days ago, I returned home after spending about a week traveling, mostly in the Black Hills and other parts of South Dakota. Before leaving, I was so consumed with school and wrapped up in my own things that I did not really know where I was going. I had agreed to “go out west” with my dad, as that was always something he wanted to do, but I had assumed that meant Arizona or New Mexico, not South Dakota.

Despite the subterfuge involved in my travel arrangements, I had a pretty relaxing and enjoyable week. Unlike most vacations I have taken, however, I had quite a bit of down time. Driving to South Dakota, I read books for class; at night in the hotel room, I read books for class; on the drive home, too, I read books for class. I took some notes, but I found it hard to write much more in the car or in my windows of time at night. Still, I had plenty of time to lay the foundation to write about these books, so even though it feels like I’m scrambling to finish these blogs, that doesn’t tell the whole story.

Choice book blog: Disrupting Class

In Disrupting Class, Clayton Christensen makes a strong case that online learning is the way of the future. Throughout the book, it was clear that I was reading the work of an economist rather than an educator as most of Christensen’s theories were obviously developed for business and later applied to education. Similarly, most of his examples throughout the book to explain and validate his ideas come from the business world. This made the book a denser read, but it also gave considerable weight to some of Christensen’s arguments, such as his projected rise of online learning. Some of what he predicted in 2008 has already begun to manifest in the present.

For example, to support his projections for online learning, he cites a study from the middle of the last decade showing that schools are investing in reading and math to the detriment of other subjects because of a focus on standardized test scores. He predicts that “a darkening budget picture could make this focus on the core even more dramatic” (103). The current decay of school funding in Wisconsin certainly supports what Christensen predicted a few years ago, but what is interesting about the book is its application of economic theory to this reality. He argues that this atmosphere creates a vacuum of nonconsumption and that schools should take this as an opportunity to move all courses away from local instruction to technology-aided instruction. The vacuum created by budget shortfalls should be used, according to Christensen, to “outsource more and more of the instructional job to virtual providers” (104).

To back up, this sly method of upending traditional education by infiltrating and conquering its operations is Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation at work. Schools have been implementing technology all wrong, according to Christensen, and to truly reform instruction, computer-based learning needs to beat monolithic learning at its own game. When Apple first introduced personal computers, he argues, it did not attack existing PC markets but created its own market by selling its computer as a toy for children. Likewise, if school administrators “first implement computer-based learning in places and for courses where there are no teachers to teach, then computer-based learning will, step by step, disrupt the instructional job that teachers are doing in a positive way” (73).

Christensen’s application of his economic theory to advance education leaves me torn in coming to my own conclusions about his ideas. On one hand, I approach everything I read critically and tend to play the role of devil’s advocate. This leads me to argue that Christensen is adopting a starve the beast strategy to promote his educational agenda. Of course, I would say, depriving school systems of funding will force them to look for cheaper educational alternatives. Of course cutting resources from traditional classrooms will cause them to become less effective. However, I believe that Christensen believes that disrupting traditional instruction is the only way to improve student outcomes. I accept that he believes this disruption will change things in a positive way.

It is difficult to set aside my rational self interest and accept the fact that his proposed system will need less people like me and achieve better results. Reading his book, I felt that Christensen spent too little time arguing why his way would succeed and too much time explaining how it would be implemented. It sounds good when he states that students will never receive a customized education in the traditional system. It sounds compelling when he argues that computer-based learning is the way to achieve a modular, student-centric system (38). Unfortunately, after establishing this thesis in chapter 1, he spends the rest of the book taking it for granted. By the time he gets to his conclusion and argues that disruptive innovation must “go around and underneath the system [to drive] affordability, accessibility, capability, and responsiveness” (225), I find myself wondering which of these outcomes he finds most important. There is no question that a computer-based instructional model could be more affordable than the current system, but Christensen never fully convinced me it would be better.

Choice book blog: Productive Group Work

Productive Group Work, written by Nancy Frey, Douglas Fisher, and Sandi Everlove, begins by defining the parameters necessary for productive group work. The authors identify positive interdependence as a hallmark of this productivity and cite Johnson and Johnson’s four methods to achieving it: group goals, individual resources, rewards, and distinct roles. To this list, the authors add a fifth principle, defining a meaningful task. They believe that “a task for productive group work must offer a challenge or a problem to solve to make all of those principles of cooperative learning come into play” (20). At first this seems obvious because without a meaningful task, it would be impossible to achieve the other criteria on the list. Still, when the authors go on to explain the idea of “productive failure,” which a teacher facilitates by offering sufficiently complex tasks, their point becomes clearer. In my own classroom experiences with group work, I have often witnessed students who do not work to their full potential because of inadequate tasks. It is up to me as the teacher to clarify individual roles in the group, to provide individual and group feedback, and to structure the activity to make it challenging and complex.

One of the biggest problems I have had with group work that I alluded to above is when student groups focus on completing a task or getting the answers instead of the process of learning. This attitude can be mitigated by a complex task, but that complexity does not necessarily change the completion mindset. In chapter 3, the authors argue that to get students to change, teachers must be better models of these behaviors themselves. They cite a study which found that “students mimicked what their teacher had modeled, not what the teacher had intended for them to do” (42). This passage hit home for me because in my own classroom, despite the fact that I stress group norms and collaboration, I see many of the student behaviors witnessed in the study. Examining a text for symbolism or figurative language, students working in the same group are quick to share answers rather than help each other through the process. Instead of telling them how to work productively in a group, I need to model the “language of learning” myself and then monitor whether student groups adopt this model of interaction. The language of learning “poster” can be downloaded as a Word document at the following website: maldenells.wikispaces.com/file/view/Language+of+Learning+Poster.doc

In chapter 5, the authors address another problem that has hindered some of the group work in my classes. To support group learning and productivity, students need to give each other feedback, but they are often too nice and sometimes too blunt. The authors quote Jay Simmons who writes that “responders are made, not born” (76). Students do not know how to give constructive feedback, and like modeling productive group behaviors, teachers must model peer responses rather than tell students how to respond to each other’s work. Teachers can model praise, understanding, questions, and suggestions as well as share their own writing, have the class respond to a piece of model writing, guide partner responses, or hold response conferences. I have used many of these techniques in the classroom, but I may not have always done them with enough purpose or tenacity. One thing this book has helped reinforce is the idea that for student group work to be productive, the teacher must continually reinforce the behaviors that make it productive. The chart from Simmons’ book can be found on page 7 of the following PDF: users.ipfw.edu/wellerw/Responders_training.pdf

The final chapter of the book includes many tips for facilitating successful group work in the classroom. The authors recommend not grouping students by ability, having teachers assign groups based on academic and social factors, assigning four students to a group, adjusting groups based on behavior or performance, and differentiating within groups. They answer common questions about group work and illustrate how to introduce group work in a classroom. Like the entire book, the last chapter offers a good balance between theory and practical examples. Throughout the book, the authors explain the research pertinent to whatever facet of cooperative group work they are discussing and offer examples from the classroom. Although much of the book felt like review, it presented moments of insight and proved to be an engaging read.  

Choice book blog: Rethinking Homework

Rethinking Homework by Cathy Vatterott begins just as I would expect from a book with such an impartial title, with the history of homework. Vatterott belabors the point that teachers and the public have long vacillated between believing that homework is inherently good and that it must be eradicated. She does offer an interesting anecdote from 100 years ago, a time when labor laws were being developed for adults and children were thought to need plenty of fresh air and exercise. “Rather than diagnosing children with attention deficit disorder,” Vatterott writes, “pediatricians simply prescribed more outdoor exercise” (4). I believe that today’s students would benefit from hopping aboard a time machine for a visit to a clinic of yesteryear.

Vatterott’s chapter on homework in the context of the new family touched on many of the themes Dr. Parks explored in her social justice course. Kids from low income families tend to have many responsibilities around the house such as cooking or babysitting. Furthermore, parental involvement in homework ranges from non-existent to overbearing, with low income parents working multiple jobs or odd hours least able to support their children’s studies. Vatterott reiterates that teachers should not assume students have “a quiet place to do homework,” “a parent home in the evening,” “money for school supplies,” or parents who “speak and read English” (40). These seem like obvious assumptions to avoid, but they are worth reiterating because, in my opinion, they offer the strongest support for Vatterott’s call to decriminalize the grading of homework (96). Students neglect homework for a myriad of reasons, many of which are out of their control.

To grade homework, one must assume that all students are capable of doing the work and that all students have time to do the work. Vatterott refers to Ken Goldberg’s idea of the “homework trap,” where “incomplete homeworkàpoor gradesàpoor attitudesàa predictable avoidance of homework and resentment toward the systemàmore failing grades” (92). I have seen many students in my freshman language arts classes fall into the homework trap, and at one point of my high school career, I fell into the trap myself. For me, junior year of high school was the year my focus in the classroom waned and I began to neglect school. I often skipped classes, and the class I skipped most of all was Accounting 1. I don’t why I took an accounting class: I did not enjoy math and had little patience for mundane, repetitive tasks. This combined with the fact that the class immediately followed my lunch period made it easy to avoid. I kept up for a while, but between missing classes and neglecting the homework, I soon fell into the homework trap big time. Luckily, I had parents who were involved, and once they found out about my delinquency, they pushed me until I earned a passing grade in the class. When a student whose parents are uninvolved for whatever reason falls into the homework trap, they will not be lucky enough to escape it. Unlike me, many low income students fall into the homework trap through no fault of their own, and criminalizing their inability to complete homework only makes a bad situation worse.

Citing many research studies, Vatterott comes to the conclusion that “a small amount of homework may be good for learning, but too much homework can actually be bad for learning” (62). She uses a list of common sense things teachers know about learning to argue that homework should be purposeful and personalized. She suggests ways to differentiate homework according to difficulty, amount, structure, learning style, or interest. Finally, she makes a case that anyone teaching in the Howard-Suamico School District should be familiar with. She argues that “homework’s role is not assessment of learning; therefore, it should not be graded” (112). She also provides support from people like W. James Popham, author of Transformative Assessment, who has found that when teachers stop grading homework, students “feel a sense of empowerment over their own learning” (115). After a long indoctrination into this mindset, I did not find Vatterott’s ideas to be groundbreaking, but I did appreciate her perspective. An idea that once seemed foreign to me, that homework should not count toward a student’s grade, has come to make more and more sense. Much of the content of Vatterott’s book regarding effective homework practices seems like common sense, but by walking readers through the process of rethinking homework, she successfully leads readers to accept her conclusions about best homework practices.      

Khan Academy: Over 65 million lessons delivered

I read an article today on Wired.com about the Khan Academy, which is basically a website featuring educational videos by Salman Khan. Khan guides students through math, science, and economics problems and concepts with his audio narration and by “writing” with his mouse cursor on a black background that looks a bit like a chalkboard. The videos are very simple, and Khan does not actually appear on camera, but his eager narration helps students work through the concepts. The site also lets students earn digital “badges,” which can be an incentive to master skills.

The aspect of the Wired article that struck me as interesting is how the teacher referenced in the article, Kami Thordarson, uses the videos in her classroom. Instead of lecturing in class and teaching all students at the same pace, the students are assigned to view Khan’s video lectures outside of class. Class is where students complete their “homework,” which Thordarson is able to guide them through at their individual paces. Advocates of Khan’s site and methods say that is taps into what Benjamin Bloom discovered in the 1980s: students learn more with one on one instruction.

Wired.com: How Khan Academy Is Changing the Rules of Education

TED.com:  Salman Khan talks about how and why he created the remarkable Khan Academy

Khan Academy example video: Introduction to the bank income statement

Staff Development Presentation - Xtranormal

Presenting GoAnimate for EdL 755 yesterday leads me to believe that there is interest among the cohort in animation tools. So, for my final presentation for EdL 719, per Keith’s approval, I would like to present a similar tool, Xtranormal.

As I said yesterday, there are positives and negatives to using GoAnimate. Xtranormal is another Web 2.0 animation tool that has some advantages over GoAnimate. It’s not perfect, of course, but I hope that in my presentation I can demonstrate its use and explain when it may be better suited to a project than GoAnimate and where it comes up short. 

Honesty is the best policy

The recent Atlanta cheating scandal, in which the Georgia Bureau of Investigation found that “178 teachers and principals in 44 schools had engaged in cheating since 2001” (Bello, Gillum & Toppo, 2011), raises tough questions about the nature of education and educational accountability. The fact that the investigation was limited to 56 schools makes the widespread nature of the cheating spectacularly disturbing.  

What does this evidence say about a system of high-stakes testing that unfairly punishes schools with low income students? What does it say about a culture where principals and teachers will lie and cheat rather than promote reform? How can the public trust that the results of high-stakes testing are accurate? How can reformers develop systems to hold schools and teachers accountable, like Scott Walker has promised to do in Wisconsin, which ensure integrity?

Teachers, principals, and politicians could learn a lesson from an episode of The Brady Bunch where Jan Brady calls attention to a scoring error that would have erroneously awarded her the winner of an essay contest. In front of her peers, Jan calls attention to the error and accepts that her honesty will cost her public adulation. The perception of success is not enough; for school reform to truly be successful, it must do more than just hold teachers accountable. It must help them teach better and do it honestly.   

CBS. (2011, June 15). The Brady Bunch - Honesty is the best policy [Video file]. Retrieved from  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCxSIfOYmAU

Bello, M., Gillum, J. & Toppo, G. (2011, July 8). Official: Investigation into possible test cheating expands. USAToday.com. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-07-08-schools-DC-investigation-cheating_n.htm?csp=34news

EdL 755 - Cognitive Surplus review

Clay Shirky begins his book, Cognitive Surplus, by making an analogy between English gin consumption in the early 1700s and American television consumption post World War II. Television itself was not the problem for Americans, Shirky assures readers, but itself a reaction to Americans’ excess of free time and diminished social circles. At this point, Shirky begins contrasting social media, a wholly interactive and networked medium, with the static albatross that is television. He asks readers to “imagine treating the free time of the world’s educated citizenry as an aggregate, a kind of cognitive surplus” (Shirky, 2010, p. 9). He presents this free time as a social asset that can be harnessed for productive projects like Wikipedia or squandered watching television. He points out that teens and young adults are watching less television than previous generations and that a subtle but prevalent shift is beginning in the way Americans consume media. People are beginning to employ “new communications tools to do jobs older media simply can’t do” (p. 15), writes Shirky, invoking as an example Ushahidi, a crowdsourcing website developed to map Kenyan violence in the wake of a controversial December 2007 election.

Shirky never uses the term crowdsourcing, which has long been part of journalistic vernacular, but he examines its tenets throughout the book. The crowdsourcing model allows news organizations or companies to harness the production of many volunteers to replace or enhance the work of a limited number of professionals. On the positive side, relying on volunteers who donate their free time has allowed “news outlets do things that would otherwise be impractical, such as searching through troves of documents looking for interesting material” (“The people,” 2011). In the future, there may not be many journalists earning salaries as their primary career, but everyone can be a journalist in his or her free time. Social media is destroying journalism while revolutionizing it and redefining what it means to be a journalist. Shirky argues that “providing professional content isn’t the only job we’ve been hiring media to do” (p. 19), seemingly acknowledging that amateur content may not adequately replace hard news or investigative journalism. However, he does not discuss the ramifications of the hard news void slowly growing in the media landscape. As news becomes less researched and more user driven, people dig in their ideological heels, accept opinion as fact, and may be falling down a collective slippery slope where more information means less knowledge. Shirky acknowledges that all crowdsourcing projects are not academic or even productive, but he does not address what this shift in media consumption may mean for the knowledge of the American electorate.

Another ramification of this shift toward crowdsourcing is addressed when Shirky examines digital sharecropping. In this new, collaborative, cognitive surplus-harnessing media landscape, “the revenue goes not to the content creators but to the owners of the platform that enables the sharing” (p. 57). Shirky relates a story about volunteers for America Online suing AOL in 1999 for profiting from their unpaid labor. More than a decade later, this issue has become more extreme and more prevalent.  Huffington Post bloggers recently sued it and AOL, which purchased the site for $315 million, for treating them like digital sharecroppers and not sharing the fruits of their digital labor (Katz, 2011).  Shirky does not come down hard enough of this practice, instead viewing it as part of a larger shift in the way that new generations view and interact with media. “One function of the market,” he argues, “is to provide platforms for us to engage in the things we value doing outside of the market” (p. 60). His logic can be readily applied to most of his examples, like Facebook, which does seem to facilitate activities – discussing current events, sharing photographs, reconnecting with people – that people want to do anyway. It is more difficult and worrisome, especially in the age of content farms, to apply this to all human endeavors. Marginalizing all writers and all content by lumping journalism in with Facebook posts contributes to the growing wealth disparity in American society. Using Shirky’s model, the cognitive surplus of the average American will eventually be diminished as he or she has to work two or three jobs make ends meet.

Shirky eventually devotes part of his text to examining the ramifications of new media and social networking on education. Here he relates an interesting history of the Invisible College, a group of scientists and academics who met in random locations and communicated with letters in the mid-1600s. Shirky relates that “within a few years, several members of the Invisible College had produced advances in chemistry, biology, astronomy, and optics” (p. 137) by fostering a collaborative and competitive atmosphere. He goes on to explain the conditions of sharing information and to praise new tools that enable more effective sharing on a larger scale and create products like the Linux operating system. Shirky contrasts this acceptance of collaboration for the greater good with an anecdote involving a freshman engineering student attending Ryerson University in 2007 who started a Facebook study group for chemistry students. To his credit, Shirky paints a nuanced picture of the Ryerson situation by invoking the concept of free riders. He asks or implies many difficult questions facing modern educators: Can educators ever expect a student’s individual work to be done completely in isolation? How can an online study group of 146 members avoid the type of freeloaders that a traditional study group can easily identify and expel? When does sharing knowledge become cheating? Shirky provides no easy answers, acknowledging that education is “less about getting the right answer than learning the right techniques” (p. 148) while arguing that “learners who share their observations and frustrations with their peers learn faster and retain more of what they’ve learned than those who study alone” (p. 149). The school eventually struck a balance between expelling the student and absolving his behavior by downgrading him on one particular assignment. Shirky seems to support this type of balanced approach but argues that schools need to establish progressive policies rather than take reactionary punitive measures.   

In his final chapter, Shirky tries to draw conclusions from the myriad of ideas considered in his book. However, precise inferences are difficult to resolve because “the bigger the opportunity offered by new tools, the less completely anyone can extrapolate the future from the previous shape of society” (p. 189). This paradox is at the heart of Shirky’s book as his historical references and modern observations do not always fully connect, routinely drawing out more questions than answers. The title of the final chapter, “Looking for the mouse,” highlights the rapid change and shifting cultural expectations that are a theme of his writing. While children a few years ago may have expected to find a computer mouse to control a television or projector screen, they may now expect every screen to be manipulated like their iPad or smartphone by simply touching the screen rather than using a mouse. While TVs a few years ago may not have allowed any interactivity, most high-end models are now being shipped with internet access and apps from GoogleTV or other services. While Shirky’s book cannot predict all trends or provide all answers, it does raise many interesting questions that allow readers to draw their own conclusions about an exciting, unpredictable future.

References

Katz, B. (2011, April 12). AOL, Huffington Post sued by unpaid blogger. Reuters.com. Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/12/huffington-lawsuit-idUSN1216794620110412

Shirky, C. (2010). Cognitive surplus: Creativity and generosity in a connected age. London: The Penguin Group.

The people formerly known as the audience. (2011, July 7). Retrieved from http://www.economist.com/node/18904124?story_id=18904124&fsrc=rss

Use of cursive not recursive

The state of Indiana has been in the news recently since it decided to drop the requirement that schools teach students cursive writing beginning this fall. With electronic communication on the rise, the most logical argument against teaching cursive is that the time students spend learning it could be better spent learning something more practical.

After I learned cursive writing in the third grade and practiced it throughout my elementary school education, I notice that it quickly fell by the wayside in middle and high school. Teachers did not force me to write instead of print, and I did not force myself. In college, I once spent a week taking notes in cursive and found that, like Billy Madison stumbling on Zs in his eponymous movie, I had to think about how to write certain letters. Cursive writing was not recursive, and I had forgotten how to write efficiently. More embarrassingly, my notes looked like they could have been scrawled by a third grader.

Few of Beloit College's incoming freshmen last year remember how to write in cursive anyway, and the process of informally phasing it out seems well underway. As more states adopt Common Core standards, which do not require cursive writing, I see longhand becoming a lost art. Moreover, I cannot think of any strong arguments to keep cursive writing as part of the curriculum. The best I can come up with is that students will need to write their signature on documents, but surely that does not demand entire units on the subject. Am I missing something?

Video contains PG-13 humor:

EdL 755 - Video Games and Learning review

The preface and introduction to Video Games and Learning begins by debunking the notion that video games are a “fringe medium” (Squire 4), a preconceived notion held by many who were not raised in the era of gaming. Born in 1980, I grew up playing video games and witnessed their integration into American culture. Even at 31-years-old, many of my friends are compulsive gamers, and I too play games occasionally. For the uninitiated, the author uses examples of particular games to emphasize the medium’s emphasis on creating engaging social experiences. Squire writes that games “suggest ways of structuring participatory educational experiences” (15) showing what teachers can learn from gaming and validating the shift toward project-based learning. Games are just one example where students learn more from working through and solving problems than they do from memorizing facts. However, when Squire points to other areas of life where this participatory culture has taken hold, focusing on digital media, he argues that “while schools remain static, learning is changing” (14). Broad generalizations such as this ignore the shifts in educational philosophy over the last decade and discount the progress being made in classrooms around the country.

Squire continues by examining what makes a “good” educational game, devising a strong list of criteria that could easily be applied to other areas of education. Plugging in “group work” to most items on his list shows how relevant and broad these ideas are: Good group work employs academic knowledge as a tool for achieving goals.  Good group work offers multiple ways of [interacting], so that [students] can experiment with a variety of identities in a group. Good group work is social, in that it encourages social interaction of different forms. Good group work inspires creativity and smoothes ramps to usher [students] from users to producers (37). Looking at Squire’s ideas with this mindset helps me to see that good games address many of the same developmental skills as other educational approaches and could achieve better outcomes. The following chapter addresses teaching with games, but it is too short and focuses exclusively on the Montessori system, which the author contends “provides a model of what a game-based learning system should look like” (49). The focus on interest-driven learning is admirable, and educational philosophy seems to be heading in that direction, but I hoped that the chapter would offer more examples of games-based learning rather than focusing on one system. After all, Squire notes that “no system is right for all children all the time” and contends that “it’s the teacher’s job to make [instructional] decisions at the classroom level” (57). It would have been helpful of Squire to offer readers a wider variety of clearer examples of what that instruction looks like.

Squire’s next chapter focuses on the ability of games to create “online affinity spaces” (64) where people go willingly to learn. This gets back to his focus on interest-driven learning because in this scenario, people are actually motivated to seek out spaces to discuss ideas and to learn from each other. The concept of affinity spaces can be harnessed to meet existing educational directives. Recently, Bay Port’s language arts department has discussed the idea that every student in a class should not be forced to read the same book. There has been opposition to giving students the option of choosing a book because of practical hurdles like having the fiscal means to provide these texts, but much of the criticism has also focused on educational concerns. It is true that offering such a variety of texts would disrupt traditional classroom practices, but that disruption may allow students to find a more productive affinity space to learn. Gaming is participatory, the internet is participatory, and the classroom is likewise being dragged into this participatory digital age. There are many web 2.0 resources that could be used in the classroom to accommodate these affinity spaces, but even traditional models like literature circle promote affinity learning.

Squire’s following chapters provide many examples of innovative games that have been developed to help students learn in a participatory fashion in a variety of fields and topics. One idea that piloting these games in the classroom has helped him debunk is the concept that “commercial games have created such a high ceiling that educational games can never succeed” (97). For example, he introduced students to a space simulator called Supercharged! built on puzzle game principles to teach physics and found that students did not immediately bristle because the game’s graphics and production values paled in comparison to mainstream games. However, he found that some students played the game thoughtfully while others played to “win” as quickly as possible (97). I see the idea that kids will only play the most advanced games debunked every day in school as students sneak opportunities to play simple games on their iPods or meet for an after school video game club where their only console is a Nintendo 64. Even though its more graphically advanced successor was just announced, the success of Nintendo’s underpowered Wii console is further evidence that games hold appeal beyond good graphics and violent content.

Similarly, one idea I held about what to expect from this book was debunked in chapter 7 as Squire shares an anecdote about meeting James Paul Gee and discussing with him the impact of games on culture. Squire writes that “James wasn’t concerned about shoehorning games into schools. He wanted to ask how digital media might change schools” (140). Reading the book, I slowly let go of my expectation that Squire would offer ways to integrate gaming into a traditional language arts curriculum. Instead, games provide a different kind of experience that offers a powerful interactive fantasy where students are “actually getting better at something” (161). Games may not be a way to teach literature, but they could be an avenue to allow students who abhor reading to have meaningful experiences similar to students who engage thoughtfully with books. Both mediums promote fantasy, transformative experiences, and blur the line between work and play.  

                

Squire addresses this point further by pointing out that schools “have a tendency to shoehorn innovations to meet the particular constraints of school (45-minute time blocks, local standards)” (212). His book does an admirable job of promoting the ability of games to engage students, to provide them a problem-based medium to solve real-world problems, and to foster communities. His final chapters address fitting this square gaming peg into a round educational hole. The opportunity is there, as he correctly notes that “the economics of textbook publishing […] is flawed” (218), but he also goes on to point out that the strengths of video game-based learning are not measured on traditional standardized tests. This doesn’t, of course, denounce any of the data showing that game-based learning works, but it does show that, like many aspects of education, assessments of learning need to change to keep pace with skills that are relevant to modern times. For games to become part of the system, the system may need to change. More research similar to what Squire provides in his coda may eventually make the case that video games should be an educational tool in schools.

EdL 719 - 21st Century Skills

I tried to post this to the blog Keith set up, but every time I post it immediately disappears:

One notion the book’s authors purport about how the role of education will change day-to-day living comes when they argue that interconnectedness will allow people from every country to “contribute to a global pool of expertise on how best to implement a 21st century education system” (Trilling and Fadel 153). I don’t feel that we are there yet, but this idea gives me hope for the future. We have a long way to go because, disappointingly, leaders with their hands on the educational purse strings seem to be motivated by an allegiance to ideologies rather than by learning from successful educational systems around the globe.  As teachers, we cannot rely on those providing the funding and making the decisions to decide the best course. Luckily, the internet and web 2.0 networking sites have made it easier than ever to reach out as individuals to educators across the globe.

Looking at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) statistics for 2009 (http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/54/12/46643496.pdf), I notice that China, Finland, Korea, and Singapore scored highest in reading, science, and math. Canada, our neighbor to the north, placed 6th overall while the United States comes in at 17th. The United States surely does not want to emulate everything about the Chinese system, for example, but surely each of these countries has something to teach us about how we teach children. As educators, we should take a lesson from the book’s emphasis on communication, cooperation, and collaboration, and admit that, even with this 21st century model, we don’t have all the answers. For example, Finnish students don’t begin formal learning until age seven because “before then they learn best when they’re playing” (*http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm).

Overall, the role of education in people’s lives needs to change because “the 21st century global economy is also requiring higher levels of imagination, creativity, and innovation” (Trilling and Fadel 49). Project based learning as described in class and 21st century skills as described in the book let students solve real-world problems that demand the aforementioned skills to prepare them for the challenges of the coming decades. The role of education has changed because it is no longer enough to educate some and let others slip through the cracks. Now, the United States does not have a manufacturing base to accommodate those students who don’t make the grade, and failing them makes it difficult for them to achieve an acceptable standard of living. We need to give them the skills to make their way in a difficult world and the education necessary to enjoy a good quality of life.

*Burridge, Tom. “Why do Finland's schools get the best results?” BBC World News America. 7 Apr. 2010

EdL 755 - Technology Matters review

In Technology Matters, David E. Nye makes a case for the symbiotic relationship between humans and machines.  Technology keeps evolving and exists to serve humans and to help solve human problems. He spends the opening chapters of the book arguing against technological determinism, the idea that “a direct line of inevitable technological development led from the first tools to the conquest of the stars” (Nye, 15). Nye seems eager to shatter readers’ notions of what technology is and how we perceive it, finding the layperson’s concept too broad and inelegant. Humans, according to Nye, are not able to predict the technological future, as evidenced by the failed predictions of the science fiction, World’s fairs, the news media, and even experts. Instead of being driven by experts, technological developments often arise in response to consumer demands. Furthermore, these demands vary from place to place and culture to culture, a claim Nye supports by contrasting Americans’ preference for bright lighting with the European choice of dimmer lighting in applications ranging from private homes to billboard advertising. Rather than forcing either technological preference on people, cultural norms shaped the application of technology in each particular culture.

                After laying out his initial premise in chapters one, two, and three, Nye backtracks in chapter four to investigate what researchers can learn from humans’ technological history. For example, he describes the competing automobile technologies of the early 20^th century: steam, electric, and gasoline. Nye accurately describes the benefits of the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine over steam or electric-powered automobiles, but he credits Henry Ford’s entrepreneurial gusto and manufacturing breakthroughs with providing the “technological momentum” (59) necessary to overtake streetcars and bicycles as well. I agree with Nye that technologies become ubiquitous through “a variety of interlinked factors” (60) which debunks the notion of technological determinism. He gives brief mention of the VHS win over the competing Beta videocassette technology but neglects to mention Blu-ray winning the next-generation video disc format war against rival HD DVD.  Blu-ray’s victory supports Nye’s idea of many factors contributing to technological momentum and its being “unavoidably bound up with consumption” (66). Sony’s Blu-ray technology offers 50GB of data storage to HD DVD’s 30GB along with the backing of more movie studios. Toshiba’s HD DVD, though, was the only format supported by Universal and Paramount. Consumers bought both formats throughout 2006, but Blu-ray sales slowly outpaced HD DVD, and by the summer of 2007, American consumers were firmly in the Blu-ray camp. In August of that year, director Michael Bay wrote of Paramount’s decision to release Transformers only on HD DVD that “for them to deny people who have Blu-ray sucks!” (Frankel). With that, the pendulum fully swung to Blu-ray, Paramount left HD DVD, and Sony’s format had the technological momentum to win the format war.

                Since technology is in part socially constructed, Nye uses his fifth chapter to explore whether it pushes societies toward uniformity or diversity. One positive aspect of this brief chapter comes in its ambiguity. While Nye seems to answer his own questions in the previous chapters, he leaves the question of the societal impact of technology somewhat up in the air, drawing no clear conclusion. He supports the “shift from viewing technology as the harbinger of standardization to viewing it as the engine of differentiation” (76) while noting the capitalist and corporate interests at work. Nevertheless, he eventually comes down on the side of technology-supported diversity by rejecting the idea that it creates “crushing uniformity and standardization” (86). Tackling farming and sustainable agriculture in chapter six, Nye again assesses the modern condition in an even handed fashion. He outlines the historical view that “technology brings greater efficiency and prosperity” (88) and traces this belief through human societies as it clashes with the inevitable obstacle of pollution from medieval French slaughterhouses to modern coal-fired power plants. Again, Nye comes down on the side of technology, but he presents historical and modern counterpoints using evidence from countries around the world with enough gusto to assure readers he is paying them more than just lip service. When he argues that “[nature’s] limits are our own” (108), he is expanding on his thesis about the indivisible relationship between people and technology. Not only is it impractical and impossible to separate humans from their technological tools, as they are an extension of our ideas, beliefs, and actions, but nature is also part of this symbiotic cocktail. Humans can and have enhanced the natural carrying capacity of the earth, reaping more from the soil than would be possible without the application of technology. Still, there may be limits to what can be agriculturally produced even with advancing technology. Quoting Joel Cohen, Nye astutely concludes that “how many people the Earth can support depends on what people want from life” (108). As he implies, the Earth’s future carrying capacity may be limited by the global push toward an Americanized notion of what constitutes an acceptable standard of living.    

                Nye’s next two chapters explore topics of labor and markets that hit very close to home considering recent developments in Wisconsin and current economic forecasts. Like many American states, Wisconsin has traditionally relied on farming and factory jobs to employ its citizens. Technological advances in agriculture and manufacturing have made those industries less labor intensive, and industry does not need as many people to produce the same goods. Additionally, technology has created a flat world with a borderless economy where jobs in nearly every field can be outsourced to where labor is most cost effective. For workers, this means fewer jobs available along with a surplus of labor, leaving those who are employed less leverage to negotiate for salaries and benefits. As Nye puts it, “as factory and white-collar jobs exit Western economies, new low-wage jobs seem to increase” (130). This certainly makes technology seem like an enemy, but workers quickly need to advance past that mentality to compete for existing higher wage jobs. Workers who are in great demand for the small market of prosperous jobs are “well-educated professionals who love their jobs, and even when away from the office never really leave it behind” (133). Nye offers no conclusions except that Western workers must face this reality, acquire education, and embrace technology to compete in the global marketplace. Chapter 8 touches on a similar topic of market control by questioning whether the same market that created the aforementioned global economy should be responsible for selecting technologies of the future, or if that task is better left to governments. He offers pros and cons of each and highlights specific cases where one or the other is preferred while considering democracy and free speech. There are no easy answers, and Nye provides none, so readers will probably adhere to their existing ideologies. More than other chapters, this chapter’s question can be answered by following one’s political leanings, conservatives advocating for market control and liberals preferring government intervention.

                Nye continues his text with two philosophical chapters questioning whether technology adds to or detracts from humanity’s collective security and intellectualism. In chapter nine, Nye attempts to answer whether advancing technology makes the world safer or invites disaster. Many tools and technological products such as safe buildings and clean, treated water inarguably add to human safety and security, but some of these have unanticipated side effects, evidenced by asbestos and DDT. Weapons of war can aid security, but are primarily responsible for suffering and death. Advancements that experts have expected to swiftly end wars have sometimes prolonged them instead. Ironically, Nye notes that during World War I, “advanced technologies, when shared equally, led not to quick victory but to stalemate” (171). In World War II, nuclear technology enabled by the Manhattan Project may have ended the war, but it took many lives, including 107,000 by the Hiroshima bomb alone (173). Since that time, weapons technology has only advanced, and more nations and rogue groups possess advanced technology. Nye seems to share my pacifist outlook on weapons and war but offers little hope for a future devoid of an escalating arms race where safety rests perilously on human pragmatism and technical reliability. Nye’s tenth chapter addresses whether technology has expanded or hindered human thought. He extols the benefits of multitasking while acknowledging the virtues of nature and solitude. Creating a paradox, he points out that technology has both drawn us away from the physical world and brought about new ways to connect with it. Finally, he advocates “embracing [technology’s] conveniences, even wallowing it its pleasures and fleeing its sensory overload or rejecting its inauthenticity” (207).

                Concluding his book, Nye discusses the future of technology in chapter eleven, pointing out historic human projections about what has since transpired. This chapter brings Technology Matters full circle, as Nye offers evidence to support his rejection of technological determinism. Some of his references seem dated, like when he refers to The Net as a “recent film” (217). Unrealistic even upon release in 1995, the technological dystopia envisioned in The Net seems silly to a modern viewer. This argument highlights the book’s strengths and shortcomings; spending so much of his text on historical and theoretical arguments, Nye manages to make the material seem insightful and forward-thinking. His arguments are well reasoned, but he spends too much of the text arguing against technological determinism long after readers can clearly see his point. As he concludes by arguing that there is “no necessary end to the symbiosis between people and machines (226), I wonder why he spent so much of the book asking questions rather than clearly supporting this thesis.  

References

Frankel, D. (2007, August 21). Michael Bay in Blu-ray fray. Variety. Retrieved from http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117970628?refcatid=13

Nye, D. (2006). Technology matters: Questions to live with. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

The Chromebook Alternative

Since I got an Android phone last December, using Windows 7 on my PC has felt more and more cumbersome. iPads and Android tablets are exciting, but I have difficulty getting past one thing: the lack of a keyboard.

As an English teacher, I try to steer my students away from text-speak and toward writing in complete sentences. Pecking at a tablet’s touch screen keyboard can be frustrating and makes using these devices for writing unnecessarily burdensome.

Google’s new Chromebook seems to offer many of a tablet’s advantages in the form of a netbook. According to reviews, the devices turn on instantly, have long battery life, and run Chrome OS, a browser/operating system that operates in the cloud.  Chrome OS isn’t Android, and I don’t think could live with its limitations on my personal machine. However, this device is tailor-made for the classroom.

Chrome OS is designed to get users to the web as quickly as possible, and all applications are stored externally in the cloud. Students can turn on their devices, log into Google, and immediately have access it its host of applications and the web. Working in this Web 2.0 landscape encourages collaboration and creativity, and with all of the technical hiccups we experience using technology, Chromebooks offer a promising alternative.

Read more about a Chromebook pilot program in Iowa at ZDNet.

EdL755 - Reflection #2

One of the core educational concepts that day four of EdL 755 helped solidify for me is that technology and culture is changing teaching and learning. Whether I love everything about the current trajectory or not, it is safe to assume that I will have opportunities to teach outside of the traditional classroom structure in the future. Both of the tools covered in class adhere to the principles of this new kind of learning in which students learn online using web 2.0 tools at a time and pace that is unique to individual learners. Moreover, all of the tools covered throughout the face to face meetings of the course could aid a teacher in this new, dynamic 21^st century approach to teaching and learning.

The concept of the screencast especially demands the attention and consideration of the evolving teacher. One of the trickiest aspects to the distance learning model is the difficulty in replicating the face-to-face human interaction of a traditional classroom. Screencasts allow a teacher to model the precise steps to perform and master a particular task while guiding students both visually and by narrating each step with his or her unique voice. This auditory connection personalizes the experience and provides students a consistent vocal guide from lesson to lesson. Because screencasts are so simple to create, a teacher could use them to respond to a student’s question from a  blog, wiki, Ning, or Google Doc and address that student by name.  The Screencast-O-Matic tool in particular even allows teachers to integrate video of themselves captured with their computer’s webcam. Video of an instructor introducing the lesson, especially someone students have not met in real life, puts a face to the name and humanizes the distance learning experience.

While there are more advanced tools like Blackboard Collaborate, formerly Elluminate Live, that offer more flexibility for distance learning, screencasts are a great supplement to traditional education and a chance for teachers to dip their toes in the 21^st century waters. Blackboard Collaborate combines real-time screencasting, voice, chat, direct messaging, and breakout rooms for students to collaborate in groups. For teachers without access to this expensive tool, screencasting could be combined with backchannel tools like TodaysMeet or VOiP software like Skype to simulate some of Blackboard Collaborate’s best features. Another way Blackboard and screencasts help meet the demands of 21^st century learners is that lessons can be recorded and students can watch them at a time that is convenient to them. Additionally, struggling learners can view a particular screencast as many times as are necessary to learn the skill.

Even though some of the aforementioned tools may have more potential to revolutionize teaching, Pixlr will probably have the most immediate practical impact in my classes. Teaching journalism, preparing kids to work in an evolving industry where future job prospects are uncertain, poses many challenges. One of them my newspaper class faces every year is earning revenue. We have been lucky to be afforded a school budget that covers our printing costs each month, but students need to sell advertising to buy cameras, microphones, video cameras, software, and to pay for field trips. Print advertising revenue is hard to come by these days, and money from online ads has been virtually nonexistent, so every year the students face an inevitable shortage of cash.

Since I started as advisor in 2008, students have hoped to upgrade our one copy of Photoshop CS, released in 2003, and have dreamed of purchasing copies for multiple computers. However, most of the tasks they perform, like brightening and cropping photos, can easily be handled by Pixlr or Pixlr Express, which both offer free, cloud-based photo editing that rivals traditional software. Pixlr is more robust, but Pixlr Express, a Photoshop Elements-like tool that has fewer features, uses a simpler interface that any student could learn in a matter of minutes. Not only will my students be able to use Pixlr on any computer in our lab, but they will also be able to edit photos from home using any web browser that supports Flash. 

EdL 755 Reflection #1

Though I have been using Google Docs in my Journalism 2 class since the beginning of last school year, I have never before used Google Sites. At a glance, it does seem to offer many of the features already available using wikis, but the integration of other Google Services intrigues me. Because my students already write and collaborate using Google Docs, creating a Google Site for my journalism class seems like a natural extension of what they are already accustomed to using. Embedding certain docs in the site, like the story ideas students brainstorm each month for publication, would allow a structured way for students to access shared documents that can otherwise be cumbersome using only Google Docs. Additionally, the ease with which Google allows users to replicate the structure of a site would allow me to set up sites for my other classes with minimal effort.

However, my vision of structuring my Journalism 2 class around a Google Site does not entirely extend to my other classes. In my Journalism 1 class, for instance, I have been using a class Ning to post assignments and links, facilitate discussions, and host student blogs in a controlled environment. Students can reasonably be expected to use both a class Ning and Google Site, but I do have reservations about asking them to do too many different things in too many different places on the internet. I also feel that Ning provides some functionality that is lacking in Google Sites, like a robust message board platform. As I experiment further with Google Sites, I would like to try embedding the Ning discussion platform in a similar manner to the Wikispaces site embedded under the discussion tab of our EdL755 class Google Site. I do have concerns, though, that the Ning would become less functional in a window and that having students click through to open it in a new browser tab or window would add unnecessary steps to accessing the Ning, especially since its url is easier to remember.

As far as using Google Sites in the Howard-Suamico School District, I think that using them to host student portfolios could be an effective and frugal method of centralizing and showcasing students’ exemplary work. Rather than having students create separate and distinct portfolios for multiple classes that include all of their work throughout a semester or school year, I think students would be better served by creating only one site and portfolio highlighting the very best work of their high school careers. It would probably be best to require a certain number of artifacts from each content area, which would enable every teacher to promote the portfolio concept in his or her classroom. The completed portfolio could then be tied to one senior-level course or be required for graduation. Much like UWGB’s education program, each senior could be assigned to one teacher who would review his or her assigned students’ portfolios and conference with that student before graduation.

PBL and journalism

Until this morning, I had planned to create my problem-based unit for the new class I am teaching this year, AP Language. It seemed like an obvious confluence of my need to prepare to teach that course and to complete a project for this grad class. Researching project/problem-based learning this morning, however, I have started to entertain the idea of developing a journalism unit instead.

Not only does the journalism curriculum, in which having a real world audience for students’ writing is already an integral part of the class, lend itself to this approach, but it is also the class in which I plan to most use the netbooks downstairs purple pod will receive this year. I have some trepidation about putting off preparing for AP Lang further into the summer, but I still believe this will be the most pragmatic way to develop a PBL unit.

Books have arrived

Some of my books thankfully came in yesterday, and I have begun to read Trilling and Fadel’s 21^st Century Skills. I will reserve specific comments for the forthcoming reading blogs, but I can already say that I am appreciative of the size of the print and accessibility of the writing.

I was beginning to feel foolish as every day I would rush to the mailbox immediately after my mail carrier drove off. Not only had I not received any of my textbooks, but most days I had no mail at all. It felt like a walk of shame as I would slink back to my condo’s front door empty handed.