Looming Teacher Observation? 7 Tips For A Better Outcome by Jason Lange It’s nerve-racking to have someone watch you, especially while you work. So it’s no surprise that classroom observations cause anxiety for many teachers. While things run smoothly most of the time, teachers may worry that Murphy’s Law will reign once an observer steps into the classroom. Teachers sometimes question the evaluator’s level of expertise. And as principals are drawn into more administrative roles, teachers question whether they have the focus for making accurate assessments, especially considering all of the logistic, operational, and disciplinary tasks at hand. Observer bias, as a recent report suggests, is another anxiety producer. Observers tend to give higher marks to teachers who have the best-performing students and penalize those who lead struggling classrooms. With all of these thoughts swirling, even the most effective teacher can stumble during an observation. But there are a few things a teacher can do to diminish the likelihood of this happening. The key is to be prepared, welcome feedback, and use it to build a better classroom. Teacher Observation? 7 Tips For A Better Outcome 1. Visualize success There are a number of things you can do to soothe stage fright. First, shift the focus away from your fear to your true purpose: delivering a lesson to your audience. You have to forget about what could go wrong, focus on reassuring thoughts, and visualize success. Prepare your lesson in advance, and read it aloud to get a sense of your voice. 2. Connect with students Once it’s time to deliver the lesson, connect to your audience with smiles and greetings. Remain open, use confident posture, and make eye contact. Just be yourself. Above all else, remember that no one is perfect, and it’s OK to make mistakes. 3. Reach out to observers ahead of time if possible Be proactive. Before the observation, you should prepare some "look for" questions. This way, your administrator will know that you’re seeking genuine feedback. For example, if you know that you tend to rush through instructions, you should ask the administrator to watch for that and pinpoint areas for improvement. This sort of feedback delivers authentic growth. 4. K.I.S.S. Keep things simple. Observation day is not the time for a video, test, or lengthy writing prompt. Just keep it simple, and deliver a solid lesson. Elaborate plans, such as a skit or student debate, can easily go wrong. Plus, they don’t really highlight your instructional skills. 5. "Ignore" observer Don’t let your observer become a distraction. Choose an unobtrusive place for your observer to sit before the session takes place. Be sure to provide the administrator with a copy of the lesson plan so he can follow along. 6. Specify takeaways Reap the benefits. After the observation, don’t simply skim the administrator’s notes. Ask questions about anything you don’t understand or agree with; then, create an action plan for improvement. This plan should address areas in which you want to improve, the timeframe for the improvement, and metrics that can be used for determining success. Use SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. 7. Focus on student actions, not teacher actions Focus less on what you’re going to do, and more on what students will be doing-and make sure there is a clear relationship between activities and learning objectives. Conclusion The time and effort it takes to plan a lesson are only useful if you can determine whether the lesson was successful. An outside observer can be invaluable for highlighting where a lesson was most effective or where it derailed. The "plan, teach, reflect" cycle of improvement is key to supporting teacher growth. No one likes to be told that they’re doing something wrong, but a good observer can provide an outside vantage point from which to pinpoint opportunities for growth that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. If done properly, the point of a classroom observation isn’t to judge; rather, it will help you develop as a teacher so you can help your students succeed. It can be an uncomfortable process to get used to, but once you learn to calm your nerves and see the benefits, it can be an invaluable tool. Jason Lange is the CEO and co-founder of BloomBoard, a company dedicated to bettering the K-12 education space by providing a marketplace for personalizing educator development. BloomBoard uses the data collected from free observational and evaluation tools to create individualized learning plans and recommendations for teacher growth; image attribution flickr user ijirkamatusetek; Looming Teacher Observation? 7 Tips For A Better Outcome The post Looming Teacher Observation? 7 Tips For A Better Outcome appeared first on TeachThought.

What If Schools Helped Students Identify And Scale Their Gifts? by Drew Perkins, International Conference of Creativity, Thinking & Education Recently while reading the most recent Fast Company magazine I came across an article entitled The Startup Revolution is About to Surge Again and was intrigued by the applications to education. What instantly struck me was the dichotomy made between being a startup and scaling up to some sort of legitimacy. I especially like the bullet points they made below and it made me wonder about the role of standardization and creativity in education, a topic for a panel (Orbiting the Giant Hairball) on which I’ll be participating in April at the International Conference of Creativity, Thinking & Education in Minneapolis. Standardization is most frequently thrust on students and the stuff done to them. While the debate over Common Core rages on with the issue of standardization being a major focal point it’s easy to see how requiring every student to learn the same things (and often in the same ways) could stifle creativity and innovation. What if we shifted the conversation and debate around standardization and taught kids like they were startups and their goal was to essentially find and standardize/scale what they were great at and passionate about? Learn how to do those things very well and "standardize" that or those things as a craft to be carried into adulthood. The 4th bullet point above notes, "Scaling is all about standardizing and executing your business model so that you can take advantage of network effects." Of course students are not a "business" and shouldn’t be treated like one, but don’t we want our young to grow and prosper in much the same way? What better way than to refine a passionate idea and/or talent as an entrepreneur would? So what if instead of thinking of standardization with the focus being on the curriculum, content, or the teaching we viewed it through the lens of startups and scaling up and the transformation of a student, or even a school or district? What if we thought of our students as startups and our schools and classrooms as incubators that were focused on providing support to student growth? To be clear, I’m not talking about growth as "student achievement" here which often takes the form of test scores and gaps and things much more easily measured and quantified. Instead, what if our education system was transformed to help students identify and scale what they’re good at and could turn into "a repeatable business model" that could be a passion-driven and profitable career(s)? When approached this way, could standardization become empowering instead of emasculating? You can discuss this and more with Drew Perkin, Terry Heick, and Jackie Gerstein at International Conference of Creativity, Thinking & Education; What If Schools Helped Students Identify And Scale Their Gifts? image attribution flickr user vancouverfilmschool The post What If Schools Helped Students Identify And Scale Their Gifts? appeared first on TeachThought.

64 Varied And Essential iPad Apps For Teachers by TeachThought Staff What exactly makes an app "essential" is open to interpretation. For pure productivity, you could consider the direction of Google Drive, Skype, Zoom Notes, iAnnotate-maybe a gradebook app, Class Dojo, etc. But what if your classroom if is full of open-ended projects and you need to constantly communicate with students, parents, and the community? Google+, Google Hangouts, Remind, DIY, and maybe Trello? College-prepping seniors in high school? Need apps for struggling readers in elementary? It just depends. Which is what made the list below by Craig Nansen so interesting-its diversity. Garage Band, notability, Wolfram Alpha, VoiceThread, Explain Everything-a variety of apps for a variety of needs for a variety of classrooms. There’s not much here for game-based learning or learning simulations, but the universal application for so many of the apps gives the list impressive utility for a lot of you out there-which is why we shared it here. iPad Apps 4 Educators 1  iTunes U Courses and lessons from educational institutions. World's largest library of free educational content. 0 likes Relist Share 2  Pages ($9.99) Pages is the most beautiful word processor you’ve ever seen on a mobile device. This powerful app has been exclusively designed for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch. 0 likes Relist Share 3  Keynote ($9.99) Keynote is the most powerful presentation app ever designed for a mobile device. Built from the ground up for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, it makes creating a world-class presentation — complete with animated charts and transitions — as simple as touching and tapping. 0 likes Relist Share 4  Notability - Take Notes & Annotate PDFs with Dropbox Sync By Ginger Labs Notability is optimized for the new iPad! It powerfully integrates handwriting, PDF annotation, typing, recording, and organizing so you can take notes your way! Discover the freedom to capture ideas, share insights, and present information in one perfect place on iPad. 0 likes Relist Share 5  iPhoto ($4.99) iPhoto is a universal app that runs on iPad 2 (and later), iPhone 4 (and later) and iPod touch (4th generation and later). With iPhoto for iOS, Apple brings Multi-Touch to photography in a breakthrough way. Browse, edit, and share your photos from your iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, like never before—all the powerful tools you need are at your fingertips. 0 likes Relist Share 6  Numbers ($9.99) Numbers is the most innovative spreadsheet app ever designed for a mobile device. Built from the ground up for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, it lets you make compelling spreadsheets in minutes — with tables, charts, photos, and graphics — using just your fingers. 0 likes Relist Share 7  Teacher Clicker - Socrative By Socrative Tablets, Smartphones & laptopsSocrative brings smart clickers, student response and ease of use to a whole new level. Engage the entire classroom with educational exercises and games while capturing student results in real-time. 0 likes Relist Share 8  Socrative Student Clicker Student app for responding to class polls and quizzes 1 likes Relist Share 9  Nearpod By Panarea Nearpod: "Best Collaboration Solution - EdTech Digest Awards 2012", "Audience Favorite - LAUNCH Edu & Kids 2012".Experience for yourself this magical educational app that has been downloaded more than 126,000 times in less than 4 months.Nearpod is a must have application for teachers and schools that have access to a set of iOS devices for their classes. 0 likes Relist Share 10  ScreenChomp Create screencasts and tutorials 0 likes Relist Share 11  ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard By Easel Turn your iPad into your personal interactive whiteboard!ShowMe allows you to record voice-over whiteboard tutorials and share them online. It’s a radically intuitive app that anyone will find extremely easy to use, regardless of age or background. 0 likes Relist Share 12  Snapseed By Nik Software, Inc. ** Best Mobile Photo App 2012 ** (TIPA)** iPad App of the Year!** Now available for both Macs and PCs! Check out Snapseed.com for more information.Snapseed is the only photo app you’ll want to use every day. It makes any photograph extraordinary with a fun, high-quality photo experience right at your fingertips. 0 likes Relist Share 13  NOOK (Free) Get an incredible reading experience with NOOK for iPad and iPhone™ from Barnes & Noble. Choose from NOOK books, magazines, newspapers, and exclusive PagePerfect NOOK Books 0 likes Relist Share View more lists from Craig Nansen 64 Varied And Essential iPad Apps For Teachers The post 64 Varied And Essential iPad Apps For Teachers appeared first on TeachThought.

 Where’s The Innovation In Education Coming From? by Terry Heick Innovation matters because it reflects and causes adaptations to a changing world. But while we stomp our feet for innovation in education and innovative teaching and innovative edtech and innovative innovation, it might be useful to clarify our thinking. First, how does education-as it exists-function as a sequence and model? What are its bits and pieces, and what is the thinking that underpins them? Four (of the many) underlying questions of modern formal education (as it is) are: 1. Content: What do we want students to know? 2. Learning Models: How can they best learn what we want them to know? 3. Assessment: How will we know if they’ve learned it? 4. Responding to Assessment Data: How can we best respond if they don’t? An Underlying Assumption Of Innovation An underlying assumption of this thinking is that innovation is necessary, a thought suggested by our mediocrity as an industry in lieu of our considerable collective effort. Innovation in and of itself is not only insufficient, but wasteful. Innovate what, and why? What are we trying to achieve? What are we trying to speed up or slow down? What inefficiencies are we trying to correct? What questions are we trying to answer? In which direction are we seeking to improve our progress? It very well may be that the innovation that education so badly needs is first in this kind of macro thinking. If learning should result in personal and social change, then we can’t simply seek a more streamlined and digitized version of what we already have. What Are People For? Fundamentally, the question is "What are people for, and what kind of world can we have if that question is honored?" Somehow, asking what a person should "do" and "be" in an industry of "person-improvement" is an alien idea. But if we work backwards from that point, rather than "How can kids learn academic content more quickly and retain it longer" provides us with a new handle for the "ed reform" argument. (See also, Wendell Berry on "What Are People For?") So where is the innovation in education coming from? What are its current levels of innovation? What might possibly disrupt it in the future?   The Sources Of Innovation In Education 1. Content: What do we want students to know? The knowledge demands of a modern student is an extraordinarily complex and subjective thing-and not scrutinized nearly enough as a result. While we focus, as a profession, on the technology and practices to distribute content to students, there is very little thinking about the content itself. We accept that academic standards are, in fact, "what students should know," and train our sights on distributing that knowledge. For most public education classrooms in the United States, the question of "What we want students to know?" is answered (most broadly) by the Common Core-a mix of content knowledge and skills. This is further supplemented (or replaced) by competencies in competency-based learning environments. From these standards, what we wants students to know and do is then clarified more precisely through curriculum maps and pacing guides, and then formatted by planning templates, and even ways of thinking about curriculum, from Understanding by Design and backwards design, to project-based learning, modules, packs, or any other number of ways of packaging content. It is, then, useful to see the relationship between content and curriculum; one suggests the other, and when one isn’t designed with the other in mind, the results are less than ideal. For example, trying to wedge challenge-based learning into an AP curriculum creates loss from the incongruity between the two. Content Innovation Level: Low Content Innovation Trend: Stagnant Content Innovation Sources: Competency-based learning, general "unbundling" of higher ed Opportunities for Disruption of Content: Mobile learning; full transparency for schools; deep parental involvement in education; a new role for Common Core standards; new standards that compliment Common Core; innovative content packaging; personalized learning, maker movement, more effective use of open courseware and open-source curriculum 2. Learning Models: How can they best learn what we want them to know? The question we are currently intrigued by is an useful one: How do students learn best? How can we change learning spaces, for example, to take create compelling learning for students? This is among the key questions that spawned the flipped classroom. Education technology plays a central role here as well. How students will learn is illuminated and packaged by locally available technology (whether old or new). Some innovation is happening here-e.g., flipped classrooms, eLearning, MOOCs, self-directed learning, etc. However, the real opportunity lies in rethinking learning in a connected world-connected learning models, for starters. This shifts what students need to know and how they go about learning it. Among the four key questions in education, learning models likely enjoy the most significant innovations, but relative to what’s possible, extraordinary potential remains. Learning Models Innovation Level: Medium Learning Models Innovation Trend: Modest Rise Learning Models Innovation Sources: technology, improved sharing of learning models across digital PLNs; broadband access; tablets; video streaming; minor innovation in learning app development Opportunities for Disruption of Learning Models: Mobile learning, Self-Directed Learning, open APIs, Social & Connected Learning Models 3. Assessment: How will we know if they’ve learned it? If education is intrigued by how students learn, it is utterly fascinated with assessment-not so much unique forms of assessment, but of the function assessment data can hypothetically play in the learning process. Innovation in assessment-both what’s assessed, how it’s assessed, how that data is visualized, reported, and interpreted, and so on-exists, with recent developments in computer-based testing. But if we consider these kinds of minor innovations compared to what assessment is trying to do (clarify exactly what a person does and doesn’t know), it’s easy to see that significant "opportunities for growth" remain. Assessment Innovation Level: Low Assessment Innovation Trend: Slow Rise Innovation Sources: performance-based assessment; adaptive learning algorithms, visual data, mobile technology, cloud technology Opportunities for Disruption in Assessment: Strategic use of existing and emerging learning taxonomies; social media-not so much twitter and instagram, but rather media-writing, video, projects, etc.-that’s social; gamification, nanodegrees and other "new certificates" 4. Teaching: How can we best respond if they don’t? While all of these questions are a part of "teaching," response to assessment data is increasingly on the shoulders of the classroom teacher, and, increasingly, characterizes teaching and dominates how teachers spend their time. So while teachers are the prime actuators of the learning process in every area, the data-based efforts in school reform, combined with advances in education technology, have changed the landscape of a classroom. Specifically, the strategies of professional learning communities, data teams, data committees, etc.-the modern tactics of school improvement-have highlighted data and data response as key drivers of education. While this varies greatly on a local level, there are some patterns, including curriculum sharing. This is further enabled by national standards suggesting shared curriculum and curricula, and PLCs that emphasize teacher co-planning and collaboration. At least philosophically, this "frees" teachers to focus less on turning standards into curriculum and units, and more on how they respond when students don’t understand. Responding to Non-Mastery Innovation Level: Low Responding to Non-Mastery Innovation Trend: Stagnant Responding to Non-Mastery Innovation Sources: Unclear Opportunities for Disruption in Responding to Non-Mastery: Social Learning Networks, Smarter app development, challenge-based learning/project-based learning, cloud technology Where’s The Innovation In Education Coming From? The post Where’s The Innovation In Education Coming From? appeared first on TeachThought.

A New Priority: Teaching Mindfulness In Elementary School From a press release MADISON, Wis. — Over the course of 12 weeks, twice a week, the prekindergarten students learned their ABCs. Attention, breath and body, caring practice — clearly not the standard letters of the alphabet. Rather, these 4- and 5-year-olds in the Madison Metropolitan School District were part of a study assessing a new curriculum meant to promote social, emotional and academic skills, conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Investigating Healthy Minds (CIHM) at the Waisman Center. Researchers found that kids who had participated in the curriculum earned higher marks in academic performance measures and showed greater improvements in areas that predict future success than kids who had not. The results were recently published in the journal Developmental Psychology. "This work started a number of years ago when we were looking at ways to possibly help children develop skills for school and academic success, as well as in their role as members of a global community," says study lead author Lisa Flook, a CIHM scientist. "There was a strong interest in looking at cultivating qualities of compassion and kindness." While mindfulness-based approaches for children have become popular in recent years, few are backed by rigorous scientific evidence. The research team — graduate research assistant Simon Goldberg; outreach specialist Laura Pinger; and CIHM founder Richard Davidson, the UW-Madison William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry — set out to change that. The team developed a curriculum to help children between the ages of 4 and 6 years learn how to be more aware of themselves and others through practices that encourage them to bring mindful attention to present moment experience. These practices, the researchers hypothesized, could enhance the children’s self-regulation skills - such as emotional control and the capacity to pay attention — and influence the positive development of traits like impulse control and kindness. Past studies show the ability to self-regulate in early childhood predicts better results later in life with health, educational attainment and financial stability. Flook says early childhood is an opportune time to equip children with these skills since their brains are rapidly developing. The skills may also help them cope with future life stress. "Knowing how critical these skills are at an early age, if there are ways to promote them, it could help set kids on a more positive life trajectory," says Flook. Throughout the study period, trained CIHM instructors taught the curriculum in diverse classrooms throughout the Madison area and worked with students through hands-on activities involving movement, music and books. Each lesson provided students and teachers the opportunity to participate in mindfulness practices, including activities focused on compassion and gratitude, and to take note of their experience. For example, kids were encouraged to think about people who are helpful to them - sometimes those they may not know well, like the bus driver — and to reflect on the role these people play in their lives, Flook says. Teachers reported one of the kids’ favorite activities was a practice called "Belly Buddies," in which they listened to music while lying on their backs, a small stone resting on their stomachs. They were asked to notice the sensation of the stone, and to feel it rising and falling as they breathed in and out. "It’s something that’s so simple and it allows them to experience internal quietness and a sense of calm," says Flook. They also each received alphabet bracelets to wear, to help them remember their kindness curriculum ABCs. The curriculum itself is rooted in long-standing adult mindfulness-based practices but was adapted to the children’s developmental ability. The researchers measured the impact of the curriculum on sharing by using stickers the kids could choose to give to a variety of others or keep for themselves. They measured the kids’ ability to delay gratification by choosing one small reward to have immediately or waiting to receive a larger treat later. The team looked at how well kids could switch from one mental task to another in a card sorting activity, where they were first asked to sort by shape, then by color, and finally, a mix of both. That’s a particularly challenging skill for young kids, Flook says. The research team also assessed the students’ ability to pay attention by measuring how well they identified particularly oriented arrows on a screen despite the presence of other on-screen distractions, and it examined the students’ academic performance in the months following the study. In addition to improved academics, the 30 students who went through the curriculum showed less selfish behavior over time and greater mental flexibility than the 38 kids in the control group. Flook cautions that while the study was designed as a randomized control trial, additional, larger studies are needed to demonstrate the curriculum’s true power. However, the results demonstrate its potential. Ultimately, the researchers would like to see mindfulness-based practices become "woven into" the school day, adapted to students across grade levels, becoming a foundation for how teachers teach and how students approach learning, Flook says. "I think there’s increasing recognition of how social, emotional and cognitive functioning are intermingled; that kids may have difficulty in school when emotional challenges arise and that impacts learning," she adds. "Can you imagine how this could shift the climate of our schools, our community, our world, if cultivating these qualities was at the forefront of education?" —Kelly April Tyrrell Image attribution flickr user matseriksson The post A New Priority? Teaching Mindfulness In Elementary School appeared first on TeachThought.

What Teachers Can Give by Terry Heick It’s better to give than to receive — that holds true for gift-giving and education. In fact, the act of giving isn’t just a matter of ultimately receiving more, or even an act of altruism and selflessness. It has more to do with seeing the big picture itself — a healthy, robust, functioning system of careful human performance — that becomes the goal. It’s in this simple paradigm shift that we, as teachers, can find a new level of performance as professionals, contentment in our craft, and changed lives in the communities we serve. So how might we focus on that service not as a characteristic of my job, but as the goal itself-the most macro product of all? For teachers, this would obviously be built around the idea of service-oriented teaching, where we gain strength and perspective from serving others. It would lead to "other growth," including, on a broader level, the formation of a personal and professional ecology than can sustain us through the challenges of teaching. What would this look like? Other teachers who need us, and who we need Parents who need us, and who we need Students who need us for something other than clarifying instructions, providing credit, and letter grades The community of our school, including grade levels above and below ours, that needs us for our performance, collaboration, and ideas, just as we need that community. In a word, this looks like interdependence. So what can I give to begin? Give Myself Teaching is martyrdom. So often, educators feel the need to give themselves up to be feasted upon until there’s nothing left. Giving yourself is a different kind of gift, though. Here, it means truly putting your self aside — your need to be the best, your insecurities, professional goals, need for affirmation, and so on — and instead give in to the act of teaching. But more crucially, this giving of yourself implies that you give your whole self to the act of teaching — your creativity, affection, background knowledge, contacts, networks, dreams, hopes, and so on — in the whole merging of you and your work. Give Others the Benefit of the Doubt As a teacher, you’ll see a lot moving upstream and down — struggling readers that always seem to come from that school; that family that doesn’t seem to care; that co-worker who seems to challenge you at every chance; that administrator who always seems to find a way to poke holes in your teaching. That assessment. That law. That policy. Never, ever stop questioning the things happening around you. Be a critical educator, and ask tough questions, and ring the bell when you’re concerned. Just do so from a position of positivity — give others the benefit of the doubt. Use positive presuppositions, such as: "We’ve always been strong supporters of literacy here, so I’m confused why. . . " Give Myself an Opportunity to Learn New Things Okay, perspective change to first-person: I’m going to give myself the gift of learning. As a teacher, it makes sense to learn endlessly, not just to model it for students, but to keep my own curiosity and tendency for play stirring and alive. I may learn a new set of literacy strategies. Maybe it’ll be a variation on the Socratic Seminar, or I’ll mash Fish Bowls with Agree/Disagree. I may bring new education technology into my classroom, or reach for new learning models such as project-based learning, sync teaching, or self-directed learning. I may throw out my desk and go paperless, mobile, or completely back to basics. But I’m never going to stop learning. That is my gift to myself. Give Students a Chance to Surprise Themselves I want to give the gift of inspiration. Who doesn’t? And what better way can we inspire than by designing learning experiences that let students do things they didn’t think they were capable of? My gift would be giving students opportunities to surprise themselves through their own skills, critical thinking, creativity, and deep understanding of important ideas. Give Parents a Reason to Get Involved It’s tempting to complain about parents that aren’t involved in their child’s schooling. Who on earth wants to be involved in schooling? Learning is a different matter — that’s something with a foothold allowing parents to engage meaningfully. This isn’t grades and homework, but rather understanding and the need to understand. You may or may not get anything more from parents, but at least you’ve given them more tempting access than they’ve ever had in the past. Give Myself New Measures of Success Teaching — properly done and measured as we do today — is impossible. It can’t be done. You cannot bring every single child to proficiency in every single standard while, at the same time, meeting their needs as human beings and helping them both see and reach their full potential. If this is your goal, you’re only going to disappoint yourself endlessly until you either burn out or realize that you’re lying to yourself. Teaching, though, with new metrics of success — well, that’s suddenly a whole lot easier. Give Myself a Break The preceding represents a lot of giving, and also a lot of complexity, interdependence, opportunity, work, and chances to fail. So above all, I’m going to give myself a break. I will give all of myself. I will give the benefit of the doubt. I’ll learn new things, promote self-discovery, connect with communities, and establish new measures of success. And when things go wrong, I’ll have a short memory. I’ll give myself a break and push on, excited about what tomorrow might bring. Image attribution flickr user denisekrebs and cloudboard; What Teachers Can Give The post What Teachers Can Give appeared first on TeachThought.

A Quick Request As We Grow by TeachThought Staff As an organization that is most immediately digital, at TeachThought we are in a permanent growth mindset. What started out just a couple of years ago as a blog to share English-Language Arts resources has grown into something larger. In November 2014, we went over a million pageviews per month; Our Google+ community is rushing towards 150,000. Twitter is approaching 50,000, facebook 25,000-and most importantly, the qualitative feedback we’re getting via email and social messaging is extraordinarily useful. Emails, phone calls, GHOs, Skypes, and "reach-outs" from all over the world: university professors, app developers, district superintendents, school designers, curriculum specialists, and most crucially, practicing teachers in classrooms worldwide. So far, the most visible portion of TeachThought has been the site-or "blog" if you’re so inclined. Here, we share models, frameworks, resources, and thought leadership from Terry Heick, Grant Wiggins, and other contributors eager to join a global conversation around the very best in progressive teaching and learning. This makes us a content publisher. But our mission at TeachThought isn’t to "publish content"; rather, that is a means to an end. That "end" has been in development quietly since we started, and shouldn’t stop if we’re on our game. We’ll share more on "TeachThought 2.0″ soon. For now, we’d love some feedback to help us clarify what that 2.0 might look like. You may notice some changes here and there: more interactive and engagement on the site; new patterns of social sharing and engagement; a new mobile version of the site, content ideas, and more (some coming very soon). None of this is permanent-if it doesn’t "work," we’ll change it. If we don’t completely outgrow our digital space, we’ve missed an opportunity. Which is where you come in. A Request For Specific Feedback Consider this is us begging for feedback. We’ll put up polls and surveys, which are incredibly useful to us as a staff, but we’re also happy to hear your individual stories and individual needs. Please feel free to send us social messages or emails, whether one sentence or 1200 words, communicating to us what you’re interested in, and how we can help push your teaching-and indirectly, the thinking of your students. Models, editorials, resources, education technology, how-tos, definitions, clarifying images, etc-the more we know what you want and need, the better we can provide that. A few guiding questions: 1. In a perfect world, what would we do for you on a daily basis? 2. What is your favorite thing about our content? What do you like least? 3. What would you like to see more of? Less of? 4. As far as the usability of the site, what are your thoughts on the new mobile version? Good or bad? What else does the site "not do" that you’d like to see? 5. What do we seem to "ignore" topic-wise that you’d like to read more about? 6. What would we have to do to be the best source of progressive education thinking on the internet? 7. Anything remotely related to any of the above! We will read and respond to every single message we get. Thanks for being a part of one of the most fundamental of human crafts, and doing so on the very leading edge of teaching and learning. TeachThought Contact Info Email Twitter Facebook Google+ LinkedIn The post A Quick Request As We Grow appeared first on TeachThought.

The US-Again-Turns To Other Countries For Ed Reform by TeachThought Staff So the United States wants some more ed reform to add to the ed reform already in place, and to do so they’ve created a committee. This committee-the The National Conference of State Legislatures-is seeking to "improve education." That this is vague and does’t even begin to imply the nature and utility of knowledge and continues our pattern thinking of teaching and learning as a kind of industries is a challenge to overcome. Another challenge? To make this happen, they are turning to other countries, continuing America’s fascination with the Finland’s and Singapore’s of the world. Within these other countries, they are then talking to policymakers-policy and initiative and program and committee among the language that reflects the tone of this commendable but perhaps wrong-headed effort. The guiding questions they’re using as they spearhead the effort do seem broad enough to allow for room for this effort to justify all the globe-trotting. You can read the press release below. Denver, Colo. — State legislators play an integral role in improving education and they consistently strive to learn more about how to advance high student achievement in the United States. But state legislators are also very aware that despite decades of reform, the United States does poorly on education achievement when compared to other countries. The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) has undertaken an in-depth look at the education reform agendas and strategies of other countries to explore potential systematic ways education can be improved in the United States. NCSL appointed a bipartisan study group of 28 legislators and six legislative staff members who have expertise, experience and interest in this topic. The study group held its first meeting in early September 2014 and a second meeting in December. The group has been studying with some of the top national and international experts, conducting research to better understand strategies and circumstances of the top performing countries, and discussing general themes emerging that can be important for states. The Study Group is working closely with Marc Tucker and staff at the National Center on Education and the Economy in this effort. During this study, state legislators and legislative staff will identify strategies that have worked in other countries and that have the potential to also work in the states. Study group members recently returned from a two-week trip to China. During visits to Beijing and Shanghai, the group toured schools and met with scholars and Chinese officials to learn about education policy and initiatives in China. "Many high-performing countries, especially Asian countries, have a long history of values and traditions rooted in education," said Senator Luther Olsen, Wisconsin Senate Education Committee Chair.  "Although the United States has a different history and culture, there are common fundamental principles that top-performing countries have employed in their reform strategies, which may be relevant across our country and within individual states." 5 Guiding Questions  The study group plans to explore several questions, including: What is working in other countries and why? What can states learn from these experiences? What is unique to these countries? What fundamental principles support reform in successful countries and are relevant for states? What are opportunities and roadblocks for states in pursuing education reform? "In the high performing countries, the balance in the respective authorities of the central government and the local governments is an extremely important piece of the puzzle," said Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, the Washington State House Education Chair.  "As Congress resumes consideration of the ESEA reauthorization, the Study Group hopes to share what we have learned about how our federal-state relationships can better support improved education outcomes for all students." The NCSL Study Group is in the process of planning other educational trips and opportunities to meet with reformers and implementers of reform in countries such as Singapore, Finland, Canada and Poland. For more information about the NCSL Study Group on International Education, please contact Julie Davis Bell, NCSL’s Education Group Director at Julie.Bell@ncsl.org; image attribution flickr user togawanderings The post The US-Again-Turns To Other Countries For Ed Reform appeared first on TeachThought.

The SAMR Model In 120 Seconds by TeachThought Staff This is not a post about the SAMR model (a way of thinking about how to teach with technology that uses an acronym as a mnemonic device)-well, not in any way that’s going to further the conversation around it, or push your thinking about the ins and outs of using it. In December, we shared a post that used Starbucks as an analogy to illustrate the SAMR model. We also shared a post about using the SAMR model for more effective teaching with apps. We’ve even offered a kind of alternative to the SAMR model with our Stages of #edtech Disruption. So why share a simple video of the same model we’ve already covered in more detail elsewhere? Because, in lieu of the slightly murky analogy involing cheese and tennis balls, the video does a pretty good job of explaining the idea in less time than it takes to watch Apple make another $18-billion-of-profits-in-a-single-quarter announcement. Share it with a teacher just getting started with the idea. Or not. We’ve done our part. The SAMR Model In 120 Seconds The post The SAMR Model In 120 Seconds appeared first on TeachThought.

The Ingredients Of A Creative Teacher by Melissa Goodwin, creativist.io There is a lot of talk about creativity these days. Creativity drives innovation, it sparks new thinking, it enriches our lives, and it connects us to other human beings.  While this is all wonderful and true, schools and educators find great difficulty in figuring out how to get more creative. Since creativity is individualized and it expresses itself in each person differently, it becomes difficult for educational systems entrenched in testing and standards to figure out how to unlock creativity in students. Unfortunately, there is no ideal top down solution. Creative classrooms start and end with creative teachers. Luckily, creative teachers can be cultivated. Here are three ingredients to cultivate creative teachers. 3 Seeds Of A Creative Classroom 1. Awareness "If you don’t know where you’re going, the road’ll take you there." - the Cheshire Cat to Alice Any math teacher worth their salt will exclaim, "math is everywhere!" They see geometry on a pool table, they see calculus as a car slows to a stop, they hear it in the toe tapping of the clarinet player, they see simple math in giving change at the store. They know what math looks like in real time and in real life because they have spent the time studying, practicing, and becoming aware of the many ways math is relatable. Creativity is no different. A creative teacher is aware of what creativity looks like for themselves as well as how it might manifest itself in others. A creative teacher always keeps their radar up for "interestingness." 2. Empowerment Empowerment is not a gift bestowed upon you; empowerment comes from within. Every individual is filled with greatness and flaws. An empowered person has the courage to accept themselves for who they are and chooses a growth mindset.  A growth mindset says creativity begets more creativity. A growth mindset says you can actually learn to be more creative. A growth mindset says you can create conditions in which creativity flourishes. 3. Practice This is the kicker. It’s not enough to just read about creativity or to scour Pinterest for hours each day. Creativity requires getting in there. It gets messy.  It requires some failing forward. That being said, there is real joy in creative practice. The act of making something, however small the act may be, changes something within. It lights a fire. One way to start a creative practice is with a little copying. Children do this instinctively. They trace letters, they repeat movie lines (sometimes with perfect voice inflections) and song lyrics. Copying allows an individual to learn the ropes. Many great painters learned first as understudies, copying their masters. The next step is a little something called remixing. The art of the remix is to take something that already exists and make it new. This might be a song, it might be blackout poetry, it might be improving on a coffee cup. Remixing is different than copying in that an individual is adding a little of themselves into the mix. It’s like an homage to the original artist, but with a little kick. Remixing fuels creativity, and serves to spark others. This is evident in the viral videos that arise each day with parents, co-workers, and children dancing, lip syncing, and singing to remixed works. The last way a teacher might practice their creativity is through combining. A great example of a combination is when Steve Jobs merged the idea of a graphical interface with the idea of a computer as a household appliance.  The combination emerged as the wildly successful Macintosh computer. Combinations are powerful forms of creativity. Unlikely pairings can often yield interesting results. It often takes many trials and failing forward to get the combination just right, but as the saying goes, "there is no glory in practice, but without practice, there is no glory." It is said that we are all born creative, but it can get buried and trampled in this modern world. Creativity thrives in classrooms where there is courage, awareness, and a culture that supports creative practice. That courage, awareness and culture starts with the teacher. When teachers light their own internal fires, it serves as a beacon for others. Today is a good day to begin. The Challenge Starting February 2, 2015, 21 Days Committed to Practicing Creative Habits: Enroll now in the 21 Day Teacher Empowerment Challenge. If you are looking for inspiration and some guidance to infuse these seeds of creativity into your teaching practice, your students — and your classroom — here’s your chance! How It Works Each day you will receive an email that encourages a creative way of thinking or acting. Each day you are encouraged to share your experience in our online communities in the spirit of sharing, cooperation and collaboration. At the end of the challenge you will be energized to continue to practice creative habits every day! You Will Receive Daily emails filled with tips on how to be creative, inspired and motivated. Online Community to share your creativity with other teachers from around the world A 21 Day Worksheet to keep track of your progress. Enroll now! Adapted image attribution flickr user denisekrebs The post The Ingredients Of A Creative Teacher appeared first on TeachThought.

Prodigy: A Math Game For Elementary Skill Building by Richie Saltzman, prodigygame.com Ed note: This is a sponsored post from Prodigy Math, a free-to-play game with paid memberships available. What Teachers Need To Know: Prodigy Math is a web-based (not app-based) math program aligned to the Common Core State Standards for Grades 1-6. With more and more educators embracing game-based learning, it’s important to evaluate and choose the program that works best for you and your students.  Game-based learning should not be a replacement for conventional classroom instruction, but rather used as a support tool to engage students and encourage practice, as well as develop "soft skills" that can promote the "whole child" while also improving academic achievement. This is where a math game we made comes in: Prodigy Math Game. Prodigy is a free, adaptive math game that integrates common-core math (grades 1-7) into a fantasy style game that students love playing. Prodigy takes game-based learning a step further and provides teachers with a powerful set of reporting and assessment tools that allow them to easily identify trouble spots, differentiate instruction, and better manage classroom time. Prodigy has recently expanded its content offering to include skills that align to the Math Florida Standards (MAFS) and the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS). And as a web-based game, Prodigy can be accessed at school and at home on virtually any device. Teacher Endorsements Over 1,000,000 students and 50,000 teachers use Prodigy for free math practice and it’s easy to see why. Here’s what teachers we spoke to had to say about the program. Sarah Z, Grade 5 Ontario Public School "As a 5th grade teacher, I have students working at various grade levels and Prodigy helps in differentiating my instruction to suit their individual needs. I really like using the assignments feature to asses each of my students for both diagnostic and formative purposes. One of the main reasons I choose Prodigy to supplement my students’ math learning is that I can choose and align the questions that are asked in the game with the specific strand and expectation that I am teaching in class. When I tell my students that we are having a quiz using Prodigy, they couldn’t be more excited to complete it! They absolutely love the game and ask to play it any time they have the chance." Shoshanna Cohen, Grade 2 Seattle Public School "I teach 2nd grade in a dual language classroom in Seattle. I have MANY extremely low and unmotivated students and math is by far their hardest subject. We practiced how to log on and how to begin and I let them soar from there. I have NEVER had such excited students. They love Prodigy Math Game and those who have computer access at home, are spending a great amount of time mastering skills outside of the classroom. I am able to differentiate lessons for my higher students and go back to the basics for my lower students. I am thrilled with the program and love the fact that it’s free!" Other Features Prodigy is designed to engage students using an adaptive technology to cater to each individual. Prodigy’s personalized approach identifies gaps in students’ understanding and works with them by pulling them back to prerequisite skills and then scaffolding them forward through more difficult concepts. Prodigy has also built out tools like virtual manipulatives, which teachers can use to walk students through solving certain problems.  It has a fantastic assessment feature as well, which allows teachers to customize content and align the game with what they are teaching in class. Assignment questions are integrated right into the game so students have no idea they are working on an "assignment"! The program was designed to be user friendly and make teaching math easier, and learning foundational math skills more enjoyable for students. You can Sign-up your class for free in less than 2 minutes, and see why teaching math will never be the same! Prodigy: A Math Game For Elementary Skill Building The post Prodigy: A Math Game For Elementary Skill Building appeared first on TeachThought.

Education Technology As A Matter Of Principle by Terry Heick iPads are the worst technology students will ever use. This was a useful idea I saw hanging for a moment in my twitter feed a month or so ago from Jamie Casap-useful in that it helped me see education technology as a principle rather than a tactic. Modern arguments around education technology tend towards binary positions-usually for or against; this "position taking" makes the design of education technology inaccessible because we’re not considering design, but rather positions. There are few compelling arguments against technology as learning tools, though even that depends on what students are learning and why. But if we’ll accept, if only for a moment, that: A) "Technology" is a relative term, and B) It allows previously impossible or unimaginable learning-in terms of process, product, pace, and content-to be possible -then we’ve suitably altered the conversation from a matter of positions (check yes or no) to a matter of design (audience, purpose, and possibility). We usually think of technology as a progressive thing, but any technology dates itself immediately through its form. Electricity, the wheel, paper, the printing press, metal working, mass transportation, masonry, and more are all forms of technology. Technology isn’t a leading edge, but a human practice. And, as such, it can both extend our humanity or reduce it based on its application. Design: Audience & Purpose On a day to day basis, human processes are based on prevailing local technology. That is, we usually use what’s available to us to express our collective humanity (for better or for worse). To solve problems, reduce inefficiencies, or create opportunities, we turn to the technology that is accessible to us, usually in the form of tools and processes. Philosophically, this is important because, by design technology is an artificial process or product intended to circumvent natural limits or defies natural processes. This creates spectacle that is addictive. Are Icarus and Prometheus and the Luddites heroes or cautionary tales? Wikipedia defines technology as "the collection of tools, including machinery, modifications, arrangements and procedures used by humans." Oxford dictionary offers up a similar take, defining technology as "the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry," going on to tell us that the word technology comes from the early 17th century from the Greek word tekhnologia-‘systematic treatment’, from tekhnē ‘art, craft’ + -logia. Art. Craft. Design. Humanity. Somewhere between and across these ideas there are glimpses of where technology is taking us, specifically within the "fields" of teaching and learning. The iPad is the latest node in a constantly-expanding concept map of shared experience. New technology builds on old technology. Properly paced and scaled, we’re in control of this hyper-cycle the whole time, but unfortunately the designers and producers of technology design produce in isolation from their applied use, which makes audience and purpose considerations-prime matters of design-impossible. But if we zoom out some, this isn’t so much about how iPads can function in a classroom, but the iPad as a matter of sequence. Technology never peaks. As students in 2015 grow and read and write and learn, technology will continue forward at breakneck speed because it evolves in isolation by standards of its own. The iPad sales have recently stagnated after a mercurial rise that began April 3, 2010-only four and a half years. Wearable technology is among the threats to iPads as successful consumer products, but in education, Google’s slick cloud-integration is making them a more streamlined choice for many classrooms. Education Technology As A Principle But more significantly, the life-cycle of the iPad in education emphasizes the incendiary, remorseless tone of technology. Arguments for or against iPads in classrooms is a bit like arguing Romney/Obama. It’s over, and holding that argument dates the arguers. I get why some teachers are against technology in education. Powerful learning models can be designed without technology because knowledge is the ultimate technology. But if we think in terms of learning design, the argument that technology is already there and we’re simply arguing for a certain technology level can be useful. It’s not binary edtech-yes-or-no, but do we want old tech or new? If we think of technology as a matter of sequence, then technology isn’t so much a teaching strategy or educational tactic as it is a principle of learning. When today’s elementary students are 40, they’ll remember iPads the way (many of us) remember cassette tapes. It will be funny that they used to hold large, heavy glass rectangles in their hands, and had to open up apps separately. And had to know which app did what. And had to "Google" information. And sometimes weren’t even connected to the internet because WiFi signals were unreliable. iPads and other existing mobile technology will be remembered like symbols-markers for a time and a place in their lives. This usefully decenters education technology as  some kind of spectacular edge, and frames it as a principle of learning-and a matter of pedagogical principle. The question we are left with then: Are we willing to design learning models that understand how technology functions in the lives of modern students? Education Technology As A Matter Of Principle; image attribution flickr user flickeringbrad The post Education Technology As A Matter Of Principle appeared first on TeachThought.

 Peace Posters: A Collection Of Visuals Designed by Students by TeachThought Staff The modern internet-memes, gif animations, and infographics for days, but of cats. What about peace? That’s (something in the universe of) what an educator thought for herself recently when she reflected on the power of the visual world wide web while lamenting the whimsy. Teacher Doris Molero explains-and asks for some feedback for the students, so we thought we’d help them get noticed. Check out them out, and vote for your favorite. "This was the final project for my English for Work students of the May- July 2014 Class. They designed a poster or an unfographic to promote peace. The posters were posted in their scoops and also in different social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and also in the virtual world of Second Life. Please. Leave them a comment. Here you can see their work on their Facebook page." Posters and infographics for Peace ︾ 1.48k views 11 items Posters and infographics for Peace Listly by Doris Molero This was the final project for my English for Work students of the May- July 2014 Class. They designed a poster or an unfographic to promote peace. The posters were posted in their scoops and also in different social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and also in the virtual world of Second Life. Please. Leave them a comment. Here you can see their work in Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doris.molero/posts/10154549206825368   Follow List   Embed List   1  Mervis Carrizo Mervis Carrizo Custodio's insight:This is a poster I made for promoting peace. It says "Let Peace Soar", so we help make the world a better place, it encourages you to do it.http://www.scoop.it/t/what-is-graphic-design-by-mervis-carrizo-custodio 7 likes Comments Relist Share 2  Rossmely Leon Rossmely León's insight:I wanted to use a song for my work, so I chose "We are The World" by Michael Jackson, that has to do with making a change, helping people, and peace. About the graphic style, I was inspired in popular design trends in these days, styles that you can see a lot in internet, like is the use of Typography combinations and beautiful backgrounds.I also used illustration to complement the text.I think this style was perfect to represent a song visually and to represent a subject about Peace.Rossmely Leónhttp://www.scoop.it/t/design-by-rossmely-leon 6 likes Comments Relist Share 3  Daniela Morales Daniela Morales's insight: This is my final project for English for Work. These are a pair of posters for peace, they were designed to promote words of peace to all people around the world. The idea is that if these posters were to be printed, they could be used together or apart, and people would still be able to recognize the similarity but not equality in the designs. The posters are made with vectors of human hands, this resembles the human being and how we should be involved with promoting peace. I believe that with peace, people can be able to achieve everything they want to. If there is no peace, there is no love, and if there is no love there is hate. Nobody wants hate, so let's have peace and love. Remember to transmit these feelings to everybody around you, because as you treat others they will treat you. Live your life with peace. http://www.scoop.it/t/graphic-design-by-daniela-morales?fk 5 likes Comments Relist Share 4  Daniela Morales Daniela Morales's insight: This is my final project for English for Work. These are a pair of posters for peace, they were designed to promote words of peace to all people around the world. The idea is that if these posters were to be printed, they could be used together or apart, and people would still be able to recognize the similarity but not equality in the designs. The posters are made with vectors of human hands, this resembles the human being and how we should be involved with promoting peace. I believe that with peace, people can be able to achieve everything they want to. If there is no peace, there is no love, and if there is no love there is hate. Nobody wants hate, so let's have peace and love. Remember to transmit these feelings to everybody around you, because as you treat others they will treat you. Live your life with peace. http://www.scoop.it/t/graphic-design-by-daniela-morales?fk 5 likes Comments Relist Share 5  Joseph Ramirez , Greddis Martinez and Lenin Romero This is an infography from kid to adults. It was designed to make people understand that we are in the same level, theres no one more important than others, so make peace; without race, color or age.Joseph Ramirezromero, Greddis Martinez and Lenin Romero http://www.scoop.it/t/a-by-joseph-ramirezromerohttp://www.scoop.it/t/designbygreddysm 5 likes Comments Relist Share 6  Elliot Quintero Peace is... ''I tried make the idea of turning the words into graphic, a creative way to read the poster and clearing the ideas, peace is that person who is locked but has the key inside his heart to set him free'' by Elliot Quintero http://www.scoop.it/t/greening-your-life 4 likes Comments Relist Share 7  Rosana Chechile Rosana ChechileI made the illustration based in the song of Imagine Dragons It’s Time, I took a phrase of the song that says: "Now it’s time to build from the bottom of the pit, right to the top" and I start the idea from there. I represented the earth and the nature on the woman illustration and those little creatures are us, recovered her. I’m trying to say that if we all put a little grain to make the world a better place, we all together can make it.http://www.scoop.it/t/design-by-rosanna-chechilehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqVhd18Gpu4 4 likes Comments Relist Share 8  Paola Verdú 4 likes Comments Relist Share 9  Daiana Yauhari, Joseline Fernandez and Maria Fernanda Peñuela For me peace is not a time that we need to wait for peace is something that we need to look and fight for. Peace is when there are fewer arguments, less conflict, fewer fights and less shame. It is when we finally find a way to educate ourselves about the world around us and realized we are more the same. I think it’s very important for everyone to live in peace or at least to try to have inner peace with ourselves... it’s like the quote we put in the image "NOTHING BRINGS YOU PEACE BUT YOURSELF" it is a very important quote cause what it’s trying to say is that if we don’t have peace with ourselves and we always live frustrated, stubborn, stressed or bitter everything is going to go wrong . In the infography we not only added some quotes we also wrote the definition of the word peace so that when people read it remind them the meaning of the word peace and try to make them see where we are wrong. 4 likes Comments Relist Share 10  Liucelis Villegas Luicelis Villegas's insight: In this case I give some advices to have peace with everyone, those little things can help to get a better relationship with others. For the design I used the same scheme of the other poster, because I wanted to keep unity. http://www.scoop.it/t/english-for-work-by-luicelis-villegas — with Liucelis Villegas. 3 likes Comments Relist Share 11  Gal Ramirez 3 likes Comments Relist Share View more lists from Doris Molero Peace Posters: A Collection Of Visuals That Promote Togetherness; Peace Posters: A Collection Of Visuals Designed by Students The post Peace Posters: A Collection Of Visuals Designed by Students appeared first on TeachThought.

Raising Our Teacher Voices: A Call For A New Generation Of Teacher Leadership By Jen Orr In 2015, what is the state of teacher leadership-its sources, its voices, and its new potential? Last month I had the opportunity to participate in ASCD’s Whole Child Symposium on teacher leadership. It consisted of two panels, the first was a big picture focused on systemic models and issues and the second narrowed in on districts and schools. It was a fabulous experience and one that I have continued to think about. All seven participants, including the moderator, are educators in some way. At least six of us are or were classroom teachers. When I consider what makes someone a teacher leader, I believe it is a teacher who impacts education beyond their own classroom. In that way, I am not so different from most people defining teacher leadership. But I believe I am defining teacher leadership a bit differently. Differently than most on the panels and differently than most folks talking about teacher leadership. When teacher leadership is discussed it is typically focused on what that means in a school, how teacher leaders can work with administrators, how teachers can impact their school. The conversation focuses on teachers and principals and how they can work together and the benefits of doing so. This is definitely a conversation worth having. However, maybe because I’ve been lucky enough to always work in schools where I felt teacher voice was valued, I want to go far beyond that idea of teacher leadership. I want there to be teachers involved at all levels of decisions and policy. I want teachers to be writing about education for the general public. I want teachers to be sharing with other teachers what works in their classrooms. I want teachers to have a voice in education beyond their schools. I believe this model of teacher leadership, one in which teachers are actively and meaningfully engaged in all parts of the world of education, is critical because teachers have a dog in this fight. That dog isn’t money, like it can be for companies or consultants. That dog isn’t power or prestige as it might be for principals, superintendents, or school board members. That dog isn’t tenure as it can be for college professors. Our dog in the fight, our only dog, is our students; when we raise our voices in conversations we are doing so with our students in our minds. No one else in education comes to the table with the perspective teachers do. Teachers are doing the daily work of education. Every policy decision, every curriculum adopted, every new regulation, every change in boundaries, impacts that daily work. Teachers have a unique understanding of those impacts. This isn’t to suggest that other voices aren’t valuable in this conversation. There are many who bring expertise to the table that is critical. However, the voices least heard are often teachers and students, ironically the voices closest to the issues. Somehow, in some way, teachers need to raise their voices and engage in the wider work of education because no one else knows children as well as we do. Jennifer Orr is an elementary school teacher in Fairfax County, Va. She was selected as a 2013 ASCD Emerging Leader and was a panelist at ASCD’s fall 2014 Whole Child Symposium on teacher leadership; Raising Our Teacher Voices: A Call For A New Generation Of Teacher Leadership; image attribution flickr user usdepartmentofeducation The post Raising Our Teacher Voices: A Call For A New Generation Of Leadership appeared first on TeachThought.

Helping Students Fail: A Framework by Terry Heick Ed note: This post is promoted by bettermarks, an adaptive math platform built around the idea of learning through mistakes. You can visit their platform here. As teachers, allowing students to see failure as a negative experience is one of the worst things we can do. Granted, this isn’t unique to education. The idea of risk-taking, failing, looking, leaping, try-try-again is ingrained in our cultural DNA. But in education, we certainly have made it dramatic. In fact, we don’t even need the whole word anymore. Failure erodes to fail, which itself erodes to simply F. Every bit of effort, every miscommunication, every missing skill or competency, every degree and layer of performance-academic and otherwise-is distilled down into a single character. And there isn’t a mark lower than an "F"-a hundred zeroes and missing assignments still say F, which means there is literally doing nothing at all would’ve yielded the same letter. That’s pretty brutal. (On a related note, here are 12 alternatives to letter grades.) What Does It Mean To "Fail"? You can fail a test or course, but the idea of failing to understand has a completely different connotation. The former could be as much about missing work or organizational habits or even literacy levels; the latter, while subjective, is something else entirely. If understanding is about making meaning, then failure is always only temporary. Making meaning is a present participle that indicates an ongoing process. It’s indefinite, if for not other reason than we can never fully and completely understand anything. Constructivism as a learning theory makes room for failure at its very core, describing learning as an active process and continuous process, stratified in layers of performance. Creating, making, constructing, building, designing and other related terms reflect the nature of both learning and knowledge as a cycle. Some kind of feedback loop is crucial, especially in academic settings where the pace of the course is set before we even know the students’ names. So it’s easy to excuse interrupting this cycle to assess understanding, which we do in various forms. And provided we’re clear that even a perfect assessment is simply a snapshot that’s already dated by the time the feedback is given, there’s nothing wrong with that. Knowledge is both perishable and alive. If we can use grades and feedback and gamification and other processes to communicate that to learners and parents and communities, then all is well. (Gamification, properly used, is capable of uncovering the nuance of the learning process.) But so far, we’ve got room to improve here. Which is where the idea of "failing forward" comes in. Helping students fail isn’t just a matter of making them feel better-it’s about thinking like a scientist, farmer, designer, or CEO-failing gives me the data I need to proceed. And knowledge? Those letter grades don’t mean much. An A doesn’t guarantee understanding, and an F doesn’t preclude it. To "fail" could mean a thousand things. It’s also not that simple. Failure doesn’t give us much more than a starting point. Which is exactly why students need help to understand it. The Role Of Failure In Learning Properly understood, failure can help students see learning as a personal journey rather than a matter of external performance. It emphasizes meaning as contextual, and distinguishes procedural knowledge from content knowledge. The primary value, then, might be in teaching students learning and knowledge rather than responsibility. Helping Students Fail: A Framework Where can I start as a teacher? By Clarifying The Meaning The Idea: Distinguishing knowledge from process so students can see failure not as one thing, but a hundred. (Or fewer, depending on grade level and situation.) Guiding questions: How can I help students separate knowledge from performance? Considering their goals-and the goals of education-is it viable for them to value both? By Providing Context The Idea: Understanding the scale, impact, and nature of failure. The "fail" extends this* far, for example-this lesson, this test, this class, this project, this community, this goal, and so on. The impact is this broad, and is or is not correctable. You might specify (guess?) what caused the failure-or help them learn to do it themselves, then celebrate that specification as a kind of triumph. We found the problem! Guiding questions: What is the nature of this failure for this student? And as a result, how should I respond, and how should they respond? By Designing Transparent Processes The Idea: Illuminating learning as a systematic process that learners and families actually understand Guiding questions: How can I design learning so that the priorities, process, and terms of success are both transparent and collaboratively constructed with learners? By Illuminating Progress The Idea: Emphasizing iteration & progress over "finishing" & completion Guiding questions: How can I emphasize iteration & progress over "finishing" and "completion"? How can I create always-on learning & growth? How can I design work that students are both willing and interested in returning to to improve? adapted image attribution flickr user tactom; Helping Students Fail: A Framework The post Helping Students Fail: A Framework appeared first on TeachThought.

6 Types Of Assessment Of Learning by TeachThought Staff If curriculum is the what of teaching, and learning models are the how, assessment is the puzzled "Hmmmm"-as in, I assumed this and this about student learning, but after giving this assessment, well…."Hmmmmm." So what are the different types of assessment of learning? This graphic below from McGraw Hill offers up six forms; the next time someone says "assessment,’ you can say "Which type, and what are we doing with the data?" like the TeachThought educator you are. 6 Types Of Assessment Of Learning 1. Diagnostic Assessment (as Pre-Assessment) One way to think about it: Assesses a student’s strengths, weaknesses, knowledge, and skills prior to instruction. Another way to think about it: A baseline to work from 2. Formative Assessment One way to think about it: Assesses a student’s performance during instruction, and usually occurs regularly throughout the instruction process. Another way to think about it: Like a doctor’s "check-up" to provide data to revise instruction 3. Summative Assessment One way to think about it: Measures a student’s achievement at the end of instruction. Another way to think about it: It’s macabre, but if formative assessment is the check-up, you might think of summative assessment as the autopsy. What happened? Now that it’s all over, what went right and what went wrong? 4. Norm-Referenced Assessment One way to think about it: Compares a student’s performance against other students (a national group or other "norm") Another way to think about it: Group or "Demographic" assessment 5. Criterion-Referenced Assessment One way to think about it: Measures a student’s performance against a goal, specific objective, or standard. Another way to think about it: a bar to measure all students against 6. Interim/Benchmark Assessment One way to think about it: Evaluates student performance at periodic intervals, frequently at the end of a grading period. Can predict student performance on end-of-the-year summative assessments. Another way to think about it: Bar graph growth through a year   6 Types Of Assessment Of Learning The post 6 Types Of Assessment Of Learning appeared first on TeachThought.

Unplugging To Connect: A Tech Timeout For Schools? by TeachThought Staff From a press release: As part of a national movement called the Tech Timeout Academic Challenge, a San Francisco school will shut down their tech devices for three days beginning February 12. SAN FRANCISCO What happens when over 1,100 students in grades K-12, at a school that prides itself on ubiquitous access to technology, power down their electronic devices for three straight days? That question will be answered on February 12-14 when students at Convent & Stuart Hall in San Francisco take The Tech Timeout Academic Challenge. It will be the first school in the greater Bay Area to take the challenge and just the third in California. The Convent & Stuart Hall Tech Timeout is unique in that it includes students ranging in age from four to 18 and spans the divide between school-provided technology and personal devices such as cell phones. All students are encouraged to participate and will complete a pledge sheet where they list all of the technologies from which they agree to abstain. Parents can also participate and will be given a family kit that they can use to help them succeed. "The opt-in is a critical piece," says Howard Levin, Director of Educational Innovation and Information Services. The hope is that participating students and their families will walk away from the Tech Timeout with a better understanding of their dependence on technology. Following the challenge, students will discuss their experience of going "tech-free" and evaluate their personal practice of how to disconnect. "In some ways the kid that fails has a better chance of being reflective," Howard says. "We want to create cognitive dissonance among those who join." This is the first year that Convent & Stuart Hall has fully adopted an ePack program across all ages designed to provide daily access to a wide range of digital tools, including a 1-to-1 program with the Apple iPad, but encompassing much more than a single device. Howard says that at the heart of the program is a desire to change the ed-tech model from "learn to use" in computer labs to a "use to learn" model where technology can aid in any lesson. To reflect this shift, the school recently designed new positions for its ed-tech faculty. Now a team of Educational Innovation Coordinators work full-time to support teachers in the use of digital tools and innovative spaces. The administration is in part facilitating the timeout to ensure that the school continues to use the provided devices in the most effective and mindful way. "A school like ours that embraces a 1-to-1 program needs to find balance," Howard says. "We need to also help students not only learn how to use technology wisely, but how to recognize how devices can get in the way of having real conversations and relationships." The Tech Timeout Academic Challenge sponsored by Foresters will launch on Feb 12 with an assembly where students will seal their phones inside envelopes. To date, more than 16,000 students across North America have participated in the challenge. Howard Levin and Ann Marie Krejcarek, President of Schools along with a Foresters spokesperson, are available for further comments. To learn more about the Tech Timeout Academic Challenge, visit: http://techtimeout.com/academicchallenge/; adapted flickr user flickeringbrad; Unplugging To Connect: A Tech Timeout For Schools? The post Unplugging To Connect: A Tech Timeout For Schools? appeared first on TeachThought.

Xavier University Adds A Maker Innovation Center by TeachThought Staff From a press release CINCINNATI  Xavier University recently signed an agreement with MakerBot, a global leader in the desktop 3D printing industry, to bring a MakerBot® Innovation Center to the university’s campus. Xavier University joins a growing number of universities throughout the country that offer MakerBot Innovation Centers, which are designed to empower organizations to innovate faster, collaborate better and compete more effectively. Xavier is the first university in the Midwest and the first private college in the United States to implement a MakerBot Innovation Center. MakerBot is providing the consulting, technical support and training required to implement the MakerBot Innovation Center and will work closely with Xavier’s faculty to develop a curriculum that introduces professors and students to the world of 3D printing and its real-time possibilities. MakerBot is excited to join Xavier University for the grand opening of the MakerBot Innovation Center on February 4, 2015. Students, parents, business partners and community members are invited to take a tour of the new MakerBot Innovation Center during an open house from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. The opening ceremony will start at 4:30 p.m. with a blessing by Xavier’s 34th president, Father Michael J. Graham, S.J., followed by speeches from University staff and MakerBot president Frank Alfano. "We’re so excited to be the first private institution in the country and the first university in the Midwest region to partner with MakerBot," said Shawn Nason, chief innovation officer with Xavier University. "Our mission at Xavier University is to educate our students so that they are able to make the world a better place. "We’re positioned to do just that with the unique 3D printing and prototyping technology of MakerBot! With these innovative MakerBot Replicator 3D Printers, we will transform how our students learn here at the Xavier Center for Innovation and beyond. With MakerBot, we’ll not only be ‘making’ 3D objects in our classrooms, but helping shape the leaders and innovators of future industries as well." What Is A MakerBot Center? The MakerBot Innovation Center at Xavier is a custom, centralized and scalable 3D printing solution that has been developed to meet the specific needs of the university. It is designed to create an environment in which entrepreneurialism, education and innovation can be cultivated and encouraged in the Cincinnati area and beyond. With the MakerBot Innovation Center, students, faculty and the community are provided opportunities to collaborate on Real-Time Prototyping™, model making and small-scale creative and manufacturing projects. This provides a unique way to prepare students for the jobs of tomorrow by putting them at the forefront of technology and giving them access to a thriving community of innovators. With dedicated spaces for startups and networking, the MakerBot Innovation Center at Xavier is designed to attract local entrepreneurs, innovators and researchers. It will serve as a local innovation hub where students from different academic disciplines can gain invaluable hands-on experience by collaborating with entrepreneurs and researchers on real-world projects. The MakerBot Innovation Center for Xavier includes 31 MakerBot® Replicator 3D Printers (25 MakerBot Replicator Desktop 3D Printers, three MakerBot Replicator Z18 3D Printers and three MakerBot Replicator Mini Compact 3D Printers), a large supply of MakerBot PLA Filament, several MakerBot Digitizer™ Desktop 3D Scanners and MakerBot MakerCare® Protection Plans. At the core of the MakerBot Innovation Center is the MakerBot Innovation Center Management Platform, a proprietary and innovative 3D printing software platform that links all 30+ MakerBot Replicator 3D Printers together, provides remote access, print queuing and mass production of 3D prints, and is designed to streamline productivity and staffing of the center. The scalable design of the MakerBot Innovation Center allows Xavier the option to easily add additional MakerBot 3D printing technology in the future. "The MakerBot Innovation Center has garnered huge interest since we first introduced the concept last year, and we’re excited that Xavier University has decided to work with us to unleash the creative potential of 3D printing on its campus and in the Cincinnati area. The passion for innovation and 3D printing at Xavier is contagious and we can’t wait to see what comes out of their MakerBot Innovation Center," noted Jenny Lawton, CEO of MakerBot. " We’re particularly thrilled to provide the team at Xavier with Consulting from MakerBot to help develop a curriculum that integrates 3D printing. This is an important step that will help introduce more students, community members, and entrepreneurs to the idea of 3D printing and how this technology can help them visualize and memorize complex theoretical concepts, gain hands-on experience and unleash their creativity." Xavier University is a private university located in Cincinnati, Ohio, providing a liberal arts education in the Catholic, Jesuit tradition. Founded in 1831, the university is the sixth-oldest Catholic university in the nation. U.S. News & World Report ranks it No. 5 among 146 universities in the Midwest, and The Princeton Review names it as one of The Best 378 Colleges; Xavier University Adds A Maker Innovation Center The post Xavier University Adds A MakerBot Innovation Center appeared first on TeachThought.

Looking Down Our Noses At The Community College Experience by Dale Schlundt, M.A. The question of "where do I go from here" can be a daunting challenge for many high school seniors getting ready to advance to the next stage of their life. The thought of "being on your own", even if that means living at home while attending college, can be a scary and uncertain time in a young adult’s life. When an individual asks my advice about the next step towards post-secondary education, I almost always advise community college first. Whether one is speaking about a four year institution or a two year college, it opens up a whole new world to the potential student. To sum it up in one word, questions. Questions as simple as how do I get started, register, what classes to take, and more. Perhaps even the bigger question, which may have not be considered prior, what do I want to do with my life? The community college provides the relatively smooth transition from a life that has been completely structured for the student to one where they are advised, yet begin grasping those challenges of independence. One of the most significant challenges students face when entering any post-secondary institution is time management. For some, they are working full time as well as taking a full load of courses. Therefore, finding the opportunity to focus on academics can be a hurdle to say the least. For others, they are solely working on college. However prior to this, have never been exposed to so much free time, while concurrently going to school. Absolutely contrary to the secondary school’s structured day with bells, making time management a new and perhaps costly learning curve. This is where the community college lends an advantage. In comparison to the university’s student/ instructor ratio, the two year college offers much more one on one assistance. The use of student collaboration, where students are able to work together, forming friendships, and essentially giving each other support, is much more prominent in the two year institution. This simply being feasible due to the size of the class. Not to be overlooked is the financial aspect of the decision on whether to begin their college life at a two year or four year institution. For those with limited funds or whom do not want such high student loans to pay off throughout their professional life, community colleges offer the relatively same classes that transfer to numerous major universities, at a substantial discount. I always advise students that unless there is a specific program that only the four year institution offers, why pay the higher tuition for less assistance? I still remember working on my bachelor’s degree where there would be classes in which the professor never knew I existed. It should be said that this is at no fault of the professor, this simply being an aspect of the significantly larger class size. This is not to take away from the four year university, of which there are many wonderful benefits, in terms of pedagogical practices, student life, and the overall experience. It is simply a personal choice on the part of the future student and what will best suite them in their new stage of life. The most reassuring aspect is there are typically many choices for your post-secondary institution, that being beneficial as well as the challenge in many young adults’ lives. Regardless, community colleges offer a smooth route to that transition from high school to the "new world" of college. Dale Schlundt holds a Master’s Degree in Adult Education with a concentration in American History from the University of Texas at San Antonio. He is currently an Adjunct Professor for Palo Alto College and Northwest Vista College. Dale has written two books, Tracking Life’s Lessons: Through Experiences, History, and a Little Interpretation and Education Decoded (A Collection of My Writings); image attribution flickr user vancouverfilmschool The post Looking Down Our Noses At The Community College Experience appeared first on TeachThought.

What’s The One Thing Will They Remember From Your Class? by Terry Heick Try as you might, your students aren’t going to remember everything from your class. In fact, they probably won’t remember much at all, no matter how good you are at what you do. And this assumes that simply remembering—hazily recalling certain ideas, facts, or projects—is your goal. If you’re looking for something close to actually understanding—self-initiated transfer to new and unfamiliar situations—then that list will be even shorter. How about new behaviors and habits? Personal change? In all of the focus on process and improvement, it’s easy to forget that there is a function of knowledge-a human output derived from injected understandings, skills, and competencies. Put another way, there is a reason to learn. A purpose. Knowledge is the most modern of currencies that itself can be exchanged endlessly without diminishing itself. Without that reason, education becomes a self-justifying expression of policies and procedures. It’s at this point that we could talk about critical abstractions—how you made them feel, discoveries they made about themselves, or networks and technologies that they discovered under your guidance. We could talk about power standards, big ideas, enduring understandings, the utility of modern curriculum, and how useful academic standards like those found in the Common Core really are, but I thought I’d turn it over to you this time to hear your ideas. A concept? A rule? Some abstract lesson? A notable project? Or simply how you made them feel? You may want to read Applying The 40/40/40 Rule In Your Classroom as a decent primer to respond. In short, 16 years from now when they see you in the supermarket, what do you want them to remember? Would love to hear your ideas on twitter or in the comments below. What Will They Remember From Your Class?; image attribution flickr user cheriejoyful; What’s The One Thing They’ll Remember From Their Time With You? The post What’s The One Thing They’ll Remember From Their Time With You? appeared first on TeachThought.

Learning Models, Theories, and Technology: A Dictionary For 21st Century Teachers by Terry Heick and TeachThought Staff Purpose: Improving our chance for a common language in discussing existing and emerging learning trends, model, and technology in hopes of innovation in classrooms, and collectively, education at large. Audience: K-12 & higher ed educators, researchers, institutions, and organizations globally. Form: An index of learning models, theories, forms, terminology, technology, and research to help you keep up with the latest trends in 21st century learning. This page was created and is updated by Terry Heick and TeachThought Staff, who you can contact directly with suggestions for terms, improved citations, corrections, or additions to the index. Revisions: Persistently updated. In addition to new definitions, models, and strategies, citations and references will also be added periodically, as will updates, corrections, edits, and revisions. Ed note: As stated, this is an ambitious work in progress that we’re choosing to share as we proof, revise, iterate, and generally improve for wider dissemination. When you find typos, dead links, missing sentences, inconsistencies, or flat out lies, let us know. ; ^ ) Ed note 2: If you’d like to help update and improve this page, and have the background, curiosity, and/or expertise to contribute, email me. I’ve got 36 terms and 19 revisions that need adding already. I’m only one person. ; ^ ) A Dictionary For 21st Century Teachers: Learning Models & Technology 1:1 A description of a learning environment where there is one "screen" for each student (whether an iPad, laptop, etc.) Activity-Based Learning According to Harvard University, "in Activity-Based Learning courses, students do public service, fieldwork, community-based research and internships in conjunction with in-class work. ABL pedagogy aims to enrich students’ academic experience and learning outcomes by connecting theory with practice, and concepts with methods, using data and insight they obtain through engagement with the larger world." (1) Andragogy The study of teaching adults. BYOD An initialism that stands for "Bring Your Own Device." BYOD programs allow students to use their own technology (usually smartphone or tablet) in a classroom. BYOD is often seen as a way of solving budget concerns while increasing the authenticity of learning experiences, while critics point to the problems BYOD can cause for district IT, privacy concerns, and more. Blended Learning Blended learning is a learning model that combines digital and face-to-face learning experiences. The Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation defines Blended Learning "a formal education program in which a student learns: (1) at least in part through online learning, with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace; (2) at least in part in a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home; (3) and the modalities along each student’s learning path within a course or subject are connected to provide an integrated learning experience." It is generally accepted that there are four models of blended learning: Rotation, Flex, A La Carte, and Enriched Virtual. The Christensen Institute clarifies that "the Rotation model includes four sub-models: Station Rotation, Lab Rotation, Flipped Classroom, and Individual Rotation." (3) There is some thought that a certain percentage of instruction must be digital to qualify as "blended learning," but there is no clear industry standard. Challenge-Based Learning Challenge-Based Learning is a learning model pushed by Apple that promotes the academic classroom as a think tank to solve authentic problems. It is similar to place-based education and project-based learning as a teaching tool. Apple defines Challenge-Based Learning as "an engaging multidisciplinary approach to teaching and learning that encourages learners to leverage the technology they use in their daily lives to solve real-world problems. Challenge Based Learning is collaborative and hands-on, asking students to work with peers, teachers, and experts in their communities and around the world to ask good questions, develop deep subject area knowledge, identify and solve challenges, take action, and share their experience." (5) Cognitive Apprenticeship Cognitive apprenticeship focuses on "learning-through-guided-experience on cognitive and metacognitive skills and processes" (Collins, Brown, & Newman, 1989, p. 457), instead of the physically concrete craft or trade that is the focus of traditional apprenticeships. "The method is aimed primarily at teaching the problem-solving processes that experts use to handle complex tasks. Cognitive apprenticeships are intended to enable apprentices to learn strategies and skills in the context of their application to realistic problems, within a culture focused on and defined by expert practice." (6) Communal Constructivism A learning theory "in which networked learners not only construct and assimilate their own knowledge from their own learning opportunities, but deliberately contribute their own learning to a community resource base."(Holmes & Gardner 2006). (7) Connected Learning A learning model by Digital Media & Learning that emphasizes the role of social interactions as a catalyst for learning. (See "Connected Learning: The Power Of Social Learning Models".) Characteristics of Connected Learning include: Interest-Powered, Production Centered, Peer-Supported, Shared Purpose, Academically-Oriented, and Openly-Networked. (15) Constructionism According to Seymour Papert, constructionism is, put roughly, learning by making. That Papert is known to struggle with the idea of defining Constructionism by a "pipeline" of knowledge-giving hints at its nature-open-ended, learner-centered, playful, non-institutional, non-academis, and so difficult to describe in an academic context. Papert explained that, while close in meaning and spelling as Constructivism, it is suitably unique: "Constructionism-the N word as opposed to the V word-shares constructivism’s connotation of learning as "building knowledge structures" irrespective of the circumstances of the learning. It then adds the idea that this happens especially felicitously in a context where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public entity, whether it’s a sand castle on the beach or a theory of the universe." Papert went on to describe Constructionism as a kind of learning which "allows full range of intellectual styles and preferences to each find a point of equilibrium. (Papert, Harel 1991) (16) Constructivism A learning theory that suggests that "people construct their own understanding and knowledge of the world through experiencing things and reflecting on those experiences" (Christie 2005). (14) Differentiation According to differentiation expert Dr. Carol Tomlinson, differentiation is not a teaching strategy, but rather a way of thinking about learning. In terms of application it is the specific design of "content, process, or product" according to a student’s readiness, interest, or learning profile. (Citation needed). Tomlinson explains that "differentiation does not presume different tasks for each learner, but rather just enough flexibility in task complexity, working arrangements, and modes of learning expression that varied students find learning a good fit much of the time." (22) In short, differentiation is the process of personalizing universal learning goals for groups of students. As such, it is closely related to (but different than) personalized learning and individualized learning. Digital Citizenship Karen Mossberger, Associate Professor at University of Illinois at Chicago, defines digital citizenship simply as "the ability to participate in society online." (9) Terry Heick offers a definition of digital citizenship as "The quality of habits, actions, and consumption patterns that impact the ecology of digital content and communities." (10) eLearning Learning expressly through online courses and related digital resources. Flipped Classroom Stated simply, a flipped classroom is one where students are introduced to content at home through digital tools (usually video), and then practice it at school under the guidance of a teacher. This is the reverse of the traditional pattern, where students are introduced to content at school, and then practice it at home without the guidance of the teacher (i.e., More Knowledgeable Other). Flow A tenet of Eastern philosophy and thought for millenia, and more recently repopularized by Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi, flow is the complete merging of task and doer-a state of being where a body, mind, and task resonate effortlessly and result in improved performance and extraordinary satisfaction. A useful example of flow from Diane Ackerman’s Deep Play: "In Bone Games, climber Rob Schultheis recalls how he felt descending a mountain after a harrowing near-death fall: "The person I became on Neva was the best possible version of myself, the person I should have been throughout my life. No regrets, no hesitation; there were no false moves left in me. I really believe I could have hit a mosquito in the eye with a pine needle at thirty paces; I couldn’t miss because there was no such thing as a miss." Game-Based Learning Learning through games (from physical to digital). Gamification The application of game-like "encouragement" mechanics to non-game entities. Put another way, it is making a game out of something that’s not. Genius Hour The allotment of a specified amount of time in a formal learning environment for the purpose of self-directed learning. (23) Google Apps for Education A collection of software bundled by Google that is available on a subscription model for schools and classroom. Services include Google Drive, Google Docs, Gmail, and more. Google Classroom Google describes their Google Classroom as "designed to help teachers create and collect assignments paperlessly, including time-saving features like the ability to automatically make a copy of a Google Document for each student. It also creates Drive folders for each assignment and for each student to help keep everyone organized. Students can keep track of what’s due on the Assignments page and begin working with just a click. Teachers can quickly see who has or hasn’t completed the work, and provide direct, real-time feedback and grades right in Classroom. Classroom is "available to anyone with Google Apps for Education, a free suite of productivity tools including Gmail, Drive and Docs." Heautagogy A term coined by Stewart Hase, heautogogy is the study of self-directed learning. (Citation needed) Inside-Out Learning Model A school model developed by Terry Heick and inspired by Wendell Berry designed to immerse student learning in local communities. Rather than an outcomes-based and standards-driven approach, it instead seeks local accountability, new knowledge types, and overtly "human" learning models. Individualized Learning The customizing of universal content (e.g., Common Core) for individual students. See also Personalized Learning, Differentiated Learning, and Self-Directed Learning. Informal Learning Informal Learning has been defined as "any activity involving the pursuit of understanding, knowledge or skill which occurs without the presence of externally imposed curricular criteria. Informal learning may occur in any context outside the pre-established curricula of educative institutions. The basic terms of informal learning (e.g. objectives, content, means and processes of acquisition, duration, evaluation of outcomes, applications) are determined by the individuals and groups that choose to engage in it. Self-directed or collective informal learning is undertaken on our own. Informal education or training is distinguished from such self-directed informal learning only by the presence of some form of institutionally-recognized instructor. (Livingstone 2001). (13) Learning Simulation Often (not necessarily) digital, a learning simulation is a recreation of a context which allows a learner to bring strategy, tactics, and skills to experiment, play, or otherwise interact with that context’s manipulatives. Learning Simulation Clark Aldrich defines a learning simulation as "an abstracted interactive environment (or) structure for education in which a learner can take actions and make decisions, and get ongoing feedback and consequences." Learning Through Play The process of acquiring knowledge, skills, or conceptual understandings through play. According to Johan Huizinga is the critical anthropological text Homo Ludens, play is "an activity which proceeds within certain limits of time and space, in a visible order, according to rules freely accepted, and outside the sphere of necessity or material utility. The play-mood is one of rapture and enthusiasm, and is sacred or festive in accordance with the occasion. A feeling of exaltation and tension accompanies the action. See also Flow & Play. Learning Taxonomies Any framework for thinking (and thus understanding), including Bloom’s Taxonomy, Heick’s Taxonomy, and Understanding by Design’s 6 Facets of Understanding. These taxonomies can be used to plan units, lessons, assessments, and other teaching and learning processes. Mastery Learning According to Vahid Motamedi of Tarbiat Moallem University, "Mastery learning is a method of instruction where the focus is on the role of feedback in learning. Furthermore, mastery learning refers to a category of instructional methods which establishes a level of performance that all students must "master" before moving on to the next unit (Slavin, 1987). Thus, through one or more trials, students have to achieve a specified level of content knowledge prior to progression on to a next unit of instruction." "Mastery learning is used in order to advance an individual’s potential for learning. Compared to traditional learning models, sufficient time, attention, and help are afforded to each student." (11) MOOC An acronym for Massively Open Online Course, a digital course that allows asynchronous access to content. Mobile Learning The United Nations defines mobile learning as "Mobile learning involves the use of mobile technology, either alone or in combination with other information and communication technology (ICT), to enable learning anytime and anywhere. Learning can unfold in a variety of ways: people can use mobile devices to access educational resources, connect with others, or create content, both inside and outside classrooms. Mobile learning also encompasses efforts to support broad educational goals such as the effective administration of school systems and improved communication between schools and families." (12) TeachThought is developing a mobile learning framework and definition that will be released in early 2015. Model-Based Learning A learning strategy by Terry Heick in which learners analyze an existing model of some kind, isolate one compelling idea, and then transfer that idea into a new circumstance. Personalized Learning The process of designing a learning experience for an individual learner, including content, learning model, assessment forms, and mode of knowledge application. Personalized learning can arise from any learning experience that is self-initiated and self-directed in pursuit of outcomes that are first personal (e.g., curiosity-based, self-prioritized, etc.) Place-Based Education Place-Based Education "immerses students in local heritage, cultures, landscapes, opportunities and experiences, uses these as a foundation for the study of language arts, mathematics, social studies, science and other subjects across the curriculum, and emphasizes learning through participation in service projects for the local school and/or community." (citation needed) (24) Play Play can be described as a pattern of free and joyful experimentation with voluntary barriers. Rather than a merely recreational activity, Terry Heick describes play as "a state of being" often "characterized by unencumbered, courageous, and joyful interactions with people, objects, interfaces, or circumstances." Heick goes on to say that play is more a matter of "tone and possibility than form or function." (citation needed) Through play, learners are able to develop a range of intellectual, moral, strategic, physical, or creative capacities. In Deep Play, Diane Ackerman describes play as cultural and evolutionary. "Our culture thrives on play. Courtship includes high theater, rituals, and ceremonies of play. Ideas are playful reverberations of the mind. Language is a playing with words until they can impersonate physical objects and abstract ideas…. For all we know, what we call intelligence may be a characteristic exclusively of primates. It may not be life’s pinnacle at all, but simply one mode of knowing, one we happen to master and cherish. Play is widespread among animals because it invites problem-solving, allowing a creature to test its limits and develop strategies. In a dangerous world, where dramas change daily, survival belongs to the agile not the idle. We may think of play as optional, a casual activity. But play is fundamental to evolution. Without play, humans and many other animals would perish." (17) Problem-Based Learning Similar to challenge-based learning, problem-based learning is a learning framework that uses (ideally authentic and highly personal) problems to frame learning experiences. Problem-based learning, then, uses the problem to necessitate a need to know in the student, which ideally would create a sense of both motivation and context for the learning experience. Project-Based Learning A method of framing curriculum that results in students learning through projects (rather than simply completing projects). (3) ASCD explains that the "core idea of project-based learning is that real-world problems capture students’ interest and provoke serious thinking as the students acquire and apply new knowledge in a problem-solving context. The teacher plays the role of facilitator, working with students to frame worthwhile questions, structuring meaningful tasks, coaching both knowledge development and social skills, and carefully assessing what students have learned from the experience. Advocates assert that project-based learning helps prepare students for the thinking and collaboration skills required in the workplace." (4) Question-Based Learning A learning strategy developed by Terry Heick that encourages learners to form, reframe, and improve questions as they are gather information and adjust their thinking in response. Scenario-Based Learning Scenario-based learning is a mode of learning that functions as a social simulation, requiring students to use authentic contexts to solve problems. Sounds a lot like problem-based learning, doesn’t it? It is, but the scenario doesn’t have to be a "problem." Massey University explains. "Scenario-based learning (SBL) uses interactive scenarios to support active learning strategies such as problem-based or case-based learning. It normally involves students working their way through a storyline, usually based around an ill-structured or complex problem, which they are required to solve. In the process students must apply their subject knowledge, and critical thinking and problem solving skills in a safe, real-world context. SBL is often non-linear, and can provide numerous feedback opportunities to students, based on the decisions they make at each stage in the process. Scenario-based learning may be self-contained, in that completing the scenario is the entire task, or it may be the first part of a larger assignment requiring the student to complete the scenario, and then provide a written or oral reflection and self-assessment on the process. As for the research basis, Massey University goes on to offer that SBL "is based on the principles of situated learning theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991), which argues that learning best takes place in the context in which it is going to be used, and situated cognition, the idea that knowledge is best acquired and more fully understood when situated within its context (Kindley, 2002)" Self-Directed Learning Self-directed learning is a model of learning where the student designs learning goals, pathways, and application. It can be used both formally and informally, for learning both academic and non-academic, in classrooms, homeschool settings, and workplaces. (See Google’s 80/20 rule, or video game developer Valve for more on what this might look like in a professional setting.) As a phrase, it is often used interchangeably with self-managed learning or independent learning, where students execute teacher-designed learning processes designed from institutional learning goals. Note: While at TeachThought we think of self-directed learning as something "whole" and entirely personal, we recognize the subjectivity of language, and the relative obscurity, opaqueness, and ambiguity of much of educational terminology (thus this page). In that way, one person’s "SDL" may be another person’s "independent project," and we respect our own biases, and thus general impotence in the face of this problem. See also Genius Hour and TeachThought’s self-directed learning model. Situated Cognition A learning theory that emphasizes the absolute and permanent relationship between knowledge and context, or "situation," situated cognition suggests a taut relationship between what one knows, and what one does with what one knows (i.e., knowledge and behavior). This creates a problematic collision between "the different instructional goals of ‘knowing what’ and ‘know how’ result in different structures and practices of our education system," and harmfully "decontextualized learning resulted from separation between learning and doing." (Brown, Collins and Duguid (1989). Clancey offers, "The theory of situated cognition…claims that every human thought is adapted to the environment, that is, situated, because what people perceive, how they conceive of their activity, and what they physically do develop together" (Clancey, 1997). See also, Cognitive Apprenticeship. (19, 20)  Sync Teaching A teaching strategy developed by Terry Heick that seeks to merge self-directed learning in an outcomes-based learning environment. Also known as Second-Screen Learning, the idea is to give students freedom to follow their curiosity (while adjusting for their own background knowledge) while still be requiring to "sync" with the teacher as the teacher sees fit (e.g., within a time frame, a learning target, etc.) In this model, the teacher chooses what, when, and how the students "sync"-which would seem to suggest each student have their own screen, but doesn’t necessarily require it. Imagine a teacher is delivering "Content 1," and each student or group of students are then accessing 1A, 1B, 1C. The topic could be the causes and effects of war, which could also act as the "sync point." The students direct their own learning around that idea while the teacher facilitates, and chooses when (in terms of timing), where (in terms of space), and why (in terms of purpose) the "sync" occurs (i.e., students redirect attention from their screens to teacher as guide). Whether this is done in 4 groups with 4 tablets, or 28 individual students in 1:1 or BYOD classrooms, the big idea is the same: students accessing (or creating) personalized content while the teacher guides and facilitates the core of the lesson. (8) References & Citations 1. Harvard Education Center For Teaching & Learning 2. Clayton Christensen Institute For Disruptive Innovation  3. The Difference Between Projects & Project-Based Learning from TeachThought 4. What The Research Says About Project-Based Learning 5. Challenge-Based Learning by Apple 6. Cortland.edu 7. University of East London Research in Teacher Education 8.  The Sync Teaching Method by TeachThought 9. MIT on Digital Citizenship 10. A Definition for Digital Citizenship (Heick 2012) 11. Mastery Learning: An Effective Teaching Strategy via New York University 12. United Nations ICT in Education 13. Adults’ informal learning: Definitions, finds, gaps, and future research 14. Presentation: Constructivism: A Holisitic Approach to Teaching & Learning  15. 6 Characteristics of Connected Learning 16. Situating Constructionism (Papert & Harel 1991) 17. How To Create Learning Through Play (Heick 2013) 18. Deep Play (Ackerman 1999) 19. Dr. Jennifer Brill at The University of Georgia 20. Brent G. Wilson and Karen Madsen Myers at the University of Denver 21. The Difference Between Personal Learning & Personalized Learning 22. (Understanding Differentiated Instruction: Building a Foundation for Leadership Tomlinson, 2000) 23. Six Principles of Genius Hour in the Classroom 24. promiseofplace.org/ and nrs.fs.fed.us/environmental_literacy/best_practices/ A Dictionary For 21st Century Teachers; A Dictionary For 21st Century Teachers: An ongoing index of emerging learning models and learning theories for progressive teaching. The post A Dictionary For 21st Century Teachers: Learning Models & Technology appeared first on TeachThought.

9 Ways To Help Students Learn Through Mistakes by bettermarks.com Ed note: This post is promoted by bettermarks, a company looking for teachers to beta test their adaptive Math software. They contacted us and asked how they could get in touch with teachers to use their platform and give them feedback. They also wanted to share some thinking on the idea of mistakes in the learning process, an idea their platform is built on. The result of both goals is the post below.  We’ be really, really, really grateful if you could take a look at our adaptive math platform and give us feedback. It’s a free one-year trial with no strings. We want to make the best product we can, and need your help yo get it just right. It is built around the idea of learning through mistakes, which we discuss in more detail below. 9 Ways To Help Students Learn Through Mistakes Most people have heard the sayings "You learn from your mistakes" or "Adversity is the school of wisdom". Meanwhile, it is a general consensus that making mistakes is an important part of the learning process. This is because if, instead of giving up in frustration after making a mistake, we work constructively to understand the mistake, the strategy to solve the problem stays with us better than if we just memorize the solution. Despite this, in our educational system, mistakes are more often punished than seen as an opportunity to learn. What then can we do to help our students learn from their mistakes? First, let’s take a look at how mistakes can stimulate the learning process. 1. See mistakes as a source of understanding When students are mindful of incorrect solution concepts while working on a problem, they are able to deal with the problem at a much deeper level than someone who is just presented with the correct solution and has to memorize it. Also, we should not just correct a mistake but make sure that students recognize and understand the reason for the mistake. Only in this way can students arrive at a deeper understanding and correct solution method for the mistake 2. Improve motivation and self-esteem by responding to and overcoming mistakes A student who successfully fixes something incorrect experiences a personal success. They experience directly how worthwhile their effort is and how their competence improves. Such an experience of success leads to the student being more persistent and putting in even more effort in the future when working on reaching a learning goal because they know that they can achieve it. This is how to turn the motivation to learn into something intrinsic, which can be much more effective than incentivizing good grades for example. 3. Honor mistakes as guidance for the teacher, too Wrong is just wrong? Wrong! Mistakes are multifaceted. They give the teacher information about the stand of the individual student and which incorrect ideas and knowledge deficits the student has which hinder learning. Mistakes also show you whether the student understands the required prerequisites and how you can optimally connect the previous topics to the current topic in the classroom. Mistakes give you, as the teacher, an important foundation for the lesson structure and individual student development. If they’re learned from and responded to, mistakes are powerfully good! But which prerequisites have to be met so that mistakes lead to a learning success and not to a dead-end? 4. Allow mistakes through the learning atmosphere So students can learn from their mistakes, they must be allowed to make them! It should be clear to students that in a learning situation mistakes will be handled in a different way than in a performance evaluation where every mistake has a negative consequence. Also, create a mistake-friendly learning atmosphere where students don’t feel ashamed of their mistakes. Motivate your students to not give up and to continue to work on the correct solution. In this way, the reward for learning remains the focus and a constructive way of dealing with mistakes is an important foundation of this. 5. Allow a variety of mistakes Students should not only be allowed to make mistakes, but they need to be able to make them. Here the type of learning material plays a decisive role. Enable situations where your students can make a variety of interesting mistakes. In most cases, just asking for the answer or using multiple choice questions will not give you any insight into the reasons for your student’s mistakes. 6. Provide timely feedback so mistake can be responded to If a problem with understanding is recognized late in the learning process and a lot of time has elapsed before the student discovers they must re-learn the topic, the incorrect thought processes may be firmly cemented in the student’s mind. The learning process usually follows these steps in this order: practice activities, make errors, get feedback, think over the feedback, and try again. The less this process is interrupted the more efficient and effective the learning is. The earlier a problem is discovered the easier it is to fix it. In the ideal scenario, a student will receive feedback on how close they are in terms of correctness immediately after giving their solution. 7. Analyze root causes and sources There are different kinds of mistakes. Careless mistakes, systematic mistakes, misconceptions - the root cause of mistakes can have many sources. It is not enough that students know that they have made a mistake; they also need to receive feedback on where the mistake lies. This root cause analysis in connection with targeted individual support is the best way to change thought patterns and prevent students from making the same mistake again. 8. Encourage independent mistake correction as a matter of habit Giving students the opportunity to find and correct their mistakes on their own immediately after they are made has a positive impact on their motivation to learn. At the same time, learning to look for root causes and sources of mistakes develops conceptual understanding. For example, in mathematics, students often just learn solution methods for problems by rote rather than actually understanding the concept. However, when students look for the source of mistakes on their own, they realize the cause and improve their understanding independently. Things learned in this way are retained longer and are more easily applied to other mathematical topics. If you want to help your students turn their mistakes into learning success in the best possible way, there are a number of challenges: How can you keep an eye on all students individually? How much effort must be put into the mistake analysis? How can you give all students individual feedback? How do you provide timely feedback? 9. Use technology that supports mistakes and personalized mistake analysis We quickly reach our limits when we try to do justice to all the mistakes of all our students. Educational software can give some relief if it is able to analyze everything the student enters and give them direct feedback on their answer. In turn, you as the teacher should automatically get analyses on the strengths and weaknesses of your students. There are hundreds if not thousands of educational software and platforms to choose from. To assist you in evaluating whether a technology supports you and your students in learning from mistakes we have created this checklist of requirements: Does the program allow any kind of answer to be entered, or is it just multiple choice - can a student make a variety of mistakes? Are there interactive input tools that are modeled after analog learning materials, for example a compass or protractor? Is feedback given immediately after entering an answer? Does the student receive customized individual feedback with explanations? Does the technology recognize recurring mistakes as knowledge gaps? As a teacher, do you receive an analysis of the learning progress and mistakes of each of your students individually? Our Platform We’d be really, really, really grateful if you could take a look at our adaptive math platform and give us feedback. It’s a free one year trial with no strings. We want to make the best product we can, and need your help yo get it just right. 9 Ways To Help Students Learn Through Mistakes; adapted image attribution flickr user vancouverfilmschools The post 9 Ways To Help Students Learn Through Their Mistakes appeared first on TeachThought.

A Call For Homeschool 2.0 by Terry Heick Recently, Emma Thompson made (some) British headlines for deciding to homeschool her daughter. Schoolimprovements.net responded cynically, but not much differently than I’ve heard from other teachers, writing: "I have no comment on this individual case, but I myself increasingly perplexed by the apparently growing gap between the stringent regulations around ‘normal’ schooling - with, for example, term time holidays banned - and the fact that just about any parent can decide not to send their child to school at all and teach them any way they want at home. I understand it will work well for some but are we really happy this is always in the children’s best interest or might they end up suffering for what could in reality be the idealism or naivety of their parents? In other words, is homeschooling typically more for the parents or the children? Your thoughts on this? Please share in the comments or via Twitter." So I did, suggesting that she may misunderstand homeschooling. @terryheick Quite possibly - but I know situations where I find it very hard to believe it is in the best interest of the children — Schools Improvement (@SchoolsImprove) February 10, 2015 Like school, then? Somehow the "it doesn’t scale" and "it’s not for everybody" arguments are smeared all over alternatives to traditional schooling without being applied to school itself. For all of our ranting and raving about their performance, schools are infinitely sympathetic icons-dramatic symbols on our cultural mindscape that can be questioned and criticized endlessly, but (somehow) never replaced. For context, we need to go a little father back, to the piece last week on Wired-The Techies Who Are Hacking Education by Homeschooling Their Kids-that is getting a lot of run on twitter recently. In it, a homeschooling family is followed around the house while they-what’s the verb here?-homeschool? The tech-wielding entrepreneurial dad and the avante garde, life-hacking mom team-up (you have to) to lead the learning of their own three children using a combination of their personalized attention, and the growth of technology. Dad explains, "I’m feeling like something is brewing right now. The cost of starting a company has gone down because there are online tools you can use for free. I can see that happening with school. So much of that stuff is just up for grabs." So self-guided inquiry-based and mobile learning. Adaptive learning apps. MOOCs. Smarter Every Day on YouTube. Blogging. iTunesU. Learning simulations. Dosomething.org. Khan Academy. Google Earth. Learning here becomes less about curriculum and more about possibility. Or pushed further, it’s a matter not of what you put in, but what you leave out. I have three children-a 14 year-old daughter, and two boys ages 9 and 7. I taught 8th grade English-Language Arts while my wife taught ECE. And every day was chaos. We’d see our kids maybe three hours a day. We’d go to baseball practice, finish homework, take baths, do chores, and (maybe) eat dinner together, all while waiting on the weekend, and then suffering the Sunday night blues. My wife and I had created a family only to have someone else lead it by raising our children, teaching them to read, think, and navigate an increasingly connected world. Life was passing us by, and they were growing so fast it haunted me at night when I tucked them in. Yes I’m melodramatic, but I couldn’t shake the anxiety of it all. So we thought we’d give homeschooling a try. My daughter, Madison, went to a "real school" until 6th grade, when we began to design learning experiences for them ourselves. Our middle son, Tyler, went through second grade, while our youngest, Terrell, has never seen the inside of a classroom. One over-simplified-but-still-relevant takeaway? While the data set isn’t very deep here, the impact of formal academia on all three of them is what you’d guess it might be. Madison, who spent the most time in school, needs the most structure-assurance that "she’s doing it right." Terrell just goes, with very little self-awareness of fear. He’s inventive and playful, and never embarrassed by mistakes. Never scared of being wrong (for better or for worse). Madison isn’t exactly the opposite, but she seems, whether by nature or nurture, to constantly look for affirmation and reward. Tyler? Somewhere in the middle, but then again he’s the most docile child you’ve ever seen, with soft blue eyes and a way of accepting the world that I never had. (That’s him laying in rain in the featured image.) When people ask my wife and I about "homeschooling," the language is very dramatic. When did you make "the decision"? When did you "pull them out" of school? Aren’t you scared they’re going to be weird? I don’t know how you do it. I love my children, but I need a break from them.  Or the most telling: How could you do that to them?   There is a lot of implication going on here, but the latter is the most interesting to me. I’ve heard it more than once, often from adults who themselves had been "homeschooled" growing up, but that words tells you as much about their learning experience as does "schooling." Schooled how? Learning what, how, and why? Saying you’ve "seen homeschooling" is like saying you’ve seen salad or computer code or the internet. But more crucially, as a parent how could I not accept the opportunity to lead my children intellectually? I didn’t homeschool as a rejection of public education, but as loving statement of affection and priority. Homeschooling is not a rejection of a school. I am an educator! Why the either/or? How I saw myself as a father-what I thought my children needed on a moment basis, and my belief in myself to be able to provide that for them, or live with the guilt when I couldn’t-would lead to how my children saw themselves as learners. Somehow it’s easier to push that on schools and classroom teachers-that’s "their job," after all. And when the learning doesn’t happen and the curiosity is stunted and the creativity unsure of itself and the literacy fragmented and confused, we can fall back on the hope that someone, somewhere is working on a "solution." And just like that, families become bystanders and passive, and their children-as students rather than learners-take on the same tone. The Wired article editorializes, "Unless every family homeschools their children—a prospect that even homeschooling advocates say is untenable—it will remain an individualized solution to a social need." There’s the "scale" argument again, as if public schools haven’t scaled themselves all the way off the map decades ago. The art of living is an individualized solution to a social need. So is learning. So is a person’s work or craft. And agriculture. And the design of a building. That’s what life is. But to evaluate homeschooling-to know if it "works" or not-we have to know what it’s supposed to do. Same with a school or curriculum or assessment. Which means we have to define homeschooling 2.0, first by saying what it’s probably not for many: reproducing school at home. While short on experts, rules, and policies, a home has agility and "scale" that a school necessarily lacks. This is an extraordinary opportunity if we can define what learning is and should be for students. If you’re trying to create a facsimile of a classroom at the kitchen table, parents and children are going to be miserable. But if you can let go of that? In 2015, it’s breathtaking. Homeschooling has long suffered from the harmful connotation of politics, religion, and social aloofness. This might be thought of as homeschooling 1.0. Homeschooling 2.0, then, is a logical response to locally prevailing technology. Things are possible today that weren’t even ten years ago, which offers new potential in how children learn. Like forward-thinking teachers, schools, and districts, there are some families on a kind of edge seeing what’s possible, and willing to be wrong about their choices. There are deeper issues here, including the nature of knowledge, the role of education, the definition of "home" and "family," and the rights-and accountability-of families and communities. Also missing from this discussion? The idea of service, community interaction, humility, place-based education, project-based learning, the cost of technology, and more. Or, crucially, the justification of a model of learning that seems to tend towards the white, "plugged-in," and affluent. The answer to all of this has to do with the bugger that keeps creeping up-scale. The scale of learning for one child-or in my case, three-suggests new paradigms for the process, content, and forms of learning of learning in 2015. If we’re re-envisioning libraries for a modern society, for example, should we start with the library as it exists and iterate it forward, adding computers and eBook checkout and so on and maybe put a 3D printer at the entrance when you first walk in to give the glow of technology? Or should we think of why libraries came to be in the first place-their function-and rethink them in light of modern technology? A reader and a need-and desire-to read? A student and a need to know? For my family, I made a shift from content to habits and forms. The ultimate goal is wisdom and self-knowledge practiced through inquiry, critical literacy, and learning through play. I am an educator, and so is my wife, and we’ve spent $6000 in the last year making all of this possible. That’s luck and privilege, and that part doesn’t scale. But what can scale is the recentering of my home as a place of affection, curiosity, and literacy. If that can’t "scale," we might need to rethink the relationship between schools and families, and have some frank discussions about whether or not schools have created a vision-and tone-for learning so overtly academic that it no longer serves to communities that need its leadership. Homeschool 2.0? Evolving how we see the relationship between communities and knowledge could do worse than start there. A Call For Homeschool 2.0 The post A Call For Homeschool 2.0 appeared first on TeachThought.

When They Read But Don’t Understand: The Leap From Decoding To Comprehension by Grant Wiggins, Authentic Education How well are we doing in comprehension of text as a nation? You know the answer. We are doing poorly when it comes to genuine comprehension: And look at math vs. reading: And this, from a Christian Science Monitor article on 12th grade NAEP results in reading: In many ways, the 2013 reading scores for 12th-graders were even more discouraging [than the lack of progress in math]. While the average score of 288 was unchanged from 2009 - and two points higher than in 2005, which represented a nadir for the reading score - it was lower than the average of 292 back in 1992.  A full 25 percent of 12th-graders in 2013 scored below basic, compared with 20 percent in 1992, and just 37 percent scored at or above proficient, compared with 40 percent in 1992. Those scoring at the proficient level could answer questions requiring them to recognize the paraphrase of an idea from a historical speech and the interpretation of a paragraph in such a speech. [I added the NAEP chart on 12th grade reading since my focus here is on older students, and the trend is so dismal]. What should we infer from the data? Numerous causes and their implied solutions, as readers know, have been proposed for flat reading scores: poverty, low expectations, inadequate background knowledge, an anti-boy bias in schools (especially in terms of book selection), IQ links to reading ability, computer games, TV, etc. etc. The utterly flat national trend line, over decades, says to me that none of these theories holds up well, no matter how plausible each may seem to its proponents. Perhaps it’s time to explore a more radical but common sense notion: maybe we don’t yet understand reading comprehension and how it develops over time. Maybe we have jumped to solutions before understanding the problems of naïve and superficial comprehension. Maybe we still haven’t specified, in diagnostic detail, what real readers do when they supposedly read books and articles and try to comprehend - regardless of what "good readers" supposedly do. At the very least: it is a good time to question the premise that we understand the problem. The Black Box Reading is the hardest thing in the world to teach and assess because the reading mind is a black box: we cannot see inside the mind to see what people are doing when they read. We can only infer what readers are doing from what they tell us, write us, and show us. But what they tell, write, or show is neither direct nor necessarily valid evidence. (Maybe they read well but write or speak poorly, for example). Self-reporting of mental states is often inaccurate; expert readers may have forgotten how they came to learn to read for understanding; young readers may lack metacognitive ability and language to describe their reading as it unfolds. In later posts I plan to share the surprisingly thin evidence about how readers actually read when they try to comprehend text. For now, I merely ask you to keep an open mind. My Own Trials & Tribulations With Reading I have always been puzzled by the idea of what it means to read because I was a poor reader in school - without realizing it! For a long time I got by. My analytic skills and basic smarts hid the fact, from me as well as my teachers in school, that I could not do what we now call close reading and core comprehension acts, such as summarize an author’s point, state the "moral of the story," or identify the key "moves" in an argument (and pose questions about those moves). There were hints: an English teacher who said I was "too literal" a reader (without telling me how to be otherwise); a teacher who said I "didn’t seem to be thinking" about what I was reading. It wasn’t until much later - in college - that I became more aware of my failures as a reader and more self-conscious of how limited my take on "reading" really was. The "reality therapy" feedback became unavoidable: I was put on probation at the end of my sophomore year. (A sad irony in that I was attending St. John’s College, the so-called Great Books school.) Yet, I knew from seminar discussions and feedback on papers that my performance was weaker than it should have been. But I still didn’t understand exactly why or how. As in most high schools and all colleges, alas, I was not taught to read hard books, I was merely assigned them. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t reading properly until my junior year when I serendipitously spotted a book on a friend’s shelf in his dorm room: How to Read a Book by Adler and Van Doren. Within a few minutes of skimming the first chapters I was bolted intellectually awake: the authors were vividly describing my bad habits as a reader and offering some clear and easy-to-follow tips on how to remedy them when faced with challenging texts. I was helped to realize that when I "read" I merely scanned words passively; I took no steps to converse with the text. Slowly but surely my reading improved by following their advice, the gist of which was to force oneself to ask and answer certain probing questions of the text, in writing, in the margins. To comprehend better is, in part, to force oneself to think more effectively. Vital Hints In The Literature On Literacy Thus, as my wife puts it, when is the problem of incomplete comprehension one of reading and when is it one of thinking? What is well-intentioned but ineffective reading/thinking, and how can one recognize the problem as such? This passage from Kylene Beers really resonated with me when I read it last year as part of my multi-year action research project on this topic: I once thought that if my students could make an inference, any inference, then my teaching woes would be over… The problem with comprehension, it appeared, was that kids couldn’t make an inference. I shared this frustration with Anne [the Principal]…. I stood leaning against her office door, complaining that that the kids she had given me that year could not make an inference. She simply replied: "Well, teach them." "Teach them what?" "Inferencing. Teach them how to make an inference." "You can’t teach someone how to make an inference. It’s inferential. It’s just something you can or can’t do," I said, beginning to mumble. "Tell me you don’t really believe that," she said…. I began to wonder just how I would teach inferencing. It took years for me to get a handle on that one. As a teacher I, too, saw that some of my bright students could not read for meaning, although I often couldn’t figure out their problems. I could only say "Re-read it carefully and take notes" or some other advice. They, like I had, protested that they had "re-read" and "done the readings." Yet, even after re-reading and taking notes they were often unable to draw critical inferences about the text as a whole. What, then, were they doing when "reading"? Oscar’s desire to drop my elective answered the question for at least one student - in a shocking way. When I asked him what his troubles were as a reader, he replied: "I just cannot memorize all the pages you are assigning!" Ouch. He really did believe "reading" was "scanning and memorizing for later recall." But wasn’t that, in its own way, what I had done much of my academic life? He at least worked hard to memorize it all! I hadn’t even done that. Chris Tovani offers a snippet of dialogue that underscores our need to better understand readers trying to understand: "Luke, why don’t you try to get unstuck." "Nothing helps me. Re-reading is a waste of time." "Try another fix-up strategy, then." "What’s a fix-up strategy?…When I was younger I tried sounding out word out but that didn’t really help." "Did you learn to do anything else?" "No, not really." "Does anyone else have a strategy he or she can suggest?" "I don’t do anything," brags Kayla. "You don’t do anything?" I asked. "Nope. I keep reading and hope it makes sense when I’m done." "And what if it doesn’t?" "Then, oh well." I would venture to hypothesize that for many HS students their reading strategy is "Read on, then, oh well." But let’s find out. The "re-reading" strategy is a perfect example of our failure to understand the problem. Why would "re-reading" a passage, by itself, clear up what was confused in the first place? All the re-readers are doing is - re-reading. They aren’t thinking differently about what they are re-reading. As Tovani says, telling someone to "think harder" is useless advice. Yet, "Re-read!" is the same unhelpful advice if we don’t know how to re-read or whether we are re-reading "properly." Too much of the reading-strategy literature amounts to such glib advice. My first foray in writing about some of this was in a blog entry two years ago about the reading strategies. Boy, did I get a ton of hate mail from people who thought I had gone to the dark side and allied myself with the non-progressive camp. I had done no such thing, even if my prose was a bit dramatic. I had mostly raised these questions (and tried to clarify terms). Indeed, a few of the more mainstream and thoughtful writers on literacy have made the very point that I was criticized for, such as Barnhouse & Vinton: As we pondered what was happening with our strategy instruction, we came to several conclusions. The first was the discomfiting realization that while we were grounding our lessons in real literature… we were, in effect, using those books to practice strategies in isolation. As it was, most of the students’ connections stayed on the surface level. This led us to the conclusion that some of the so-called comprehension strategies - especially visualizing, predicting, connecting, and questioning - seemed aimed more at helping students develop the habits of active and engaged readers rather than to specifically help them comprehend more than they might have. We would need, in effect, to find strategies for the strategies to ensure that they were used as meaning-making tools, not as end products. So, let’s go slowly. When you as a teacher of older students tell students to "read" and "re-read" a challenging text, what exactly are you assuming that they should be doing in their heads? What do they assume you are asking them to do when you ask them to read or re-read? And - most importantly - what do you think they will actually do when they get stuck? Is Tovani correct that, regardless of training, adolescent readers will have little or no intelligent approach? (I am not asking what they "should" do but what they will likely do.) Do they use the reading strategies or do they forget all about them or approach them randomly or revert to some other bad habit or naïve approach? The Leap From Decoding To Comprehension As I have long said, we give far too little feedback and too much advice. Beers, for example, has a nice chart in which she describes in general form what non-comprehenders do, but it is very brief and general, e.g. "can read all the words but consistently has difficulty asking questions, creating questions, discussing the text, doesn’t "see" anything in his mind while reading, thinking beyond literal questions…" and the book focuses on advice. I am calling for a far more intense look at what non-comprehenders do. Otherwise feedback and advice are easily too generic. But to give feedback you have to somehow "see" what the reader is doing - which we said above is very hard. It is time, however, to pause in offering non-comprehending readers so much advice and to spend more time in trying to figure out what readers are actually doing in their heads when they supposedly "read." We might then, like good coaches, offer highly specific feedback based upon what was working and what wasn’t in the readers’ attempts; and only offer specific advice about what to do, based on the specific attempt and the feedback. We would thus want to do far more ungraded comprehension and self-reporting quizzes than we now do. In follow-up posts, I plan to review briefly the literature from the past 30 years on what readers do (including look at some of the eye-tracking research) and explain why I believe a core premise behind the teaching of the reading strategies is flawed: just because "good readers" do certain things, doesn’t mean we understand how to improve "weak" readers. The strategies - e.g. visualize, predict, connect, re-read, infer, etc. - may only be correlated, not causal. (And, as I will again argue, some of the so-called strategies simply do not pass muster.) So it should not surprise us that reading scores do not improve much if the strategies are taught and learned. Finally, I will have some reports from teachers who have volunteered to give the previous survey or another like it to their students to see what we can learn from just studying kids trying to understand. If you teach English, try out some of the self-monitoring questions I proposed that you consider, above; and report back to us! In response to some comments and emails: PS: Yes, I actually do understand the Kant passage - after dozens of readings and multiple under-graduate and graduate classes on Kant. I didn’t really understand the passage - even after a dozen or more re-readings! - until I was helped to understand what the point of the Critique of Pure Reason was, and how Kant was arguing with Hume’s view about what we can understand. That is the paradox of reading, to me: you cannot understand the part until you understand the whole and the "great conversation"; but you cannot understand the whole unless you understand the parts through close reading. What, then, reading and English teachers? How do we better help students understand what they do and do not understand? How can they better self-assess their degree of understanding - and use that feedback to better understand? PPS: There are some fabulous suggestions in the comments thus far for how to address the problem of poor comprehension. But note my caution and focus: what unsuccessful readers actually do is what we need to understand better. Then, we’ll be in a far better position to weigh and propose solutions that are valid and personalized. When Readers Don’t Understand; This article first appeared on Grant’s personal blog; Grant can be found on twitter here; adapted image attribution flickr user guillaforysthe; Reading Comprehension: When They Read But Don’t Understand The post When They Read But Don’t Understand appeared first on TeachThought.