Category Archives: Education – general

design thinking, Education - general, Maker Movement

The Green Dragon Classroom

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Planning is important, but imagination is what makes the extraordinary possible.

I’ve quoted that snippet many times, but I had a remarkable opportunity to experience it during my recent trip to Florida for FETC (the Future of Education Technology Conference).

As I was planning for the trip, I was trying to think of a way I might still get in some guitar practice while I was away from home. If I don’t practice a little every day or two, I feel like I start losing some of what little skill I have, and this was going to have me away for a week. I put out a request on Twitter… anyone at/near FETC have a guitar I can use?

Someone replied and tagged another Twitter friend of mine, fellow educator and Maker-enthusiast, Mr. Dennis Dill.

Mr. Dill teaches at the Jewett School of the Arts in Winter Haven, Florida. I don’t have the foggiest idea what his class is called. I didn’t even think to ask. I just know his space is filled with equipment and supplies for students to make a lot of cool things.

Part of his classroom space is set aside for some musical instruments – drums, keyboard, and… …guitars!

I was heading to Florida early before FETC, because I had a couple of “I’m going to be in the area, so this may be the best chance I ever have to…” items on my list. So, what would adding one more hurt? I found the nerve to ask Mr. Dill if I could visit his classroom.

He was more than gracious in allowing me to visit, and I took away a wealth of ideas for the makerspace I work with in Felicity, Ohio!

There were no “assignments” being handed out, just “design challenges.” Some of them would require a pretty significant use of technology. Some would not. Some students worked independently on their chosen challenge. Some worked in groups. Nothing that was aimed at meeting a challenge was off-limits.

As students worked, I just sorta wandered around and observed what they were doing. At one table, a group of students had a special clay and hardware for making custom earrings. I asked where the idea for the project came from, and one student replied, “I saw these on Etsy, but they were pretty expensive. So, I thought, I can probably make them myself.”

First time in my life I ever wished I had pierced ears.

“Well, we got these clips, so we can make keychains, too,” another student offered, to help me avoid squeezing in a jewelry store trip to my Florida travels.

Students were choosing and working on the whole range of different projects. They were learning what they needed to learn in the moment about the software or equipment or devices that would get them further in their challenge.

If a student wanted their “My Word For 2022” image to be poster-sized, that was a great time to learn some new skills in Photoshop. If a student wanted to design a “flying machine” in Minecraft, that was a great time to learn some new blocks and tools.

And, if a student really just wasn’t feelin’ it that day, there were plenty of books and cozy places to sit… and I don’t really see anything wrong with affording students the same grace I sometimes wish I could find for myself.

I still want to know whether the special roll of hydrodip film really wasn’t any better than spray paint, as several of the students strongly contended.

It wasn’t part of any of their challenges for the week, but I did get to work in a few licks with the in-house electric guitar. Big thanks to “G” for adding the percussion for me on the electronic drums!

An old golf cart that was being stripped down to turn it into a flight simulator. A homemade pool table doubling as a group workstation. And a RetroPi video game emulator set into a hand-built arcade game cabinet – which I didn’t see one student touch the entire time I was there. They were too busy doing other things.

“What’s wrong with students today? Why are they so lazy? Why do they always say they’re bored? Why are they just staring at their phones all the time?” I dare say none of those questions have ever been asked in Mr. Dill’s classroom. His is the kind of classroom that provides the sort of experiences for kids that helps them be better students in all of their classes, and will result in people who have the kind of mindset and approach to problem-solving and trying new things that we desperately need for a brighter future.

Before I ever stepped foot in the Orange County Convention Center for the “Future of Education Technology Conference,” I saw what is possible in the present with educational technology.

And it’s pretty freakin’ awesome.

Education - general, Testing

What We Can Fix about Testing

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It wasn’t always so.

There was a time, not so long ago, when students in public K-12’s in the United States didn’t take annual tests in English and math. Ask teachers, administrators, and even a lot of parents what one thing they would get rid of first from schools, and you’ll hear that word a lot. Testing. It’s too high-stakes. It’s too prone to inaccuracies. It takes up too much valuable time. But it’s a fact of life in education – we can’t do anything about it.

Or can we?

A test provides, at best, a single point-in-time snapshot of what an individual is able to do. Honestly, that’s what tests are supposed to do. To that extent, they can be a useful instructional tool. But when an array of such scores begins to be used to draw conclusions about educator efficacy, district efficacy, and acceptable subgroup progress, we have injected them with far more weight than they deserve.

If test scores get too much attention at the state board of education, that’s their shame. If test scores get too much attention in the superintendent’s office, that’s a travesty. But, if test scores are the only thing that we talk about in the classroom when “testing season” comes, we have completely let go of the steering wheel.

Garry Marshall has directed a long list of popular TV sit-coms: “Happy Days,” “Laverne and Shirley,” he even directed 6 episodes of “The Odd Couple.” But he struck gold the day he decided to cast Robin Williams’ guest shot as an alien visitor on “Happy Days” into a new series, “Mork & Mindy”. The show was a vehicle for Mr. Williams to do his thing, wild improv comedy.

In those days, TV shows were shot in front of a live studio audience, with three cameras fixed on the key points of action. Robin Williams, who honed his skills playing in every direction to street corner crowds, would dart about the set, doubling the crews over with laughter and blinding them with their own hysterical tears.

When he was finally able to draw a breath, Marshall would ask the cameraman, “Did you get that?”

“Get what?” came the stoic reply of the camerman.

“THAT!” Marshall would respond, gesturing emphatically at Williams. “That was genius!”

“If he’s such a genius,” replied the expert cameraman, never looking up from his viewfinder, “tell him to hit his mark.”

Garry Marshall could have tried to retrain the octogenarian camera operators to follow Williams’ madcap hijinx (bad idea). He could have reined Williams in and got him to work solely from his X taped on the stage (worse idea). Instead, he came up with an innovation that changed studio-audience recording – the fourth camera. Marshall left the three existing cameras where they were, but brought in a fourth, freely-roaming, camera. And that camera operator’s instructions were simple – “Record everything Robin does.”

Nationally-normed standardized tests are a stationary camera. They record what they’re intended to see, and nothing more. And the camera operator never-mind’s everything else.

If we want students to believe that tests aren’t necessarily an indicator of their hard work – and not at all a measure of their worth as a person – we had better show them. That initiative will not come from the top, outside of the local district. This one is totally under our control. And we don’t do it by continuing to harp about the tests, even when we’re parroting that they’re not that important. (When your kid mentions the newest video game console ten times a day and keeps telling you it isn’t important, what message do you get?)

Every student in your class/grade/school/district can deliver a genius performance at something. If you don’t know what it is for one of your students, find out. Ask their previous teachers, their siblings, their guardians. If they don’t have any of those, just getting to school is a stroke of genius. Our job is to make sure there is a “fourth camera” there to catch those genius performances, for everyone.

Be that kid’s fourth camera.

Education - general

COVID-19 and School Re-opening

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What will “school” look like in the Fall?

This question has been in the minds of administrators, teachers, staff, and students. Will schools be able to go back to the way they were before (and should we?), will we still be operating under “remote learning”, or will we have some combination?

If the current (Ohio) Department of Health recommendations hold until school resumes for the 2020-2021 school year, here are my thoughts on how to best make use of available resources while taking steps to provide a safe environment for all.

— Some of your students will do just fine under “remote learning”. They have the skill, the means, and the support to achieve expected outcomes without setting foot in the building. Let those students stay home and learn with remote feedback and support.

— Take the rest of your students, and put them in 3 or 4 groups. No, don’t “ability group” or “level” them. Mix them up. Let’s say you have 3 groups, and we’ll call them “A”, “B”, and “C”. Bring Group A in for the first week of school. All day, all week. The “core” subject teachers should expose the students to new material, and preview what they will learn for the next two weeks. Arts and other specialized subjects should be a big part of students’ experience. Groups B and C will stay home this week and participate in online instruction. For Week 2, Group B comes to the building and Groups A and C participate in online instruction.

— For a small percentage of your students, uninterrupted daily presence in the building is essential. These students need the most support, and depend on many specialized services they receive at school. These students should be scheduled to be in school every day. Every. Day. Scheduling them for two days a week while scheduling the gifted honors dual-credit senior two days a week sounds “equal”, but it is by no means equitable or fair.

— Allow students to have more than whatever the minimum state requirement is for lunch.

— Forget the seven or eight equal-timed class periods. Divide the day into twenty-minute segments and have a different small group of students moving at those twenty-minute intervals. Some classes may only meet for 40 minutes (two twenty-minute segments). Some may meet for three or four. Just don’t put all of your students in the hallway at the same time. Teachers in “departmentalized” schedules shouldn’t have to be in class with students for more than half of the school day under this system. The rest of their day can be used to provide feedback and assistance to remote learners. Students in self-contained classrooms should still have about half of their day in specialized courses, recess, literacy/library support,

— Most of all, remember that the system is supposed to be there to support the students. The students aren’t there to support our system. We must not try to force our comfortable routines to fit an extraordinary situation, and then complain that the job can’t be done when we find that we can’t do things the way we’ve always done them.

We can do this. We can do things we’ve never been able to do before, if we are willing to make the best use possible of what we have available.

Education - general, Maker Movement, tech tools

Active Learning

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My role as a Technology Integration Specialist with Forward Edge has taken a twist this school year. I am supporting teachers in the Felicity-Franklin Local School District for the third year in a row. Two years ago, I was there two days a week. Last year, I was there three days a week. This year, I will be there every day they have school!

So, here’s the twist: I will still be supporting their implementation of educational technology, K-12. But this year, Felicity-Franklin is implementing a new makerspace, and I have been so fortunate to see it grow from an idea to a reality.

Our first two projects in the Active Learning Center are complete, and they were a great way to get started.

Student green screen video, standing at a crime scene.The Forensic Science high school class researched careers in the field, and created brief informational videos about them. They recorded their videos in front of a green screen, and used OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) to superimpose their videos on backgrounds that matched each topic.

Students build their prototype catapult.Several Agricultural Education classes participated in a Catapult Challenge. In this project, students had to design and build a device that would perform three different tasks.

Design Thinking and Learning-by-Making is built upon exploring questions that do not have a “one right answer”, and students get plenty of opportunity to brainstorm, build, test, refine, as many times as they need.

I heard students say, several times, “Let’s try both ways and see what works better.” “Can we try again?” “What if we…?” I never heard one student speculate about what their grade might be. They weren’t worried about a grade.

It was a little noisy. It looked a little chaotic at times. But, we had zero behavior problems.  Our makerspace is a little under 900 square feet, and our biggest class was 27 students.  It felt a little crowded at the “build space” when four or more teams wanted to use it, but we weren’t stepping all over each other.

Some students had the idea of using their school-issued Chromebooks (or their personal phones!) to research catapult designs to get ideas for where to start or where to improve their designs.  They were a little nervous to let the adults see them doing this.  They’ve grown up to believe that looking up an answer is against the rules.  But, when the question is constructed properly, looking things up is “research”, not “cheating.”

Perhaps my favorite observation came from the class using the green screen.  They were fairly hesitant to get in front of the camera to record their first video.  I had visions of the students “ooh-ing” and “aah-ing” over the technology and the opportunity to do something different!  In reality, everyone wanted to go last.  Eventually, the teacher imposed a list of who would go when, and the students complied. However, when they came back the second day, it was a completely different story.  I posted the videos from their first day in their online course management system, so they had a chance to see them before coming back.  When they returned to the makerspace, they were all ready to have a chance to do their video again.  They saw what they had done, and they saw that it could be watched by everyone else in their class.  Now, they wanted to do it better, and they knew where they needed to make improvements.

Try. Review and reflect. Refine. Try again. That type of approach to learning results in remarkable achievement.

Education - general

Book Creator Ambassador

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I am not one to pile up professional endorsements “just because”.  But when there is an ed tech tool that I have found exceptionally valuable, and that tool conducts a program to recognize people who want to help others get the most out of that tool in helping students, I like to dig into it to see what else I can learn about my favorites.

Book Creator Ambassador badge.

My newest credential comes from one of my longest-running favorites in ed tech: Book Creator.

What started as one of my all-time favorite iPad apps is now a first-ballot hall of fame cross-platform application.  You and your students can become published authors and create your own high-quality multimedia electronic books.  The old excuses and barriers of self-publishing being too hard, too expensive, and too time-consuming are gone.  The world is your audience.

The newest iteration of Book Creator goes beyond the idea of you becoming your own publishing house, to connecting your classroom, your building, and your district in such a way that you can collaborate in ways that were not possible before.  A classroom, building, or district can publish entire libraries of self-created multimedia eBooks!

Book Creator is a great way for students to produce their own content-rich textbooks, create memento/souvenir eBooks of special events, get creative with project portfolios, and capture volumes of evidence of their learning with ease!

I have to thank Jon Smith and Mike Marotta for introducing me to the incredible power of Book Creator back in its early days, and for creating challenging ways to use it to help all (yes, ALL) students.  One of my professional goals this year is to help a group of students publish a book of their own original work, and Book Creator is going to be an important tool in making this happen.  As Rushton Hurley says, “When students know that others will see their work, they want it to be good. When it’s just for the teacher, they want it to be good enough.”  Book Creator helps students produce good work.

Check out bookcreator.com for the free version for Chrome, iPad, or Android – great for an individual teacher wanting to help their whole class become published authors.  Full versions can be a very affordable part of any building or district’s curriculum plan.

Education - general, inclusion, UDL

The Most Significant Barrier

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The most significant barrier that many students with disabilities face in school is not their disability.

In actuality, the most significant barrier that many students with disabilities face in school is a lack of support from the system toward accomplishing greater things than they ever thought possible.

Sometimes, the system (that includes the teachers, the administration, and the family) just doesn’t have a basic belief that the student has a path to accomplish great things.  Sometimes, the belief is there that the student could achieve great things, but there is not adequate support (either in type or quantity) for the student to make it a reality.  Both of these situations perpetuate a longstanding myth that students with disabilities are unable to achieve the same curriculum goals that typical students are expected to reach.

This perspective becomes magnified when students are expected to “qualify” somehow, behaviorally or academically, before being given access to the very technology that could unlock a world of learning for them.

If you have a 1:1 program, but you don’t include the kids in a resource room or other placement besides the typical classroom, I’m sorry, but you don’t really have a 1:1 program.

Chrome logo with accessibility symbolIn my work as an instructional technology coach this school year, I have been supporting Felicity-Franklin Local Schools with rolling out Chromebooks to all students, grades 5-12.  Some of the students have difficulty (for various reasons) using the Chromebook in its typical setup.  Through a variety of accessibility features, students are using their Chromebooks in a variety of ways to accomplish tasks.  Here are some of the most useful for us:

  • Zoom – Native to Chrome OS (and the Chrome browser) is the Zoom feature.  Press [Ctrl] + [=] to zoom in (make things bigger).  Press [Ctrl] + [-] to zoom out (make things smaller).  And when you get lost playing with that, press [Ctrl] + [0] to return the browser to the default zoom. [Pro tip: Use [Cmd] instead of [Ctrl] for Chrome on a Mac.]
  • Speech-to-text in Google Docs – Google Docs has a built-in speech-to-text tool called “Voice Typing” that lets you talk to your word processor instead of typing!  This is a great help for students who struggle with keyboarding speed, and students who struggle with spelling.    In a Google Doc, click “Tools” → “Voice Typing” (or use the keyboard shortcut [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [s]).  A guide to input by dictation and voice commands is available at https://support.google.com/docs/answer/4492226.
  • Text-to-speech with texthelp’s Read&Write – Some students greatly benefit from having on-screen text read aloud as they follow along visually.  Far from being a “crutch” that permits students to consume content without developing decoding skill, text-to-speech supports developing readers by highlighting individual words as it “reads”, giving students a multi-modal experience. Get the Read&Write Chrome extension.
  • Closed Captions in YouTube – Many typical students prefer video to reading, especially for longer passages of material.  For students with hearing loss, video can be a huge barrier.  Make sure the videos you provide for your class have accurate captions, or at least an accurate transcript, available.  YouTube will try to auto-generate captions for a video that does not have them provided, but these can be woefully inaccurate. [Pro tip: In YouTube, click the “More” (three dots) button below the right edge of the video, then click on “Open transcript”.  Click on any line in the transcript, and the video will jump to that timestamp! Great for searching for a particular word or phrase in the video!] 

All of these tools, and many more that are used for more specific circumstances, have one great thing in common: they address learner variability by “adding to” rather than “taking away”.  Strategies like removing access to technology and reducing academic expectations do more harm than good for students who struggle with typical curriculum (even in electronic formats!).

When a student struggles with the technology we are making available to every student, we must remember that the barrier is not in the student, but in the technology.  The first best question we can ask is, “What can we add to this situation to reduce or eliminate the negative effects of this barrier for this student?”

Education - general, Guest Posts

STREAM? Why not STREAMMSSFLPE?

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The following article was originally published by Daniel Mares at https://www.mrmares.com/stream-why-not-streammssflpe/.  It is re-published here with his permission.

Full disclosure. I am a former social studies teacher. I have also taught math and engineering. I dabble in computer science with my students as well.

Textbook with highlighter and glassesI recently was invited to a webinar that was focused on STREAM education. Many are familiar with STEM and STEAM. But STREAM was new to me. The second part of the title of the webinar was “R for reading.” Reading. We have to add reading to acronyms for education. When did reading leave the classroom? Did we start to focus so much on science, technology, engineering, and math that reading was left out of our schools!

I understand the initiative to bring more focus to the science, technology, engineering, and math curriculum. Especially when we are forecasting jobs of the future to be reliant on those skills, along with problem-solving, creativity, collaboration, and communication. Reading should be baked into everything that we are doing in our classroom and our schools. It is fundamental to achieving everything else in our classrooms.

Math Equations on Chalk BoardIf we are going to add reading to our STEM or STEAM initiatives, then why not add music, social studies, foreign language, physical education, and everything else that we teach in our schools? STEAMMSSFLPE. Even with a focus on stem education, reading should not have gone away from our classrooms.

I understand with the A in STEAM, but if we continue to add letters to STEM it will lose its purpose. If we are to really begin to focus on bringing awareness to our STEM skills, we need to ensure that we keep it simple with acronyms. STEM is fine the way it is. STEM does not say, “do away with all other subjects.” STEM is just a focus. We can’t lose sight of the other subjects as we want to have well-rounded students that really can read, write, communicate, create, think critically, and collaborate to be successful in the economy we believe is coming.

Daniel Mares is an Instructional Technology Coach in Coloma, Michigan.   He blogs at http://www.mrmares.com He is on the short list of “people I have never met face to face but would love to sometime.”

Education - general, Five Rules of Design Thinking

“The Chickens**t Club”

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The July 11, 2017, morning Marketplace radio program featured an interview with journalist Jesse Eisinger, promoting his new book “The Chickens**t Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives.” [Amazon link: No affiliation]

I listen to the Marketplace Morning Report because, well, because it happens during NPR’s Morning Edition during my drive to work.  I don’t typically find myself enthralled by the Morning Report content.

This one caught my attention – not because of the content, but because of the story that Mr. Eisinger told about where the NSFW title came from.

Go listen to the Marketplace interview.  (Mr. Eisinger was also the featured guest on the July 11, 2017, episode of NPR’s “Fresh Air”.)

Back in 2002, when former FBI Director James Comey was named US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, he gathered his corps of bright, talented, young attorneys.  He asked them to raise their hand if they had never lost a trial.  Numerous confident hands went up.

“My friends and I have a name for you,” Mr. Comey informed them, “you’re the ‘Chickens**t Club.'”  In blistering fashion, Mr. Comey pointed out that the best measure of their job was not about whether they were always winning, but about whether they were standing up for the right causes.

As educators, we have a parallel experience.

I have never met a good teacher who never had a lesson fall flat on its face.  I have never met a good teacher whose students didn’t misbehave sometimes.  I have never met a good teacher who didn’t have a student who failed an assignment, a quiz, a test.

Why?  Because they were willing to try something beyond what they were already comfortable with, something afield of what they had done every year before, something they didn’t already know would succeed.

Those are the best teachers I ever met.  Those are the best teachers I’ve ever had.  Those are the teachers who are willing to try whatever it takes to help all of their students learn to define and achieve what the highest level of success means for them – not just to pass a test or earn a credit.

Teachers: if everything you do in class works just the way you expect it to, it’s time to resign from The Chickens**t Club.

 

Education - general, tech tools, UDL

Product vs. Process

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Do you know who these two guys are?Norm Abram and Roy Underhill

 

The man on the left is Norm Abram, host of PBS’ “The New Yankee Workshop” and “This Old House“.  Norm is a master carpenter.  Norm also has a penchant for using a wide range of common and exotic power tools to create masterpieces.  It is not unusual to see him use a variety of tools, bits, and jigs in his projects.

The man on the right is Roy Underhill, host of PBS’ “The Woodwright’s Shop“.   Roy is a master housewright.  Roy focuses his efforts on time-tested, traditional woodworking methods.  Roy uses no power tools at all, sticking to hand tools and human-powered machines.

If I offered you a piece of furniture that had been made by one of these two master craftsmen, would you care which one made it before accepting it?

No?

Neither would I.  And that’s the beauty of how technology should work in education.  When “use of technology” is seen as the product of our educational efforts, we get unnecessarily distracted from what the real goal should be.  When “use of technology” is part of the learning process, then we are better able to decide when and where it makes the most sense, to support what we are truly trying to accomplish.

For example, “creating a Google Slides presentation” shouldn’t be the goal.  “Deliver a presentation to convince an audience to fund your project” is a much better goal – and if the student can use Google Slides to support that work, so much the better.

Technology can help us do some things faster.  Technology can help us do some things easier.  Technology can help us do some things better.  But, technology should not be the “end game”.

When you consider infusing technology into your instruction, do it for one of the following reasons: 1) technology makes a task possible that wasn’t possible otherwise, or  2) technology makes the task more engaging and results in a better product.   Anything else is just a distraction from the real end product.

It’s an old axiom in marketing: “When you buy a drill, you don’t really want a drill.  You want a hole.”  A great drill can help you make an exceptional hole, much faster and more accurately than a hand-drill would.  But, a great drill is not the goal.

When you start with a great real-world authentic learning goal, infusing technology to support that goal stands far less chance of being a roadblock to real learning!

 

Ed Tech Coaching, Education - general, UDL

The Opposite of Tech Integration

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“Technology Integration Specialist” is the title on my business card.  I like it.  It speaks directly to what the primary focus of my job is – how to use technology to intentionally increase achievement for all learners and close gaps for historically underserved subgroups.

Explaining what that looks like can be difficult.  It’s as difficult as explaining what “good teaching” really looks like, especially once you get beyond definitions that are all about compliance (“students are quiet”, “desks are in neat rows”, “assigned work is turned in on time”) and get to definitions that actually reflect learning (intellectual, emotional, and behavioral advances made by the students).

Sometimes, we can get a clearer picture of what something is by defining what it isn’t.  So, what would be the opposite of Tech Integration?

How about “Tech Segregation”?

“Tech Segregation” separates the technology from the learning process, or relegates it to its own learning path.  Learning to use technology becomes a separate subject, like English, math, social studies, or science.  Or maybe even more like a foreign language.  And anytime learning in one field helps a student make advances in another field, the effect is a happy accident instead of an intentional outcome.  We are misusing students’ time when students in a Technology class learn to create PowerPoint presentations about topics with no explicit connection to the curriculum, and then type or hand-write a book report for Language Arts.

“Tech Segregation” relegates technology to extension activities, only for students who have already achieved the day’s academic goal.  Or, the technology becomes a reward for compliance – something students get to do after they finish the stuff they don’t want to do.  In that system, students have to find a way to perform without the technology before they can use it.  It’s as senseless as making kids prove they can walk all the way to school before they’re allowed to get on a bus.

“Tech Segregation” makes kids achieve a standard or pre-qualify before they can have access.  Access to technology is seen as inherently motivational for students, but that attribute is used as the carrot on a stick to get kids to do things the old way, instead of transforming the way we teach to take fuller advantage of the way we learn.

“Tech Segregation” preserves the rank-and-sort, label-and-identify system that has resulted in significant gaps for students who don’t fit typical socio-economic and cultural norms.  Kids who are “good at school” get the bells and whistles.  Kids who don’t are told to try harder, while we turn away and suck our teeth at the sad state of their homes and families.

Conversely, Tech Integration acknowledges that quality tools in the hands of practiced learners makes amazing things possible.  When that position is paired with the belief that every student can learn, then it becomes unconscionable to keep those tools out of the hands of the very students who need the most support when it comes to accessing the general curriculum.

End Tech Segregation.