Author: Peter Pappas

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Rigor and Relevance in Amman

I’m writing this post from Amman Jordan, where I’ve been visiting family and seeing the sights. In addition, I took some time for professional contacts to learn more about education in Jordan.

I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to visit the American Community School in Amman. I’d like to thank my hosts – Brian Lahan, School Superintendent and Brien McCall, Curriculum Coordinator.

Behind an impressive security perimeter (it’s the US Embassy “school”) I found ACS to be an engaging pre-K-12 learning community. I began the day by touring the school and classrooms. During the brief walk-throughs, I saw small sections, with students actively engaged in their learning. The student body is very diverse with a sizable Jordanian population. Not surprising, Arabic is taught at all levels of the program.

My visit coincided with an early release day for students and professional development in the afternoon. Brien McCall and I had worked in advance to arrange for me to give a 2-hour presentation on “Rigor and Relevance.” I’ve gotten so hooked on my TurningPoint audience response system, that I brought it to Amman. But I’m glad I did. It was the first time most faculty had seen one in action, and as always, it fostered great discussion. The workshop was an opportunity for me to work with a talented group of teachers in a unique setting. Their evaluations suggest they found it equally rewarding. Here are a few teacher comments:

"I really loved how you synthesized the many best teacher practices that we have tried to initiate at ACS. There are so many things we do, do well, want try to improve on.  Your information is practical and will bring results."

"Today’s workshop reinforces the need for students to create, and think more on their own".

"I am currently using writing prompts in my science class and have systematically worked to give more control of learning over to my students. Your workshop confirms this approach and provided valuable ideas for me to continue in this direction."

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Start Your Digital Scrapbook – I Collect SpamHaiku


Spam Haiku

I’ve found a tool that makes blogging too easy. Tumblr let’s you quickly post thoughts, dialogue, quotes, images and videos. The account is free. Sign up and start posting your content. The engine lacks design and management tools, but that’s a plus. It’s a format designed for short-form posting without the commentary. You don’t have to worry about creating a blog that that takes over your life. If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks.

I started a tumblelog a few weeks ago called SpamHaiku. Each morning I spend a few moments with my spam before I hit delete.  I’ve long admired the pointless subject lines – now with a quick copy / paste – I assemble a “poem.” I pick the morning’s most outlandish spam “author” and give them credit for the post. Here’s a few  of  “my creations.”

Pounds down
Mood up
Punishable footprint
Frown bereft
— Fern Fry

Goldfish sleepily
watch his pounds
disappear.
— Birdsboro Boone

Technology continues to lower the barrier for entry to the new media. The new copy / paste culture fosters a bottom-up takeover of the information flow. Will we upload more than we download?  Will the audience become the show?

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Talking About Rigor, Relevance and Reflection

I’ve been doing follow-up workshops with teachers who attended my Rigor and Relevance training. Our goal is to discuss their implementation of the learning strategies I shared in our first training session. Everyone agrees that rigor, relevance, and student-centered learning are good in theory, but how do we get past the challenges? – lack of time, students who can’t (or won’t) do independent work, overcrowded curriculum, state tests, etc. I’ve developed this "Quick Guide to Rigor, Relevance and Reflection" to assist teachers in evaluating instruction in their classrooms.  Download Quickguide-rigor-relevance-reflection (267 KB pdf)

Our goal is connect students with their learning. To enable them to answer questions like:

  • What am I learning today?
  • Why am I learning it?
  • How can I use this knowledge and these skills to make a difference in my life?
  • How can I work with teachers and other students to improve my learning?

Throughout their lives our students will need to be adaptable, self-directed learners. They will need to be able to reflect and:

  • Judge if this information and these skills are appropriate to their goals.
  • Appraise the merits of different strategies and problem solving approaches.
  • Evaluate their progress as a learner.
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Teaching Innovation in Routine Schools? Part II

On March 7, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates testified before Congress on changes needed in the nation’s schools and immigration laws. When your foundation gives away more than $3 billion, you earn the right to an opinion. He said, “the U.S. cannot maintain its economic leadership unless our work force consists of people who have the knowledge and skills needed to drive innovation.” For more of Bill Gates thinking on this subject see: How to Keep America Competitive Innovation requires both a strong foundation in content knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge in new ways – usually across a variety of disciplines. Thus it requires using all of Bloom’s skills from knowledge through synthesis and evaluation.

Gates envisions a workplace of the future characterized by innovation and change.  Workers will need to be flexible and able to adapt to new situations – self starters capable of working independently and able to readily change teams in an ever evolving work environment. Innovation requires thinking out of the box with the ability to learn from success as well as failure.

That doesn’t sound like the learning environment created by NCLB. Our schools are aiming too low – we force feed the content required for “adequate progress” as measured by standardized state tests. Too little time is left for student-centered, project-based learning that allows students to work at the upper level of Bloom. Innovation requires much trial and error (Bloom’s evaluation). Learning to self-assess your problem solving approach is not a skill fostered in multiple-choice test-prep environment.

NCLB correctly put the focus on student achievement. Our students will need a strong foundation in core concepts. But schools can’t be filled with routine tasks. They need to be fluid environments focused on helping students take responsibility for thinking and problem solving where there sometimes isn’t a right answer.

PS When Microsoft “borrows” the Mac OS “widget” and adds it to their new Vista OS and calls it a “gadget,” does that qualify as innovation?

For my prior post see “Teaching innovation in routine schools?”

Image credit Flickr/s.alt

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Five Reasons Why I Blog

 
why blog

Greg Bell, a fellow jazz-loving friend and blogger recently tagged me to post “Five Reasons Why I Blog” – a meme that circulating around the blog world. Here’s my thoughts and thanks to Greg for making me do this.

1. Blogs compensate for my lack of originality. They allow me to easily synthesize content from different sources and present it in a new context. That why I call my blog Copy / Paste.  As W. Somserset Maugham said, “…Quotation…is a serviceable substitute for wit.” (See, I borrowed again. )

2. Blogs are learning tools. With new technologies we can be creators and consumers of content. It’s time to bring teaching and learning into the 21st century.

3. Blogs connect people. I recently ran a workshop in Portland OR for the Oregon Dept of Education. It was a big group (350) and I wanted to engage their thinking and comments. In addition to using an audience response system, I created a workshop blog. Participants took a survey at the blog in advance to help shape the agenda. Their pre-workshop posts became part of my presentation. (with citation, of course). We held the workshop in a WiFi enabled convention center and attendees read and posted comments during the presentation.

4. Blogs are easy. I’ve had websites at edteck.com and peterpappas.com for nearly 10 years. They’re created with FrontPage (sorry I never learned how to write in html.) Building them was far more work than blogging.

5. Blogs are fluid.  I don’t know CSS, so making a style change at my two other domains requires me to edit every page. Blogs compensate for the thin veneer of understanding I have of technology. I recently made a new header for this blog. One edit – shows up on every page.

Since this meme is set up like a chain letter here’s where I tag other bloggers – I’ve picked some educational bloggers in various stages of their blogging career. Your turn David, Bob, Patrick, Nancy, Julie and Pat

Image credit flickr/Kristina B