Tag: Engagement

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Teachers, Have the Courage to be Less Helpful

I’ve been thinking about the educational implications of passage in Tom Friedman’s recent editorial The Start Up of You. Here Friedman quotes a comment made to him by LinkedIn’s founder, Reid Hoffman.

“The old paradigm of climb up a stable career ladder is dead and gone,” he [Hoffman] said to me. “No career is a sure thing anymore. The uncertain, rapidly changing conditions in which entrepreneurs start companies is what it’s now like for all of us fashioning a career. Therefore you should approach career strategy the same way an entrepreneur approaches starting a business.”

So does that mean we’re supposed to prepare our students to become hi-tech startup entrepreneurs? I don’t think that’s realistic, or wise. But I do think that it should remind us that we need to craft learning environments that ask students to increasingly take responsibility for their learning – products, process and evaluation – and the type of deeper thinking and reflection called for in the Common Core standards.

“I want kids behaving like a journalist, like a scientist… not just studying it, but being like it.” ~ Larry Rosenstock, High Tech High

Unfortunately, most of our students get a steady diet of force-fed information and test taking strategies. We’re giving a generation of kids practice for predictable, routine procedures – and that happens across the “bell curve” from AP test prep to meeting minimal proficiency on NCLB-mandated tests.

If LinkedIn’s Hoffman is correct, it makes you wonder how our students are getting prepared for “uncertain, rapidly changing conditions?” School mission statements claim to foster “life-long learning,” but walk in most classrooms and you’ll see students hard at work on a task that’s been scripted by their teacher. Most likely they’re working to replicate a final product that’s already been prescribed (with rubrics) by their teacher.

If students are going to be productive in a dynamic society and workplace they will need to be agile, fluid learners. Students that are encouraged to explore their own approaches and reflect on their progress. Students who can work collaboratively with their peers to plan, implement and evaluate projects of their own design. As Larry Rosenstock of High Tech High put it, “I want kids behaving like a journalist, like a scientist… not just studying it, but being like it.”

Every summer, teachers get to re-invent themselves – to rethink their instructional approach. Here’s your essential question for the coming school year – “How can I stop scaffolding every task for students, and have the courage to be less helpful?” Does this seem like a crazy idea? Asking student to “figure it out themselves,” when every time you’ve given an assignment, you’ve been bombarded with trivial questions like, “… How long does it have to be? … What’s it supposed to look like?”

I think students have been taught that they work for the teacher and the grade. I’ll bet the most “what it supposed to look like” questions come from the “best” students who have learned that their averages are based on faithfully executing assigned work.

For a more on the benefits of “figuring it out for themselves” see my posts Don’t Teach Them Facts – Let Student Discover Patterns or The Four Negotiables of Student Centered Learning

So be courageous – remember, the same students who seem to be unable to function independently in school are highly motivated by the uncertainty of video game. You can retrain them to “figure it out” at school, as well.

Looking for a few practical ways to start? Here’s four ideas from “Student-Directed Learning Comes of Age: Teachers Adopt Classroom Strategies to Help Students Monitor Their Own Learning” by Dave Saltman in Harvard Education Letter, July/August 2011 [Summary courtesy of The Marshall Memo – a valuable weekly round-up of important ideas and research in K-12 education]

Moving Students Toward Directing Their Own Learning
“An insistent drumbeat of research findings, as well as newly adopted curriculum standards, continues to sound out a message to educators that the work of learning must be shifted from teachers to the ones doing the learning,” says teacher/writer Dave Saltman in this Harvard Education Letter article. “That’s because research and anecdotal evidence suggest that when students manage their own learning, they become more invested in their own academic success.” Saltman describes four approaches that develop self-direction:

Continue reading “Teachers, Have the Courage to be Less Helpful”

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How to Flip Your Classroom – and Get Your Students to Do the Work

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Recently I shared lunch with colleague and friend, Mike Gwaltney. He teaches in a variety of blending settings both in class and online. We got into an interesting discussion about ways to deliver instructional content and learning process both in and outside the classroom. The conversation quickly turned to the notion of “flipping the classroom.” This is the idea that teachers shoot videos of their lessons, then make them available online for students to view at home. Class time is then devoted to problem solving – with the teacher acting as a guide to teams of students. It’s a great approach that flips the delivery of the lesson to homework – it’s like a TiVo time shift that can reshape your classroom. More about flipping here.

Watch this video to see flipping in action – cool graphics courtesy of Camtasia Studio.

Both of us admired teachers (like these in the video) with the time, technology and talent to do video productions – but questioned how many teachers would be able to morph into video producers. Moreover, with the growing catalogue of free online content – we questioned why a teacher would even want to bother to produce their own online material. As Mike quipped – “why would someone video their own Lincoln lecture – when you can watch Gary Wills online?”

Flip the delivery of the lesson to homework – it’s like a TiVo time shift that can reshape your classroom.

Ultimately, we saw flipping the class as a great opportunity to engage our students in taking more responsibility for their learning. Why not let your students curate the video lessons from existing content on the web? As a follow up to our chat, here’s my seven-step how to:

1. Start slow! Pick a single upcoming lesson or unit that you already plan to teach.

2. Recruit a few of your savviest students to do the research to find existing online video material to support the lesson. They should include a text overview defining what the students should be looking for in the video.

3. Also work with the student team to develop an in-class activity that students will do after viewing the video.

4. Post the video lesson to your content manager. Don’t have one? Just use a free Google website – very easy to embed or link to videos there.

5. Then run the video as a pilot lesson for the whole class. Part of their assignment is to decide what they like (and don’t like) about the each component of the lesson. In other words, they assist in the design of rubrics for selection of videos and integration of the video lessons into a classroom activities.

6. Then repeat step 1-3 until you get a good basis for selection of future videos.

7. Repeat 1-6, as needed, until your students have curated a collection of online content to support your classroom. They would also be responsible for better defining what constitutes “high-quality” online content and how that can be best used to support a more student-centered classroom.

Extension: You might even consider adding some pre-assessment for upcoming units – using a formative pre-test or student self-assessment rubric to let students decide which elements of an upcoming unit need video support. Then based on the formative assessment – assign teams of students to curate online content while you work with them in class to design future follow up class activities. If this process works, think of all the class time you would free up. No concerns of running out of time to “cover” the required material. Instead of class time being filled with the pointless transfer of information from teacher to student, you and your students would have the time to apply and explore the content in a more engaging and project-based classroom. Who knows you might gain so much time that you’ll have the chance to discover your inner Scorsese – and go on to produce your own instructional videos?

Image credit: flickr/Nasser Nouri

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PBL Resource Site – How to Plan, Manage and Evaluate

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This week I led a four-hour training session – “Project Based Learning in the STEM Classroom.” Here’s a link to the Google site I used to support my workshop. You’ll find links to a variety of resources to help teachers get started using a PBL approach in their classrooms – handouts, videos, project ideas – plus tips on how to plan, manage, and evaluate PBL. I included some Google forms as collaboration tools. They didn’t get much action, but they had potential for collaboration. (I reset them to no longer accept new data.)

For more on the workshop approach see my post “Solve This Problem, You’ll Learn the Skills Along the Way“

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Solve This Problem, You’ll Learn the Skills Along the Way

Wisconsin STEM Summit I’m in the Wisconsin Dells today to deliver a four-hour training session for CESA 6. It’s entitled “21st Century Skills in Action: Project Based Learning in the STEM Classroom.”  We’ll be using a Turning Point ARS and lots of activities so that participants experience the why, what, and how of PBL in the STEM curriculum.

Students explore their world with an expectation of choice and control that redefines traditional notions of learning and literacy. Educators are discovering that they can motivate students with a PBL approach that engages their students with the opportunity to behave like STEM professionals while solving real-world problems.

I was pleased to read an interesting piece in the NY Times on yesterday’s flight. “Computer Studies Made Cool, on Film and Now on Campus” (6/11/11). While the focus is on the growing popularity of computer science, it make a strong case for the project based approach to learning. 

The new curriculums emphasize the breadth of careers that use computer science, as diverse as finance and linguistics, and the practical results of engineering, like iPhone apps, Pixar films and robots, a world away from the more theory-oriented curriculums of the past.

The old-fashioned way of computer science is, ‘We’re going to teach you a bunch of stuff that is fundamental and will be long-lasting but we won’t tell you how it’s applied,’ ” said Michael Zyda, director of the University of Southern California’s GamePipe Laboratory, a new games program in the computer science major. With the rejuvenated classes, freshman enrollment in computer science at the university grew to 120 last year, from 25 in 2006. …

To hook students, Yale computer science professors are offering freshman seminars with no prerequisites, like one on computer graphics, in which students learn the technical underpinnings of a Pixar movie.
“Historically this department has been very theory-oriented, but in the last few years, we’re broadening the curriculum,” said Julie Dorsey, a professor.

She also started a new major, computing and the arts, which combines computer science with art, theater or music to teach students how to scan and restore paintings or design theater sets.

Professors stress that concentrating on the practical applications of computer science does not mean teaching vocational skills like programming languages, which change rapidly. Instead, it means guiding students to tackle real-world problems and learn skills and theorems along the way.

“Once people are kind of subversively exposed to it, it’s not someone telling you, ‘You should program because you can be an engineer and do this in the future,’ ” said Ms. Fong, the Yale student. “It’s, ‘Solve this problem, build this thing and make this robot go from Point A to Point B,’ and you gain the skill set associated with it.” With other students, she has already founded a Web start-up, the Closer Grocer, which delivers groceries to dorms.

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The Future of Schools – Three Design Scenarios

Richard Elmore and Elizabeth City of Harvard Graduate School of Education wrote a powerful piece in Education Week Using Technology to Move Beyond Schools (May, 16, 2011).

Since it’s behind a subscription paywall, I thought I’d quote it broadly to help spread its powerful message. For my thoughts on the subject please see my post What Happens in Schools When Life Has become an Open-book Test?

“What proportion of the activity called ‘learning’ will be located in the institution called ‘school’?” The availability of relatively cheap technologies offering direct access to knowledge of all types creates opportunities for students to experience a dramatic increase in the choice of what they learn, with whom they choose to learn, and how they choose to learn. How will the institution called “school” survive in this environment, in what form will it survive, and what would schools look like if they chose not just to “survive” but to find a productive place in this new environment?

With rare exceptions, schools currently treat the digital revolution as if it never happened. Computers, more often than not, still sit in dedicated rooms, accessible only with adult supervision.

… When students step out the door of the institution called school today, they step into a learning environment … in which one is free to follow a line of inquiry wherever it takes one, without the direction and control of someone called a teacher… If you were a healthy, self-actualizing young person, in which of these environments would you choose to spend most of your time?

… The more accessible learning becomes through unmediated relationships and broad-based social networks, the less clear it is why schools, and the people who work in them, should have such a large claim on the lives of children and young adults…

Consider three possible school scenarios for the next generation or so.

The first might be called “fighting for survival,” or “turtle gets a laptop.” Schools continue to be organized and run in much the same way as they are today. …Teachers and schools continue to control access to content and learning. In this instance, schools will increasingly become custodial institutions, isolated from the lives of their students and the learning environment beyond their walls.

The second scenario might be called “controlled engagement,” or “frog gets a GPS device.” In this case, schools make some nonincremental leaps in the way they are organized and run. Schools set the learning destinations and map out the best pathways to those destinations. … Teachers are less gatekeepers of knowledge, and more knowledge brokers. … Schools become less places where students go to learn from adults, and more places where adults and students get together to enter a broader learning environment

The third scenario might be called “open access to learning,” or “caterpillar learns to fly.” Here schools cease to play the determining role in what constitutes knowledge and learning. …Schools are on their own, competing with other types of service providers and learning modalities for the interest and loyalty of students and their parents. A family might combine services from two or three different organizations into a learning plan …Schools, as we presently know them, would gradually cease to exist and be replaced by social networks organized around the learning goals of students and their families.

I imagine that many educators will dismiss this commentary as being too far-fetched. Perhaps schools need be reminded of the growing irrelevance of information gatekeepers (record companies, book publishers, newspapers) in the lives of their students.

Image credit flickr