Future Thinking

As I walked my dogs this morning I was thinking about where we are in Education as we move toward what is hopefully the final chapter in the pandemic. Good news and good data points are driving the stock markets and a feeling of hopefulness for a return to “normal” are a real possibility. I was thinking about in education terms as ‘senioritis’ is setting in. We are in the final sprint, we need to keep wearing our masks, maintaining our distance, but yet we see so many folks who are not adhering to the guidelines. It seems as though daily there are reports of politicians and government officials breaking rules, planning parties from both sides of the aisle while telling their constituents to avoid indoor large gatherings. It feels so much like the seniors planning their parties and letting their guard down. Hopefully, the time before vaccine arrivals will be quick and this dog year (because it feels like 7 in 1!) will be behind us. However, I am wondering what will be the legacy for education once this passes and I was considering a few things.

First, we are all aware of the digital divide, since my earliest days of implementing laptop and 1:2:1 programs, the divide is real. As a computer science educator I have worked through CSTA and other organizations to bring computer science education to women and minorities who are underrepresented in the fields. But didn’t most school districts get devices into the hands of students as they closed? Many districts and schools provided devices to students who couldn’t afford it. I am not naive enough to think that all students got access, those who were migrant or homeless the divide is probably deeper, and everyone should understand the importance of provided internet access and making it affordable or free should be a platform that those politicians should get behind. What is clear though, is that many more students, regardless of their successes have experienced online either synchronous or asynchronous learning as a possibility.

Second, we can’t put the genie back in the bottle even if we may want to. The idea that a portion of education could and maybe should be remote is with us to stay. Institutions that figure this out and make moves to understand how to implement the changes and support them moving forward have the potential to put themselves ahead of the curve.

Third, for all those in the media who are screaming about the deficits in learning for students this year I would argue that these world events have taught many lessons outside the walls of the schools. The lessons might not be part of the original planned curriculum but I would suggest that students have learned a lot about themselves and the world they inhabit this year. They’ve learned valuable life lessons that hopefully will inform their personalities in positive ways and will help us to become a more empathetic society. Regardless, being a few months behind in math, reading, whatever, are lessons that can still be taught when we remember that we were all in this together and will continue to be so in the future. Learning is a lifelong process, and we need to be ready for the seismic shifts that have happened as we learned lessons in resilience and collaboration.

How I Spent My Covid Summer Vacation

National leadership has leaned toward getting kids back into schools because they feel that would be best for families – especially families that need childcare to work. Education as childcare is a strange model that I do not want to focus on. What I think has happened as a result of that pronouncement is that school systems have spent the majority of their time this summer planning and devising ways to get students back into classrooms. I have watched as major districts designed plans of alternating days, weeks, etc, while at the same time promising quality education in either blended or online models. Now this week, announcements are being made here in MD, VA, and DC and the plans that were on the table last week are now off – most large districts have announced no live school until Thanksgiving or after Christmas. That’s probably smarter because now they are moving quickly to try to figure out how to train their staff in online learning. Nothing is clear, indeed, but what I see is that a lot of time. was lost that could have been spent bringing faculty up to speed in terms of their professional practice with online paradigms and instead they were trying to figure out who would be live and who would be virtual.

What I am really proud of is the approach that has been taken thus far at the independent school where I work. While administrators worked to devise plans for a safe return to campus, teachers were encouraged to spend the summer seeking professional development. Although the education community was exhausted from a spring filled with unknowns this made sense because the majority of folks were seeing travel plans canceled or altered. As a result we engaged in a six week course that I led to examine our professional practice and plan for an uncertain future.

While we were expecting to return to campus, we wanted to engage in learning that would enable us to be the best educators we could be. The professional development we designed was geared around the needs and questions that faculty had as a result of their experiences through the spring. We started by examining our online lesson flops and topics that were deemed too difficult for online instruction and were avoided. Over the course of six weeks we examined best practices as determined by research, examined tools, and alternative lesson tasks. We focused on how to get and keep our learners engaged remotely and examined tools to help with differentiation. In addition, we were fortunate to have some advice and support from two university professors, Dr. Maya Israel and Dr. Albert Ritzhaupt, from the University of Florida College of Education Educational Technology program. The collegiality of this learning experience allowed faculty a safe place to ask questions, work together, and share ideas that will inspire our teaching and learning in the coming school year, no matter what it may look like.

Best Practices for Online Teaching & Learning

Best Practices for Online Teaching

Whether we intended to be online teachers or not, many of us are being turned into online educators overnight.  Many experts in this field find that often when teachers start out they have the intent of replicating what they do in their face to face (f2f) classrooms and this is really difficult to do. Keep in mind that a lot of the research literature addresses online learning students who initially were adults seeking career change while balancing roles as workers and caregivers. While this has changed and many school systems now even require an online class or two, jumping to a new style of teaching can be terrifying. Most of the research literature also recommends that we give teachers time to develop units and practice their craft, well, this is a new time and this is a luxury many do not have so I will take a moment or two to try to distill some of the literature. 

When online learning was first introduced, the biggest mistakes made were treating these courses as correspondence courses.  It is important to not post assignments and then leave students to figure things out on their own. Online learning requires high-level executive-function skills that some students may not possess. When students are in a physical f2f classroom they have challenges. Some of these, like time management and motivation can be far worse in an online environment. Try to find ways to meet them where they are. These are extremely challenging times for all of us, and we need to support our students and our colleagues now more than ever. 

Here is a list I have compiled of online best practices. Hopefully they can help some of you.

Foremost on the list is Instructor Presence, listed as Show up to Class (Darby, 2020).  It is super important to be available to your students. You can do this by having office hours, posting information, responding to discussions, giving timely and effective feedback and while you are doing all of this, try to let your personality shine through!

Course alignment is also important. Be sure to make your objectives clear and manageable.  Content that is outside the objectives can be extra credit or optional work. Realizing that many students might not opt to do these things is okay. In these times they might have many other more important things on their minds or having to help with siblings or other chores. In other words, consider what they might be facing and put yourself in their shoes.

It is hard to concentrate in f2f classrooms. It’s even harder online.  Be aware and understanding of this and break your work into manageable chunks.  Middle schoolers in f2f can last about 10-12 minutes. Online it could be even less so keep your instruction and instructional videos short.  Rather than a ten minute video, opt for two five minute ones instead. Chunking will also help to scaffold learning. Be sure to provide examples, they are more important than ever when shifting to a new environment. We should always attempt to scaffold learning in order to help students develop critical thinking skills.  In an online environment you can do this with short videos or shorter lessons and changing the types of interaction. Mix it up by using discussions, chats, and online assessment tools like polls or quizzes. 

It’s also good to provide opportunities that are challenging.  Enhance them with opportunities to continue with their collaborative skills by creating assignments that will allow collaboration via distance with tools like baiboard or padlet.  When working in groups online, it’s a good idea to keep groups small (O’Malley, 2017).

Student engagement will help with student buy-in.  Try to include assignments that are synchronous and asynchronous (online and offline) and in so doing, be sure to use resources that are readily available. Finding ways to engage students in meaningful ways is going to also be key.  Yes, think of yourself as an online entertainer because at the end of the day, you are competing with Netflix, Instagram and TikTok!

Another final thought, you are new at this, and your students know it! Model for them what life-long learning is all about and seek to continually improve your online delivery. It’s okay to make mistakes, recognize them, or don’t, just don’t get complacent and do your best to continue to improve as you go. You know how to teach, don’t let the platform daunt you, meet the challenge and show your students how to roll with what life throws us.

 

Darby, F. (2020). How to Be a Better Online Teacher. Retrieved 16 March 2020, from https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/advice-online-teaching

O’Malley, S. (2017). 7 guidelines for effective teaching online | Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved 16 March 2020,https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2017/07/12/7-guidelines-effective-teaching-online

Salcido, A., & Cole, J. (2020). Best Practices for Teaching Online – Teach Online. Retrieved 16 March 2020, from https://teachonline.asu.edu/2018/09/best-practices-for-teaching-online/

 

Closing doors but opening new doors to continue learning

There are excellent resources that have gone public to help us during these difficult times.

ISTE is helping out with a website that is helping to curate at https://www.learningkeepsgoing.org/ just announced but it has links to digital promise   There are lots of companies that are opening up their tools to teachers for free through the end of the year.  Jolie Boucher has been curating them through twitter here.

Some of my personal favorites for tasks that can be shared online are nearpod, flipgrid, padlet, and kahoot. There is a list of resources at http://www.amazingeducationalresources.com/ many have gone free.

Our friends at the International Schools have put together an Online Learning resources. One of the best documents there is there recommendations 5 tips for making the rapid shift.

The folks at Mouse (a national youth development nonprofit mouse.org) has provided a list of STEM ideas – projects that students can do at home.

Scholastic just added a free site with 4 daily lessons for kids in different grade bands. www.scholastic.com/learnathome

Some advice about heading into virtual school from virtual school educators “focus on connecting with students and having some routine to help kids. Teaching online is tough and it takes a lot of prep. Take the pressure off and don’t plan on doing what you would f2f, adjust expectations, also please be aware students at home might now be babysitting siblings, illnesses etc. so lots of tolerance and forgiveness may be necessary.” My take-away from this is try to also make it a bit fun so the students will want to log in to see what’s happening each day.  I think I am going to post a picture at the start of each class on a whiteboard, and in a chat let them put in funny suggestions. It may or may not have something to do with the day’s lesson.  Here’s one for my first AI virtual lesson.

Coding vs Programming are they the same thing?

Interesting how you can sometimes find yourself feeling older in subtle ways. Yesterday in class my students wanted to make a distinction between coding and programming.  Almost every student felt that the two terms were different.  While code.org has done an amazing job at bringing CS to the forefront of education, politicians, and parents, why do my kids now think these two things are different?  Well when I got to the bottom of it, many of the students identified the block-based tools they were using as coding – that had been programmed by someone else for them to use!  Still, other students thought that if you created a game you were a coder, and if you created software to run things then you were a programmer.  Hmmmm. What’s happened here? How did these become two separate things? The old computer programmer in me is befuddled by this change. But language is a living thing. If I remember the introduction of the words newbie, selfie, and googling into the dictionary, maybe they are correct in making a distinction?

So I don’t often call the mothership for tech support, but when I do…

I recently updated my iPhone.  Since my 6 had become ridiculously slow and unresponsive, it was time to make the switch.  Ok. So it’s all updated, transferred and I’m good to go.  Then the first phone calls came in and the ringtone was disappointing.  Why? because it was the same default one.  All of my ringtones that I had customized over the years had disappeared.

So I waited until I had some time today to play with them.  The first step, find them on the phone. Nope, not there.  Next step, some research to find them in iTunes.  I learned the folder is still there, but it doesn’t show up anywhere inside iTunes.  Next, I dragged the files to the device in iTunes.  It shows them as being there, on the phone, but not in the menu of options when I go to set them. Where are they?  Ok, attempt 6.  Go to Garageband and make a couple of new ones.  Share them to iTunes.  Go to iTunes into tones, they aren’t there. What the heck. This is frustrating.  Several youtube videos and web cult of mac pages later and still no progress.  I’m now in hour 3. Time to call the experts.

The first guy in tech support Rex said yeah, he can help me.  We shared screens. He couldn’t figure out where they were or how to reach them after several steps lots of finder searches.  Time to elevate to tier 2.  Chris assured me he was an expert and it would be easy to do.  Shares the screen again.  Oh, update your garage band. Ok, did that. Hmmm. Still not working. Puts me on hold. Finally comes back and says, yeah, this is weird it’s not working on his machine either.  Takes my number and gives me his contact info and says he needs more time to research and he will call me back in a bit with the answer.  And I am still waiting.

I guess it’s good that I don’t call the experts very often and can usually figure out a lot of stuff through research online.  But when I do call, it’s a doozy.  Moral of the story, if you have an X, your self-created ringtones might be toast.

Learning about Big Data

To take a look at some examples of manipulating data with data visualizations go here  https://www.google.com/publicdata/directory  Sometimes called KDD –  Knowledge Discovery in Databases which is a primary purpose of analyzing big data sets.

2 things to consider Usability VS Useful

 

Thinking about Tweens Online

I have been doing a little digging on this topic to get ready for a parent coffee.  Although the sites are ever-changing my advice is somewhat constant.

• Don’t be afraid to look at your child’s device, in fact let them know you will be looking
• Don’t be afraid to say no. There are some sites that are just inappropriate – little good has come from sites like yik yak – that allow users to be anonymous.  Any time kids can be anonymous they try on different personalities and even the nicest kid can do mean things – because they are trying on a personna that is not them!
• Any sites you do allow your child on be sure to check privacy settings. And then keep rechecking them because many will change them from time to time, it’s part of the game.
• If sites don’t allow accounts for kids under 13, then try to keep your child off of them, and if you can’t be sure to watch the account with them.
• Don’t assume your child knows more about technology than you do.  Lack of fear is not the same as learning and being educated!  Take the time to work together. You have a great opportunity to set ground rules for your teen and BE A PARENT!

Here is an interesting article Reaching Gen Y-Fi about tweens. The punchline is that tweens are a big market and advertisers are looking for them.

What do we need to teach children?

In today’s world of constant access what children need to learn may be changing. While I don’t believe that children’s brains have changed because of technology, what they need to know may now be different.  Does memorization still have as important a place at the table?  Memorization as a skill will always be needed. Is memorization of trivial facts and figures as important as it used to be?

Consider the alphabet.  Absolutely young children need to learn their letters to learn how to read. But do they really need to learn the alphabet in order?  Most immediately jump to the answer that of course, there is no doubt that alphabetical order is as basic as well, your abc’s! But consider this, is it really so important that students know the letters in order?  In teaching computer science we teach sorting and searching.  In a computer language, it is easiest to sort according to the ASCII table.  If you didn’t realize it, the ASCII table is not in alphabetical order.  While the letters on the table are sequential, most are surprised to learn the B comes before a, and all of the numbers come before any letters.  When writing code to do a search you must compare ASCII values, not code to the alphabet.  While understanding ordinality is an important concept, is alphabetizing a thing of the past?  Why do we really need it anymore? When we search we are generally letting a device do it for us. As more records become digital, is there any purpose to knowing the order of the letters anymore?

My FETC’15 highlights:

 

If these are your areas of interest you’ve probably already seen the following but these are the highlights of what was new (somewhat or a new way to think about something old)  to me this year 😉  Overall, there wasn’t a lot new, but the biggest buzz was blended learning, maker spaces, and GBL and gamification

The gaming folks have probably all seen this, but I learned of http://www.kqed.org/assets/pdf/news/MindShift-GuidetoDigitalGamesandLearning.pdf (Links to an external site.) at FETC this week. Also look into the work of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. www.joanganzcooneycenter.org (Links to an external site.) (I had never seen this)

eyewire.org – a game to map the brain..(a student of mine showed me this one he spends hours on it)

uni motionsavvy.com is a deaf translator that looks quite cool on a tablet

newsela.com for kids as well as www.exibi.com (Links to an external site.) look interesting.