Year: 2010 (page 5 of 20)

I was a minor part of a conversation a few weeks ago with the Couros brothers ( @couros and @acouros ) when I jumped into their conversation about whether a school should allow a variety of Internet ready devices, or if schools should become mono-cultures and try and enforce a single type of device. 

After 2 months of allowing a plethora of student Internet devices and the havoc it has wreaked on our ability to trouble shoot our wireless problems, I am beginning to wish that we had bought the devices for the students. I’d like every student to be using exactly the same hardware right now because it would mean that once we found wifi settings which worked for one student, the settings would work for all students.

One side of the argument is that it is more important to teach students about the Internet and computing itself than to let them become dependent on a single type of device. If all they see is a single device then they won’t know how to use other devices they may encounter later in life. They become experts at trouble shooting that one device, but then never learn about how to trouble shoot other devices. Technology is easy to use when it is working properly, it is when it is not working that you want students to be really comfortable working out solutions to the problems they find.

The other side of the argument is that schools have limited resources and time, and if we spend our time trying to negotiate and troubleshoot a variety of devices, we lose time students could be using learning with those devices. Instead we can use all the same device and all of our time repairing and fixing problems with the devices is reduced because very quickly we will know all of the solutions to the problems we will encounter.

What’s your opinion? Should we be rigid and use one type of device, or should we be flexible and allow any device?

I saw @drtimony tweet suggesting that we, and by this he meant #edchat on Twitter, should start a school. It’s a good idea, certainly among the participants of #edchat we have the expertise to pull it off.

What would I want that school look like? 

First I’d like the assessment in the school to be used to help the students’ learning, rather than on trying to identify the progress of learning for anyone else. Ideally this would mean no grades for the students; nothing numerical being used to measure their learning. Each student would have a portfolio that they would use to guide and keep track of their learning, and could be used to share what they are learning with the wider school community. Grades are demotivating for students. First, they end the learning process. Once an assignment is graded, it is no longer worth improving upon. Second, grades lead naturally to ranking of students, which leads to students self-image being hurt. Nothing is more demoralizing than recognizing that a person of authority thinks you aren’t as worthy as your peers.

Student discipline would run using something like the restitution model where students become able to manage their own behaviour. Conversations about discipline under restitution stop the focus on the student as being a bad person and start with idea that people are always in a state of improving themselves.

The building of the school would include learning spaces and be a place which is comfortable. The schools filled with hallways and classrooms are sterile and cold, and are a reminder of the factory model upon which our current model is built. Instead of students being trapped inside, my perfect school would include a blended model where students could learn from the outside world. We may not even be tied to a single building, as schools like the Think Global School have shown that what matters about a school are not its walls, but the people and experiences they encompass.

No textbooks would be found in this school. The curriculum itself would be at least 50% self-directed by the students with some essentially skills taught along side completely personalized learning. Our emphasis would be on skills, not content. We would want students who can communicate, who can think, and who know how to learn. Technology would be used to support those skills, and students would be connected to other learners from around the world. Discussions would replace lectures and students would be expected to be question-makers rather than question-consumers. 

The educators who worked at this school would be passionate learners along side their students as their role would not be to instruct, but to support. The teachers at this school would also run the school, with each of them having a leadership role in some aspect of the school. They would share the workload associated with schools and act from a student-centred perspective. They would ask "how can we help these students be successful?" and "how can we support our students?" everyday.

What would you like your ideal school to look like?

I posted out a suggestion on Twitter which I want to write about in more detail. The basic idea is, instead of the current model of teacher education that we use now, we should look at an apprenticeship model. Each new teacher would do a year of training in their university with a small amount of classroom observation time, and then in the following year they would apprentice with an experienced teacher in their classroom for at least a year, and then with a different experienced teacher for a following year.

In their two years as an apprentice teacher they would learn how to teach. They would still attend some classes outside of teaching so they could formalize their learning but they would have an invaluable experience learning how to teach from someone who knows the trade. The classroom of students would benefit from the attention of two teachers, one of whom has been recently trained in the most current pedagogy, and other of whom would have years of experience behind them. No classroom would end up with a rookie teacher on their own and suffer the consequences of trying to learn from someone who is struggling to learn how to teach. 

I would also include some assistant teachers in this program to ensure that the busy bureaucratic work of teaching isn’t handed off to the apprentice teacher too often. It would be important for them to have the time to learn how to teach properly, rather than handle the paperwork of the classroom. 

A further benefit of this system would be that every classroom with an apprentice teacher also has someone on staff who can act as a substitute teacher. These substitute teachers would have the benefit of knowing the students, the curriculum and the learning of the students would never have to miss a beat. There would be no more "substitute’s in, let’s party!" days for the students.

You would have to start out such a program small and with a few master teachers as the initial guides. The apprentices would apply for the program with the understanding that their first couple of years of teaching would be paid less. In British Columbia, many teachers have to work for years as substitute teachers without gaining any substantive experience as a full time classroom teacher. Here in BC, they would welcome this change as it would be a marked improvement to the current system.

A definite drawback of this system is that it would likely cost more than the current system although there would be some cost-savings with the reduction of the number of substitute teachers required.  You might be able to regain some of the cost savings back if you recognized that a slightly larger class size could be managed with two (or possibly three) adults in the room since the workload for each teacher would generally be less than if they had their own full-size classroom.

Another way this would offset the cost of the program is that you would spend less time training new teachers since the attrition rate for teaching would be likely be lower. Many teachers who leave the profession cite a lack of support as their reason for quitting teaching. Teachers in the apprenticeship model of learning how to teach would have much more support and more immediate access to resources than our current model.

Does anyone know if this model exists anywhere yet? I’d love to hear from people who have actually spent significant time apprenticing to be a teacher.

Here is a graph of the spending on education in public K to 12 schools in the US compared to the spending on education outside of K to 12 schools from 1950 to 2007. The data is from this site thanks to @jasonflom. Please comment below if you see an error in my math.

So what this graph shows is that there is an incredibly strong relationship between the money spent from all sources on public K to 12 education in the United States and the money spent from all sources on all other education in the US. Since the funding for sources outside of public K to 12 education have very different funding sources we know that this funding situation is not a function of federal or state policy.

In other words, since funding for education has been increasing regardless of the policy behind the funding, it must be that the education just costs more today than it did years ago. Some obvious reasons for this are that the technology in schools has changed over the years and costs more and land costs have risen above the cost of inflation.

Today a teacher came and found me and thanked me. I had helped her class a few times while they were learning how to produce their podcasts for her class. She was having a bad week, but when she listened to the results of the podcasts, she was really pleased and it made her week.

You can listen to her podcasts here. 

http://stratfordmyp.podomatic.com/

Clarence Fisher ( @glassbeed ) had a great quote in an Elluminate session I listened to yesterday.

For our parents that complain about their students learning how to become global citizens and learning digital literacy because of privacy issues, ask them "would you take your child out of math class?"  (summarized)

Such a good point to bring up. It sounds ridiculous to take students out of math class because we see that as a core skill. However, global citizenship & digital literacy are exceptional important skills, ones that I would argue are as important as learning mathematics. Once you turn the conversation about technology into a discussion of the other skills that students learn through the technology you can change the tone of a conversation about privacy. We can teach kids how to be "safe" online and how to manage their own digital footprint more easily if they are establishing their presence through a safe environment.

Here’s a new version of my subscriptions to different blogs through Google Reader in OPML format. Please feel free to download this and edit as you see fit. 99% of these blogs are related either to technology or educational technology and all of them are relevant to teachers. You should be able to import this file into your own feed reader without difficulty.

Download file here

Here is the email I’ve just send to George Abbott, our new education minister in British Columbia. Let’s see if he responds.

Dear Mr. Abbott,

Here’s a presentation I’m giving this Wednesday to the teachers at my school on Connecting your Classroom. After viewing William Eaton‘s presentation last Friday at the CUEBC conference I decided to present on a similar topic to my own staff, using a couple of his ideas (which I’ve referred in the presentation). The idea is that every classroom can be connected in various ways, and I’m showing 5 of the ways we can connect based on the domains of curriculum, community (in this case experts), student work, and the world. Check out my presentation below.