Education ∪ Math ∪ Technology
So today I returned a laptop that a student had forgotten at school to a student during our homeroom. Two of his friends were standing nearby and expressed their shock that he would be so careless with his laptop.
Student 1: "How could you be so careless with your laptop? It’s a crucial part of our learning!"
Student 2: "It’s our main tool for school!"
The students obviously recognize the value of the laptops for their education. Why don’t more educators?
I had an idea tonight for a project that would be cool if we could implement it. The basic idea is, we submit complete information about a bunch of schools which are known to work, and then we break those schools down into their component pieces, such as assessment policy or their science curriculum. We then provide an interface so that people can remix these schools.
I think of schools as being driven largely by policy. Yes, individual teachers make a difference but those teachers are generally hired to a school because of a policy about how teachers are hired. By and large the decisions about how schools are run, and how successful they are (with the given population of students they have) are made at the policy level, rather than the day to day action of the teachers. Think of the cumulative action of the teachers as making a difference, but that cumulative action is driven by your assessment policy, your classroom discipline policy, and so on. Even a purely democratic schools, in which every major decision is decided by the democratic process has an over-arching policy, they’ve chosen to be a democratic school.
So imagine we have all of the policies for a bunch of successful schools, and we were able to remix them. We would be able to to pick and choose between the policies (where they are compatible) and develop our own school models. Schools might be able to re-examine their own policies more critically and make some changes to improve their own model. The very nature of what makes an individual school successful would become shared public knowledge.
I’ve been reading about people trying to implement a paperless classroom, and it occurred to me that there are plenty of things you can do to implement this type of classroom, without using a lot of technology. You don’t need a 1 to 1 laptop program at your school to make it a (nearly) paperless classroom.
First buy some whiteboard material from your local carpentry supply store. Cut it up and make pieces about two feet (60 cm) by three feet (90 cm) in size.
Here is an example of a classroom run using these whiteboards.
Having some larger whiteboards on which to share instructions or information is useful. Instead of handing out sheets of paper to students, most of what you will share will go on these whiteboards. I used to write down instructions for a project, or practice questions, or discussion ideas up on a whiteboard before school and when the particular class came in, I would put out the appropriate whiteboard. Doing this will eliminate the worlksheets from your classroom.
Next, find 3 or 4 desk-top computers to place somewhere in the back or side of your classroom, or even better separate them around the classroom so that students can crowd around them when necessary. These are your research stations and the places where students will create permanent digital copies of their work. An organization like Free Geek can help you reduce the cost of purchasing these, or you may even be able to find corporation to make a donation. It is important that at least one of these computers is reasonably decent and has an Internet connection, but the other ones don’t have to be awesome. It is amazing how much utility you can get out of an old computer when it’s running a low memory operating system like Ubuntu.
Having a document camera, or a projector hooked up to the one of the computers in the room would be useful, but not critical. You can see from the picture above that the whiteboards are large enough that when students are sharing their work, they can just hold up the whiteboard and let everyone see it. Alternatively you can treat the sharing of work as a mini-fair where each group takes a turn looking at a few other group’s work.
It would also be a good idea to equip this classroom with at least 1 or 2 digital cameras. These can be useful to take pictures of the work the students have done on the whiteboards. You can designate one of the computers as your media storage computer and upload the pictures to this computer since you will want some record of the student’s work for later.
You will also need some notebooks for the students to record other work, particularly in writing-rich classes. In some subjects you may find that the notebooks don’t see enough use to be needed, but in others they will fill up quickly. This is where most of the paper you will use in your class will be. The notebooks will be the place where individual reflection will take place and can either be shared or not shared, depending on your preference.
Another piece of the puzzle will be a library of books on the back wall, relevant to your subject area. This way students can do “off-line” research. Yes, some of the books will be woefully out of date, but if you have a variety of books, you can help kids understand that they need to examine multiple sources, and not just accept the first thoughts on a subject they find.
Most of the work students will do will happen on the whiteboards and will disappear forever after it has been erased from the boards. Some of it will be saved on the computers as a picture taken of the whiteboard. Some of it will be transcribed to the computers as you and the students decide on what summative assessments you will include.
The type of work students will do will be collaborative. Most of your assessment will be formative as you move around the room to ensure both that the students are on task, but also that they are meeting your shared expectations. Your summative assessments will either be recorded in the notebooks, or on the computers. You can use workstations as a way to differentiate your work, and to ensure that not everyone “needs” the computers at the same time.
The (nearly) paperless classroom starts with the assumption that not every piece of work students produce is worth saving forever. Most of it is just them sharing their thoughts. Think of the notebooks and workbooks your students currently have, and the notes that they take. 99% of that work will never be looked again once it is completed. It is only as small percentage of work that needs to be immortalized on paper.
Change your mindset that the paperless classroom needs a lot of technology. It doesn’t. It needs a transformation of pedagogy from teacher centred and content focused to student centred and a focus on developing skills.
Please share any other ideas you have on implementing the (nearly) paperless classroom.
I tell a lot of stories when I teach, but not generally stories about my life or past stories of students. I use story-telling as a vehicle for explaining concepts that are difficult to understand when abstracted in symbols.
For example, when I talk about sums of arithmetic sequences, I start with the story of the legendary mathematical genius Gauss as a kid.
Supposedly when Gauss was a kid, he was given the task of adding up the numbers from 1 to 100. His teacher expected this task to take a while, but Gauss finished it in seconds. He apparently was the only student to write down the correct response, 5050. What Gauss did was to group the additions from 1 to 100 like so:
1 + 100
2 + 99
3 + 98
…
50 + 51
He noticed that each of these added up to 101, and that there are 50 such pairs. 50 x 101 = 5050, the answer Gauss came up with.
When I share this story with students, they tend to remember the process Gauss went through and they identify with him, not because he’s so smart, but because he bests his teacher which is a story a lot of students would like to believe. They remember the story because our minds are adapted for remembering stories.
Leading students through the more abstract proof of the sum of an arithmetic sequence formula is a lot easier when they understand where it comes from. I find story-telling in mathematics is an easy way to turn an abstract concept into something kids get and in my experience practically everything in mathematics comes from a story.
Want to explain infinite series? Tell the story of Achilles and the Tortoise. Want students to understand distance vs time graphs? Make sure to tell a story as you trace out the graph, particularly one with a lot of action you can pantomine.
Update: Here’s an example of a story being told in video form.
Boat In The River — Question from Dan Meyer on Vimeo.
Multimedia can make telling the story easier, especially if the concept you want to share is complicated. Think of the pictures that you see in children’s books, and ask yourself, how much do they contribute to the telling of the story?
Story-telling is an excellent tool in mathematics education. How could you see this used in your own subject area?
So I was responding to comment on this blog about student retention, and the person used the word "level" and it made me think of "leveling up" which is this process by which your fantasy character becomes more powerful as a result of the experience they gained. This video below describes the process of leveling up in World of Warcraft (an online fantasy role-playing game). I also remember reading about a professor who was planning on giving experience points for assignments rather than grades.
The thought I had here is, grades on assessments are the "experience points" our students gain, and their school grade (K to 12 in the US & Canadian systems) is their "level." Experience points become a measure of how much your fantasy characters have learned over time, and when you have learned enough, your character gets promoted. As your fantasy character gains levels, they gain abilities, much in the same way students gain skills & mastery of content.
I think this simplistic view of how school works is wrong for a couple of reasons. First, many assessment students do, particularly under assessment of learning systems (as opposed to assessment for learning) are not learning activities, so the idea of applying experience points breaks down here. They simply aren’t gaining experience from the activities in a nice smooth linear fashion. The second reason is that what students are capable of doing does not come in nice neat quanta as suggested by the metaphor of levels. Instead students are complex organisms which grow and develop over time. There may be times when they make leaps and bounds, but really their development comes in small incremental changes, rather than suddenly gaining new capabilities.
So if you buy my argument from my previous paragraph, now our concept of traditional grade levels becomes a bit questionable. We treat students like they are capable of more in 8th grade than they were in 7th grade. How many times have you heard yourself saying "now you are in 12th grade, you shouldn’t act like that!" Our current school system makes hardly any allowances for students who are at different points along the learning continuum. Instead we treat students almost exactly like my analogy.
Retaining students, or complaining of social promotion are just symptoms of a larger problem. We need to stop grouping students by their perceived "experience point level" and start grouping them by what they skills they have mastered.
We had a silly ceremony when I was in first grade. It was called "the first grade graduation ceremony." We all stood around and our families all came out and we celebrated our graduation from first grade. We were even given little certificates to hold onto to remind us of the experience. I have no idea if my mom still has mine, but I doubt it.
We stood in line and each name, except one, was called. I still remember the look on my friend’s face when his name wasn’t called. When they should have called his name, he twitched a little, like he was expecting to be called. His face changed and a look I had never seen before on another person’s face came over him. That look on his face told me that he understood what had happened and felt a deep sense of shame he didn’t know how to handle. I didn’t know what it meant then, but later in life, I learned it well (but that’s another story).
When I think of that moment, I have a weird discomfort that follows and I remember thinking at the time, why isn’t he graduating? My friend wasn’t graduating because he’d been retained. He’d been held back another year. He had attempted first grade, and been found wanting.
The fact that I still remember this moment, from nearly 30 years ago so vividly should tell you something. The moments that we think kids will get over and forget about are actually the ones that kids remember most. If it would be a painful memorable experience for an adult, it’s a painful memorable experience for a kid. We can’t absolve ourselves of guilt simply by thinking that we aren’t doing permenant harm to these children. We are.
The research on retention, as I understand it, is quite clear. "[T]he cumulative evidence does not support the use of grade retention as an intervention for academic achievement."
If grade retention is so bad, why are schools still doing it? Doesn’t anyone read education research before they enact these kinds of policies in schools?
Here is an excellent presentation by Ben Levin.
Improvement, Not Innovation, is the Key to Greater Equity from CEA ACE on Vimeo.
Here’s a great quote from his presentation. "How many of you have been involved in a pilot project? Okay almost all of us… How many of those pilot projects are still in operation? Virtually none of them…" In other words, schools have been spending too much time on innovation and not enough time implementing strategies which are known to work.
His observation that we have cycled through many times in education in innovation. Here’s a picture of what I think he means.
According to Ben Levin, we should "take what we know to be effective practices and ensure that these practices are used in every classroom…We could go into school after school after school and look for the practices we know that work, and not see them being used." I’m not sure that I want every classroom be identical, but maybe he is right, there should be more similarity. If something is known to work, and it works in every context it is used, then it should be used in every context, in every classroom.
I like what he has to say, but I’m going to push back a little. Obviously not every single new school program has died, maybe only most of them. However some of them have thrived and expanded and turned into things schools just do. We need a balance between what we know works, and a small number of educators pushing at the boundaries of what we know.
To do this, we need to become better at sharing, and we need to break down the barriers we place between schools. We need to find ways to allow educators to move more freely between schools and thus share their expertise. You can talk all you want about a good practice in education, but these things are complicated, and unless I see it in action, I’m not likely to implement it. We need more sharing of what we already know.
Blogging is like becoming a super-hero. It is a costume you wear and while you are in this costume you can say almost anything and speak your thoughts in ways you would never do while at work. You can choose a pseudonym, design the appearance of your costume, and feel like you have a kind of imperviousness if you choose anonymity. Even normally mild-mannered people can have their ferocious opinions shared and scrutinized.
You are a superhero while you blog because you give a voice to ideas that would otherwise remain trapped in your head, and through the proliferation of ideas will eventually come about the change our society so desperately seeks. In some areas of the world, just having a blog is considered a an act of heroism as the state seeks to control the minds of its citizens. When you blog, you become larger than yourself. You become a symbol of a movement, and a leader. You become a risk-taker and an adventurer.
When you go to work, of course, you shed this costume and become like Clark Kent. While secreting recognizing the inadequacies of the system, you follow orders and act meek to preserve your job and your public identity. You might have some small acts of rebellion, but by and large, you follow orders and lay low. Inside you might be a super-hero, but to everyone else you are merely ordinary. No one blames you for being Clark Kent at work.
There are many of us who have yet to done our costumes and join in sharing our thoughts. We could use more super-heroes! We need a stronger voice in the blogging community. Become a super-hero today, and start a blog. We need your voice.
Our current school system teaches students how to be obedient instead of independent. Almost every time our students show even the slightest deviation from the path schools set, we beat them back into line using our bludgeons made of consequences, grades, and self-esteem. I’ve been thinking about this a lot since reading John Taylor Gatto’s essay, The Six-Lesson School teacher so I’m sure that many of the thoughts below are reflected in his essay. What follows are some sarcastic comments about how we strip children of their independence.
Want to go to the bathroom? Oh, you’ll need a hall-pass for that, and don’t try to go more than three times in a semester because We are keeping track.
Want to speak and share your thoughts? We have a roadblock for that too. First you have to raise your hands and We will let you know when you can speak. You can always tell who learned this lesson especially well by those people who raise their hands when chatting with their friends. We choose where you sit too.
Want to display your individuality in your clothing? Be careful! We’ve got rules about what you can wear. We would hate to let give you some freedom of expression.
Maybe you’d like to use your precious time outside of school for other pursuits instead of school? Oh, no! We have that time locked up with homework and school sanctioned sports. If you do not do what we tell you outside of school, we will be sure to put the pressure on through your parents and through our mechanical grading system.
Want to think outside the box? Perhaps come up with a unique solution to a boring problem? You’ll find your grades suffer for that. Write about what interests you and we may have to suspend you from school, and prevent you from seeing your friends. You must write about what interests us, after all we are the gatekeepers of literature.
Get bored easily in class? They’ve got drugs for that. If what Sir Ken Robinson says about the rise of ADHD as you travel East from Ohio is true, then we are literally drugging our kids into obedience. Take the blue pill and slip back into our Matrix.
Got some self-esteem? We’ve got ways to take that away from you too. We will assign grades to your thoughts, give your peers awards for their obedience, and train you to loathe your independence.
If you have dreams for your future, they will in fact be our dreams and we will shatter them with our standardized tests and our common curriculum. We will take away the parts of school you love and drill you until the other part of school becomes repulsive.
Want to diss your school in your graduation speech? Be careful or they’ll threaten to take away your diploma.
Perhaps you’d like to bring your partner to your prom? That’s only okay if each of you has different pairs of chromosomes, otherwise it is immoral and wrong and we will be sure to remind you of this fact over and over again.
Once you enter post-secondary, we will force you into enormous loans, and then servitude to pay off these loans in some job you didn’t want anyway. You believed us when we said college was the only answer and look where that got you! If you choose a different route than this, we will deride you and embarrass you for your choice in front of your peers in our final secondary school assembly.
Many schools unwittingly play a kind of psychological warfare against students. We work hard to ensure adhere to strict guidelines of conformity and use ladders of consequences to chip away at the self-esteem and independence of our children. We make too many choices for our students because of an economic need with our current factory model of schooling to teach each child for the least amount of money possible. We cannot afford to teach each child individually, or to provide them too many choices. Such models of education are not scalable!
The primary way you can help your students turn into independent and capable thinkers is to give them lots and lots of opportunities to make choices. You do not need to specify exactly what they write about. You can let them choose when to use the bathroom, and what to wear to school. You can give them choices about what they learn and when they learn it. You can turn your school into a democracy.
I just conducted a very unscientific poll. I sent out a link on Twitter only and asked people who happened to be around how many hours they worked. It’s not rigorous. However, in the limited sample group I have of 85 (update actually 132) educators on Twitter, here are the results as a CSV file. If you haven’t responded to the survey, and want to add yourself, please feel free to do so, but please be as honest as you can.
First, I had to discard some outliers. While I do believe that there are educators who work 100+ hours in a week, there are too few of you, and you are skewing my results. One lonely soul even indicated that they work 168 hours per work, or 24/7.
First, we can see that elementary school teachers work about the same as secondary school teachers. Some people responded other, and they worked 57.1 hours per week (One of the people in the "other" category contacted me to let me know he was an administrator so maybe this is true of everyone in the other category?).
Post-secondary school teachers apparently have it easy at only 47.8 hours a week, but only 8 of them responded so obviously this a pretty tiny sample size. I don’t think we can conclude much from their responses without more data.
Here’s another chart where I’ve grouped the data.
The most important message I think we can get from these graphs is that teachers work damn hard. Look at how many educators work more than 40 hours a week! Over 90% of the educators who responded to the survey indicated that they work over 40 hours a week. I still think the 3 people at 100+ hours of work a week are a bit extreme and might be exagerating slightly…
The next time someone complains to you about how long teacher vacations are, ask them to count total hours worked in a year, not weeks. You’ll come out ahead in that argument for sure.
