Mastery, Learning Objectives and Blended Learning

At my school this year we have unofficially adopted the motto: "Not all students will learn in the same way or on the same day".  I think this is true and with the recent focus on student success and credit accumulation I think that institutionally we have come to understand this.  However, we have not made any significant changes to support this.  Students still have to be in class for a specified number of days and they still have to learn a specified number of learning objectives.

This means that a student who has difficulties still has to grasp the concepts within a prescribe period of time, even though we are insisting that not everyone learns at the same rate.  The flip side to that coin is that a strong student must still move along at the same pace as the other students who may need more time to grasp the same concepts.  So while we recognize that students learn at different rates, we have made no significant changes to support this.

If we were to make the necessary changes to support this what would they be?  I think that part of it has to be the notion of mastery.  The curriculum is currently divided into strands with both overall and specific learning expectations.  This organization lends itself to the notion of mastery.  To have learned something you need to show more than simply remembering the facts, you need to show that you understand or have 'mastered' the information.  The students need to absorb the information, and then apply levels of higher order thinking.  The next step is to demonstrate their 'mastery'.

So, what does this process look like in a classroom?  We need to remember that we are talking about a digitized classroom with universal access to mobile devices.  I think that learning objectives need to be listed and made evident and clear to the students.  As teachers we need to find ways of getting some of the info (key concepts) to the students.  This can be achieved through video tutorials, podcasts, notes, Keynote or Powerpoint presentations, teacher created websites, Prezis, etc...  

We also need to have students find their own information.  Let's remember that we are trying to get the students to think critically, not only about the information we provide them, but about the mass of information available on the internet.  Our main function as educators should shift from being the 'sage on the stage' to being a guide towards understanding.  As such we need to lead the students towards understanding.  Part of this can be accomplished through Differentiated Instruction.  When given choices students often respond with interest.

The accumulation of credits will proceed at different rates for different students.  Classes will become much more 'fluid' in their makeup.  Students will move from one group to the next as they demonstrate the appropriate levels of mastery.  Much like swimming lessons, once you have demonstrated that you 'know' the required learning objectives you move on to the next, higher level.  

We are already starting to see a similar model in Blended Learning.  This is a class that combines students being in the classroom with students who are online.  This model is starting to be used more widely in my board in order to deal with declining enrolment.  It allows for students to take credits that may not be offered at their school because of low numbers.  It also allows the 'host' school, for the credit, to run the course despite low numbers.  Within the model I am proposing students would be placed according to their 'mastery level' and work with students of a similar level.  This model is not age dependant.  You could potentially have a student in grade 9 working on their grade 11 math by the end of the year, while still completing their grade 9 french.

In my next post I'll explore the role of the teacher and the student.

21st century education: What might it look like?

I feel like things are on the cusp.  We are approaching a critical mass.  Something has to give.

These are some of the thoughts and gut feelings I get when thinking about where I see education in five or ten years.  Attendance is an issue.  Submission of work is an issue.  Student engagement is an issue.  I don't think anyone will argue that our students are changing, or that life outside our schools are changing.  However, not many can deny that we as educators are not changing.

Walk into any class and ask yourself how different it is from 15-20 years ago?  My guess is that it is not very different.  Sure there might be a few more computers in the classroom, most students have their cell phone or iPod touch, there might be SmartBoard or projector, but the structure of the environment is much the same.  The teacher leads the learning, the student assimilate that knowledge and spit out some work that demonstrates they 'know' the 'stuff'.

This educational structure has been in place for a few centuries, since the establishment of public education.  It is a structure that has served our society well.  It can't be denied that such a structure is an immense factor in the high literacy rate, the industrial development and the wealth of our society.  But we must understand what need that educational system served.

With the development of our industrial society, we needed literate individuals who could follow a process and be part of an assembly line.  It was important to know specific, and limited information by heart.  A worker needed to know what was coming down the assembly line and what was needed at the next stop along that line.  Our education system developed to produce people who fit into that model.

We no longer live in an industrial age.  There can be no denying that industry and manufacturing are still a vital part of our economy and our lives, but much of that manufacturing is being automated or being sent to other countries.  Our economy is becoming one that depends on information.  Our society reflects this.  We live with a constant stream of information bombarding us, the new jobs of our economy will be ones that make sense or manipulate or manage all of that information.  Mobile technology is also changing the 'when' and 'where' of those jobs.  Why does something need to be done between the hours of 9am and 5pm anymore?  If we have constant access to information no matter where we are, then hours of operation become more flexible.

If this is the world we live in, then we need to prepare our students for that world.  We need to rethink our model of education.  We need to change.  So what will this change look like?  I don't know, but I can hazard a few guesses.

When working with information the most important skill is to think critically.  Working with information requires higher order thinking.  You need those skills to analyze, synthesize and evaluate the information you are working with.  So those are the skills that our students need to develop.  I have noticed a shift in focus towards this over the past few years.  However, we need more, it needs to be a core element of every class.  We need to move beyond simply asking students to regurgitate information, they need to understand it and make judgements on it.  The internet and the digitization of most of our information has made the need to mentally retain information less important.  In the past it was beneficial to remember as much as you could, it was faster than looking it up in books.  The innumerable databases and Google has made the search for information much faster.  At work if you need some information you can look it up quickly.  Efficiency and effectiveness in the work place are no longer dependant on the retention of information.  Instead it lies in the ability to sift through information and make sound judgements and decisions.

Collaboration is another crucial skill that will be required.  This is perhaps where new technologies will have the largest impact on the shape of our classes.  If students are to collaborate, they get together.  New mobile devices and social media allow them to collaborate without physically meeting.  In a sense it alters the meaning of time and space in an educational setting.  Students can work at their convenience.  While deadlines should not be lessened or not stressed, some students may choose to work in the evenings, or on the long bus ride home.

Students arrive at school and have a good understanding of using social media.  Our task would be to harness that basic understanding and refine it.  Just as they need to be taught how to think, they need to be taught how to work effectively in a group.

My next post will look at the idea of mastery and learning objectives.

Technology in the Classroom - Prezi

I was introduced to Prezi on Monday.  I met with other innovative teachers and we discussed using graphic organizers.  One of my colleagues (Hi Chris) introduced me to this.

I got to playing with it today and came up with this(Click here for link to Prezi).  I think it does a decent job of explaining some of my thoughts on the use of technology in my classes.

Enjoy.

The wiki wave

I find myself riding the wiki wave lately.  I've started using wikis a lot in my classes this semester.  I teach french as a second language and have very small classes, so small in fact that I have to combine three classes into one.  I have a grade 9 Extended French, grade 10 Extended French and grade 11 Core French combination.  The Extended french program starts in grade 5 and has students speaking french for half days until grade 8.  Once they get to high school they have to take 7 credits in French.  As you can guess it's not the largest program.  So I've been forced to combine classes in order to offer them.

That means that I am running two novel studies simultaneously.  The wiki is great, because I've set one up for each novel.  For each chapter the students have to read it and then write two comprehension questions.  Once all of the questions have been posted to the wiki they choose three to answer in the comments section.  This wiki is run through our board's server, which means the students have to logon to access it and this keeps track of who made what changes and comments.  In terms of assessment and evaluation this is very handy.  I can easily scan through, see who was contributed and assess their work accordingly.

In my grade 9 french geography class we are also using a wiki.  Except in this case the wiki is our textbook, and it's the students who are creating the content.  This is the project that is really exciting for me.  This is a different model for teaching.  Instead of the teacher being the sage on the stage, I am their guide.  So far we've talked about higher order thinking and different types of questions.  We've come up with different research strategies and way to get information for the textbook.  Our next step will be to evaluate that info and talk about what should make it into the textbook and what should be left out.  All of this would have been very difficult without the wiki and the iPads.  For this class I have 12 iPads dedicated every day.

The only unfortunate things is that the wiki can't be edited with the iPad.  You can submit comments, but not edit the page.  Luckily I have two desktop computers in my class, so the kids can do their research and prepare their info on the iPads, email it to themselves and then go on the class desktops to edit the wiki.  It's a pain in the butt, but it is what it is.

Mobile Technology: Altering Time and Space???

I know the title seems laden with metaphysical implications, but I think there might be some truth to it, in a manner of speaking.  Let me explain:

We are now in exam week.  Our first semester is coming to an end, students are panicking about exams, and finally handing in much needed assignments.  As I've mentioned in earlier posts, my grade 11 Ancient Civilizations class has been using our school's new iPads to research and prepare a board game and write a research essay.  The iPads are a class set, 24, that for the time being remains in my class.  For almost three weeks my students have used them every day.  It was a good exercise in classroom management for me and self-control for them.  Facebook is such a tantalizing distraction for so many of my students.

To get back to my point about time and space.  I've been thinking and reading a great deal about iPads or any mobile tablet computer and how to best use them.  I've come to a simple conclusion:  Every student should have one.  Fraser Speirs make an excellent case for this in his latest blog post (http://speirs.org/blog/2011/1/21/how-the-ipad-wants-to-be-used.html).  He is a teacher at a private school in Scotland, and has just instituted a 1:1 iPad to student program.  Granted he works at a private school and I work at a public one, but the argument for them is no different.   A mobile device, like the iPad allows students to complete their work on their own schedule.

An excellent example of this happened last weekend.  My history class had been working on their research essays.  They were due on Friday, but I extended the deadline to Monday.  I received an essay from a student on Monday morning at 1:35 am.  That's right I got it in the middle of the night.  The student wasn't coming in to school on Monday but was still able to send in his work.  This gets to the core of my post.  He could do it because he had access to a computer and the internet.  Many of us take this for granted, especially those of us who live in an urban area.  My school provides for students who live in a rural area.  High speed internet is not always an option, and some students can't even get dial-up!  One potential solution to this is to get those students a Wi-Fi+3G iPad, and come to some agreement on the data plan.  This would go a long way in eliminating the digital divide in our area.

Consumers vs. Producers

My wife and I have noticed a trend with our two youngs boys, ages 7 and 4, when compared to us growing up.  On weekend mornings, especially saturday, my wife and I can remember rushing downstairs to watch the great lineup of saturday morning cartoons.  My boys however, rush to the macbooks, iPods and iPad.   They play games, make music (or at least try very hard), put on concerts with the iPod blaring Queen or AC/DC.  All of this while we  are trying to enjoy a quiet morning coffee.  My wife just doesn't understand it.  Having read Don Tapscott's book Grown Up Digital I think I do, at least a little.

In his book he talks about the Net Generation and their much different relationship to media, due in large part to the ubiquitous nature of the internet and technology.  Previous  generations had a much more passive/receptive relationship with the limited media of the day.  We sat on the couch and watch TV, listened to the radio or read what was written in the newspapers/magazines.  Other than the occasional letter to the editor, the mass population had no way of actively participating in the creation of media.  We could only sit passively and receive the media message from on high.

Flash forward to the past decade and the explosion of the Web 2.0 and the masses now have a means by which they can create media.  Think of Youtube, Wikipedia, blogs, podcasts, twitter, social networks, etc...  There has been a monumental shift in the way we interact with the media.  We are no longer passive when it comes to media, we actively create it and share it.  For many this has been a very uncomfortable shift, mistrust and disdain are often symptoms of this discomfort.  Our youth, however, find this new relationship with media to be completely natural, like breathing.  The technology is no longer a barrier to media production, but is often an enabler.  Most video editing software includes a button that allows you to upload to Youtube, or share on Facebook and Twitter.

So the issue with my boys is not that they are spending less time with their media than we did, but spending their time differently.  We would sit and enjoy the show, for my boys they are the show.

This is what I believe to be the fundamental element in the effective use of technology in the classroom. We as teachers need to understand our students' relationship to media, not only as consumers but as producers, and turn that to our advantage instead of fighting against it.  We need to understand that in this we are not necessarily the experts.  This might be frightening for some, and just like in the media industry there will be mistrust and disdain, but the potential for meaningful discussions with our students about the process of learning is the key.  Since we no longer control the creative process that can be used  in learning activities, we can instead focus our efforts towards helping the students evaluate, analyze and synthesize their learning.  That is higher order thinking and that is the 'holy-grail' of education.

iPads in the art class

We received our iPads just before christmas break, so to help teachers familiarize themselves with the iPad we sent many of them home with one.

One of the first teachers to get back to me after the break was our Art teacher (hi Rosie).  I had gotten her the Artstudio app.  Here is what she was able to do with it:

Quite simply, this is fantastic work.  She is not a technogeek, but she found the app easy to use and intuitive.  She especially liked the ability to zoom in quite closely to work on some fine details.

She was able to modify the brush style and pixel sizes.  She could easily modify colours.

But more than anything it wasn't what she could do with it that made her so excited.  It was what she could see her students doing with this.

With the magic of the Undo button, she strongly believes that students will be more confident to try out new techniques and ideas.  On paper if a student makes a mistake it could potentially ruin hours of work.  This tends to make students hesitant to try new things.  However, with this app, all a mistake  costs you is the effort of pressing the undo button.  If anything this might be the biggest benefit from using the iPad in the art room.

She also sees a major saving in materials.  As with any skill, different art techniques require practice.  This app presents them with an excellent means of practicing without using up reams and reams of paper

One more benefit is the ease with which this app allows students to share their work.  As with many apps, students can email their work to themselves, their teachers, family and friends.  It is also very easy to post student work to the school website.  This is a great opportunity for students to showcase their work.

Thanks for reading,

and don't forget to talk nerdy to me:)


Artwork created by Rosemary Gough