McREL uses Google applications in some professional development such as Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works. For instance, students can collaboratively identify and explain the metaphors in Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech using Google Docs. In order to include the latest tools, I will be attending the Google Teacher Academy in Boulder, Colorado this August 5th. You can too. But you have to apply. The Google Teacher Academy is a professional development experience designed to help K-12 educators get the most from innovative technologies. The Academy is an intensive, one-day event where participants get hands-on experience with Google’s free products and other technologies, learn about innovative instructional strategies, and receive resources to share with colleagues. Upon completion, Academy participants become Google Certified Teachers who share what they learn with other K-12 educators in their local region. To apply, go to http://www.google.com/educators/gta.html and follow the directions. Don’t delay, the deadline to apply is July 3rd. I hope to see you there. If you attend, find me and say hello.
McREL
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The Miami Herald reported recently that former superintendent Rudy Crew’s “$100 million investment in Miami-Dade County’s lowest performing public schools failed to boost student achievement, according to the school district’s final report on the program.”
“The School Improvement Zone” focused on eight low-performing high schools and their feeder schools for a total of 39 schools. The effort extended the school day by one hour and the school year by 10 days and required 150 minutes of reading instruction each day. On paper, the Zone effort appears to have focused on the right things, such as improving reading instruction and giving kids and teachers extra time for learning (a la promising schools such as KIPP).
Yet, three years and $100 million later, the district had little to show for its effort. According to a 166-page internal report from the district’s program evaluation office, annual academic growth rates for 8th graders attending Zone schools was actually lower than students in comparison “control” group schools.
So, what exactly happened?
To be fair, some of the Zone schools, especially elementary schools, did improve student achievement, just not markedly over comparison schools. And it’s important to note that schools in the comparison or “control” group weren’t sitting idly by; many were focused on improving reading instruction through the federal Reading First program. In effect, the most significant (and costly) difference between the Zone schools and others in the district was the additional time added to the school day and calendar.
Why didn’t the extra time help?
For starters, some students played hooky. The evaluation report notes “excessive absences” (even more than might be expected for the end of school) among students in Zone schools during the added days. It also notes that some students—especially those who were high achieving, felt like their required 10 extra days of school was punishment for a crime they did not commit.
One might also ask whether 60 minutes a day is really enough extra time to offer struggling students the support they need when other schools, such as K.I.P.P., provide as much as 60 percent more instructional time over traditional public schools (staying open from 7:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on weekdays, every other Saturday morning, and for three additional weeks in the summer).
The anemic results of the Miami Zone schools may offer a cautionary tale for those, like President Obama and Arne Duncan, who have advocated for longer school days and calendars. While more instruction may sound like a good idea, U.S. schools already appear to offer students more instructional time than many other higher-performing nations. Moreover, lengthening the school calendar by half measures—tacking on an extra hour a day and some poorly attended days in the summer—is probably insufficient to provide struggling students the extra support they need to succeed.
To top it off, such changes—or any large-scale change, for that matter—are likely doomed to failure if they do not address school culture. Consider these data from Miami:
- 34 percent of teachers in Zone schools said “staff morale is high” versus 55 percent in control schools
- 43 percent of parents of children in Zone schools think their “school maintains high academic standards” versus 62 percent in control schools
- 56 percent of students in Zone schools said “this school is safe” versus 70 percent in control schools
In the conclusion of their report, evaluators noted that low morale among staff in Zone schools likely contributed to the effort’s “lack of efficacy.” Attempting to reform struggling schools without changing their culture is like trying to lose weight simply by buying a new track suit and joining a new gym; it may be an important first step, but only as effective as the changes in values, beliefs, and behaviors that must accompany it.
I’ve lately become intrigued with the idea of going paperless. I have certainly cut back in paper use over the years, mostly without really trying, as technology made printing less and less necessary. A few things have happened recently, though, that really have me thinking about the possibilities of a paperless office and (eventually) paperless schools.
I was recently working on two large projects that, just a few years ago, would have resulted in my printing reams of paper. One was a technology audit that we had conducted which included interview transcripts from dozens of teachers. My job was to go through and code their responses to look for patterns. On another project, we were conducting a literature review for effective pedagogy. Both of these required me to read hundreds of pages of documents and to annotate them with key findings. Instead of printing them out and grabbing the ol’ highlighter, I found an online resource that allows me to upload documents, highlight and tag key phrases, then sort by tags. I not only saved money and trees, but was actually able to get my work done much more efficiently.
More recently, I was packing my office in preparation for a move to another floor at McREL. As I began cleaning out my file cabinet, I was aghast at some of the documents that I’d saved. A meeting agenda from 2006…countless articles that are now saved on my Delicious site…a to-do list from last November. Most embarrassing for me personally was a folder labeled “Web 2.0.” (How very Web 1.0!) If I had wanted to access most of this material, the first thing I would do is search online or use my bookmarks – I certainly wouldn’t thumb through countless files in my file cabinet!
I think there are several reasons why both schools and businesses should start thinking about the possibility of a paperless (or at least paper-reduced) future:
1. If we don’t force ourselves to rethink how we read, write, and communicate, we are ill prepared to teach and work with a generation that already embraces technology as its primary tool for these tasks. At McREL, we are experimenting with new ways to support our professional development sessions. For example, our Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works workshop no longer has a Participant’s Manual, but instead uses a wiki to provide key points, graphics, and links.
2. Schools currently spend upwards of $20,000 per year on paper & printers, even more on textbooks.
3. Even with recycling efforts, less paper means fewer trees are cut down, fewer trucks are needed to transport trees to a pulp mill, less pollution is spewed into the air (I grew up near a pulp mill…lessening that smell for future generations would be a very kind thing to do), and less gas is needed to transport paper to stores & offices.
So here’s my challenge: throughout the next month, question yourself whenever you start to print something. Ask if you can access or provide the same information using email, wikis, your intranet site, Delicious, or other means. Try having a meeting where bringing a laptop is encouraged. Find other ways to get information across during workshops other than printing out your PowerPoint slides. I’d love to hear what efforts you made and the ideas you came up with for going paperless.
(For more information on this topic, see the Teach Paperless blog at http://teachpaperless.blogspot.com or follow his Tweets @teachpaperless.)
Practice makes perfect – so why are so many middle school students more intent on honing their video game reflexes this summer than their math skills? Research suggests that academic motivation tends to decline in American schools as students reach middle school – a quandary for educators, given the links between intrinsic motivation, practice, and achievement (for a practical take on this subject, see David Brooks’ recent New York Times op-ed, “Genius: The Modern View”). Teaching students to delay gratification is critical to this effort – making the development of self-regulation a hot topic in early education. While educators have struggled to determine whether or not instructional strategies can successfully teach children to internalize intrinsic motivation prior to middle school, evidence suggests that focusing on effort rather than ability (‘you’re working hard’ vs. ‘you’re good at this’) is an especially beneficial practice. Other voices have called for parents and educators to explicitly teach children about the malleability of intelligence and the relationship between practice and achievement.
These are complicated issues. As we are all aware, motivation varies by context, culture, and personal predilection: a student intrinsically motivated to finish a Harry Potter novel may simultaneously rely on extrinsic motivation (conveniently enhanced by threat of a pop quiz) to finish Wuthering Heights. Unfortunately, extrinsic motivators (grades, social pressure) begin to break down in middle school, making the development of internal drive all the more valuable. Think this might be an interesting topic for light summer reading? Richard Nisbett’s new book, Intelligence and How to Get It, offers a thought-provoking discussion of the sources of individual variation in student motivation.
I was thrilled to find this article in my ASCD SmartBrief last week on the importance of setting objectives. As one of the strategies highlighted in Classroom Instruction that Works, it’s often the first strategy we talk about during the workshop, and often one of the most important things a teacher can do to engage and motivate his or her students.
This article in particular focused on helping students to see how their decisions in school impact their future lives and careers. Students often go through the motions of “going to school” without realizing that decisions they are making at age ten, thirteen, sixteen, can hugely impact the options they have available by age eighteen. One question teachers often bemoan is the inevitable, “When are we ever going to use this?” If teachers can help their students to understand that learning to problem-solve, work through difficulties, prioritize, and network with others will greatly impact their adult lives, then teachers can help students move beyond their sometimes naive views of wanting to dismiss specific skills because they may or may not need them. Instead, the experience of learning itself becomes a lifelong skill and can help students to reach their future endeavors.
In a recent post on Suite 101 Barbara Pytel writes about why students drop out. According to a survey of 500 recent drop outs, here are some of the reasons they decided to drop out of school:
• 47% said classes were not interesting
• 43% missed too many days to catch up
• 45% entered high school poorly prepared by their earlier schooling
• 69% said they were not motivated to work hard
• 35% said they were failing
• 32% said they left to get a job
• 25% left to become parents
• 22% left to take care of a relative
• Two-thirds said they would have tried harder if more was expected from them.
Looking at these numbers, educators should ask why. Why did 69% of students feel unmotivated? Why did 47% feel classes were not interesting? Why did two-thirds of students feel not enough was expected of them?
Part of answer might be found by looking inside a typical classroom. McREL has been collecting classroom observation data for over two years. Administrators and others, using McREL’s Power Walkthrough™ software have been in K-12 classrooms from coast to coast, in 27 states, and collected data from over 23,000 3-5 minute visits. What those data indicate might provide some clues to why some students drop out. Here is a picture of the “typical” classroom experience, as indicated by the Power Walkthrough data.
Students walk into a classroom and are seated in rows of desks for whole group instruction for the majority (54%) of their day. The teacher stands in front of the room lecturing for just over 20% of the day. When the teacher isn’t lecturing, students are doing workshops for 16% of their school day. Technology, the world students live in outside of the classroom, is only used by teachers in 22% of all lessons. Students only use technology in the classroom 21% of the time. Students are engaged kinesthetic activities in just 4% of all observations. Just under two-thirds of observations (60%) indicate that instruction is at the lowest two levels of the Blooms Taxonomy. Could this be a reason that two-thirds of dropouts feel not enough is expected of them?
“Yes,” you might say, “but that is high school, not elementary school. Elementary teachers have kids working in small groups and do much more hands-on activities.” Not according to the data. While the overall data indicate 54% of instruction is whole group instruction, the number for primary (K-2) classrooms is 50%. In fact, the data just doesn’t change much at all from primary through high school.
It is time to think about teaching and learning from eyes of the student. Let’s think about designing our classrooms and our instruction for the benefit of the student, rather than the convenience of the adult. As Marc Prensky writes, “Engage Me, Or Enrage Me.”
Excerpted from “A Second Chance at Success” in Northwest Education magazine, by Bracken Reed
On any given day in one of Debbie Watkins’s seventh-grade math classes you might find a student standing under a giant lightbulb, calling a parent, family member, or guardian on an old white telephone attached to the wall. Occasionally, the entire class will turn to watch the student make the call. Other times they barely notice, it’s become so commonplace.
It may sound like a punishment, but it’s actually a unique reward. A student gets to turn the light bulb on when they’ve finally demonstrated mastery of a difficult concept, typically one that has been causing them grief for several weeks. Then they get to call an adult of their choosing to share the good news.
…
These lightbulb moments and celebratory phone calls are indicative of several things at the grade 6–8 Vallivue Middle School, just outside Caldwell, Idaho.