Reflection on 1:1 and our Day with Dr. McLeod

Before my mind slips and I forget all the thoughts that ran through my head on Friday I thought I'd write a little summary of some take aways from our Professional Development day. My mind was certainly stretched and collectively I think the day was incredibly thought provoking. I'm left with a the following thoughts:


Creative Class and Creative Work that Uses Critical Thinking
The opening of part one detailing the changing economic structure brought by globalization was another reminder of how the world our graduates face is fundamentally different than that of the previous generation. The disappearance of tasks that require low skill repetitive work in our American economy is no secret. If the American wage premium is to stay this will be tied primarily to the growth of jobs in the creative / critical thinking section of the economy. Trades and local based skill jobs will always be in demand as well but a large sector of jobs providing a middle class existence for generations are disappearing. The question then becomes how as schools do we prepare our students for the new landscape. I think we do this in primarily three ways: 1. Information and Digital Literacy 2. Fostering of critical thinking / problem solving skills through authentic assessment and 3. Driving home that in an ever changing world the changeless values and virtues of our Faith become even more relevant and guiding. Accomplishing these objectives is where our work and energy should rest.

Breadth vs. Depth in the Digital Age
This issue came up in all three of the break out sessions in the afternoon. There was a general sense that the value of collaborative projects with real world applications is understood but how to implement these structures without eating up large amounts of class time. The concern seems to be coverage would suffer. This risk seemed to resonate with a number of staff members. I'd like to provide my own humble opinion on this issue I could be wrong I could be right. I've enjoyed being back in the classroom this spring to test some of this out. In terms of project based learning the success is in the set up. If we assign 24 individual students 24 individual projects we''re going to burn a tremendous amount of class time witnessing demonstrations of learning. What is we grouped the students into groups of 4-5 students and when they present they have five minutes each. I'd argue some times a series of smaller projects may be better than a two to three huge ones. I've tried to tinker with this in personal finance and its too early to say whether it is successful or not. Here's a link to weekly mini projects that students embed their presentations right to the wiki page. Keep in mind it's early. These will get better as time progresses. BTW these students are juniors and seniors who haven't had our tech app course. They figured out how to post to a wiki and collaborate with google docs in under 24 hours. If you dont' know how to do these tasks don't worry they do and if they don't they'll look up on youtube how to do it. Nothing to turn in - no thumb drives to try to load strange versions of powerpoint on to. I'm still fidgeting with the rubric for the projects and the reflection rubric that follows each session.

The other concept that came out of yesterday's session is the whole idea of what could be termed the "homework-class time flip". In secondary schools in general we use the class time to introduce the material and assign the problems or thinking activities for homework. What if we flipped it? Make the homework to listen to a world class lecture from academic earth and spend the class time moderating the discussion and using your expert knowledge to solve problems. Radical maybe but if the world of Web 2.0 puts world class resources a click away and someone else has a rockin presentation on a topic in your course sacrificing a little pride might go a long way.

Control and Risk
A fundamental shift in effective 1:1 instruction is turning over more ownership for the learning to the students. Giving some freedom. Some 1:1 schools report that when the rubrics are too structured and too defined the creativity is crushed and the project / paper / assignment fails to engage. Engagement should lead to student empowerment not an excuse to let the children do whatever they want. There is still base knowledge that needs to be accumulated. Before you can exercise critical thinking skills you need to have some knowledge to think critically about. That being said we need though to take a hard look at our own assessments. Do we fit the typical high school mold where 85% of what we ask students to do on assessments is rote recall? For the information age that ratio certainly has to change.

Good teachers are good thieves and it's always been that way
You don't have to invent the wheel you just need to steel it. The world of Google reader and creating your own Personal Learning Network (PLN) to see what other leading educators are doing in their classrooms is a profound tool. On Friday there was a lot of willingness to do these things but a sense of - show me how. Creating your own PLN and seeing from other content specific instructors is more valuable than any course or conference. The PD focus in the building will soon focus on doing just that.

From the Students Perspective
Our students are in for a change. Let's be hones a good number are fairly comfortable being passive learners. The play the game well and enjoy it. Change is difficult for everyone but shifting to pedagogies that move away from sit and get, worksheet, factual recall, scantron model of instruction will only serve them better in the long run. To ignore this fact when we've been empowered with a better picture of what our students will need to do is not only a professional error but a moral one as well.


Below is the video Did You Know 4.0 that Dr. McLeod shared with us on January 15.

Are We Really Losing the Global Education Game

We often hear concern within our media that the U.S. as a nation is losing its educational edge. The pundits fear that we will cease to be competitive and our mighty economy will stumble. Are our college graduates all doomed to live in their parents basements until the ripe age of 40 or are the pundits full of crap? After all when is the last time you heard a business argue that they are moving their factory to Mexico because of the great public education system. As Catholic educators should it concern us that the talk of globalization is often framed in the context of "competition" rather and the context of increased "cooperation". Which framework is more helpful in solving what are now global issues? As members of the first international organization (the Church) where is our voice in the growing debate?

ASCD recently published a book by Michigan State professor Yong Zhao titled "Catching Up or Leading the Way". The book moves beyond international tests (TIMSS and PISA) or achievement and looks at the outcomes and reform efforts in each country. Having been raised in China and educated in both the United States and China Zhao's perspective is definitely worth a look. Zhao points out that China is racing to reform their educational system to be more like the United States while we are (at least in terms of NCLB and the recent work of the Department of Education) reforming our system to be more like the traditional Chinese system. In general the traditional system in China contains an emphasis on drill and kill activities and rote memorization. Culturally the college entrance exam in China is the ticket to social mobility with the benefits of citizenship often only applied to those who hold college degrees. This myopic focus on one test comes to shape the entire culture. Saturdays are no longer reserved for family and activities but rather math camps and grammar rodeos fill the weekends. The outcome is as predicted: high test scores but low ability. Recently Premier Wen called a national conference lamenting the Chinese system's inability to produce creative thinkers. The majority of patents in the world in the area of invention and new technology are still awarded disproportionately to Americans. This does not bode well for China who longs to become more than just the world's factory and inexpensive labor pool.

American education certainly celebrates the wide spectrum of human ability. Ask any high school principal what their evenings are filled with? It's not grammar rodeos and math camps but rather the wide-array of co-curricular activities that are part of the American high school experience. We know football, basketball, music and band can often steal the show and perhaps garner too much attention. Look at your football budget compared to your science department budget. Zhao argues this balance allows on one end a truly American focus on the importance of the individual but also argues the confidence achieved in one area flows into others. This courage to do your best and to push the envelope is what often defines America and it has served us well.

So China is racing to become more like the West in terms of education while our national reform efforts seem to sap the joy out of any school. Teacher-proof scripted lessons and weeks of preparing for the annual graphite dance on the bubble sheets may raise our TIMSS score but at what long term cost?

Below are three links that are worth a look. One is Zhao delivering a summary of his work. The other is a link on how Asian students are flocking to Liberal Arts schools in the U.S. in pursuit of learning critical thinking and problem solving skills. The third is a slide share presentation that summarizes the book.

Link to Zhao's presentation

Link to Article on Asian students and Liberal Arts Education

Link to slide share summary of the book.

Catchingup

View more presentations from charlie roy.

I'm not one to be content with average performance and I don't mean to push off accountability efforts with this post. But until we frame school reform around an agreement about what knowledge and skills our graduates really need our efforts will be empty. I'd argue producing young men and women who think critically, live humanely, lead effectively, and can operate in a paradigm of global cooperation (not competition) would be an excellent start. A thorough grounding in Catholic moral and social teaching would be a nice base as well.

Teaching the Lower Track

For years our school has split our curriculum into three different tracks. We've called these tracks by various names and have adjusted the terminology from time to time. Currently we have three tracks: modified, regular, and honors. Students are placed into these tracks through scores on the placement / entrance exam. As of late I've begun to worry about the students in the low track.

Does tracking beyond honors and regular actually increase student learning? I see two sides to the situation. We are about to embark on a massive curriculum revamp as part of a switch to a trimester and 1:1 computing model. The debate around modified courses is about to began.

To give the context we track in four areas: math, science, social studies, and english. On one hand the observation is made that our staff at the modified level is not specifically trained to teach with different methods for students of lower academic ability. In a school of 850 each class has about 20 students tracked into the modified lane. A large percentage of these students have IEPs for various reasons but many do not. These students spend the entire day together moving from class to class with the exception of a few electives. Concern has been raised that by grouping our lower scoring students together for four years they continually reinforce to each other low expectations. Some argue that if we placed these students into regular classes they could manage to make it through if teachers were willing to differentiate their instruction to address the learning needs of these students. This group believes students would be better served by being placed in the regular lane.

On the other hand a number of our staff are opposed to eliminating the modified track with the concern that by placing these students into the regular lain the curriculum would be watered down. That teachers would be forced to teach to the needs of the lowest students. This group believes adamantly that eliminating tracking at this level would have a profound negative impact on the school as a whole.

My personal feelings are mixed. I'm curious as to our students thoughts. As soon as school kicks back up in the fall I plan to collect some student opinions on the matter. I can see some merit to the views of both camps. I'm curious as to how other Catholic high schools address these issue. Perhaps we are in the minority by tracking perhaps were not. Maybe it would be better to place these students in regular classes but assign them to a special study hall and delay the foreign language elective for a couple of years. I'm sure a number of schools have addressed these issues and have come up with a solution.

Some make the argument that Freshmen and Sophomore year should be untracked and admittance to the AP / Honors lane be determined only by academic performance during the Freshmen and Sophomore year.

Please take the survey link here and share your practices and ideas. Link Here

Reflecting on Year One of Technology Integration

During the past school year we implemented a plan to give all of our instructors Apple Macbooks. We also greatly increased the strength and bandwidth of our wireless network. Our newly formed director of instructional technology took on the challenging task of teaching and implementing technology goals for the 2008-2009 school year. Below I reflect on what worked, what didn't, and what we learned in the process. Our hope is others can learn from our efforts or give us some great guidance as we move forward. This post is inspired by Scott McLeod's latest post on urging school leaders to take seriously their obligations to advance technology integration through Leadership Day 2009.

1. Upgrading the wireless: Well it worked and it worked well. We went from a network that often slugged around at paces so slow checking email was a chore. The upgrade for the building all told cost around $30,000 for a high school of 800. I'd tell you are square footage but I don't know it. What we learned: design with the ability to add access points to handle 1:1 depth. Having a great network guy and team player helped enormously. After all its always about the people in the end.

2. To filter or not filter? Once the network was up and blazing what to do about filtering. We take a rather open approach at PND and aren't concerned with blocking social network sites, youtube and the like. After all why block what can be used for educational purposes. The "fear" card is too often overplayed and shouldn't be. Live a little. Of course we block the porn and other soul ruining sites, gambling etc. What we learned: blocking educational tools is a waste of time and more importantly creative talent. We encourage teachers to use facebook for their class nor personal communication with students. Here are some examples. Link to art page, school facebook account.

3. Choosing appropriate goals: Obviously giving teachers a laptop comes with the expectation that they will be used. What we often find is fear can get in the way. We also know that the worst way to do technology development with staff is to make them all sit in a room or lab at the same time. The problem is everyone is at a different level. Some teachers can easily create websites, blogs, and use social networking. Others struggle to create a powerpoint. With this in mind we created the position of Director of Instructional Technology to work individually with teachers throughout the year on their two identified goals. Teachers were given a number of options. Overall I would say this worked well. Not very well for some faults on my end. What we learned: I presumed all the staff would be pretty much a self starter in making their appointments and times. Those 5% of the wayward souls often need some more direct over sight. It will be provided next year. A year end survey of staff helped account for progress. I also made the mistake of assigning our Director of Instructional Technology to teaching too many sections not leaving enough time to work with the teachers. A great wiki was started about tech shortcuts and all and building PLNs with a number of staff was incredibly valuable. Once again it is about the people and our director did a great job in a challenging and new role.

This coming school year we are gearing up to prepare our staff for teaching and working in a 1:1 environment. Much work must be done between now and then but we are looking forward to the whole process.