Okay, so I’m reading my news aggregator and come across this headline. I’m thinking… Are they talking about the Blackboard software or an actual blackboard. I mean, I haven’t seen one of those in a while. They’ve been green and not we simply use white/wipeboard with markers. But an actual blackboard?

Anyways, so I’m reading this article (which on the NY Times) and here are the highlights:

“The physics department has replaced the traditional large introductory lecture with smaller classes that emphasize hands-on, interactive, collaborative learning.”

“Already, attendance is up and the failure rate has dropped by more than 50 percent.”

“In these institutions, physicists have been pioneering teaching methods drawn from research showing that most students learn fundamental concepts more successfully, and are better able to apply them, through interactive, collaborative, student-centered learning.” Oh, DUH!

‘“Just as you can’t become a marathon runner by watching marathons on TV,” Professor Mazur said, “likewise for science, you have to go through the thought processes of doing science and not just watch your instructor do it.”’

“In an article in the education journal Change last year, Dr. Wieman noted that the human brain “can hold a maximum of about seven different items in its short-term working memory and can process no more than about four ideas at once.”” Wonder how many things a freshman is given during a major-auditorium class?

“The new approach at M.I.T. is known by its acronym, TEAL, for Technology Enhanced Active Learning.

A $10 million donation from the late Alex d’Arbeloff, an M.I.T. alumnus, co-founder of the high-tech company Teradyne, and former M.I.T. corporation chairman, made the switch to TEAL possible. The two state-of-the-art TEAL classrooms alone cost $2.5 million, Professor Belcher said.” GASP! There goes the reality that this will fit other educational institutions.

“Younger professors tend to be more enthusiastic about TEAL than veterans who have been perfecting their lectures for decades.” RIIIIGHT. “Perfecting“. So that’s the word I should be using when I see a teacher teach the same thing the same way year after year.

Anyways, here I was getting all excited to see that our students might grow up to see a better education standard only to find out that it costs an arm and a leg and it’ll only service a far few number of students vs the traditional way. Unless the educational system can get a bailout like the auto industry and the banking industry, there’s no way this wil be adopted across the US.  Too bad. The research is there to prove that what MIT is doing works. And that gives me all the more fuel to homeschool my children at home.

Of everything you learned, what do you think will have the biggest impact on student learning?

The process as a whole is extremely beneficial. Learning how to put together a unit of this size and refining it until it’s doable is something all teachers should go through. It’ll help give them the support they need to move away from traditional teaching to a more project-based approach that allows students the freedom and time to move deeper into the curriculum as opposed to what the teacher dictates.

While it was difficult for me personally to grasp Unit questions, the importatnce of curriculum framing questions can’t be denied. It gives students the ability to hang their hat so to speak; why am I learning this and how does it apply to me?

As a former SPED teacher, I appreciated the time spent investigating how accomodate and scaffold the lesson for students with special needs, our ELL/ESl students and our gifted/talented students. Too often teachers will complain about their low students but simply ignore their high. They are content to continue giving those students A’s without truly challenging them. And with time, some/many of those students become challenging themselves.

Key points to address ahead of time to ensure students are in the loop:

Communicating about the project:
Project introduction - I’d like to pose this to them either via student sample or using some video clips of future forms of travel; something to get the juices flowing.
Expectation, key tasks and responsibilities - I’ll be posting these on my teacher page for parents and students to access outside of the classroom along with showing them on the big screen in the classroom.

Timing & Transitions
School schedule - I’ll need to double-check that the days/weeks I’m planning this unit don’t conflict with any other alredy scheduled events that will interupt or conflict with this unit.

Collaboration
Group Size - Based on how many laptops and items available, I prefer groups of 3 but will use 4 if I have to; it’s not my ideal choice.
Types of Groups - I prefer grouping based on abilities (high, med, low) as opposed to creating groups of all high ranging to all lows. While it makes it easier, it’s not ideal for all students.
Managing and monitoring groups

Materials/Equipment/Technology/Outside Resources/Facilities
File management - I think I’ll try using pbwiki’s new v2.0 features where students can have their own folders and pages. I think I’ll create folders for each group, givng only those students in that group access to the folder to view/edit so that I don’t have to worry about mistakes from other students deleting work
technology management - I need to double-check that I can get into the lab, or library or check out the laptop cart on the days I plan for research and for final presenation/product creation.

From the Intel Course:

I joke that I don’t differentiate my instruction and that I don’t believe in it. I joke that mu-mu teaching works for all. But I’m really joking. What scares me is when I hear a teacher talking to a parent about their child’s progress, “I’m not sure what’s wrong. I teach <insert name here> just like everyone else. And most of them are getting A’s and B’s.”. That one just floors me.

Even as a trainer with a 1:1 computer:student ratio, there’s always room to differentiate the instruction. It just needs to be planned for and given time for. If a teacher doesn’t make time to monitor and adjust their instruction based on data collected during the unit/lesson/activity, then I doubt they’re making time to monitor the activity/lesson/unit to accomodate low level or high level learners.

As Hannibal always said in every episode, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

From the Intel Course:

What’s above is all good but it does take practice. Practice to ensure that students won’t simply choose the easy way out. That students won’t fail to create a rubric/assessment that properly measures the learning objectives. That students won’t go overboard and create a rubric/assessment that is too unmanageable or unattainable.

Also, it’ll take practice on the teacher’s part to ensure he/she is facilitating the creation of the student assessment. This will help ensure that rubrics/assessments align to the learning objectives, that they are achieveable by all/most students and that they are rigorous. But it begins with letting go. Most teachers need to learn and experience the feeling of letting go of this step. It might happen slowly. Or it might happen to quickly and then the teacher has to slowly step back into the process.

But it needs to be done in an unseen partnership. Allow students to feel like they’re creating but don’t let them see you managing/facilitating/directing behind the scenes to ensure rigor and alignment to your learning objectives.

How can technology be used most effectively to support and assess student learning?

Often I hear from teachers how can I use this tool better? Or is there another way I can do X with tool Y.

And often I encourage teachers not to think about what else they can do with a tool but think about what are the learning objectives and what can this tool do.

I mean, a plumber’s wrench is big enough to work as a hammer in a pinch, but it’s not made to hammer on a consistent basis. Use it for what it’s meant for… wrenching. And find a tool that does support your learning objectives.

Decide what you want your students to learn from an academic (not tech) point of view. Then create a lesson that forces them to use 21st century skills (collaboration and problem-solving) to solve a problem or create an original end product. Then think about what tools they can use to do this. Have them think about what tools they can use. You might think PowerPoint, but they might think animoto.com. You might think about MovieMaker, but they might think jaycut.com. And sometimes, your thinking about blogs when you should be thinking about wikis.

If a teacher or person tries to focus too close on the technology, they start losing focus on the learning and academic objectives. Then they start becoming a more literacy-based teacher instead of a transforming one.

Okay, while this isn’t exactly a breaking news flash, it’s one that I feel needs to be said over and over and over again.

Teachers can get in the habit of always supplying info to their students that their students lose the skill of locating and evaluting their own information and resources for finding information.

And then we as teachers and adults wonder why our youngin’s these days can’t think for themselves.

And I don’t blame teachers; I blame summative, state-wide tests that have to be passed in order for a student to graduate, in order for a school to receive an excelling or highly performing lable, in order for that teacher to make a decent salary based on goals made, in order for the gov’t to have a “oooh, look at us! We’re so good” comment to put into the newspaper once a year… that is if the test results are good.

Meanwhile, the internet is impacting students in other ways. See this example below from a recent i-Safe newsletter I received:

We need to realize as a society that the internet can not only have a positive impact on our students’ learning but it can have a negative (and sometimes deadly) impact on our students overall.

According to an article I found on eSchool News, “SanDisk Corp., four major record labels, and retailers Best Buy and Wal-Mart are” wanting to sell music albums “on microSD memory cards“. To me, this is very cool. Before I was given a 60g iPod, I always recommended to folks to get a cheap MP3 player that took the removable SD cards. Those go on sale so often and for so cheap. Then you copy your music onto those cards. Just like people used to make mix tapes and mix CD’s, I’d tell people to make mix SD cards. Then you pop in the one you want for running, the one you want for homework and the one you want for smooching.

With cell phones now taking the micro and mini SD memory cards, I like the idea of music being sold on these. Pop them in and out of your cell phone. Now if the cell phone makers would decide to stop putting them behind the battery like my CrackBerry…

I’ll be looking for these. If you see any, let me know, please!  Thanks!

• How can Curriculum-Framing Questions help support my students’ learning?Curriculum-Framing Questions are critical for keeping projects focused on important learning. They help teachers to use higher-order thinking skills which will help students fully understand the concepts.Curriculum-Framing Questions consist of Essential, Unit, and Content Questions:are broad, open-ended questions that address big ideas and enduring concepts. Essential Questions often cross disciplines and help students see how subjects are related. A good EQ is one where people could go off in different directions to answer.are tied directly to a project and support investigation into the Essential Question. Unit Questions are open-ended questions that help students demonstrate how well they understand the core concepts of a project. A good UQ is one where people can see how they’re going to answer the EQ within a specific content area.are fact-based, concrete questions that have a narrow set of correct answers. Often, Content Questions relate to definitions, identifications, and general recall of information—similar to the types of questions you would typically find on a test. Content Questions are important support questions for Essential and Unit Questions. A good CQ is one that can be answered after during the research or applying a learned skill.

  Essential Questions

  Unit Questions

  Content Questions

• How can I plan ongoing student-centered assessment?First, the average teacher doesn’t often utilize multiple assessments. If they do, they’ll use a preassessment in addition to the summative assessment. But even then, most don’t use the data collected from the preassessment to guide their instruction. They do it just to see what students know what or how much; it’s just a presurvey. A good teacher will use the data from multiple assessments throughout the unit and/or year to adjust their instruction. The picture inserted here from the Intel site shows examples of how a teacher can assess during a unit/project: