A teaching mantra: less us, more them

This was written by Gary Stager and Sylvia Libow-Martinez who writes and speaks about progressive education. He is the co-author of Invent to Learn. Gary blogs here and tweets here. Sylvia's website is here and tweets here. This post is an excerpt from his book Invent to Learn.

by Gary Stager and Sylvia Libo-Martinez

Anytime an adult feels it necessary to intervene in an educational transaction, they should take a deep breath and ask, "Is there some way I can do less and grant more authority, responsibility, or agency to the learner?"

Understanding is the result of existing knowledge accommodating and explaining new experiences. If we focus on a handful of powerful ideas and create experiences where students naturally need to stretch their understanding, students learn more. The role of the teacher is to create and facilitate these powerful, productive contexts for learning.

One simple way to do this is to make your teaching mantra, "Less Us, More Them." Piaget suggests that it is not the role of the teacher to correct a child from the outside, but to create the conditions in which the student corrects himself. Whenever you are about to intervene on behalf of a teachable moment, pause and ask yourself, "Is there a way I can shift more agency to the learner?"

Less Us, More Them (LUMT) doesn't exempt teachers from the learning process, or minimize the importance of their expertise within the learning environment. LUMT raises expectations and standards in our classrooms by granting more responsibility to the learner. In this environment, it is natural to expect kids to look up unfamiliar words, proofread, and contribute resources for class discussion without prodding from the teacher.

To start making your classroom more student-centred, demonstrate a concept and then ask students to do something.

Walk around and support them when asked. Bring the group together to celebrate an accomplishment or seize the next teachable moment. We need to operate as if students own the time in our classrooms, not us. Kids rise to the occasion if we let them. When students own the learning process, they also own the knowledge they construct. Self-reliance results when we relinquish control and power to our students.

What do you want kids to do with technology?

This was made by Bill Ferriter.


I think if we are to get project based learning right, we need to pay attention to this.

12 characteristics of progressive schools

This was written by Alfie Kohn who writes and speaks about parenting and education. His website is here and he tweets here. This post was originally found here.

by Alfie Kohn

To create the schools our children deserve, it’s probably not necessary to devise specific policies and practices for every occasion. Rather, these will follow logically from a few core principles that we devise together. Here’s a sample list of such principles, intended to start a conversation among educators, parents, and (let’s not forget) the students themselves:

1. Learning should be organized around problems, projects, and (students’)questions -- not around lists of facts or skills, or separate disciplines.

2. Thinking is messy; deep thinking is really messy. Therefore beware prescriptive standards and outcomes that are too specific and orderly.

3. The primary criterion for what we do in schools: How will this affect kids’interest in the topic (and their excitement about learning more generally)?

4. If students are “off task,” the problem may be with the task, not with the kids.

5. In outstanding classrooms, teachers do more listening than talking, and students do more talking than listening. Terrific teachers often have teeth marks on their tongues.

6. Children learn how to make good decisions by making decisions, not by following directions.

7. When we aren’t sure how to solve a problem relating to curriculum, pedagogy, or classroom conflict, the best response is often to ask the kids.

8. The more focused we are on kids’ “behaviors,” the more we end up missing the kids themselves -- along with the needs, motives, and reasons that underlie their actions.

9. If students are rewarded or praised for doing something (e.g., reading, solving problems, being kind), they’ll likely lose interest in whatever they had to do to get the reward.

10. The more that students are led to focus on how well they’re doing in school, the less engaged they’ll tend to be with what they’re doing in school.

11. All learning can be assessed, but the most important kinds of learning are very difficult to measure -- and the quality of that learning may diminish if we try to reduce it to numbers.

12. Standardized tests assess the proficiencies that matter least. Such tests serve mostly to make unimpressive forms of instruction appear successful.

Obvious to you. Amazing to others.

Technology has promise and peril.

I've written before about some of the perils, but today I want to write more about its promise (like I wrote here, here, here, here and here).

I see technology and social media as a way to share. It reminds me of the old Japanese proverb that says no one of us is as smart as all of us. I love how the Internet can be used to remove obstacles such as time and place so that we can learn from others that the limits of time and place might never allow.

No one ever changed the world by sharing their testsandgrades.

This is why I think handing things in only to the teacher is so 1996 -- today, students should be sharing what they learn with the world.

There is a lot wrong with standardized testing, but the solution is not merely better tests or tests on computers. Alberta has already announced a move away from Provincial Achievement Tests in grades 3, 6 and 9 and some schools are making attempts to move beyond grades and awards ceremonies.

In the past, post-secondary and employers may have been content with transcripts full of grades and resumes with awards certificates, but things are changing. The real world is (slowly) changing. The nature of transcripts and resumes is changing.

When we reduce something as magnificently messy as learning to grades and awards, we always conceal more than we reveal. Things go very wrong when testsandgrades and awards become the primary goal of education, not just the means for understanding it.

Good enough schools help kids fill their transcripts and resumes with testsandgrades, but truly great schools help all students make their learning visible by sharing it with their parents and maybe even the world. Project-based learning, performance assessments and portfolios shouldn't just supplement testsandgrades and traditional report cards -- they should replace them.

Whether it is social media or 3D printers, technology can play a wonderful role in making this happen.

If you want to learn more about how technology can be used to best support student learning, I suggest a blog post, an article and two books:

Assessment and Technology

Telling Time with a Broken Clock: The trouble with standardized testing

Invent to Learn by Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez

The Children's Machine by Seymour Papert

Making the Case for Making in Schools

Gary Stager and Sylvia Martinez wrote a marvelous book Invent to Learn. If you spend time with kids, you need to read this book.

Saying we want to personalize learning and putting students first are platitudes. They are easy to say because who in their right mind would disagree.

In the video below Sylvia summarizes the problem succinctly:

There is a disconnect between what we want to have happen, what we know works and what's really happening.

Grant Wiggins tells us that "when practice becomes disconnected from purpose, rigidity sets in" and Susan Engel writes, "What we admire and what we deliberately cultivate aren't the same."

If you are interested in making school more student focused and more hands-on and minds-on, take 30 minutes and watch this video.

Making the Case for Making in Schools from Maker Faire on FORA.tv

The maker movement and project based learning does not supplement testsandgrades -- the maker movement and project based learning replaces testsandgrades.

Telling time with a Broken Clock: The trouble with standardized testing

Education Canada Magazine

June 2013

Telling Time with a Broken Clock: The trouble with standardized testing

"The more we learn about standardized testing, particularly in its high stakes incarnation, the more likely we are to be appalled." 

– Alfie Kohn 

What do standardized test scores really tell us? As with many public policy questions, this is a complex question – yet too many people assume to know its answer. Whole school jurisdictions and entire nations define themselves by their standardized test results, including provincially administered examinations and international instruments such as Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). All of these programs, justified by their so-called impartiality and objectivity, share the assumption that the scores must be the public's “transparent” window into the quality of our schools.



Best-selling author and blogger Seth Godin reminds us that the worst kind of clock is a clock that randomly runs a little fast or a little slow. "If there's no clock," Godin writes, "we go seeking the right time. But a wrong clock? We're going to be tempted to accept what it tells us."[1] Godin's message is that tracking the wrong data or misreading good data can get us into trouble. What if standardized test scores aren't telling us what we think they are telling us? What if the scores are illusions that are giving us false confidence? What if our reliance on standardized testing to judge our schools is like relying on a broken clock for time?

If education policy pundits (many of whom are not teachers) and politicians expect the public to trust the scores as prima facie evidence of the quality of teaching and learning that goes on in our schools, then the public needs to know more about the costs and consequences of standardized testing. It is time to move past our historic reliance on standardized testing programs driven by educational bureaucracies satisfied to measure what is easiest to measure. Canada’s already strong public school systems will not punch past their current levels of performance unless we move to a new approach to public assurance.

Measuring what matters least

Ask any parents what their long-term concerns and goals are for their children, and seldom will you hear about test scores and world rankings. Their concerns are compelling, existential and heartfelt. Parents want their kids to be happy, hard working, motivated, responsible, honest, empathetic, intelligent, collaborative, creative and courageous. Of course we want our children to grow academically, but we also want them to grow emotionally, socially and physically, and this requires a well-rounded education that cannot be evaluated by standardized tests. This is not an argument against academics, after all academics should play a large role in school -- however, even when it comes to numeracy and literacy, standardized tests tend to be limited to measuring forgettable facts while ignoring the higher level creative and critical thinking. It makes a lot of sense to question the scores when you know that the tests are an amazingly contrived and unrealistic form of assessment that measures what matters least. It’s time we shifted from valuing what we measure to measuring what we value.

Campbell’s Law

Well-known (but not well-known enough) in social science, Campbell's Law tells us that “the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it was intended to monitor.”[2] In the case of standardized testing, corruption and distortion can come in a variety of ways. Here are three examples:

Teaching or testing? Teaching to the test and excessive test preparation invalidates inferences that can be drawn from the scores – yet they are the inevitable response to pressure to produce good test scores. Classroom time is devoured by not only the tests themselves but also practice tests, pre- and post-tests, field tests for the tests, benchmark tests, teacher tests, district tests, and state or provincial tests. Because testing is not teaching, this ultimately leads to a loss of opportunities for students to have a broad range of educational experiences, and the first things to go usually end up being the arts and physical activity – which do not lend themselves to be easily tested.

Learning or cheating? The moment low-stakes test scores are publicized to rank and sort teachers or schools, they become high-stakes tests. Where there is smoke, there is usually fire, and where there is high-stakes standardized testing, there is cheating. We can bemoan this inconvenience or play the blame game, but it won't change anything. When we stop and reflect on why cheaters cheat, systems thinking tells us that cheating has less to do with the characteristics of individual teachers or students and more to do with the priorities of schools and school systems.

Raising children or raising scores? When schools are encouraged to focus on test scores, some come to see children less as individuals of worth regardless of their academic ability, and more as score increasers and score suppressors. Sadly, the more the scores are made to count for teachers and schools, the more the scores count against the children who need the most help. They will be seen as undesirable; after all, they are the students most likely to score low, dragging down the school's ranking. This becomes even truer when (as in the U.S.) merit pay schemes marry teacher pay to the scores and/or when a school's reputation hinges on being publicly ranked. Under these twisted circumstance, schools may come to know more about raising scores than raising children.

We can no more skirt the real-world ramifications of Campbell's Law than Wile E. Coyote could avoid the punishing effects of gravity. Nichols and Berliner explains, "apparently, you can have (a) higher stakes and less certainty about the validity of assessment or (b) lower stakes and greater certainty about validity. But you are not likely to have both high stakes and high validity. Uncertainty about the meaning of test scores increases as the stakes attached to them become more severe."[3]

Socio-economics

Alfie Kohn begins his article “Fighting the Tests: A practical guide to rescuing our schools” by stating, "Don't let anyone tell you that standardized tests are not accurate measures. The truth of the matter is they offer a remarkably precise method for gauging the size of the houses near the school where the test was administered."[4] The inconvenient truth about standardized testing is that socioeconomic status is responsible for an overwhelming proportion (50 to 70 percent) of the variance in test scores. The strongest predictor of student performance on achievement tests is socio-economic status, which is why it is a mistake to believe that the scores tell us about school quality when really they are reflecting affluence or poverty.

No school or school system has ever become great without great teachers, but what can an excellent teacher do about a child who needs glasses, has cavities or is hungry? To say that teacher or school quality is the most important variable in education is at best naive. Education historian Diane Ravitch writes, "Reformers tell us that teachers are the most important influence within the school on student scores, and that is right. But the teacher contribution to scores is dwarfed by the influence of family and other out-of-school factors."[5]

Ultimately, great teachers make great schools, but great teachers can't do it alone – they require the support of an equitable society. If we are not careful, we risk misinterpreting the scores, and instead of waging war on poverty and inequity, we end up waging war on teachers and schools.

Dispelling the Corporate “Reform” Agenda

Finland's Pasi Sahlberg warns us about how the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) focuses schools on competition, standardization and test-based accountability. With GERM, "education has become a commodity where the efficiency of service delivery ultimately determines performance."[6]

Alongside the rush to introduce unproven technologies into classrooms, standardized testing in the United States has become a political instrument wielded by organizations such as Students First, Democrats for Education Reform and the American Legislative Exchange Council. Linking teacher pay to student test scores, and eliminating tenure and collective bargaining have become popular methods for undermining confidence in public schools so that education entrepreneurs can pour private equity and venture capital into companies that aim to profit from public education.

After a decade of intense standardized testing and sanctions under No Child Left Behind, California Democrats passed a resolution that aims at supporting public education and dispelling the corporate ‘reform’ agenda by stating, “the reform initiatives of Students First, rely on destructive anti-educator policies that do nothing for students but blame educators and their unions for the ills of society, make testing the goal of education, shatter communities by closing their public schools, and see public schools as potential profit centers and children as measurable commodities.”[7]

In the face of tough economic times, some governments might see this as a way of easing pressure on their beleaguered budgets; however, Diane Ravitch warns us that, "Our schools will not improve if we expect them to act like private, profit-seeking enterprises. Schools are not businesses; they are a public good. The goal of education is not to produce higher scores, but to educate children to become responsible people with well-developed minds and good character."[8]

Over the last two decades, the United States has proven to be a cautionary tale for how Canada, and the world, should not reform education, and Canadians would be wise not to think that the 49th Parallel offers any kind of inherent insulation from the corporate education reform agenda.

Building a better clock

The way forward is not to build schools that are a better version of yesterday. It is telling that the demand for standardized testing intensifies the further you get from classrooms, and yet authentic accountability and public assurance needs to happen within schools and communities, not driven by a tired-out model of bureaucratic accountability focused on compliance.

A move away from standardized testing is not a case for the absence of accountability – it is a pathway to supporting innovation and creativity. Ruth Sutton reminds us, "The issue is not whether we need information about the learning and achievement of our children and young people, but what kind of information we need, and how best to gather it."[9] Once we can see that standardized testing is like a broken clock, we can work together to figure out how to build a better clock.

Building a better clock and better schools starts with asking tough questions – which is precisely the spirit behind an Action Canada Task Force report titled Real Accountability or an Illusion of Success?[10] that invites Canadians to take a deeper look at the goals of public education and the role of standardized testing.

Alberta should be congratulated for their recent move away from their grade 3, 6 and 9 Provincial Achievement Tests. Now Alberta requires the courage to see that the replacement for the old tests should not be new tests. From a policy perspective, accountability models that are based on census testing of entire student populations do little to support student progress and are not cost effective. A shift from testing every student to a sample program using performance-based assessments would be less obstructive, cost less and provide more meaningful information.

Given the highly relational nature of the teaching and learning process, the best teachers know that assessment is not a spreadsheet; it's a conversation. They also know that there is no substitute for what teachers observe while their students are actively learning, and this is why the best assessments ask students to actually do something that is in a context and for a purpose. Unlike standardized tests which cannot provide anything more than a limited and incomplete snapshot of a student on a single day, a collection of performance assessments assembled in a learning portfolio can inform the teaching and learning process in a timely fashion, while simultaneously assuring the public that students are receiving a high quality education.

To enhance public assurance, Andy Hargreaves suggests departments of education should shift from a “bureaucratic accountability model to a locally focused, student-driven assurance model based on school-development plans and teachers as leaders in innovation.”[11] The means for accomplishing this can be found in programs like Alberta’s Initiative for School Improvement (AISI). A number of community-based school improvement initiatives such as AISI exist throughout Canada and yet are vulnerable to cuts by government, such as Alberta who recently axed AISI, that see times of fiscal belt-tightening as an excuse to reduce investments in innovation – precisely the wrong time to reduce support for creativity and risk-taking.

It might be argued that standardized testing has allowed us to build good enough schools; after all, even a broken clock is right twice a day. However, business guru Jim Collins reminds us that "good is the enemy of great." If we aspire to create a great school for all children, we need to seek an end to standardized testing and replace it with more sophisticated and more demanding processes for public assurance.

Notes

1 Seth Godin, "The worst kind of clock," Seth Godin (Blog), September 21, 2012, http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/09/the-worst-kind-of-clock.html.

2 Sharon Nichols and David Berliner, Collateral Damage: How high stakes testing corrupts America's schools (Massachusetts: Harvard Education Press, 2008), 26-27.

3 Nichols and Berliner, Collateral Damage, 27.

4 Alfie Kohn, “Fighting the Tests: A practical guide to rescuing our schools,” Phi Delta Kappan (January 2001). http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/ftt.htm.

5 Diane Ravitch, "Why VAM Is Junk Science," Diane Ravitch's Blog, July 16, 2012, http://dianeravitch.net/2012/07/16/why-vam-is-junk-science/.

6 Pasi Sahlberg, Finnish Lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? (New York, Teachers College Press, 2011),100.

7 The California Democratic Party, Resolution 13-04.47: Supporting California’s Public School and Dispelling the Corporate “Reform” Agenda (April 14, 2013).

8 Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 227-28.

9 Alberta Assessment Consortium, A New Look At Public Assurance: Imagining the possibilities for Alberta students. http://www.aac.ab.ca/resources/pdf/Public%20Assurance%20Doc_final_may31.pdf.

10 Real Accountability or An Illusion of Success? A Call to Review Standardized Testing in Ontario. Action Canada Task Force Report.

http://testingillusion.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/illusion_of_success_EN.pdf.

11 Andy Hargreaves, foreward to A Great School for All: Transforming education in Alberta (Edmonton: Barnett House, 2012).

Provincial Achievement Tests are gone! Now what?

On May 9, 2013, the Alberta Government announced that they are dropping the grade 3, 6 and 9 Provincial Achievement Tests in favor of what they are calling "more student-friendly assessments".

Some history:

• In 2010, Alberta Education made changes to their organization structure by eliminating the Accountability and Reporting Division.
• In 2011, Alison Redford became Premier of Alberta and promised to bring an end to grade 3 and 6 Provincial Achievement Tests.
• Former Education Minister Thomas Lukaszuk announced that the government wished to make changes to Provincial Achievement tests.
• Alberta teachers have long opposed Provincial Achievement Tests as the scores were either at best unhelpful for teaching and learning and at worst harmful.

What we know about the new tests:

• The new tests will be computer-based tests known as "Student Learning Assessment" and will be developed by "experts" and administered at the start of grades 3, 6 and 9. 
• They will focus on assessing numeracy and literacy while also assessing competencies such as creativity, critical thinking and problem-solving.

Skeptically Optimistic

The proposed changes to Provincial Achievement Tests brings both crisis and opportunity. As a critic of standardized testing, I am happy that Alberta is removing the current Provincial Achievement Tests. 

In fact, I'm ecstatic!

However, while we are writing epitaphs for the old tests, we shouldn't stand over the grave too long. After all, someone who the government is calling a group of experts is already planning the next foray of tests.

I'm also concerned that many Albertans have come to define their successes and failures with Provincial Achievement Test results, but now that these tests are on the way out, many Albertans will experience a kind of existential vertigo - how else can they define themselves if not by fancy bar-graphs and shiny pie charts depicting their test results? Many Albertans will need to be coached through this shift from test-based accountability to public assurance.

There are a lot of ways the Government could get these new tests right and there are a lot of ways they could get them wrong.

Getting the new tests wrong:

• Change for the sake of change is no better than tradition for the sake of tradition. If the only difference between the new tests and the old tests is their scheduling (spring vs fall) and their format (computer vs paper), they will only be "new" in name.

• Too many teachers and schools misused Provincial Achievement Test scores by making them count as a part of the student's report card or final exam. It would be educational malpractice to make these new diagnostic tests count on a report card.

• Putting these new tests online might be an improvement but not if they are still multiple choice. These new tests cannot be multiple choice. 

• If the government maintains their monopoly over accountability and public assurance and develop these tests in secret, we will have wasted the opportunity to involve the public in public assurance.

Getting the new tests right:

• The old tests were problematic for many reasons but here are at least three things the new tests should not do: (1) place undue stress on students or teachers; (2) unfairly rank and sort schools without regard for their unique circumstances in which they operate; (3) narrow educational opportunities for students.

• The old tests were terrible at helping teachers improve their teaching so that students could learn more. The new tests need to be diagnostic in nature which means the information would be used to improve -- not to prove.

• Ruth Sutton tells us, "Involving teachers, parents, students and the community in the process of assessment and evaluation is the key to a form of public assurance that serves to improve and develop our students and our schools, not just to measure them." The Alberta Teachers Association and the public must play an active and authentic role in designing and implementing these new tests.

• Public assurance needs to be more than a one-time computer test . We need to design authentic assessments that support learning while simultaneously assuring the public that students are learning. This includes the use of project-based learning, performance assessments, and learning portfolios. For more on this consider reading A New Look at Public Assurance: Imagining the Possibilities for Alberta Students.

What do you think? Will a shift away from Provincial Achievement Tests lead to a crisis or opportunity?

How do I know what my students know if I don't test them?

Here is an actual Twitter conversation I had with someone we will call Sally:

Joe: The best teachers need not use testsandgrades to know what their students know. 

Sally: How do I know how well my students understand parts of speech without giving them a test on it? 

Joe: Have them write something meaningful that is in a context and for a purpose. 

Sally: How does that test their knowledge of how a noun differs from a verb? 

Joe: well, why do you want children to learn the difference from a noun and a verb if not to write meaningful stuff? 

Sally: Okay, meaningful stuff. Only meaningful if it can be communicated. Only communicated through understanding of language.

Can you see how when we are frantically focused on the minutia of content delivery that testsandgrades can hijack learning and become the raison d'être for school?

Project Based Learning and Portfolio Assessments are authentic alternatives to testsandgrades.

When I have these conversations, I like to remember what Grant Wiggins meant when he said:

When practice becomes unmoored from purpose, rigidity sets in.

Caine's Arcade and Project Based Learning

Try this:

Show these two videos to your students and provide them with class time and cardboard.

Here's what I've discovered:

• Too often creativity is code for "did not follow instructions". Too often a child's creativity is seen by adults as a mess that needs to be cleaned up. 

• Too many students have become acclimatized to classrooms where they are expected to play a passive role, and it is those students who find projects that require them to play an active role fiercely frustrating.

• Too many teachers have resigned themselves to be agents of the state that are charged with the sole responsibility of content transmission. Regrettably, some teachers might see projects like this as a waste of time for they do not cover any of their curriculum checklists. 

• If we are to design authentic learning environments for students, we must resist the urge to alter our focus from the learner to the teacher too quickly. Asking how something might be properly assessed is not a bad question, but if it dominates our thinking, we may justify not providing students with projects that they would love to do and love to learn from, but hard on us to assess.

• For too many, the game of school sounds all too familiar. It's like the learners and teachers exchange winks that say: you will pretend to teach and we will pretend to learn; it won't be all that enjoyable, but it will be easy. Want proof? Sadly, some students might prefer to do worksheets, rather than engage in learning that requires them to play an active role; however, this is not a learning style to be accommodated, but a problem to be solved.

• We need not frame school as a choice between the rigor of passive learning and the chaos of anarchy. School need not be soul-killing work or mindless play. School should be about learning -- which is an environment that has students balancing precariously on the edge of their confidence and competence.

• Too many of us mistake rigor as a necessary characteristic of learning -- the secret to real learning is not rigor, it's vigor. Vigor and fun are what make learning sustainable and life-long and fuels an attitude within the learner for a passion to go on learning.

• The best feedback parents can receive about their children's learning is for them to see their children learning. We need to shift from test-based accountability to a public assurance model that samples performance assessments that are collected in learning portfolios. 

For more on what real learning looks like, check out this post. 

Everything I know about engagement I learned in kindergarten

This was written by Doug Johnson who is a K-12 teacher who is the Director of Libraries and Technology for the Mankato, Minnesota Public Schools. Johnson blogs here. This is an excerpt from a post found here. For an entertaining read, check out Johnson's freely admitted personal biases.

by Doug Johnson

In kindergarten you get:

• Show and tell. You got to do something or bring something and then tell others about it. Secondary skill attainment measurement needs to be less about testing and more about show and tell performance-based assessment. Oh, and listening to other students is a lot more involving than listening to the old person in the room.

• Choices. As a little kid you often got to choose - your library book, your reading buddy, your activity, the subject of your drawing. People tend to choose things that interest them and interesting things are engaging. How often do we let older students choose?

• Play. Elementary teachers can make a game out of almost anything - and make just about every task feel like play. The older we get, the less we get to play and more we have to work. Just why is that? Gamification is a fancy term for putting play back into the curriculum. Look it up.

• Naps. Most adolescents I know are tired - and not because they've been up all night texting. (Well, maybe that's part of it.) We've long known that teens do better when school starts later in the morning. Tired people have a tough time staying engaged.

• To go outside. The best learning takes place in the "real world" not in the classroom. Whether it is studying bugs and leaves in first grade, marching with the band in junior high, or doing service learning as seniors, we all are more interested when it is the real world with which we are dealing.

• Colors. A blank sheet of construction paper and some crayolas have always let young learners be creative. Creativity is inherently engaging. What's the high school classroom's equivilant to scissors and paste? 

• To do it together. Reading groups. Play groups. Science groups. It's better with other kids. Social learners are engaged learners.

• Reading for enjoyment. Our elementary teachers and librarians want us to practice reading so much they let us read what we like! Do our secondary teachers want us to write so much, know so much, experiment so much, and solve problems so much that we get to do it for enjoyment?

• Learning that's important. Nobody needs to convince a little kid that learning to read, to add and subtract, or to know about firemen is important. And that you should pay attention when being taught these things. Calculus, world history, the Romantic poets, the atomic structure of non-metals, not so much. If you can't convince me what you are teaching should be important to me, teach something that is.

• Care. OK, this should have been the first one. I really believe a lot little kids are engaged because they know someone cares that they are. Yeah, the littlies are cute and cuddly and all that, but the gangly, awkward, homely teens need to know adults care too. When someone else is paying attention to you, you pay more attention yourself.

There you are - 10 simple steps to keep the engagement level from tanking.

The power of making: 3-D printers

I was reading Unbored: The Power of 'Making' in the Classroom when I came across this:

The girls open their sketchbooks and doodle possible solutions. One toothbrush plays music. Another comes with a timer. Still another has a tiny TV embedded into the handle. One model grows larger as you brush and then gets smaller when the two minutes are up. 

The project takes several weeks and involves more than a few trips to the school's Fab Lab, a state-of-the art digital prototyping and manufacturing facility that Marymount started in 2011 to more thoroughly engage its students in math and science. It's here that they transfer their sketches to computer-automated drawings, which are then sent to the classroom's MakerBot, a 3-D printer that seems like it was plucked straight out of The Jetsons.

I immediately searched for MakerBot 3-D printer and came across this video:



When it comes to curriculum and lesson planning, my mantra is: students should be completing projects that are in a context and for a purpose.

What if every student had access to one of these printers at home or at school? How might school be more active, relevant and engaging?

Richardson: Rethink Assessment

This was written by Will Richardson who is a parent, author, speaker and educator who has been writing about the intersection of social networks and learning for the past decade, most recently at WillRichardson.com. He blogs here and tweets here. This is an excerpt from his book Why School?

by Will Richardson

With few exceptions, all the things our children are using to connect and learn outside the classroom -- social media, cell phones, Internet connections -- are banned inside classrooms. In my kids' case (and they have more access than many), school is the only place in their lives where they can't use the technology they carry around in their pockets and backpacks to answer questions.

The only place. Why is that?

Those of us who have shifted our learning lives to online networks and communities know the potential power that resides there. Education author Jay Cross says, "Knowledge is moving from the individual to the individual and his contacts." That couldn't be truer in this abundantly networked world. It's not what I know, it's what we know. And my reality is that I would suddenly become much dumber if you told me I had to disconnect when seeking answers or solving problems.
This Will Be on the Test

Remaking assessment starts with this: stop asking questions on tests that can be answered by a Google search. Or, if you have to ask them, let kids use their technology to answer them. More often than not, we ask questions that can be easily answered by technology. That is unfortunate.

Take a quick look at any of the state standardized tests for graduation, and you'll see more of those than you can imagine.

For instance, from the New York State Regents global history and geography test:

"Which geographic feature impacted the development of the Gupta Empire?"

No lie, this was a question every potential graduate in New York State was supposed to answer in 2011. I'm not sure about you, but I'd never even heard of the Gupta Empire.

The answer choices were: a) island location; b) volcanoes; c) monsoons; and d) permafrost.

Let's be serious for a second. Can you think of any reason why this little tidbit would be important for your son or daughter to have stored away in his or her brain, aside from needing it for the test? And if I announced that I had a free iPad for the first person who emailed me the correct answer, what would you do right now?

I don't even have to answer that. 
These are the questions we ask when we're operating as if information were scarce. Our tests are loaded with questions whose answers almost everyone is guaranteed to forget as soon as the test is over. I'm not saying there might not be some profound learning we can take away from the story of the Gupta Empire (which was, according to Wikipedia, an Indian dynasty that was the model for classical civilization). But I am saying that we don't take anything away from answering a question like that, except for wondering whether we got it right or wrong. (The correct answer for the question above, by the way, is c) monsoons.)

The effects of assessments like these have implications far beyond their impact on our students. The problems with standardized tests are summed up quite well by Yong Zhao, a professor at the University of Oregon:

By imposing upon schools and teachers unrealistic, meaningless, and arbitrary goals, high-stakes testing has corrupted the spirit of American education, intoxicated the education environment, and demoralized educators. By forcing schools and teachers to teach to the test, it has narrowed the educational experiences of millions of children and thus deprived our children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, of a real education. It has wasted valuable, precious, and dwindling public funds that could have been put into educating rather than testing our children. It has generated unnecessary fear, anxiety, and loss of confidence in our children. It has distracted us from addressing the real challenges facing education today: poverty, globalization, and technological changes. It has taken away the opportunities and resources for exploring innovations that may lead to true improvements in education. But most importantly, it has eroded the traditional strengths of American education that have made America the world's center of innovation, creativity, entrepreneurship, and democracy.

Instead, let's make sure that at least some of the questions we ask our students on assessments require them to tap into the vast storehouses of information that reside online as well as the networks of people who can help them sort out the answers. For instance, what if we asked (and only if it were worth asking), "In what ways have the inventions and works of the Gupta Empire had an influence on our modern culture?" That's a bit different from making a choice from a list. It would require an ability to think critically about the world. And it would be most complete if it also tested for a student's ability to access the resources and experts now available online.

In other words, let's scrap open-book tests, zoom past open-phone tests asking Googleable questions, and advance to open-network tests that measure not just how well kids answer a question, but also how literate they are at discerning good information from bad and tapping into the experts and networks that can inform those answers. This is how they'll take the real-life information and knowledge tests that come their way, and it would tell us much more about our children's preparedness for a world of data abundance.

Let’s also shift our assessments of students' mastery to ones that examine mastery in action. Performance-based assessments, where students actually have to do something with what they know, tell us volumes more about their readiness for life than bubble sheets or contrived essays.

No question, these types of assessments are more inefficient, subjective and time-consuming than the traditional variety. But they're worth it.

Here's what learning looks like

I think this video exemplifies what real learning can often feel like. Take a look.



Safe. One of the first things I learned in teacher school was that learning only happens when people feel safe. This includes physical and emotional safety. It's important to note that the girl says "I'll be fine." Despite her obvious fear of the unknown, she is telling us that she feels safe.

Fun. If learning isn't fun then we are doing something wrong. Too many of us mistake rigor as a necessary characteristic of learning -- the secret to real learning is vigor, not rigor. If you listen closely, someone in the background says, "have fun." Vigor and fun are what make learning sustainable and life-long and fuel an attitude in the learner with a passion to go on learning.

Thrill of discovery. Learning needs to have an element of uncertainty. We need to allow learners to construct an understanding for themselves, but this requires taking a leap of faith into the unknown. Needless to say, this is risky. When she says, "Here goes something, I guess," she is embracing risk.

Self-efficacy. Learning requires a learner who believes in their abilities to complete a task or reach a goal. Learners need to attribute their success less to external factors (luck, ability, difficulty) and more to internal factors such as effort. When she says, "ok, I'm gonna do this," we get a sense that she believes that she can and will jump.

Formative feedback. Students should experience their successes and failures not as reward and punishment but as information. This means that the best kinds of feedback from teachers require the absence of judgment. It's important to note that "just remember, never snow plow, ok?" is free of judgement and is feedback that contains only the information the learner needs to be successful. Assessment is not a spreadsheet -- it's a conversation between the learner and the teacher. This is why the best kinds of feedback are two-way conversations. When the student asks, "do you go faster on the in-run?" she requires a timely answer from the teacher. Beginning questions lead to more sophisticated questions like, "is it (in-run) any steeper, do you think?" which again requires timely, and informative feedback from the teacher.

Constructed and Connected. Learning should connect with the learner's previous understandings and experiences. When she confidently says, "just a bigger 20, that's all," she's telling us that she's making connections between this new, unknown experience and something she understands and has experienced.

Pleasantly frustrating and fearful. Learning should be the perfect blend of pleasure, frustration and fear. Not too hard and not too easy. When she starts to breath heavy and wimper, we know that she's balancing precariously on the edge of her confidence and competence.

Encouragement and guidance. Learning is a highly social activity. It isn't often that we learn the best or the most in isolation. She needed to hear, "it's fine. You'll be fine."

Celebration and reflection. Learning should be about making projects or performances that are in a context and for a purpose, and when we have made something we need to celebrate with others. The whole purpose of assessment is so that the learner can assess themselves. "Sixty seems like nothing now," is confirmation that she is growing and improving. She didn't just learn about ski jumping -- she learned about ski jumping by doing it.

What if school was more like this?

This was written by George Couros who is Division principal of Innovative Teaching and Learning for Parkland School Division in Alberta, Canada. He is suspiciously well dressed and has the healthiest head of hair I've ever seen. He tweets here and blogs here. This post was originally found here.

by George Couros

Here is a little activity that you can do with staff when returning to school to get the wheels turning on project based learning inspired by this awesome video.

Take the Alberta Education Competency Wheel below:

Then watch this AMAZING video below about a self-initiated project done by a pretty cool kid:

As you watch the video, write down all of the things that the student did on his own to meet the expectations as listed in the “Competency Wheel”. Are all elements touched upon in this project? Discuss some ideas or projects that you can do with students that would be similar as a whole staff or within teams.

You could also discuss this article that has some lessons taken away from the video (quote shortened below):

1. Boredom is more of a statement about the person than the situation. “Hey Caine…want to come spend the summer with me in the back of my barely-trafficked auto parts store?” For most kids this would be summer vacation equivalent of the kiss of death. There was no gaming system. No swimming pool. No television. A perfect excuse for “I’m booooooorrrred.” But NO. Caine looked around and saw opportunity. Everywhere. Cardboard boxes, packing tape, gadgets and doo-dads. He chose not to be bored. It’s totally a state of mind. 

2. Keep working while the world ignores you. How long was it before Caine had customer #1? How many entrepreneurs or artists would have given up by then, or stopped working at their craft and improving their skills? Caine approached his arcade with craftsmanship and fervor, and that’s what I aspire to do too. 

3. Your craft will cost you something. Did you notice the prizes in the arcade? Caine’s own toys. His vision for his arcade required (demanded!) that he use all of his resources to make it work, and this meant forfeiting his own stuff for the sake of his vision.

Better yet, show the video to kids and discuss the wheel with them. Get them thinking on projects that they can initiate that would include these elements and would be something that they are interested in doing. Perhaps have them do some proposals of projects that they can do that would be an all year idea or could be used as the basis of a capstone project.

Through a different lens

Real learning is by definition active. When learners are provided the opportunity to play an active role in their own learning, they not only tend to learn more but they also nurture a keen desire to go on learning more.

The only problem with this kind of learning is that it doesn't meet the needs of the suits who need to quantify children into spreadsheet friendly data.

So now we are at an impasse.

Who's needs shall we attend to? The suits or the students?

The Photoshop Effect: a cool project

Anytime someone says they care about student achievement, the first thing I ask is for their definition of "student achievement". I do this because too often "student achievement" has everything to do with testsandgrades and very little, if anything, to do with real learning and student engagement.

Here is one of the projects I've had success with. When I say success, I mean that students have been authentically engaged in creating their own understanding for a concept that they can see in a context and for a purpose.

Here's the question that guides this project:

How do you feel about photoshop in the media?

To kick off the project, I like to show these Dove commercials:

Then I share this two part documentary on The Photoshop Effect:

Inside Verily: The First ‘No Photoshop’ Fashion Magazine: The founders of Verily have pledged not to use photoshop on their pages. They explain why we need more realistic beauty standards.
I tend to encourage kids to use a program such as Microsoft Publisher to create their project, but I am not married to any particular software. The kids simply need a blank canvass where they can create word art, text boxes, and import pictures.

They then print their projects off in full colour and comb bind them. When they are done, they are the author of their very own book. Here is a picture of the comb binder and book.

Here is an example of a student's book. Click on it to read through it:

Negotiated, Integrated Curriculum

I came across James Beane and Barbara Brodhagen's Negotiated, Integrated Curriculum Model when listening to Alfie Kohn's 2009 lecture for PACE University.

I have quickly summarized the ten steps Beane and Brodhagen provide that I plan on following to negotiate an integrated curriculum with my students:

1 Have students individually brainstorm a list of questions about themselves. I post this question on our class Ning as a discussion forum topic.

2 In small groups, students will share their questions about themselves and group common questions into potential categories and subcategories.

3 Students brainstorm a list of questions they have about their world.

4 In small groups, students will share their questions about the world and group common questions into potential categories and subcategories.

5 In small groups, with adult support, students consider ways to connect their 'self' questions with their 'world' questions. The words used to connect these ideas become possible themes.

6 In small groups, students share their ideas of themes for study. Themes are placed into categories and subcategories to remove repetition and overlap.

7 Students vote on themes and most popular themes are identified as themes to be studied through out the year.

8 A small committee of students examine all the questions and place them with their corresponding theme.

9 Students create activities to accompany each theme.

10 Unit planning is done by the teacher based on the students' input and the mandated curriculum.

11 If some of the mandated curriculum does not fit with the student input, then this is brought to the student's attention to be discussed.

I see an integrated and negotiated curriculum to be at the heart of a democratic classroom that puts student engagement as a priority.

Further reading:

Democratic Schools
A Reason to Teach
Curriculum Integration