Making the learning stick

When I was putting the insulation on my windows, I had two different products. One had the instruction of waiting fifteen minutes before I removed the backing to the two sided tape. The other did not have that instruction. The fifteen minute wait tape was far superior to the other.

I wonder how much time we give our students to stick to their new learning before we ask them to use it. Fisher and Fry suggest in Better Learning Through Structured Teaching that when we give our initial modeling of the new learning, we do not ask students to actively participate but, instead they are to think about this new learning. If they do not firmly understand the modeling before we ask them to practice it, then there is a high likely hood that they will do it incorrectly. Their first steps of doing it wrong will be cemented into their brains. Instead, we can model the learning for them and go over an exemplar of it. We can let them think about the new learning and then scaffold them through it.

Let’s organizing our teaching so that we allow students plenty of time to think about the new learning before they are asked to do it. Let’s let them get firmly stuck to the new learning before they use it.

For any one who is interested in implementing formative assessment in the classroom, my book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students is available through Eye-on-Education.

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Big Things (Learning) First

As I was packing the car yesterday, I realized that I was following the way my father packed the car  He always packed the big things first and then worked the little things around the big things.

I wonder how often we pack the big ideas, the major concepts in the standard, first with students. Do we lead off the unit with telling them about the standard? Do we instruct them directly on the big ideas?  Do we give them activities that clearly focus on the big ideas? Do we assess them on the big ideas?

I remember watching a teacher who did a half period introductory activity to the unit. The activity was engaging.  However, it did not deal with the big ideas of the unit but with a very minor point.

Do you pack the big ideas first with your students?

Gladly would the teacher help the students to learn

Chaucer wrote “Gladly would he learn and gladly teach.” I would like to change that to “Gladly would he/she learn and gladly help students to learn.” Unfortunately some teachers think of teaching as presenting information and then testing on that info. In the formative assessment process, the focus is on helping the students to learn.

Glick wrote :”It is not what the teacher does but what he gets the students to do that results in learning” Our focus should be not on what the teacher does but on what the teacher helps the students to do. The teacher’s “best” lecture is not good if it does not help students to do something to learn the standard. Teachers should teach less and have students learn and do more in the class. The more students do in the class, the more teachers can observe them, diagnose them, and offer formative feedback to help the students so that the students can improve drastically in their learning.

Do you focus on teaching or learning?

Birth of a Child and Hope for the Future

My grandson, Rowan, was born yesterday early in the morning. Mom and Dad are doing fine. As I ponder what his life will be like I focus in on his schooling and technology. I think about my many years of teaching and my son’s educational experience. The last school district I was in had limited technology -every teacher did not have an LCD; in fact we shared one within the department of 20 people. There were a few mini-labs but there were many thousands of students and their teachers vying for those labs. My son had many excellent teachers and some not so good ones. A few teachers used technology but he had more technology at home than in school.  I think that maybe schools have changed but then I think about my working with a large city school district for the past year and I know that some schools have not changed. They have not changed in terms of curriculum and in terms of using technology to create in-depth learning experiences.

Have we fundamentally changed how and what we teach? How we globally integrated technology to provide probing learning experiences? What will be different in five years when he starts his first formal schooling? What will cause a change?  I wish the best for Rowan in his schooling!

Making YouTube Videos From the Digital Camera- Lessons Learned

Usually you can take a movie directly from your digital camera and upload it directly to YouTube type programs. Check on how your camera save movies. The formats of .mov/ .avi work fine.

The following will make your YouTube movie work better:
Have strong solid content
Storyboard what the camera will see and hear
Practice it several times
Have a visual or an oral introduction to the topic
Have all your props ready and in their correct order
Use close ups whenever possible to focus on the objects or actions
Have a solid color non-distracting background
Avoid background noises
Speak loudly and clearly
Keep all actions focused on the learning standard, not on comic relief
Keep the camera movement steady even if you are moving the camera
If your first try does not work, do it again. It is easier to reshoot than to edit it.
Learn from your mistakes and make each video better.
Have each group in the class make an instructional video about the topic

What have your learned from doing a YouTube type video?

© Harry Grover Tuttle, 2007

YouTube Educational Videos or Just Comic Videos

Unfortunately, at present there are not many worthwhile classroom videos that teach or share ideas about specific learning. Most are “commercial ” ones or ones ripped from TV shows. There are many student produced “This is an experiment we did” videos (So what science principle does it show? Why does what happens happen?). Many are put up for the comic value or ego value instead of their educational value. The K12 Educators area of YouTube has minimal teacher or student made instructional videos.

I would guess that about 20% of the YouTube videos are teacher or students made and of those about 5% are instructional. This translates as about 1% of YouTube videos are teacher or student made and are instructional.

If we work together we can change that percentage. Let’s try for 10% by Nov. 2007. Please help to put up teacher and student made instructional YouTube videos.

© Harry Grover Tuttle, 2007

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KISS with Learning and Technology

KISS =Keep it Simple Stupid or, politically correct, Keep it Simple Someone
Do we use KISS when we help teachers figure out their true learning goal? A series of “Why ” questions can help teachers determine their true purpose. “Why do you want them to study the Civil War?” “Why is it important to know about wars?” “Why …….”
Do we use KISS when we help teachers decide on their summative and formative assessment? “So we can better figure out what technology-infused activities to do, how will you assess the students during and at the end of the unit?”

Do we use KISS when we help teachers select an appropriate technology? Do they need to create and maintain a webpage or can they use a blog?

Do we use KISS when we introduce technology to teachers and students? Do we teach them only the most commonly used commands/features?

Do we use KISS when we help teachers figure out how to implement the technology in the classroom? Do we share with the teacher the five most common implementation issues in using this technology for this project?

Do we throw supportive KISSes when we are in a room to support the classroom teacher? We offer help in non-threatening ways with comments like “Sometimes people click on the icon first and then….”

Do we KISS goodbye so that the teacher is independent in his/her technology use? Our goal is to free them from us, not to make them dependent on us.

Do we KISS and tell others of the wonderful standards-based learning that took place due to technology?

How do you KISS with learning and technology?

© Harry Grover Tuttle, 2007

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Videoconferencing and Districts- Sharing Teachers and Globalizing Education

Videoconferencing has the power to overcome distances. Many schools are located in rural areas where they cannot provide a quality education at the advanced levels. A very simple solution is for students from those locations to videoconference with an educator who teaches in that advanced level regardless of where the educator is physically located. The technology of videoconferencing is so simple yet there are so many policy and parochial views that prevent its use in education.

With videoconferencing, a teacher can teach to students in any location. Why should we limit a teacher to the physical location of within a school? Why should we assume that one teacher is an expert in all aspects of their subject area? When I was teaching, I would have loved to have had another teacher who knew more than I did about African-American literature teach that part of my course. I would have taught his/her Latin American literature part of the course. Why not have a teacher from Latin American teach the Latin American literature part of the course? Why not use the expertise of each teacher regardless of where that teacher is located?

Maybe we can promote a virtual teacher exchange through videoconferencing! You teach part of my course and I’ll teach part of yours. Our students would benefit so much more than in our present system. We can develop a community of global educators!

© Harry Grover Tuttle, 2007

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Diagnostic Pre-test With Technology Before Teaching the Standard

I’ve noticed that teachers start off a new lesson with the topic, maybe why it is important, and some motivation/hook. I have not seen, in the last few years, any teacher pre-testing students at the start of the topic. I understand the reason not to pre-test students. If we know what students do not know, then we have a responsibility to fill in the gaps. If we do not pre-test, then we do not know anything about learning gaps and we can proceed with our already-planned lesson even it does not fit the needs of the students.

If we pre-test and quickly analyze the results, we have an obligation to modify instruction. We can not simply say that the students need to do more math problems or they need to write more to do better in the standard. We have to discern how to help them travel from where they are to where we want them to be in terms of the standard.

I suggest giving a pre-test the day the students finish the previous unit. Then you have a day to analyze the results and modify your unit according to the new data you have. Some teachers who do not have a district online quiz or test program use survey sites such as Zoomerang and SurveyMonkey that allow them to give 10 question pre-test (multiple choice, True False, ratings, and open-ended) “survey” for up to 100 students. They can set up a quiz quickly. If they write the pretest in a word processor, then they can copy and paste it into the online survey taker program and they will have it for the future. However, the teacher has to copy the survey results since the results will disappear after ten days. Teachers save pretest correction time and basic analysis time when they use these sites.

Do you use another online survey program for pretests? Do you have another way to give online pretests and have them analyzed? Share your information so that we all can have new tools to help us improve our students’ learning.

© Harry Grover Tuttle, 2007

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Student success in learning not limited by socioeconomics: Model with Technology

“A good number of the highest-achieving schools, are.. among the poorest in the state. NAEP gains for minority students in these states (NC, OH and IL) are about three times the gains for US students overall.”

“High-poverty, high minority schools in New York City outperform their counterparts in Los Angeles and Washington DC by two full years.”

“In Texas, black students perform better on the NAEP 8th grae writing assessment than white, nonpoor students in seven other states. In Virginia, Latinos perform better in 4th grade reading than white, nonpoor students in 17 states (Haycock, 2005)”

“Only five years of above-average teaching can eliminate the achievement gap in some states (Kain & Hanushek in Haycock, 2005).”

Schmoker, M. Results Now. (2006). ACSD: Alexandria, VA, 21

Schmoker suggests that these results are based on applying simple good teaching such as Madeline Hunter where the teacher tells the learning standard, models it with examples, checks for initial comprehension, scaffolds students learning, has frequent assessments, monitors and adjusts instruction, and has closure.

A teacher can model the high level of learning through examples through the use of technology. For example, the teacher shows the class an example on a Smartboard and indicates what makes this example a great standard example by circling or underlining parts.

So how do you model the high level of learning with examples through the use of technology?

© Harry Grover Tuttle, 2007

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Videoconferencing Ways, Types, or Cateogories in Public School Education

I’m doing a presentation in a few weeks on “20+ Ways of Videoconferencing in Education”. In a previous post (May  7, 2006 Videoconferencing in education: Students, Administration, Faculty, Community), I listed many different examples of videconferencing under the categories of administration, student, professional development, and community.  I would like to see how many more categories you can help me add before then and how many different examples we can generate.  So far I’ve thought of these general categories. If you have examples of a new category or type of videconference or of a more general category for one of these categories , please make a comment. Likewise, if you have examples of any of these please add by putting the category and your example  such as  expert: hear an expert talk about an animal

Administration:

Professional Development:

Instruction:

-Expert
–Students ask questions of the expert.
–The expert demonstrates a physical procedure or process such as stacking in PE.
–The expert runs sophisticated equipment for the class such as a scientist.
–The expert gives feedback on  students’ projects or work such an artist whose style the students used.
–The expert explains something  such as an animal at the zoo.
–The expert has students create a model to demonstrate a concept like flight.
–The expert walks students through a thinking process to develop an analysis skills such as analyzing a work of art.

-Peer-to-peer

-Assessment:

Mentoring:

Interviewing:

Community:

??:

??:

Essential Data Driven Purposeful Technology Use for Student Learning

Aseltine et al’s Supervision for Learning (ASCD, 2006, pgs 23-24 ) has four tests to guide teachers in selecting what their slice of improvement for the year will be. These questions are consistent with the Understanding by Design model of Wiggins and McTighe

1. Essential Teaching and Learning. Does the target represent an area of essential teaching and learning for the teacher’s grade level and content area?

2. Schoolwide and District Data. Does an analysis of schoolwide or district performance data suggest that the target is an area needing improvement

3. Classroom Assessment. Does an analysis of classroom assessment data confirm the target as an area needing improvement?

4. The School and District Improvement Plan. Does the target correspond to an area of emphasis in the district or school’s improvement plan?

I would add that these same questions should be asked when teachers plan to infuse technology into learning. When they use these four questions, then they are using technology to support essential learning rather than using technology to support non-essential learning. Then technology use supports building goals and are not just a great add-on.

Try asking these questions before your next project.

A Shakespeare Play in English Class: Then and Now with Technology

I grew up in a text based school environment. We read Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream word by word, line by line, page by page, scene by scene. I struggled just to understand what was happening, I usually did not get around to thinking about the themes of the play.

Today’s students can do many technology-infused learning activities.

Many of these technology-infused activities allow the students to be fully engaged and to be doing higher level thinking. Are English teachers in your school text based or technology based? You can use the first column as a check list. Teachers can help their students to better understand any play through technology.

The Power of Visuals to Persuade: An Inconvenient Truth and Teachers’ Images

Last night I had the opportunity to watch Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. I realized how powerful his visuals were. His images showed the impact of global warming through charts and through simulations. As he was talking, I did not doubt him but I felt unconvinced. However, as I saw a simulation of the impact of global warming on icecaps and the potential flooding in areas like Florida, I saw the horrible possible future. I was moved. His images were convincing.

 

I wonder how powerful are the images that teachers use in the classroom? Are they compelling images? Do those images move students to new view points? To greater understanding? To more higher level thinking skills? Or do they just decorate a presentation?

 

What is your truth about visuals in your classroom? Can they convince students as to what winter is the Northeast is like?

YouTube Shows Bad Teaching

In getting ready for a presentation, I spent several hours on YouTube. I found some amazing things for use in a classroom such as other students’ or classes’ production of Shakespeare.

However, the thing that shocked me the most was all the cellphone videos taken of teachers. Almost all of these depict teaching at its worst – boring, off of topic, wasting time, etc. From the descriptions I sense that the teachers were not aware of being recorded. It hurts to see such “bad” teaching. Maybe if we are thought that we were being recorded then we would teach better.

Flickr Hints, suggests that “You can’t take pictures of people and post them on the web without theirpermission – at least, that’s the position in the UK.”

Flickr Third Party Links for Classroom Use

Here are some Flickr links that you might find valuable for using Flickr in education

Flickr

http://www.flickr.com

 

FlickrLeech—see all of today’s thumbnails

http://www.flickrleech.net/

 

Flickstorm sorts by topic rather quickly

http://www.zoo-m.com/flickr-storm/

Woophy Geotagged flickr

http://www.woophy.com/map/index.php

Airtight Interactive –See other tagging connections

http://www.airtightinteractive.com/projects/related_tag_browser/app/

 

Add Bubbles to a Picture or Series of Pictures/ See Archives

http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/

 

Flickr Tools Listing

http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2005/03/great-flickr-tools-collection/

 

Woophy and Flickr: Finding a Good Visual in Time?

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then how long should a teacher or student search for a meaningful image to communicate an idea?

Yes, Flickr has a search engine.

Yes, Woophy searches Flickr through a map or a search.

There are a host of other searching flickr sites.

Flickr is a wonderful site that contain many images. However, the question still remains how long will a teacher or student be searching for an image?

 

I’ve been preparing a presentation on Visual Literacy and I’ve been using Flickr. I can verify that I have spent much time in finding the image that communicates the idea I want. For example, I want to give a quick overview of the geography of Mexico. When I search Woophy for Mexico, geography there are 102 images. Many of them do not show geography; for example, I see racing cars, models, traffic jams, a wall, etc. It is the search engine that is showing me geography or Mexico? It is that the pictures were tagged with geography? There is no way to see all of the images at once so I have to scroll down and see ten and then scroll to the next ten. Eventually I found what I needed but it took a long time. Do teachers and students have that much time in the classroom?

Top 10 reasons not to use professional collaboration program

 

10 I don’t have time to check the online site since I’m too buy creating materials.

9 My stuff is not good enough to share.

8 I don’t want anyone else using my great writing technique.

7 I’ve heard that blogs and other collaborative programs like that have porn so I’m staying away from them.

6 Othere subject area teachers don’t teach like I do so their materials or ideas won’t help me.

5 I’ve used the same materials for the last 20 years and I won’t change now.

4 I have all the transparencies I need.

3 Once I close the door, it is my private world.

2 I am an expert in my subject area.

1 My students like to listen to me lecture each period.

 

It’s about teaching, not technology!

Technology is only an amplifier of teaching. If a teacher is a good teacher, then when he or she uses technology than that teaching is amplified. If a teacher is not an effective teacher, then when he or she uses technology that ineffective teaching is amplified.

 

“All technology is an amplifier…and what happens when you give a bad guitar player a bigger amplifier? Ouch!” Mr. Big as quoted in Ohler’s blog.

 

We should focus our efforts on good teaching, not on technology. We are spending far too much time and money in technology training; we need to spend much more on improving teaching.

 

Our leaders should be educators, not technology gurus.

Dependent or Self-Sustaining Technology-Infused Learning

I heard a state education leader talk about a school district that once was considered to be a national model. The district had an abundance of the newest technology in each classroom. Teachers were doing exemplary technology-infused learning. The superintendent left the district and within a few years, the technology emphasis became minimal.

 

 

In a school building, there was a computer lab assistant who created powerful learning experiences using a wide variety of technology. When he left for a teaching position, his replacement taught keyboard and word processing skills. Now very few teachers do technology projects.

 

 

It is good to analyze your building and district for the people who are the leaders in using technology. If a key person left, what would happen to technology use in your building or district?

 

 

Have teachers embedded technology-infused learning activities into their curriculum so that they are self-sustaining and even constantly improving? Or is technology use dependent on people outside the classroom?

Industrial to Information Age or Status Quo

A Flickr Fliction: Not Bright Enough for Me

A Flickr Fliction: Not Bright Enough for Me

When I started teaching Spanish in 1968, I used transparency pictures for class writing, conversations, oral comprehension and quizzes on a daily basis. (The overhead was a new technology back then!) Yes, it was a big pain to find the right picture from magazines or newspaper and then to make transparencies of the pictures. Yes, sometimes the transparencies melted (cheap transparencies and hot overhead machines). Also, I used a slide projector to show cultural pictures that I had taken in Spanish speaking countries. In 1975, I wrote an article (“Using Visual Material in the Foreign Language Classroom” Learning Resources, Vol 2-5 ,Feb. 1975, 9-13) on improving students’ language and cultural skills through fifty uses of visuals in the Foreign Language classroom. In addition, I mailed (not emailed) pictures of our area to students in Spanish speaking countries who asked us questions about our area. I made handouts of pictures for students to use in a variety of group activities within the classroom.

 

The basic educational concept has not changed throughout the years. Many students are visual learners and they react well to visual images. Can you say Millenial students? The students are engaged when visuals are used.

 

So, what would I like from Fliction? I want it to do more than I could do with the overhead, slides, handouts or mailing pictures. I want a more powerful learning technology. So far, based on the two presentations I have seen on Fliction, I have only seen one story attached to one specific picture and one comment on that writing. What about multiple stories to one picture? What about “continue my story” approach?What about two contrasting pictures to create higher level learning about a topic? What about a series of pictures showing a local community or topic? What about multiple comments to the multiple stories? What about a dialogue between the picture presenter and the story writer? What about writers role playing different people in the picture and having a conversation. For example, in above picture which I took are the two people happy or sad? What are they saying to each other? What are they saying about their location? How might the location represent their relationship?

Visuals are rich learning resources. I want students to have rich responses to them and to be able to respond to the pictures easily.

 

I’ll wait for a better developed learning-embedded technology image than Fliction. I’ll wait for a brighter use of technology to help students express their in depth ideas.

 

Improving Teaching Skills Through “Technology Integration” Professional Development

A school district hired me to do some professional development with its staff on the use of LCDs in the classroom since those teachers did not have LCDs in their classroom. These teachers would be sharing the LCD with a team or grade level. The technology director did not want his teachers to use an LCD just for lecture as some of them had done with the overhead.

 

I agreed to do the professional development as long as I could be creative. I changed the professional development from using LCDs to creating activities that engage students in high level thinking skills. Robert Marzano’s Classroom Instruction that Works. (ASCD, 2001) became my model. His research states that the technique of “similarities and differences” produces the greatest gain of any strategy in student learning, a 45% gain.

 

Each session I presented 15+ activities based on comparing and contrasting skills in their subject areas. Each activity involved high student engagement. I used the LCD as a catalyst for helping these 6-12 teachers to think differently about learning through the use of technology.

 

The Technology Director has arranged this professional development to be a series of sessions. After the teachers viewed and created some activities in the professional development session, I had the teachers try one technique in their own classrooms using the LCD and report on it the next session. As teachers reported their success with the short activities (developing the comparing and contrasting skill within one or two PowerPoint slides), other teachers commented that they wanted to modify the just presented technique for their classroom. One teacher acknowledged that she had not previously thought of using comparing and contrasting in her subject area and now she realized how easy it was. She had done three highly engaging higher level thinking activities when I had requested one to be done.

 

Many teachers will not go to “Improving Your Teaching” professional developments. However, each “technology integration” professional development can become an teaching improvement opportunity. The best way to improve how educators use technology is to improve their teaching skills first. As the teachers focus on high student engagement and higher level thinking skills such as comparing and contrasting, they use technology in very different ways than those who focus on low engagement and lower level thinking skills.

 

Do your “technology integration” professional developments develop teaching skills or technology skills?

Deliberate Learning and Technology

In July of 1978 I saw a demonstration of a desktop computer (a Radio Shack TRS 80). Immediately I thought of ways of using it in my middle school Spanish classroom and so I bought it. However, I quickly learned that I had to program it; there were no commercial programs. I had to decide whether the student learning was worth my time in creating the individual programs. As I thought of each lesson that I was going to teach, I would decide if the computer was a useful tool for presenting or testing information. I found that I could develop meaningful vocabulary, grammar, written conversation, and cultural lessons. Once I decided to use the computer for a specific lesson, I had to be very precise about what I wanted the students to learn, how they would be quizzed, and then how I could structure the learning activities for students’ success; today we call it Understanding by Design. Then I would write the computer program for that lesson.

I included the computerized lesson as one of the learning stations in my Spanish classes. Usually the computerized lesson provided a follow up to the previous day’s introduction of a new concept or it reviewed a topic covered the past week such as vocabulary. Students would huddle around the computer; they took turns answering the questions. If a student was not at the keyboard, he or she wrote down his or her answer before the keyboarder entered the answer. Students were thrilled by the computer program since they knew instantly whether they were right or wrong. If the keyboarder was incorrect, then the computerized lesson provided some remediation. I felt like I had a partner in the room.

Structuring student learning for success through technology was a laborious yet rewarding task for me. Now, as I visit classrooms in many schools and have pre-service teachers report on their supervising teachers’ classrooms, I wonder how deliberate teachers are in helping students to be successful learners through technology.

I find that many teachers have their students use technology since the teachers can use the technology with very little effort. On the other hand, I have found that some teachers’ technology embedded learning activities result in much classroom time and little subject area learning. I feel that sometimes there is a disconnect between the selected learning and the students’ specific technology use.

If teachers can be more deliberate about the specific learning they want for their students and how they will assess that learning, they will create appropriate technology embedded learning activities that allow their students to be successful learners.