No Learning for Unauthorised Persons

I was involved in a conversation the other day, with a teacher, who expressed the sentiment that she would not be willing to share her work with people from other schools. It’s a sentiment that is probably not uncommon. But it does make me sad.

I’ve spent a fair bit of time over this weekend thinking about why it is that teachers often take that position. I even found myself lamenting aloud about it at the dinner table… and my son (14) interjected:

“What are they worried about.. that some students from another

school might do some unauthorized learning?”

We all laughed. But it does raise the question – what is it that makes many teachers create good resources, and then hold them close to their chest as though they were commercially valuable company secrets? Is it really because they don’t want to help students in other schools to learn? Maybe it is! Perhaps they have such a scarcity mentality that they think because VCE exams are standardized, helping other students is tantamount to working against their own students!

Or perhaps they don’t want other teachers getting hold of their Intellectual property. If they spent all that time preparing a worksheet, how dare another teacher just use it and take advantage!! The other teacher might even pass it off as her own! (which would be unethical, but would it really, in any real sense affect the teacher who created it?).

Maybe some teachers are just so entrenched in 20th Century, industrial-age, knowledge-worker mindsets, that they don’t even know why they don’t share their resources with the world. They just haven’t started yet to realize that in the 21st Century, information is just a commodity. Worksheets, podcasts, videos – they are all just commodities. But what really have value in this new economy are the abilities to network with people and to crowd-source solutions to problems. Both of these are enhanced by sharing.

Personally I have found that when you give your work away, you get things back in return. Sometimes (not often) the reward is financial, sometimes its access to resources created by other teachers who reciprocate, sometimes it’s less tangible – a thank-you note, or an email. Last week I received an anonymous monetary ‘gift’ from the mother of a girl I have never met, who listens to my biology podcast, just to say ‘thanks’ for sharing my resources with her daughter. Over the past week I have received more than 25 heartfelt emails and voicemails from students I don’t know – expressing gratitude for the resources I share on the Internet. Here’s just one example:

Isn’t that why we became teachers – to help students learn, enjoy learning and experience success in learning? Why does it matter that this student is not one of my “official students”?

I think the saddest example of proprietary thinking that I have seen, was when visiting a school a while ago, I discovered that the English staff in that school SELL their work to their colleagues in the same office!

I guess we all guard our IP a little. We feel a bit indignant if others steal our stuff without proper attribution. But let’s remember why we became teachers in the first place. (whispers: “it was all about student learning”).

Class Without a Room

When I was at NECC in Washington DC earlier in the year, I sat in on a debate about whether we will need brick and mortar schools in the future or whether schools will be virtual. I didn’t find the arguments from either side particularly helpful, but I’ve thought a lot about the question since then, trying to imagine what a school of the future might be like, what role teachers will play in it, where my teaching is on that journey and what steps I could take to move forward.

I think students will still have a school to go to – but that school will operate very differently to the school they attend now. It will still be a place of social interaction, and identity. It will still be a learning hub. But it won’t operate from 9:00 AM to 3:30 PM, divided into 6 periods that run one into the next, with a 5 minute gap to move from room to room and punctuated by a common lunchtime and recess. I imagine a school where students have much more flexible time arrangements. They will be able to participate in some of their classes from home, online in one way or another. They’ll come to school for prac classes, for sport, and for other special meetings. Some days they may not arrive in the morning until their first meeting.

Other days they may turn up and work in a room where teachers are available on demand to help with things that a student is having difficulty with. I doubt many teachers will be standing in front of the class explaining algebra. Instead that kind of content will be delivered online via any one of a number of vehicles, and the role of many teachers will not be primarily to bring knowledge into the classroom, but wisdom, support and encouragement. (see my earlier post McEducation: Would You Like Teachers With That?

Since 2006, I have encouraged my students to continue interacting with each other and me even outside the classroom, by listening to and producing podcasts and screencasts, asking and answering questions on discussion forums, by SMS and so on.

There have been times when I have been away from school and have left a virtual class, which students have participated in without necessarily being physically in the classroom together. On my return, my students have sometimes told me that i teach better when I am away than I do when I am in the classroom with them!

Likewise, I had one student (Matt) leave the country half way through the year, but by continuing to listen to my podcasts, and by interacting with his classmates on a forum, he performed just as well while absent as he did when he was present in the classroom!

Over the last four years, I have become increasingly convinced that students learn better when they are learning online than they do in the physical classroom. A report from the US Department of Education gives reason to think that my anecdotal bases for thinking this are supported by empirical data that compares the effectiveness of face-to-face learning and online learning.

Yet one thing remains in my teaching. One vestige from the 20th Century that I have clung to like a security blanket: our 4 periods a week of time-tabled face-to-face class time. Its hard to imagine a class operating without it.

Or is it?

Next year, I have been granted permission to teach a biology class without a place in the timetable nor a classroom. Instead, we will meet in the evening, or at lunchtime, online, using Elluminate or something of that ilk. In addition we will make the class available to some students from other schools in the region. I’m hoping that teachers from those other schools might also be involved in some way.

There will be times when we will want to meet together in person, for pracs, for example. There may be other weeks when it’s not necessary to meet at all (even online) and other weeks when we want to double our time.

This class will comprise part of my official teaching allotment, so it also makes my day more flexible. For example, If I am teaching a class in the evening on a Wednesday, I may not turn up to school until recess that morning, or i may go home at lunchtime on Thursday. Likewise students will have flexible-time, being allowed to vary their attendance times at school.

In some ways its not unlike distance education, but the student:teacher ratio will be no larger than for a conventional VCE  face-to-face class, it will be more interactive than typical distance ed. and the class members will know each other in real-life. In many ways it will be more like a normal class, based in a public school, within a country town, but freed from the strictures of a timetable.

The regional director has given us permission to forge ahead with this – as an experiment, and has committed his financial support. So now all that remains is to get students involved, and to figure out how we are going to do… well, everything! This is a new land we are entering!

Any suggestions would be welcome! To tell the truth I’m a bit apprehensive. It’s a risk I’m taking – and I’m not just risking my own reputation, but the learning of my students. That’s a big risk. But if I’m right – those kids will learn better than the students in the conventional classes, and pave the way for more classes to be taught like that.

I’ll be reporting on how it goes throughout the year, here, and on my Twitter feed.

Virtual Post-It Notes

Today in my Year 12 Biology class, i used a neat tool that I came across called Wallwisher I think its really cool. It uses a “stickies-on-a-wall” metaphor. You can add a Sticky note simply by double clicking anywhere on the wall and by clicking and dragging, you can reposition any note on the wall – allowing grouping of similar notes.

I simply used it as a formative activity – asking my students to write down anything and everything they already knew about evolution on post-it notes and place them on the wallwisher wall.  Anyone was allowed to write anything, and anyone was allowed to move stickies around to group them with other related comments. It was only a 5 minute activity – but really engaging, and it has some advantages over real stickies, in that (a) everyone can see the comments clearly from wherever they are (on his or her own screen) and (b) the wall can be saved  (c) you don’t need to be in the same place at the same time to collaborate on it (although my students were) and (d) A student has the option of being anonymous.

What other uses can you see for it?  I’m keen to hear your suggestions.

Open Testing

Today I gave my year 8 Astronomy students a test.  But it was not like the tests I have given in the past.  I told them that they were allowed to use any resources they wanted to.  Their test still had to be their own work, but they were allowed to “phone a friend*”, or use any tools they brought with them.  Some brought their iPhones with astronomy apps on them, some brought more traditional plansipheres, some used the Mia Mia service to text away for information they needed to complete the tasks I had set.  They were, of course also allowed to use their class notes, etc.

The questions on the test were suitably open-ended so that finding factual information was not sufficient to answer a question.  They still had to be able to apply the facts they were finding.  And I hope that students who know more, and understand more, will have been able to answer the questions more fully and in a way that shows the fruit of their study.  But even weaker students (who didn’t know much) were able to make an attempt on the test.  To me, this kind of assessment seems much more relevant to the real world than a more traditional test.  Its hard to imagine many situations in the future when these students will have to complete a task without access to information from outside their own heads.  The ability to resourcefully and selectively access needed information and then use it judiciously is more important, I think, than remembering a list of things that the teacher has told them “will be on the test”.

More importantly, I think it helped my students to see that I am serious when I tell them that I don’t want this to just be a class, where they turn up, learn what they are told to learn, and then prove it in order to “pass”.  No – i want it to be a learning experience, where they learn for the joy of learning, and show me and each other what they have learned.  There is a difference.

*as long is it was a friend outside the class.

McEducation (Would you like teachers with that?)

Friday morning I was eating breakfast and I noticed on TV a McDonalds advertisement – advertising “MathsOnline”.  If you have not seen this, MathsOnline is a comprehensive virtual maths tutor for Australian secondary students.  McDonalds is providing it free of charge to any and all families and schools.

I signed up, and created accounts for my two teenaged sons and had them test it out for me.  A teacher explains by screencast how to solve a particular type of equation, and then there is a series of exercises that allow a student to test his ability.  Once finished he is told what his score was, and is able to go back and review any questions he got wrong.  The site also sends me a weekly report to show me how my sons are progressing.

Just because its McDonalds, I think, part of me wants to report that its not very good… but actually, my cursory look at it says that it actually IS  good.  Ok, maybe its not as exciting as playing online games, but if you want to learn how to do a particular type of maths, it sure beats textbook exercises! And here is the point I want to make: while the screencasts have been recorded by an experienced maths teacher, the project has neither been funded nor commissioned by the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD), or any other Education Department, nor by any school.  No, it is the initiative of  McDonalds.

I discussed in an earlier post my prediction that technology will democratize and is already democratizing education.  This is a prima facie example!  Here the responsibility for education is being assumed by a non-government body.

I think it raises real questions about the future role of schools and education departments.  Its not that we won’t need schools or teachers, just that their roles will have to change, if they are to be relevant.

I think anything taught in school that can be automated or recorded in a podcast or screencast or vodcast should be recorded as such (and will be recorded as such) over the next few years, by teachers like me and community organizations like McDonalds.  I also think that accounts for a large proportion of what is taught in schools.

What then will the role of teachers in the classroom be?  Good question!  One that bears thinking about.

Multitasking

My students were making a podcast, and as I walked past this pair of girls, at first I was a little confused.  I had to stop and figure out what was going on.  When I realized what was happening… i whipped out my iPhone and took this photo.   If you haven’t managed to interpret it – they each have a pair of earphones, which they are sharing with the other.  One had hers plugged into the computer they were working on.  The other had hers plugged into an iPod.  Together they were editing their podcast with one ear, and with the other, listening to some music.  Leaving aside issues of earwax and the fact that it doesn’t seem – to my generation x brain – like a good way to work… it was probably the most productive that this pair have been all semester!  I don’t know what to think of it.

Democratizing Education

Last century, a student was the ‘educational property’ of her teacher.  The teacher controlled what knowledge she had to acquire and the conduits through which it would be acquired. I know teachers who have felt personally offended to learn that one of their students was paying a private tutor for extra lessons!

If you are the sort of educator who is offended to think that your students might be asking help from someone else, brace yourself for what is inevitably going to happen, and is already happening in an incipient way: a democratization of education.

By “democratizing education” I mean that the day is coming and may already be here, that a student may not consider you to be her ‘teacher’, simply by virtue of the fact that your initials are on her timetable, and she is forced to attend to your classroom 4 times a week.

As an increasing number of teachers make quality podcasts, screencasts, vodcasts, nings, forums and other resources and make these available to anyone who wants to learn, students will have an ever-diversifying smorgasbord of learning communities to choose to belong to.  And this democratization is crossing the traditional boundaries between not only one school and the next, but between public and private schools, school districts, and even countries.

In my own case, I make a biology podcast specifically for my own 20 students, but it has a regular listening audience of about 4000 students!  In the last month there have been over 18,000 downloads (representing more than 270 GB of data).  The last episode of the podcast was an hour entirely dedicated to answering the questions sent in by listeners by voicemail and email.   Among those listeners are a number of students who cannot regularly attend class due to chronic illnesses, a girl who could not otherwise enroll in biology at her school due to a timetable clash, and another who described me as her favourite teacher – although she had only ever heard me teach via the podcast!  There is a middle-aged alaskan woman, and a 13 year old in Oklahoma who also listen – not because they are facing an exam, but because they want an education.

Meanwhile, I know that some of my students listen to a biology podcast produced by another teacher who has a very different teaching style to mine.  As more and more teachers make podcasts like this, students are not only being given choice over where they listen, when they listen, for how long they listen and how many times they listen to a lesson but they also have choice over whose lessons they listen to!

At the moment we are only beginning to see this happen.  But I think its inevitable.  And consider this: the most popular teachers in this scenario, may not necessarily even be practicing teachers!  They may be university students or retired teachers.  How relevant is it going to be for students to come to class at all in this future?  If the classroom teacher still sees himself as the ‘font of knowledge’ for those students, then, it may not be very relevant at all.  There has never been a more important time for teachers to ask themselves “what value am I adding to my students?”, and even “what is my role as a teacher?”  Nor has there been a better time for schools to question the current models of attendance and timetabling.

All abuzz over Yuri

Today in my Astronomy class ( year 8 ) we started learning about space exploration.  Students knew who the first person to walk on the moon was, some even knew who the second was.  Nobody knew who the first person in space was – although some thought it might have been a Russian.  Now, suppose I had simply told them who it was ([whispers] It was Yuri Gagarin but shhhhh! because at this point in the story my students don’t know that yet). How engaging would that have been? Right! it would have been boring and the lesson would have been utterly unmemorable.

Instead, I told them we were going to have a contest.  The first student to get a text message on their phone, with the correct answer to the question would be the winner.  Here’s how events transpired…

The truth is, of course that we were all winners.  We’d had fun, learned something… no, not that Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space – just between us, I don’t really think that’s terribly important to remember – you can always look it up if you need to know it – but the important lesson was in the value of a PLN (personal learning network).  If you’re reading this blog, you probably realise the value of a PLN in your own career, but how often do we encourage our students to think about cultivating a PLN?  In a world where information is voluminous, ubiquitous and free, a person’s professional success will not be predicated on an ability to remember facts, but on an ability to quickly access information on the fly.   A PLN is powerful for that.

If nothing else, the lesson was memorable. The engagement of students made it a worthwhile novelty – you could see it in their faces.  Their pupils were dilated, they were smiling and there was a buzz in the air (literally! – from the ringtones).

Automate Your Left-brain Teaching

In his book A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink argues that just as last century, machines replaced the human back, this century machines will replace the human brain. But not the whole brain, just the left half – the side that deals with routines and right answers; things that can be reduced to a formula or a sequence of steps. He argues that whilst schools are obsessed with routines and right answers, the skills that will make a person successful in the 21st century are right-brain skills such as empathy, artistry, big-picture thinking, and story-telling.

Certain types of jobs are going to disappear according to Pink. Certain types of accounting will disappear; certain types of law will disappear; certain types of medicine will disappear. Any career that is based on following a decision tree that brackets to yes-no answers or any career that is predicated on factual knowledge will disappear early this century because it can be done cheaper, faster and more consistently by a computer.

So as teachers, if we think our value lies in the subject knowledge we possess, then we soon will be, if we are not already, redundant.

So what is the solution? I think it’s to embrace Pink’s prediction about the future and run toward it, deliberately automating our left-brain teaching processes and thereby freeing ourselves to better do the right-brain parts of our job that can’t be automated.

Today I enjoyed working with our ceramics teacher, Narelle Baker, who has seen that potential. She’s beginning the process of vodcasting the skills that she teaches in ceramics. Today she was vodcasting basic pottery-wheel skills. She used a flip cam on a tripod to record herself demonstrating the skill she normally demonstrates (over and over and over again). This video will be uploaded to her SharePoint site where students can watch the demo at home, and more importantly it will be set to loop on a monitor located behind the pottery wheels. She is automating an aspect of her teaching that can be reduced to a series of steps.

Imagine walking into Narelle’s room in the future! Students will be working on the wheel…with a virtual Ms Baker explaining and demonstrating over and over (without losing patience!) how to perform a technique…. while the real Ms Baker is working with students elsewhere in the studio, discussing more right-brain topics like design and aesthetics – the sorts of things that require the genius of a ceramics teacher – things that can’t be automated. They have to do with emotions and maturity in the subject. Or she might be working with a misbehaving student. That’s empathy, which also can’t be automated. As a teacher, she will have more time to do the sort of work that can’t be automated, by automating the parts of her job that can.

As seen by students (1064)

Visually Compelling, Instant Student Feedback: SRS on the Cheap

INTRODUCTION

I spend a lot of time with computers and gadgets. I like them. But what gets me really enthused is when I find an ICT pencil that will do the job of a space pen (refer to earlier post on space pens and pencils). That makes it something that can be used by teachers anywhere, anytime at no, or very little cost.

This post is about one of the best pencils I’ve seen in a long time.

WHY I WANT TO USE AN SRS?

In 2004 i started looking at Student Response Systems (SRS), starting with the Promethean ActiVote. Like everything I do, this was not about the technology, it was about the teaching and learning.

I’d argue that good teachers have always sought feedback from their students in order to inform their teaching.  This feedback is sought  in a number of ways – from having students raise their hands, through informal quizzing right up to a full SRS.  The direction and pace of the lesson is then informed by that data – with everyone in the class feeling part-ownership in the path the class takes. That approach to teaching, has to be more effective than simply teaching what, to the teacher “seems like a good idea”. With a limited amount of class time, spending more time on things that are poorly understood, and less time on things that are well understood must lead to better outcomes (not to mention engagement).

The appeal of an SRS is that the teacher and students can get immediate, anonymous, visually compelling feedback that shows how well the class understands a concept, while the concept is being taught.  If students raise their hands, the feedback is immediate, but neither anonymous nor individual (whether or not a student raises his hand is likely to be influenced by the indications of his friends).  If students complete a quiz – even an anonymous one – the feedback is not instantaneous.  So an SRS allows us to achieve a quality of feedback that is not possible otherwise.

THE SEARCH FOR A CHEAP ALTERNATIVE SRS

What stopped me investing in an SRS back in 2004 was the cost. The price tag is substantial.  A class set of  Promethean ActiVote carries a price tag of thousands of dollars. Others such as iRespond, or Qwizdom are also very expensive. I could have procured funding to purchase a set of these… but then what? I can hardly share that teaching strategy with colleagues, “Look what I can do! – You too could be teaching this way …. if you can find a spare $3000″.

So over the years I have tried a number of ways to achieve a similar result – getting instant feedback at low cost. Some of the systems I tried were OK – but none of them were Ideal.  probably the most successful was the survey tool built into SharePoint – but even that always seemed clumsy, required a lot of page-refreshing, and wasn’t very visually appealing.

ENTER POLLEVERYWHERE

Last year I became aware of a web 2.0 site called “polleverywhere” (www.polleverywhere.com). I would highly recommend its use as a free SRS. Last year I used it to have students vote on a response from their mobile phone (that is how most people use it, I think). Students say its like voting for a contestant on Australian Idol. Its quite engaging and the results appear on the website instantaneously as the votes come in. The downside, of course is that each vote costs each student the cost of an SMS. In my experience, that’s not a deal breaker for most students for one or two questions, but if you had ten questions, it will cost each student over $2. Its still a LOT cheaper than an SRS like Activote… but at $2 per student that is costing the class about $50 for a ten-question quiz!

MY STUDENT RESPONSE SYSTEM SETUP

BUT Polleverywhere also has the option to vote using a computer – ‘web voting’. That is what I have been doing this last two weeks. It has been a process of trial and failure – finally resulting in something that I’d label a success, that I will use again and again, and that I want to share with my colleagues.

I set up 10 questions in Polleverywhere (that is, ten ‘polls’) about enzymes.

I then created a new SharePoint site with nothing but ten XML webparts. If you don’t have SharePoint, you could use a wiki, or any other site that lets you embed XML code in the page.  I also tried it with Wikispaces and it worked fine.

Beside each poll on Polleveryhwere, there is a link “Embed in Blog or Web Page”. Clicking this gives you the XML code for that question. Copy that and paste it into the XML code Web Part in the SharePoint site.

To visualise the results fo the votes, you could simply display your Polleverywhere site on the data projector, But you can alternatively download a PowerPoint slide of each graph – or (as I did) download an OS X dashboard widget.  Either of these options adds a real fluidity to the flow of the lesson – negating the need to click back and forth, loading one page after another.

By displaying the PowerPoint slide or Dashboard widget on the data projector, the class can see the results graph as they are voting. Using the dashboard widget is quite neat, as it will show over the top of a PowerPoint or Keynote slide, so you can call up the poll at any time during your presentation. Alternatively, you can just bring up the widget, without needing to have PowerPoint in slideshow mode. That lets you use it with other applications on the screen – perhaps some simulation software, or a website.

Students log into the SharePoint site on their computer in class and as we get to each question, they click the option that they think is correct. The graph on the data projector responds by changing dynamically as the votes are entered. It is worth mentioning that there is NO need to refresh either screen at all during the lesson (which pleasantly surprised me).

Instant, Individual, anonymous, visually compelling class feedback!! – much as you can achieve with a $3000 SRS, but free.  OK, its not a space pen.  A dedicated SRS would be do the job better.  But this can be used by teachers right across the school.  To me that makes it a better option.

The screenshots below show a question, on which 75% of my class chose the wrong option.  As a result, we spent considerable time exploring that concept.  But skipped others on which 100% of the class chose the right option.