Archive for Blair Peterson

1:1 Laptops = Head Fake

August 10, 2012 Blair Peterson No comments

Photo by Ben­ton Smith

Cross Posted on Cre­ative Tension

We have been plan­ning for our 1:1 roll­out for the past year and a half and the event finally took place last week. Graded is fully 1:1 in the mid­dle and high schools. Dur­ing this time it has become clear to all of us that all of our talk about 1:1 was just a head fake. Randy Pausch described the “head fake” in ,  “Last Lec­ture: Achiev­ing your Child­hood Dreams”. Dr. Pausch talks about the indi­rect learn­ing that hap­pens when you’re involved in an activ­ity. One exam­ple that he offers is from par­ents want­ing their chil­dren to play football.

“We actu­ally don’t want our kids to learn foot­ball. … we send our kids out to learn much more impor­tant things. Team­work, sports­man­ship, per­se­ver­ance, et cetera, et cetera.”

Tran­script of Lecture

For all of our talk about becom­ing a 1:1 school, we didn’t just want teach­ers and stu­dents walk­ing around cam­pus with machines. We learned quickly that what we wanted was so much more. This is where the com­monly heard expres­sion “it’s not about the tech­nol­ogy” fits. Sure, we planned for elec­tric­ity, soft­ware, band­width, polices and pro­ce­dures, but the real learn­ing came with those big­ger ques­tions that we are still tackling.

Find­ing the answers to these ques­tions is where the real learn­ing occurs and this is why our jour­ney will continue.

  • What skills and knowl­edge do our stu­dents need to learn for now? Future?
  • Is the cul­ture of learn­ing dif­fer­ent today?
  • “How do I help teach­ers bring authen­tic assess­ment and real world prob­lem solv­ing to the classrooms?”
  • With the tech­nol­ogy in hand, what new resources will help with learning?
  • “How can we bal­ance the teaching-learning process both on-line and face to face mode in a 1:1 program?”
  • “The rela­tion­ship between new learn­ing and old learn­ing — is it a par­a­digm shift or a continuum?”
  • “How do we man­age stu­dent learn­ing as we encour­age more outside/digital interaction/play?”
  • “What is the best way to change struc­tures at Graded to sup­port learn­ing out­side of tra­di­tional classes…and should we?”

We know that we have just begun the jour­ney and that it’s going to be an excit­ing one for our entire community. If was really just about mov­ing to a 1:1 envi­ron­ment we’d be done and we could check that task off our list.

Join us for Innovate 2013 in Sao Paulo, Brazil

May 30, 2012 Blair Peterson 2 comments

Graded, The Amer­i­can School of Sao Paulo has teamed up with the Amer­i­can School of Bom­bay, Lau­sanne Col­le­giate and Frank­furt Inter­na­tional School to pro­vide the Amer­i­cas with this Lap­top Insti­tute event. In plan­ning the con­fer­ence we con­sid­ered The Lap­top Insti­tute, ASB Unplugged, Learn­ing 2.011, K12 Online Con­fer­ence, Educon 2.4, and oth­ers. Will Richard­son, Mick Ebel­ing and Scott Klososky will join for­ward think­ing edu­ca­tors from around the world in “Re-imagining School”.

Inno­vate 2013 Learn­ing Structures

In an effort to com­bat the Edu­ca­tion Myths That Shape Con­fer­ences, Inno­vate 2013 is com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing a vari­ety of learn­ing struc­tures to sup­port par­tic­i­pants in inves­ti­gat­ing inno­va­tion and plan­ning for trans­fer in ways that are pow­er­ful for them personally.

Two-hour Open Space Slot: Open Space Tech­nol­ogy was cre­ated in the mid-1980s by orga­ni­za­tional con­sul­tant Har­ri­son Owen when he dis­cov­ered that peo­ple attend­ing his con­fer­ences loved the cof­fee breaks bet­ter than the for­mal pre­sen­ta­tions and ple­nary ses­sions. This block of time is designed to hand over the con­fer­ence to par­tic­i­pants to deter­mine what kinds of dia­logue need to hap­pen that we at Inno­vate 2013 missed in our planning.

Cohort meet­ings:  Sched­uled three times through­out the con­fer­ence, cohorts are a group of 20 – 25 indi­vid­u­als that gather reg­u­larly to exchange ideas, reflect on learn­ing and cre­ate con­nec­tions that result in mean­ing­ful, per­son­al­ized out­comes from the con­fer­ence. Orga­nized and focused by a facil­i­ta­tor, par­tic­i­pants are encour­aged to choose into a cohort that best defines where their dri­ving ques­tion about edu­ca­tional inno­va­tion may reside. This learn­ing struc­ture is designed for par­tic­i­pants to build a plan for tak­ing learn­ing back to their organizations.

Cohort strands to choose from include:

  • Lead­er­ship
  • Instruc­tional Tech­nol­ogy Facilitators
  • The Peo­ple Behind the Scenes: Infrastructure
  • Dig­i­tal Citizenship
  • Differentiation/Special Needs
  • Assess­ment
  • NCTE Twenty-First Cen­tury Literacies
  • The Arts
  • Col­lab­o­ra­tion in local and global communities
  • Phys­i­cal Education
  • Stu­dent

90 minute work­shops and three-hour insti­tutes: We invite YOU, our par­tic­i­pants, to share your work and ideas with every­one by pre­sent­ing at the con­fer­ence. Come and share how you or your school are inte­grat­ing tech­nol­ogy in the class­room, chal­leng­ing the sta­tus quo, or pur­su­ing strate­gies that place stu­dents in the cen­ter.  Share your expe­ri­ences launch­ing and imple­ment­ing a 1-to-1 pro­gram, uti­liz­ing dig­i­tal tools to sup­port assess­ment prac­tices, build­ing col­lab­o­ra­tive com­mu­ni­ties, or exam­in­ing strate­gies that add to the dia­logue of edu­ca­tional innovation.

Call for Proposals

Graded School is seek­ing dynamic and for­ward think­ing pro­fes­sion­als to facil­i­tate learn­ing ses­sions at the Inno­vate 2013 Conference. Innovate 2013 marks Graded School’s com­mit­ment to re-imagine the school that best serves and inspires stu­dents for tomor­row.  Please join us and inno­va­tors from across the globe to engage in a dia­logue designed to ignite new ideas result­ing in build­ing a foun­da­tion for the change our stu­dents deserve.

The journey can be exciting and scary at the same time

May 11, 2012 Blair Peterson One comment

Cross posted on Cre­ative Tension

In Decem­ber 2009, I used this photo in my Lead­er­ship and 1:1 Bus post and last year I used it with the Graded fac­ulty to describe our jour­ney to pro­vide stu­dents with a rel­e­vant edu­ca­tion for today and the future. This jour­ney includes going 1:1 in August 2012. For me the photo con­jures up excite­ment and fear. And while some peo­ple are adven­tur­ous enough to sit on top or hang on the side, oth­ers feel more com­fort­able inside. It doesn’t mat­ter where one sits, the impor­tant thing is that we’re all together on the journey.

When is it excit­ing and often mag­i­cal?  When our stu­dents are using tech­nol­ogy for learn­ing, cre­ative and orig­i­nal think­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion, research and infor­ma­tion lit­er­acy and crit­i­cal think­ing and prob­lem solving.

When is it a bit scary?  When we are uncer­tain of what is com­ing next or when we have to step out­side our com­fort zone to try some­thing new.

We have so much to be proud because we have trav­eled so far in such a short amount of time. This year we have done the fol­low­ing to pre­pare for a full 1:1 roll­out in August.

  • Sup­port pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment at con­fer­ences by pro­vid­ing fac­ulty with the oppor­tu­nity to attend the Lap­top Insti­tute at Lau­sanne Col­le­giate and Unplugged at the Amer­i­can School of Bom­bay.
  • Pro­vided all of our teach­ers and admin­is­tra­tors with lap­tops so that we all get used to work­ing any­time, anywhere.
  • Using dig­i­tal tools to help us with our work and our learn­ing. The idea is that we will exper­i­ment and fig­ure out what works as we do the same in our classrooms.
  • Cre­ated PLCs around assess­ment in today’s dig­i­tal environment.
  • Reviewed and redesigned our cur­ricu­lum in sci­ence and Eng­lish with a 21st cen­tury lens.
  • Encour­aged stu­dents to bring in lap­tops to ease the tran­si­tion for August.
  • Defined our Infor­ma­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Tech­nol­ogy stan­dards that will be inte­grated school­wide next year.
  • Pro­vided teach­ers with a full-time aca­d­e­mic tech­nol­ogy coor­di­na­tor to sup­port them with inte­grat­ing tech­nol­ogy and pro­fes­sional development.
  • Devel­oped our accept­able use pol­icy and LARK guide­lines so that our com­mu­nity mem­bers can be respon­si­ble dig­i­tal citizens.
  • Devel­oped a dig­i­tal toolkit that will pro­vide us with some soft­ware stan­dard­iza­tion in our bring your own lap­top environment.
  • Upgraded facil­i­ties so that we have elec­tri­cal power through­out the campus.

We real­ize that the jour­ney is not over yet. In real­ity, we’ve really only trav­eled a short dis­tance. The key is that we are well on our way to trans­form­ing the learn­ing expe­ri­ences for our students.

WOULD THIS ARTICLE MAKE YOU WANT TO LEARN IN A 1:1 SCHOOL?

October 20, 2011 Blair Peterson No comments

Alan Schwarz’s New York Times arti­cle, Out With Text­books, in With Lap­tops for an Indi­ana School Dis­trict high­lights the the new 1:1 lap­top ini­tia­tive in Mun­ster, IN.

I’m a bit shocked by the focus of the arti­cle and the way that the pro­gram is por­trayed. Take a look at a few of the quotes from the arti­cle and you tell me what you tell me what you think.

This is the quote from Ms. Stafford that ends the article. “This wasn’t a tech­nol­ogy ini­tia­tive — this was a cur­ricu­lum initiative,”

OK, but look at these other ones.

  • “The day all have seen com­ing — tra­di­tional text­books being replaced by inter­ac­tive com­puter programs…”
  • “The mate­r­ial we’re teach­ing is old but every­thing around it is brand-new,” said Pat Premetz, chair­woman of the math depart­ment at Wilbur Wright Mid­dle School
  • “Uncuffed, Angela Bartolomeo’s sixth graders spent a recent Wednes­day rear­rang­ing terms of equa­tions on an inter­ac­tive Smart Board and dragging-and-dropping answers in ways that chalk­boards never could. (In between, a car­toon char­ac­ter exclaimed that “Mul­ti­ply­ing by 1 does not change the value of a num­ber!” in his best super­hero baritone.)”
  • “When Ms. Nor­man told the stu­dents to take out their ear buds to watch a video, two in the back yelped, “Cool!””
  • “With a text­book, you can only read what’s on the pages — here you can click on things and watch videos,” said Patrick Wu, a sev­enth grader. “It’s more fun to use a key­board than a pencil.

Are these the main rea­sons that we advo­cate for pro­vid­ing stu­dents and teach­ers with access to tech­nol­ogy? Are these exam­ples of higher level learn­ing in a 21st cen­tury class­room? I applaud the efforts of the school dis­trict and teach­ers. I just think that this arti­cle fails to cap­ture the real rea­son why the dis­trict decided to go 1:1.

Cross posted at Cre­ative Ten­sion.

Planning on becoming a school of the future?

April 12, 2011 Blair Peterson No comments

Cross posted on Cre­ative Tension

Some­thing very excit­ing hap­pened when our lead­er­ship team met for a lead­er­ship retreat to work on our vision for Graded. For the longest time we have been focus­ing on our 1:1 ini­tia­tive in the mid­dle school and amaz­ingly enough, dur­ing the entire retreat, tech­nol­ogy never entered the con­ver­sa­tion. We even framed our learn­ing around five of ISTE’s Essen­tial Con­di­tions to Effec­tively Lever­age Tech­nol­ogy for Learn­ing. The five that we chose were Skilled Per­son­nel,  Cur­ricu­lum Frame­work and Stu­dent Cen­tered Learn­ing, Ongo­ing Pro­fes­sional Devel­op­ment, and Assess­ment and Evaluation.

I think that we owe the National Asso­ci­a­tion of Inde­pen­dent Schools (NAIS) and their “A Guide to Becom­ing a School of the Future” for this accom­plish­ment. I highly rec­om­mend it as required read­ing for any school that is plan­ning for the future. I think that we spent so much time focus­ing on the core of a our school in the future, that it was just assumed that tech­nol­ogy would play a major role in the teach­ing and learn­ing process.

What does the guide have to offer?

The first sec­tion is enti­tled, “Mak­ing the Case for Schools of the Future”. Even if you don’t need con­vinc­ing, I sug­gest that you read it and share it with those who need to be convinced.

“We can choose to adapt, accept­ing that we do not know this world as well as our chil­dren and look to them to help us learn. Or, we can be infex­i­ble immi­grants, focus­ing on how good things used to be. If we are to reach our chil­dren and help them learn, we must adapt, we must face the fact that our stu­dents are no longer the peo­ple our edu­ca­tional sys­tem was designed to teach.”

The sec­ond sec­tion is, “Essen­tial Capac­i­ties for the 21st Cen­tury”. We linked this to a cur­ricu­lum frame­work where the main cat­e­gories are Ana­lyt­i­cal and  Cre­ative Think­ing  and Problem-solving; Complex Com­mu­ni­ca­tion —Oral and Written; Leadership and Teamwork; Digital and Quan­ti­ta­tive Literacy; Global Perspective; Adaptability, Ini­tia­tive,  and Risk-Taking; Integrity and Eth­i­cal  Decision-Making. There are many frame­works out there that describe what stu­dents should know and be able to do. This is just one that pro­vides food for thought.

I love the third sec­tion and think that it is the core of the guide because it pro­vides schools with a vari­ety of mod­els and resources for change. It’s great that they start the chap­ter off by saying:

“The inten­tion is not to pro­vide a for­mu­laic approach to the chal­lenges of teach­ing and learn­ing in our times but rather to encour­age explo­ration, inno­va­tion, and trans­for­ma­tion within each school in a man­ner that is con­sis­tent with the school’s mis­sion and the needs of its students.”

One can spend hours in this sec­tion explor­ing the ideas and the links to resources from a wide vari­ety of school and teach­ers. The Sto­ries of Excel­lence guide has exam­ples of class­room units where tech­nol­ogy is used (unfor­tu­nately, It looks like they have blocked it to non-members).  This is one resource that is teach­ing and learn­ing with tech­nol­ogy focused.

The authors iden­ti­fied the fol­low­ing uni­fy­ing themes:

  • The schools are aca­d­e­m­i­cally demanding
  • Project-based learn­ing, as an inte­gral part of the school’s pro­gram, is woven through­out all grade lev­els and disciplines
  • Class­rooms extend beyond the school walls, actively engag­ing stu­dents in the world around them
  • Dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies and a global per­spec­tive infuse all aspects of the curriculum
  • Vibrant arts pro­grams help pro­mote cre­ativ­ity, self-expression, self-discipline, and fexibility
  • The adults are actively engaged with one another and with the stu­dents in a process of con­tin­u­ous learning
  • A cul­ture of engage­ment and sup­port invites par­tic­i­pa­tion, inno­va­tion, and a “growth mind­set” on the part of teach­ers and students
  • Trans­for­ma­tional lead­er­ship chal­lenges the sta­tus quo, draws out the issues, nav­i­gates through con­fict, and mobi­lizes peo­ple and resources to do the adap­tive work nec­es­sary to cre­ate and sus­tain effec­tive change.

Finally, the appen­dix has addi­tional resources to use in your planning.

If you haven’t stud­ied this guide, you’re miss­ing out. It’s a must in my hum­ble opinion.

Task Force 2012: our plan for using collaborative tools

April 11, 2011 Blair Peterson No comments

Cross posted on Cre­ative Ten­sion.

While our mid­dle school has a 1:1 pro­gram in grades 6 and 7 our high school is plan­ning to roll out a 1:1 pro­gram in August 2012. We have cre­ated a 27 mem­ber task force com­prised of teach­ers, stu­dents, par­ents and admin­is­tra­tors whose job it is to get out in front of the learn­ing and to make rec­om­men­da­tions for the 2011 school year.  The task force lead­er­ship group decided to struc­ture the group, which has a Decem­ber — June lifes­pan, around these ideas and goals.

“We will strive to keep the learn­ing pur­pose­ful and the task force focused on cre­at­ing rec­om­men­da­tions (action plans) for the 2011 school year.” Goals

  • Develop recommendations/action steps for the high school for the 2011-12 school year. Rec­om­men­da­tions will be based on the Inter­na­tional Soci­ety for Tech­nol­ogy in Education’s Essen­tial Con­di­tions.
  • Share infor­ma­tion on 21st cen­tury edu­ca­tion with the Graded community.

The group meets monthly for four hour chunks of time so we real­ize the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­cat­ing and col­lab­o­rat­ing vir­tu­ally. There are three tools that we are rely­ing on heav­ily for com­mu­ni­ca­tion and collaboration.

1. Ning - The 2012 Task Force Ning is our hub for com­mu­ni­ca­tion. While there are 27 mem­bers of the task force, there are 56 mem­bers on the Ning. We have opened it up to our entire com­mu­nity. We started by post­ing notes from our ini­tial meet­ings in the dis­cus­sion forum and are encour­ag­ing video uploads, ongo­ing dis­cus­sions and blog posts. We use it as a por­tal for dis­cus­sions and an archive of our process. Recently, we asked our high school lead­er­ship team to review the Ning so that the mem­bers could gain a sense of what the task force is doing. While we’re never sat­is­fied with the level of par­tic­i­pa­tion, the amount of infor­ma­tion that has been gen­er­ated after 3 months is fantastic.

2. Diigo - We have cre­ated a group called Graded 21st Cen­tury that mem­bers can use to share web resources. Mem­bers can also share high­lights and notes with the rest of the group. We are find­ing that the long tale prop­erty  holds true with a very small num­ber of mem­bers con­tribut­ing mul­ti­ple sources. It will be inter­est­ing to see how par­tic­i­pa­tion improves over time.

3. Google Docs — We use Google Edu­ca­tion tools to col­lab­o­rate and present infor­ma­tion. These tools are avail­able 24/7 for mem­bers to use and we have a rich archive of information.

So, what have we learned in rolling out these tools?

1. Build­ing the Ning doesn’t mean that peo­ple will auto­mat­i­cally start using the tool. We found that we had to pro­vide sup­port to help the teach­ers, stu­dents and par­ents to get started. Send­ing the infor­ma­tion out via e-mail only worked for some of the participants.

2. Using the tools dur­ing the face to face meet­ings is a must. Aside from the obvi­ous rea­sons, this allows the par­tic­i­pants to dis­cuss the tools and they can get help, if necessary.

3. We’re work­ing with an out­side con­sul­tant and she is able to track our progress and par­tic­i­pate in the dis­cus­sions. On a recent Skype call with her I asked her to guess which direc­tion the group took in a recent meet­ing and she had already seen the work and was able to com­ment. It’s so effi­cient and effec­tive to have her linked in with our work.

4. Mak­ing a monthly post an assigned task has had mixed results. Some were more com­fort­able with expound­ing on their ideas that related to spe­cific online resources and oth­ers just shared resources on the Ning. We’re hop­ing that with feed­back and dis­cus­sion that post­ing will become a habit and that the qual­ity of the posts will improve.

5. We’re con­stantly look­ing for ways to increase the chat­ter on the Ning. We are opti­mistic that we’ll develop a cul­ture of online col­lab­o­ra­tion but it seems to be some­thing that we can’t give up on.

We’re very excited about the work that this group is doing and it will be excit­ing to see how this online cul­ture evolves. What sug­ges­tions do you have for us?

Looking for Research on 1 to 1 Initiatives?

January 31, 2011 Blair Peterson 5 comments

I’m cer­tainly glad that I fol­low Chris Smith from Sham­bles on Twit­ter because I recently found the New South Wales (NSW) One-to-One Com­put­ers in Schools 2010 Lit­er­a­ture Review through him. The tim­ing was per­fect because our school com­mu­nity is ready to look at research on the topic. The review focuses on Stu­dent Achieve­ment, Pro­fes­sional Learn­ing and Lap­top Ped­a­gogy, Lead­er­ship and Tech­nol­ogy Inte­gra­tion, Tech­ni­cal prob­lems and sup­port, and Com­put­ers at home. I don’t want to ruin this excel­lent learn­ing expe­ri­ence for you, but they iden­ti­fied the key impli­ca­tions as,

  • One-to-one lap­top pro­grams can bring about improve­ments to stu­dent learning
  • Improve­ments in stu­dent achieve­ment are related to lap­top use
  • Pro­fes­sional learn­ing is essen­tial for suc­cess­ful integration
  • A shift from a focus on tech­nol­ogy pro­fi­ciency to lap­top ped­a­gogy needs to take place
  • Teacher ped­a­gog­i­cal beliefs largely deter­mine the degree and type of inte­gra­tion that occurs in the classroom
  • Pro­fes­sional learn­ing  must include processes by which teach­ers reg­u­larly dis­cuss their ped­a­gog­i­cal and edu­ca­tional values
  • Teach­ers need time for dis­cus­sion and the shar­ing of ideas/resources
  • Lead­er­ship is cru­cial for suc­cess­ful integration
  • School lead­ers must build a shared vision, keep the focus on that vision, lead the plan­ning, pro­vide time for col­lab­o­ra­tion and dis­cus­sion and pro­vide appro­pri­ate and timely pro­fes­sional learn­ing for teachers
  • Lead­ers must fos­ter a col­lab­o­ra­tive and sup­port­ive school culture
  • Dis­trib­uted lead­er­ship and a whole school approach are most effective
  • Suf­fi­cient tech­nol­ogy sup­port is cru­cial for the suc­cess of a one-to-one laptop program
  • Tech­nol­ogy sup­port needs do not dimin­ish as the pro­gram matures

You can learn more about the Dig­i­tal Edu­ca­tion Rev­o­lu­tion in NSW at their site.

How will you use this rich infor­ma­tion to sup­port your 1 to 1 initiative?

Practical Ideas from Curriculum 21 — Part 1

January 26, 2011 Blair Peterson One comment

Crossed Posted on Cre­ative Tension

This is part 1 of 2.

I slowly worked my way through Heidi Hayes-Jacobs bookCur­ricu­lum 21: Essen­tial Edu­ca­tion for a Chang­ing World for the past cou­ple of months. It’s been slow only because I haven’t had much time for seri­ous read­ing lately. Once I got my new iPad I was able to breeze through it.  While I was skep­ti­cal about the con­tent at first, I have to say that I was pleas­antly sur­prised with what I learned from the book. Hayes-Jacobs with help fromStephen Wilmarth, Vivien Stew­art,Tim Tyson, Frank W. Baker, David Nigu­idula, Jamie P. Cloud, Alan Novem­ber, Bill Sheskey, Arthur Costa and Bena Kallick present an argu­ment, along with prac­ti­cal steps for “upgrad­ing the cur­ricu­lum”. This first post will focus on two key points from the first four chap­ters by Heidi Hayes Jacobs.

What year are you prepar­ing your stu­dents for? 1973? 1995? Can you hon­estly say that your school’s cur­ricu­lum and the pro­gram that you use are prepar­ing your stu­dents for 2015 or 2020? Are you even prepar­ing them for today?

Start with chang­ing the assess­ments — As I visit class­rooms I’m con­stantly ask­ing myself how will the les­son change when every­one has ubiq­ui­tous access to the right tech­no­log­i­cal tools (we’re prepar­ing to go 1:1 in 2012). As we talk about this trans­for­ma­tion I agree with her in say­ing that the first prac­ti­cal step to take is to change the assess­ments to. Her sug­ges­tion is to con­sider what “21st cen­tury social sci­en­tists, sci­en­tists, math­e­mati­cians, artists, writ­ers, lan­guage spe­cial­ists, musi­cians, and busi­ness men and women might pro­duce…”  To put this in place she sug­gests the fol­low­ing steps.

Step 1 — “Develop a pool of assessment”

Step 2 — “Teach­ers work­ing with IT mem­bers, iden­tify the exist­ing types of soft­ware, hard­ware, and Internet-based capa­bil­i­ties in their school…” Sug­ges­tion for teach­ers to become com­fort­able with at least one new tool per semester.

Step 3 — “Replace a dated assess­ment with a mod­ern one.”

Set aside a book report and replace it with a pod­cast, vir­tual lit­er­ary tour, video or mag­a­zine book review.

Step 4 — “Share the assess­ment upgrades for­mally with col­leagues and students.”

Step 5 — “Insert ongo­ing ses­sions for skill and assess­ment upgrades into the school calendar.”

Upgrade the Con­tent –While chang­ing the assess­ment is a good first step, upgrad­ing the con­tent through changes to the cur­ricu­lum get to the heart of the mat­ter. We, in inter­na­tional schools have the lux­ury of being able to develop our own cur­ricu­lum. The sug­ges­tions that Heidi Hayes-Jacobs offers are refresh­ing and excit­ing. How would stu­dents feel about the fol­low­ing units?

  • How does cul­tural anthro­pol­ogy shed­ding light on the econ­omy of resource-rich Brazil?
  • Sci­ence units focused on ideas that changed the world. Also think­ing ahead to future ideas that have the poten­tial to change the world.
  • Phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion stu­dents orga­niz­ing a 5k run for the com­mu­nity to pro­mote healthy lifestyles.
  • A unit on book to film where stu­dents study the process and results of mak­ing a movie from a book.
  • Using an inte­grated approach to teach­ing math/economics where stu­dents look at the eco­nom­ics of real life prob­lems. The stu­dents cre­ate their own Freako­nom­ics scenarios.
  • Stu­dents orga­niz­ing a vir­tual orches­tra con­cert with musi­cians from around the world.

I believe that these steps can help us make a tran­si­tion into a school that is prepar­ing stu­dents for 2011. Has any­one tested the ideas out?

If you’re inter­ested in join­ing the Cur­ricu­lum 21 Learn­ing Com­mons you can join the Ning.

Part  2 will be devoted to key learn­ings from the other authors.

1 to 1 Supporters: How do we respond to this?

October 28, 2010 Blair Peterson 9 comments

Cross posted on Cre­ative Tension

Lecture

This post fits nicely with Nick’s “Won’t the stu­dents be dis­tracted” post. As a prin­ci­pal who pro­motes new mod­els of teach­ing and learn­ing with tech­nol­ogy I fre­quently get asked, “How do you know that the use of tech­nol­ogy helps stu­dents learn? Can you show me research?” I have a vari­ety of answers and I can pro­vide them with sev­eral research stud­ies show­ing pos­i­tive results. But, recently, some­one shared this research report with me and I am try­ing to fig­ure out how to react and respond. How would you respond to these findings?

The arti­cle entitled

Eval­u­a­tion of Alter­na­tive Deliv­ery Sys­tems on Aca­d­e­mic Per­for­mance in Col­lege Alge­bra by Wyne­gar, Robert G.; Fenster, Mark J. shows, “ that the tra­di­tional lec­ture deliv­ery sys­tem had the high­est grade point aver­age and one of the low­est fail­ing rates of all teach­ing strategies.”

The study took 3 groups of com­mu­nity col­lege stu­dents who were tak­ing Col­lege Alge­bra and put them into three dif­fer­ent classes.

“Both online and tele­vised vari­a­tions of Col­lege Alge­bra were cre­ated and offered. Web sup­port pages for on-campus sec­tions were cre­ated and filled with thirty hours of stream­ing real-media and mimeo lec­tures, prac­tice tests for each chap­ter, and quizzes for each sec­tion of the text. A course guide con­tain­ing more than one hun­dred pages of worked exam­ples, study tips, and addi­tional sup­port was writ­ten, and has been sold as a sup­ple­ment to the course. Sup­ple­men­tal instruc­tion and peer tutor­ing pro­grams have been imple­mented to sup­port Col­lege Alge­bra. Addi­tion­ally, the math depart­ment estab­lished exper­i­men­tal sec­tions of Col­lege Alge­bra that would aban­don the text and inter­nally devel­oped sup­port mate­ri­als for the course in favor of a computer-aided instruc­tion (CAI) model.”

The stu­dents in the tra­di­tional lec­ture class out­per­formed their peers in both the com­puter aided instruc­tion (CAI) model and the online and tele­vi­sion model. This is even after they con­trol­ling for dif­fer­ences in teacher grad­ing. The arti­cles fin­ishes with the fol­low­ing statement.

“These results have impli­ca­tions for the way insti­tu­tions sched­ule and deliver cur­ricu­lum. CAI courses are held in com­puter labs which cap the num­ber of stu­dents in a class. Tra­di­tional lec­ture courses are able to serve more stu­dents. Not only do stu­dents per­form bet­ter in a tra­di­tional lec­ture course, as mea­sured by final grade, but insti­tu­tions of higher edu­ca­tion can deliver instruc­tion more effi­ciently on a per stu­dent cost using tra­di­tional lecture.”

Help! I need to bet­ter under­stand how to respond to these types of studies.

Image Credit: The Lec­ture Bored me to Death

 

Old School v. New School: An example from South America

October 20, 2010 Blair Peterson No comments

Cross posted at Cre­ativeTen­sion

This post is a bit dif­fer­ent than the typ­i­cal 1 to 1 Schools post. Dif­fer­ent because the topic doesn’t directly relate to 1:1 schools and it’s from South Amer­ica. Maybe this exam­ple will moti­vate you to look for other sce­nar­ios of 21st cen­tury change out­side of your nor­mal areas of focus.I find it to be an excel­lent excer­cise that keeps me fresh and look­ing forward.

Whether it’s videos, new tech­nolo­gies, or exam­ples of chil­dren in today’s world, I find that it helps us bet­ter under­stand what”s hap­pen­ing around us. This past week­end I had the for­tune of attend­ing the Fes­ti­val Natura Nos here in Sao Paulo. It wasn’t the head­lin­ers that caught my atten­tion, but it was an Argentine-Uruguayan band named Bajo­fondo that caught my atten­tion. Ever since my trip to Argentina years ago I have been fas­ci­nated with the Tango. The com­bi­na­tion of the music and the dance can be mesmerizing. 

For those of you that haven’t heard or seen tango for awhile this video of Old School tango will jog your memory.


 

Now take a look at Bajofundo’s New School — “Elec­trotango”. Notice the instru­ments, the light­ing, the turnta­bles, com­put­ers and the crowd. At the Natura Nos Fes­ti­val the band had old black and white videos play­ing in the back­ground. The music was great and the show was visu­ally stim­u­lat­ing. The band doesn’t like the “elec­trotango” label since they con­sider their music a mix of “milonga and can­dombe, … rock, elec­tron­ica and hip-hop.” It’s easy to see why the band has revived the tango with the younger crowd.


 

I won­der what the tra­di­tion­al­ists are saying.

What exam­ples of “Old School” v. “New School” do you have to share?

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