Does Tech in Education Help Students Learn?

Carnegie Mellon University wants to know how educators can best use technology with their students, and to find out, the university has announced the Simon Initiative, called the “world’s largest database on student learning.” Researchers at Carnegie Mellon will use the data to find out what are actually the best practices in using technology in the classroom. Most educators are convinced that technology in classrooms works well in helping students learn. We see it every day in our schools; The Simon Project is designed to use a multitude of data to prove that we are right.

The project proposal has the following goals: “sharing rich data globally, helping teachers teach, acceleration innovation and scaling through start-up companies . . . .” This will be an interesting project to watch, since its outcomes will certainly be of use to all our schools, PK-college.

Pay Attention to Teacher Learning Styles

We ask teachers to adjust their teaching to the needs of students, but often we don’t follow the same advice when helping teachers. Paul Sanfrancesco, School CIO Advisor, asks, “Which PD Models Work?” He writes about educators going to PD sessions where speakers drone on and on. You’ve surely encountered some of these as well as techies leading training sessions who go so fast that hardly anyone understands anything. —Or, how about those sessions where they throw everyone together—tech experts, tech users, and not-so-tech-oriented teachers—to learn? Some already know what is being taught and find it a waste of time, some benefit from it, some aren’t ready for it, and some will be sure it will never fit into the content they teach and/or their teaching style.

Sanfrancesco asks you to contribute to the blog by adding your comments about professional development. We know that a one-size-fits-all model doesn’t work well for tech professional development. But what does?

Cell Phones, Browsing the Web, & eMail: Distractions for Teachers?

It’s difficult to fight the urge to check email, text messages, social networks, and/or app info on our cell phones, computers, and other digital devices. Although, schools often have rules against teachers making and answering personal calls while they are teaching, we all know it happens. Browsing the Web and checking personal or school email and messages are distractions we need to avoid while teaching. Some of us are so obsessed with checking our email and smart phones that this “need” interrupts lessons and takes time away from working with students. Administrators who suffer from these digital obsessions are often distracted from the running of their schools.

Peter DeWitt in his Education Week article, “Do You Check Your School E-Mail Too Much”, reminds us that if we read and respond to parent email when we receive it at home, on vacation, late at night or early in the morning, parents “will get the idea” that we are available all the time, “any day... any night”. Of course, sometimes it’s necessary to look and respond, but most of the time it’s better to resist.

 

Monster.com lists making too many personal calls and excessive Web browsing as two of the top ten ways to get fired from a teaching job.

ADHD Awareness Month

There’s a very nice piece in the SmartBlog on Education called, “And still we can wander.” Author Stuart Grauer (Real Teachers) writes about learning through the mind of a student with ADHD. He says, “ADHD-types are on topic, maybe just not the required topic.” That’s because when they take off on a topic, they want to learn everything and diverge into their own discovery leaps.

Grauer knows that many teachers consider this an inability to concentrate, evidence of distractibility, and/or impulsive behavior. There are, what he calls, “dream-catcher” teachers who allow space for students to digress and to venture into the ideas that come into their minds. These are the types of teachers that ADHD students—and perhaps all students—need.  Grauer has found that if ADHD students are granted space to explore, to learn in a non-linear way, that most of these students will return their attention to the content being taught.

Let The Eat MOOCs

Gianpiero Petriglieri, Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD (The Business School of the World), appreciates the advantages of communicating through blogs and other technologies with his students, but he wonders what MOOCs might eventually do to our educational systems. When asked if he’d offer a MOOC, he answered, “I envisioned myself walking to a digital guillotine in tattered academic garb, whispering, ‘Let them eat MOOCs.’” He compares MOOCs to colonialism in which the culture of the powerful “extends control over weaker people or areas.” Petriglieri believes that a liberating education, not a MOOC-type education, “makes students not just recipients of knowledge and culture but also owners, critics, and makers of it.”

Although Petriglieri’s ideas are focused on high education, what is happening in colleges and universities is trickling down to pre-college education. MOOCs are there to offer free coursework to all, and that is good. But, will this movement lead away from the human element in educating students? If a teacher has a class of 70,000, the students may be getting content and the opportunity to watch and listen to a world-class teacher, but what are they missing?

Tough Teachers

The Wall Street Journal article, “Why Tough Teachers Get Good Results,” is an excellent piece for us to read and discuss. Over the years, there has been much discussion about exactly what motivates students and what ignites creativity. Janice Lipman, the article’s author, suggests that maybe we aren’t where we should be in education because of teaching methods that follow “the kinder, gentler philosophy that has dominated American education over the past few decades. The conventional wisdom holds that teachers are supposed to tease knowledge out of students, rather than pound it into their heads.” Lipman backs up her call for stricter discipline and unyielding demands with research and with her eight-part manifesto: “1. A little pain is good for you. 2. Drill baby, drill. 3. Failure is an option. 4. Strict is better than nice. 5. Creativity can be learned. 6. Grit trumps talent. 7. Praise makes you weak. 8. ....while stress makes you strong.”

Lipman says that one of her toughest teachers taught students how to fail and how to get themselves up and going once more.

What do you think? Is it an either or—nice or tough?

Five Minutes to Inspire a Student

Mark Barnes, author of The 5-Minute Teacher (ASCD), tells us that we only have a few minutes to capture our students’ attention and motivate them to want to learn more about what we are teaching. His book, 48 pages long, seems to follow this guideline for us, as well. Sure, the book will take more than five minutes to read, but it is a quick read that’s filled with ideas that will work in your classroom. Even highly motivated students who have the interest and determination to listen to a longer lecture will profit from short instructional sessions. Teaching in small increments is what Barnes recommends—inspire our students and then set them off to learning on their own.  With integration of technologies into classroom, teachers are putting those precious five-minute sessions to work, and then giving their   students the tools for finding the information they need to move themselves forward. If you’d like to try this idea, look for 5-minute teacher resources and Web pages online.

Should We Ban the Words “Technology Integration”?

Gary Shattuck, Tech & Learning CIO Advisor, knows that technology is being used in classrooms, but he is concerned about how it is being used. He says that technology is usually an add-on to lessons, not essential to them. According to Shattuck, while we are using technology to engage students, many of us are not using technology for the type of engagement in which technology is embedded into lessons. To solve this problem, Shattuck suggests we forget the words “technology integration”, which leads us to view technology on a “superficial level”.  Shattuck, the director of technology and media services at Newton County Schools in Georgia, says that lessons need to be “meaningful and purposeful” and that technology should be embedded, not simply integrated, into lessons.

Educator Roles in 21st Century

“23 Roles of the 21^st Century Educator” offers a nice graphic, by Stephen Downes, showing how the roles of those of us in education have changed. Downes’ mind map of what an educator must be today includes the following: Learner, Tech Support, Convener, Lecturer, Salesperson, Coach, Theorizer, Bureaucrat, Designer, Demonstrator, Coordinator, Sharer, Programmer, Collector, Facilitator, Alchemist, Agitator, Curator, Evaluator, Mentor, Critic, Moderator, and Connector.  What other roles do you think educators must take on today?  How about writer, developer, curriculum designer, guide, counselor, protector, . . . ?

MacMeekin’s Creative “Posters”

Mia MacMeekin, at “An Ethical Island,” provides a chart that gives ideas for what to do if students are not paying attention. The suggestions are what most master teachers already know, but putting them together in one place is a good way to remind us what to do whether, as MacMeekin says, “it is the students who are bored” or “the instructor who is boring.” While visiting the site, take a look at some of the other poster-like summaries of good teaching that MacMeekin offers. There’s a “what if” about online learning, a “Did They Learn Anything?” about teaching techniques, Moodle help, and more.