Will you take the #CoETaIL challenge?

 

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="549"] gratifyingly un-sexist nuclear families[/caption]

One of my most inventive colleagues teaches French by placing his students, whenever possible, in authentic language situations. When they need to learn employment vocabulary, the students each film an interview with an adult about their work and then subtitle it. I help in class with the captioning process. Last year, I enjoyed learning about the spirits distiller Madame Wagner; Herr Klensch the personal trainer and Monsieur Bettel. He's the Prime Minister of Luxembourg. Two enterprising students had secured an exclusive with our nation's CEO. I love working in small countries!

"(Technology) tools can provide students and teachers with learning that is relevant and assessment that is authentic" What is successful technology integration? on Edutopia

One great reason to accept the CoETaIL Challenge is to learn about new ways for us and our students to learn.

It is very appealing to assess our students in authentic situations, but like so much that is desirable, easier said than done. If you've worked in this way, you'll know that authentic assessment tasks are an inefficient way to achieve the traditionally narrow goals of teaching. The vocabulary of work could be imparted to these students using flash-cards and a written test. All done in 45 minutes and the syllabus bullet-point is checked off.

Instead, the task I am describing took several lessons, and homework, as well as the close attention in the classroom of my colleague, Guillaume, and me, as ed-tech coach. If you have done something similar with students, you will know, also, that movie formats, missing cables, bad sound, lost files and editing challenges are some of the obstacles on the road to success. So, though 'authentic tasks' sounds appealing, why are we taking the time and making all the extra effort, exactly? Is it worth it?

You need to decide for yourself.

Guillaume's students learned the vocabulary by formulating questions, understanding the answers and transcribing the videos; they managed their time and resources in a complex project; they practised social skills with their partner and the interviewee; they used a range of technology creatively. They ran into problems; we fixed the problems; they worked hard. The lesson in which the class all watched each other's videos was a celebration of their achievements of which the students were clearly proud. The teachers were satisfied too.

It is inescapable that the process of authentic assessment is demanding, messy and sometimes even discouraging, but there are rewards for those who stay the distance. Are you ready for the challenge?

Catalysts for understanding

If you watched the video, you now know that the Earth spins because it formed from rotating dust and nothing has stopped it so it just keeps on going. It's got nothing to do with forces, centrifugal or otherwise, nor does gravity make the Earth spin. Many former students of Physics can spout Newton's First Law of Motion, but Derek Muller's videos go beyond mere repetition of knowledge and, by first focusing on misconceptions, achieve greater understanding.

"The idea of understanding is surely distinct from the idea of knowing something." Wiggins and McTighe, Understanding by Design 2nd edition (p36)

More than just a manager

In 2018, all of the teachers in our school will be using a new learning management system (LMS). My ed-tech coach colleague and I have a full year in which to help our Upper School faculty, alongside their existing workloads, to become comfortable with the system. As a first step, we have envisaged a pilot of volunteers which will begin in August 2017. My hope for this LMS, with its myriad capabilities, is that it will not simply manage the learning, but that it will be a catalyst for change. More than simply acquiring new routines, we will explore the potential of the LMS for improving our students' learning.

We call it One to World

For nearly one year now, all of our students have brought a laptop to school every day. The learning curve has been steep, since most teachers and students had never worked in a 1 to 1 environment before. But the education has not changed very much, if at all. This is not to say that the computers are unused, rather that there isn't a strong culture of innovation. Don't get me wrong: no-one is suffering. As ever, Good Teachers + Good Students = Learning. Having gone down the road of computer-enabled learning, however, I think we should be better exploring technology's possibilities.

What should our teachers be able to do?

"The challenge is to focus first on the desired learnings from which appropriate teaching will logically follow." (p14)

The teachers will learn how to use the LMS and will know what the school wants them to do with it. Is that all? Surely there must also be understanding of how the system can support learning.

"To understand is to have done it in the right way, often reflected in being able to explain why a particular skill, approach, or body of knowledge is or is not appropriate in a particular situation" (p39).

Our teachers are not short on professional knowledge nor understanding; but many aren't familiar enough with how educational technology could help their students learn better. Our goal will therefore be to relate the mechanical processes of the new LMS to powerful educational concepts; in particular, concepts which can be enhanced by computers in the classroom.

And what might these concepts be?

[caption id="attachment_69" align="alignleft" width="300"] Image: Craig Badura[/caption]

George Couros has provided an excellent schema for how today's classroom could look. Crucially, although few of the ideas have a direct line to technology, they all can be enhanced by it.

When the Physics class used a wiki to comment constructively on each other's Energy projects; when my IB ToK students could submit any 'creative digital document' to demonstrate their understanding of Cultures; when Grade 6 students could see their Online Habits survey responses accumulate in real-time; on all of these occasions, I revelled in examples of Couros' ideas made concrete by technology.

A greater success, however, would be if they can use that knowledge gained in one situation and apply it to others.

"Understanding is about transfer... we can create new knowledge and arrive at further understandings if we have learned with understanding some key ideas and strategies" (p40)

How will we know what the teachers have learned?

What will be the evidence of learning? I'm not sure I know yet. The LMS has been purchased, but I haven't got my hands dirty with it so far. This one has a great reputation in schools. I do know that I want to use Couros' 'Today's Classroom' as part of the teachers' learning experience. There will be evidence of their Voice as they Reflect on the outcomes of their Self Assessment. I hope there will be evidence they have Thought Critically about the Problems they might solve and evidence they Chose to Innovate and to Connect with other learners.

What will be their learning experiences?

In UBD, this is the third and final stage of deciding, and since my knowledge of the evidence is incomplete due to inexperience with this LMS, I shall be developing the activities, with my coach colleague, at the start of the next school year.

On my CoETaIL projects page, I have embedded the UBD template. Being live, it will reflect the project at whichever time you read it. As I write, only the Desired Results are known, including:

Understand how new ideas (eg Couros’ ‘today’s classroom’) can be supported by the new LMS

More than knowledge, understanding will be my main criterion of success. The teaching will aim at understanding and I shall seek ways to gather evidence of:

"conceptions: that is, meanings that are general ... Without this conceptualizing, nothing is gained that can be carried over to the better understanding of new experiences" John Dewey, How we Think, 1933, p153

What the 1 to 1 classroom has taught me

"Despite their growing popularity, laptops may be doing more harm in classrooms than good." (Mueller and Oppenheimer, 2014)

This grandiose conclusion was drawn when the authors tested groups of students taking notes either on laptops or longhand. "Those who wrote out their notes by hand had a stronger conceptual understanding and were more successful in applying and integrating the material than those who took notes with their laptops." (Professor Cindy May, Scientific American).

At least two important questions went unaddressed:

1. Were the subjects in the experiment equally experienced in paper and electronic note-taking? If not, maybe you are actually measuring their aptitude with the medium.


2. What do you mean by 'classrooms'? In the experiments, only podium lecturing was tested (recorded TED talks and verbatim reading of scripts). That's not what the classrooms look like in the schools I know.

What have I learned from 1-to-1?

In nearly all of the lessons I have taught since 2008, the students have used devices for nearly all of the time. Before then, not at all. I changed abruptly because my school did and I was interested to see how far I could take the new model.

You may be an interesting teacher, but you can't compete with the Internet

One sees the truth of this even in staff meetings if teachers have their device lids up. They are not paying proper attention because your brain can't process two information streams at once. In lessons, it's the same. When I talk to my students, I insist they should not be looking at their screens. A strategy which works for me has been to organise my class as an 'inverted horseshoe' with desks around the edge of the room, laptops facing outwards. This means that when I talk to the group, I can ask the students to face me and turn their backs on their screens.

And then I shut up so that they can get on with it. Ergonomically it's an advantage too. When the students are all working, I can stand in the middle of the room and get to anyone quickly. Not every colleague has been convinced, but it works for me.

You are already an expert

I had been teaching Physics for several years before I landed in a 1-to-1 classroom. The internet had become a cornucopia of excellent teaching materials. There were assessments, simulations and videos; there were resources produced by great teachers, inspired students and world-renowned physicists. I started a wiki and embedded, linked and organised all of the assets I had found, but after I had planned my courses there were many I hadn't used even though I knew they would be great for the students. I took a step back from my role as gatekeeper. I flung back the gate. No! I took it off its hinges. In their own time, the students who wanted to know more browsed the wiki and found materials which suited their learning style and because it was online, the site also welcomed up to 5 000 visitors per day.

1-to-1 intimidates many teachers because they assume that students are more comfortable with devices than adults. This may be true, but it's not important. A teacher is an expert explainer; he is knowledgeable about his subject; he knows good teaching ideas when he sees them. A good teacher who doesn't use technology (yet) is still a good teacher. Technology is just another tool he should use to become the best teacher he can be.

Let go

So technology enabled me to improve what I was giving to my students. It also freed me to interact with them in my version of the flipped classroom. Some of the instruction was flipped to the home, but more importantly, it was flipped to the virtual classroom I had made. As the students learned from my curated resources, I could spend time with those who needed support.

To do this, I had to trust in the students' wish to learn. I wasn't standing at the front commanding their constant attention. What they were doing instead is still called note-taking, but it only vaguely resembles the activity which Scientific American said laptops don't do well. Alongside their text, students dragged in images and graphs straight from the wiki. They added photos of my sketches on the whiteboard; links to my curated videos; their own found resources (which we could then add to the wiki).

open up the kitchen and the larder, not just the dining room

The traditional classroom is like a restaurant. The visitors consume what the chef produces because she has the knowledge and expertise. But what if the clientele were allowed to choose ingredients from the shelves and then prepared their own meals under the tutelage of the chef? Of course it's inconceivable; the result might be nourishing, but is unlikely to be sophisticated. This, however, is what we have done to the classroom when we gave the students access to the same resources the teachers have (but not the expertise). The metaphor sounds outrageous, which shows what a radical change education has seen.

Of course, if all we do is try to use devices to replicate the activities which were developed for paper, we will, like Professor May, be disappointed by them.

The Long Road to 1 to 1 (step 4)

So you go 1 to 1. You give the teachers a laptop; you tell the students they have to bring one too. And that's it. Well, you bring in a LMS but you don't mandate it's use. You make Google Drive available, but again, you send contradictory messages about it (maybe OneDrive would be a better fit). You bring in a couple of tech-focused gurus for workshops. Light the blue touchpaper and stand well back! And...

Picture credit: pixabay

Well, no, nothing like that.

And that's probably for the best. Most people are not revolutionaries, they do not want to live through interesting times. But, on the other hand, if you ask your teachers to make a change (and potentially a big one), you don't want everything to be as it was, or what was the point?

Beforehand, I had encouraged people to think of it as a soft launch, or maybe not even a launch at all, but more like a milestone on the long road to 1 to 1: neither at the beginning nor the end of the journey. There was a couple of reasons for this. Many staff were fearful of the change, so it might settle their nerves to know that there would not be an expectation immediately to be functioning at a high level of technical expertise. Secondly, we were badly prepared: LMS, online storage, PD, the infrastructure are all sort-of present, but practically, each is insufficient in one way or another. Let's not point fingers (I'm sure I am implicated too), rather I am interested in how a school can up its game and become a good learning environment once the physical fact of 1 to 1 is established.

Our teaching staff are experienced educators and many have been at this place for a long time. They knew what they were doing before 1 to 1 came along. They have not been asked to do anything very different. Furthermore, there is an existing content-rich curriculum many elements of which have been in place for a long time and are not showing any moves towards retirement. So putting a layer of mobile devices on top will not, in itself, change anything. Not many of the teachers has worked elsewhere in a 1 to 1 environment, so there is not a lot of pressure from that direction, and those who have worked in 1 to 1 tend to operate in their own little isolated pockets (generally, when they try to inject some new ideas into the system this is not well-received; hence the pockets).

It's the job of the Facilitator to make a difference - and that's me and my colleague.

No-one will change the way they do things unless they see a reason to do it. So what could motivate our teachers to make the effort and go through a process of change? The problem, in my view, is that they do not know what the goal looks like. The world of educational technology is full of high-flown notions:

"Teachers use their knowledge of subject matter, teaching and learning, and technology to facilitate experiences that advance student learning, creativity, and innovation in both face-to-face and virtual environments. 

a. Promote, support, and model creative and innovative thinking and inventiveness."

 (ISTE Standards for Teachers, 2008)

Hard to disagree, but what does that mean in practice? So I started looking for something which described more concretely than the ISTE Standards what it is we think we are doing? And I can't find it! At the other end of the spectrum are accounts of what people are doing in their individual classrooms. Great, but also not what I'm looking for. Nor do we need any more lists of '10 tools you can't possibly live without'. No, what I am working towards is a way to give some teachers who have never seen one a big and detailed picture of what a 1 to 1 classroom can be.

And if you can't even do that, then you really have done nothing more than just put some computers into some rooms.

The Long Road to 1 to 1 (step 2)

In the previous post, I described how we have changed tack in the process of moving our established European international school towards a 1 to 1 computer arrangement. Prior to the recent arrival of the new director of technology and ICT facilitator (the second one is me), the school management had committed itself to a byod (bring your own device) project from September 2013. We have introduced an undefined delay and are carefully referring to '1 to 1' rather than byod, since we don't see any advantages to the institution of byod. The first proposal caused a significant amount of concern among staff, especially the proposal to dispense with their beloved desktops. We looked into how many teachers have experience of 1 to 1 programmes and there are only 8 teachers out of 80, of whom 5 have arrived within the last 4 months. It is maybe not surprising that they are alarmed by the idea of a move to mobile machines, citing worries about posture, power and projectors amongst others.

We have written a list of questions, which has been reduced to eight, the answers to which will allow us to write a 'manifesto' for the development of a programme. This may seem overblown, but we realised that the school had not discussed a justification for putting mobile technology in the hands of the students to use in their learning. We put together some articles and videos which covered various aspects of the issue on a learnist board and asked the leadership team to read a few each as well as considering our questions. Here are those questions:

1. How do the school’s philosophy/mission/vision/values justify 1:1?
2. How do we expect teaching and learning to change?
3. What are the expected benefits?
4. What difficulties could there be with the implementation of 1:1?
5. What if we didn't do it?
6. What process should we use to decide which model to adopt?
7. Do we know if parents, teachers and students are in favour?
8. Why should the school introduce a 1:1 programme?

We met the leadership of the school and had a thoughtful discussion around the issues. Since a meeting of the academic leaders was coming up (heads of departments such as Science and Modern Languages), we put the questions to them too for their reactions. We are expecting all of those responses by the end of the week, though the majority I have seen so far are along the lines of: you guys are the experts, tell us what we want. At least they can't say we didn't consult them. The idea behind developing the manifesto is to have the support of the institution as we go forward.

The next stage, which will run concurrently with the ongoing consultation, is to consist of research, visits and pilots. As much of the data as possible is meant to be contextual, ie How would 1 to 1 work in our school? The visits are intended to be varied and also to include people from across the spectrum in the school from techies to Luddites and admin to students; similarly we hope to set up a few 1 to 1 zones around the school eg iPad room, Chromebook room, laptops and tablets to gather different sorts of information. These spaces will also function as training areas for teachers in the 1 to 1 environment whichever it is to become.

Will this work? Will the result be a better introduction of a 1 to 1 programme? We won't know how it would been otherwise, but having observed the school during the last few months, there is a number of pitfalls I am hoping to avoid. Firstly, the experience of both students and teachers in the uses of technology in the classroom are very limited. Secondly, this is a quite conservative institution in which fear of change expresses itself in the form of banal doubts which double as passive resistance. I see no way to achieve a proper change in which education takes the central position unless the community comes with its hearts and minds. This includes the opportunity for the 'antis' to express publicly their misgivings. I have learned that whatever the outcome of a consultation, you have to keep up the momentum. When the deadline for feedback has passed, report quickly, adjust accordingly and move on. And realistically interpret both positive or negative reaction (there are dangers in giving disproportionate attention to either).

So far, the outcomes of the consultation have not really pushed us forward on a wave of new ideas, but they have allowed the expressions of doubt as well as obliging the community to envisage a future with a school where everyone has a computer in hand all day. 

The Long Road to 1 to 1

At our international school somewhere in Europe, the school has committed itself to a BYOD programme. The trouble is no one can remember how or why the decision came about. The implementation has been entrusted to two of us who are new to the school. We have both come from schools in the Far East where every student and teacher had a Mac, so we both feel that we've seen a model that works.

Our predecessors have not left any documentation about why the decision was made to start with a programme where the Upper School students (the final 4 grades) would all bring a 'device' to class from the next school year, beginning in September 2013. As we have looked at the feasibility of continuing with this thinking, one element at a time has fallen by the wayside. First it became quickly clear that to introduce the programme in less than a year, when no planning or details existed, was unwise. So the new tech team put the brakes on.

We developed a proposal in which the introduction was delayed until 2014, nearly two years hence; the staff would get laptops a year earlier than the students (there had been no planning for staff machines in the old model: not even when the students had mobile devices would teachers be in the same boat); the school would adopt Google Drive to enable teachers and students to work in the cloud; another change to the original proposal was that the devices would be in the hands of all students from Grade 6, and if it were decided to introduce to only one section, it would be to the younger students in the Middle School. We put this proposal in a Google slides show and presented it to the Academic Leaders meeting (these are the heads of each teaching department such as Science or Foreign Languages). The meeting was cordial and receptive, and the next stage was agreed to be feedback once the ALs had put the ideas to their departments. The feedback was copious and overwhelmingly critical of the proposed model. My colleague was particularly discouraged. The few positive points were very general such as 'flexibility' and 'innovation'. The negative remarks were much more prosaic including reservations about charging cables, time to connect to the projector and eye and back problems for laptop users.

These comments also focused exclusively on the teacher's experience. There was no mention of problems students might experience such as the distractions of the Internet, cyber bullying or the potential for cheating (which in my view are things you have to consider). I felt that the nature of the response said a lot about the dynamic in this established conservative institution. In particular, the consultation process seemed to afford an opportunity for moaning rather than a balanced response. It was also clear that there was very little understanding of what 1 to 1 means since very few of the staff, apart from the newest, have any experience of computers in the classroom apart from our dreadful laptop carts and the IT labs which were scrapped a few years ago.

At least this process had enabled the staff to begin to envisage the ways in which the classroom might change. But it was obvious to us that a couple of crucial steps had been skipped when the project was originally discussed. We constructed a list of questions which we felt had to be answered before any decisions could be made about the direction in which the project should go. In addition, we realised that we, new to the school, would have to take account of the nature of the staff whom we are working with.

BYOD is the answer. But what is the question?

As part of the school's Professional Growth process, I have been asked to construct some SMART targets. I don't think the ones I submitted, and had accepted, are very specific etc, but they divide my area of work into three useful questions.

• GOAL 1 - Develop the ICT in Action course for Grades 6 to 8 for the coming years including appropriate skills, knowledge and attitudes for students, identifying the time necessary for the achievement of the goals of the course, the resources and the staff required to deliver the programme.

• GOAL 2 - Assemble resources and construct an environment to enable teachers to develop professionally in using ICT in the classroom and to acquire knowledge of the innovative ways of teaching made possible by new technology.

• GOAL 3 - Contribute to the school's discussion of the implementation of the BYOD policy.

So, the three areas are developing the computer skills of the students; assisting the professional growth of the teachers in their use of computers; and working on the development of ICT for the upper school. The more I think about each of these, the more I realise that they are connected and that other issues are relevant as well. Thus, the direction the school will take with respect to Bring Your Own Device is related to the professional development of the teachers. It looks like the only planning for BYOD which has been done is a declaration that it will happen in September 2013. This year, then, is the preparation year, but without any detail worked out at all. Not only do the parents and teachers not know what is coming, but the school itself does not. Furthermore, not only have no decisions been made for the nature of BYOD, but there is also no declaration as to the direction the school wants to go in. In short, we have said we want BYOD, but we don't know why! From this it follows, that if you don't why you want something, you can't know if your decision is a good one. That's an educational question to which we have already decided that the answer is BYOD, but what's the question? (Shades of Douglas Adams). The shape of our BYOD should be dictated by this discussion and then once it is, other things fall into place, such as what hardware and software do we need to have; how should the hardware be deployed; what should the teachers be able to do, what does PD look like; what does it all mean for the students? Furthermore, once we know where we're going (and given that we do know where we are), we can start to work out how to get there.

The present ICT layout of the school has particular features such as: laptop carts (which are not effective to use, I know from daily experience); every classroom has a high-end smartboard and one desktop on the teacher's desk; the teachers have been inveigled into a scheme of buying their own subsidised tablets. Lots of kit, but what is the plan? Not 'what are the tools?', but 'what is the job which will be done with them?' That is how I am interpreting my Goal 3 right now; to help reverse-engineer a plan for BYOD on the basis of previous decisions which seem to have been made without reference to a big picture.

There is a growing feeling amongst decision-makers, I think, that BYOD needs another year to be full-blown. But the preparations need to be initiated now. 2013 would be year zero, the one before the Big Bang, but even that needs to be anticipated with actions taken in 2012. For a start, I want to get the teachers working on experiencing teaching with a laptop before the students bring them in. With the original plan of BYOD in 2013, there was no provision for teacher devices other than those PCs glued to the front desk.

One idea could be to dismantle some laptop carts (these monstrosities could only be popular with someone who has not tried to use them), and hand out some of the machines to the teachers; the large number of desktops around the place reside largely in corridors and 'workrooms'. In my opinion they would be more effectively deployed in classroom arrangements to which the users would travel rather than the other way around. The problem is that the opposite process has been underway for a couple of years, but the prevailing ideology of out of labs and onto carts hasn't been explained to me. We're going to have to start addressing that right away and deal with the loss of face this may entail. Classrooms with one computer per student is a closer approximation to a 1 to 1 laptop environment than carts which must be fetched and frequently malfunction.

It's an exciting time, and I don't know whether there is the latitude to throw around the pre-conceived arrangements. It can happen, because the plans so far only involve equipment. That can be re-deployed just like that, but the challenge is to persuade everyone that the new plan is not just another random act of technology implementation, but part of a considered plan. From that bigger picture, which relates to my goal 3, we can start to see the form of goal 2 and finally, we can work backwards to goal 1 - what the students should be doing. Wish us luck!