Are we worried about becoming irrelevant?

I asked a group of people yesterday if we were worried about becoming irrelevant and the response has stuck with me. We were talking about the big push in K12 for 1:1 computing. As the discussion unfolded I threw it out there and asked at what point do we become irrelevant if we don’t meet the needs of learners coming from 1:1 schools and if we aren’t preparing our graduates enough for teaching in a 1:1 school? Nothing specific about the response from the people in the room stood out, but rather it was more what wasn’t said. The looks on some people’s faces said more. It felt as if some in the room thought that what I said was absurd or that I’m out of touch with the demands of the higher education classroom.

But here’s the thing, I can see a future where students either transfer away or simply don’t attend colleges and universities that don’t create the type of learning environments where students can work together with other students and experts to solve real problems. The needs of students are changing. They have different interests, different learning preferences, and they aren’t afraid to shop around for education that meets their needs.

As we talked yesterday, one thing that came up was that a number of the 1:1 schools in Iowa aren’t being effective, which I can’t argue with. I know there are schools in the state that just bought a bunch of computers, gave them to the students, and hoped for the best. But, there are a lot of schools that are doing amazing things with the technology, whether they have 1:1 or not. They are implementing learning environments where students are the focus, not the teacher. The students are doing all the work. The students are guiding their own learning. Is it happening everywhere? No. Does that mean we shouldn’t respond, knowing that this type of learning is best practice? No. We need to respond and respond loudly. But we aren’t. Most colleges and universities aren’t, or if they are, we don’t hear their stories. I know we get hung up on the technology and how that is only going to distract from learning. But what if it doesn’t or even better, what if it does distract? Not from learning, but from the way we used to learn. What if learning changes?

I’m in a curriculum theory and development course right now and something we’ve been talking about is that the curriculum should reflect three distinct groups: the subject matter, society, and the learner. My concern isn’t that instructors aren’t teaching their content well, but rather that they might not be considering the needs of society and the learner. They are experts for sure. There’s no debating that. However, how they leverage their expertise depends on their consideration of the learners and the society in which we all live. These things do effect the way we use our expertise. But for many instructors, they are teaching to the past without look towards the needs of the future or even the present. I think we’ve been too quick to discount the latest generation. They are unique and with that have unique needs considering the changing landscape within which we live.

So how are we going to respond?

 

It’s the Total PACKage that matters

I’ve started to realize that as I work with more and more teachers to use technology in their courses that they really are only interested in developing one of two types of knowledge. The first is Technological Knowledge. They just want to know how to use the technology. What steps to do I need to go through to make this work. The second is Technological Content Knowledge. An example of this would be the teacher wanting to know what the good math apps are.

There’s an implicit problem with both of these approaches to integrating technology…they don’t address teaching. If our goal for any professional development is to help teachers become better teachers, then we need to make sure we are talking about teaching. But here’s the problem, there are a lot of teachers who don’t want to talk about teaching. They’d rather just keep on keep’n on. I think this is the biggest challenge I, and I assume others, face. We need teachers to talk about their teaching. Oh, and it needs to happen more than once a month.

 

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Striving for Good PD

I’ve been providing regular professional development for teachers at one of my partner schools this school year. I’ve been trying to provide PD that is more valuable than what has typically been the norm in my experiences. The norm from my vantage point has been you come, sit for a few hours, and then leave with little real accountability. Pretty much a waste of time. I think we can all relate to this type of PD.

So what I’m attempting to do is the following. Every month when we meet for PD, there is some form of accountability built into what we are doing. There is an outcome. I can’t stand doing things for doing thing’s sake. I just won’t do it. I can’t.

I’m also changing what I do to make the PD more like an instructional design session. What I find amazing from my experiences has been that we learn about all these new topics, whether it’s technology, pedagogy, or content, but then we never have time to look at how we can use them in the teaching and learning process. We’re left to do that after the fact, alone, with little support. Sounds like a recipe for success…right? What I’ve attempted to institute has been a Learning by Design PD where the teachers come, work in groups and design a lesson with whatever we’re learning about.

Once we are done at PD, the teachers have had a pretty good idea of what they want to do, and at that point, it is up to them to do it. However, I think it’s easy to fall back from a PD session and not use what was learned. That’s why as a follow up, we are going to look at what they did in their lessons. What happened when they actually taught the lesson? Did it go well? What happened that you didn’t expect? How are you going to change it for next time? Are there external issues we need to consider before moving forward? And so on.

I’m still learning and developing my own iteration of Learning by Design. This is my first attempt and next week I’ll have another go at it. I’m doing a little research to see what I need to change to be more effective. I’m also looking into how I can change the focus of the PD from being more techno-driven to being more pedagogic/content-driven. I find it very discouraging if we lead with the technology because it all too often follows that we only focus on the technology skills. As Mishra and Koehler have said many times, there is not single technology solution for all teacher, courses, or teaching philosophies. So I think it’s time we stop looking at our PD that way.

If you have any thoughts, suggestions, comments, etc., I’d love to hear them. Leave a comment.

Access and Support

So I haven’t blogged since mid-September, which is much less than I want, but as it is, I’ve been busy. Which is good! I’ve been working with faculty here at UNI and teachers in our partner schools to use technology in their courses. I thought I’d share a major theme that has emerged over the last month: it’s all about access and support.

Not surprisingly if you give educators the tools and time to learn how to use them, they’re going to create some amazing things for their students to be engaged with during their courses. However, this often isn’t the case in many schools. For any number of reasons the access just isn’t there. However, with the grant, I’ve been able to help provide access to a number of educators. This access has taken many different forms, from equipment to software to my time and to the time of those around them. This certainly shouldn’t be anything new, but I sometimes think we forget that if we simply provide the time for teachers to work together toward a common goal, they can accomplish amazing things. Like we should ever doubt them. They teach our kids. They should be some of the most trusted people we know.

But providing access to technology and the right people has only been part of the theme. The other part is support. This support has expressed itself in many ways, such as: administrative support before, during, and after professional development, technical support, curricular support, and sometimes, moral support. There have been ups and downs over the last month, but we’ve always held strong and kept moving forward. We haven’t let problems derail us in our pursuit of our goals. Often the best solution is asking teachers what support to be successful and then following through. It doesn’t always mean being immediate, but it does mean following through.

This has been a little big picture, but as I look at my experiences over the last month, there are too many to describe here. The pace is likely to keep up until November and then I’ll take some time to debrief more specifically. Until then, here are some helpful tips to help guide your work.

When things don’t go as planned…

Using technology in the classroom can be high stakes. There are a number of things that can go wrong, from technical issues like the WiFi going down to the lesson not going as you expected due to an unforeseen issue. There certainly are things that can go wrong, and sometimes, it just doesn’t work out. I think teachers who want to use technology in the classroom, but have a tough time doing so because of the potential for failure, need to remember that teaching is a complex activity regardless if technology is used or not. Things go wrong. The power goes out, the wrong instructions for a project are handed out, there’s an interruption in the hallway, or worse in the classroom that stops everything. Technology is no different. Things go wrong here too, but the difference is, with non-technology things, we pick up the pieces and move on. With technology, however, it seems like we give up. We can’t go on, or even think about how we could go on if something went awry. Why?

I was leading an in-service for secondary teachers at a school last week and we ran into issues with the Internet. We were exploring iPads and how they could be used in a very low stakes way. Not looking at going one-to-one but as a way to enhance the current learning taking place in their courses.  As luck would have it, the Internet went down and wasn’t available for the rest of the day. I adapted. We relied on the tools available at the time to finish the in-service, and from what I heard from a few of the teachers afterwards, it was a pretty decent afternoon. Certainly not life changing, but valuable.

I’m not telling my story here for my ego. I’m talking about it because it underscores a key area I feel we need to develop as educators. I’m talking about teacher technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge, or TPACK. I was able to adapt to my situation when the Internet went down, because I knew what I wanted to do, how it could be done, and what I could use to get there. I acted much like teachers do in classrooms every day.  However, I think we grossly underestimate the role technology knowledge and its interactions with just content and just pedagogy have in the teaching process. While many effective teachers can handle curve balls in the non-technology classroom, many of those same teachers would be overwhelmed if they were in a similar situation like I was last week.

I feel we are still in technology as an isolated knowledge mode, rather than as an equal player mode. There is a dynamic relationship in TPACK. Any change in one is going to result in a corresponding change in the other two (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). For me, teacher TPACK is on a continuum. It isn’t something a teacher achieves, even though there may be varying degrees of TPACK. A teacher’s TPACK just keeps enhancing and adapting do new or different contexts. Teachers aren’t able to come to PD sessions, learn about or even experience technology and expect to attain TPACK. There’s more to it than that. Teachers have to learn about the technology, pedagogy, and content, and their interactions with each other as a whole and as individual entities, in a variety of contexts.

I think the main focus of developing teacher TPACK is on the confluence of each knowledge domain and rightly so. But that overlooks all the other areas (TK, PK, CK, TPK, TCK, PCK). These are all just as crucial to develop as TPACK, even though TPACK is the variable we’re trying to enhance. TPACK may be what teachers use as they demonstrate their effectiveness with technology in the classroom, but in order to demonstrate that effectiveness through TPACK, teachers must first have a firm grasp on each knowledge domain. If not, I’m not sure that teachers, regardless of how effective they may be, can handle problems with the technology when they arrise in the classroom.

There has to be a better way to helping teachers use technology. We know it’s not focusing on the technology, and I’m not sure focusing just on TPACK is the next logical step. To me, it seems like we need to think about TPK, TCK, and PCK and how they fit in the overall picture. Without them, I’m not sure we can develop teacher TPACK.

Your thoughts?

Image credit: http://mkoehler.educ.msu.edu/tpack/files/2011/05/tpack-1014×1024.jpg

Take Aways from Class

The semester is in full swing and this has been my first week back in the Ed.D. program.  Here are some take aways I came up with while sitting in class.

• Students come to school (K12/College) expecting to be engaged, however, when they come to school they aren’t engaged, at least not in the way they want to be engaged. It’s no wonder students drift off to Facebook, Twitter, texting, or even sleep. Sitting in lecture/discussion is not engaging and as the size of the class increases, motivation and accountability to be engaged decreases.
• Just because students stray from lecture/discussion does not mean they have short attention spans. Rather they have better things to do than participate. How engaged would you be if someone talked to you for an hour or more and didn’t interact with you in any way. Saying they have short attention spans and that technology is to blame is a copout for the traditional teacher. See how attentive they are when you engage with them in meaningful ways, perhaps using technology. You might be surprised.

Image Credit: http://flic.kr/p/5y2Uqm

Involvement

What does it mean to be student centered? Can we still consider a lesson student centered if the learner isn’t involved in the planning process? At what level does the learner become involved? These are some questions I’ve been reflecting about for the last day or so. The more I think about learner involvement and student centered instruction, I begin to feel like there is a continuum. On one end we have high student involvement throughout all aspects of the lesson, from planning through lesson evaluation. On the other end, we have low involvement throughout the entire lesson.

Traditionally, I’ve thought that student instruction was somewhere in the middle of these two points. Probably more towards the high involvement than then low, but not all the way to the extreme points. As a rule of thumb, I never go all in to one extreme over the other, but I’m wondering how student centered a lesson really is when the learner isn’t interested in the content being learned?

I understand the fact that the more relevant a lesson is to the learner, the more engaged and committed he or she will be to the learning process. But is that enough? What if the learner sees no value in the content or sees value, but wants to be more involved in the selection and design of the lesson? As I reflect on how I’ve taught in the past, rarely have I considered the value learners place on the content they are engaged with (I’m not going to say learning because I’m not sure they really are learning the content if there is a philosophical barrier between what I’m selling and what they’re buying). The content is important to me, but maybe not to everyone else.

I’d make the argument that if faculty (and probably students too) don’t believe in the content or how it is being disseminated, then minimal learning can take place. I don’t feel it’s enough to be student centered in the way that the learner is actively engaged, or even to the extent that the lesson is hyper relevant to the learner. I think there is another factor involved that is preventing a number of new ideas from being implemented. And I think that factor is full disclosure involvement from content selection, through design, and implementation.

I wonder how many of us that provide learning opportunities for faculty (as well as students) do this on a regular basis? I know I don’t…perhaps it’s time that I start.

Leadership Day 2012: Don’t Adopt Technology on a Whim!

Image from: http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/LeadershipDay2012.png

My message for this year’s leadership day is going to be simple: Stop making decisions to adopt technology on a whim! You are damaging your school every time you decide to adopt a new technology initiative, because your faculty, staff, and students cannot be expected to change every time you attend a conference and come back with the latest flyer from the vendor hall. Gather a team that represents all stakeholders in the school and work together to create a vision that has student needs at heart.*  Once you have that vision, bring every resource the school has into making it happen, including technology.

I may seem a little harsh, but I have become frustrated with both administrators and teachers, who lack the common vision for where they need to be and how they are going to get there. When this happens, numerous initiatives are started and the disconnect is so great that it is difficult from an organizational standpoint to support everything everyone is doing. The cliché, a mile wide and an inch deep, is very reflective of where many schools find themselves. Everyone has their vision for what needs to happen, but since many of these visions compete against each other, no one can do them well, not to mention enact meaningful change.

If you find yourself in any leadership position, I urge you to stop and take a step back. Gather key stakeholders that represent your school community and take a deep breath and consider where you want to go. What’s important? What skills do your students need to leave with as they enter college or the workforce? What is the light at the end of the tunnel that each student needs to reach when they leave? Define what that is, and then begin talking about how you can get there. How will you use every resource the school can leverage, including technology resources and funding, to make that vision happen? Most important, how are you going to  build capacity within those around you? Figure out what it is that you need do and do it extremely well. This isn’t going to be easy, but it has to be done.

I want to conclude by saying that once you have made your plans and it comes time for implementation, be sure to encourage a culture where change is embraced. Any meaningful change you implement is likely going to be different from what has been done in the past. Teachers are going to need support and lots of it. If a major technology initiative is being implemented to support the vision, be sure to support a culture where teachers and administrators are willing to work with each other and willing to fail together. Perfection isn’t achieved on the first run, so be willing to re-invent your plans, your techniques, and most important, yourself. The road is going to be bumpy and mistakes are going to be made. Lead by example and take risks that could end in failure,  learning from your mistakes. Be willing to move on to find the right solution.  And above all, be true to your vision and stick it out. Don’t let the static of vendor halls and technological novelties interfere with your vision. Don’t adopt a technological innovation on a whim.

 

*Yes I know schools have these teams, but I often question their effectiveness. How much is what these teams accomplish for show and how much is for real change? Is the culture present within these teams to allow for failure without blame? Is this team really helping your school move forward? If not, maybe it’s time for a change? Certainly not all schools are like this, but I’m sure too many are.

Developing Teacher TPACK

I was reading over at drzreflects.com about his post on TPACK and it triggered a thought I have been thinking about a lot lately.  I often think about how poor much of the professional development we have in schools is, but I’ve often struggled to define what would make it better. I’ve been searching for a construct that would help me conceptualize what would constitute really good professional development. After reading more about TPACK lately and coming across Leigh’s post this morning, I thought I’d share my idea about developing a teacher’s TPACK. Here’s my comment:

Leigh,

When you mention how we implement TPACK in our teaching, you touched on a topic that has been in the front of my mind for some time now. I think as we consider about how TPACK can be implemented in practice, we have to think also about how teacher TPACK can be developed. I think there are at least two levels of TPACK implementation we can consider with regards to level of technology use in the classroom: integration and innovation. We have been integrating technology for a long time using TPACK whether or not we really knew we were. I view integration as happening once we make a decision to use technology and include it in instruction. We make a decision about a technology, which then makes a change in how we teach the content, the P and C. However, if we think of TPACK as a knowledge to be developed in teachers, I think we can reach technology innovation which is the creation of new types of learning experiences that wouldn’t have been possible without the technology. I believe there is a continuum between these two lenses if you will that teachers move along as they develop an awareness of TPACK. As the they develop each domain of knowledge: T, P, C, T, TP, TC, PCK, and TPACK, they can begin to see stronger connections between each domain and how each can be leveraged in the classroom to create new learning experiences.

As I think about how this type of knowledge development can be created, I go back to how Mishra and Koehler (2006) explain how they implemented it in masters courses. They called it learning by design, which reminds me of problem based learning. They had students work together in groups that were responsible for defining, designing and refining a solution to a problem over the course of a semester. As I look at how this can be applied to practicing teachers in PK-12 schools, I see great potential. But it requires professional development practices to change.

Not sure what I was hoping to accomplish with this comment, but your post spurred my thought process, so I wanted to share. Happy summer break!

Dan

Rote learning: A necessity but not for the classroom

Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mischiru/2860228008/

At UNI we are still in the transition to Google Apps and the last major transition is from our old calendar platform to Google Calendar.  As I was reading the email I noticed that instead of having formalized training sessions on how to use Google Calendar, there was a link to Lynda.com where users can find training on all apps.  This left me wondering, why aren’t we doing this for all rote training needs we have?

As a technology specialist and educator, I understand that in order to reach innovative use of technology in a course, it is necessary to have some “how-to” knowledge about the technology being used.  Typically (going to generalize here) this is taught in large group sessions in a very rote way.  Click here, this feature does this, and so on.  We’ve all attended these trainings and many, including myself, have led a number of these sessions.  I’m wondering however, if we’ve reached a point where we no longer need to concern ourselves with teaching rote knowledge.  If we have very good tutorials on how to use X or what X is, do we really need to take up time “teaching” this when we are all together?  Wouldn’t we be just as or even more effective if we hand picked the videos we wanted our colleagues or students to watch so they can gain that rote knowledge that’s absolutely necessary for being successful?  Then, couldn’t we spend more time learning about how we can be effective with this technology in our courses?

I believe we have entered a point in society that you have to be a lifelong learner.  You simply cannot function without that essential characteristic.  At UNI, I’d say nearly all the people I work with would more than be capable of lifelong learning and I’d imagine many of you would agree you see the same in your colleagues.  However, as educators, have we truly embraced what it means to be a lifelong learner?  Do we take the initiative to learn new innovations as our organization adopts them?  I don’t think we have and I think we are wasting time organizing formalized training sessions on the latest innovation.  I know I’m guilty of this, we all are.  But I think we have a professional duty, as educators, to learn about new innovations as they become available in an asynchronous way.  I’m not saying you need to be an expert in every innovation, but I do think you need to be knowledgeable enough to either have a discussion about the innovation and/or be able to use the innovation in a basic sense without having to sit through an hour or even a full day workshop.

I’m going to shift gears slightly, but remain on the same topic.  I think we need to begin developing this literacy in our students as well.  How much time do we spend in education teaching students rote knowledge?  When was the Civil War?  What is the atomic weight of Boron?  What is the formula for calculating the surface area of a parallelogram?  We need to stop teaching our students how to do these things in our physical classrooms!  The answers to these questions can be found online and are very well articulated in a variety of mediums.  Why, I ask WHY do we still use low level rote instruction?  We’re good at doing it, but someone else is better and they’ve decided to share it with you for free (usually)!  Send your students to these resources online to learn this knowledge and then in class have them apply the concept they learned at home, the library, a friends house, etc.  It’s the application of the concept that get’s interesting and is where students have questions and is where our efforts as teachers should be.  Helping students apply knowledge in a meaningful context.

I’ll end by saying that rote learning, is necessary, but it shouldn’t be the only kind of learning that takes place.  I remember when I was in student teaching, my university supervisor asked me, “When are you going to develop the low level knowledge needed for your students to be able to answer the high level questions you’re asking them?”  This statement has remained with me ever since.  Before we can synthesize, create, or analyze, we need to first be able to understand the concept in its most basic form.  I think advocates for reform forget this, especially those who are critical of the flipped classroom.  I think flipping is exactly what we need to be doing, but it’s not the only thing.  It’s just one piece in the puzzle.