Using outdoor spaces

Today I was reading a recent blog post by John Spencer about the ways that nature helps us to be more creative (check it out here). Personally I love to be out in nature, so the post really caught my attention. The gist of the post was about the fact that time in nature can lead us to greater levels of creativity. His 5 ways that nature makes us more creative are listed in bold below, with my own thoughts added:

Nature creates positive disruptions – Life draws us into the natural hustle and bustle of our world. Being in nature helps us get away from technology, current events, and everything else that makes it hard for our brain to stay focused. That time away from all those distractions allows our brains to think more deeply.
Nature encourages problem-solving – Almost every time I go for a hike, or spend some time in nature, I’m inspired to write a new blog post, or solve a problem, or be creative.
Nature helps us embrace deep work – When do you do your best thinking? There is a lot of research that says that simply being active can lead to deeper thinking. Simply going for a walk helps us activate our brain in different ways. According to some research, throw nature into the mix and you multiply that effect. So what does that mean for you? Before teaching a particularly important skill, take your class for a walk in the woods outside of school. Your students brains will be better prepared for deeper thinking when you return.
Nature humbles us while also expanding our worldview – I’m not sure how many of you know this about me, but I was a 10 year 4-H member. I didn’t show animals (we weren’t on the farm), but I did lots of other projects over the years. One of the projects I did required me to take multiple observations of a natural environment every day over multiple weeks. I chose a small wooded area with a trail just a little over a mile from my home. I had to observe at different times in the day, and I began to notice changes in what seemed like an untouched environment. Some animals were more or less active at certain times of the day, some plants looked different depending on various factors. The time I have spent in the natural world helps me realize that there are so many things happening in the world around us that we miss when we are in our cars, or on our devices. Sometimes you really do have to slow down, look around, and smell the flowers in order to be aware of what’s happening in our world, and to realize how little control we have over so much of what’s around us.
Nature can spark innovation – Did you know that Velcro was designed by a Swiss engineer after his dog was covered in burdock burrs after going on a hike? Or that the design of the nose of Japanese high-speed trains was meant to mimic the beak of a kingfisher? These are just a couple of examples of innovations that came about because of things that people noticed in nature. Imagine what the future scientists of the world (our students) may be able to develop if they learn to look to nature for ideas and solutions to our problems.

Reading Spencer’s post got me thinking about the natural wonders just waiting to be explored outside of our school. By walking out the doors of our building, you can access a variety of outdoor environments. Between the trails in the wooded areas, the stream running through the woods, the untended plain near the baseball fields, or the river, there are so many ways for us to access nature. And the benefit doesn’t just stop with the kids being out in nature away from their devices. Something they see while they are with you may inspire creativity and wonder in a way that is totally unexpected.

What have you done with your class in our outdoor areas? Have you seen increased levels of creativity as a result of the time you have spent outside? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Make it meaningful

I was recently directed to an interesting article by Zachary Johnson titled “Bored Out of Their Minds” (click here to access the article). While there were several aspects to the article that I connected with, and lots of interesting data and statistics about students’ engagement, one passage in particular stood out to me.

“But the biggest shift we need,” Rose believes, is much more elemental. “We need to get away from thinking that the opposite of ‘bored’ is ‘entertained.’ It’s ‘engaged.’” It’s not about pumping cartoons and virtual reality games into the classroom, it’s about finding ways to make curriculum more resonant, personalized, and meaningful for every student. “Engagement is very meaningful at a neurological level, at a learning level, and a behavioral level. When kids are engaged, life is so much easier.”

Parts of this quote come from Todd Rose, author of The End of Average. I read the book last fall, and wrote a couple of posts on the ideas learned from the book here: Part 1; and here: Part 2. The idea of the book is that the “average person” just doesn’t exist – there is jaggedness to us all. The implications of this jagged profile for educators is that we have to remember that no matter what label a student may carry, they all have strengths and weaknesses. We can’t expect our students to fit into specific characteristics that we place on them.

What leads kids to disconnect as they grow older? One of the things that Johnson brings up is that as students grow older, they have less and less choice in what they do. I think back to my own educational career – in elementary school we were given great leeway to dig into the topics that interested us. I was free to choose what books I wanted to read (my sixth grade reading log would show lots of Stephen King novels), what topics I wanted to research for the science fair, and how I wanted to share my learning as we discussed European explorers visiting the “New World” – these are just a few of the choices I got to make.

This photo was titles “Boring Lecture, 1940s”
https://www.flickr.com/photos/dukeyearlook/2076633334/in/photostream/

By the time I got to high school free choice was mostly gone, most classes were lecture based. Many of my class syllabi were the exact same as the ones that were used for the students before me, and the students before them. I remember being checked out of my trigonometry class (sorry Mr. Petry), putting forth just enough effort to get through biology, and being bored out of my skull by the filmstrips that were shown on a daily basis in world geography (at least I could get extra credit by bringing in a box of Kleenex anytime we were running low).

So how do we help our students to stay connected to the learning that happens in our room? The HSE²¹ Best Practice Model helps us to get there. We can help provide the relevance for our students to see why it’s important to learn whatever it is that we’re doing in our classroom. We can give our students choices in how they express their learning. We can push our students to ask questions and wonder once they have seen the relevance in their learning – getting us to that inquiry driven study that we’re looking for.

As the summer approaches, take some time to reflect on the things that your students have done this year. What are the things that worked best? What are the things that fell flat? With those things that were best, what was it that got the kids excited about learning? And with those things that may not have been so great, how can you add more relevance and choice so that students may be better engaged? Remember, as Johnson says above, engagement isn’t about entertainment, it’s about finding ways to make the curriculum more meaningful for every student. I’d love to help you on that path! If you have an idea and want someone to brainstorm with, let me know. Two brains are always better than one!

What are some of your best engagement strategies? How have you been able to get your students highly engaged in learning in your classroom this year? Share with us in the comments below!

Cognitive load

How many times have you been in a conversation with a colleague, and they started giving you suggestions? Each one sounds great, you think they could work in your room, but then you walk away from the conversation and nothing has stuck. All those great ideas went in your ears, passed through your brain, and then disappeared into the ether. No amount of thought can bring them back, and you feel embarrassed to go back to the colleague because you think that they might be offended that you didn’t remember the first time.

For all of us, there’s this idea called cognitive load. Cognitive load refers to the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory. When you were talking with that colleague and they were sharing more and more ideas with you, it was causing your brain more and more of a cognitive load. In that moment, your brain is kind of like a cup – it can only hold so much new information before it begins to overflow.

Now, if each of us struggles cognitively to hold on to multiple ideas in a short conversation, how does this translate to our students? In a lot of the research on cognitive load in children, there is a clear difference between adult and child knowledge. Because of the differences in knowledge, children have to make a greater effort to simply process what is coming in, which means that their cognitive load will be exceeded more quickly.

I know that there were times as a teacher when I might have a student ask me a question. As I was answering the question, I might give more detail than was entirely necessary in order for students to better understand. Then, a few minutes later the student would ask the same question. At the time, it was frustrating – “Come on, I just told you that!” but I now understand that by giving the extra details, I was causing too heavy of a cognitive load on my students.

So, what does that mean for us? As we talk with students – whether we are giving them feedback on classwork, discussing their behavior, or making suggestions, we need to keep it short and to the point. In a recent post from Matt Miller, he suggested using the sandwich technique:

A compliment (positive feedback)
A change they could make
Another compliment (more positive feedback)

Is it possible that we could suggest 17 corrections? Sure! But if we make all 17 at one time, the student will be overwhelmed, and none will get done. Pick your main point, your main concern, and focus on that. Once the student has shown that they understand your initial change, then maybe attack one of the other 17 things.

Meaningful feedback to students is one of the best ways to increase learning outcomes for our students. Give that feedback in the moment – while you’re walking around and peaking over shoulders, and keep it to the point. Students will learn and grow.

What are some of the strategies you use to give feedback to your students? Share with us in the comments below. If you’re looking for a few new ways to give quick feedback to your students, check out this awesome post from Matt Miller:

10 strategies for lightning-quick feedback students can REALLY use

What’s your why?

The vast majority of the people reading this blog are in the educational realm. Whether you are a teacher, a counselor, an administrator, or you work in a school in some other way, something called you here. Take just a moment to think about it, what was it that brought you to this point?

For me, when I think about what brought me into education, there are a few moments in my lifetime that stand out. I remember my fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Gromer. With her, the Maya Angelou quote to the right comes to mind. There aren’t very many specific things I remember happening in her classroom, but I remember that I always felt welcome, and valued, and important. I felt that if I wasn’t there, someone missed me, and some value was lost from the class. While I had great teachers before her, and great teachers after, nobody ever made me feel as important in the classroom setting as Mrs. Gromer.

In high school, one of my stand out teachers was Señora Cease – she was my Spanish teacher for all three years that I took the class. While I may not be fluent in Spanish today, I learned some valuable study skills that I don’t believe I would have learned anywhere else. Learning a language came hard to me, and while some friends were valuable parts of my studying, her efforts and ideas in class gave me skills that translated to so many other areas.

Then I think about Professor Katz. Easily the most entertaining professor that existed – I’ll put money on it. He was a history professor at IU. I had the luck of knowing him when I was young, which meant that when I walked into his class, I became an easy target of his. In a lecture hall full of 400 students, he would find me no matter where I sat and ask my opinion. While I am a fairly confident person now, I’m sure that term didn’t always describe me. On the first day of class he asked me a question, to which I responded in a noncommittal way. His response “Are you asking me? I was asking you.” Professor Katz helped teach me to be confident in all that I do. While many of the small groups were led by instructional assistants, I had the privilege of being in the group that Professor Katz led himself. You had to know your stuff – there was no hiding from him. In addition to confidence, Professor Katz taught me about preparation.

All of these pieces of my history in education are part of what I brought to my classroom. I wanted to bring the warmth that Mrs. Gromer had – I wanted my students to know that they were valued and important in my classroom. I would work to provide scaffolding to support students who were struggling, just as Señora Cease had done for me. And I would challenge my students at times – push their thinking when I thought they were just giving me surface level knowledge – just as Professor Katz pushed me.

I’m sure there are other things that come from my history that led me to the role that I’m in now, but now, I have an even more important why. I look at each of my kids. They have such unique personalities.

Lainey is the quiet rule follower. Last year she actually received a reminder from her teacher – just one – and she cried about it as soon as she walked in the house. We still can’t talk about it for fear of another evening full of tears. She’s also very intentional, to the point of perfection on some things, which causes her to work slowly and sometimes not complete her in class work or feel as though she is falling behind her peers.

On the other hand, there’s Brody. He’s not in school yet, but he’s been going to preschool. Brody’s curiosity is almost indescribable. He’s constantly asking questions – Why? Why do they call it baseball? What does that word mean? Sometimes it’s almost exhausting to answer all the questions he has. To go with that, he loves to play rough – there are a couple of times I thought he was going to take me out by the knees, and even though he’s grown up with a sister, and almost all the kids in the neighborhood around us are girls, he finds ways to get them to play rough as well. I expect Brody to be a kid who will probably rush through things. While on spring break last week, he was always asking what we were doing next, so excited to get on to that, that sometimes it seemed that he couldn’t enjoy what we were doing in the moment.

And I know that both Lainey and Brody will have challenges as they grow older. School can be a difficult place for kids. Lainey will have times that her perfection will cause her to fall behind others, while Brody will be so concerned about getting on to the next thing, that he’ll probably hand in a paper half completed with several mistakes.

I have hopes and dreams for these two. I want the best for them. And I know that if that is the way that I feel, then the parents who trust each of us with their children have similar types of hopes and dreams. The faces that sit in our classrooms each day are their everything, and they want the best for their kids as well.

So while Mrs. Gromer, Señora Cease, and Professor Katz may be the past why that pushed me into education, and led me to be the teacher that I became, they aren’t the why that will push me moving forward. The past isn’t going to push me to strive to go further. The past isn’t what’s going to help me continue to learn and grow as an educator. Instead, I rely on my kids to be the catalyst for that growth. And each of the 1,000 kids who walk into our building each day becomes the fuel that keeps that learning and growth going.

So… What’s your why?

Share your thoughts in the comments below. I’d love to hear what it is that drives you to do what you do. Education isn’t easy, and we all need that why to push us!

Building on our strengths

When you get up in the morning, what are you excited about? For most of us, the thing that gets us going in the morning is also the thing that drives us throughout the day. It’s also typically something that we feel confident about, that we think we do well, and we enjoy doing. Most importantly, that thing is also something we would identify as a strength.

I feel that often in education, we get drawn into thinking about weaknesses. As a teacher, we have to identify weaknesses in our students in order to find ways to support their growth. As an administrator, evaluations often include identifying weaknesses of the staff in our building, and planning to lead to future growth. We get caught in a cycle of looking for the weaknesses around us. If our strengths are the things that motivate us, isn’t it safe to assume that our learners would be motivated by their strengths?

A few years ago, as an ongoing activity throughout our unit on Ancient Rome, I provided students with a list of possible ways they could articulate learning. These choices involved aspects of Roman society and culture. I was amazed by the projects that students were able to create based on their strengths. I had students designing roman outfits based on research because they were interested in style and design. I had a student write a children’s picture book about the Roman Empire because they felt they were good writers and illustrators. And probably my favorite, I had a student, Patrick, who had struggled all year long but designed and built a scale model of a Roman Aqueduct that was SPECTACULAR (it’s still in my office today) because he liked to build things. While we were doing in class activities for learning, students were also researching for these projects. They were able to select a project that fit their strength, and the results were amazing. Having students present something that they had learned that also fit with their strengths was such a rewarding experience for me, and I’m sure led to a greater transfer of learning for each of them. I would guarantee that none of them would be able to answer any of the questions we had on a summative exam, however I would also bet they could tell you about what they created for that project.

Knowing how strengths can motivate all of us reminds me to be on the lookout for strengths as I am walking the halls. I am challenging myself to look for the strengths or everyone, and recognize those strengths! I challenge you to do the same.

Be thinking about the data that you collect on students. Don’t just look for patterns in terms of weaknesses. Also look at the data that supports their strengths. Give them the opportunity to build upon those strengths. Most of our students will choose a career path based on their interests and passions. Wouldn’t school be a better place if we gave our students the opportunity to accentuate their strengths? I’m not saying we ignore areas where a student needs to grow, but I can tell you that all the time that my sophomore English teacher had me spend diagraming sentences is not what has led me to be a good writer, a good reader, or any of the other skills I have developed. All it did was make me hate sophomore year English (sorry English teachers!).

Take a few moments in the coming days to seek out the positives in the students that are in your classroom. Identify the things you see, and share it with your students. See how they react to some strength-based feedback.

#IMMOOC #IMMOOCB3: Engage or empower

Engagement. We all say that this is what we’re striving for when our students are in the classroom. We want our students to be engaged in whatever’s happening in our classroom. Normally that means getting your students excited about whatever it is that your class is studying.

But as we think about what it takes for any of us to learn something new, being engaged in the activities doesn’t guarantee learning. I can guarantee that in the next few days I will be engaged in hours of watching NCAA Basketball. The likelihood of any kind of deep learning happening in that time is not very high.

To get students to that deeper understanding, the learning needs to be meaningful. Bill Ferriter (@plugusin) says “Kids need to be empowered NOT engaged.” So how do we get there? Ferriter goes on to say that “Empowering students means giving kids the knowledge and skills to pursue their: Passions, Interests, Future.”

One of the things I believe in education is that we have great power to help our kids be excited about learning. The more student choice and voice we give, the more authentic and relevant approaches we take, the more we shift our students from engagement to empowerment.

#IMMOOC Week 1: The Power of Ice Cream

This week is the beginning of The Innovator’s Mindset Massive Open Online Course. For the next five weeks, I look forward to the opportunity to reread a great book and interact with educators during the weekly YouTube Live sessions as well as the Twitter chats! I love this format of PD, and look forward to creating new connections and growing my Personal Learning Network! If this sounds like something you would be interested in, you can still sign up here: IMMOOC

As I was reading the introduction to The Innovator’s Mindset this week, there was one line that really stood out to me: “if students leave school less curious than when they started, we have failed them.” Given the meaningfulness of that line, I was so glad that became a major topic during the YouTube Live event on Monday evening. During this session, AJ Juliani talked about a self-audit based on 4 questions, and I felt that these questions could really help us think about what we do in the classroom that might encourage students to “play” school and take away some of their self-agency and curiosity.

What do I allow for in my classroom/school?
What do I make time for in my classroom/school?
What do I support in my classroom/school?
What do I praise, assess, look for in my classroom/school?

What intrigued me the most about these questions is that students who play school well get there not because of their own desires. Instead they get there due to the things that the adults in their lives (both educators and family members) value. Watch kids of any age, and you will see curiosity – whether it’s on the playground, with their friends, or while playing a video game, our students our naturally curious. But for many, when we put them into a classroom and ask them what makes them curious, the response is “I don’t know.” If this is happening in your class, then your students are probably well trained to play school.

If we want our students to create, we have to model creativity (or at least a willingness to try). If we want our students to be problem finders and solvers, that spark has to be modeled through our actions. All of us have our interests and desires. A lot of us keep those interests and desires separate from what is happening in our classrooms. If we want to ignite the fire of curiosity in our students, we need to show them that their interests matter.

Recently in our school building, a student noticed that our cafeteria never served ice cream at lunch. She knew from talking with friends at other intermediate schools that ours was the only one in the school district that did not ever serve ice cream as part of the school lunch. Instead of just complaining about it, or even accepting that’s just the way it is, she went into action. She did research. She got friends and classmates involved. She met with our school’s cafeteria manager to understand why we didn’t serve ice cream. She met with our district facilities manager to learn about options to make ice cream a possibility at our school. She got the student council on board to do a fundraiser. All of this started last year with the question of why.

The Creamsicle may not be the fanciest of all ice cream treats, but it was a huge step forward in a school that had not served ice cream at lunch ever before!

Last Friday at lunch, our school served ice cream for the first time.

I would argue that the learning that happened for this student, and her classmates who were part of this work, was some of the most meaningful learning in the past year. All of this happened because the adults around this student saw the curiosity and the drive that this student had – for ice cream – and they let her run with it.

What are the ice cream moments that are happening in your classroom? In your school? How are you helping to ignite that curiosity? What are the ice cream moments for you? Are you modeling that curiosity with your students? As the leaders of our classrooms and schools, we have the ability to choose a course for our students that inspires them, or we can choose a course that creates students who “play” school well. Which course do you choose?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. Keep the conversation about innovation in learning going here, or hit me up on Twitter @brian_behrman.

This class just can’t handle it…

When I was in high school, I remember taking a physics class – I believe it was my sophomore year. At my high school, physics classes were taught in the wing that had once been the area for “shop” classes. My physics classroom was this huge open space. One side had a large garage door that once allowed cars to come into the building for students to be able to learn how to work on them. By the time I was in high school, the “shop” classes had been shifted to the Hoosier Hills Career Center across town, and the shop classrooms had been converted for other uses. On any given day, I would walk into this classroom, and around the outside of the class I would see various experiments in process. There were large lab tables – at one point there were lasers on every table that were being used to make holograms. Another time there were these air rails that were angled and allowed people to measure velocity and acceleration based on the time it took an object to travel across the rail. In one corner, there was Newton’s Cradle built out of cable and bowling balls and hanging from the rafters high up in the room. I could go on… largest-newtons-cradle2-500x334

As a sophomore, I would walk in and see these awesome experiments that would pique my curiosity. I made it a point to arrive to physics class as early as possible to check out these things. I remember wondering how you could use a laser to create a hologram, or just how the timing controllers worked on the air rails. But then, the bell would ring, I would make my way over to my desk in the middle of the room in front of the chalk board, have a seat, and take out my textbook. You see, as a sophomore, I was in the basic physics class. Those experiments were not set up for our class, but were there for the AP Physics class that also met in the same classroom. Now, I don’t want to imply that we never got to do experiments in my physics class that year, but it was nothing on the level of what the AP class was doing.

Thinking back to my experience as a sophomore in high school in my physics class, I know that some of those experiments probably were things that I did not yet have the true theoretical understanding to be able to carry out and understand, but that doesn’t take away how bummed I was to see cool things set up in my classroom and feel as though I could not participate. The reality is though, there were probably variations on many of those experiments that would have tied to the standards that my basic physics class was expected to cover. There were probably ways my teacher could have provided scaffolding and support to allow the students in my basic physics class to participate in those cool experiments. Would we have gone as deep with the experiments? No, but we would have had that hands-on experience that was sometimes lacking from my physics curriculum that year.

This memory comes to me when I occasionally hear teachers say things like “My regular class just isn’t ready for this.” Or “this group is my resource group, so they may not be able to do that activity.” (I’ll admit – I may have made statements like this when I was a classroom teacher). That fear that students aren’t ready or aren’t capable can hold us back from such cool learning opportunities for our students. If you’re worried about kids not being ready, you should know that there are some second-grade classes in this district that have been doing some of the same experiments that I have seen happening this year in some of our sixth-grade classrooms. I’m sure there were adaptations to make the learning accessible for a second grader, but if a second grade student can successfully carry out activities that our sixth grade students are doing, isn’t it worth finding ways to adapt our activities so that all our fifth and sixth grade students can do them?

Whether we’re talking about a socrative seminar, a hands-on experience, an experiment, or a project, we need to makes sure that all our students have the opportunity to learn in exciting ways. Think critically about how you might be able to adapt your class so that no matter what level your students are at, they have the opportunity to be challenged. How could you scaffold and support those students that some might say just aren’t ready? If you’re struggling to find ways to integrate some of these higher-level experiences into your classroom, find someone to collaborate with – it could be with a teammate, a teacher down the hall, a teacher in another grade level, a TDS, one of our resource teachers, or maybe it’s one of our related arts teachers. We have lots of great people working in this building, and through working together, we can make sure that all our students are able to participate in amazing learning opportunities!

Also, just so that you aren’t too worried about my long-term well-being, I apparently liked that basic physics class enough to go on and take the AP Physics class the next year. I was able to participate in all those cool experiments that I was so curious about as a sophomore. I learned how to create a hologram of a die using a laser, I got to do those experiments with the air rails while learning about acceleration and velocity. I also remember AP Physics as the most difficult class that I took that year, but at the same time it was the most interesting and rewarding because of the hands-on experiences that we had throughout the year.

The cool stuff, the fun stuff, those are the things that get students excited about learning. Those are the things that students will talk to you about when they run into you in the future. Those are the activities that stick with them as they get older, that they can go back to and recall what they learned while they were in your classroom.

Do you have memories similar to mine? How did it make you feel to not be able to do some of the “cool” things that your teachers did with other classes? Have you ever talked to your students who don’t get to do some of those things because they “just aren’t ready?” Share your thoughts in the comments below.

The Apple Teacher Program

How many of you like to play games? Maybe you like board games or card games that you can play with your family and friends. Maybe you like to play video games on the PlayStation or Xbox. Or maybe you are more into games that you can play on your iPad or phone. One thing that has become a trend in a lot of the digital games is the idea of earning badges to symbolize advancement in the game. People love to compete for those badges. Some teachers have even integrated this gamification into the learning process. Today I want to share with you something that Apple has developed that can allow all of us as educators to collect our own badges, and maybe learn some new things in the process.

A couple of days ago I saw a post on Twitter from an educator that I follow saying that he had just earned a new badge in the Apple Teacher Program. I didn’t know much about the program, but a quick Google search took me to Apple’s site with more information about the program (click here if you want to check out the site!).

Reading over the short pieces of information on that site, I learned that through this program you could learn how to use built-in apps to “enhance creativity and productivity” in the classroom. As you complete lessons, you can take a quiz, and if you pass the quiz you earn a badge.

I decided to sign up so that I could learn more about the program. Once I was signed up (almost instantaneous – you sign up with your Apple ID, and then you receive an email with the link to sign in to the Apple Teacher Learning Center), I was able to find links to learning resources for teachers, inspiration for new things to try out, and links to earn badges that are based on the iPad or the Mac. Since we are 1:1 with the iPad, that is where I went first, and without having to participate in any lessons I was able to pass quizzes to earn a couple of the badges.

There are options to earn general badges for the iPad, to learn about productivity, and to learn ways to integrate creativity with the iPad. There are also badges for specific apps like Pages, Keynote, Numbers, iMovie, and GarageBand. When you select a badge you want to earn, you have the option to go to a Starter Guide with tons of information about apps – I just skimmed through looking for things that were new to me. What I also found interesting about the started guide is that it instructed you on how to play with the app in order to learn to use it better. We all know that we learn better by doing! In addition to the starter guide, there are links to online help for the app, or even options to sign up for a live workshop at the Apple Store. Once you feel like you understand the app, you can take a quiz and earn a badge.

In addition to the original options for badges, once you complete all the badges you earn an official Apple Teacher logo, as well as access to additional learning resources and badges. I wanted to share this with you because I found it interesting.

Have any of you ventured into the Apple Teacher Program in the past? There seem to be tons of great (and free) resources that could be used in the classroom. Share with us if you decide to sign up, and then let us know as you add badges to your collection!

What is the “average” student? (Part I)

I’m not sure how many of you listen to podcasts, but for me, it’s almost all that I listen to – in the car, on a run, working on the yard – if my earbuds are in, I’m probably listening to a podcast. I used to love to listen to talk radio, but the commercials drove me crazy, not to mention that I had to put up with topics that didn’t interest me to get to the interesting stuff. One of the great things about podcasts – you only have to download the ones you find interesting. If you don’t like a topic, don’t download it. There are a couple of podcasts that I listen to no matter what the topic is. The other day I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, 99% Invisible. It’s a show all about design, but looks at it from all kinds of perspectives – sometimes architecture and infrastructure, sometimes history, sometimes visuals, even a series on vexillology, which is the study of flags (I know, I’m a geek!).

One of the most recent episodes was titled “On Average.” Much of this episode is based on the work of Todd Rose, author of The End of Average. One of the things that I found most interesting was that Rose, who is a professor at Harvard, is also a high school dropout. His research on the science of individuality is based on his learning that nobody truly fits the average – more on that later.

So where does the idea of average come from? While there are some mathematical references that go back to ancient history, the first scientific documentation of the idea of averages comes from astronomers in the 16^th century. In tracking the orbits of planets, astronomers would scratch the lens of a telescope in 2 spots and keep track of the amount of time it took the planet to move. Astronomers realized that individual measurements could be highly inaccurate based on who was taking them, and other factors. However, by taking many measurements and finding the average, the data seemed more accurate among multiple astronomers.

Fast forward to the 1800s, and a Belgian mathematician named Adolphe Quételet. He decided to take a tool primarily used by astronomers and apply it to people. He started with a data set of thousands of Scottish soldiers, and found that the average chest size of the soldiers was 39 and three-quarters inches. He considered this to be the “true” size of a soldier. Quételet extrapolated this data to say that if all lived in optimal conditions, they would be average. Over time Quételet’s ideas expanded to find the normal rates based on all kinds of data sets – marriages, murders, suicides, etc. Quételet went so far as to say that the individual person was synonymous with error, while the average person represented the true human being.

One of Quételet’s fans was none other than Abraham Lincoln. During the Civil War, Lincoln had the army take data on soldiers to assess them both physically and mentally. The data sets were then used to decide on appropriate food rations, design of weapons, even the size of uniforms. Prior to the Civil War, every soldier received a uniform that was custom made. With the number of uniforms necessary, this was no longer feasible, so the soldiers were broken into average sizes (small, medium, and large) so that uniforms could be mass produced. Today we buy clothes based on sizes that relate back to these measurements from the armed forces.

Average based design became the way for the military, and from the time of the Civil War until World War II, everything built for the military was designed based on the average size of the soldiers. Whether we’re talking about uniforms, bedding, food rations, weapons, vehicles, and as they came into use, airplanes, all were built to specifications that matched the average size data.

During World War II, the Air Force noticed a huge decline in the performance of pilots. As the first air based war, this was a problem. Initially blame was placed on the pilots, then on the trainers. In time, the Air Force realized the issue was the size of the cockpit. The cockpit didn’t fit the pilots. As a fighter pilot, when split second decisions can make a difference between survival, the Air Force saw that they needed to find a new average.

Researchers at Wright Air Force base in Ohio were tasked with finding new averages. Members of the team traveled from base to base taking measurements of pilots on 140 dimensions (some were the obvious – height and weight – while others were much more unique – length of the thumb or the distance from a pilot’s eye to his ear). One of the members of the team was Gilbert Daniels, a recent graduate from Harvard in the field of anthropology. As he was taking the measurements, Daniels started to wonder how many of the pilots truly were average.

Daniels took the data from a set of just over 4,000 pilots. He found averages on the 10 measurements that would be considered the most important in terms of the design of an airplane cockpit and set up norms based on a 30 percent range (the average height in the study was 5-9, so the range was 5-7 to 5-11). He then he went back to the individual data. The assumption going in was that most pilots would fit the definition of the average pilot. When he compared the individual measurements of all the pilots in the data set, he was stunned to find that not one of the pilots fell within the average range on all 10 dimensions. When they narrowed the study to only 3 dimensions, less than 4% of the pilots met all 3.

The research showed that there was no such thing as the average pilot. Instead the data looked a little like this:

airforce-dimensions — Rose describes the variation that shows in these measurements as Jaggedness – which represents that fact that everyone has variations from the norm or average.

In response, the Air Force made significant changes to their design process. No longer would they buy airplanes that had cockpits that were designed to the average. The Air Force banned the average for design of airplanes! Instead they needed planes to be designed to the edges. Prior to World War II, the pedals, seats, helmets, controls, and anything else in a plane was static, it could not be adjusted. Following the results of this study, the Air Force demanded adjustable seats, foot pedals, helmet straps, and more.

When the change was made, guess what happened? Pilots got better! No longer did they have to adapt to the size of the plane. Now all planes can be adapted to the size of the pilot. Think about it, how many of you would purchase a car that did not have adjustable seats, mirrors, or steering wheel? These adjustable features came about thanks to the Air Force’s research on averages.

I know that this post hasn’t gotten into the education implications yet – I promise that’s where I’m going next week. To help next week’s post make more sense, we needed some background information about averages. Next week we’ll get into how the research on the science of the individual translates into the classroom, and what we can do to design education to the edges, not just to the average.

What thoughts do you have? Do you already see a connection between this backstory and your students today? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

The View from 518

Category: Inquiry