Don’t deny the technology – permanently…

As most of you know, HSE²¹ has been a multi-year project in which administrators, teachers, parents, and students have been looking at how best to create a 21^st century learning experience for our students. Through the program the Best Practice Model was developed, and in time the decision was made to transition to a 1:1 environment as a way to enhance the Best Practice Model. These decisions were made as a result of the changing world around us. As teachers we have all seen more of our students, and possibly more of our own lives, occurring in a digital world.

For most of us, if we see that a child is engaged in a particular activity, we find ways to try to encourage that skill. If your child is coloring on the wall, you may initially be upset, but you may also be tempted to put up a chalkboard, or get an easel that they can use to encourage that skill. Who knows, that kid that started out painting on the wall may turn into the next Picasso or Van Gogh. In your classroom that may mean allowing students to choose what product would best represent their learning.

Now think of our students. The second they walk out of the building they are bombarded with digital options. Smart-phones, tablets, computers, apps, websites, and more are competing for their attention. If we don’t notice that and innovate towards that, we will lose some of our students. The way I see it, more and more, technology is a right for our students in their learning. Are there moments when it may not fit, or they may not use it? Yes! But it’s also important that we all recognize that devices and digital tools are becoming interconnected with our lives and with education.

I have had many conversations with teachers who fear that we aren’t “preparing students for the real world.” How can we accurately predict what that world will look like for our students? I struggle to predict what next week might look like, let alone predicting what the world will be like in 10 years when our students either have entered, or are entering the workforce. One thing I feel confident in telling you: they will need to know is how to use technology in appropriate and responsible ways. If our only solution for poor decisions with technology is to try to permanently take technology away from our students, we are doing them a disservice. Remember, our kids are 10, 11, and 12 year olds, and they are going to make mistakes, but going to the nuclear option of “you can’t use this anymore” doesn’t teach a child anything. However, taking the device away for a period of time, and then having a conversation about the repercussions of their actions creates a learning opportunity for a child.

Sometimes drastic measures need to be taken to maintain the kind of classroom experiences that our students need – things like a temporary ban on technology – but we have to go back to the fundamentals. To be relevant for our student we must use the best tools at our disposal. By avoiding the technology permanently we are missing out on amazing teachable moments.

Thinking about your classroom, where are successes that you have had that would not have been possible without technology? Have there been times that taking the technology out of a lesson has led to better engagement and learning? Share with us some of your opinions!

How can you motivate your students? (Part 2)

Last week I shared a TED Talk by Daniel Pink. If you haven’t watched it yet, take a little time to watch it. You can scroll down to the post below, and then come back to here.

Sometimes the things that we believe will motivate us actually hold back creativity.

How many times have you tried to incentivize your students? You let them all know that “if you do this, then you’ll get this…” Whatever you offer is something that you just know that your students will love, and yet they don’t fulfill your expectation, or you get a negative response. What I love about Pink’s talk is that he realizes that since rewards and punishments often don’t work, he shares some ideas that do work. What his research shows is that appealing to deeper motivations like autonomy, mastery, and purpose are the key. Here’s how he defines each:

Autonomy: “the urge to direct our own lives.”
Mastery: “the desire to get better and better at something that matters.”
Purpose: “the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.”

So, how do we take these ideas and use them to help motivate our students?

Autonomy: When I was in high school, I took science all 4 years. Biology was probably my least favorite, and Physics was the best. The difference was not so much the subject matter, but rather the way that we learned. My biology classroom had 30 desks with attached chairs. It was difficult to manipulate the space, and we were always told at the end of the class to be sure that our desks were lined up correctly (she had permanent marker outlines on the tile floor for the location of every piece of furniture in the room). On the other hand, my physics classroom was in a giant lab setting. There were lab tables at the back, and desks arranged in groups at the front. We didn’t have assigned seats, and could sit where we wanted every day. I didn’t always sit in the same place, my choice depended on what we were doing.

The more choice we provide our students, the more engaged they will be (think about the HSE21 Best Practice Model – there is a whole section on Student Choice). Look for any way you can to allow your students to have autonomy in their learning and they will be much more motivated to learn! If you keep the goal of learning the focus, there are hundreds, if not thousands of digital tools that allow our students to reach our main objectives. It may take a little longer to grade if everyone’s project is different, but where in the real world is every member of a team expected to produce an identical product?

The process... The journey... — The process… The journey…

Mastery: Historically it was the role of the teacher or educator to be the master of all information in the classroom – think back to an earlier post on Gatekeepers and Travel Guides – but anymore our students may be masters of some of the technology that we have them using, while we are still learning. It can be uncomfortable to admit that students know more about something than we do, but in this day and age, anyone can be a master of anything.

Allow your students to be the masters sometimes. If there is someone who figured a new idea out with a tech tool, allow them to share with the class. We as teachers can become the learners right along with our students. What if we allowed that student to present during a staff meeting? Think of how empowering that would be from the student’s perspective!

It's all about the purpose! — It’s all about the purpose!

Purpose: If students feel that the only reason they have to learn your material is to pass a test, that does not help the student feel like they are contributing to “something larger than themselves.” What if their learning was part of a service project to help others? Or what if their project solved a problem here at our school, or in our city? Have your students find how what they are learning can connect to a local need, and they will see purpose in what they learn.

Another way to think about motivation is through the Six C’s of Engagement (Choice, Collaboration, Connection, Challenge, Communication, and Commotion). If you want to see more, click here. If you want your students to truly be motivated, use some of the strategies here to move beyond consequences and punishments, and move to a realm of true motivation!

What are some of your most successful motivation strategies? Share below so that we can all have more ideas!

Share with your community

Every time that I moved to a new subject area, I relied on the teachers around me who had already been in the subject to help me figure out where to get started. There are some of you in this building that I borrowed (or maybe stole) to the benefit of my students. More important than taking in is the willingness to share out. With Office 365 and Blackboard, I know that many of you are already sharing within the building, however as you build connections with the world beyond these 4 walls, you can share them out with others.

In Ditch that Textbook, Matt Miller says “The one thing that teachers can do to make this unprecedented collaborative community more powerful is to share.” Some of you may have your doubts about this – you may think you don’t have anything to share, you don’t know how to best share, and most of all you don’t have time. I would suggest picking a way that works for you – Twitter is easy to start using and make quick connections through the use of hashtags. We all have different perspectives based on our own experiences, and any of us can talk about our experiences, content, success, failure, etc. As for time, start small – a short blog post once a week about your classroom successes, and a Twitter account to follow a few educators that you can check for 5 minutes a day. Instead of taking the time to come up with an excuse, you could find a way to share.

The two easiest way to share:

Pass your best ideas around with colleagues – each time you come up with something new, share it with your PLC, your teammates, or the whole school. If you gain something at a conference, pass it on. Inspiration is infectious!
Start a blog – basically a blog is like an online journal. You can post your ideas, and others can read and comment on them. I love WordPress.com, and set my blog up in about 5 minutes. Write about what you know. The time you take writing causes you to reflect on what you are doing

How have you benefitted from the things others have shared with you? What have you shared in the past that others have benefitted from? Share in the comments below!

How much is enough?

In this week’s post, I would like to build upon the ideas of a post from before winter break titled Choosing to Cheat. The concept of that post was built on the idea that we don’t have an unlimited amount of time in our days to be able to fulfill all of our priorities. Feel free to go back to that post if you would like.

For some of us it is difficult thing to think about cheating at anything. We might think “If I skimp here, my students might not get it.” Or we might say “If it doesn’t look pretty and perfect, I won’t feel as proud of it.” There are a lot of people who spend a lot of time in this school building. They are all effective or highly effective teachers. Sometimes it’s hard to leave the building knowing that there is more that could be done. But for all the teachers who put in long hours, there are others who do not spend that amount of time in the building. Does that mean that the teachers who spend less time are less effective? Or is there something more to the story?

In order to be more effective in our time management, we have to think about the concept of the minimum effective dose (MED). Tim Ferriss, the author of The 4-Hour Workweek, defines the MED as:

“the smallest dose that will produce the desired outcome. Anything beyond the MED is wasteful. To boil water, the MED is 212 degrees Fahrenheit at standard air pressure. Boiled is boiled. Higher temperatures will not make it more boiled. High temperatures will just consume more resources that could be used for something more productive.”

There are lots of examples out there of people who have cut back the amount of time spent, only to find that it actually improved their outcome. As a runner I always taper the amount I run in the last couple of weeks leading up to a big event so that I will feel fresh on the day of the race. Every year at the end of the NFL season you hear analysts arguing about whether a certain team should rest their star players prior to the playoffs. I follow a couple of blogs that post daily, but rarely do I have time to read them every day. On the days I miss a post, I feel as though I am missing something that could be important. If the authors of those blogs cut back to 3 posts a week, I wouldn’t be upset. I might actually be able to read everything they post!

Ultimately, we have to remember that our audience are the kids sitting in our classroom. No matter how hard we work, they are only going to take in as much as they think is necessary to be able to complete your upcoming performance task. So think, are you trying to over boil the water in your classroom? Remember, water temp can’t go over 212 degrees, no matter how much energy you put in. At the same time, no amount of overwork will cram more info into your students’ heads if they can’t absorb it. Keep your focus on your goals and what you want to accomplish. Try to reduce the wasteful or ineffective things we do, and ultimately we will use our time in more valuable ways! In the Choosing to Cheat post, I shared the chart below. Focus on placing your energy in the activities that we believe will help our students grow.

Use this to help guide your thinking and the areas where you may choose to cheat.

As for how much time to spend at school, I can’t say that there is a correct answer to that questions. At different phases in my life there have been different amounts of time spent. I feel that through appropriate time management, we can all do our job to the best of our ability, and meet the needs of our students in a reasonable amount of time.

Have you ever tried to over boil the water? What are some of the things you cut when your realized you were doing more than you actually had to? Share in the comments below!

Teachers vs. Students

It’s the beginning of class, and you are checking to see what students came to class prepared, and you get to “that” student (admit it, a name just came to your mind!), and of course, they are not prepared for class today. This is the third time this week, and who knows how many times this month…

All of us have been there at one time or another. It can be so hard not to take it personally. In your mind you may think about the amount of time you have invested in that student, or the help that you provided yesterday to make sure that student was organized and prepared to be able to finish the homework, or maybe you think of the assurances you had from the parents who told you they would help make sure work was being completed. How can we not take it personally?

Of course, the reality is that for the vast majority of our students, they are not doing this purposely (although on the day I am writing this, I did see a student with a t-shirt that said “I’m just here to annoy you!”). In fact, you are probably the furthest thing from their mind when a student does not complete his work. Instead, the lack of completion could be for a lot of reasons (maybe they didn’t understand how to do the assignment, maybe they didn’t want to do it, maybe they thought it was boring, or maybe there was nobody at home to make sure they did it – you get the idea, there are lots of possible reasons). I think logically all of us understand that students are not intentionally coming to class unprepared in an effort to drive us crazy, and yet we can’t help but feel that way.

One of the great beliefs I have about education is that relationships are one of the keys to success for our students. I know that many of you feel the same way. We take the time to build relationships with all our students. We feel invested in each of them. We can’t help but believe that the feeling is mutual. Unfortunately, our students don’t always feel the same way. Sometimes even with our best effort, it is hard to help all our students to feel connected here at school.

When “that” student comes to class unprepared, the simple solution is often to get angry or frustrated. It is much more difficult to figure out the answer to the key question – why?

Finding the answer to the question of why is not easy. The answers that students will give run the gamut – I forgot, I had a basketball game last night, my parents couldn’t help me, etc. A lot of time we see these answers as excuses. Instead, maybe we should look at them as clues. If they say they forgot, are they disorganized? Do they need additional support so that they won’t forget in the future? Could you help them set an alert on the iPad or phone to go off in the evening to remind them of the work they have to do tonight? If they say that they had another activity, can we assess what they do have done to see if they understood the concept? Do they need more work time here at school? We can’t control how their time is scheduled outside of school hours, but we can help control how that student uses their time here at school. If they say they didn’t have a parent to help them, then do they need to have the concept retaught to them? If a student needs a parent’s help to be able to complete a homework assignment, then they don’t really understand the material.

In last week’s post we discussed growth mindset in teachers. An argument could be made that situations like the one described at the beginning of this post could be the perfect opportunity to use some of what we learned about having a growth mindset. Instead of taking it personally when a student isn’t prepared for class, look at it as a puzzle to be solved. Try to understand why the student isn’t prepared. Once you understand the why, it will be much more likely that we can approach a solution. If you don’t have an idea of how to help the student, talk to your colleagues, counselors, or administrators to see what ideas they may have (collaboration = more opportunities for growth!).

If you’re still struggling to come up with a way to motivate the student, come at the problem from a PBIS perspective. Most of our kids who struggle simply want attention of some kind. Getting negative attention is easy, but when given a choice between a positive and a negative consequence, most kids will choose the positive (it’s amazing what I used to get kids to do for a sticker or a jolly rancher!). And if you show them that it is possible to earn that positive consequence, then they find success. Once they show a pattern of success, you can make it more difficult to earn that positive feedback, and hopefully the student will begin to learn that the feeling of success from a job well done is a good enough reward (I know that this process takes longer than we like, but it does work!).

Instead of looking at the unprepared student as the enemy, spend some time thinking about them as a puzzle. If you don’t know what will motivate him, spend some time to get to know him (2 for 10 strategy). Look back on one of our earlier posts: Know your kids – Love you kids for a little more on how a 2 minute conversation can help you learn about your kids.

What success have you had in motivating the unmotivated or reaching the unreachable? Spread the wealth! Share some of your experiences in the comments below.

Growth Mindset for Teachers

Over the past couple of years I have had several conversations with members of our school community about the idea of Fixed Mindsets vs. Growth Mindsets. I previously shared a video featuring some of the findings of Carol Dweck. In those conversations and in that video, the discussion is framed around how to help our students to develop a growth mindset. What about all of us? How do our mindsets impact the learning that takes place in our classrooms? How might those mindsets impact our relationships with students? As a review, I included a couple of graphics showing the difference between a Fixed or Growth Mindset. (I know the pictures below appear small – if you click on them, they will be easier to read).

https://teacherpaulp.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/darkside1.png

https://teacherpaulp.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/growth_mindset_poster1.png

According to Dweck:

In a fixed mindset students believe that their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that’s that, and then their goal becomes to look smart all the time and never look dumb. In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching, and persistence. They don’t necessarily think everyone’s the same or anyone can be Einstein, but they believe everyone can get smarter if they work at it.

What if you reread that statement, but you replace students with teachers? Where do you fall? Are your abilities as a teacher a fixed trait, or do you believe that your talents and abilities can be developed through effort? Are you somewhere in the middle? Draw a continuum with Fixed on one end, and Growth on the other. Put an X where you think you are, and then ask if you are comfortable with that location on the continuum. If the answer is no, how can you move that X to where you want it to be?

Yes, even you have permission to fail! Just make sure that you learn and grow from those failures! https://www.flickr.com/photos/126588706@N08/14826069893/in/album-72157645530010989/

One of the things that concerns me most for teachers comes from the second sentence of Dweck’s definition above. Is it your goal to “look smart all the time and never look dumb”? What does that show our students? If we tell them that they should see failure as a first attempt in learning, but never model for them what it looks like to fail and then improve, what message are we sending our students? Do we really want to have an attitude of “do as I say, but not as I do”?

I’ll admit, it’s never fun to make a mistake in front of a group of students. But let’s think about the concept of gradual release – I do, we do, you do. We would never assign our students something they have never done before without modeling it and expect them to be successful on their first try. Instilling a growth mindset in our students means we have to be willing to take risks, and sometimes fall flat on our face. Then, we can model for our students what it looks like to get back up, dust yourself off, make an adjustment, and do better the next time.

If you look at yourself as a learner first, and a teacher second, you will recognize that this craft we carry out is something that we are all learning. Every day that I’m here at school, I see someone doing something that I’ve never seen before. When I scroll through my Twitter feed in the evening I often end up reading education related blog posts that provide me with new ideas or ways of thinking. I see things my friends share on Facebook, and I get new ideas. Hopefully you see your experiences here at school, and those outside of school, as something that you can learn and grow from as well. Hopefully you’ll be looking for ways to shift your own mindset further down that continuum towards the ideas of growth.

Throughout this month I hope to use this forum as a way to look further at the Growth Mindset continuum, and in particular focus in on how our mindsets can affect our relationships with the students sitting in our classroom.

In the comments below, feel free to share with us a time that you may have fallen flat on your face. What steps did you take to correct it? What did your students learn from your failure? Or you can share something that you plan to try that you aren’t quite sure how it will work out. What are you nervous about? What’s the worst that could happen? I look forward to hearing from you!

Reflection

To set the scene, imagine that you are in your classroom. You are getting the kids started on one of your standing assignments that everyone in the room knows will come each week:

You: All right, let’s all get started on (insert that assignment that your students hate to do).

Class: Collective groaning. From the back you can hear one student say “Why do we always have to do this?”

You find yourself wondering why the reaction is like this – you might think to yourself “they loved doing this earlier in the year!” Fast forward to the due date. As you are collecting the assignment, you see that the students who play school well completed the assignment, but it’s clear that they put forth the minimum amount of effort possible. You also notice that some of your students did not complete the assignment, and no amount of effort from you is going to get them to finish the task – you could have them work in the hall, take away recess, call parents, etc. – nothing is going to make a difference for those students.

As a teacher we have all experienced this. So here’s the question – why do we keep asking our students to complete assignments that they hate? Why do we keep giving assignments that students don’t put forth much effort, or simply don’t do the assignment at all? Why do we keep giving assignments that put the effort on us to run down the missing assignments when the students are putting no effort into the assignment?

When I was writing last week’s post, I inserted the HSE²¹ Best Practice Model. As I put it into the post, something jumped out to me in a different way than ever before. Look at the Best Practice Model above – in this blog I have spent a lot of time talking about the boxes on the outside: Student-Centered Approaches; Cognitive Curriculum; Fundamental Classroom Conditions; and Transfer of Learning. Last week for some reason, the purple circle that connects them all jumped out at me – in particular the word at the top “Reflection.” Given that New Year’s Day is approaching, I would guess that a lot of us are taking time to reflect on the last year, and many of us think first of our personal life, however reflection is an important aspect of teaching as well. What better time to take a few moments for reflection than to do so over the 2 week winter break?

Think about how your year has gone so far. What’s working well? What isn’t? Do you often have situations like the one that I referenced at the top? How could you adjust your assignments so that they don’t get stale? Even the most engaging activity today may get old and stale to our students if we do the same thing every day or every week over a long period of time. Find some ways to mix up what you are doing in your classroom to increase student engagement. For me, an important part of reflection is also getting feedback and ideas from my colleagues. If you have an activity that has gotten stale, talk with your colleagues – see if anyone has an idea of how you could spice up that activity and make it more engaging to your students. Or maybe you will just decide to let that activity go for a while – replace it with something else that might serve the same purpose.

If you never take the time to reflect, you may miss out on opportunities for growth as a teacher, as well as opportunities to help your students grow. As I reflect on this school year, one of the things I am most disappointed in is the amount of time I have had to spend in my office rather than out and about during the school day. One of my resolutions for the new school year is to spend more time out in our classrooms seeing the awesome things that you all do on a daily basis with our students. Please help hold me accountable to this goal!

What resolutions have you set for yourself? Personal or professional, share them in the comments below. We can all help hold each other accountable to our goals and resolutions.

Choosing to Cheat

There have been periods in my career in education where I felt as though I was living at school. Back in my coaching days I would often arrive at school around 6, work on grading, planning, or whatever else needed to be done, teach a full day, coach my team, come back to my room to do more work, head home for a quick dinner, grade something else, go to bed, and do it again tomorrow. In those days I was cheating my other priorities – my family, my friends, and my health. How many times have you looked at your to-do list and felt that there was no way you could get it all done? I know that there are days that I walk in to my office with 3 things on my to-do list that are left over from yesterday. Over the course of a day I may add several new items to it, but am not able to cross anything off my list. In those moments, I choose to cheat. I can’t do it all. There are 24 hours in a day, and 168 hours in a week. Sometimes there are things we can’t make it through.

Do you ever feel like your to do list looks like this?!?!

We all have important things in our life that take up some of those 168 hours in a week, and while we are all professional educators, there are other priorities in everyone’s life. Here’s the thing about choosing to cheat though: we have to be strategic in the ways that we choose to cheat. I keep to-do lists (some are on my phone in the reminders app, some are jotted on scraps of paper in my office) and when I create them, I also prioritize them. Certain things can only be done when there are students here, others can be done first thing in the morning, or after my afternoon bus duty. Phone calls to parents – that can happen anytime (thank goodness for *67 and the speakerphone feature so that I can call while I’m in the car). When you look at the things that you are doing in your classroom, prioritize them. Think about the needs of your learners – are you doing things to help the students in your classroom grow? If you can’t emphatically say yes, then that may be something you need to choose to cheat on. Keep in mind, cheating isn’t about slacking off, but rather it’s about making sure you are intentional in how you use the time you have.

Throughout the process of HSE²¹, one of the messages that Danielle and I have always tried to share with you is that we don’t expect you to do it all right now. When our teaching and learning team (Jan Combs, Phil Lederach, and Stephanie Loane) came to present a few weeks back, one of their slides talked about “More of this” and “Less of this.” Take a look at that slide to the right. If you’re spending a lot of time in the less of column, that may be something that you need to reexamine. It’s also important to look at the HSE²¹ Best Practice Model (below) to guide our intentional thinking about what is best for the learners who walk into our classroom every day.

Think about the things that you value most. Do you devote your time accordingly? If not, you are probably stressed out, unhappy, and might feel unsuccessful. To be a good teacher, you have to be in the right mental place. Think about the choices you make and how they are benefitting you and your students. If you are making choices that don’t benefit you and your students, try to find a way to make a change. Be willing to set aside things that do not hold as much value, and instead focus on the things that are most valuable to you and the students in your class.

What are some of the ways you choose to cheat? Are there things you have given up, or maybe don’t do as often? Maybe there are things you focus on for a while, then let fall out of focus, only to come back to later. Share in the comments below how choosing to cheat has helped you to be a better teacher and a more rounded person.

Importance of student feedback

A couple weeks ago I had a post on how to influence students (click here to see it again). This weekend I was reading a post by A.J. Juliani on his blog titled “The Future of Learning” and I saw an article that related to my previous post, but he looked at things from a slightly different perspective.

What are the best ways to give feedback to our students?

Through reading Juliani’s blog, I ended up reading a research paper written by a team of psychologists from Stanford, Yale, Columbia, and several other well known schools to look at the type of feedback that is given to students. In this study the authors were testing to see if the type of feedback given on an essay written by 7th graders could result in greater effort (as measured by an increased number of revisions), and improved quality of final drafts.

While there have been many studies on how to provide praise to our students, there has been limited research in how to provide meaningful criticism that will result in improvements for students. Many of us place our criticism in the format of 3 stars and a wish (or something of this nature) to boost self-esteem before delivering the criticism.

The reality is, self-esteem is not the key to being able to hear criticism, but rather trust is the key. Boosting self-esteem will not always boost trust. When trust exists, we are able to see criticism as information to help us improve.

In the experiment, some students received “wise feedback” while other students received “neutral feedback” on their papers. Simply through the type of feedback that was given to a student, there was a marked improvement in students choosing to revise their paper (a 40% increase in student effort) and improvement in overall performance on the final paper (you can see the study here).

So, what was the magical feedback that led to such extreme improvements? What note was written on the top of each paper with similar feedback below? The experimental phrase was:

“I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.”

That’s right – 19 words written on the top of the paper. In other aspects of the study, these words helped develop greater trust between the student and the teacher, which in turn provided students with a sense of belonging and connection.

For the students who were in the control group, the note at the top of the page looked very different. It simply said “I’m giving you these comments so that you’ll have feedback on your paper.”

Remember that feedback tells us about the relationship that we hold together. Feedback like what you see in bold above gives the students some clear messages: you’re part of this group; we have high standards; and I believe you can reach those standards. So what lessons can we as teachers take away from this? In the post from Juliani that led me to this research study, he referenced an article by Daniel Coyle, the author of The Talent Code. His lessons from this study are as follows:

Connect: As John Wooden said, they can’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
Highlight the group: Seek ways (traditions, mantras, fun little rituals) to show what it meas to belong in your crew.
Don’t soft-pedal high standards: Don’t pretend that it’s easy – do the opposite. Emphasize the toughness of the task, and your belief that they have what it takes!

Have you found success in sharing feedback in this manner? If so, share with us how you let students know that they are part of the group, the group has high standards, and your belief that the students can reach those standards.

Sometimes our feedback can be a little misguided... — Sometimes our feedback can be a little misguided…

Enhancement or Transformation?

Being that we are in the second year of a 1:1 program, we all know that adding technology to education comes at a cost – money, time, and effort. If it’s done well, technology can transform teaching and learning. If it’s done poorly, our students are left holding a “$1,000 pencil” according to George Couros (@gcouros), a Canadian principal and education speaker. As I said last week, our pedagogy must drive our technology. Don’t use tech just because our kids have an iPad; instead use tech to create a learning experience that would not have been possible otherwise. Remember, we want to integrate tech where it works. Hopefully the rest of this post will provide some ideas about how to transform education for our students.

Most of us have seen the SAMR model (to the left) as a framework to help you evaluate the best technology in your classroom. This framework is developed from the bottom up. As you see in the graphic, the creator of SAMR places Substitution and Augmentation in the Enhancement group (think of enhancement as the most basic change – it may improve the lesson, but maybe not the thinking). Then there is a dashed line before you get to Modification and Redefinition which fall in the Transformation group (think of transformation as a thorough change in the form of education – it will improve the lesson and the thinking). Many teachers find that dashed line to be a tall fence to climb. In essence, to get over that fence, teachers sometimes have to throw previous activities out the window and create something new, and other times it requires a complete redesign of the activity. In order to make that jump from augmentation to modification, here are some ideas:

Know your goals – don’t think task or app, think learning outcome.
Think about things you’ve done in the past and identify their strengths – what experiences were important for students, and what were the areas of growth from those experiences?
Find a tool that can meet your goals and has similar strengths – with a quick Google search you can find websites and apps that might work. Scan their features to see if something does what you need it to do.
Keep an open mind – don’t eliminate a tool just because you’ve never used it before.
Generate several ideas for activities – make a list of possible tools. Cross out the ones that you don’t think will work.
Put the plan into action – remember that the best way to learn new tech is to play with it. If you don’t know a tool yet, don’t feel like you can’t let students use it. I have yet to have a student tell me “I can’t use this, we haven’t had PD on it!” Students are just as capable of playing with an app or website to figure out what it can do, and if they’re really stuck, they’ll use Google or YouTube to help them figure it out. Plus, if it’s new, students will be more excited and engaged!
Be ready to adjust on the fly – remember, failure is part of the learning process. If something doesn’t work, go back to the drawing board. Sometimes our willingness to model failure will help our students accept the idea that we learn and grow in times of failure.

One other idea that may help you to transform education for your students is through collaboration. Don’t feel like you have to redevelop everything you are doing on your own. Get together with others who teach the same subject as you and pick a topic. Bring some of your favorite activities that fit that topic, and collaborate to find a way to make the jump from enhancement to transformation. Then, after you try something, come back together to talk about what worked well, what didn’t, and what you would do next. And if meeting together is not possible, use tech to collaborate – create a shared planning document in Office 365, or Facetime with your colleagues to plan when you both are free but cannot be together.

On Matt Miller’s website there is an excellent article titled 10 ways to reach SAMR’s redefinition level. Follow the hyperlink for some great ways to take it up a notch!

Where are you in terms of the SAMR model with the tech you are using in your room? Do you feel you are sticking to the enhancement zone, or have you jumped the fence into the transformation zone?

The View from 518

Tag: Best Practices