The edtech land is losing their minds of the second major revision to the SAT in nine years’ time. In case you missed it.

Horray! The SAT is finally getting on board with what really matters!

Khan Academy will help more students get ready for the test! This will level the playing field!

< /end sarcasm>

The SAT isn’t changing. The announcement and following hullabaloo is a procedural shift to improve the appearance of the test without considering the deeper implications of standardized exit exams.

Students are still coerced into the exam by the testing machine and higher ed.

Students are still given an arbitrary rank (but it’s out of 1600 now) to show what they know.

The College Board is still making money.

David Coleman now has more control over the American curriculum (not really, but really).

Khan Academy can now pull in the test-prep market because videos.

The New York Times Magazine ran a fantastic article yesterday outlining how the major players came together in one magical-you-heard-it-at-SXSWEDU press event. I highly encourage you to read it.

I keep returning to a closing point in the article:

With a redesigned SAT, Calkins thinks that too much of the nation’s education curriculum and assessment may rest in one person’s hands. “The issue is: Are we in a place to let Dave Coleman control the entire K-to-12 curriculum?”

Before we start celebrating a victory, can we please talk about the bigger implications of the curriculum and assessment that is marching on without the input of teachers? Aside from CCSS, the SAT, and the people involved, why aren’t we talking about learning? Why isn’t that newsworthy.

So much for change.

I was able to travel again this year to Germany to attend the Inverted Classroom Model (ICM) conference. Last year, I spoke about teacher approaches to Flipped Learning. I tried to cover all of the content areas to give ideas of how teachers were approaching content and using class time more effectively.

This year, I was able to come and share student responses to flipping. In my last post, I asked for help with a survey, and you all came through! I had over 100 responses (making it a little more legit), with nearly 80% of those coming directly from students. I was able to pull out six major themes to lead a discussion with German educators from all levels. The hour was fantastic, and even included two current university students who were able to speak directly to a group of professors about class time, grading, and the pressures they feel in the classroom. I’ve got some notes I need to digest from the hour we spent together.

There are three things in the folder linked below:

• The Google form I used to collect responses.
• You can read through the spreadsheet or use the “View summary” tool in the form itself.
• The slides from today’s discussion

The images I used in the slides are attributed in the notes for each.

Get the Folder

Finally, I referenced a study completed by the University of Michigan and Michigan State University which questioned whether or not students would use screencasts if there were no external requirement. The Casting Out Nines blog post analyzes the data and includes a link the the published PDF. I wanted to call it out here because it has deep implications for how we approach creating and sharing digital content.

This Sunday, I’m jetting off to Germany for a one week, three city, two-conference tour with fellow TechSmithie, Anton Bollen. Part of my trip is speaking with German educators about Flipped Learning, and this year, specifically about student responses (both good and bad) to flipping. If you have five minutes to spare, I would really appreciate your help in gathering some very unofficial stories.

There is a section for students and teachers. So, if you’d be willing to share it with your students as well, that would be some great evidence to share next week. Just like the last survey I did, you can fill it out below or on the form itself.

If you’d like to share the form with friends or colleagues, please use http://bit.ly/stuflip so I can track the clicks on it.

Another cross post, somewhat edited, from a recent MAET assignment. Below is a short reflection (slightly adapted for the post) I wrote comparing Missional Thinking (big idea, goal-based) and Instrumental Thinking (short term, tool-based) in education.

You can see the entire assignment response in my Google Doc

I'm not in trouble, though.

I mentioned yesterday that I'm leading a conversation at Saturday's NovaNOW conference in Grand Rapids. The topic: Flipped Learning pros and cons. I can pull from my experience, but one sample does not a study make (or something like that).

I sent a short survey out on Twitter already, but I'm posting it here in case anyone who subscribes isn't on Twitter. If you're a flipped educator, I would really appreciate your contribution. It won't take long, 5-7 minutes tops. You can do it right here on the blog or visit bit.ly/myflipstory to bookmark it for later or to share it with your friends.

Sharing is caring, folks. Here's the link in case you missed it at the top: bit.ly/myflipstory

I was working on a graphic to use as a promo for my debate this Saturday with Nate Langel at the NovaNOW conference in Grand Rapids. (sidebar – if you’re in the area, it’ll be a great conference. You should come).

Here’s the final image:

If you’re wondering what the topic of the debate is, well…it’s Flipped Learning. And perhaps debate is the wrong word…we’ll be discussing the pros and cons of flipping from our viewpoints. I’m going to try and make sure the whole thing is recorded so I can post it later.

Anyways, this took me way longer to make than it should have, but through that time, I learned a lot by making a ton of mistakes.

So, first, I needed a background image. I just did a quick Google search for some flip flips and picked an image that was top-down showing both sandals so I could put the text on each foot.

I pulled the JPEG into GIMP and got to work. First, I looked for a summer-ish font and landed on Bauhaus 93 mainly because I think it’s something Old Navy used to use. And they’re always having fun in their jorts and sunglasses.

The text gave me a hard time. GIMP, for whatever reason, gives you three or four interfaces for editing text, but not all of them work. The best way I found to edit the text was to make sure the “Use Editor” option is selected with the text tool.

So, I had some flat text on the flip flops and I knew that there was a way to add some texture in the GIMP menus. Canvas is a great one for old-timey book covers or for faux paintings, but it wouldn’t have worked on this one because the sandals have some larger bumps. After doing some research, I came across the Bump Map. That allows you to take the texture of any layer and apply it to a layer sitting on top, letting it come through.

This is where it got tricky for me. Lesson #1 – make sure the layer you want to texture is the same size as your image. You can do this by right clicking on the layer and selecting “Layer to Image Size.” It makes the mapping much easier.

In the dialog, you have some options. In the dropdown, set the textured layer. In other words, this is the layer you want to use to apply the texture. For me, it was my base flip flop image.

You can see that the text now has the same texture as the flip flop, making it look like it was printed rather than digitally added. It isn’t perfect, but it looks better. I also played with the Azimuth, Elevation, and Depth controls to make it look like it was the same grit as the rest of the shoe. I also filled the text with a 60% opacity to make it look a little faded…it let some of the orange of the sandal bleed through. The last thing I did was take the eraser and select a brush tool to create some fade marks. They’re hard to see, but it gives a little more authenticity to the text.

One thing I need to work on is fading the edges of the text to match the texture a little bit. Right now, they’re too clean, which ruins the effect a little bit. If anyone has tips on how to do that, I’d love to see how in the comments.

The following is the text from an assignment I did for my current grad class. We were asked to read the Introduction and chapters 1 and 2 from Larry Cuban’s Teachers and Machines as well as Chapter 3 from John Hattie’s Visible Learning.

In Visible Learning, Hattie lays out six areas technology can influence: the teacher, child, home, school, curriculum, and pedagogy. I responded to areas of greatest influence, least influence, most potential, and most challenging. Because we were asked to reply to the text directly, the citations are limited to the two texts.

Student achievement is a dangerous topic. The world, including teachers and schools, are looking for easy solutions (single solutions) for a very complex idea. Oftentimes, technology is the go-to solution for achievement issues that can be better served by focusing on improvement in other areas. That being said, technology, when used as a resource rather than a means to an end, can be extremely powerful in improving both teaching and learning.

Hattie (2008) makes it clear that “learning is a very personal journey for the teacher and [emphasis added] the student” (p. 23) and that the two need to work together in order to be successful. Technology can impact the learning process in many ways, and I would like to argue that the Teacher and Approaches (Pedagogy) have the highest potential to be powerfully affected.

The teacher cannot improve without reflecting on pedagogy, and pedagogical growth cannot occur without a reflective teacher.

I am linking these two factors because “[The act of teaching] involves an experienced teacher (individual) who knows a range of learning strategies (pedagogy)…” (p. 23). A significant part of the expectation of the teacher to both “learn from the success or otherwise” (p. 24) of strategies used in teaching and learning. This involves an intimate knowledge of how to provide meaningful and effective feedback as well as evaluation of the methods or pedagogical approach used. Technology can not only help teachers give timely and meaningful feedback to students, it can also help teachers reflect meaningfully on their practice. The teacher cannot improve without reflecting on pedagogy, and pedagogical growth cannot occur without a reflective teacher. The teacher has direct influence over both areas, meaning technology should have the greatest impact when applied purposefully.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the School is the factor least affected (in a direct manner) by technology, mainly because Hattie’s definition includes, “the climate of the classroom” and “peer influences” (p. 33). For technology to influence the school, it requires the intentional application of the tools by teachers and students. Cuban (1986) defines technology as “any device available to teachers for use in instructing students in a more efficient and stimulating manner” (p. 4), so a compelling argument could be made that technology should not be included with Hattie’s classroom climate.

In any case, the Student stands to benefit the most from any intentional use of technology. Student growth requires four actions: quality experiences, difficult yet specific goals, meaningful feedback, and the awareness of a teacher. Technology can have an immediate impact particularly with meaningful feedback and teacher awareness by eliminating time and communication barriers. Hattie (2008) even says, “[teachers] provide students with multiple opportunities and alternatives for developing learning strategies” (p. 22). This is a significant step in pushing students through the realms of knowledge and thinking about those facts and into construction, which is “the major legacy of teaching” (p. 26).

The Home is the factor least addressed by Hattie, which in turn, makes it stand out as the most problematic for schools. One of the major concerns is that parents do not know how to “speak the language of schooling” (p. 33). The burden of proof is entirely on schools. In conjunction with access issues for some students, technology can appear to widen an achievement gap. Technology can surely help with the communication and we’ve already seen how it can benefit students, but the challenge schools face is to show those benefits clearly and concisely to parents.

Cuban, L. 1986. Teachers and machines: The classroom use of technology since 1920. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Hattie, J. 2008. Visible learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London: Routledge.

“Walk the line” could work, too, but I’m no Johnny Cash.

I moved to TechSmith nearly a year ago from teaching. All I ever wanted to do since starting college was teach. I never changed my major, and I never held a job (except for summer work) prior to jumping into my own classroom in 2009. I also managed to work in public, private, and charter schools since I began teaching. I’ve added to my license as well as added to my interests. Last winter was the first time I seriously considered, and subsequently acted on, leaving the classroom.

When I left, I had a real identity crisis. What was my focus? How do I identify myself? To be honest, my first instinct is still to say, “Hi, I’m Brian, and I’m a teacher.” That’s how I feel, but it’s strange to not have that be the truth anymore.

It’s something I think about a lot today. Most of my friends are teachers. All of my contextual references for how to handle certain situations come from teaching. Nearly all of my favorite stories to tell about “work” come from teaching. I understand that most of my professional life was in the classroom, so the number of references are to be expected, but those memories feel more crisp…more alive.

I feel like I can’t talk to some people the way I used to. I’m someone else now, on the other side of the glass, looking in. I relish stories of students doing great things, of teachers having major wins and major fails. I feel the pain in the struggle and I feel awkward when I realize I don’t have to think about the politics anymore. But I also feel like a cop out when that happens, so I make sure to stay informed.

I feel the shift when I say, “I used to be in the classroom.” Is it a loss of respect? Of appreciation? I’m not sure. Probably not. But it’s still there.

I also get looks from the other end…looks from teachers who wish they were in my position. Longing for something…release? Relief? Just a chance to get out while they still have their sanity? Those unsettle me the most.

Switching gears is really, really hard. I don’t feel like I’ve escaped the inescapable system. I also don’t feel like I’ve given up on public education. In fact, I feel stronger about it now than I ever have before. But, and this might get me in trouble, being on the other side of the line, I see how much mistrust there is when it comes to education. I don’t know what else to call it. I’m also guilty of the same judgements.

How many lines do we all straddle? Who’s burden is it to manage the dissonance? Can (should?) we favor one side over the other?

I think I’m learning that the value in relationships come from our experiences walking our lines. Playing the teacher on one side, and the parent/professional/author/athlete/astronaut/whatever on the other three or four sides. Life isn’t black and white, so how can out self-identifications be?

I know that before I left, I was a teacher. My lines have become irreversibly intertwined, but that isn’t a detriment. I’m thankful for my time in the classroom. I’m thankful for my time (so far) at TechSmith. I’m looking forward to getting even more tangled up every day.

I updated the original post, but I thought it would be worth having a brand new item for reference. As I said earlier, the @StopSBG account has been unsuspended, and they are now tweeting again. I haven’t been paying much attention to the ongoing conversation so I can do other things, like eat and sleep. But, what I have done, is used Martin Hawksey’s amazing Google Docs-driven Twitter archive script to automatically archive the tweets.

View the archive

I can only look back seven days at a time, so unfortunately, the initial conversation is lost, unless you use another service, like topsy.com to search for yourself. But, this spreadsheet is probably the most complete archive of the entire 5,000+ exchange happening. The archive will update every couple of hours and add a new tab at the bottom of the page for convenience. Take a look at the short video below on how to manage the massive amount of data on the sheet.

Update 8:00 AM Jan 7, 2013 – The @StopSBG account is now active again. Change is reflected below.

Over the past 10 days, Twitter saw one of the most epic, twisting, and riveting arguments ever. It started with someone called @StopSBG [STRIKEOUT:(account is now suspended, so no link)] and Frank Noschese. Presumably, the account was run by a concerned parent opposed to their district’s decision to move to Standards Based Grading. When I first saw the exchange, this individual was writing about how much extra work teachers would have to do to report under SBG rather than a traditional grading scheme. Frank hopped in, being one of my favorite go-to persons for SBG matters, offering to help. Well, then, the Twitters exploded.

I’m not going to recount the entire debate. I did manage to grab an archive which is so convoluted and branched, that it’s practically unreadable right now. Maybe I’ll get to it and try to sort through it all someday. Over the course of 10 days or so, over 50 teachers, education researchers, and assessment professionals joined in the conversation.

As I watched, it really stood out to me that Twitter is probably the worst place to hold a rational debate. The character limit is hard to work around. Only being able to write in snippets dilutes points and counterpoints and also drives some really inventive shorthand which requires even more explanation. Because of the nature of the timeline, it’s hard to finish a point before someone jumps in and changes the direction.

I’m convinced that if this discussion had happened at a coffee shop, a public forum, Branch, or even a Google Hangout, it would have ended much more amicably. So what ended up happening? Supporters are still supporting SBG, opponents are still opposed. I don’t think any minds were changed, and again, the StopSBG account is mysteriously suspended. We looped and circled, ultimately, going nowhere with the original group.

There was some collateral damage, though.

@BMSscienceteach One good thing about StopSBG debate is all the cool teachers I've met! Great conversations!

—Raymond Baker (@RayBake) January 6, 2014

R&D on SBG has begun! Much thanks to @fnoschese 's discussion with @StopSBG for inspiration and motivation! #SBGchat pic.twitter.com/RrcghtNpqI

—Trevor Register (@TRegPhysics) January 5, 2014

The debate was engaging, and maybe that’s what we should take away from this experience. People who wouldn’t normally get pulled into philosophical discussions about grading practiced jumped in. Articles were shared. Experts weighed in. It seems like the people least involved in the debate were the ones who learnt the most. I think that’s the biggest shift for me: I started wanting StopSBG to realize that we were “right.” Having 18 hours or so to think about it since the “end” of the conversation has changed my mind. Sure, debates are fun, and this one definitely had its moments. The real power in this whole thing is the fact that it happened in an open space where anyone could watch and chime in.

So, what do we want to fight over next?

Major, major props to Frank, Jen Borgioli, David Knuffke, Rick Wormeli, and many, many others who remained rational, polite, and to the point with this discussion. I’m glad you are all willing to lead when reason flies out the window.

See what I did there? That took a significant amount of brain power tonight. It must be the end of the semester.

CEP811 is closing this week and for my final post with that particular tag, I’m going to reflect a little bit. I’ll try not to ramble too much.

Long story short: I’ll definitely be using the Raspberry Pi when I get back to the classroom someday. This course was a particular challenge for me because everything I’ve planned and written about has been in spe. (That’s Latin, folks.) So, while I can’t go and do some of the things I’ve written about tomorrow, I have them filed away for the future. The big thing about maker tools is that they can do whatever we want them to do. The Raspberry Pi, for me, is something that will allow one more student to explore something they might be interested in. Sure, there are times I’ll bring it into what we do to pique some interest, but like any other tool, it’s not something I can require every student to engage with. I get wary when we talk about “every student should need to learn how to code,” because that’s ignoring the fact that every student has different strengths, weaknesses, and interests.

If the tools in my classroom encourage students to think, to question, or to explore (play?), then I think they’re effective. I want to see students take risks and I want to provide a variety of modes for them to risk with. It isn’t about the curriculum I design to go specifically with the Pi, but the challenge it will present to learners. I want to evaluate how they rise to meet that challenge and how they cope with dealing with new tools. We see this happening as young as first grade now with designing lunch boxes. It isn’t about having fancy tools or toys, but how we engage our students.

(Scott, 2000, p. 16)

Socrates denied being a teacher because he didn’t fit the definition given by culture. I feel this is something we battle today. Culturally, a teacher is someone who stands in front of students, a content expert, to instruct. Metaphysically, teachers are so much more than that:

@bennettscience A teacher is charged with finding flaws within themselves and others, without wallowing in failure.

—Ben Rimes (@techsavvyed) December 11, 2013

@bennettscience A teacher is charged with knowing just how hard to push a learner past their point of brilliance before going over the ledge

—Ben Rimes (@techsavvyed) December 11, 2013

@bennettscience The role of the teacher is not to provide knowledge but to point and guide to better knowledge acquisition skills. #edchat

—Heather Askea (@hblanton) December 11, 2013

@bennettscience @techsavvyed a teacher is a person that convinces others to learn stuff they wouldn't otherwise want to learn

—William Chamberlain (@wmchamberlain) December 11, 2013

So, how will the maker ideas fit into my class? They should already be there. I need to be addressing and encouraging student’s innate desire to be creators, explorers, and discoverers. Sure, the Raspberry Pi will help me do that. But it isn’t about the device…it’s about the pedagogy we bring to give context to the tool.

Looking back, I wish I had been more aggressive with my own maker project plans. I don’t have a working program like I had hoped to, and that’s mostly because I didn’t make it a priority through the course. I think had I continued that project through each week, I would have felt like each week had more of a connection. However, I do feel like I pushed myself to think beyond the obvious with each prompt. I wanted to get to the root of my beliefs and draw out each component of the class as much as I could. I challenged myself to take risks and write provocatively, and through that, I have been able to reframe some of my core beliefs about education.

Week seven of CEP811 is waning, and this has been a very busy week for me. I was in San Antonio Tuesday through Friday for a conference and then came back with a cold. Luckily, this week was manageable because of all the reading I needed to do. Below is a collection of articles I found through the MSU library that focus on inquiry learning, science education, and using digital tools to accomplish those tasks.

This post is a revision of the original experiment I posted two weeks ago. The main purpose of this is to add more elements of Universal Design for Learning and to elaborate more on the process used to help students build their own understanding of speed based on experimentation.

Additions

This activity will have a larger scope than the immediate physics relationship. Students will work with their biology (and health?) teachers to study human physiological reactions to activity. Things like heart rate, muscle fatigue, breathing patterns, etc can all be studied. Students will be asked to take factors like exercise patterns, sleep habits, and nutrition and evaluate their effect on physical tasks. The bicycle can then be used after a period of experimentation to take new data and draw conclusions.

To address the process of encoding and decoding graphs, I’ll be adding an activity from David Wees, a math teacher who often does experiments with web tools being used to teach through inquiry and games. Not long before I wrote the original experiment, David shared an interactive graphing game that I referenced, but didn’t pay much attention to. The player is asked to move a stickman in such a way that a real-time graph matches a pre-determined line. The graph is labeled and clearly shows the effect of any action in the game. Students can use this to form explanations of the components of graphs and how they relate to one another.

This leads into the bicycle hooked to the Raspberry Pi. The parameters are similar (distance over time) but we’re adding the physical act of pedaling as well as the physics component (speed) as outlined.

I’ve been ensconced in Chrome lately. I worked with the team at TechSmith who brought Snagit to Chrome and now, I’m researching different ways to make learning more accessible through Chrome apps and extensions. I’m not going to get into the argument of why it is or isn’t a big deal. I’ll just say that yes, I think it is a big deal, but save the why for another post.

Last night, Google published an extension that brings Google Now-like voice searching to Chrome. It runs in the background and lets you use the “OK Google” trigger to search for anything.

You should grab the extension to try it yourself.

Like I said in the video, other than feeling like I’m in Star Trek, talking to my computer and having it talk back, what implications does this have for learning? If students can do a search for anything without even using their hands, it should really change the way we think about technology in classrooms.

What ideas do you have?

Design is the application of intent – the opposite of happenstance, and an antidote to accident.

The quote I open this post with is from Robert L. Peters, a designer, thinker, and professor originally from Canada, but teaching globally. This is especially apropos because of the task this week, designing a classroom, and because this is something I thought about constantly while teaching. Design influences frame of mind, expectation, and ultimately, behavior in any given space. Schools, in my opinion, haven’t paid enough attention to design, which is why we struggle to accomplish collaborative learning or inquiry-driven learning goals.

Greg Green is the principal of Clintondale High School in Detroit. Greg and I spent time together working with a team on the Four Pillars of Flipped Learning. We were tasked with explaining and classifying Flexible Environments. Greg and I talked about the types of spaces that must be present in any classroom to support all types of student learning needs. Because I am not currently in the classroom, I took some creative liberty and designed the ideal classroom space based on my discussions with Greg. The four areas we identified were:

1. Individual space
2. Group (collaborative) work spaces
3. Small group instruction
4. One on one instruction

Obviously, these could be accomplished in any variety of ways, and I approached it through an intentional floor plan, furniture, flow, and available resources.

Each area of the classroom is designed to meet a particular need. It is also easy to get up and move around as needs change throughout the course of a class. A student could begin working individually, but easily move to another area of the building to join his or her group, or get some extra help from the teacher.

A main argument for the need of varying learning spaces comes from Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence Theory. According to Garnder, people have cognitive strengths they pull from to solve problems (Brualdi 1996). We’re all familiar with classifying students as “visual” or “kinesthetic” learners. However, there is no evidence suggesting that focusing on particular facets of intelligence described by learning style theorists helps students succeed (Riener, Willingham 2010). Design as an effort to meet these multiple intelligences is shortsighted and doesn’t address the needs of learning as a practice.

For such an ambitious undertaking, the entire community would need to be involved. School leaders, teachers, designers, parents, and most importantly, students, should have a say in the way the space is structured and implemented. More often than not, students know their comfort zones and how to address their own needs. Without the correct space, for example, a student can create a space of individual learning by using earbuds in a noisy room. It is the task of the teacher to help students evaluate what kind of environment is most conducive to learning. The space should support the behavior we want to see in a given situation.

Placing a cost estimate is nearly impossible because of all the variables involved. We can go for top of the line digital tools and put the cost into a prohibitive zone, or we can evaluate the needs of the space and work to solve those needs effectively. Aside from furniture, this learning space only has large televisions for presentations or discussion on digital media. Multiple whiteboards are included for on-the-fly collaboration, problem solving, or brainstorming. There are no computers in this space because learners are often using their own device(s). Comfort is important, and the task of learning an unfamiliar tool can often get in the way of focusing on the work being done.

Large projects are very difficult to implement all at once. With this particular project, I think the mindset of what schools should look like and do will be a major barrier. Schools in their current form have been around since the early 20th century. The system of compartmentalized education is such a part of our culture, that a shift in a direction that gives students freedom and choice in their learning path is a major uphill battle. If we can begin talking about schools the same way we talk about libraries and community centers, design change will follow close behind.

I’ll admit right at the beginning that this post is a shameless use of all facets of my network. This blog is one of those. So, if you’re someone who doesn’t like it when people do that, you can stop reading, I’m sorry. But, I do ask that you give me a shot.

Thanksgiving is upon us, and customarily, people are sharing out their quips of thanks for the season. Some go through each day and give one thing they’re thankful for.

I think this is something we need to do more often in education. It is very easy in today’s climate to get beaten down and complain about the things going wrong in our schools. I count myself in that group. There are a lot of posts on this blog in which I extol the adversity in my classroom and building. However, I would like to invite everyone to share something they’re thankful for in education. There are more wins out there than losses, and I want to make those as public as I can.

If you’re not familiar with what I do nowadays, I work with TechSmith Education. Part of my job is to host a weekly podcast on the EdReach Network titled Chalkstar to Rockstar: Revolutionary Ideas in Learning. I get to share out stories of teachers doing amazing things in their classrooms each week, and I’ve had the chance to interview some amazing people.

Next week is the Thanksgiving episode. It goes live on Wednesday, Thanksgiving Eve, and I want to share as many stories of thanks in education as I can. To do that, I need your help. Please take 30 seconds to fill out a two question survey, of which only one question is mandatory. I’ll be sharing all of the responses on the podcast as well as an accompanying blog post. If you could fill out the embedded form below and then pass it along, I’d be much obliged.

You can also share on Twitter using #eduthanks. If you want to pass the survey, you can use http://bit.ly/eduthanks.

For me, I’m thankful for teachers who continue to fight the good fight against overwhelming odds. You all are an inspiration daily (and I’m not just saying that). Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

CEP 811 is steaming forward at full speed and we’re now getting close to finishing week four of the course. This week, we’ve been tasked with creating an outline for a MOOC. After many days opening a new blog post and staring at it, I think I’ve finally landed on a format and topic. So, without further ado, I humbly submit for your consideration…

In I’ll Take it to Go, my peers will explore mobile creation skills by working only on mobile phones for the course and through open communication, feedback, and remixing by peers.

Course topic: facilitating active learning on mobile devices.

Students are coming into schools with mobile devices which are not being utilized for a variety of reasons, one of which is not knowing how to effectively engage students in higher order thinking skills. Often, mobile apps and tools are dismissed as only having entertainment value. We are missing a huge opportunity to leverage the computing power in their pockets.

So, the question is, “Why mobile devices?” Consider the amount of time you use your device each day. Directions, research, quick communication…all done on the go. We capture moments through photos and video, we share our lives with one another as we move from place to place. These simple (and often free) tools can be repurposed to support students and the learning process. Nearly all students have experience with mobile devices, so the time spent teaching complicated tools can be eliminated. Remember, Cognitive Load Theory states that learning can only occur when the student can apply sufficient working memory resources (Sweller, Merrienboer, and Paas, 1998). Too often, new tools command the student focus rather than the learning task given. By using familiar tools, accentuating process and encouraging connections, the course will push learners into higher-order application of ideas and skills.

This is meant for all educators and students. Tools that can be used by students can (and should) also be used by teachers and other staff to engage, encourage, and support learning. This won’t be a typical MOOC. The course will be decentralized and focus on skill building and innovative application of mobile learning techniques. Learning targets will have suggested tasks to complete, but participants will be able to network, explore, and create their own products for completion. Peer evaluations will be used as benchmarks for progress through the course, and the course can be taken in any sequence. That being said, the length of the course may vary from one person to another.

Participants in the course will be expected to use their mobile device to create a history of artifacts to demonstrate their learning. Areas of focus will include photography, video, audio, social media, and blogging. While all tasks can be done on a traditional desktop or laptop computer, the main objective of the course is to immerse learners in the world of mobile tech so they can bring their experiences back to the classroom to more successfully engage their students. The time it takes to complete is partly determined by the depth of exploration that occurs within each topic and the resulting peer assessment, revision, and remixing. There is no prescribed “time on task,” and learners will have an opportunity to explore ideas as in depth as they would like.

Putting it together

The majority of MOOCs focus on using the Internet as content delivery…a large pipeline through which information can be delivered from one person to thousands. The problem is that the Internet doesn’t work like a pipe. It works like a network, with information criss-crossing from one person to another. If we want to design effective online classes, we need to build courses to mimic that network. As long as MOOCs focus on technology (the LMS used for delivery) and the content (top-shelf professors), their design and effectiveness will continue to suffer. Pedagogy must has as much importance as the others, if not more, in order to truly innovate in online education.

I watched a TEDxBeaconStreet talk the other evening entitled “Reimagining Learning.” It started off well enough, with some good points about the challenges of teaching in a digital age. I really liked Richard’s opening point:

Not too bad, consider I’ve even written about reimagining schools through Flipped Learning.

He then made some jokes and quips about scanning photos and using projectors as really fancy chalkboards. Ha ha.

He argue that the way to really change schools is to personalize learning. Again, something I can get on board with.

And then he dropped this bombshell:

< crashandburn >

My heart fell. There are so many things in this story that put Richard, in my mind, solidly in the camp of “digitizing traditional teaching practices.”

I don’t know about you, but the first thing I want my students to see when they walk in is me, smiling, welcoming them back to the room to learn together. Step one in this case is digitize the teacher.

Their performance goes into an algorithm that customizes their schedule for the next day.

Rinse, wash, repeat. (And, I bet if a teacher were around in that picture, they could tell you what the girls were working on that day.)

He then goes on to talk about MOOCs (attributing the idea improperly) and how “reimagining learning” is really just opening it up to hundreds of thousands of people. No mention of the massive attrition rate of students nor the fact that MOOCs aren’t solving real problems in higher education.

I think I’ve come to the conclusion that most of the widely-publicized talks on education are either 1) given by people with lots of money, or 2) given by people who want to make lots of money. There have been very few compelling TED talks lately that have really communicated some of the major change that can come to education when we really think hard about what technology can help us do.

I’m not saying there aren’t any. Ramsey Musallam’s “Three Rules to Spark Learning” and Kristin Daniels’ talk on reinventing professional development are top notch. I’m convinced they are because they’re teachers. Not venture capitalists. Not entrepreneurs. Not CEOs or filmmakers.

Maybe I’m just watching the wrong talks, but I know that I’m waiting for TED to look past the hype and bring back some great ideas.

Another post in the series for CEP811, we’re really getting serious now as we begin to develop potential plans for our maker kits.

Last week, I wrote about a potential activity using an old exercise bike and a Raspberry Pi hacked together. (It even had a super-fancy animated GIF as a bonus.) In short, the idea was to have the students pedal an exercise bike, send some data to the Pi, and have it graph (in real time) the student’s speed as a function of time.

A lot of this project comes from my longing for a better experience with physics and math in high school. Both were drab, disconnected, and frustrating for me. Since joining Twitter in 2011 and following people like Frank Noschese, Dan Meyer, and Ramsey Musallam, I really wish I had an experience like what they give their students.

I want to focus on one theory in particular: Cognitive Load Theory (CLT). According to CLT, working memory constraints are the determinants of instructional effectiveness (Sweller, Merrienboer, and Paas, 1998). The authors break cognitive load into three types of “load”: Intrinsic, Extraneous, and Germane.

Intrinsic load is related to the nature of the content being taught. Extraneous load is related to the instructional methods and conditions, and germane is the formation of learning schema (Sweller et al., 1998). Tasks with low interactivity contain elements that do not interact with each other, can be learnt in isolation, and require relatively low working memory load (Ayers, 2006). A high working memory requirement comes from tasks that have multiple interacting elements that need to be learned simultaneously rather than in isolation (Ayers, 2006; Sweller, 1999; Sweller & Chandler, 1994). In addition, Marcus, Cooper, and Sweller (1996) state that understanding “is applied only when dealing with high element interactivity material.”

With this in mind, my activity is designed to reduce the cognitive load placed on students as they explore the concept of speed using an exercise bike and a Raspberry Pi.

In order to introduce speed, students need an understanding of how to graph. (I deliberately use the term “understand” here because of the relationships required to produce proper graphs.) Sweller et al. (1998) suggest students that may not have this content processed automatically in existing schema could experience a high cognitive load on the wrong material and be unsuccessful in the goal of the activity.

At the start of the activity, students will be asked to pedal an exercise bike for a period of time. They will not be given direction on how fast to pedal because the second part of the activity will ask them to analyze their graph. The Raspberry Pi will automate the graphing process so students can focus solely on the task of creating a working definition of “speed.” Students will also have an opportunity to repeat the experiment as often as needed in order to confirm their result.

This activity can also be used to introduce the idea of average speed in relation to instantaneous speed. The analysis of the graph will ask students to plot a best-fit line in order to report the average speed of their trial. Typically, this activity is done where students take all the data, create the graph, and then attempt to draw conclusions. I am automating data collection and graphing so students can focus on coming to the correct conclusion rather than filling their working memory with procedural components.

Materials for this activity are difficult to produce because of the exploration that students need to do. By deliberately witholding information and direction, students are more likely to take risks and form hypothesis that can be tested further throughout the class. Science is all about exploration and hopefully, this activity will allow them to explore freely.

In the future I hope to incorporate more ideas around inquiry and perplexity, but that will have to be in another post. For now, consider this TED talk by Ramsey Musallam on the unique opportunity we have every day to perplex and engage students in critical thought and exploration.

I went to Goodwill this evening with Lindsey and Meredith. I had wanted to go for a while, and after not finding much in the clothing, I turned towards the assorted gadgets in the back to hunt for some cool toys for this assignment.

As luck would have it, there was a great old exercise bike there.

It even had a working pressure dial and speedometer on it.

I bought a Raspberry Pi for the course and I’ve already started working on a project coding in Python and using my telescope. There is a ton you can do with some cheap switches and circuit boards, so I thought it would be cool if my classroom (someday) had a way to introduce graphing using a manipulative. I have to admit I was in a frame of mind for graphing for a couple of reasons.

First, Dan Meyer had a blog post rounding up some great classroom action he saw in the blogs this week. One was referencing novel ways to introduce students to graphing. Dan posted a quote from the original, which I am reposting here:

…a comment laced with negativity that resonated with Lauren and me was an outburst that “graphing used to be so easy, and this just made it hard.”

The second reason I was thinking about graphing this evening was because of a link from Ramsey Musallam to an interactive graphing game by David Wees. I spent a good time playing the game, learning, experimenting, and working to connect the physical act of moving the stick figure to the way the line was being drawn.

So, I came to this idea: Students could ride the bike, which has a controller hooked to the Rasperry Pi, to create a graph velocity for the time bike is pedaled.

In order to get the tachometer on the bike to talk with the computer, you’d need some kind of controller.