Why They Aren't Using It: The PD Dilemma and Transfer

I love working with my fellow teachers. I believe that teachers are some of the most insightful, caring, strategic people I know. (Full disclosure: I AM a teacher!) My colleagues come up with amazing solutions in spite of seemingly insurmountable challenges, often with a smile.

However, after conducting a series of collaborative, interactive professional development sessions with some teachers, I'm often asking myself the following question:

WHY AREN'T THEY USING IT???

Whether it's Understanding by Design, iPads, or teaching with multimedia, I find that teachers don't use what they've learned very often. This is a problem.

After doing a little bit of informal research, here are the top reasons why teachers don't try out what they've learned in PD:

• They're busy!
• They're still a little skeptical that the new strategy will actually work.
• There is a systemic factor stopping them. (i.e., the schedule, the test, software, etc.)

While I believe that all of the reasons stated above are real, I also think there is another factor at play: TRANSFER. Transfer is the ability to use what you've learned in different contexts on your own. It's hard. Really hard. (You can read more about that here.)

Often, the design of professional development doesn't support the level of transfer required for classroom innovation to happen. The way that we design learning experiences for adults must intentionally support the transfer of learning. Here are 3 important elements that can make transfer more likely:

• Provide many examples and ask teachers to generalize from those examples. One of the hardest things to do is to visualize what a new strategy or technique will look like in YOUR classroom. In professional development sessions, show teachers lots of examples (video is best) from many different grade levels and subject areas. Then, have your colleagues make generalizations about what this strategy would look like in their own setting. The Teaching Channel is a great place to find examples!

• Give time for teachers to practice and receive feedback. In Doug Lemov's book, Practice Perfect, he describes how teachers actually try out specific strategies using role play. This is really important so that they can receive some immediate feedback about their performance. This helps you to understand what a correct implementation actually feels like.

• Ensure that the system supports the new strategies. Be intentional about what happens when teachers return to their classrooms. Does anyone notice that they've taken a risk and tried a new strategy? Does anyone compliment them on their hard work with the new strategies? Do they have the time and resources that they need to try out what you've taught them? Putting the right environmental factors in place can make transfer happen.

What have you done to support transfer for adult learners? I'd love to hear your ideas!

Photo Credit:
  by  robotson 

Can the Common Core Make Career Exploration Cool Again?

Note: This is cross posted at Smart Blog on Education.

In many schools and districts, career education has gotten a “bad rap.” Sometimes, vocational and career exploration activities are only offered to students who aren’t attending college. Due to this, career exploration can carry a negative stigma that seems silly and even detrimental.

But, the Common Core’s focus on CAREER and college readiness may change all that. Schools and districts across the country are revamping their internship and career exploration programs with awesome results. A recent study published in Phi Delta Kappan found that students participating in career exploration activities generally were more likely than nonparticipants to graduate from high school and to prepare for and enroll in postsecondary education. Further, the 2011 Harvard GSE report, 2011 Citizen’s League Student Speak Out Project, and the 2007 Project Tomorrow efforts have all reframed school-wide conversations about careers.

As educators, we must use this momentum to make career exploration COOL again. “Trying on” different careers and roles early in the educational process can increase student engagement at school and improve learning outcomes.

Not sure how to begin? Try these practical tips.

Share OOCHING with kids and parents. In their new book Decisive, Dan and Chip Heath describe OOCHING as doing small experiments to test a hypothesis. The research on OOCHING shows that it’s a great way to make better decisions about college and career. Interested in being a pharmacist? Then shadow one for a month. Want to be a stylist? Shampoo hair at a salon for a few weeks. These smaller investments of time and energy can actually SAVE time and money in the long run by helping students look before they leap.

Create tasks that ask students to take on real roles and engage with real audiences. Many of the tasks that we design for learners are actually quite contrived without an audience beyond the teacher. Kids sense this immediately, motivation plummets, and projects fizzle. To fix this problem, build tasks that ask students to take on authentic roles where their work is evaluated by professionals in the field. For example, have students work with an architect to redesign your classroom cafeteria. Hold students to similar standards as set forth by the American Institute of Architects and solicit feedback on student work from local architects.

Use Google Hangout or Skype to seamlessly integrate professionals into your classroom. In many cases, professionals in many fields are more than willing to donate time to visit your classroom virtually. Use Google Hangout or Skype to provide opportunities for students to ask questions and learn from people in all different walks of life. This can make learning more relevant and offer students diverse perspectives.

As we all know, the careers available to our students may look very different from the careers in existence today. However, if students better understand the types of work they enjoy, they’ll be better positioned to HELP DESIGN our world’s fresh crop of jobs. Let’s help our students to closely examine all the possibilities that lie before them. The sky’s the limit!

Photo Credit:
Career Fair 2012 by Lafayette College

The Great Homework Debate

Note: This post was also a part of Mark Barnes' Ed Newsletter.

Recently, the topic of homework has become increasingly polarized. Generally, teachers either LOVE or HATE homework. However, it’s dangerous to view anything, including homework, as either black or white.

As Chris Wejr wrote recently,

When we use powerful polar statements, they often “sell” and get retweeted… but do they do anything to move the dialogue and create educational change?

Homework is only a tool. It’s how we use (or misuse) homework that makes the difference. The three questions below can be helpful guides to determine if your homework is a force for good or evil:

• AUTHENTIC: Would a student be required to do this task on personal time in real life?

All homework assignments should be authentic, or related to the requirements of real life. Some professions, such as general dentistry, don’t require any “take-home” work. However, orthodontists, architects, and editors have quite a bit of “take-home” work. Consider the professions related to the task you’re assigning. Would this task be done on personal time? If so, go ahead and assign it. If not, think twice. Be sure to communicate these connections to students; it will help them make more informed choices about their careers!

• DELIBERATE: Does this task encourage students to engage in deliberate practice?

Deliberate practice requires you to design tasks that require specific and sustained efforts on individual areas of weakness. Have you identified a particular student’s weakness and targeted it through the assignment of the task? If so, go ahead and assign it. If your homework is monolithic and one-size-fits-all, then think twice.

• ENGAGING: Would YOU be excited to complete this task?

Completing 50 rote math problems that look exactly the same doesn’t exactly inspire passion. Defining an arbitrary list of words doesn’t correlate with a love of reading and writing. Put simply, would you have the forbearance to complete the task you’ve just assigned? If not, don’t expect your students to be enthralled either! (Check out Nick Provenzano’s attempt to complete all the homework he assigned to students HERE.)

If your homework is authentic, deliberate, and engaging, then it’s likely a worthy tool within the educational program you’ve designed for students. Extending learning in safe, meaningful ways can help students accelerate their progress.

However, if you’re homework is arbitrary, a source of “grades,” or a way to penalize children, just skip it.

In short, there’s NO easy answer. And the debate rolls on...

Photo Credit:
  by  Daniel Y. Go 

Preventing Summer Setback with Social Media

Note: This is cross posted at Just Start Blog.

As the school year winds to a close, many teachers are looking for methods to keep the learning alive for their students. Allington and other researchers remind us that summer setback often affects our neediest learners most.

So, the question becomes:

How might we connect ALL students 

to rigorous, engaging learning beyond the classroom?

In some ways, this type of design inherently demands educational transfer. We need to design experiences that encourage students to use what they know without us. Given that the learning will happen outside the traditional school structure, the design also has to utilize authentic engagement and intrinsic motivation.

This is a tall but worthy challenge. Luckily, social media offers us exciting, free ways to continue learning conversations in digital spaces. It’s never been easier to interact with learners across large distances in real time.

Although we may never figure out the perfect solution, here are a few practical tips to guide your choices. (It’s also a wise idea to include students in the design process as they’ll likely have even more solutions!)

1. Go mobile.
Although many students from high needs areas may not have access to a computer or Internet, many students DO have access to mobile devices and cell phones. When you design your learning experience, try to ensure that students can use a phone to check in. This will greatly increase participation for students of all walks of life. Here are a few free tools that work well with mobile devices:

*iPadio – iPadio allows you (or your students) to create, share, and listen to podcasts using a mobile device. This would be a great way to share brief learning updates or thoughts on a reading or current event. Best of all, it’s free.

*Class Pager – Class pager allows you to ask students questions, send reminders, or provide feedback via a mobile device. It works with any mobile device and it’s free!

*Blogger- If you want to have a collaborative class blog over the summer, you can set up a Blogger blog to accept posts from an email address. If you share the email address with students, then they can email images or messages from their phones that will post to the site. Importantly, you can set the blog to require approval from you before a post goes live. All of this can be configured in the “settings tab” when you log in. Again, this tool is free!

2. Make it relevant.
If we want students to actually engage with the work we design on their own time, students must find it inherently interesting. We need to tap into students’ intrinsic motivation and curiosities. Here are a few strategies to design relevant work:

*Ask the kids. – This might seem like a no-brainer, but it is sometimes forgotten. Ask students what they want to learn about over the summer. Increased autonomy will result in increased participation.

*Use tasks with real audiences and real roles. – Don’t make summer work too “teacherly.” Instead, ask students to become engineers, doctors, lawyers, coffee shop owners, etc. Send students out into the community to gather data or design real solutions.

3. Figure out scalable ways to provide feedback to students.
The most successful digital spaces provide learners with lots of feedback. To keep students coming back to a digital conversation, actively create a feeling of belongingness. Here are a few strategies to provide feedback:

*Don’t try to provide all the feedback yourself. – You are only one person, and you can’t realistically read every post or comment! Have students comment on each others’ work. Invite community members into the space and encourage them to provide feedback. In short, make the space flat and diverse, not linear.

*Craft a few “go to” responses. – Is there a conversation about genetic engineering happening in the space? If so, figure out 3-4 basic responses that you can use. Then provide these responses to students. If you have a frame from which to start, it can really speed up the feedback process.

Remember, use the suggestions above as a guide, not a recipe. There’s no “wrong way” to create digital learning during the summer months. Find something that works for you and your students. If you are thoughtful, you’ll help students stay connected to learning all summer long!

Photo Credit:
  by  Klearchos Kapoutsis 

Scaling Change

If you read this blog often, you know that I'm passionate about helping people learn better.

For the past 2 years, I've been working alongside Grant Wiggins to help teachers redesign their curriculum. Essentially, I've been trying to ask educators thoughtful questions about how they design learning experiences. It's been an amazing ride with amazing people.

Today, I begin a new journey. Although I'm a Philly native, I've moved to San Francisco to join BrightBytes with Rob Mancabelli and Hisham Anwar.

The mission of the organization?

To improve the way that people learn using technology.

Perfect for me, huh? Given the amazing conversations that I've had with the team, I think I'll fit right in. Everyone is keenly aware that scaling educational change is a challenge worth tackling with fervor. Stay tuned to learn more as I explore my new role and new city!

PS- Have any tips about living in San Francisco? Want to "tweet up?" Let me know!

Increasing Career Exposure: Adding Roles to Your Tasks

As the summer draws near, many educators have asked me:

What's the most impactful change 

I can make to my curriculum this summer?

Although it's hard to generalize when it comes to learning design, there is one thing that I notice in my work with schools and teachers:

We often ask kids to do tasks that lack real-world context.

For example, consider the following 6th grade task that assesses a student's ability to prioritize the most important aspects of Ancient Roman culture:

You will create a travel brochure about Ancient Rome. Be sure to include sights, sounds, foods, and maps to describe the location.

Here are the questions that enter my head immediately as I read the task above:

• Do travel agents even exist anymore?
• Who uses brochures? 
• Is the amount of research required to fill a trifold piece of paper really sufficient to convince someone to book a very expensive trip abroad?

Many of the tasks that we've designed, even the ones that we believe are authentic, are actually quite contrived and "teacherly." Kids sense this immediately, and they also realize that there is no real audience for their work. Motivation plummets, and your project fizzles.

To fix this problem, redesign your tasks to include a current career and real-world audience. These two elements can change the learning and assessment experience in your classroom.

Instead of a travel brochure, consider this revised 6th grade task:

You are a set director for a new summer blockbuster called Rome. The director has given you a budget of 1 million dollars. You must purchase or rent items that will make the set as realistic and appealing as possible. Keep in mind that you may need to research who currently owns the items and determine an acceptable purchase or rental price. Draw and label you set and provide a full budget with annotated links. Be prepared to pitch your proposed set to the director.

This role is real. The audience is real. The problem is somewhat vague and allows for a lot of creativity. In short, real adults do this type of work every day. 

So, this summer, create tasks that start with 

cutting-edge, real-world CAREERS. 

This will ensure that your tasks are murky, engaging, and relevant to your students. In fact, a recent Students Speak Out Report found that students want to learn more about the careers that are available to them.

So spend some time this summer upgrading your curriculum with real-world careers. You won't regret it.

Photo Credit:
  by  sandburchick 

Prioritizing the ELA Common Core

Thankfully, the ELA Common Core Standards focus on complex skills, not meager acquisition. Due to this, the number of standards has been significantly reduced for most states.

However, every educator and school system faces a critical design tension: TIME. The minutes we have with students are limited, and we all need to decide what will be prioritized. For a curriculum to be truly guaranteed and reliable, districts should be considering consistent ways to determine WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT.

I recently went through this process with a stellar team in Maine. (It was one of the best teams I have ever worked with.) As I know that many districts and schools are grappling with this task, I thought I would share the process I designed as well as some general takeaways the team experienced.

Our Process for Prioritization:

Step 1:
First, we set norms by thinking of ourselves as designers. We watched a video about the staff at IDEO, a product design firm that embraces risk-taking and true collaboration. From there, we focused on the end user of our design process: the student. We watched some informal video clips of students explaining why they go to school. Many students go to school so that they can be successful in future careers and life.

Step 2:
As eventual career success is very important to our students, we used an open Google Doc to brainstorm the skills used by adults in a series of professions. Patterns quickly emerged. We identified the following critical competencies: evaluate, create, research, communicate, analyze, and justify.

Step 3:
Using these competencies as a guide, we determined which ELA standards were most important. This required a very close read of the standards and inspired much debate among the group. We constantly asked the question: “Does this standard ask students to engage in the critical competencies that adult professionals need?” In the end, we ended up with 8 standards out of the 32 total standards in reading, writing, speaking/listening, and language.

Step 4:
After we selected the standards that deserved extensive emphasis and prioritization, we collaboratively crafted a rationale as to why we selected each standard. This information was written in a way so that other teachers in the district would understand our thinking.

Step 5:
As a final step, we considered what it would look like to properly prioritize a standard. Here’s what we agreed upon:

• Prioritized standards should be taught over and over and over each semester.
• All other standards have to be taught as well throughout the year!
• Students should see the same common threads year after year via the competencies and the prioritized standards.
• Students should understand how the competencies link to careers.

Some Takeaways:
Our process wasn’t perfect and it required a lot of revision. As we considered the implications of each decision, we often found ourselves revisiting tasks and ideas. However, in the end, we realized something important:

If you prioritize everything, 

then you actually prioritize NOTHING.

The process was as important as the finished product. Reading the standards closely, debating with each other, and coming to shared agreement helped us all gain a more complete understanding of what instruction should look like to meet the demands of the ELA Common Core Standards.

A Final Thought:
I know that many of you would probably like to see what we selected and how we crafted our rationales. However, that would rob you and your team of the critical meaning making (and magic!) that happens during the process. Engaging in the messiness is half the fun!

I hope this helps!

Photo Credit:
  by  Banalities