All posts by Judi Fusco

The Cyberlearning Report goes to school

Cyberlearning, Cyberlearning Report 2017, Teachers & Researchers, Written by: Judi Fusco

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​By Judi Fusco
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The Cyberlearning report will be going to school! I teach Ed.D. students at Pepperdine University, many of whom are K12 practitioners. When I next teach my class on learning theories, I will share the Cyberlearning Community Report: The State of Cyberlearning and the Future of Learning With Technology. Because technology use is so common in K16 classrooms, I like to think with my students about how learning theories can help them use technology in deep ways to support learning. I don’t want technology just to be a substitute for pencil and paper. I love concrete examples and this report shows many new ways technology, grounded in learning theories, can augment or help the learning process. Here’s a little background.

What is Cyberlearning?                  
“Cyberlearning research is the study of how new technologies, informed by what we know about how people learn, can be used to advance learning in ways that were never before possible.”  (from the report p. 6)

So why do we have this report and who created it?
Cyberlearning is a funding area of the National Science Foundation. This program has funded about 270 projects since 2011. From all of these projects, 22 researchers came together to write about exciting new directions and themes found in these 270 projects.

What else should I know about Cyberlearning?
As we’re starting, there’s one more thing I’d like to discuss before diving in to the report — something that teachers who read early versions of the report asked. They wondered if cyberlearning researchers were trying to replace teachers with technology. My answer is a resounding NO! Please know that cyberlearning projects are NOT trying to replace teachers, or other human beings. Often, they are trying to give information to improve the understanding a teacher can have about a situation or support students learning a difficult concept. Technology should not replace a teacher during the learning process. But usually, in classrooms, there’s only one teacher and a lot of students. Many projects are trying to support the teacher and give the teacher more eyes and ears to see what is occurring in parts of the classroom where they can’t be. A teacher may be able to do many things at once, but no teacher can support all of their students at all times. 

As an example, let’s think about a virtual learning environment for science inquiry (see INQ-ITS in the report). In the virtual learning environment, students do their work and get instant feedback from the system about how they are doing. The teacher also gets a report from the system that tells how each student is doing. From the report, a teacher can learn who needs what kind of help. Some students would not need help and some would; this kind of information could help a teacher more efficiently target the students who need help. It could also help relieve the teacher of some of the mountain of grading they have as the system is monitoring the work in real time and summarizing it. The virtual environment would support and augment the teacher so that the teacher could have a good understanding of how to help students very quickly (nearly real time) and without creating more work for the teacher.

Right now, in a physical  science lab, a teacher has to grade lab projects to understand how students are doing and can’t give feedback to all until the grading is done. If a middle school teacher has 5 labs of 30 students, the time to get all the grading done is significant. If students were in a virtual environment, a teacher could be alerted how each student was doing before the class period was over. If a student was having problems the teacher could give a quick intervention and help students correct their misconceptions. 

Despite how helpful a system is, no system should or could replace the teacher. A teacher is irreplaceable and knows so much about how to help each student. Teachers bring the human touch to the student and so many students desperately need a caring adult in their life. In addition, students are not just empty heads to be filled with one-size-fits-all knowledge. Students come with their own interests and desires and a teacher can help inspire a student. We need to be really smart as we think about the future and make sure that technology is used in ways to support a human teacher in the classroom. Ultimately, we want students to be able to work with other people and having a human teacher will help to ensure human interaction. Of course we want technology to help us and we want students to understand technology — how to use it, and how to make it — but human interaction should come first and be placed as a priority. (In addition, in my opinion, a virtual environment shouldn’t replace all laboratory experiences as there are so many things to learn in a physical lab, too. )

Many cyberlearning researchers are trying to envision new technology products and activities that might improve learning. Cyberlearning research is typically exploratory, and as it is designing for the future, it is essential to have practitioners involved in the process. We need the wisdom of practice with all that is learned from working with diverse students with needs, interests, and experiences to create more inclusive designs in cyberlearning. Many projects do involve practitioners, but hearing from even more will improve the project, and give the projects new life and directions. We need to hear what makes sense to practitioners. Some of the best (in my opinion) cyberlearning research adds new thinking about equity, affect and emotion, and learning with the whole body (embodied learning research). We need researchers and practitioners working together to make sure cyberlearning research is useful for a wide variety of students.

I’m going to end this blog post with a hope that you’ll go download the report now and that you’ll come back to think more about it with me. I’d love to hear about how you think technology can help or hinder learning and what you think of the report. I’ll plan to post a few more blog posts about the report and some of what I am planning for my class.  I’ve talked about the opening section here. Read up to page 11 and then come back for more. I’ll continue to discuss the report in several future blog posts.

P.S. If you’re teaching graduate students, please comment and let me know if you would take the report to your class, and how you’d use it.  I’d love to hear more.

Implementing Bootstrap: An Adventure in Algebra and Computer Science Integration

Computational Thinking, Computer Science, Mathematics, Written by: Sarah Hampton

By Sarah Hampton
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In a former post, I wrote about a site I discovered while exploring the 2016 Stem for All Videohall called Bootstrap.

Bootstrap designs curricula that meaningfully integrate rigorous computer science concepts into more mainstream subjects such as math and science. Developed with the help of Brown, WPI, and Northeastern, Bootstrap has backing from several major players including Google, Microsoft, and the National Science Foundation. If that isn’t enough to pique your interest, initial research shows that Bootstrap is one of the only computer science curriculums that demonstrates measurable transfer to algebra, specifically on functions, variables, and word problems. (Wright, Rich, & Lee, 2013 and Schanzer, Fisler, Krishnamurthi, & Felleisen, 2015)

Recently at our school, Sullins Academy, the middle school math teachers (including myself) and the schoolwide technology teacher met to discuss and coordinate implementation of Bootstrap’s algebra curriculum for our eighth graders. The curriculum combines principles of mathematics and programming as students create their own simple video game. Before the meeting, we independently worked through the first unit which included dissecting the parts of a video game, relating the coordinate plane to positioning, relating the order of operations to program evaluation, and planning our own basic video game. After talking about our reactions to unit one, we worked through unit two, distinguishing data types used by programs and writing functions to manipulate them, as a group.

After working through the first two units, we knew Bootstrap was something we wanted to try with our students for three main reasons:

  1. Bootstrap makes algebra relevant and accessible to all learners. This could be a game-changer for traditionally disengaged math students.
  2. Computational thinking (CT) is huge for computer science and math, and Bootstrap is a great way to develop it. According to the Center for Computational Thinking at Carnegie Mellon, CT is “a way of solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior that draws on concepts fundamental to computer science. To flourish in today’s world, computational thinking has to be a fundamental part of the way people think and understand the world.” We agree and want to actively cultivate CT in our students.
  3. Bootstrap might be more motivating for students than a block language like Scratch because they are typing real code. They might feel more as if they are engaged in “real” programming. (Although, we know that the learning outcomes of Scratch can be extremely high-level and beneficial, we have heard students make derogatory comments about block languages being elementary.)

So we knew we wanted to implement Bootstrap, but we still had a big question: when and through what class (math or technology) would this be taught? Similar to most cross-curricular projects, there would be difficulty meeting standards organically for both classes. We decided to implement the curriculum predominantly through the technology class with crossovers in the eighth grade math classes as they naturally arise. (I am lucky to work in a school where we are encouraged to work across classes. Flexibility and collaboration are two of my favorite things about our school.)

Now that we have a plan in place, we are all really excited about the potential learning outcomes. We hope it shows students that math and technology do not exist in individual bubbles and that standards are not just isolated facts to memorize or know for a test. All subjects and content are integrated in real life for authentic purposes. The technology teacher hopes that this will make students realize that programming is within their grasp. It’s not this abstract, crazy, no-way-I-can-do-it sort-of-thing thing. Even if students don’t program again, the technology teacher hopes that it helps with troubleshooting abilities and independence. In addition, she hopes it will motivate students to improve their typing skills and realize why attention to detail is important, for example, when they see that even one missing parenthesis or misspelled word will break the program. Beyond the obvious desire for students to better understand algebra, the math teachers hope it allows students to see that math is really useful beyond the classroom. Most importantly, we hope working on Bootstrap displaces the teacher and puts the students at the center of the learning by improving metacognition and developing perseverance as they work through their error messages. In this way, students might grow out of the teacher-dependent mentality and learn to trust and rely on themselves and each other.

Keeping it real, we are concerned about a few things as well. It was interesting to see our reactions to the curriculum because the technology teacher has ample programming experience, I only have some, and the third teacher has no former experience. This was a fortunate coincidence because it represents the spectrum of prior knowledge our students will have as well. Overall, Bootstrap provides enough scaffolding for any previous exposure to programming as long as you are comfortable with a “learn as you go” approach, although occasionally, it did seem as if Bootstrap made an optimistic assumption about what students would know coming in. For those with no prior experience, we would have liked more direct instruction on key vocabulary, syntax requirements, and reading and diagnosing error messages. Another concern is keeping all students engaged for the length of the project. Undoubtedly, some students will be able to fly through the curriculum while others need a bit more time. We hope the answer to this problem lies in offering the extensions Bootstrap has built in for quick learners.

Overall, we are really looking forward to seeing what Bootstrap can do for our students. Our plan is in place so may the adventure continue! I will keep you posted.

Have any of you implemented Bootstrap or another computer science curriculum like Logo or Scratch? Did you see transfer to math or science? What advantages did you notice? Are there any obstacles you can help us navigate? We would love to learn from you!

Citations and Further Reading
Schanzer, E., Fisler, K., Krishnamurthi, S., & Felleisen, M. (2015). Transferring Skills at Solving Word Problems from Computing to Algebra Through Bootstrap, ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 2015.
Available at:
http://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/sfkf-trans-word-prob-comp-alg-bs/paper.pdf

Wright, G., Rich, P. & Lee, R. (2013). The Influence of Teaching Programming on Learning Mathematics. In R. McBride & M. Searson (Eds.), Proceedings of SITE 2013–Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (pp. 4612-4615). New Orleans, Louisiana, United States: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).
Available at:
https://www.learntechlib.org/p/48851/.

Center for Computational Thinking at Carnegie Mellon.
Available at:
​https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~CompThink/

Teaching about tolerance and race

Teaching Tolerance
As we return to school, some teachers have shared with us that they are having conversations about race and tolerance with their students. These conversations are difficult, but so important. On August 22 there will be a webinar on the topic of “When Hate is in the Headlines” with American Federation of Teachers, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Teaching Tolerance project, the Anti-Defamation League and Facing History and Ourselves (all linked below, too).

​If you can’t make it to the webinar, here are some resources for learning more about these topics and for having conversations with students about inclusion, acceptance, and community. At the bottom of the post, there are links to people who facilitate these conversations professionally. You can find tips, advice, and more resources on their websites. What resources do you use?  What activities have worked for you in your classroom?

Resources for learning more:

TED Talk: Verna Myers: How to overcome our biases? Walk boldly toward them
TED Talk: Bryan Stevenson: We need to talk about an injustice
Debby Irving’s Recommended Resources
Book: Hidden Biases of Good People
and
Project Implicit

Resources for talking with students:

The Essentials of Dialogue: Tony Blair Institute for Global Change
Book: The Hate U Give By Angie Thomas (and Discussion Guide)
Classroom Lessons from Teaching Tolerance
Resources from Teaching Tolerance around School Climate
SEED: “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” and “Some Notes for Facilitators”
Anti-Defamation League
Facing History and Ourselves
PBS Resources 
Project Cornerstone (elementary schools)

People who can help:

Debby Irving: Racial Justice Educator and Writer
Liza Talusan: facilitator in conversations about diversity, racism, unconscious bias, privilege and power
Alison Park: Critically Rethinking Diversity

The Brain and Cyberlearning

Educational Neuroscience, Learning, Written by: Judi Fusco
By Judi Fusco

One of the topics we learned about at Cyberlearning 2017 was the brain. Cyberlearning researchers are not typically neuroscientists. Many cyberlearning researchers are learning scientists, but there is a gap between neuroscience and the learning sciences. As we planned Cyberlearning 2017, we decided to try and address this gap so we invited Mary Helen Immordino Yang, a social-affective neuroscientist to give one of the keynotes. In this post, I’m going to introduce one of the topics she talked about and give you the link to her talk.

In much of the work we do in helping people learn, we’re trying to make sure they are engaged in a task and paying full attention to it. However, as with most things, there’s another side to consider. Neuroscientists have discovered that the brain has a “default mode” that takes over and is active when the mind is wandering. This default mode network (DMN), that takes over when a person looks like they are engaging in off-task behavior, may be important for social emotional well-being, and it may serve to help “recharge” the brain for better focus in attending to tasks.  

I’m grossly oversimplifying, but as we learn more about the DMN, we may need to consider the importance of downtime in the design of learning environments so that brains can work really well. Our brains are never idle and some of what they do when we look off-task might involve using our imagination to help us plan or think about what we are learning and better relate it to ourselves. Mary Helen Immordino Yang calls what is happening when the DMN is active “constructive internal reflection.”

While we know that it’s important to pay attention during tasks, without time in default mode, it may not be possible to focus as well as we should; it may not be possible to really internalize and personalize learning without this network. “Off-task” time may be key to deep learning.  Of course, there is much work to be done to understand the balance needed between time for activities requiring focus and attention and time for the DMN.

Below is the Cyberlearning 2017 Keynote by Mary Helen Immordino Yang.  

Here are some additional readings if you’re interested:
Why we shouldn’t worry about our wandering minds
Rest is not idleness an article by Mary Helen Immordino Yang 
Why your brain needs more downtime

 I’d love to hear your thoughts and questions as you look at this research.  I’ll be looking more at neuroscience, emotion, and learning in future blog posts. Please let me know if there are things you’d like to think about or questions you have.

5 videos from the STEM for all Video Showcase

Video Showcase, Written by: Judi Fusco
By Judi Fusco

I just watched this video about mathematics educators and Makers.  If you’re interested in either topic,  I suggest stopping by the STEM for all Video Showcase and watching.  The videos from the video showcase will be available after the showcase ends, but right now you can participate in the ongoing discussions and give feedback.  You can also VOTE for your favorite!  

There’s a lot over there so you may feel like a kid in a candy store.  I’ll share some of the others I have watched and enjoyed.  If you tweet, take a look at the twitter hashtag for the showcase to see what others are saying. ​

The image on the right shows what you see when you get to the showcase.  You can filter by keywords, age/grade level, and 5 other ways.  

I started watching in the Cyberlearning area (filtered by keyword) and then went to the Teacher Audience type.

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There seems to be something for EVERYONE in the Showcase.  There is EarSketch: teaching coding through music.  As I watched it, I became very interested because it has curriculum aligned with AP Computer Science test, and it seems to be inspiring to students.  If kids are inspired they often go further than is required of them and it makes their learning fun.  

I spent some more time watching videos and I want to go to the K12 Engineering Scholars Program! It looks like such a great experience!  I would love to see these in other states!  

​I also watched the TechFit Video as I think keeping our kids active is very important.  I love what I saw in the project!  

And finally, number five (the first video is linked in the first line of the post) is the EcoXPT video — it’s a virtual environment for students to learn about field research in biology.  It seems like it would give great experiences and help students learn. 

I tried to share a diverse set of videos in this post to show how much ground the STEM for All Video Showcase covers.  I hope you’ll take some time to explore and watch!

Cyberlearning 2017 Recap

Educational Neuroscience, Learning, Teachers & Researchers, Virtual Reality, Written by: Judi Fusco

 

By Judi Fusco

Cyberlearning 2017 was an inspiring event in April.  You can see a storify (a record of the tweets during the meeting) that documents many of the topics and technologies presented. In this post, I’m going to share a little about the 4 keynotes and give you the links so you can watch them.

The four keynotes kicked off with a future thinking one about virtual reality (VR) by Jeremy Bailenson. The VR discussed in this keynote isn’t ready for the classroom yet, but we’ll have new technologies soon that will be classroom ready. The keynote by Jeremy Bailenson describes his work and helps us think about what we need to investigate to understand about learning and VR. Cyberlearning researchers and teachers need to be thinking and planning now for the future.  (We’ll do a post soon about VR that is in the classroom.)  ​

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​The second keynote by Mary Helen Immordino Yang focused on the link between emotions and learning and what we know from neuroscience. Most of the good teachers I know intuitively understand how important the emotional connection is in the learning process, but the keynote talk helps us understand reasons why emotion and cognition are so intertwined and has helped me think. I will share more in another post.

The third keynote talk by Eileen Scanlon was on the challenges of creating and sustaining a meaningful  program of research. Eileen does research on Citizen Science; you can learn more about it in a CIRCL Primer on Citizen Science.

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The final keynote, given by Karthik Ramani, discussed computational fabrication as a way to engage students and help them learn.  He is also creating new technologies and interfaces to technologies. He describes his work and lab. His students showed off cardboard robots! In the photo on the right, one of the  CIRCL Educators checks out the robots.
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​I highly recommend watching each of the four keynote videos at some point. Each keynote is one-half hour and if you watch, leave a comment and tell us what you think and if you see any implications for your practice. You can read reflections on the meeting by Jeremy Roschelle, one of the co-chairs of the conference.

Cyberlearning 2017: What’s Next? Making Connections to Shape the Future

Cyberlearning, Written by: Judi Fusco

By Judi Fusco​

Every year, CIRCL hosts a meeting for the community–this year it’s April 18 and 19. If you’re not coming, we have a portion of the meeting that gets webcast; we encourage you to sign up and join us virtually. Our keynote speakers will all be webcast and they are:

Jeremy Bailenson:  Experience on Demand: The Opportunities (and Costs) of Learning in VR
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang:  Why Emotions are Integral to Learning: A Neuroscience Perspective
Eileen Scanlon:  Technology Enhanced Learning and the Science of Citizen Science
Karthik Ramani:  Lowering Barriers to Engagement through Computational Fabrication

At the meeting, Cyberlearning researchers come together to share their work and think about the direction of the field–pretty normal for researchers. But in addition, we are lucky because we also have students, educators, designers, industry experts, and other stakeholders at the meeting–we call these folks the CIRCL of Influence. Among the many things, the CIRCL of Influence helps us think about what is happening in the field, what is needed in practice, and how we can share our findings and ideas with industry and make an impact. Since the beginning of CIRCL, we’ve placed a priority on making sure we have many voices in our community.  

One of the things we’ll be doing is thinking about some of NSF’s Big Ideas and how they relate to Cyberlearning. Specifically, we’ll be thinking about:

  • INCLUDES – Diversity / Broadening Participation (see the INCLUDES video showcase)
  • Data science for 21st-C STEM
  • Human-Centered Design
  • Convergent Research
  • Media & Computational Literacy
  • Smart & Connected Communities (see the Primer on SCCL)

Since the meeting hasn’t happened, I can’t tell you about it, but after the meeting I will (and I hope some of our CIRCL of Influence will guest blog here, too)! In the meantime, I will point you to a Storify documenting last year’s meeting, with images and links to videos of last year’s keynote speakers.  Take a look to learn about what Cyberlearning meetings are like and what kind of work is happening in Cyberlearning;  follow us @CIRCLCenter to keep up to date.  Leave us a comment and let us know what looks intriguing and what you’d like to hear more about.  

Favorite Tech Tools Series: Google Drive

Classroom Technology, Collaboration, Mathematics, Written by: Sarah Hampton
Edited 2/11/2018 to add the link to the gold award!  Congratulations, Sarah!

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By Sarah Hampton
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From STEM programs to one-to-one device campaigns, we hear a lot about the importance of technology in the classroom. Like most initiatives, this is for good reason! We live in the digital age, and producing students who can responsibly and productively use the numerous technologies at their disposal is a crucial 21st century skill. Also like most initiatives, our tendency might be to view technology use as a bothersome requirement handed down by well-meaning administrators. When we approach anything with this attitude (read: the oft-dreaded professional development), we miss out on the spirit of the requirement. In this case, that means implementing technology in ways that genuinely improve student learning or enhance classroom organization and workflow. In this series of posts, I will share my favorite tech tools for streamlining my middle school classroom and promoting student learning. Let’s start with Google Drive, one of my favorite student-centered learning tools.

Google Drive
Technology is useful when it allows you to do something you can’t do with a whiteboard and markers, or when it allows you to do something better or faster. Google Drive frequently allows me to do both. You probably already know that Google Docs is a powerful collaborative writing tool. Multiple studies have found that web-based collaborative activities, done well, can promote learning outcomes, teamwork, social skills, and basic computing skills among students (Zhou, Simpson, & Domizi, 2012, pg. 359-360). In addition, I love how easy it is to give comments in Google Docs and how easy it is for students to work together. If you haven’t incorporated it yet, then make a class writing project a priority. Here is one example. If you are already a Google Docs pro, then check into using Slides or Forms. Our school frequently uses Forms for quick polls and surveys. Google Sheets is also a must have, particularly for math and science teachers. I would like to demonstrate how powerful this app can be by sharing how it helped me create one of my best lessons this year for middle school algebra (my class included mixed ages of 6th, 7th, and 8th grade Algebra 1 students).

After watching the Olympics this summer, I started to wonder why some countries seemed to do better than others. I posed that question to my students and we brainstormed two main categories that we thought might correlate with a country’s Olympic performance: population (greater probability that gifted athletes live there) and per capita income (more opportunities for athletes to practice and/or have access to high quality facilities and equipment.) I had each student pick three to five countries, research their populations, per capita incomes, and total medal counts in the past four summer Olympics, and add their information to the class spreadsheet. Then, in groups, they created a scatterplot for their assigned factor and analyzed the data using linear regressions to see which factors more highly correlated with Olympic performance. If you want more specifics or want to see the results, then check out our class spreadsheet. You can also find instructions for a similar project at Mathalicious.

This project was organically cross-curricular and addressed multiple algebra standards by necessity. It incorporated geography, because the students placed push pins in their countries on a giant world map, and economics, because they wondered why some countries’ per capita incomes were very high or very low. It gave meaning to population density when the students saw the size of a country on the map and then noted its population on the bar graph. (Iraq and Canada have similar populations? But Canada is soooo much bigger!) It increased number sense when they created bar graphs, scatterplots, and histograms and realized that some of the values were literally off the charts–like the per capita income of Monaco (which presented the perfect opportunity for me to introduce vocabulary like “outlier.”) Astonished, students were naturally curious enough to research why. This led to lessons on digital literacy as we discussed how to appropriately locate, evaluate, and use information from the internet, a skill that is frequently overestimated in today’s students according to a study commissioned by the British Library and JISC (University College London, 2008).

The students really got into this project and even asked to do an extension! They hypothesized that countries with lower average temperatures would perform better in the winter Olympics, so, of course, we analyzed that, too. This matches perfectly with the International Society for Technology and Education’s claim that, “When students take responsibility for their own learning, they become explorers capable of leveraging their curiosity to solve real-world problems” (ISTE, 2017).

As it turns out, we weren’t the only people to look at what factors affect Olympic performance. After the project, my students found two websites that helped explain things further. The first was written by an economics doctoral student and the second by a senior editor at The Atlantic.  (Bian 2005, O’Brien 2012) The other sites concluded that the same factors we studied were major contributors, and their charts and methods remarkably resembled our own, albeit with some more advanced statistics in the case of the doctoral student’s article. My students’ excited comments indicated that they felt validated in their reasoning and felt that they were doing “real math.”

This project hit the sweet spot: students were engaged in deep and relevant learning, and Google Sheets significantly contributed to its effectiveness.

​How have you used Google Drive to create more student-centered environments? What outcomes did you see when you used them? Did anything (good or bad) surprise you? I would love to learn from your experiences by reading your comments!

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Students proudly displayed their results in the hallway outside our classroom.
Citations and Further Reading
Bian, X. (2005). Predicting Olympic Medal Counts: the Effects of Economic Development on Olympic Performance. The Park Place Economist, 13(1), 37-44. Available at: https://www.iwu.edu/economics/PPE13/bian.pdf

International Society for Technology and Education. (2017). Essential Conditions: Student-Centered Learning. Available at: http://www.iste.org/standards/tools-resources/essential-conditions/student-centered-learning

Mathalicious. (2017). Hitting the Slopes. Available at: http://www.mathalicious.com/lessons/hitting-the-slopes

National Writing Project. (2017). Directions for Teachers Participating in Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future. Available at: http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/doc/nwpsites/writing_our_future/directions.csp

O’Brien, M. (2012). Medal-Count Economics: What Factors Explain the Olympics’ Biggest Winners? The Atlantic. Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/medal-count-economics-what-factors-explain-the-olympics-biggest-winners/260951/

University College London. (2008). Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future. Available at: https://www.webarchive.org.uk/wayback/archive/20140614113419/http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/programmes/reppres/gg_final_keynote_11012008.pdf

Zhou, W., Simpson, E., & Domizi, D.P. (2012). Google Docs in an Out-of-Class Collaborative Writing Activity. Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 24(3), 359-375. Available at: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1000688.pdf

Active Learning Day, 2016

Constructivism, Mathematics, Science, STEM, Written by: Judi Fusco
By Judi Fusco 

Active Learning Day is Today, October 25!  What are you doing for it? What will active learning look like in your classroom? In active learning, students work on meaningful problems and activities to help them construct their learning. This includes inquiry activities, discussion and argumentation, making, solving problems, design, and questions.

Last month, we had the pleasure of helping organize the Active Learning in STEM Education Symposium, sponsored by NSF as part of the activities honoring the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching awardees. The keynote speaker, Bill Penuel, focused on “talk” — particularly “accountable talk” — as an important activity to support Active Learning. 

If you want to know more about accountable talk, take a look at the Talk Science Primer by TERC. There are many great tips for teachers of all subjects in there. For Math Classrooms, here’s a link discussing Creating Math Talk Communities. For general information about it see ASCD’s Procedures for Classroom Talk.  
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In the Active Learning in STEM Education Symposium, one of the presenters, Joe Krajcik, discussed Interactions, a curriculum aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) to make science an active endeavor in a classroom.  (Visit the Interactions project page and click on the curriculum tab to learn more.) Language and talk are essential in NGSS. You may want to check out the videos on the NSTA site where you can see what NGSS looks like in action. You can also see what NGSS looks like in a 4th grade Science Classroom; this video was shown in the Active Learning Day in STEM symposium by Okhee Lee as she discussed NGSS for all Students including English Learners.  

Other presentations at the symposium included Jennifer Knudsen on Bridging Professional Development and the idea of using Improv in a Math class, Eric Hamilton on collaborating with a cyber-ensemble of tools, Tamara Moore on using mathematical modeling to engage learners in meaningful problem solving skills, David Webb on AgentCubes as active learning, and Nichole Pinkard on Digital Youth Divas and making eCards to learn about circuitry.  (See links to the presentations of all the speakers on the site. ) 
Active Learning Day is officially today, but there’s no reason why you can’t do more in your classroom at any time.  Leave a comment and tell us about what active learning looks like in your classroom!

PBL in the classroom

Written by: Judi Fusco

 

By Judi Fusco


Project Based Learning (PBL) is an active, inquiry-based method that helps students construct their own understanding. PBL can be used in any subject area. Content and learning goals should be central in the work, and projects should have students demonstrate their learning as they create a artifact. PBL is a great approach in classrooms when it’s done right. Teachers often have a lot of questions about it, and sometimes there are misconceptions. Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with Cassandra Kelley and Kristin van Gompel about Project Based Learning. Both are former elementary teachers and now doctoral students pursuing their Ed.D.s in the Pepperdine EDLT program.  (The picture shows them at the United States Department of Education during one of the doctoral program trips. Cassandra is on the left and Kristin is on the right.)  In addition, Cassandra Kelley is a member of the faculty in the CalStateTEACH Teacher Preparation Program. Kristin van Gompel works at an educational technology company and is also faculty at CSUEB in the Teacher Preparation Program. In this post, Kristin and Cassandra discuss an article by Krajcik and Blumenfeld (2006). The article outlines 5 design features for PBL learning environments that they see as key in the process to help with deeper student learning. The first design feature is:

1.  There should be a challenge in the form of a driving question or a problem to be solved. The problem should be authentic and meaningful to the students and created by the students, if possible.Sometimes teachers are unaware of the importance of students determining what problem they are going to solve, so the teacher merely assigns a project to the student. For example, a teacher may believe that assigning fourth grade students to build a Mission (something often done in California History projects for 4th grade) would be PBL assignment. However, if there isn’t an initial driving question or problem, these assignments become an exercise in just building. Students can even buy a kit to create a great Mission. Buying a kit and assembling it may teach something, but if the initial learning goals were to help students learn and think critically about history, just building a mission is not going to help students learn what was intended. In addition, the problem isn’t authentic; most students know that building a mission isn’t something that is typically done in the real world, especially if they go get a kit.   It can be difficult to get younger students to come up with an authentic driving question that will help with the learning goals, but teachers can help with this by providing background, and finding out what the students are curious about and what’s important to them.  Existing PBL lessons often have an introductory section that introduces the topic and helps the students get interested in the topic of study; existing lessons also often provide driving questions.After the students have their driving questions:

2. Students should explore their questions by participating in authentic inquiry and engage in collaboration to problem solve.

This exploration is important because it helps the driving question or problem become more deeply understood. For example, in the case of a Mission project, students might consider questions like: How can we choose a good location and design for a new California mission? What should we consider? Why do we see differences in the Missions that were built in the past?  (For more on a PBL Mission project see 22nd Mission — a project created by BIE.) As students spend time considering these questions together, they consider alternatives, discuss, and debate to more fully build an understanding of issues. A teacher may need to help students learn to productively discuss and collaborate with each other. Collaborative group work is not something that students just “know how to do.”  Teachers can help make collaborative time more successful by assigning roles for the students to take in their groups, giving expectations for what kinds of interactions are expected, giving suggestions on how to talk when there is disagreement, and providing students with an agenda or an outline where they can make an agenda for their work time so they can stay focused and productive. We’ll discuss collaboration more in a future post.

As students begin to work on the project, another element that should be included is:

3.  Students, teachers, and others should work together to discover the answer.

Having voices other than students in the project can provide expertise and lead to more discoveries, but other voices shouldn’t dominate the discussion. Besides the teacher, interested others could be a parent, a volunteer, an expert, or an older student. If the teacher can find an expert from the community, they can come into the classroom in person or through online video conferencing tools to talk or be part of the process. (Sometimes, an expert isn’t easily found or can’t make it to the classroom; in this case, previously recorded videos are very helpful to bring in expert perspectives. Students won’t be able to discuss with the expert but hopefully they can learn and then discuss with each other.) Older students in the school who have done the project before can be very helpful.  (We’ve had good experience with slightly older students helping younger ones learn. )

When working in groups with others, students have the opportunity to learn more about problem solving and watch others (classmates, parents, experts, or older near peers) engage in the process of developing the project. Teachers and others shouldn’t try to give a solution, but the groups should work together to figure it out. Teachers, especially, shouldn’t have all the answers. (When teachers give solutions, students follow the steps given, like a recipe, and then do not construct their own understanding.)

Also, in the process,

4.  Students and others should use learning technologies that help students do things they can’t normally do and learn new things.

For the Mission example, teachers may ask the students to do more research on the web to understand historical conditions. Students could potentially visit the missions through Virtual Reality or YouTube videos, and explore different topics based on the learning goal. (The teacher might also give them a worksheet or other tool that helps scaffold the research process or improve their questions in the process.) Teachers who use Minecraft could have students create buildings in Minecraft if it makes sense for the learning goals. If students are designing missions based on what they have learned, they could begin by creating the floor plans of a mission and later consider 3D printing or adding interactive coding elements within a virtual mission. Designing in 3D would incorporate a mathematical challenge; this is one way that STEM topics could be included in the project, if appropriate. (Of course, if building is important in the process and 3D printing isn’t available, a traditional paper or cardboard model to address the driving question(s) is a fine option.) While all of this could be fun for the students, care should be taken to ensure that the technology added to the project helps students achieve their learning goals. When PBL is incorporated across the curriculum, there are opportunities for multiple learning goals across the different subjects and this often leads to different opportunities for including technology.  

And this leads to the 5th element,

5.  Students should create an artifact or “project” that addresses the original driving questions and allows them to share an artifact demonstrating what they learned.
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The creation of a shared artifact often motivates students. However, sometimes, it seems like we (as educators) are too focused on the product. One warning sign that you may not be doing PBL is if you ask every student to create an identical project. Building a mission, even if students build different missions, probably isn’t sufficient if you want students to demonstrate their learning through the project. It is important to let students create, but what they create should not be dictated. Of course, for practical reasons, a teacher could give parameters for the project with each student doing something like a poster, video, or a brochure. It would be up to each student or group to decide what is included based on what answers their driving question and demonstrates their learning. The artifact doesn’t need to be elaborate if it helps the students answer their driving questions.

In PBL, we need students leading the work to develop driving questions, collaborate, and demonstrate their learning in their projects.  Teachers need to facilitate the process, to build in time for iteration, to think about what questions or challenges could excite our students, and make plans using the key elements of PBL so that the project helps the student reach the learning goals. We want the product of the project to be a representation of the learning goals rather than the main event where students are following a set of steps to create something. As the production phase of the project ends, the meaningful artifacts or findings from the project could be presented to a wider public community through a blog, website, local newspaper, YouTube, etc., providing more purpose to the research and final projects.

These five elements are very important in PBL. What’s not discussed above is how a teacher learns how to do effective implementation of PBL to enhance learning. Cassandra Kelley works with new teachers in the CalStateTEACH program. The curriculum in this program requires students to create their own PBL unit following the model provided from the Buck Institute for Education website. Using this curriculum, new teachers are actually engaged in PBL themselves, as they create example PBL lessons to implement in their clinical experiences (and ideally for later use in their own future classrooms). In the process, the candidates form collaborative teams in order to develop an authentic driving question, teaching/learning guide, calendar, assessment map, and design rubric. It’s great when the placement classrooms for new teachers are in PBL schools or in schools with a focus on PBL in their curriculum, or the teacher is working with a mentor teacher who understands and uses PBL effectively. They can learn so much more. When the new teacher is placed in a class with a mentor teacher who doesn’t know PBL, it can be difficult; we’ll share more in another future post.

Krajcik, J.S., & Blumenfeld, P. (2006). Project-Based Learning. In R.K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences (317-333). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
You can download the chapter listed; please note, it will download as soon as the link is clicked.

Here are some resources we find helpful in guiding thinking about PBL.  http://www.bie.org/object/document/project_based_teaching_rubric
http://www.bie.org/object/document/project_design_rubric
https://www.bie.org/object/document/pbl_essential_elements_checklist
http://www.hightechhigh.org/student-work/student-projects/
​http://design39campus.com/showcase/

Leave a comment with a question or your favorite PBL resource.

In addition to a big thanks to  Cassandra Kelley and Kristin van Gompel, thanks also to Pati Ruiz, Cynthia D’Angelo, and Patti Schank for their thinking on this post.