Category Archives: School Administrators

Suggestions for Supporting Staff in a Distance Learning Environment

July 27, 2020Guest Author, Learning, School Administrators, Teachers & ResearchersPati Ruiz

by Kip Glazer Ed.D.

Kip Glazer is the principal at San Marcos High School. She has an Ed.D. in Learning Technologies and wrote this to share her thoughts and expertise with district leadership. The leaders were very open to the suggestions. Full disclosure: Santa Barbara Unified School District is entering a consulting relationship with Digital Promise and working with some of the CIRCL Educators in our Fall 2020 Professional Learning.

Summary

This article identifies the four major types of needs of a high school during distance learning. It suggests that we apply the Core Conceptual Framework and the TPACK framework when creating teacher professional development (PD); we choose a different type of learning management system; we curate research-based teaching practices intentionally and systemically; and we implement robust assessment and accountability measures.

Introduction

As a teacher, administrator, and scholar, my professional interests have always centered around developing strong pedagogical skills among our teachers. This document is intended to provide our district leaders with some suggestions to improve our instructional practices as we embark on distance learning. I wrote this from the perspective of a high school teacher and administrator based on my professional experience and expertise.

Background

In addition to writing a dissertation on game-based learning after participating in a hybrid program and engaged in different game-based learning projects, I have experience in a variety of asynchronous and synchronous learning and teaching activities. For example, my former students in Bakersfield, many of whom were English Language Learners or Bilingual students, participated in the asynchronous online writing mentoring project with 6th graders in Chicago. These experiences have afforded me a unique perspective on effective distance and hybrid learning.

Scope

There are numerous topics that are related to distance learning such as online security, student data privacy, and cyberbullying. Although I acknowledge that those topics are important, this document will primarily focus on online instructional practices in relation to teacher professional development (PD) and subsequent quality control of their teaching.

Needs

As the District implements 100% distance learning next school year, we must address the following needs:

Needs of all learners including technological, linguistic, cultural, emotional, physical, and academic.
Needs of parents who would want consistent, calibrated, highly-responsive, and personalized instructions for their students.
Needs of teachers who provide distance learning to the students who they have never met and whose needs range from not having basic technology access to having an abundance of at-home resources in all areas.
Needs of the community that is looking to the District to provide comprehensive yet flexible instructional solutions that will maximize all available financial and human resources.

Considerations

As we work to address the above needs, we must consider the following:

Social-emotional needs of the staff, students, and parents.
- Successful distance learning requires strong relationships between the students and teachers, and we must address this issue prior to the beginning of any content-based instruction.
Choosing and establishing a coherent instructional framework and/or theoretical framework to build our instruction practices.
- We must consider hardware, software, and how we leverage both hardware and software in a learning environment to achieve an optimal result. In order for our technology department to be effective, we must have resources, systems, and structures to address all three components that are grounded in a sound theoretical framework. This allows us to avoid chasing the latest and greatest technology tools unnecessarily. All leaders must act as a noise-canceler to be able to lead the teaching force by evaluating and advocating tools that meet our chosen instructional framework.
Quality control over instructional practices.
- One of the biggest and most important tasks is to improve the overall quality of our instructions; we must consider this to be the moral imperative in whatever condition we educate our students.
On-going monitoring of effectiveness beyond teacher- or student-preference
- We must develop a rigorous evaluation protocol that reveals the effectiveness of a tool or instructional practices.

Suggestions

To address the needs above, I suggest the following:

1. Teacher PD

Address the needs of the teachers based on a Core Conceptual Framework immediately and urgently.
- According to Desimone (2009), effective teacher PD must (1) be content-focused (i.e. PD activities centered around the content that the teachers teach and how their students will learn it), (2) include active learning (i.e. participating in lesson studies, or group review and grading of sample student work), (3) be coherent (i.e. PD aligned with the teachers belief and knowledge; PD aligned with the goals of the district, site, and department based on a common instructional focus), (4) be over a period of time (i.e. PD spread different activities over a semester rather than a few days), and (5) facilitate collective participation (i.e. PD provided for a group of teachers who teach the same subject or in the same professional learning community).
Adopt the Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge (TPACK) Framework as the singular framework for teaching.
- Use the TPACK framework to guide the creation and evaluation of all PD offerings. TPACK framework addresses the needs for seamless integration of three major elements – technology, pedagogy, and content – in today’s educational environment (Koehler & Mishra, 2009). The TPACK model illustrates the importance of balancing all three such elements in forming a dynamic learning environment to improve student learning (Harris, Mishra, & Koehler, 2009; Mishra & Koehler, 2006).

The TPACK image. Adapted from “The TPACK Image,” by M. Koehler & P. Mishra, 2012.

Provide personalized learning in all three areas of the TPACK Framework based on the Core Conceptual Framework.
- We should ensure that any online PD platform is able to provide the necessary training for our teacher to address all three areas of knowledge while addressing the needs of adult learners.

2. Technological tool

Choose a singular learning platform that is robust and flexible.
- The District must choose a robust and flexible LMS that includes tools that strongly maximize student participation such as chats, wikis, forums, and blogs. It must allow an easy integration of tools such as all Google Apps and various video conferencing software. It must also provide detailed analytics and click counts that allow easy monitoring of the students’ activities. Finally, it must have tools to allow family engagement.

3. Teaching and learning practices

Curate instructional practices that reflect best-practice that are based on research and data.
- Many resources that have been shared on our internal Google site Learning at Home for Teachers website are about digital tools. We must expand the site to include (1) the pacing guides, (2) major benchmarks, (3) assessment tools including performance rubrics, (4) the best practices, and (5) unit plans. For example, rather than just sharing the rubric for technology readiness for students, the site should include how a teacher would use it in his or her lesson. Rather than sharing the short videos on a topic, the site should provide examples of them being used in a lesson.

4. Assessment and accountability

Continue collecting data around the effectiveness of each tool, pedagogical practices, and content acquisition.
- One of the benefits of distance learning is that we will have access to a great deal of data; therefore, we must build robust data analytics to quickly identify the area for growth so that we can respond with solutions.
Provide a clear and concise plan for common practices among teachers.
- Distance learning, no matter how well planned, can be and is often a disorienting experience. Just as we ask our teachers to reduce the amount of content and set explicit expectations for their students, we must set 2-3 very clear expectations and adhere to those expectations.

Conclusion

This document is in no way a comprehensive document for distance learning. Because distance learning is not likely to go away any time soon, we must act now. We cannot afford to lose any valuable time before creating a comprehensive instructional plan, especially for our high school seniors who will experience significant loss. I look forward to working with our staff and district leaders to continue improving our practices.

Additional resources:

Assessment and Data toolbox from Dallas ISD

UDL for Distance Learning

References:

Common Sense Media. (2020, April 07). Everything You Need to Teach Digital Citizenship. Retrieved July 18, 2020, from https://www.commonsense.org/education/digital-citizenship

Common Sense Media. (n.d.) Screen Time. Retrieved June 18, 2020, from https://www.commonsensemedia.org/screen-time

Desimone, L. M. (2009). Improving impact studies of teachers’ professional development: Toward better conceptualizations and measures. Educational researcher, 38(3), 181-199.

Educational Technology. (2012). The TPACK Model. Retrieved July 18, 2020, from http://www.rt3nc.org/edtech/the-tpack-model/

Harris, J., Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. (2009). Teachers’ technological pedagogical content knowledge and learning activity types: Curriculum-based technology integration reframed. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 41(4), 393-416. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ844273.pdf

Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9(1), 60-70. Retrieved from http://www.citejournal.org/vol9/iss1/general/article1.cfm

Magid, L., & Gallagher, K. (n.d.). The Educator’s Guide to Social Media. Retrieved July 18, 2020, from https://www.connectsafely.org/eduguide/

Michigan Virtual. (2020, March) Teaching Continuity Readiness Rubric. Retrieved June 18, 2020, from https://michiganvirtual.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Teacher-Continuity-Readiness-Rubric.pdf

Mishra, P., & Koehler, M. J. (2006). Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Framework for Teacher Knowledge. Teachers College Record, 108(6), 1017-1054. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9620.2006.00684.x

Quillen, I. (2013, March 7). Student Mentors: How 6th and 12th Graders Learn From Each Other. KQED Mind/Shift. Retrieved July 18, 2020, from https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/27542/student-mentors-how-6th-and-12th-graders-learn-from-each-other#more-27542

Rappolt-Schlichtmann, G. (2020, March 18). Distance Learning: 6 UDL Best Practices for Online Learning. Retrieved July 18, 2020, from https://www.understood.org/en/school-learning/for-educators/universal-design-for-learning/video-distance-learning-udl-best-practices?_ul=1%2A1vi266z%2Adomain_userid%2AYW1wLUhYa3ZJQUFrcVNWb29EM0RzaExjUGc

Secondary Remote Learning Resources (n.d.) Learning at Home – Teachers. Retrieved July 18, 2020, from https://sites.google.com/sbunified.org/learning-at-home/secondary?authuser=2

StopBullying. (2020, May 07). What Is Cyberbullying? Retrieved July 18, 2020, from https://www.stopbullying.gov/cyberbullying/what-is-it

Sung, K. (2015, October 27). Books-to-Games: Transforming Classic Novels Into Role Playing Adventures. KQED Mind/Shift. Retrieved July 18, 2020, from https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/42538/books-to-games-transforming-classic-novels-into-role-playing-adventures

The PL Toolbox (n.d.) The PL Toolbox. Retrieved July 18, 2020, from https://www.thepltoolbox.com/

Harnessing Educational Data: Discussing Dr. Safiya Noble’s Keynote from Cyberlearning 2019

July 21, 2020AI in Education, Book Club, Cyberlearning, School Administrators, Teachers & Researchers, Written by: Amar Abbott, Written by: Angie Kalthoff, Written by: Judi Fusco, Written by: Pati Ruiz, Written by: Sarah HamptonPati Ruiz

By Pati Ruiz, Sarah Hampton, Judi Fusco, Amar Abbott, and Angie Kalthoff

In October 2019 the CIRCL Educators gathered in Alexandria, Virginia for Cyberlearning 2019: Exploring Contradictions in Achieving Equitable Futures (CL19). For many of us on the CIRCL Educators’ team it was the first opportunity for us to meet in person after working collaboratively online for years. In addition, CL19 provided us with opportunities to explore learning in the context of working with technology and meet with researchers with diverse expertise and perspectives. We explored the tensions that arise as research teams expand the boundaries of learning, and explored how cyberlearning research might be applied in practice.

One of the topics, we thought a lot about at CL19, is algorithms. We had the opportunity to hear from keynote speaker Safiya Noble, an Associate Professor at UCLA, and author of a best-selling book on racist and sexist algorithmic bias in commercial search engines, Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (NYU Press). In her Keynote, The Problems and Perils of Harnessing Big Data for Equity & Justice, Dr. Noble described the disturbing findings she uncovered when she started investigating algorithms related to search. She was not satisfied with the answer that the way algorithms categorized people, particularly girls of color, was what “the public” wanted. She dug in deeper and what she said really made us think.

This keynote is related to some of the conversations we’re having about Artificial Intelligence (AI), so we decided to re-watch the recorded version and discuss the implications of harnessing Big Data for students, teachers, schools, and districts. Big Data is crucial in much work related to AI. Algorithms are crucial. We bring this into our series on AI because even though math and numbers seem like they are not culturally-biased, there are ways that they are and can be used to promote discrimination. In this post, we don’t summarize the keynote, but we tell you what really got us thinking. We encourage you to watch it too.

Besides discussing algorithms for search, Dr. Noble also discusses implications of technology, data, and algorithms in the classroom. For example, Dr. Noble shared how she breaks down how a Learning Management System works for her students so that they know how the technology they are using can inform their professors of how often and how long they log into the system (among other things). She said they were often surprised that their teachers could learn these things. She went on to say:

“These are the kinds of things that are not transparent, even to the students that many of us are working with and care about so deeply. “

Another idea that particularly resonated with us, as teachers, from the talk is the social value of forgetting. Sometimes there is value in digitally preserving data, but sometimes there is more value in NOT documenting it.

“These are the kinds of things when we think about, what does it mean to just collect everything? Jean–François Blanchette writes about the social value of forgetting. There’s a reason why we forget, and it’s why juvenile records, for example, are sealed and don’t follow you into your future so you can have a chance at a future. What happens when we collect, when we use these new models that we’re developing, especially in educational contexts? I shudder to think that my 18-year-old self and the nonsense papers (quite frankly who’s writing a good paper when they’re 18) would follow me into my career? The private relationship of feedback and engagement that I’m trying to have with the faculty that taught me over the course of my career or have taught you over the course of your career, the experimentation with ideas that you can only do in that type of exchange between you and your instructor, the person you’re learning from, that being digitized and put into a system, a system that in turn could be commercialized and sold at some point, and then being data mineable. These are the kinds of real projects that are happening right now.”

We are now thinking a lot about how to help students and teachers better understand how our digital technology tools work, how we should balance the cost of using technology to help learners with the potential problem of hyper-datafication of saving everything and never letting a learner move past some of their history.

As we think through this tension, and other topics in the keynote, some of the questions that came up for us include:

What information is being collected from our students and their families/homes and why? Where does the information go?
Who is creating the app that is collecting the data? Are they connected to other programs/companies that can benefit from the data?
What guidelines for privacy does the software company follow? FERPA/COPPA? Do there need to be more or updated standards? What policies aren’t yet in place that we need to protect students?
What kinds of data is being digitally documented that could still be available years after a student has graduated? How could that impact them in job searches? Or, what happens when our students, who have documented their whole lives digitally, want to run for public office?
There are well-documented protocols for destroying students’ physical work, so what documented protocols are in place for their digital work?
Are school devices (e.g., Chromebooks or iPads) that contain student sensitive data being shared? Are all devices wiped between school years?
- Students clean out their desks and lockers at the end of the school year, should we be teaching them to clean out their devices?
- Do students have an alternative to using software or devices if they or their families have privacy concerns? Should they?
Is someone in your district (or school) accountable for privacy evaluation, software selection, and responsible use?
- How are teachers being taught what to look for and evaluate in software?

In future posts, we’ll cover some more of what Dr. Noble suggested based on her work including the following points she made:

(Re)consider the effect of hyper-datafication
Resist making issues of justice and ethics an afterthought or additive
Protect vulnerable people (students) from surveillance and data profiling
Fund critical digital media research, literacy programs, and education
Curate the indexable web, create multiple paths to knowledge
Reduce technology over-development and its impact on people and the planet
Never give up on the right things for the planet and the people

Finally, some of us have already picked up a copy of Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism and if you read it, we would love to hear your thoughts about it. Tweet @CIRCLEducators. Also, let us know if you have questions or thoughts about the keynote and/or algorithms.

Teaching and Beliefs about Learning

June 19, 2020Learning, School Administrators, Teachers & Researchers, Written by: Judi FuscoJudi Fusco

By Judi Fusco

This post features the dissertation work of Michaela Jacobsen, Ed.D (completed March, 2019). She is currently Assistant Principal at Louis E. Stocklmeir Elementary School in the Cupertino Union School District.

In her dissertation, she investigated:
1) What supports teachers need when they are actively leading and designing their own professional learning.
2) How teacher beliefs about learning relate to how they participate in an active professional learning program.
3) How teachers beliefs about teaching and learning change from beginning to end of the experience.

We are currently in a time of uncertainty about so many issues. During this past spring, teachers experienced a time when everything changed. The work by Dr. Jacobsen looks into the importance of thinking about beliefs during a change process. While her work looked at a set of specific conditions around change, she found important considerations for any situation where people are asked to change.

We know from past research that effective professional learning promotes active learning, emphasizes collaboration, is sustained over time, is related to teachers’ specific contexts and curriculum, and is coherent with the school as a whole. Over the school year, Dr. Jacobsen worked with the three teachers. The school principal and vice principal also offered support. The three teachers and Dr. Jacobsen, who acted as a facilitator for the group, devoted much of their school-based professional learning time to work together. A problem-based learning (PBL) approach was the method.

In PBL, learners work to solve authentic, ill-structured problems with a facilitator. The facilitator helps establish a culture of collaboration in developing a deep shared understanding of the problem and possible solutions. Facilitators also model good problem solving strategies and refrain from giving answers. In PBL, learners gain knowledge as they work together and discuss and reflect around the problem to be solved. PBL was chosen because it promotes active inquiry, the acquisition and deepening of problem-solving skills, self-direction, reflective practices, and collaboration and communication skills. These are important for all learners, but especially important for professionals.

Together, the three teachers chose a problem around how to adopt a new practice, specifically how to help students become better problem solvers in math. All the teachers felt that learning how to help students become better problem solvers would be challenging, but agreed it would be an important problem to solve. Math was taught in a very traditional instructional manner in their school and the new practice of putting the learner at the center did not fit particularly well in the school’s established culture. Through interviews and questions, Dr. Jacobsen learned that for two of the teachers, the new practice did not fit into their belief systems of teaching and learning. One of the teachers had beliefs that aligned with the methods and practices necessary to help students become better problem solvers.

For the teacher with beliefs that were consistent with the new practice, she worked to fully understand what it meant for a student to be a better problem solver and then planned and worked to implement many aspects of the new practice in her classroom. Over the year, she planned and implemented many changes in her classroom practice. She also reported seeing changes that she felt were positive in her students as they became better problem solvers.

For the two teachers with conflicting beliefs to the new practice, there was little change in their understanding of the new practice or how to adopt it. In fact, to avoid a conflict between what they were supposed to do in the new practice and their beliefs, they joined forces and developed their own understanding of how to help their students become better problem solvers. They spent time together and constructed a way to make a different minimal change that was not in conflict with their beliefs. They also reported how they saw their students as being different than the students of the teacher who had success with the new problem solving methods. They used this “difference” to further reinforce their beliefs that the new methods couldn’t work with their students. They did not interact more than necessary with the facilitator, the third teacher, or the principal or vice principal all of whom could have challenged their thinking and given new issues to consider.

How the classroom practices of the three teachers changed or not depended on their beliefs around teaching and learning before the project started. The teacher who had beliefs that aligned with the new practice was able to understand it more deeply and move it into practice. The two teachers who started with beliefs that clashed with the new practice reinforced each other as they minimized how they would implement the new practice. These two teachers also used the “culture” of the school as a basis for defending their position and avoided the facilitator, the third teacher, and the principal and vice principal who were interested in making changes.

What does all this mean? If teachers are asked to make a change that does not align with what they believe about how students learn, they will most likely change “how they are being asked to change” to a way that matches their beliefs. When teachers are making a change, they need much support to help them understand the change. They need even more support when the change does not align with beliefs. Dr. Jacobsen outlines three strategies to help change teachers beliefs:

1) have them reflect on their beliefs in collaboration with others to think about pedagogical practices,
2) have a peer or coach (gently) challenge their beliefs and give feedback, and
3) give assistance while the teacher is making a change so that they can fully understand what needs to occur.

Additionally, experiencing a new pedagogy as a learner can be very effective. When teachers are put into a situation to be a learner, they can experience and really understand how the pedagogy works to promote learning.

Dr. Jacobsen’s dissertation citation is:

Jacobsen, M. (2019). A Multi-case Study of a Problem-based Learning Approach to Teacher Professional Development (Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University).

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions for us, please share via Twitter at @circleducators and #CIRCLedu

Remote Learning During the Pandemic: No one was trained for this and it’s changing by the hour

April 2, 2020Classroom Technology, Learning, School Administrators, Teachers & Researchers, Written by: Judi Fusco, Written by: Pati RuizPati Ruiz

By Judi Fusco and Pati Ruiz

During this uncertain time, we share stories about what different schools, districts, and educators are facing. As we spoke to educators, one sentiment that came through is that we’re all experiencing something new. Even educators with experience teaching online are supporting colleagues who haven’t done this before. All of the educators shared how going remote means you can’t do the same things as you do in a brick and mortar school. A half-full perspective says this is an opportunity to bring in new methods and think more about centering the student(s).

We spoke to three education leaders who have been thinking about online/remote learning for many years. Dr. Joy Lopez, Director of Technology at Sacred Heart Schools in CA helped create the SHP Flexible Plan for Instructional Continuity with Dr. Diana Neebe. Dr. Colleen Murray at Haddonfield Schools in New Jersey used the SHP plan to help create a guide for her district. At the Riverside County Office of Education, Dr. Steve Hickman helped develop remote learning guidance for the State of California. The three leaders had different perspectives depending on the people they serve; each discussed their plan as a starting point, and that each district, school, and teacher will need to figure out a solution for their unique situation. All of the educators spoke about the importance of making sure the people are the first priority. Dr. Lopez points out that this is a massive change and it’s not surprising that teachers and students feel like they are starting over.

We also spoke to Dr. Kip Glazer, a principal at a high school in Santa Barbara, CA who discussed the huge digital divide she sees; her high school is 51% free and reduced lunch. The school has been closed for a week, with the exception of providing meals for students, and will stay closed through spring break. Upon return, the district will move to remote learning. Right now, the focus is determining what they can do to deliver remote learning equitably. Because of the huge disparity in her district, Dr. Glazer has been considering, “What does remote learning look like for a kindergartner who is homeless, or for students with dangerous domestic situations?” In contrast, she has parents worried that their child won’t pass an AP test.

Dr. Glazer would love for people to understand that school is more than a place of testing, how it’s the heart and soul of a community. She sees students wandering around the school because they miss it. Drs. Murray and Glazer also discussed how the switch is causing some teachers and assistants, who are new to the digital world, to feel uncomfortable and uncertain about their role and what they can do to support students.

Remote learning is a new opportunity that will require learning on everyone’s part, creativity, compassion, and caring, and will continue to change in the next few weeks. We heard ideas for new classroom tactics. Dr. Lopez described how in situations with multiple teachers at the same grade level, they can team up for redundancy. She hopes none of her teachers get sick, but this could help mitigate coverage issues. Also, one kindergarten teacher got creative and put her iPad on a chair while talking to students to give the same view they have from the circle-time rug.

Sarah Hampton, a middle school math teacher is making ShowMe videos for students to help them understand operations with exponents. She discussed how her ShowMes have an advantage over those made by others because she can say things in ways her students are used to hearing. She further personalizes by saying names during the videos to direct their attention. Kristyn Palazzolo, a Library Media Specialist, is working to support families. She is building a parent website with virtual field trips, sample daily schedules, curated lists of shows, enrichment activities (at home crafts and science activities), and other resources. Kristyn is also creating a reading challenge where parents take pictures when they catch their children reading and STEAM video challenges; the first was to create a Rube Goldberg machine.

Thank you, educators, for sharing. We know how much you miss your students, and we look forward to seeing more in this new digital space.

A Promising Blog for Educators and Students

August 13, 2017Classroom Technology, School Administrators, Written by: Karen SnedekerKaren Snedeker

By Karen Snedeker

Presently, I teach math and technology at San Lorenzo Valley Middle School. We are a small district in the big redwoods North of Santa Cruz, California. I have a diverse background including teaching Social Science, Language Arts, computer technology and math to students ranging from 6th grade through high school, including many years in alternative and continuation high school in Orange County. This summer, I am working as a Teacher in Residence at SRI International with the CIRCL team through an Ignited Summer Fellowship.

I let myself get lost in all the topics within the Digital Promise Blog. Wow, what a find! The articles featured on the main page grid fascinating. They have a wonderful search drop down menu that I started searching for my own interests — then with other coworkers and students in mind — time just slipped away like a summer sunset. Honestly, I rarely come across a website that has something for everyone in the profession of education: researchers, administrators, librarians, teachers, even students. Each article leads off with an eye-catching photo, recent date, title, and a brief description. Just one click opens graphs, photos, or videos embedded throughout the text which illustrates key points. Most articles interview students and educators at various schools who share their experience on the specific topic. There are no pop-up advertisements to distract or interrupt the reader; rather the sidebar suggests related links and articles to keep the learning journey progressing as long as the reader’s time allows.

Student Lens
As a technology teacher, I am constantly on the lookout for contemporary topics for my students to research and then post their opinions in our class; I promise that Digital Promise blog is an inspiring site to spark anyone’s interest because most blogs include student testimonies. At the end of each article, readers are invited to leave a comment or email address to receive future updates. You can click “search this site” at the top and “start typing” your topic. Or alternatively, you can browse the categories and see topics specific to a specific audience. For example, I might have my students look at the blogs that are categorized for the “Student Audience” to research a specific subject such as math or science. Students can browse suggested articles relevant to them including “What Causes Mind Blanks During Exams?” a weakness that often prevents quality students from being successful in traditional education.

360 Filmmakers Challenge using VR might spark an interest with teen intrigued by creating with advanced media. Another topic that combines leadership development and the ever growing need to address technical issues on a school campus is how “Students take the lead with technology in their school.” After reading this article, fellow CIRCLEducator blog contributor Sarah Hampton commented, “Authentic school need + students learning valuable skills = win-win” As an educator, I may direct students on a specific topic, yet my joy will be to see what each individual discovers on his/her own time within the safe and inspiring environment that the Digital Promise Blog resides. The next step may be to motivate students to develop their own blog through research and writing about interesting topics in a similar style discussed by Digital Promise (as in 360 Filmmakers Challenge Stories: “Breaking Barriers”).

Schoolwide Makerspace

Our district is considering transforming some of our library space into a Makerspace. I searched Digital Promise “Categories” and found 20 articles on “Maker Learning” and 9 under “Makerspaces” that focus on research that will be of interest to my school librarian. I read several articles including How a Middle School Library Promotes Maker Learning for All Students that features a video interviewing both students and adults from Greer, South Carolina. I adore this quote from the article, “I also noted the shift from students as consumers to students creating information and ideas. I think it’s fascinating how libraries are iterating from merely being repositories of information to incubators of creativity and making.” The video enhances the article as well as inspires the reader to want to integrate a Makerspace within their own school. A Primer on Maker Learning: Agency and “A Primer on Maker Learning and How You Can Get Involved” both include Maker language, school examples, and valuable links, including how to sign up for the Nationwide “MakerPromise.org” for schools that ready to make the commitment and discover valuable resources and information. Since MakerSpace is a recent trend across our nation, the Digital Promise Blog post can help districts, administrators, librarians, teachers, students, and those involved with the physical and cognitive shift necessary to integrate effective MakerSpace into the core of their school.

Final Thoughts
I also searched in the domains of mathematics and science and found some nice things, but I will save those for later. After pre-reading this article, Rebecca Doty, teacher at San Lorenzo Valley Middle School noted, “It definitely got me looking at Digital Promise. It does seem like a great resource that I could also get lost in for hours…or days.”

I look forward to spending more time within Digital Promise and will definitely share this online resource with others in my school district as well as have my students discover some exciting topics to spark their own sense of learning. Leave me a comment and let me know if you spend some time with the Digital Promise site and what you find that you like!

Perspective on learning from an administrator

April 14, 2016Constructivism, School Administrators, Student-driven Learning, Written by: Judi FuscoJudi Fusco

By Judi Fusco

Today, for something completely different, I include snippets from conversations with Katie Hong, an administrator in a large school district in a school-wide Title 1 middle school. Katie is also a doctoral student pursuing her Ed.D. in the Pepperdine EDLT program.

One of the first things Katie told me was how Keith Sawyer got it right when he said, “Many teachers spend their entire careers mastering the skills required to manage an instructionist classroom, and they understandably have trouble envisioning a different kind of school” (Sawyer, 2014 p. 3). Teachers are told to implement Common Core Standards with student-driven learning, emphasizing collaboration, but they have not been equipped to implement or facilitate constructivist methods in their classroom. Another issue compounding the problem is administrators. Administrators often evaluate teachers based on the instructionist view. As they evaluate, they convey to the teacher how they want to see traditional classroom practices. When Katie was a young teacher, she did student-driven, collaborative lessons; she had one on Mesopotamia where the students were working together exploring the role of irrigation and how it impacted the growth of civilization. Her principal walked in to evaluate her and was a little miffed because the class wasn’t quiet. He told her he’d come back when she was “teaching,” as he couldn’t do an evaluation on her with her students so off-task.

Administrators have huge power over teachers, and teachers often continue to focus on the traditional classroom practices because they want to please their administrator, receive an effective evaluation, and be viewed as an effective teacher by their colleagues. Administrators aren’t completely to blame. as there aren’t good evaluation instruments or tools to help them evaluate constructivist methods or classes doing cooperative learning. Also, many administrators lack sufficient knowledge about student-driven methods and collaboration.

As Katie and I have continued talking, she has made many observations that have stayed with me. She spoke about how an ideal teacher evaluation should involve much more time than it’s given. Often there’s only time for one classroom visit with a pre- and post- meeting, but it would be better to have visits on a continuous basis throughout the year. She told me that she, as an administrator, would like to observe teachers facilitating student-driven lessons, but teachers often don’t use student-driven lessons on days she’s evaluating them unless she specifically asks them to in their pre-meeting. She also wishes she could have tools to help her understand what is happening more quickly when she walks into a classroom where students are collaborating. When there are a lot of groups, it can be hard to understand and evaluate what is occurring. And the forms she has to use for evaluation often involve a lot of answering of questions that may not capture the most important details. For her own research, she’s interested in thinking about how to help administrators evaluate a constructivist classroom effectively. She said, “I want to see the interaction with the students and teacher and how the teacher facilitates–that would be my ideal observation. I learn so much more when I talk to the students. I want to see if they can synthesize material and apply it. I know the teacher knows the material. I don’t need to see them lecture. I want to observe what the students have learned and understand.”

Thanks for the important perspective, Katie. We’ll have more of your thoughts on student-driven learning in another post, soon. Administrators and teachers, what are your thoughts about teacher evaluations and student-driven learning? What do you need to be successful? If you teach teachers, do you talk with them about the topics covered in this blog post? Cyberlearning researchers, can we help Katie with some new tools for evaluation of student-driven collaboration?

Sawyer, R.K. (2014) Introduction: The new science of learning. In: Sawyer R. K. (ed.) Cambridge handbook of the learning sciences. Second edition. Cambridge University Press, New York: 1-18.