Category Archives: Teachers & Researchers

Ambitious Mashups and CIRCLS

AI in Education, Cyberlearning, STEM, Teachers & Researchers, Webinar

By CIRCL Educators

CIRCL, the Center for Innovative Research in Cyberlearning, has come to an end, but don’t worry, we’re getting ready to roll over to a new project called CIRCLS, the Center for Integrative Research in Computing and Learning Sciences. Stay tuned here and we’ll keep you apprised of any changes. Of course we’ll still be working to bridge practice and research and share what CIRCLS is doing and what we, as educators, are thinking about and facing in our work. If you’d like to get more involved with our work, please contact us! We’re looking for more educators to think and write with.

In the meantime, before we transition to CIRCLS, we want to dive into the final report from CIRCL. In it, we reflect on what we’ve learned since 2013 when CIRCL started. The world and technology have both changed quite a bit. Over the years, CIRCL worked with the approximately 450 projects funded by the National Science Foundation through their Cyberlearning program. The term Cyberlearning is a hard word to grasp, but the program and the projects in it were about using what we know about how people learn and creating new design possibilities for learning with emerging technology. In addition, in a 2017 report, we noted a strong commitment to equity in the CIRCL community. That commitment continues and is discussed in our final report with recommendations for future work to strengthen this important theme.

One thing we were struck by, in the review of the projects, was that there were many innovative designs to enhance learning with technology. As we tried to categorize the projects, we noticed that most contained combinations of multiple technologies, learning theories, and methods. While this may sound confusing, these combinations were purposefully designed to help augment learning and deepen our understanding of the technologies and how people learn. We looked for a term to use to explain this phenomenon and couldn’t find one, so we came up with a new one: Ambitious Mashups. In addition to the importance of mashing things up, the report also discusses:

Next week, we’ll be part of a webinar and talk through the different sections of the report. The webinar welcomes practitioners who want to learn more about research on emerging technologies from NSF-funded projects. While the projects aren’t always ready for use in a school today they offer ideas for new projects and new ways to think about how to use technology to support learning. The ambitious mashup projects think about learning in different ways and show how grounding activities in what we know about how people learn can help meet learning goals and outcomes. Ambitious mashups are usually exciting and give new ideas. CIRCL Educator Sarah Hampton says CIRCL reports can “help you get excited about the future landscape of education.”

We invite you to join us to learn more about Ambitious Mashups and Reflections on a Decade of Cyberlearning Research Webinar
Date: 10/28/2020
Time: 4 pm Eastern / 3 pm Central / 1 pm Pacific

Register

 

 

Book Review: You Look Like a Thing and I Love You

AI in Education, Engineering, Learning, STEM, Teachers & Researchers, Written by: Judi Fusco

By Judi Fusco

During CIRCL Educators’ Summer of Artificial Intelligence (AI), I read the book You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How AI Works and Why It’s Making the World a Weirder Place1, by Dr. Janelle Shane. I got the recommendation for it from fellow CIRCL Educator, Angie Kalthoff.

I found the book helpful even though it is not about AI in education. I read and enjoyed the e-book and the audio version. As I started writing this review, I was driving somewhere with one of my teenagers and I asked if we could listen to the book. She rolled her eyes but was soon laughing out loud as we listened. I think that’s a great testament to how accessible the book is.

Teaching an AI

Many of us use AI products like Siri or Alexa, on a regular basis. But how did they get “smart?” In the book, Dr. Shane writes about the process of training machine learning2, systems to be “intelligent”. She tells us how they certainly don’t start smart. Reading about the foibles, flailings, and failings that she has witnessed in her work helped me understand why it is so important to get the training part right and helped me understand some of what needs to be considered as new products are developed.

Dr. Shane starts out comparing machine learning and rule-based AI systems, which are two very different types of AI systems. Briefly, a rule-based system uses rules written by human programmers as it works with data to make decisions. By contrast, a machine learning algorithm3 is not given rules. Instead, humans pick an algorithm, give a goal (maybe to make a prediction or decision), give example data that helps the algorithm learn4, and then the algorithm has to figure out how to achieve that goal. Depending on the algorithm, they will discover their own rules (for some this means adjusting weights on connections between what is input and what they output). From the example data given to the algorithm, it “learns” or rather the algorithm improves what it produces through its experience with that data. It’s important to note that the algorithm is doing the work to improve and not a human programmer. In the book, Dr. Shane explains that after she sets up the algorithm with a goal and gives it training data she goes to get coffee and lets it work.

Strengths and Weaknesses

There are strengths and weaknesses in the machine learning approach. A strength is that as the algorithm tries to reach its goal, it can detect relationships and features of details that the programmer may not have thought would be important, or that the programmer may not even have been aware of. This can either be good or bad.

One way it can be good or positive is that sometimes an AI tries a novel solution because it isn’t bogged down with knowledge constraints of rules in the world. However, not knowing about constraints in the world can simultaneously be bad and lead to impossible ideas. For example, in the book, Dr. Shane discusses how in simulated worlds, an AI will try things that won’t work in our world because it doesn’t understand the laws of physics. To help the AI, a human programmer needs to specify what is impossible or not. Also, an AI will take shortcuts that may lead to the goal, but may not be fair. One time, an AI created a solution that took advantage of a situation. While it was playing a game, an AI system discovered there wasn’t enough RAM in the computer of its opponent for a specific move. The AI would make that move and cause the other computer to run out of RAM and then crash. The AI would then win every time. Dr. Shane discusses many other instances where an AI exploits a weakness to look like it’s smart.

In addition, one other problem we have learned from machine learning work, is that it highlights and exacerbates problems that it learns from training data. For example, much training data comes from the internet. Much of the data on the internet is full of bias. When biased data are used to train an AI, the biases and problems in the data become what guide the AI toward its goal. Because of this, our biases, found on the internet, become perpetuated in the decisions the machine learning algorithms make. (Read about some of the unfair and biased decisions that have occurred when AI was used to make decisions about defendants in the justice system.)

Bias

People often think that machines are “fair and unbiased” but this can be a dangerous perspective. Machines are only as unbiased as the human who creates them and the data that trains them. (Note: we all have biases! Also, our data reflect the biases in the world.)

In the book, Dr. Shane says, machine learning occurs in the AI algorithms by “copying humans” — the algorithms don’t find the “best solution” or an unbiased one, they are seeking a way to do “what the humans would have done” (p 24) in the past because of the data they use for training. What do you think would happen if an AI were screening job candidates based on how companies typically hired in the past? (Spoiler alert: hiring practices do not become less discriminatory and the algorithms perpetuate and extend biased hiring.)

A related problem comes about because machine learning AIs make their own rules. These rules are not explicitly stated in some machine learning algorithms so we (humans aka the creators and the users) don’t always know what an AI is doing. There are calls for machine learning to write out the rules it creates so that humans can understand them, but this is a very hard problem and it won’t be easy to fix. (In addition, some algorithms are proprietary and companies won’t let us know what is happening.)

Integrating AIs into our lives

It feels necessary to know how a machine is making decisions when it is tasked with making decisions about people’s lives (e.g., prison release, hiring, and job performance). We should not blindly trust how AIs make decisions. AIs have no idea of the consequences of its decisions. We can still use them to help us with our work, but we should be very cautious about the types of problems we automate. We also need to ensure that the AI makes it clear what they are doing so that humans can review the automation, how humans can override decisions, and the consequences of an incorrect decision by an AI. Dr. Shane reminds us that an “AI can’t be bribed but it also can’t raise moral objections to anything it’s asked to do” (p. 4).

In addition, we need to ensure the data we use for training are as representative as possible to avoid bias, make sure that the system can’t take shortcuts to meet its goal, and we need to make sure the systems work with a lot of different types of populations (e.g., gender, racial, people with learning differences). AIso, an AI is not as smart as a human, in fact, Dr. Shane shares that most AI systems using machine learning (in 2019) have the approximate brainpower of a worm. Machine learning can help us automate tasks, but we still have a lot of work to do to ensure that AIs don’t harm or damage people. 

What are your thoughts or questions on machine learning or other types of AI in education? Tweet to @CIRCLEducators and be part of the conversation.

Thank you to James Lester for reviewing this post. We appreciate your work in AI and your work to bring educators and researchers together on this topic.

See a recent TED Talk by author Janelle Shane.

Notes:

  1. Read the book to find out what the title means!
  2. Machine learning is one of several AI approaches.
  3. Machine Learning is a general term that also includes neural networks and the more specialized neural network class of Deep Learning. Note also, a famous class of ML algorithms that use rules are decision-tree algorithms.
  4. Some algorithms “learn” with labeled examples and some without, but that’s a discussion beyond the scope of this post.
Shadows

Introduction to Culturally Responsive Teaching

Diverse Learners, Teachers & Researchers, Written by: Judi Fusco, Written by: Pati Ruiz

by Pati Ruiz and Judi Fusco

At CIRCL Educators, we’re on a journey to help students and we think culturally responsive teaching is an important part of it. Since we will have more posts that fall under this topic we wanted to share a few definitions and a few of our favorite resources that have helped us start thinking and talking about culturally responsive teaching. This is a starting roadmap. The terms mentioned are similar, but distinct. In the research world different terms represent different emphases. We’ll discuss the differences more in the future. We provide this glossary of terms and full references to the articles discussed below.

Definitions

Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: credited to Ladson-Billings (1995), this term “loosely refers to teachers’ ability to incorporate knowledge of students’ background and culture in their instructional practice to enhance student learning” (Gist, 2017, p. 289). However, it seems Ladson-Billings (2014) grew dissatisfied with how her term was used saying: “What state departments, school districts, and individual teachers are now calling “culturally relevant pedagogy” is often a distortion and corruption of the central ideas I attempted to promulgate. The idea that adding some books about people of color, having a classroom Kwanzaa celebration, or posting “diverse” images makes one “culturally relevant” seem to be what the pedagogy has been reduced to” (p. 82).”

Culturally Responsive Teaching: This term comes from Genva Gay’s work, which built on the Ladson-Billings ideas, and directed the approach more toward the act of teaching. “Gay (2010) explained culturally responsive teaching by arguing that such practices are a means for unleashing higher potentials of ethnically diverse students by simultaneously cultivating their academic and psychosocial abilities.” (Gist, 2017, p. 290). Gay characterized culturally responsive teaching by the use of ‘cultural knowledge, prior experiences, frames of reference, and performance styles of ethnically diverse students to make learning encounters more relevant to and effective for them.

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: is an umbrella term used by Gist (2017) that includes Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and Culturally Responsive Teaching as well as the intentional strategies that teachers should implement to create an environment in which all children have equitable opportunities to learn.

A related term is Culturally Relevant Education (Aronson & Laughter, 2016). This work places the work of Gay on teaching and Ladson-Billings on pedagogy at the center of an effort to create a social justice pedagogy.

Books

Articles

Aronson, B., & Laughter, J. (2016). The theory and practice of culturally relevant education: A synthesis of research across content areas. Review of Educational Research, 86(1), 163-206. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654315582066

Gist, C. D. (2017). Culturally Responsive Pedagogy for Teachers of Color. New Educator, 13(3), 288–303. https://doi.org/10.1080/1547688X.2016.1196801

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, Vol. 32, No. 3. (Autumn, 1995), pp. 465-491.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2000). Culturally relevant pedagogy in African-centered schools: Possibilities for progressive educational reform. African-centered schooling in theory and practice, 187-198.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2014). Culturally relevant pedagogy 2.0: Aka the remix. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 74-84. doi:10.17763/haer.84.1.p2rj131485484751

Reports

Krasnoff B. (2016) Culturally Responsive Teaching

We’ll close this post with this quote from Gist (2017, p. 290)

In both Ladson-Billings’ (1995) and Gay’s (2010) theorizing of culturally responsive practices, common themes of high expectations, acknowledgement of student cultural capital, critical sociocultural/political consciousness, and passion and dedication are apparent. Unfortunately, terms such as culturally responsive pedagogy can become so commonplace that teacher educators lose sight of what teacher candidates need to know and be able to do when attempting to cultivate culturally responsive practices with their future students. Moreover, even if culturally responsive pedagogy is emphasized and addressed in a teacher candidate’s preparation experiences, it can be inappropriately applied in ways that differ sharply from the original intent of culturally responsive pedagogy theorists (Ladson-Billings, 2014).

Thank you to Joseph Chipps, Ed.D. for reviewing this post. You can reach us by tweeting @CIRCLEducators. Please let us know what you are reading and thinking as we take this journey.

Dr. Glazer speaks into a microphone at an assembly

Suggestions for Supporting Staff in a Distance Learning Environment

Guest Author, Learning, School Administrators, Teachers & Researchers

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).

TPACK: Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Framework

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

Cyberbullying

Digital Citizenship

FERPA for Educators

Screen Time

Social Media

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/

Five CIRCL Educators stand next to a Cyberlearning 2019 banner

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

AI 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 Hampton

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:

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

Dr. Noble on stage at the Cyberlearning 2020 meeting.

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.

Title slide reads Bridging Practice and Research: Connecting Teaching and the Learning Sciences with two profile pictures and a picture of a bridge

Strengthening Education Research: Connecting Teaching and the Learning Sciences

Learning, Teachers & Researchers, Webinar, Written by: Judi Fusco, Written by: Pati Ruiz

Take a look at the recorded session Digital Promise learning sciences researchers did for ICLS 2020.  At Digital Promise, learning sciences researchers investigate the why, what, and how of learning across ages, backgrounds, and contexts through four projects. We will provide examples of how our research includes a wide range of education stakeholders across K-12 and higher education and how this work gives rise to promising learning innovations, processes, and outcomes.

CIRCL Educators Judi Fusco & Pati Ruiz presented as part of the group, watch the whole session or go to 14 minutes in for our talk titled Bridging Practice and Research: Connecting Teaching and the Learning Sciences. https://youtube.com/watch?v=iTzIiN

Find our syllabus here.

Tweet @CIRCLEducators and let us know if you have questions or thoughts about this presentation.

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Teaching and Beliefs about Learning

Learning, School Administrators, Teachers & Researchers, Written by: Judi 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

Further reading:

Howard, B. C., McGee, S., Schwartz, N., & Purcell, S. (2000). The Experience of Constructivism: Transforming Teacher Epistemology. Journal of Research on Computing in Education, 32(4), 455-465. doi: 10.1080/08886504.2000.1078221

McConnel, T., Eberhardt, J., Parker, J., Stanaway, J., Lundeberg, M., & Koehler, M. (2008). The PBL project for teachers: Using problem-based learning to guide K-12 science teachers’ professional learning. MSTA Journal, 53, 16-21.

Mulford, W., Silins, H., & Leithwood, K. (2004). Problem-Based Learning: A Vehicle for Professional Development of School Leaders. Educational Leadership for Organisational Learning and Improved Student Outcomes, 25-34.

Zhang, M., Lundeberg, M., & Eberhardt, J. (2011). Strategic Facilitation of Problem-Based Discussion for Teacher Professional Development. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 20(3), 342-394. doi: 10.1080/10508406.2011.553258

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

Classroom Technology, Learning, School Administrators, Teachers & Researchers, Written by: Judi Fusco, Written by: Pati 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.

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CIRCL Educators at Cyberlearning 2019: Exploring Contradictions in Achieving Equitable Futures

Cyberlearning, Teachers & Researchers

Register for the webcast!

 
As CIRCL Educators we’re all excited to collaborate and think together (in the same physical space!) about how we can apply Cyberlearning research in K–16 learning environments. As we get ready to travel to Alexandria, Virginia we have reviewed the agenda, read the Community Report, and looked at Emerging Directions from the Workshop Leaders Summit and white papers from individual workshops. While we’re all focused on applying research to practice, we were all drawn to different things as we reviewed the program agenda and materials for the meeting. We each wrote a little bit about that here.

Pati

I’m looking forward to Angela Booker’s keynote: Ethical Power Relations as an Act of Design. Specifically, I’m interested in hearing her perspective on how we can use cyberlearning insights and tools to increase democratic practice and new media use among youth and families. I first became interested in Dr. Booker’s work when I read the book she co-edited with Indigo Esmonde titled Power and Privilege in the Learning Sciences: Critical and Sociocultural Theories of Learning. In the introduction to that book, the editors describe “power as ever-present in the learning contexts” and urge us to “grapple with the ways our work is situated and mobilized with regard to power.” The book identifies opportunities for scholars to be critical of their own work and encourages them to consider contradictions and tensions in the field. I’m excited to learn more about Dr. Booker’s work and the work of other Cyberlearning researchers at CL19!

Angie

CL 19 will be a different type of conference than I am used to attending. I have attended, presented at, and organized many K12 Learning and Teaching, and EdTech conferences. I recently attended my first research focused conference, SIGCSE 2019 in Minneapolis, and it was a whole new experience to me. I found the content-heavy research sessions exhilarating and exhausting at the same time.

At CL 19, I will be introducing myself with my new role and school. I recently made the transition from a K12 public school educator (first an Elementary ESL Teacher then to a K12 Technology Integrationist) to now a Program Manager at Tufts University for the Early Childhood Technology (ECT) Graduate Certificate program where I teach in early childhood classrooms and online for graduate students. I think my experiences in early childhood, K12, and higher education provide me with a perspective that is valuable to our conversations.

Sarah

I’m excited about the keynote by Mike Sharples because I have learned so much from the Innovating Pedagogy report series he established and from his book, Practical Pedagogy: 40 New Ways to Teach and Learn. In the book, I recognized some teaching strategies I already use but didn’t know the technical term for like Explore First, and I learned more about strategies I want to try like Spaced Learning and Learning through Argumentation. I expect his keynote topic, Theory-Informed Design of Cyberlearning at Scale, to be equally interesting.

Overall, I’m excited to learn more about what’s new in cyberlearning! The fact that our team has been able to meaningfully collaborate online is because of technologies like Zoom and Google Docs. That’s cyberlearning–using technology combined with how people learn to create rich learning experiences that otherwise wouldn’t be possible. I’ve seen cyberlearning work time and again in my classroom using PhET simulations, citizen science, expressive construction, and more. What else is out there that I don’t know about yet? What new tools and strategies will I learn that can benefit my students? There are sure to be exciting posts following our trip–stay tuned!

We’re all excited to meet people whose work we’ve followed for years and collaborate with cyberlearning researchers! Check out the program agenda and participate virtually by registering for the webcast  and using hashtag: #NSFCL19. As always, please share your thoughts with us on Twitter @CIRCLedu and use the hashtag: #NSFCL19