Tech Ed-dy

I have just finished reading a really fascinating article called How David Beats Goliath: When underdogs break the rules.  The main gist of the article is that throughout history underdogs have had unbelievable success when they decide to compete on their own terms rather than conventional terms.  In the David vs Goliath battle David

hastened and ran out from the lines toward the Philistine

rather than battling toe to toe with Goliath.  Of course, he also chose to fight with a sling and stones rather than swords.

The article then goes on to describe a breathtaking array of examples where the underdog won for two main reasons (the two parts of the insurgent’s creed): being willing to go against the conventions of society (do what is “socially horrifying) and being willing to work harder than anyone else (which takes courage).  In the end victory in these examples came down to effort.

Effort can trump ability – legs … can overpower arms – because relentless effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coordination.

Threaded throughout the article is a story about a middle school girls basketball team that enjoyed incredible success despite being inexperienced and not very skilled.  Their secret was the full court press.  In short they tried harder than the other team.  When there was a turnover they didn’t run back to their side of the court to defend, they tried to get the ball back.  They didn’t bother covering the person throwing the ball, instead they focused their energies on getting to the ball before the other players.  They played by their own rules and had incredible success as a result.  The article goes on to describe the career of a college coach called Rick Pitino who went on to use the full court press to win championships with teams that didn’t have many all star, potential NBA, style players on them.  It was obviously a very successful strategy, but it was never widely adopted because it took too much work.  Pitino described his workouts this way:

The players are moving almost ninety-eight percent of the practice.  We spend very little time talking.  When we make corrections they are seven second corrections, so our heart rate never rests.  We are always working.

The implications for how I run my classroom seem obvious.  It’s really such a simple observation that effort and motivation are the keystones of effective learning that I wonder why I don’t always see it?  I can get so caught up in either the content or the particular output that I want them to produce that I am not always asking myself what I am doing to keep them motivated.  Sometimes I am guilty of assuming that if I badger them enough they will somehow find it in themselves to be truly interested in what I want them to learn, when deep down I know that the only really useful thing I have to teach my students is a love of learning.

If we don’t treat motivation as intrinsic (or something that can be turned on and off as a result of badgering my a teacher), then we can start to explore the things that really motivate in a classroom.  I can come up with three:

1. Control.  As I understand it, if our students don’t feel in control of their learning their hypothalamus  has been triggered.  They are in some sort of fight or flight mode.  When this happens information gets backlogged in their “primitive brain” and never makes it to their cortex for processing.  So whatever I teach them will never stick.  Conversely if students feel that they are being listened to and have some control of the process then it stands to reason they will be willing to invest more in the process.
2. Choice.  This is linked to control as having choices helps students feel in control.  Cathy Nunley does a brilliant job with this in her Layered Curriculum Model.  I taught Science with this model for a few year and was amazed at how motivated my students were, I couldn’t stop them working!
3. Value.  In order for effort to be valued there needs to be a reward linked to the effort.  Of course we have grades, but often grades are a mystery and if the direct path from effort to reward is not obvious then how can I expect grades to motivate?  Using rubrics and being clear about grading schemes can obviously help here, but even then grades have very little intrinsic value.  They are all about getting something;  for example, if you get good grades you can go to university.  Portfolios and exhibitions are a lot more work than just giving grades but it seems to me that the social aspect of the feedback received in these situations carries a lot more value than grades.

Finally, I wonder how all this will play out as more and more courses go online?  In my experience online courses are wonderful for students who are already motivated and willing to put in the effort.  But if I don’t physically have the student in my classroom, what can I do to motivate them to buy into the “full court press”?

Photo by Sebastia Giralt on Flickr

I have been struggling all week to figure out how to frame an answer to this question that doesn’t get bogged down in fancy words and jargon.  I am feeling the need for some clarity regarding the skills that I need to make sure I am teaching my students, the classroom structures and processes that are best for teaching these skills and finally, the best approach for changing my classroom practice in a productive way so that I am really teaching 21st Century Skills (in other words, what are the best first steps?).

It all started with a great post on 21st Century Pedagogy written by Andrew Churches.  In the post he has a great Cmap (one of my favourite mind mapping tools) diagram illustrating the key features of 21st Century Pedagogy.  They are,

?    building technological, information and media fluencies [Ian Jukes]
?    Developing thinking skills
?    making use of project based learning
?    using problem solving as a teaching tool
?    using 21st C assessments with timely, appropriate and detailed feedback and reflection
?    It is collaborative in nature and uses enabling and empowering technologies
?    It fosters Contextual learning bridging the disciplines and curriculum areas

This is a great list and I agree with all the features, the problem is that there are too many.  In my busy day to day classroom teacher life I don’t have the energy or brainpower to figure out how to incorporate all of these features into my curriculum.  However, it seems to me that I actually only need to focus on project based learning and the rest logically fit into their appropriate place.

For the last 4 years I have been lucky enough to teach the IB Middle Years Program Technology Curriculum.  This is a curriculum that is very well suited to project based learning and has really opened my eyes to the power of this approach.  As a busy classroom teacher I believe that if I make it my focus to use project based and inquiry based learning effectively in my classroom then I will also be building technological, information and media fluencies, developing thinking skills, using problem solving as a teaching tool and fostering contextural learning (after all a project by it’s very nature is based on real challenges that cross curricular boundaries).  It is also collaborative in nature.

This still raises the question what good project based learning looks like.  I’m no expert but the elements that have to be there for me include:

• Using the Design Cycle explicitly.  In my classroom this means that we take the time to break down what it means to really INVESTIGATE – PLAN – CREATE – EVALUATE an end product.  We take the time to break down each of these steps into concrete actions and we agree on assessment criteria for each step before we begin (ok, if I’m being honest this doesn’t always happen, but I’m trying).  I like what Andrew Churches says about assessment:

Students should be involved in all aspects of the assessment process. Students who are involved in setting and developing assessment criteria, marking and moderation will have a clearer understanding of: what they are meant to do; how they are meant to do it; why it is significant; why it is important.

• During the INVESTIGATION stage I take the time to teach my students the skills they will need to be successul in their project.  Often this includes exposing them to knowledge, facts and information – the traditional classroom stuff.  This gives them the base they need to jump off into higher order thinking activities.  This is also where I often end up incorporating lessons on building technological, information and media fluencies.
• During the PLANNING and CREATION stages I have found a critical element of success to be the creation of Checkpoints and Milestones that groups can use to measure their ongoing progress.  I am always so busy that this is a real challenge for me, but when I do manage to structure ongoing feedback during a project the end product is always vastly superior.  Again from Andrew Churches:

Linked to assessment  is the importance of timely, appropriate, detailed and specific feedback. Feedback as a learning tool, is second only to the teaching of thinking skills [Michael Pohl].

In the funny way that these things happen I was just sent this edutopia link today about a school in Pennsylvania that is using project based learning as a vehicle for teaching 21st century skills.  They include the following excellent suggestions:

• Connect to Standards – don’t be distracted by the flash of the technology
• Plan, Plan, Plan – projects are complex, so a carefully planned framework is essential
• Expand Your Audience – using web 2.0 tools to expand the reach of students is motivating and gives projects context
• Walk a Mile in Their Sneakers – try the technoloigy yourself first.  It often takes longer than you think.
• Keep it simple (this is my biggest challenge)
• Be on the lookout -stay connected to a community of professionals.

A fairly comprehensive list of project based learning resources can also be found here.  So what have I missed?  Are there any skills or knowledge that can not be taught using a problem based learning model?  Are there any other key elements of project based learning that are essential to it’s success?

Cindy Martin got me thinking with her recent blog post Reflections on Instructional Methods

My research groups do not need to work on a project.  They need to work on the skills needed to do a research project.  I do not need to feel pressured into producing some elaborate end result with them, we need to work on the process in a manner that allows them to own their own learning and for me to own my teaching

I feel like I have been going down this same road for a while but have not quite managed to put all of the pieces together.  Some of the reason for this is probably my long standing preference for teaching ‘on the fly’ as opposed to planning ahead of time, but I also think they are tricky pieces to fit together.  So, I thought that in this post I would just list the pieces and see if I can get them to fit at a later date.

Piece #1: Personal Learning Networks

This is the piece that I have only just started to become aware of.  In the Digiteen project Vicki Davis had her students use an igoogle page to aggregate feeds from different sites and in their reflections it was evident that this had really helped them.  The Common Craft inspired video below also presents a really powerful argument for including networked learning skills in the process skills we are teaching our students.

Piece #2: The MYP Design Cycle.

My school is an accredited IB Middle Years Program school and as the Technology Teacher it has been my job to teach students about the design cycle.  I have found this cycle to be an invaluable tool for helping my students deal with the different challenges inherent in doing projects.  Kim Cofino does a great job describing how this cycle can be used in her post entitled Creating Independent Learners: The MYP Technology Design Cycle.

Piece #3: The Teacher

Chris Betcher’s blog post called Is Teaching a Dirt Word? has gotten me thinking about the role of the teacher in a process centered classroom.  I think that in order for me to be really effective in a classroom that is becoming more and more student centred and process oriented I am going to have to become more clear in my own mind about what I am teaching (it’s certainly not content).

Those are the pieces so far.  Now all I have to do is complete the puzzle.