Here are I am trying to be technologically hip by thinking of something insightful and interesting to share with an unknown audience on a fairly regular (maybe not so regular; it’s been a while) basis, and I keep reading that blogging is dead. Okay, “dead” might be a little strong, but it’s certainly not hip or cutting-edge anymore. The latest nail in the coffin came from The Economist. The magazine noted that blogging has gone corporate. Every company has at least one, and they use their blogs as another way to reach and influence customers. I’m not blazing trails; I’m just one of the pack.
The early blog adopters have moved on to twittering and other emerging means of communicating. A similar migration is happening with Facebook. Once mom and dad join, the kids flee (my son recently unfriended me). Who can blame them (I’m not really in the 17-year old peer group)? As Walmart, Proctor & Gamble, and other staid corporate entities develop their Facebook presences, I may follow. The problem is, wherever the trailblazers go, mom and dad and the corporations will follow. You can’t really escape for long.
So what happens when new becomes old, when cutting edge turns into mundane, when the digital natives leave and the immigrants (like me) move in? Will enough people with sufficient energy stay in the neighborhoods to keep them vibrant? Which neighborhoods will survive and which will whither? It’s going to be very interesting to watch what happens. The speed with which new services arise, grow (or not), and disappear reminds me of biology experiments with fruit flies. Their lifespan is so short, the passing of generations so quick, that you can see the effects of evolution unfold in real time. Keep your eye on the web, but don’t blink. You might miss the life and death of a transformative service.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
I love standards. I hate standards.
I guess it’s clear from the title of this blog that I have a love/hate relationship with the standards movement. Breaking down curricular content areas into grade level objectives -- in 3rd grade students in Texas are expected, among 40+ other math standards, to “use fraction names and symbols to describe fractional parts of whole objects or sets of objects” -- have done much for clarifying expectations for what students should know when. Enforcing these standards on a state, or even national, level insures that all students should be receiving a rigorous education. Classrooms, schools, states, and the nation can test students on their mastery of these objectives to identify where the instructional system is faltering. Curriculum developers and publishers can create instructional materials to support the expectations. When the system works, it should be beautiful.
Unfortunately, the reality rarely matches the plan. In fact, in some ways, the standards movement may have been more harmful than helpful. Part of the difficulty rests with the lack of a common national standard. It’s expensive to maintain a different set of standards for each state, along with different high quality assessments matched to those standards. Local control (and local standards) is not a bad idea, so long as the funding is available at each local level for successful implementation and support. It’s not particularly efficient for each state or district to develop standards, the particular assessment items to evaluate the acquisition of those standards, and the training and curriculum materials to support the implementation of those objectives. Funding shortages lead to short cuts and misalignments between what we say we expect and what we actually test.
But there’s another important problem with the current standards movement; it has led to the atomization of content and instruction. The list of grade level standards has become just that, a list to be checked off lesson-by-lesson. Instructional lessons carry a list of the individual standards they address. Check, check, check. Next lesson. The coherence that connects and makes sense of the path through the standards gets sacrificed in the urgent need to cover each individual objective. The learning expectation above about fractions cannot be taught successfully in isolation. Students need a coherent understanding of fractions and of number that unites the individual ideas, concepts, and skills described in the standards. Jumping from number lines for whole numbers to pizzas for fractions to place value grids for decimals may meet individual math objectives, but it can leave students feeling that each number form is a different number system. We’re just setting them up for later confusion. Standards are great but not at the expense of the path connecting them.
Good news. NCTM has recognized that 40 to 60 individual, equally-valued math objectives per grade level is a recipe for speed teaching. Each standard on the list gets 5-minutes. Better pay attention. The organization’s Curriculum Focal Points document attempts to identify the core standards upon which others are built. The Report of the National Math Panel reiterated the need to focus on the critical ideas and to build coherent curricula. Last year’s National Research Council report on science education moved in a similar direction. Hopefully, we can sustain the momentum, but there’s plenty of work to do to reconcile my rocky relationships with standards.
Unfortunately, the reality rarely matches the plan. In fact, in some ways, the standards movement may have been more harmful than helpful. Part of the difficulty rests with the lack of a common national standard. It’s expensive to maintain a different set of standards for each state, along with different high quality assessments matched to those standards. Local control (and local standards) is not a bad idea, so long as the funding is available at each local level for successful implementation and support. It’s not particularly efficient for each state or district to develop standards, the particular assessment items to evaluate the acquisition of those standards, and the training and curriculum materials to support the implementation of those objectives. Funding shortages lead to short cuts and misalignments between what we say we expect and what we actually test.
But there’s another important problem with the current standards movement; it has led to the atomization of content and instruction. The list of grade level standards has become just that, a list to be checked off lesson-by-lesson. Instructional lessons carry a list of the individual standards they address. Check, check, check. Next lesson. The coherence that connects and makes sense of the path through the standards gets sacrificed in the urgent need to cover each individual objective. The learning expectation above about fractions cannot be taught successfully in isolation. Students need a coherent understanding of fractions and of number that unites the individual ideas, concepts, and skills described in the standards. Jumping from number lines for whole numbers to pizzas for fractions to place value grids for decimals may meet individual math objectives, but it can leave students feeling that each number form is a different number system. We’re just setting them up for later confusion. Standards are great but not at the expense of the path connecting them.
Good news. NCTM has recognized that 40 to 60 individual, equally-valued math objectives per grade level is a recipe for speed teaching. Each standard on the list gets 5-minutes. Better pay attention. The organization’s Curriculum Focal Points document attempts to identify the core standards upon which others are built. The Report of the National Math Panel reiterated the need to focus on the critical ideas and to build coherent curricula. Last year’s National Research Council report on science education moved in a similar direction. Hopefully, we can sustain the momentum, but there’s plenty of work to do to reconcile my rocky relationships with standards.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
What Before How
I’m spending a lot of time these days thinking about multiplication. Keith Devlin, a Stanford mathematician, author, and NPR Math Guy, has created a swirling controversy through his Devlin’s Angle column on the Mathematical Association of America website (http://www.maa.org/devlin/devangle.html). Last summer Devlin sparked a debate by exhorting teachers to stop defining multiplication as repeated addition. His follow-up articles this summer fanned the flames and ignited a raging firestorm in the blogosphere. 4x3 can readily be rewritten by the repeated addition of 4+4+4. But what does repeated addition look like for, say, 3/4 * 5/8? It’s a challenge to articulate a definition that is both accessible to kids in elementary school and still true as the numbers become more complex.
I’ve enjoyed reading the unfolding arguments. It’s a healthy and important discussion, because determining what we should teach is essential before we decide how to teach it. Designing technology to more effectively instruct and engage students in a misconception or limited explanation shouldn’t be the plan. I fear that too much of the “innovation” and promise of technology doesn’t go deep enough into the roots of why our kids aren’t succeeding. It’s far too easy to take the existing curricular canon and put it into a glossy technological wrapper and be satisfied that kids “like” using it. We need to push ourselves further.
So, the search for a new way to define multiplication continues. When we have it, we can devise ways for technology to help visualize it, explore it, practice it at appropriate levels, and connect it to the content that came before and follows. It’s rigorous work, but if we get it right we can truly make a lasting and meaningful difference with kids’ understanding. It’s worth the extra effort.
I’ve enjoyed reading the unfolding arguments. It’s a healthy and important discussion, because determining what we should teach is essential before we decide how to teach it. Designing technology to more effectively instruct and engage students in a misconception or limited explanation shouldn’t be the plan. I fear that too much of the “innovation” and promise of technology doesn’t go deep enough into the roots of why our kids aren’t succeeding. It’s far too easy to take the existing curricular canon and put it into a glossy technological wrapper and be satisfied that kids “like” using it. We need to push ourselves further.
So, the search for a new way to define multiplication continues. When we have it, we can devise ways for technology to help visualize it, explore it, practice it at appropriate levels, and connect it to the content that came before and follows. It’s rigorous work, but if we get it right we can truly make a lasting and meaningful difference with kids’ understanding. It’s worth the extra effort.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
First Pitch
Yes, I’m throwing out the first pitch at tonight’s Red Sox game against the Angels. My wife won the prize at a charity auction and gave it to me for my 50th birthday. It’s an incredible gift, and one that allows me to reflect directly on some of the research I’ve been reading and writing about -- particularly the research on anxiety and performance.
Ever since my wife presented me with the gift last fall, friends, family, and strangers have inquired about my fitness and ability. “You know, it’s pretty far from pitcher’s mound to home plate. Can he throw it that far?” “Has he been practicing?” My cousin sent me a link to a YouTube video of a mayor throwing the first pitch into the dugout. “You don’t want to be like THAT guy.” Thanks everyone for the pressure.
I’m no athlete, so I’ve been playing a little catch. Sixty feet, six inches. When I’m just throwing the ball with my wife or son, it doesn’t seem like a problem. But practice is different from high stakes performance. Throwing in an empty field is different from throwing under the gaze of 35,000 fans. Okay, so none of those fans finding their seats and buying their hot dogs will actually be watching me; they’ll still be there. Will anxiety about not screwing up dominate my thinking and make me forget how to throw? Is this how some kids feel when they’re getting ready for high stakes testing?
I’ve got it easy. Whether I bounce the ball into home plate or throw a looping strike, I’ll give a satisfied smile and a fist pump. They only take pictures of me, not where the ball goes. Wish me luck.
Ever since my wife presented me with the gift last fall, friends, family, and strangers have inquired about my fitness and ability. “You know, it’s pretty far from pitcher’s mound to home plate. Can he throw it that far?” “Has he been practicing?” My cousin sent me a link to a YouTube video of a mayor throwing the first pitch into the dugout. “You don’t want to be like THAT guy.” Thanks everyone for the pressure.
I’m no athlete, so I’ve been playing a little catch. Sixty feet, six inches. When I’m just throwing the ball with my wife or son, it doesn’t seem like a problem. But practice is different from high stakes performance. Throwing in an empty field is different from throwing under the gaze of 35,000 fans. Okay, so none of those fans finding their seats and buying their hot dogs will actually be watching me; they’ll still be there. Will anxiety about not screwing up dominate my thinking and make me forget how to throw? Is this how some kids feel when they’re getting ready for high stakes testing?
I’ve got it easy. Whether I bounce the ball into home plate or throw a looping strike, I’ll give a satisfied smile and a fist pump. They only take pictures of me, not where the ball goes. Wish me luck.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Digital nomads with their heads (and data) in the cloud
My son Jake, a rising high school senior, doesn’t have his “own” computer. Instead, he seems to have everyone’s. At school he moves from the computers in the computer lab to those in the student center to those in the film studio. He emails documents to himself or carries work on a flash drive. At home, well, at home no computer is safe. I’ll open my work laptop and find FirstClass open, my son’s Facebook page on the browser, and a couple of homework documents on the desktop. “Do you need any of this stuff?” I ask. “No, I got it.” My computer was handiest; he used it and pushed his work into the Internet cloud to be retrieved at the next available machine. When we travel Jake always manages to find someone or someplace with a computer, iPhone, or some other cloud-friendly device. He connects with friends, moves pictures to Facebook, and checks tennis scores. Welcome to the world of the digital nomad.
Don’t get me wrong, Jake wants his own laptop. He needs a base (we have an aging iMac at home that is “his” in general), but his ability to exist in the cloud frees him from that base (making anything “his” at any moment). And the shrinking size of computers and growing power of cell phones offer the promise that maybe the base can move with him as well. Or at least be available wherever he goes. For him, with the exception of a few specialized applications, school work has no boundaries. Any computer in our house, at school, at a public internet station, or anywhere will do.
As more and more work, student and teacher, exists in the cloud, the opportunity to do something really interesting with it grows because we can all access the cloud and what it contains. Despite my own experiences, direct and vicarious, with mash-ups and remixes, I’ve been slow to see the potential of the collaborative Web 2.0 promise. I’m finally beginning to see the light, but it’s fraught with questions and issues we still need to figure out.
Let me give a specific example: We are about to launch a new program, Timeliner XE. The original TimeLiner 1.0 in 1986 turned Apple IIs and early PC’s connected to dot matrix printers into simple systems for generating banner time lines with ease. Type in events in any order, and the software created a proportionally-spaced chronology that could be printed out sideways on the scrolled paper of those early printers. Simple and sweet. Over the years and releases, the program added the ability to print posters, save as html, create slide shows, and add graphics, links, and other media. This new version takes a huge leap forward. Timeliner XE, built with Adobe Flex and Air, contains a built in browser that enables users to gather, organize, and present information within the same application. In addition to time-related events, any sequential information -- like the life cycle, the steps in a research project, or the plot of a book -- can be managed in the program. It’s very cool.
So what happens to the time lines and sequences that students and teachers create? While having thousands of students create their family histories or story arcs for Tuck Everlasting each year is nice, can’t we take their efforts further by putting the work into the cloud? Imagine a Day-in-the-Life time line that students from around the world contribute to. Each contribution gets its own category and color code so that they can be distinguished and turned on and off. How about collaborative time lines highlighting the flow of information and technology around the world as it happens? What might it look like for users to stand on the shoulders of previous work rather than simply repeating what others have already done? We’re having fun imagining the possibilities.
We’re also straining to understand the implications. What student information is private? Is it okay to share a student’s day in the life in the cloud? Can other users change someone’s time line? What about ownership and attribution? How do we make sure that copyright is respected in what gets posted? It is exciting, but it’s also complicated.
Many of our students are already living in the cloud. It’s happening even as the rules are being created and understood. We’re working on it. I hope you’ll be part of the unfolding story.
Don’t get me wrong, Jake wants his own laptop. He needs a base (we have an aging iMac at home that is “his” in general), but his ability to exist in the cloud frees him from that base (making anything “his” at any moment). And the shrinking size of computers and growing power of cell phones offer the promise that maybe the base can move with him as well. Or at least be available wherever he goes. For him, with the exception of a few specialized applications, school work has no boundaries. Any computer in our house, at school, at a public internet station, or anywhere will do.
As more and more work, student and teacher, exists in the cloud, the opportunity to do something really interesting with it grows because we can all access the cloud and what it contains. Despite my own experiences, direct and vicarious, with mash-ups and remixes, I’ve been slow to see the potential of the collaborative Web 2.0 promise. I’m finally beginning to see the light, but it’s fraught with questions and issues we still need to figure out.
Let me give a specific example: We are about to launch a new program, Timeliner XE. The original TimeLiner 1.0 in 1986 turned Apple IIs and early PC’s connected to dot matrix printers into simple systems for generating banner time lines with ease. Type in events in any order, and the software created a proportionally-spaced chronology that could be printed out sideways on the scrolled paper of those early printers. Simple and sweet. Over the years and releases, the program added the ability to print posters, save as html, create slide shows, and add graphics, links, and other media. This new version takes a huge leap forward. Timeliner XE, built with Adobe Flex and Air, contains a built in browser that enables users to gather, organize, and present information within the same application. In addition to time-related events, any sequential information -- like the life cycle, the steps in a research project, or the plot of a book -- can be managed in the program. It’s very cool.
So what happens to the time lines and sequences that students and teachers create? While having thousands of students create their family histories or story arcs for Tuck Everlasting each year is nice, can’t we take their efforts further by putting the work into the cloud? Imagine a Day-in-the-Life time line that students from around the world contribute to. Each contribution gets its own category and color code so that they can be distinguished and turned on and off. How about collaborative time lines highlighting the flow of information and technology around the world as it happens? What might it look like for users to stand on the shoulders of previous work rather than simply repeating what others have already done? We’re having fun imagining the possibilities.
We’re also straining to understand the implications. What student information is private? Is it okay to share a student’s day in the life in the cloud? Can other users change someone’s time line? What about ownership and attribution? How do we make sure that copyright is respected in what gets posted? It is exciting, but it’s also complicated.
Many of our students are already living in the cloud. It’s happening even as the rules are being created and understood. We’re working on it. I hope you’ll be part of the unfolding story.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Brain Doping
A recent edition of Economist magazine had a very interesting editorial and article about the coming wave of cognitive enhancement drugs that augur the possibility of some tough ethical dilemmas ahead. As research uncovers chemical paths to improving memory and mental processing power for those afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease and other cognitive disabilities, what happens to those who seek to use those chemicals for a brain boost rather than just a neurological repair? Many of us already use over-the-counter drugs, like caffeine, to enhance general alertness or to help study for a test. Where do we draw the line?
Already, it seems, a surprising number of intelligent folks are stepping well over the caffeine line. The scientific journal Nature surveyed its readers, a pretty knowledgeable crowd, about their use of cognitive enhancers (Nature 452, 674-675 (2008)). Of the 1,400 respondents to the poll, one in five “said they had used drugs for non-medical reasons to stimulate their focus, concentration or memory.” Does that mean that 20% of Nature readers are cognitive cheaters?
Maybe I’m overreacting, but if we found that 20% of Sports Illustrated readers used prescription drugs, like steroids, for non-medical reasons to enhance athletic performance, I wager many of us would feel that those folks were doing something unfair. How should we think about “natural” intellectual ability versus one that is artificially enhanced? Is it cheating to use drugs to help you study longer or more readily recall what you’ve learned? What about the student who uses a beta-blocker to reduce the effects of anxiety before a test? Are non-prescription boosters okay but not ones that require a doctor’s permission?
I’m not sure I know how to answer these questions yet. If only the well-informed and well-to-do have access to these brain boosters, then I do think there’s a problem. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. On the other hand, improved intellectual ability seems like a good thing in general. Shouldn’t we encourage it whenever we can? Except when it’s unfair or unhealthy. But who decides that? It seems like a good debate is brewing. I look forward to participating in it. I may need a cup of coffee to keep me awake to read all the relevant research and opinions.
Already, it seems, a surprising number of intelligent folks are stepping well over the caffeine line. The scientific journal Nature surveyed its readers, a pretty knowledgeable crowd, about their use of cognitive enhancers (Nature 452, 674-675 (2008)). Of the 1,400 respondents to the poll, one in five “said they had used drugs for non-medical reasons to stimulate their focus, concentration or memory.” Does that mean that 20% of Nature readers are cognitive cheaters?
Maybe I’m overreacting, but if we found that 20% of Sports Illustrated readers used prescription drugs, like steroids, for non-medical reasons to enhance athletic performance, I wager many of us would feel that those folks were doing something unfair. How should we think about “natural” intellectual ability versus one that is artificially enhanced? Is it cheating to use drugs to help you study longer or more readily recall what you’ve learned? What about the student who uses a beta-blocker to reduce the effects of anxiety before a test? Are non-prescription boosters okay but not ones that require a doctor’s permission?
I’m not sure I know how to answer these questions yet. If only the well-informed and well-to-do have access to these brain boosters, then I do think there’s a problem. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. On the other hand, improved intellectual ability seems like a good thing in general. Shouldn’t we encourage it whenever we can? Except when it’s unfair or unhealthy. But who decides that? It seems like a good debate is brewing. I look forward to participating in it. I may need a cup of coffee to keep me awake to read all the relevant research and opinions.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Fewer is More, too
My son, Jake Dockterman (he likes it when I use his name; it raises his Google hit count), is a bit of a stickler when it comes to the use of the words “fewer” and “less”. He’s not alone, as a web search of “fewer vs less” will reveal. You see “fewer” refers to how many, and “less” refers to how much. If you can count it -- marbles, tortilla chips, brothers and sisters, or Manny Ramirez home runs -- you use the word fewer. If you can’t count it -- applesauce, happiness, sand, and milk -- you use the word less. You don’t say “I’m fewer happy” when something upsets your birthday. And you don’t say “I have less siblings than my friend.” At least, you shouldn’t say you have less siblings. One last note: the signs above the express line at the grocery store should read “10 items or fewer.”
I’m a big believer in the less is more philosophy, and I enthusiastically embrace the sentiments of the NCTM Curriculum Focal Points and the final report of the National Math Panel. Both documents advocate focusing instruction on the essential content, the core ideas that students need for success in math, Algebra in particular. A report from the National Research Council last year recommended a similar emphasis on big ideas in science. Taking Science to School offers a very accessible review of the research on science teaching and learning and recommends: “The next generation of standards and curricula at both the national and state levels should be structured to identify a few core ideas in a discipline and elaborate how those ideas can be cumulatively developed over grades K-8.” The trend (hopefully) in both math and science is a welcome targeting of the curriculum on what really matters.
So, are these reports calling for less or for fewer? The distinction is important. Fewer topics means dropping some of the content that’s crowding the curriculum. Maybe we don’t need to cover probability or tessellation or the orbits of the planets. Covering the lengthy lists of state content standards provides little time for depth of learning. Cutting the list in half doubles instructional time for each learning objective. Fewer instructional goals could mean more time for truly learning those that remain.
On the other hand, devoting less time to some of the items found in state curriculum guides could also lead to more time for other, more critical, items. The big ideas certainly merit more focus than the supporting skills or concepts. Maybe the issue is one of emphasis. Not all content objectives are equal. The NCTM Curriculum Focal Points document makes this case very clearly. NCTM recommends “areas to emphasize” rather than to slash. Focus on the core ideas and use the other objectives to support those crucial concepts.
From my perspective, I think we need both less and fewer. The list of learning objectives in some states has simply become too long and too atomized. The pressure to cover each standard has turned them into a checklist of disconnected items. It’s time for some judicious winnowing of the curriculum. We need fewer standards to give teachers tangible evidence that they have the freedom (maybe mandate is a better word) to focus on what matters. Even so, we still need a re-emphasis in the curriculum. We must identify the core ideas that merit more time and show how the remaining objectives can support them. Less time on some content can lead to more understanding overall. And fewer topics in the list can help make that re-emphasis possible. Less is more, and fewer is more too.
I’m a big believer in the less is more philosophy, and I enthusiastically embrace the sentiments of the NCTM Curriculum Focal Points and the final report of the National Math Panel. Both documents advocate focusing instruction on the essential content, the core ideas that students need for success in math, Algebra in particular. A report from the National Research Council last year recommended a similar emphasis on big ideas in science. Taking Science to School offers a very accessible review of the research on science teaching and learning and recommends: “The next generation of standards and curricula at both the national and state levels should be structured to identify a few core ideas in a discipline and elaborate how those ideas can be cumulatively developed over grades K-8.” The trend (hopefully) in both math and science is a welcome targeting of the curriculum on what really matters.
So, are these reports calling for less or for fewer? The distinction is important. Fewer topics means dropping some of the content that’s crowding the curriculum. Maybe we don’t need to cover probability or tessellation or the orbits of the planets. Covering the lengthy lists of state content standards provides little time for depth of learning. Cutting the list in half doubles instructional time for each learning objective. Fewer instructional goals could mean more time for truly learning those that remain.
On the other hand, devoting less time to some of the items found in state curriculum guides could also lead to more time for other, more critical, items. The big ideas certainly merit more focus than the supporting skills or concepts. Maybe the issue is one of emphasis. Not all content objectives are equal. The NCTM Curriculum Focal Points document makes this case very clearly. NCTM recommends “areas to emphasize” rather than to slash. Focus on the core ideas and use the other objectives to support those crucial concepts.
From my perspective, I think we need both less and fewer. The list of learning objectives in some states has simply become too long and too atomized. The pressure to cover each standard has turned them into a checklist of disconnected items. It’s time for some judicious winnowing of the curriculum. We need fewer standards to give teachers tangible evidence that they have the freedom (maybe mandate is a better word) to focus on what matters. Even so, we still need a re-emphasis in the curriculum. We must identify the core ideas that merit more time and show how the remaining objectives can support them. Less time on some content can lead to more understanding overall. And fewer topics in the list can help make that re-emphasis possible. Less is more, and fewer is more too.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Arts and Smarts
In March The Dana Consortium released a compilation of research dealing with the arts and cognition. How does studying music or dance or the visual arts affect brain development and learning? I’ve been fascinated with this topic ever since the governor of Georgia, Zell Miller at the time, proposed providing the parents of every newborn in the state with a CD of classical music to play for their infants. The Mozart effect promised to boost performance, particularly in math, simply by listening to classical music. Music could make you smarter.
Well, maybe not. A small study that showed improved performance on a paper folding task after some of the subjects had listened to Mozart became headline news in a media hungry for big stories. Other studies that showed temporary, but not lasting, boosts to IQ (which itself raises interesting questions about what IQ really measures) fueled the media flames. The fact that subsequent studies showed that similar increases in performance could be sparked by other relaxation techniques did little to dampen the media-whipped excitement around the Mozart effect. Naturally, those follow-up studies received fair exposure in academic journals, but the popular media had little interest. Bold stories sell papers (or clicks on the Internet). Nuance is too complicated.
But nuance is often the true story behind the research that makes headlines in the popular press (as opposed to the academic journals). Whenever I see a story, even in Education Week, about a dramatic research finding, I track down the source article in the academic journals. How was the research conducted? What do the results really tell us?
The Dana Consortium report does a wonderful job of describing the bits we know and the many questions we still need to answer about the arts and cognition. Learning music intensely, for instance, does seem to make a difference in academic performance. Just listening to music or the occasional weekend music lesson doesn’t reveal any meaningful differences. But serious music study does appear to have a positive spillover effect on academic tasks.
However, the report cautions that it isn’t clear that music is what makes the difference or just the intense study of a subject. Learning music teaches students how to focus their attention, and that habit may be the key underlying skill for success in other areas. Or maybe there is something about music in particular. Of all the activities studied by brain imaging techniques, performing music lights up the most parts of the brain. While the question lingers, there’s certainly no harm in encouraging music study among our children. It does seem to make a positive difference for whatever reason. I see it in my teenage son, who is a serious music student and a successful school student. Like chicken soup, it couldn’t hurt.
Well, maybe not. A small study that showed improved performance on a paper folding task after some of the subjects had listened to Mozart became headline news in a media hungry for big stories. Other studies that showed temporary, but not lasting, boosts to IQ (which itself raises interesting questions about what IQ really measures) fueled the media flames. The fact that subsequent studies showed that similar increases in performance could be sparked by other relaxation techniques did little to dampen the media-whipped excitement around the Mozart effect. Naturally, those follow-up studies received fair exposure in academic journals, but the popular media had little interest. Bold stories sell papers (or clicks on the Internet). Nuance is too complicated.
But nuance is often the true story behind the research that makes headlines in the popular press (as opposed to the academic journals). Whenever I see a story, even in Education Week, about a dramatic research finding, I track down the source article in the academic journals. How was the research conducted? What do the results really tell us?
The Dana Consortium report does a wonderful job of describing the bits we know and the many questions we still need to answer about the arts and cognition. Learning music intensely, for instance, does seem to make a difference in academic performance. Just listening to music or the occasional weekend music lesson doesn’t reveal any meaningful differences. But serious music study does appear to have a positive spillover effect on academic tasks.
However, the report cautions that it isn’t clear that music is what makes the difference or just the intense study of a subject. Learning music teaches students how to focus their attention, and that habit may be the key underlying skill for success in other areas. Or maybe there is something about music in particular. Of all the activities studied by brain imaging techniques, performing music lights up the most parts of the brain. While the question lingers, there’s certainly no harm in encouraging music study among our children. It does seem to make a positive difference for whatever reason. I see it in my teenage son, who is a serious music student and a successful school student. Like chicken soup, it couldn’t hurt.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Science Dinner
Boston hosted the NSTA (National Science Teachers Association) annual conference at the end of March, and Tom Snyder Productions hosted 50+ science educators from the conference for an open house at our office. A mix of science teachers, district-level science coordinators, state consultants, and other science education specialists from across the country joined us for an evening of demos and dinner. It was great fun and a wonderful opportunity to connect with the people doing the hard work at the front lines.
I was particularly impressed with the number of TSP folks who surrendered a Friday night to hang out with a bunch of science educators. Engineers, quality assurance specialists, producers, IT personnel, customer service reps, and others mingled and chatted with our guests. Most of these TSP employees don’t get a chance to meet the people who actually use the products they create. There were fabulous conversations going both directions. I look forward to the next time a relevant conference is in town.
I was invited to say a few words at dinner. The last thing I wanted to do was interrupt the flow of the evening (and the meal) with a boring speech. So I kept it short. I offered three bits of research-based advice for how to behave at dinner.
1) Talk to your neighbors. Research is very strong about the value of sharing what you’re learning to build your own understanding. In fact, recently published research on problem-solving transfer among young children concluded, “The general lesson might be that if you are having difficulty in understanding something, you should try explaining it to your mom.” (Rittle-Johnson, et.al., 2007). I like that.
2) Be careful what you say. Last year’s report from the National Research Council called "Taking Science to School" offers a very nice summary of the available research on science learning and instruction. The report notes that past science instruction paid little attention to the informal background knowledge that children brought with them to school. Kids’ have some well-entrenched notions about the workings of the natural world, notions that can help or hinder the acquisition of accurate scientific concepts. If we don’t take students’ existing understandings into account, then what we tell or teach them may well reinforce a fundamental misconception.
3) Have fun. Affect, the way we generally feel, has an impact on how well we learn. Engagement and happiness tend to reinforce retention. We remember what we enjoy. So have a good time. Learning is fun.
I was particularly impressed with the number of TSP folks who surrendered a Friday night to hang out with a bunch of science educators. Engineers, quality assurance specialists, producers, IT personnel, customer service reps, and others mingled and chatted with our guests. Most of these TSP employees don’t get a chance to meet the people who actually use the products they create. There were fabulous conversations going both directions. I look forward to the next time a relevant conference is in town.
I was invited to say a few words at dinner. The last thing I wanted to do was interrupt the flow of the evening (and the meal) with a boring speech. So I kept it short. I offered three bits of research-based advice for how to behave at dinner.
1) Talk to your neighbors. Research is very strong about the value of sharing what you’re learning to build your own understanding. In fact, recently published research on problem-solving transfer among young children concluded, “The general lesson might be that if you are having difficulty in understanding something, you should try explaining it to your mom.” (Rittle-Johnson, et.al., 2007). I like that.
2) Be careful what you say. Last year’s report from the National Research Council called "Taking Science to School" offers a very nice summary of the available research on science learning and instruction. The report notes that past science instruction paid little attention to the informal background knowledge that children brought with them to school. Kids’ have some well-entrenched notions about the workings of the natural world, notions that can help or hinder the acquisition of accurate scientific concepts. If we don’t take students’ existing understandings into account, then what we tell or teach them may well reinforce a fundamental misconception.
3) Have fun. Affect, the way we generally feel, has an impact on how well we learn. Engagement and happiness tend to reinforce retention. We remember what we enjoy. So have a good time. Learning is fun.
Friday, March 7, 2008
National Math Panel
The final report of the National Math Panel is finally out, and I have to admit that, overall, I really like it. I completely agree with their conclusion that the tension between conceptual understanding and procedural fluency is a false battle. It isn't the standard algorithm OR flexibility in solving problems. Conceptual understanding, fluency, and problem-solving all work together. Quick recall of basic math facts is very important, but it isn't everything. The opposing sides in the Reading Wars eventually accepted a truce; kids need to know how to decode, and they should love and understand what they read. Let's hope the antagonists in the Math Wars have reached a similar accord.
One area noted in the report should readily be embraced by everyone. Effort and attitude matter. They summarize the research of Carol Dweck (see one of my previous blogs) about shifting the learner's attitude from one focused on innate ability to one that recognizes growth through effort. It's critical for students and teachers to acknowledge incremental improvement and the effort it takes to achieve it. I wouldn't be surprised to find a relationship between these attitudes and math anxiety. The panel recognizes the reality of math anxiety and recommends more research to uncover its source. Indeed, the report makes many recommendations for further research. We need it.
The panel's report did, though, leave me wanting in a couple of areas. While the report talks about the importance of problem solving, it never describes what "problem solving" means or how it should be developed. Maybe the research isn't robust enough to illuminate clear directions. I would also have liked more clarity about why the panel members singled out particular areas in measurement and geometry for instructional focus. I don't disagree with the importance of the selected areas of content, but I would welcome more elaboration about how they fit into an algebra trajectory.
Hopefully, NCTM's Curriculum Focal Points and this report of the National Math Panel provide enough guidance for states to review and revise their curriculum standards in math. The list of learning objectives on state curriculum frameworks tend to be long and without emphasis on what's really important. The objectives get treated as separate, isolated teaching and learning events. Fitting them all into a school year inevitably leads to shallow coverage trumping real mastery. Let's concentrate on what's important and make sure kids really get it before moving on. Now, if only we can get the testing establishment to reflect this focus, but that's the topic of another blog.
One area noted in the report should readily be embraced by everyone. Effort and attitude matter. They summarize the research of Carol Dweck (see one of my previous blogs) about shifting the learner's attitude from one focused on innate ability to one that recognizes growth through effort. It's critical for students and teachers to acknowledge incremental improvement and the effort it takes to achieve it. I wouldn't be surprised to find a relationship between these attitudes and math anxiety. The panel recognizes the reality of math anxiety and recommends more research to uncover its source. Indeed, the report makes many recommendations for further research. We need it.
The panel's report did, though, leave me wanting in a couple of areas. While the report talks about the importance of problem solving, it never describes what "problem solving" means or how it should be developed. Maybe the research isn't robust enough to illuminate clear directions. I would also have liked more clarity about why the panel members singled out particular areas in measurement and geometry for instructional focus. I don't disagree with the importance of the selected areas of content, but I would welcome more elaboration about how they fit into an algebra trajectory.
Hopefully, NCTM's Curriculum Focal Points and this report of the National Math Panel provide enough guidance for states to review and revise their curriculum standards in math. The list of learning objectives on state curriculum frameworks tend to be long and without emphasis on what's really important. The objectives get treated as separate, isolated teaching and learning events. Fitting them all into a school year inevitably leads to shallow coverage trumping real mastery. Let's concentrate on what's important and make sure kids really get it before moving on. Now, if only we can get the testing establishment to reflect this focus, but that's the topic of another blog.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Being a struggling learner
I received a helpful reminder at TSP’s annual holiday party about what it’s like to be a struggling learner. Our “holiday” party really needs a new name, unless the holidays we’re celebrating are Martin Luther King Day and Valentine’s Day. Each year we seem to edge the date closer to President’s Day. There are plenty of holidays to celebrate, but the traditional Christmas and New Year’s holidays are well-behind us by the time we party. Anyway, for the last couple of years, we’ve had dance instructors at the party. Last year the instructors taught salsa; this year they did swing. You get a sense where this struggling learner story is headed?
One of the party organizers came to me during the party and asked me to help get folks participating in the swing instruction. I long ago learned that you can’t ask people to do something that you’re not willing to do yourself. Fortunately, my wife likes to dance. Unfortunately, she married someone who doesn’t have a lot of natural rhythm or coordination. Nonetheless, we took center stage, and I loudly invited others to join us. The student-to-dance teacher ratio at the outset would have been the envy of even the most well-endowed private school. Gradually, though, we gathered a good-sized crew of dancing students. It was fun, but I clearly struggled. At one point I noticed people looking at me and realized that my lips were moving along with my feet -- 1, 2, 3...5, 6, 7. I’d like to think my awkwardness was endearing, but I felt embarrassed. At the end of the night the dance instructor told me, “Well, not quite, but you have something to work on.” Not exactly the kind of robust praise I prefer to hear.
Without the obligation of recruiting participants, I’m sure I would have abandoned the effort after just a few missteps (and I had many). The experience got me thinking about Carol Dweck’s work on motivation and self-efficacy. Dweck’s research has received a lot of attention and press in the past year, and her book Mindset has been well-received (for more about the book and links to relevant articles go to http://mindsetonline.com/). The basic premise is that those who view intelligence or other abilities as fixed -- I’m good at these things but bad at those -- tend to gravitate toward activities they’re already good at. Those who see intelligence as something malleable -- if I work hard, I can get better -- are more willing to try and stick with things that are initially difficult.
I was living the research during the party. Dancing doesn’t come easily to me. (Neither does skiing. I got the award for most perseverance after a week at ski school in Aspen.) I’ve never stuck with dance lessons for more than an evening. The initial failures to succeed have led me to believe that I just can’t dance. I prefer to avoid it so I don’t look foolish. For me to stick with it, I need to believe that eventually, with effort, I can succeed. And the instruction needs to be structured in a way that gives me a sense of progress, that reinforces my belief that I can get better.
While my story is about dancing, students everyday are experiencing similar senses of “I’m not good at this” in math, reading, history, science, music, physical education, and all the other school subjects. Why, they might think, should they even try if they’re just not good at it.
Recent neuroscience research has revealed that our abilities are not fixed at birth. With focused effort and attention, our brains can change. It’s called neuroplasticity, and we should help our students understand it. We also need to adjust our instruction to reward effort and help students see incremental progress. Adaptive technology that challenges students at the edge of their competence, that isn’t too easy or too difficult, can play an important role.
The morning after the party, I shared with my son that I was caught moving my lips with my feet while learning to swing dance. I told him that I’m not much of a dancer…yet. He said that he wasn’t much of a dancer either. I pointed my finger at him and said, “Yet.”
One of the party organizers came to me during the party and asked me to help get folks participating in the swing instruction. I long ago learned that you can’t ask people to do something that you’re not willing to do yourself. Fortunately, my wife likes to dance. Unfortunately, she married someone who doesn’t have a lot of natural rhythm or coordination. Nonetheless, we took center stage, and I loudly invited others to join us. The student-to-dance teacher ratio at the outset would have been the envy of even the most well-endowed private school. Gradually, though, we gathered a good-sized crew of dancing students. It was fun, but I clearly struggled. At one point I noticed people looking at me and realized that my lips were moving along with my feet -- 1, 2, 3...5, 6, 7. I’d like to think my awkwardness was endearing, but I felt embarrassed. At the end of the night the dance instructor told me, “Well, not quite, but you have something to work on.” Not exactly the kind of robust praise I prefer to hear.
Without the obligation of recruiting participants, I’m sure I would have abandoned the effort after just a few missteps (and I had many). The experience got me thinking about Carol Dweck’s work on motivation and self-efficacy. Dweck’s research has received a lot of attention and press in the past year, and her book Mindset has been well-received (for more about the book and links to relevant articles go to http://mindsetonline.com/). The basic premise is that those who view intelligence or other abilities as fixed -- I’m good at these things but bad at those -- tend to gravitate toward activities they’re already good at. Those who see intelligence as something malleable -- if I work hard, I can get better -- are more willing to try and stick with things that are initially difficult.
I was living the research during the party. Dancing doesn’t come easily to me. (Neither does skiing. I got the award for most perseverance after a week at ski school in Aspen.) I’ve never stuck with dance lessons for more than an evening. The initial failures to succeed have led me to believe that I just can’t dance. I prefer to avoid it so I don’t look foolish. For me to stick with it, I need to believe that eventually, with effort, I can succeed. And the instruction needs to be structured in a way that gives me a sense of progress, that reinforces my belief that I can get better.
While my story is about dancing, students everyday are experiencing similar senses of “I’m not good at this” in math, reading, history, science, music, physical education, and all the other school subjects. Why, they might think, should they even try if they’re just not good at it.
Recent neuroscience research has revealed that our abilities are not fixed at birth. With focused effort and attention, our brains can change. It’s called neuroplasticity, and we should help our students understand it. We also need to adjust our instruction to reward effort and help students see incremental progress. Adaptive technology that challenges students at the edge of their competence, that isn’t too easy or too difficult, can play an important role.
The morning after the party, I shared with my son that I was caught moving my lips with my feet while learning to swing dance. I told him that I’m not much of a dancer…yet. He said that he wasn’t much of a dancer either. I pointed my finger at him and said, “Yet.”
Friday, February 22, 2008
How different are kids today?
I’m writing this blog on the flight back from FETC, the Florida Educational Technology Conference. My visit was very brief. I flew down, cruised the exhibit floor, did a session, and flew back. In that day, though, I did feel a much higher energy level than I expected to find. With all the dire news about the economy and ongoing grumblings about NCLB, I anticipated a somewhat depressed sensibility among the conference attendees. Not so, at least around the Tom Snyder Productions booth. It was constantly crowded and full of enthusiasm. Participants were excited, curious, and scrambling to learn more about lots of products. It felt good. But that’s not what this blog is about.
Several of the sessions I breezed in and out of and a number of the informal conversations I had reflected the underlying assumption that today’s kids are different. And I often wonder what that really means. Certainly 21st century children are using tools and interacting with each other in ways that are completely alien to old folks (like yours truly). I can’t imagine as a teenager being willing to share my personal history and preferences for the world to see like my son does on Facebook. I remember in graduate school scoffing at the notion of computers and the Internet threatening the existence of libraries. How could you do research without wandering the stacks and feeling the heft and integrity of the books that contained the knowledge. Wow. What a drag it is now when a journal article isn’t online, and I actually have to open a book. Many kids never had that kind of old-fashioned library experience.
My son and graduate students text each other without a thought and flit from one computer to the next without a care. Their work and identities travel with them or wait patiently in the ether until accessed from whatever machine is at hand. I just didn’t grow up that way. I’ve had to relearn how to do some things, and the pieces of this emerging world that I have embraced don’t look the same as those growing up in it initially. (My son thinks it’s just wrong for me to be on Facebook.) So, yes, it’s clear that today’s kids look and behave in new ways; but didn’t I look strange to my parents?
My parents couldn’t understand how I could spend so much time on the phone. How could I do homework while watching TV? And that music on the stereo…. Yes, every generation is different from the preceding one, but isn’t the pace of technology outpacing our ability to keep up? These 21st century kids REALLY are different. I wonder.
I had a brief conversation with a year ago with the recently deceased Peter Lyman, a cultural anthropologist from Berkeley who had been studying digital youth culture. He gave me some sense that underneath the surface today’s kids are a lot like yesterday’s. They still value status and being part of a group. They still feel anxieties about who they are and will become. The venues for exploring those feelings have dramatically changed, but maybe the core remains familiar. Maybe. It's a good question. I’ll keep looking for the answer.
Several of the sessions I breezed in and out of and a number of the informal conversations I had reflected the underlying assumption that today’s kids are different. And I often wonder what that really means. Certainly 21st century children are using tools and interacting with each other in ways that are completely alien to old folks (like yours truly). I can’t imagine as a teenager being willing to share my personal history and preferences for the world to see like my son does on Facebook. I remember in graduate school scoffing at the notion of computers and the Internet threatening the existence of libraries. How could you do research without wandering the stacks and feeling the heft and integrity of the books that contained the knowledge. Wow. What a drag it is now when a journal article isn’t online, and I actually have to open a book. Many kids never had that kind of old-fashioned library experience.
My son and graduate students text each other without a thought and flit from one computer to the next without a care. Their work and identities travel with them or wait patiently in the ether until accessed from whatever machine is at hand. I just didn’t grow up that way. I’ve had to relearn how to do some things, and the pieces of this emerging world that I have embraced don’t look the same as those growing up in it initially. (My son thinks it’s just wrong for me to be on Facebook.) So, yes, it’s clear that today’s kids look and behave in new ways; but didn’t I look strange to my parents?
My parents couldn’t understand how I could spend so much time on the phone. How could I do homework while watching TV? And that music on the stereo…. Yes, every generation is different from the preceding one, but isn’t the pace of technology outpacing our ability to keep up? These 21st century kids REALLY are different. I wonder.
I had a brief conversation with a year ago with the recently deceased Peter Lyman, a cultural anthropologist from Berkeley who had been studying digital youth culture. He gave me some sense that underneath the surface today’s kids are a lot like yesterday’s. They still value status and being part of a group. They still feel anxieties about who they are and will become. The venues for exploring those feelings have dramatically changed, but maybe the core remains familiar. Maybe. It's a good question. I’ll keep looking for the answer.
Monday, February 4, 2008
A moment to brag…but not about myself
I recently finished evaluating student projects from the software design class I teach at the Harvard Grad School of Education. With all due respect to my past classes (which were all fabulous, each one better than the others), this year’s group really clicked, and the range of high quality projects was impressive. To complete the projects students work in small teams on a project of their choice. They gather evidence to define an educational problem they are tackling, review relevant research for clues about effective approaches, devise a plan, construct a prototype, and test and revise it. I learn an enormous amount; hopefully they do too.
I had a number of former, current, and prospective teachers in this year’s mix. They helped maintain a grounding in reality that sometimes gets lost when folks start playing with the possibilities technology offers. One group of students, who are in a mid-career teacher transition program, took on negative numbers. They wanted a program to help them with a problem they were encountering in their classrooms. Digging into the research gave them a depth of awareness about a core learning issue that few teachers have the luxury to plumb. They found no easy answers, but I suspect the knowledge and experience they did gain will serve them well down the line.
So too for the group that focused on teaching the physics of sound, the one that hoped to use a program on the Pilgrims to help elementary students see outside themselves to better understand history, and the one with fabulous activities to build reading comprehension skills. The physics group developed a pre-assessment on student conceptions of sound that was incredibly enlightening. The drawings and descriptions revealed a great deal about kids’ thinking and provided a powerful reminder about the importance of respecting the knowledge students bring with them to class. The Pilgrim project worked to push second and third graders developmentally, and the effort uncovered the edges of what young students can comprehend. The reading comprehension project simply radiated a graduate student’s passion about what she teaches in her high school English class in Florida. Her project introduced me to some very intriguing ideas about using comics and graphic novels to teach comprehension. More importantly, it allowed her to focus and deepen her thinking about some very powerful instructional lessons. Wouldn’t it be fantastic for all teachers to be able to take a semester to really grapple with some element of their teaching?
Three projects gave me hope that recently neglected parts of the curriculum may soon recover. One was a project that engaged students in using primary sources scaffolded reading and interpretation and helped turn what is too often a “read and remember” subject into one that is dynamic and alive. History is being made and interpreted everyday; we should teach it! When the “Culture Shock” team presented its project to the class, they started with a National Geographic geography online quiz. While the performance of my graduate students was pretty solid (this is Harvard, after all), the national results were pretty sorry. We are a geographically ignorant nation. That’s sad given how interconnected the world has become. The team’s simulation puts students in the role of manufacturers looking for the best resources and most responsible working conditions from around the globe. That’s real and relevant. Can’t we squeeze a little geography and culture back into the curriculum? The third project dealt with decision-making, civic responsibility, and conflict management. They developed a whole class prototype that had my students engaged in rich conversation and perspective-taking for two hours. Shouldn’t we devote a bit of school time to learning how to see and work with others?
Two groups of students gained experience by working with real clients. One team of international students partnered with a professor at the University of Athens in Greece. They aimed to design an online support environment for a course that’s part of a program training future teachers of English to native Greek speakers. The team that developed a technology-rich program for a media literacy unit in a local urban high school also had to revise and rethink based on the input from the teacher who would ultimately be using the materials. We all relearned the lesson that designing something cool might be different from designing something that will work somewhere real.
And speaking of contextual constraints, one group turned to cell phones as a delivery platform for teaching French to children and adult learners in Ghana. That team had to think through a whole new infrastructure that leverages a number of emerging technologies with solid, proven pedagogy. This mobile learning project, along with one working to incorporate some web 2.0 features into an online vocabulary-building environment, particularly highlighted the promise of new technologies. All of the projects had solid research foundations, but they each took creative paths to applying that research with the aid of technology to meet important educational needs.
I think I covered all the projects from this fall’s course. I hope I didn’t embarrass any of my students or leave anyone out. I just wanted to brag about their efforts a bit and tease out some of the general lessons that are easy to overlook in the details of each project. Nice work!
I had a number of former, current, and prospective teachers in this year’s mix. They helped maintain a grounding in reality that sometimes gets lost when folks start playing with the possibilities technology offers. One group of students, who are in a mid-career teacher transition program, took on negative numbers. They wanted a program to help them with a problem they were encountering in their classrooms. Digging into the research gave them a depth of awareness about a core learning issue that few teachers have the luxury to plumb. They found no easy answers, but I suspect the knowledge and experience they did gain will serve them well down the line.
So too for the group that focused on teaching the physics of sound, the one that hoped to use a program on the Pilgrims to help elementary students see outside themselves to better understand history, and the one with fabulous activities to build reading comprehension skills. The physics group developed a pre-assessment on student conceptions of sound that was incredibly enlightening. The drawings and descriptions revealed a great deal about kids’ thinking and provided a powerful reminder about the importance of respecting the knowledge students bring with them to class. The Pilgrim project worked to push second and third graders developmentally, and the effort uncovered the edges of what young students can comprehend. The reading comprehension project simply radiated a graduate student’s passion about what she teaches in her high school English class in Florida. Her project introduced me to some very intriguing ideas about using comics and graphic novels to teach comprehension. More importantly, it allowed her to focus and deepen her thinking about some very powerful instructional lessons. Wouldn’t it be fantastic for all teachers to be able to take a semester to really grapple with some element of their teaching?
Three projects gave me hope that recently neglected parts of the curriculum may soon recover. One was a project that engaged students in using primary sources scaffolded reading and interpretation and helped turn what is too often a “read and remember” subject into one that is dynamic and alive. History is being made and interpreted everyday; we should teach it! When the “Culture Shock” team presented its project to the class, they started with a National Geographic geography online quiz. While the performance of my graduate students was pretty solid (this is Harvard, after all), the national results were pretty sorry. We are a geographically ignorant nation. That’s sad given how interconnected the world has become. The team’s simulation puts students in the role of manufacturers looking for the best resources and most responsible working conditions from around the globe. That’s real and relevant. Can’t we squeeze a little geography and culture back into the curriculum? The third project dealt with decision-making, civic responsibility, and conflict management. They developed a whole class prototype that had my students engaged in rich conversation and perspective-taking for two hours. Shouldn’t we devote a bit of school time to learning how to see and work with others?
Two groups of students gained experience by working with real clients. One team of international students partnered with a professor at the University of Athens in Greece. They aimed to design an online support environment for a course that’s part of a program training future teachers of English to native Greek speakers. The team that developed a technology-rich program for a media literacy unit in a local urban high school also had to revise and rethink based on the input from the teacher who would ultimately be using the materials. We all relearned the lesson that designing something cool might be different from designing something that will work somewhere real.
And speaking of contextual constraints, one group turned to cell phones as a delivery platform for teaching French to children and adult learners in Ghana. That team had to think through a whole new infrastructure that leverages a number of emerging technologies with solid, proven pedagogy. This mobile learning project, along with one working to incorporate some web 2.0 features into an online vocabulary-building environment, particularly highlighted the promise of new technologies. All of the projects had solid research foundations, but they each took creative paths to applying that research with the aid of technology to meet important educational needs.
I think I covered all the projects from this fall’s course. I hope I didn’t embarrass any of my students or leave anyone out. I just wanted to brag about their efforts a bit and tease out some of the general lessons that are easy to overlook in the details of each project. Nice work!
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Fractions
Dennis Deturck, a noted mathematician and the Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, has provoked a little firestorm within the math education community by suggesting that schools consider delaying fraction instruction until students are dealing with higher level math. In a 60 Second Lecture a few years ago, Deturck said: “I have a simple suggestion when it comes to teaching fractions in elementary school: Don’t.” Decimals are sufficient. With a new book offering these and other ideas coming out next year, the UPenn dean’s thoughts about reforming math instruction have been making the news.
Critics of Deturck’s suggestion argue that fractions are a fundamental part of our daily lives, unless, of course, you live with the metric system. Some argue that his suggestion of pushing fractions higher up in the curriculum is elitist. Then again, we delay a lot of content until students are better prepared to handle it. Frankly, I welcome the conversations sparked by this controversy. Math instruction in the U.S. is failing a lot of kids. We should be challenging it.
I met Dennis about a year ago when we were both playing advisory roles for the PBS show Cyberchase (a good program), and we talked about fractions then. Dennis does a lot of work in the Philadelphia area schools. He has a good deal of direct experience with struggling kids, and he feels we push them into finding common denominators and computing with fractions long before they have an understanding of what fractions are. I agree.
We’re doing some work ourselves now at Tom Snyder Productions with fractions. We’ve found kids in upper elementary grades who don’t know that 3/3 is 1. They don’t know how to compare 0.6 and 5/10. And they don’t believe that a fraction can ever be greater than 1; after all, we tell them that fractions are parts of a whole. How could it ever be more than that whole? These students, who don’t get fractions, are being asked to add and otherwise manipulate them. The arcane rules they’re learning for these procedures are meaningless, confusing, and readily forgotten.
We’re seeing what we can do to build a better foundation, to help kids make the tough transition from discrete to continuous quantities, from counting how many to measuring how much. A rich, intuitive sense of fraction quantity and equivalence can provide a much stronger base for learning and understanding rational numbers. We’re working on it.
Critics of Deturck’s suggestion argue that fractions are a fundamental part of our daily lives, unless, of course, you live with the metric system. Some argue that his suggestion of pushing fractions higher up in the curriculum is elitist. Then again, we delay a lot of content until students are better prepared to handle it. Frankly, I welcome the conversations sparked by this controversy. Math instruction in the U.S. is failing a lot of kids. We should be challenging it.
I met Dennis about a year ago when we were both playing advisory roles for the PBS show Cyberchase (a good program), and we talked about fractions then. Dennis does a lot of work in the Philadelphia area schools. He has a good deal of direct experience with struggling kids, and he feels we push them into finding common denominators and computing with fractions long before they have an understanding of what fractions are. I agree.
We’re doing some work ourselves now at Tom Snyder Productions with fractions. We’ve found kids in upper elementary grades who don’t know that 3/3 is 1. They don’t know how to compare 0.6 and 5/10. And they don’t believe that a fraction can ever be greater than 1; after all, we tell them that fractions are parts of a whole. How could it ever be more than that whole? These students, who don’t get fractions, are being asked to add and otherwise manipulate them. The arcane rules they’re learning for these procedures are meaningless, confusing, and readily forgotten.
We’re seeing what we can do to build a better foundation, to help kids make the tough transition from discrete to continuous quantities, from counting how many to measuring how much. A rich, intuitive sense of fraction quantity and equivalence can provide a much stronger base for learning and understanding rational numbers. We’re working on it.
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
The Effect of Affect
It seems like one of those "duh" statements: emotion and attitude matter in learning. I certainly expect that students who are excited and happy about school perform better than students who are emotionally down and dour. In cognitive psychology these emotional states are called affect, and they can be positive or negative. Now, even though we (or at least I) have assumed that a student's emotional state has an impact on learning, the cognitive science research historically hasn't really incorporated affect into the way it looks at teaching and learning. Remember Mr. Spock from the original Star Trek (or Data from a more recent edition). Spock, a Vulcan, had no emotion. His thinking was clear-headed, logical and rational. Many theories about teaching and learning reflect a Spock-like view of the world. They're logical and rational. Affect is in another category.
Fortunately, more recent research from cognitive neuroscience to neuroeconomics (an up and coming new field) has begun to respect the role of affect in learning and development. Decision-making, for instance, isn't just the result of an emotionless, cost-benefit analysis (look at the work of Antoine Bechara among others). Affect plays an important role (that's why Kirk was captain and Spock second in command). The affective part of the brain also seems to matter in memory (happy experiences are more memorable) and in working memory. Stress, for instance, releases chemicals that impact brain function. Anxiety eats up working memory. Your feelings about yourself affect your performance on tests (check out the article on stereotype threats in the October Education Week).
It's time we started accounting for affect explicitly in instructional design.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Brain Metaphors
New technologies, like functional MRIs, have made brain research more accessible to neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists, and they've made it more accessible and interesting to curious novices like I've become. I'm now an avid reader of neuroscience books and articles. I've got a lot to learn, but I'm really into it. I've even got multiple neuroscience news feeds on my iGoogle home page.
This reading has prompted me to reflect back on the assumptions I had as a beginning social studies teacher in the late 1970s about how my high school students' brains incorporated what I was teaching them. As I recall, I pictured the brain as something of a filing cabinet with a complicated cross-referencing system. That metaphor had a substantial impact on how I structured my instruction. I figured that each new bit of information I taught my students got filed somewhere in their brains. It was easier, I thought, if they already had a file under which to add something new. That led me to emphasize themes and narrative that might become headers for file folders. It also led to me imagine each bit of information residing in a solitary place in the brain.
My image of the brain and how it works is very different today. Now I picture an incredibly complex network of distributed information and skills. I have much greater respect for the role of emotion and affect. And I acknowledge that as much as we've learned about cognitive neuroscience in the last two decades, we still have a long way to go to fully understand how the brain works as we learn.
In any case, I'm curious how other teachers past and present imagine the brain at work and how those models may influence their teaching. I've started searching for research in this area, but so far I'm not finding anything. I think there's a good thesis topic in here. I don't think I'll have the time to pursue it, but I'd be happy to advise.
This reading has prompted me to reflect back on the assumptions I had as a beginning social studies teacher in the late 1970s about how my high school students' brains incorporated what I was teaching them. As I recall, I pictured the brain as something of a filing cabinet with a complicated cross-referencing system. That metaphor had a substantial impact on how I structured my instruction. I figured that each new bit of information I taught my students got filed somewhere in their brains. It was easier, I thought, if they already had a file under which to add something new. That led me to emphasize themes and narrative that might become headers for file folders. It also led to me imagine each bit of information residing in a solitary place in the brain.
My image of the brain and how it works is very different today. Now I picture an incredibly complex network of distributed information and skills. I have much greater respect for the role of emotion and affect. And I acknowledge that as much as we've learned about cognitive neuroscience in the last two decades, we still have a long way to go to fully understand how the brain works as we learn.
In any case, I'm curious how other teachers past and present imagine the brain at work and how those models may influence their teaching. I've started searching for research in this area, but so far I'm not finding anything. I think there's a good thesis topic in here. I don't think I'll have the time to pursue it, but I'd be happy to advise.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Schema
So I'm driving in the car with my 16-year old son (actually, he just got his license and he's driving), and we're listening to music, Grounds for Divorce by Wolf Parade. My son says, "Nice hemiola." I say something intelligent like, "Huh?" My son, who is a musician (saxophone) taking Advanced Harmony this year, explains that a hemiola takes two standard 3-beats (1 2 3, 1 2 3) and plays it like three 2-beats (1 2, 1 2, 1 2). It's about the way the beats are accentuated. I concentrate on the music, and I can begin to pick out the hemiola as well.
I tell him that I think what he's just done is an example of what the cognitive neuroscience literature I'm reading calls a "schema." He's curious. "What's a schema?" Explaining it to him is a good exercise for me.
Putting my thoughts into words helps me clarify my own thinking. Indeed, it often reveals how far I am from really getting it. A schema, I summarize, is like a generalizable pattern or model that helps you make sense of new information or situations. The hemiola pattern is something that my son can recognize in music he's never heard before. In fact, music and the arts are full of schemas. Those of you (not me) who dance, for instance, can readily pick up a waltz or salsa or disco beat in a novel tune. Genres of literature and art follow patterns that allow readers and viewers familiar with the genre to anticipate the flow of the story or to look for particular aspects of color or shape.
In fact, schemas are everywhere, and they don't have to be narrow and technical like a hemiola. Neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, in his wonderful book, This is Your Brain on Music, offers the example of a kid's birthday party schema. We know the pattern -- games, cake, presents -- and we recognize it from one party to the next. The children, the setting, the games, the cake, and the presents may all be different at each party, but our brains don't get overloaded with the uniqueness of each situation. Instead, we take comfort in the common underlying structure.
We relied on schema research for a program we created called GO Solve Word Problems. Our goal was to help students see the underlying patterns in arithmetic problem solving situations. Rather than treating each problem as unique or applying a weak schema (like focusing on key words or automatically dividing when one number is a factor of the other), students should focus on the mathematical patterns. For instance, is the problem about something changing or a comparison?
I think we've just scratched the surface with how schema theory can guide improved instructional strategies. Schemas help make new information and situations familiar and manageable. We all use them all the time.
Understanding the ones that struggling students use on academic tasks may provide some very useful insight. I'm curious about the overlap between schema research and the work on student misconceptions. More to come on this topic...
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