Author: Mr. Chase

Not broken.

Get in your seats.

Take out your books.

Get in your pods.

Matt hollers to his class of 9th grade English students.

They’re studying Homer’s Odyssey. Once in their pods, the students pull out permabound copies of the text littered with fluorescent sticky notes. The notes are covered in the scrawl of ninth-graders. Each one unique, but all of them somewhat crude and uncertain.

The pods are charged with discussing “Book III.”

“This book was awesome,” one student says when I ask what he thought of the chapter.

“It was boring,” said another.

“No it wasn’t!” shouts the first, “I don’t know why he doesn’t just say things more simply.”

Matt interrupts.

“What do all the characters have in common?”

A girl with a feathery voice raises her hand to answer.

Matt asks why King Nestor tells a long-winded story only to say that he does not know anything.

Hands shoot up.

“No, no, no. This is a question for your pods.”

The room is again engulfed in noise.

“Just so you know, Dawn is a god,” one student tells his group.

“This was a lot easier to understand than ‘Book II,'” another student says to hers.

Matt and the senior assigned to this class roam opposite sides of the room, checking in with the pods.

The senior is part of the school’s Student Assistant Teaching program. Now in it’s second year, the program matches seniors with the sections of lower-classmen to help with the class. More than 30 of the school’s grade 9-11 classes have SATs.

At the back of the room, an observer from one of the local universities discusses the reading with a pod seated in dirty, over-stuffed chairs Matt has pulled in to his room over his five years at the school. It’s the kind of furniture you wouldn’t want in your room, but would expect to find in an ad hoc dorm room.

Traveling around the room, Matt overhears a pod discussing the Spanish alphabet.

“We’re good, we’re good,” he yells, “First question in 45 seconds.”

The students hurry to their original seats.

“Only a pencil or pen and a piece of paper. Everything else, including your Odyssey book and your old quiz, away.”

In a little over a minute, the kids are ready.

“Forty-five seconds,” is one of those teacher time warps that’s been around for ages.

“Ladies and gentlemen, no talking,” Matt says as he connects his laptop to the digital projector in his room.

“This is from class,” he says of the question on the board.

The students use their “off” or non-writing hands to protect their answers.

Aside from the shuffling inherent in ninth-graders at the end of a school day, the room is silent.

On the second question, the student beside me is stumped. “Just keep putting words down there until you’ve got it,” Matt advises. To the rest of the class, he encourages, “Folks, leave no doubt. Just keep writing.” It’s the first lesson some of them are getting in the importance of trying above all else.

“Hands up for more time,” Matt says. A third of the room’s hands go up. “Ok.”

Each of the questions pulls from the content of the previous night’s reading. They’re comprehension questions.

Matt is checking to make certain his students are understanding the reading before they move to student-generated higher-level questions later in the class.

Interested more in activating the students’ knowledge than trapping them in the details, Matt offers hints and rephrases the questions for those with stunned surprise registering on their faces.

Five questions in, during the last academic class of the day, the students remain silent and focused ’til the end.

“Quiet. Quiet.” Matt says after the quizzes have been turned in. He polls their feelings:

  • Hands up, I’m totally a rock star and got them all right.
  • Hands up, I’m getting there.
  • Hands up, I’m halfway there.
  • Hands up – listen to all of this – I sat down with no distractions with my Odyssey book, with my pencil or pen and my stickie notes, spent at least 20 minutes or a half hour and focused on the book, wrote down questions I didn’t know, came to class, sat down with my pod and asked questions of every member of my pod and still didn’t get anything right.

With snickers, a few hands go up.

Matt asks the students if they notice they’re understanding the book more because he is reading it to them in class. Many say yes.

“That may be because you’re what kind of learner?”

“Audio,” they respond in chorus.

Matt clarifies, “Even when you get your laptops with the audio, that doesn’t mean you’ll automatically get it.”

“No matter what, every lunch period, the lit lab is open. Take your book and everything else and an English teacher and several other students are there to help you.”

He explains the school’s Lit Lab, run mainly by upper-classmen, is another on the long list of ways the school helps its students.

“It’s one more reason I don’t accept what?”

“Excuses,” the class responds in the weary voice that denotes they know he’s not kidding.

Matt refers to higher-order questions as “HOT questions” and tells the class it’s time to discuss them now.

Matt takes the students’ attention to a flashback within the book and walks them through some of the complexities of the text.

Pens and pencils scribble new notes on stickies.

A confused student raises her hand.

“Can you say that one more time, but in baby language, so I can understand it.”

“Sure,” Matt says, “But not in baby language. I’ll fix what I said.”

He grabs a marker too draw a map of events while the students help direct him.

Back in the book, Matt begins reading again. “You with me?” he asks.

The students are silent.

“Talk back to me. You with me?”

“Yes,” they respond.

With the basic plot outlined, Matt turns class over to the students and his SAT. “If you have any high-order thinking or HOT questions, ask them and then ask your classmates.”

Hands shoot up around the room.

As the students answer their classmates, they turn not to Matt, but to the student who owns each question to make eye contact in their attempts to answer.

If an answer doesn’t seem quite right, hands shoot up for course corrections.

In this classroom of students with IEPs and 504s and home lives their classmates might never understand, everyone is participating.

When the last student is called on to offer her question, a few side conversations have broken out.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Matt says, “Demand to be respected when you’re speaking.”

The student waits. The conversations stop. The question is asked.

By the clock, the class is over, but this last question has incited some disagreement in the class and the students make no movement to gather their things to leave.

“Take this sudden curiosity,” Matt says, “and read ‘Book IV.’ If, when you come in next week, and people are seeming like they read it, I will not give you a quiz.”

The deal made, Matt dismisses the students, “You’re beautiful. I’ll see you next class.”

And he did it all despite being in a public school, part of a union and having tenure.

I know. I didn’t think it could happen either.

They’re breaking teachers

A friend of mine has been crying a lot recently.
After more than a decade and a half in the classroom, my friend has been labeled unsatisfactory.
You may have heard about the schools my friend works for. Oprah loves ’em. Turns out the federal government loves ’em to. I’d be willing to venture neither Oprah nor Sec. Duncan would want to learn there, but they’re fine enough for other people’s children.
About a month into the school year, my friend had her first formal observation the other day.
We talked before. She was nervous.
Seems a rating of unsatisfactory could come as a result of not keeping her lesson within the timing framework of 10 minutes of introduction, 20 minutes of whole group instruction and 15 minutes of practice. This friend who guided and mentored me when I entered the classroom 8 years ago – this master teacher who has shaped thousands of lives – has been reduced to cookie-cutter teaching.
It is breaking her.
As it turned out, the timing of her lesson was not the point of contention. Content was the problem.
Her lesson introduced her learners to a key component of her subject area.
Without a mastery of this element of content, her learners would flounder in their further studies. Truly. In the list of basic things you need to know about the content of her course, this little tidbit sits near, if not at, the top.
My friend’s evaluator didn’t see it that way.
You see, this particular content is only featured in two of the questions on the quarterly benchmark tests her learners will be completing. And, they’re only comprehension-level questions.
The lesson should have been a mini-lesson, my friend was told.
Also, she should have waited for the learner who walked in tardy to the class to present her demerit card rather than moving on with the lesson and dealing with the issue when time permitted.
My friend – this resource, this veteran of the classroom who loves children and learning and igniting children’s curiosity and passion for learning – is being broken.
Something she loves is being molded into a pretty but deeply fractured system of homogeneity.
Other than these words, I’m uncertain what to do to help my friend. As the nation looks admiringly on, I can’t help but imagine others like her around her country who are finding themselves broken by the system.

Hi, you’re doing it right: Introductions

As I’ve explained, I started my master’s program a few weeks months ago. Through an online program, I’ll have a Master’s of Teaching and Learning in Curriculum and Instruction in 14 months. It’s my first time in an all-online learning environment. They’re doing it wrong right.

With the advent of the new school year at SLA, a new term is also beginning for my grad program as well. This means a new course, a new “Academic Specialist” and new material.

They’re small, but the signs thus far point to the idea that Course 2 will be a different experience than Course 1.

I’ve received two e-mails thus far from Academic Specialist 2.

The first was a general welcome greeting us and talking about the University’s move from WebCT to BlackBoard:

See what AS2 did there? That’s right, admitted her own learning in front of us. I actually felt a little better about the move because of this e-mail, and I wasn’t even feeling timorous about the whole thing. (Truth be told, I’m no fan of monopolies, but moving around in BlackBoard is, so far, much better than moving around in WebCT).

Looking at the e-mail again, I realize it’s exactly the kind of thing Harry Wong would support. For the first few years of teaching, I returned to The First Days of School just before the start of the year each year. Even this year, I’ll probably skim through it. I’ve read it enough to surmise that AS2 has at least a passing familiarity with Wong’s “7 things kids want to know on the first day of school.”

Turns out, they are the things I want to know.

The second and longer of the two e-mails from AS2 truly worked to set the tone for the class.

and:

and, finally:

Did you catch that?

Throw out everything from the last class? Check.
No need to find the book, all you need for learning style is available through a web search? Check.

Facilitator, research practitioner working daily in schools, open lines of communication, using the web when it makes sense – in two e-mails, we’re miles ahead of the last course.

Hi, you’re doing it right.

Hi, you’re doing it wrong: Reflection

As I’ve explained, I started my master’s program a few weeks ago. Through an online program, I’ll have a Master’s of Teaching and Learning in Curriculum and Instruction in 14 months. It’s my first time in an all-online learning environment. They’re doing it wrong.

I’m a reflective guy.

Seriously.

I journal. I blog. I seek peer advice. I seek learner advice. I even took a job teaching at a school where reflection is one of the core values.

If I were any more reflective, people would wear me whilst biking at night.

When I looked at my last few assignments for this first grad school class, and saw they were all about reflections, I was, in a word, giddy.

Then, I read the assignment descriptions.

For the assignment titled “Course Reflection,” here’s what was asked for:

The purpose of the Course Reflection is to give you the opportunity to reflect on what you have learned in a specific instructional block and how this knowledge relates to the core propositions. The reflection is written in narrative form with all the conventions of English language. It is a personal document you are willing to share with others.

The reflection summary has distinct sections in which you provide different information. The first section is a reflection on how you applied the most important topic/issues presented in the instructional block.

The second part is a reflection on your personal growth. The emphasis should be on application of knowledge you have experienced as a result of what you have learned in a particular block. This is the most personal part of the reflection. You might discuss application of knowledge to your classroom or a change in your philosophy.

The “core propositions” referred to in the first graf are the props set forth by the National Board. They drive our program. I kept waiting in the course for the chance to discuss and debate the propositions. If it’s what we’re working toward as the goal, we should, perhaps, think about them rather than accept them as though handed to us from the mount on stone tablets.

(No offense meant to the National Board. BTW, nice mount.)

As a reflective assignment, not bad. Really.

I mean, it was due a week before the end of the course, but I’m sure they didn’t really want us to reflect on the whole course.

The rubric was a little odd:

The course reflection exhibits clear, concise, thoughtful, and substantive evidence of the learner’s professional growth, with superior and insightful articulation of expectations or evidence of improved teaching and learning in the classroom.

Sounds good at the face value. My learning, though, wasn’t due to the content of the course or the teaching. The bulk of my learning took place in my thinking about the structure, delivery and pedagogy of the course itself. I’m a better teacher because I looked at the course as a case study.

Because of the tone set within the course, though, I couldn’t say as much. I said what they wanted to hear.
I’ve received no authentic sign that Educational Specialist was worried about my learning or teaching. Assigning work that asks questions about my learning and teaching, yes. Actually curious as to how to improve my practice, no.

You’d think one reflective assignment would be enough. Silly.

The last assignment of the course was a reflection on the learning surrounding the inquiry-based project we’ve been working on throughout the module.

A little sidenote on the project for those of you playing at home. The project is designed for the course when it’s taught during a school year and the learners in the course are, you know, teaching. For the summer session, we pretended. Not quite the same.

In the “Helpful Hints” doc we were given, ES stated:

Using the Reflective Self-Assessment section for each lesson plan, analyze more completely what might be successful and what might not, if and how you might accomplish your goals and objectives, and if you think your implementation plan will help you resolve your problem statement.

Some mental gymnastics there, no?

The guiding questions were a little silly as well:

  1. How were my goals and objectives met?
  2. What were my “aha!” moments and/or successes?
  3. What did not go well and/or was not as successful as I had hoped?
  4. What needs improvement?
  5. What would I do differently next time?
  6. What will I do again?
  7. What were the key concepts I learned?
  8. What did others see that I did not or could not and how will I use that
  9. intelligence to continue to refine and improve my teaching?
  10. What did I learn about my own teaching?

Number 5 was certainly the easiest: Next time, I would probably put all of this into practice rather than teaching it hypothetically.

Again, that’s not what I wrote. I wrote what they wanted to see.

One more thing about what they wanted to see.

In the second half of this second course reflection, we were asked for more references:

  • Include a complete reference list of all the resources you used for the entire inquiry project.
  • Follow the guidelines found in the most current edition of the American Psychological Association (APA) format and style manual.  Please put the original 15 sources at the beginning of this section then add the additional sources after the 15 original sources.
  • MINIMUM 22 sources.  15 sources from Assignment # 1 and 7 new sources. The 7 new sources should be 5 from our class material and 2 OTHER.

I don’t know why.

The part that positively made my head explode happened in the final bullet point. Seven more sources? I mean, I like prime numbers as much as anyone, but, why? For the final assignment of the course – a reflective piece – we’re to manifest 7 new references for work that was already done? What’s the reasoning for the 5-2 split? And adhere to APA style, but post the most recent sources at the bottom?

I’m not given to conjecture often, but my guess would be that this new ordering process is so ES can count sources. I mean, I’ll do it, but, why?

Reflective work from learners can provide some intensely rich feedback for the teaching of a course and any corrections that might need be made. We’ve actually read quite a bit about this as part of our studies in the course.

This isn’t effective reflection. Absent a safe and open learning environment, reflection has become another version of, “What does the teacher want to hear?”

Hi, you’re doing it wrong.

Hi, you’re doing it wrong: Grading

As I’ve explained, I started my master’s program a few weeks ago. Through an online program, I’ll have a Master’s of Teaching and Learning in Curriculum and Instruction in 14 months. It’s my first time in an all-online learning environment. They’re doing it wrong.

I’m a pretty decent student.

Really.

I like to think. I like to participate. I love to learn.

Oh, and I get good grades.

One quarter in high school I got straight A’s. Otherwise, it was A’s and B’s. Still, not too shabby.

It’s been a while since I’ve been graded.

Turns out I’m perfect.


I really shouldn’t be.

Assignment #1, Parts 1-2-3 was my first attempt at the use of APA style. I’m pretty sure I got it wrong. At least I think I got it wrong a couple of places. I’m not entirely sure.

Here’s what Education Specialist had to say:

ES hit on each of the areas of the rubric. And…well, that’s it.

My favorite comment? “APA was used.”

You bet your sweet bippy it was. Used correctly? Who’s to say?

Well, at least I know how to improve it.

You see that place where ES questions my thinking and points me to places where I can improve in the future?

Yeah, me neither.

Probably just ran out of time.

Let’s take a look at another one. My Philosophy of Teaching. I worked quite thoughtfully on this one. It’s my statement of what I believe as a teacher. I edited it publicly as a google doc and revised more than most anything I’ve written lately.

ES says:

Ok. Note my ability to connect my philosophy of teaching to my learning is worth as much in the assignment as my ability to properly utilize writing conventions. Sure, those are the same things.

Again, no direct questioning or push back. That’s fine, because the assignment was shared with my peers in the course for discussion. Wait. No.

I’m torn on how I feel about the fact that two assignments sit turned in but ungraded.

I teach. I teach in a classroom with 32 learners in each section.

I get that grading in a timely manner can be a bear to say the least.

If the feedback were richer, though, I’d be more forgiving.

If the feedback pushed my learning, I’d be more forgiving.

Neither of those things is happening.

When I saw the score on Assignment #1, I shared it with the rest of the team in South Africa. “That’s great. Congratulations,” was the general sentiment.

While I’m not saying I’d like to have failed, I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about the 53/53.

I worked a long time on that assignment. I didn’t learn much of anything, save for APA style (I think).

In Making Learning Whole, David Perkins provides three types of feedback:

  • corrective: announces what’s wrong “Yes, but…”/”Good, but…”

  • conciliatory: vague, uninformative positive feedback

  • communicative: structured to ensure good communication 1) clarification, 2) appreciation, 3) concerns and suggestions

As a teacher, I’m going to be striving to live more in the world of communicative feedback this year.

I wish ES was doing the same.

Hi, you’re doing it wrong.

I don’t teach in the 17th century

I don’t teach in the 17th century.

More pointedly, I don’t teach in a 17th century school. I never have.

About a week ago, this quotation from Don Tapscott got tweeted out from a webinar he was doing with Discovery Education Network:

We have the very best schools that 17th century tech can deliver.

Granted, I’m not aware of the context of the quotation.

But, that’s twitter – providing context-free snippets since 2007.

I’d really appreciate it if Tapscott would not say things like this. If he said more, I’d really appreciate it if other people didn’t push out pieces of thoughts.

It’s not that I don’t see the value in making generalizations about all members of a group. When has that ever gone wrong?

Science Leadership Academy is well beyond 17th-century tech.

Phoenix Academy, my previous school, was well beyond 17th-century tech.

Sarasota Middle School, my very first school, was well beyond 17th-century tech.

The counterargument is simple:

These three schools do not represent the norm.

I can’t agree with that. I’ve seen many schools across the country creating amazing content owned by learners.

Look at the work Karl is doing at Arapahoe High School is doing.

Look at the thinking Bud is doing at St. Vrain Valley School District is doing.

Look at the creating Ben is doing.

Look at the connecting Monika is doing.

Look at the pushing Dan is doing.

Look at the teaching Diana is doing.

So long as we continue to say our schools are failing, we’ll never notice success. The statement of failure is generally wrapped around the metric of standardized test scores. While they provide a snapshot of ability, I think we’re all on board the train of thought that recognizes they don’t provide a complete understanding of learners’ understandings and abilities.

Stop asking what’s wrong. Start asking what’s right.

My follow-up question is this. How much tech does it take to push a school into the post-modern age?

Don’t worry about answering, I’ve done some figuring. The official answer:

Three netbooks, one digital projector and a class set of T1-83s.

Aside from avoiding generalizations, we should, perhaps, start to move our thinking to the globalized approach folks have been hoping their kids would adopt.

It might give some perspective.

Schools without electricity in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa are operating without any tech to speak of because the ups and downs of a generator would likely damage any equipment in which they invested.

Schools on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya have graveyards of second-hand monitors donated by well-meaning businesses. The monitors don’t work, and the schools can’t afford to have them properly disposed of.

When Tapscott makes this assertion, and again, I don’t have context, and others re-tweet, perhaps a little humility and perspective are in order.

We’re on the way to building amazing temples of ideas across the world. The teachers mentioned above and countless others I’ve met are working to make learning what it can be. More to the point, they’re meeting with tremendous success.

They’re doing it without racing anywhere.

Those schools without electricity in South Africa, they’re about to harness the power of mobile technologies.

Those schools with the monitor graveyard in Kenya, turns out you only need a handful of working computers to connect to the world.

I’m not certain I’m teaching to the full extent of what 21st-century tech can deliver – 2099 is a fair piece away – but I’m doing alright. So are a lot of others – today.

Hi, you’re doing it wrong: Chat/Discussion

As I’ve explained, I started my master’s program a few weeks ago. Through an online program, I’ll have a Master’s of Teaching and Learning in Curriculum and Instruction in 14 months. It’s my first time in an all-online learning environment. They’re doing it wrong.

As I’ve mentioned, my course requires participation in three online chats throughout its 8-week run. I missed the first chat as I was in a tiny town in a small town outside East London in Eastern Cape, South Africa, and the Internet was spotty.

Wednesday, I returned to the States.

Wednesday, our second chat was scheduled.

After two days of travel involving 3 continents, I had my sister pull over on the drive from O’Hare back down to Springfield, IL and I signed on sitting in supremely busy McDonald’s of Pontiac, IL. (If you don’t think there’s a global information divide, compare that last sentence to this situation and get back to me.)

No matter the free Internet juice my MacBook was sucking down, it just couldn’t talk to the chat room.
As had happened during my first go, I’d log in to the WebCT chat room, one person would send a line of dialogue and the infinite pinwheel of death would appear.

This happened across Firefox, Flock and Chrome.

After 30 minutes of trying, I e-mailed “Education Specialist” to say I wouldn’t be making it to the night’s chat.

Here’s what happens if you miss a chat:

After missing the last chat, I opted for the second choice. I’d intended to go with the first option, but the transcript never got posted. I inquired about it on the discussion board. But, as I’ve now learned, “Education Specialist” doesn’t so much use the discussion board.

I in my e-mail explaining my absence from Chat 2, I said I’d keep an eye out for the transcript. Subtle, I know.

Chat 2’s questions for discussion were:

Some potentially beefy material.

Before I read the transcript, I checked back to see what the requirements for participation were…non-existent.

On the other hand, I found this:

While no set requirements for participation exist, we are to write a synopsis of what we’ve learned in the chat and copy and paste it to our “Chat Log” along with our compiled responses to the weekly discussion forum.
I’m a bit worried that option 4 here runs in contrast with option 2 for those who missed the chat. Seems even if I opt for option 2, I’ll still need to include option 4 which is the same as option 1 above.

Here’s where I’d normally make the argument for putting all information in the same place, but I don’t have it in me right now.

Baffled, I’ve turned to the transcript.

Here’s how the discussion began:

The response to that one was kind of ugly.

The answers, by the way, Active Learning and Classroom Management. The first one makes me chuckle every time.

Then “Education Specialist” said:


But not everyone had finished typing the first strands, so it was a mix of strands  in what was an actual request to repeat specific information back to the instructor.

In the middle of it all, someone asked a question about an upcoming assignment and received the reply:

Burn.

It was difficult to read the rest of the transcript. “Education Specialist” would yell each successive pre-announced question and my peers would type their responses back to “Education Specialist.”

Here’s the only feedback I could find:

Warms the cockles, no?

Forty-seven minutes in, and it was over.

Kaput.

In this course, we’ve read (or were assigned to read) multiple chapters about making learning active, moving from a teacher-centered approach, making learning authentic and multiple modalities.

Then, in one of the 3 times we’re all in the same “room,” it’s straight-forward teacher-centered call and response. Desperate for any actual evidence of, you know, chat, I took a tally.

In the discussion that took place before “Education Specialist” left the room, peers responded directly to one another a total of 5 times. Those responses were generally along the lines of “I have used that tool and find it very helpful as well in the math classroom.”

Hardly the free, open and democratic exchange of ideas I work to facilitate in my classroom.

Chat can and should be a much more powerful tool for facilitating learning from varied geographic areas.

Election Night 2008, I sat in Chris’ living room with my laptop, logged in to a moodle chat room open to all SLA learners for discussion of the history that was being made. People were throwing out commentary, questions, answers, tips for the channel with the best coverage. When it got down to the wire, a rich conversation started about how some news outlets were calling the election whilst others were not.

No pre-fab discussion questions were needed. Something interesting to talk about and learn from was happening and so we got together to explore it.

This week, seasoned educators from around the country were asked “What techniques do you utilize to manage classroom behavior?” and 3 people responded with 10 lines of text.

Every second of the 47 minutes that chat was being facilitated could and should have been dedicated to just that question. Teachers from multiple disciplines talking about what they do to set and maintain the climate of their classrooms, and we spent maybe 5 minutes.

This isn’t active learning. This isn’t inquiry. This isn’t constructivist. This isn’t, well, it just isn’t.
“HOW DO YOU INCORPORATE THE THEORIES OF VYGOTSKI, PIAGET, DEWEY, ERIKSON AND OTHE THEORISTS INTO YOUR CLASSROOM[?]”

Better than this.

Hi, you’re doing it wrong.

Hi, you’re doing it wrong: Discussion Forum

As I’ve explained, I started my master’s program three weeks ago. Through an online program, I’ll have a Master’s of Teaching and Learning in Curriculum and Instruction in 14 months. It’s my first time in an all-online learning environment. They’re doing it wrong.

There were stone tools, there was the wheel, there was online learning, there was the discussion board.

Instructors looked at this and said it was good.

Learners looked at this and said was annoyingly restrictive at times.

The discussion board for my current master’s class looks like this:

The standing assignment for the discussions says:

The “Education Specialist” has contributed to this discussion board this many times:

0

Here’s why “Education Specialist” needs not worry about joining in:

Learner’s options for posting new threads to the discussion board look like this:

That’s right, we can’t.

Some thoughts:

  • I don’t always have 250 words in response to the posted discussion questions that are often meant only to check if we’ve completed the reading.
  • Requiring me to reply to 2 people means I tend to reply to the two folks who posted their responses earliest and never read the responses of those who follow.
  • Knowing people are responding to what I wrote because they were required to spend 100 words on my thinking cheapens it.
  • Inferring that my discussion log is going to be used to check for completion and not quality of discussion cheapens it.
  • Not being able to post what I like when I find it cuts out the possibility of organic discussion and learning.

I don’t find future contributions from “Education Specialist” likely either. There’s no pushing of thinking, there’s no questioning of our premises, no “Oh, I found this link to this article related to the reading for this week.”

The others in the class have picked up on the hoop-jumping nature of the discussion board assignment as well. Posts are empty, enough words to get by and then done. Not about the ideas, but about the word count.
Not that the questions lend themselves to real depth.

The one assignment from the course where I’d like to have seen and responded to my peers’ work and have them do the same for mine was the drafting of our philosophies of teaching. These documents outlining who we are as teachers and where we come from could have led to some interesting discussion and thinking.

The philosophies went straight to the assignment dropbox. Why collaborate on those?

I’ve used the moodle discussion forum in teaching many times. I’ll throw a forum up for sharing resources or giving feedback on drafts of essays or discussing readings. I’ve done the whole “respond to two other people” thing. I don’t know that I’ll be doing that again. I’ve come to realize it’s the online equivalent of forced mingling. The worry could be that people won’t respond to one another if not required to. If you have to require someone to use the tool and they wouldn’t normally do so, you might be using the wrong tool. Maybe content matters?

I’ll certainly be keeping this experience in mind the next time I use the discussion forum in class. Discussion isn’t enough. It seems we need actually be saying something.

Hi, you’re doing it wrong.

The best part of today

Day 3 at Wavecrest Primary saw an hour of play time for the grade 7 teachers, the vice principal and the school’s lab assistant. The way Benji and I have been handling things is sitting the laptop on the desk in the case at the top of the session and saying, “Ok, let’s start. First, would you hook up the laptop please?”

Startled looks.

“Don’t worry. We won’t let you do anything that can’t be fixed.”

Cautiously they began.

We’ve met with the grade-level teachers for every grade in the school.

Some teachers have never touched a laptop before. The adapter on the VGA cable has been a cause of difficulty for most. Once past it, we tell them to play with the SMART Board doing anything they’d like.

A quizzical look.

“Seriously.”

Eventually they start to play.

By the end of the hour, once they’ve learned how to shut down and pack up the laptop, every teacher says something to the effect of “I didn’t know I could do that.”

It’s pretty awesome to see teachers get so jazzed about something they can use immediately in their practice.

Today, after our sessions, I got to visit classes.

I started with Ms. Hendricks’ Reception Level (kindergarten) class. We were learning listening skills by clapping when she said the word “sun” – more difficult than you might think.

From there, I joined Ms. La Vita’s grade 4 class in the computer lab. They were using Encarta Kids to find maps of South Africa. Then, Ms. La Vita let them use the Games and Activities section.

Twenty-six computers, 40 plus learners. They were 2 to a machine. Except Wallace. He’d sat at the machine with the bunk monitor.

I tried to fix it but I couldn’t.

I pulled out my laptop.

We looked at pictures from this year and last on iPhoto. I was getting ready to go talk to the rest of the class, so I opened Word. “Write a note about whatever you want,” I said.

“Write a note to who?”

“To me.”

“Ok,” he said with a pensive look.

Fifteen minutes later, Wallace waved me to the back of the room.

Here’s what he wrote:

I know he doesn’t know me. I know I’m not really his hero. But, he typed it for me. He was proud of it. So, no matter how cynical you are, let me think, for today, that I’m Wallace’s hero and he’ll miss me.

Hi, you’re doing it wrong: Course Design

As I’ve explained, I started my master’s program three weeks ago. Through an online program, I’ll have a Master’s of Teaching and Learning in Curriculum and Instruction in 14 months. It’s my first time in an all-online learning environment. They’re doing it wrong.

This is the front page of my current course:

This is the discussion forum:
You’ll note there are multiple threads. That’s because not everyone in the course responds to the weekly discussion questions through reply.
Here’s a classmate’s response post:
Here’s my attempt to preemptively stop all of my classmates from posting their discussions and responses as file attachments:

The “Education Specialist” has a thread about each upcoming assignment, except one that was due last Sunday. On the syllabus, it’s due next Sunday:

On the due date sheet, it was due last Sunday:
In the course dropbox, it was due last Sunday:
In the discussion forum, where we’ve been alerted to how to complete all assignments, not a peep:
My e-mail:

The “Education Specialist’s” response:
The page that has heretofore gone unmentioned in the discussion forum:

Each course at SLA uses moodle as a content delivery system. From time to time, I’ve attempted to use Google Calendar or other means of delivering due dates and course assignments. It hasn’t worked. My learners have looked in one place. If I put it in one place, they know where to look. It makes the actual work easier if they don’t have to search for assignment due dates and descriptions.
The same could be said for this course.
In short, they’re doing it wrong.