Tag: edweek

149/365 Help me Think about MOOCs

After reading this piece from EdWeek guest blogger Michelle Davis, I’ve more questions than answers around MOOCs.

They’ve been a bit of a mystery to me since I first hear about the massive open spaces a few years ago, and they have only gotten more so as they’ve developed and grown more popular.

In the piece, Davis describes “K-12 Teaching in the 21st Century,” a MOOC effort from Michigan Virtual University and Kent State University to help current and aspiring teachers navigate the technological landscape as it exists today. Aside from wishing the title were “Teaching Now,” I’m not quite sure how I feel about this course and others like it.

Are we doing what we didn’t like before, but bigger?

As I look at MOOC efforts, they strike me as the big box stores of education. This makes it feel strange when the same folks who champion connecting with students, the values of being able to build a network across time and space, and other humanist lines of thought also champion MOOCs.

Don’t these spaces present greater likelihood of anonymity and leave the forging of strong personal connections to chance? I’ve signed up for four MOOCs in the last two years and finished neither of them. Contrary to the views presented here, my intent on each registration was to finish the course, engage with its material and connect with other participants. With the exception of reading the recommended book for one of them. I did exactly none of that for any of them, and often left because I wasn’t interested in performing tasks that weren’t immediately relevant for teachers who would never know I’d left.

In each course, I saw a way to do the work without getting recognized, to slip through the course as a number, user name or email address, and to step away from the course without feeling as though I’d given up, stopped, or left something undone.

Shouldn’t I at least feel like I’d walked away from worthwhile work, missed connections with fellow travelers, or that my presence would be missed? Aren’t these the same questions we’ve been asking about standard classrooms where we’ve been trying to operationalize relevance and relationships for years?

Do we need to organize the Internet this way?

Am I wrong in feeling like the advent of Google and other search engines established the best version of a MOOC? Isn’t the Internet exactly a massive open course?

Part of the beauty of what I see in finding resources online is the manner in which I can curate exactly what I want to get my learning or a given task completed. I can cull multiple forums, jump to vimeo and youtube, throw together a google doc, and invite tweeps in to help me brainstorm. And, I can do all of this in a moment with any topic. Don’t MOOCs limit that open curation of tools, answers, and immediate assistance in important ways?

With a library card, an Internet connection, and a social media account, wouldn’t I have the same affordances of a MOOC without the limitations of playing by someone else’s structure?

Is this all in the service of data?

The language of most any formal school environment these days is replete with mentions of data. Decisions, discussions, and direct instruction are all driven by it. If the comments of the last section are true, and I can complete the learning of MOOCs without MOOCs using any number of free resources, does it stand to reason that we like these courses because it’s a way for schools and other organizations to be able to present data about the Internet?

Whereas I could learn something on my own before and no one but me would be any the wiser, does the construction and subsequent completion of a MOOC provide the satisfaction of gathering data that drives us to construct more MOOCs?

Rarely do I read articles about MOOCs that go beyond reporting on the course title or subject and the number of people who have enrolled or completed the course. The data points more interesting to me take longer to explain. They are the explanations of what people built as a result of participation. What shape did the expression of learning take within the course? What was the diversity of artifacts created? What depths of understanding are marked by certificates of completion?

Rarely, if at all, do I read explorations of these data points in relationship to MOOCs. This speaks, I fear to my first point above.

I’m still not sure.

I list the questions and concerns above because I need to know more about MOOCs and because I worry whenever millions of dollars of education funding start sliding toward any effort. It usually means they’re sliding away from something else.

As a result of MOOCs, it’s easier for me or someone a world away to access the thinking of people I’d not otherwise have had access to. In the name of MOOCs professors from leading institutions have had an impetus to do what millions of us were already using the Internet to do – share.

Is there more there? What are the unintended consequences of moving toward MOOCs? What possibilities, solutions, and learning environments are we ignoring as we pay attention to this model?

Help me think?

122/365 The Difference Between a Policy and a ‘Race’ (Part I)

Oklahoma ranked 34th and 20th in rounds 1 and 2 of Race to the Top, respectively. Connecticut ranked 25th in both rounds. Florida ranked 4th in both rounds and was awarded $700 million in Round 2 funding.

The difference between setting policy and sponsoring a competition is that it’s difficult to hold competition losers to the rules of the contest once they’ve lost. As states move to comply with the rules of the game they’ve already lost, we’re likely to see them taking their toys and going home. I can’t blame them.

According to this July 3 EdWeek piece, Oklahoma is having a difficult time pulling together the tech necessary to implement the digital edition of the PARCC assessment in the 2015-16 school year.

A survey of the state’s schools found only 20% of the states schools have the banwidth and devices necessary to deliver the assessment, according to EdWeek.

While they’re still planning on PARCC-ing, EdWeek reporter Benjamin Herold writes, “Officials said Oklahoma is not formally withdrawing from PARCC, but the details of how the state will remain involved now that it is not planning to use the consortium’s tests remain unclear.”

In Connecticut, officials have asked permission from federal officials to give schools the choice in which tests to administer to students. A Smarter Balanced state, Connecticut’s governor would like schools to be able “to choose whether to offer the Smarter Balanced test or the Mastery or CAPT test — or both” according to a July 11 article in The Hartford Courant.

Reporter Kathleen Megan suggests the delay in implementing Smarter Balanced testing is needed while teachers adjust to the new Common Core curriculum which is described as “more stringent” than original Connecticut standards.

If this is referring to comparisons such as the Fordham Institute’s 2010 comparison of CT to CC ELA standards, such a claim of stringency would appear apt.

Examining Fordham’s complaints about CT’s reading standards, though, reveals some questionable claims.

The reading expectations generally place as much emphasis on content-less and often unmeasurable comprehension skills and reading “reflection” and “behaviors” as they do on important content. For example:

Make connections to text representing different perspectives [such as] family, friendship, culture and tradition, generating personal and text-based responses [sic] (grade 2)

While it’s likely difficult to evaluate students’ connections to different perspectives, the claim that such skills as the ones above are unimportant is devoid of a basic understanding of the research surrounding what draws students into reading and keeps them there. This is to say nothing of the sustainability of civic awareness for students whose teachers encourage the taking on of multiple perspectives.

While it’s certain that Connecticut English Language Arts standards could likely have been revised toward increased clarity and structure, it’s unlikely they deserved the “D” awarded by Fordham compared to Common Core standards.

This is all to suggest that both Oklahoma and Connecticut are moving in a direction that isn’t directly tied to thoughtful consideration of what is best for their students and teachers.

According to the Children’s Defense Fund’s 2013 report on children in Oklahoma, “A child dies before his or her first birthday every 22 hours” in the state and nearly a third of Oklahoma 19-34 month olds are not fully immunized.

In Connecticut, the two main teachers unions have praised the governor’s request for flexibility. These are the same unions who were on board for the adoption of the new measurements of teacher effectiveness as required for the application for Race to the Top funding when it was first announced at the height of the economic collapse.

The money didn’t come to Connecticut and the state is bracing to take on new standards, tests, and systems of teacher evaluation just the same. With one year of flexibility, it’s likely that teachers will understand that all of the pieces to which their unions agreed are highly stressful and coming without the funding their acquiescences to these changes was meant to attract.

While it’s unlikely RttT losers like Connecticut will completely depart from the suggested path of the contest, there’s no policy or law keeping them from pausing to reflect on the rush of changes and asking, “What are our priorities for the children and adults in our education system based on the expertise of the system?”

To be certain, that dialogue will be better-informed, more thoughtful, and more productive than any policies adopted as part of a race.

What about Florida? That’s a post for tomorrow.

44/365 What is the measure of greatness of a school?

I’ve been asked by Sam Chaltain to contribute to the conversation over at EdWeek around the series A Year at Mission Hill. I’ll be offering a take on each episode and interpreting some of the research that might be relevant and trying to make it practical. My second piece went live today. You can find it here. For now, you can find the first episode of the series and my first piece below.

In last week’s introduction to the new 10-part series, A Year at Mission Hill, we’re asked an important and timeless question: “How do you create a great school?”

Like most important questions, to answer it we must ask other, deeper questions such as, “What do we mean by great?” “What is the measure of greatness of a school?” and “What greatness has come before us?” Together, our goal will be to use the lens of Mission Hill as a way to collect and translate some of the best thinking and research about how to improve schools and build their capacity for greatness.

Back in 1992, Richard Elmore named a key obstacle to great teaching, and, I would argue, great schools: failing to build the collective capacity of educators beyond the application of “research-based” strategies and tricks. “In current research,” Elmore wrote, “learning means the development of understanding, or the ability to perform complex cognitive tasks that require the active management of different types of knowledge around concrete problems.” To foster this kind of learning in their students, teachers needed — and still need — a different set of tools.

If this is how the students learn, then it must also be true of the teachers.

As Mission Hill Principal Ayla Gavins points out, “Everyone has value.”

Great schools work to uncover each person’s value, and make it explicit.

Some of the most impactful work I’ve seen in this area is the work of Norma Gonzalez, Luis Moll, and Cathy Amanti in their exploration of “funds of knowledge.” Rather than performing a study in order to publish it in a journal article for a select few, these educators chose a different and more practical tack: they trained teachers in the methods of social sciences, and then deployed teams of them into homes throughout the Mexican community of Tucson, Arizona.

These teams were not there to teach parents or students how they could better students’ performance in classrooms. Instead, they were there to discover what knowledge was implicit within these communities. Rather than view the families as impoverished citizens in need of being rescued, these researchers approached the homes they studied as places already rich in value, knowledge, and learning practices. In short, they began from the assumption that when Tucson’s Mexican-American children were at home, they were continuously fulfilling Richard Elmore’s definition of learning. And then they turned their sights on the classrooms from which the teacher-researchers originated and asked: “How can we integrate these deep funds of knowledge into our own teaching practices?”

Not unlike the conversations we’ve already seen taking place at Mission Hill, the Arizona teacher-researchers engaged in after-school conversations designed to compare what was going on in their classrooms with what they’d encountered and grown to understand about their students’ homes. Simply put, they were aligning their professional practices with the lives and experiences of their students.

These stories remind us that teachers who take the time to understand the “funds of knowledge” that surround their students outside of the classroom will learn to see their students as unique individuals with distinct abilities and needs. And while it’s true that this work is insufficient by itself in making and sustaining a great school, it’s equally clear that building such an understanding among adults is an essential ingredient toward deepening a school’s capacity for greatness.

27/365 Let’s Have a Better Conversation

My friend Sam Chaltain is telling “A Different Story About Public Education,” and I get to help him. Not only that, a great many voices are part of this conversation.

For 10 weeks, Sam and other edu-thinkers will be considering one episode per week of a series called A Year at Mission Hill that documents a year in the life of a successful public school.

In true trans-media spirit, the series promises to be a convening of those who are asking questions and doing the great work of improving public schools. More than that, it’s a portal that invites involvement in both the better conversation and the great work.

EPISODE ONE:

For my part, Sam’s given me space on his EdWeek blog to consider contemporary research relating to each chapter and try to filter it through the lens of a classroom teacher who might be interested in using the the work of ivory towers to improve their practice. My first attempt is here.

If nothing else, follow A Year at Mission Hill because it promises to ask, “What’s going write in public education?” rather than operating from the deficit perspective that’s all too familiar for anyone who’s listening to the rhetoric surrounding our schools. Let’s celebrate the greatness that’s possible, and ask how to help it spread.