Frank Barnes's List: 1:1 General

• EducationSuperHighway

• Access to high-speed broadband in our schools and libraries is critical for America’s children. As more than 50 CEOs, including the heads of Facebook, Google and Microsoft, wrote in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), “If our schools do not embrace technology and the Internet, our children will be unable to compete in the global economy.”
• “If our schools do not embrace technology and the Internet, our children will be unable to compete in the global economy.”
• And, as shown in a meta-analysis published in the Review of Educational Research based on 40 years of research, we know that technology in learning spaces has made a significant impact on student achievement time and again.
• And, as shown in a meta-analysis published in the Review of Educational Research based on 40 years of research, we know that technology in learning spaces has made a significant impact on student achievement time and again.

  • Learning spaces are everywhere, and learning is all the time.

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• But the rationale that I find most disturbing — despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it’s rarely made explicit — is the idea that it will increase our efficiency . . . at teaching in the same way that’s persisted for a very long time.
• Despite corporate-style declarations about the benefits of “innovation” and “disruption,” new forms of technology in the classroom mesh quite comfortably with an old-school model of teaching that consists of pouring a bunch o’ facts into empty receptacles.

  • One value I see is that using technology forces both teachers and students to adapt to new learning.
• “What kinds of learning should be taking place in those schools?”  If we favor an approach by which students actively construct meaning, an interactive process that involves a deep understanding of ideas and emerges from the interests and questions of the learners themselves, well, then we’d be open to kinds of technology that truly support this kind of inquiry. 
• create, design, produce, construct
• make things collaboratively
• meaningful learning never requires technology
• these are examples of how technology may make the process a bit more efficient or less dreary but does nothing to challenge the outdated pedagogy.

  • Pretty much the substitution level of SAMR.
• The first involves adjusting the difficulty level of prefabricated skills-based exercises based on students’ test scores, and it requires the purchase of software. 

  • I don't buy this definition.
• personalized
• personal
• the presence of a caring teacher who knows each child well.

  • This is pretty much the key to it all.
• “a host of national and regional surveys suggest that teachers are far more likely to use tech to make their own jobs easier and to supplement traditional instructional strategies than to put students in control of their own learning.” 

  • Making a teacher's job easier is a nice perk, but it should never be the primary reason for using technology.
• But even if ed tech were adopted as thoughtfully as its proponents claim, we’re still left with deep reasons to be concerned  about the outmoded model of teaching that it helps to preserve — or at least fails to help us move beyond. 

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• "The introduction of computers into schools was supposed to improve academic achievement and alter how teachers taught," said Stanford University education professor Larry Cuban. "Neither has occurred."

  • Teachers need to change the way the teach in order for this to happen. It's not simply using technology to teach in the same way; it's beginning with the needs of the learner and working out from there.
• "There's nothing transformative about every kid having an iPad unless you're able to reach higher-order teaching and learning,"
• "You can do student-centered teaching without technology. There have been teachers doing that for a long time," said Wendy Drexler, ISTE's chief innovation officer. "But tech is not going away, and we want to have teachers using it effectively."
• "I decided my personal goal was to turn my classroom into a model so other teachers who want to start down this pathway have someone to come and [observe]."
• But Mount Pleasant Principal Heather Austin said that only about 5 percent of her school's teachers are even in the same ballpark as Ms. Howton when it comes to making effective use of classroom technology. Another 5 percent are extremely resistant to use just about any ed tech.
• "They're using [technology] to enhance what they're doing, but they haven't really given students control over it."
• For the most part, he concluded, "even in computer-based classes, teacher-centered instruction with a mix of student-centered practices was the norm."

  • This is a teacher and teacher education issue, not a student/learner issue. Schools of education need to take responsibility to make sure their graduates are prepared to have their students learn in a manner and using the tools that drive today's social, economic, and governmental reality. Anything less is irresponsible.
• "In general, teachers at many schools seemed to view technology as a more valuable tool for themselves than for their students,"

  • This is a big part of the problem. Teachers and conventional wisdom continue to identify the teacher as the central focus for providing an effective learning environment. Wrong. It's the student, and everything the teacher does needs to address the needs of each individual student in his or her charge. As long as conventional wisdom remains static, we will continue to have this misinterpretation of how to foster student learning, with or without technology.
• One big issue: Many teachers lack an understanding of how educational technology works.

  • TahDah!
• But the greater challenge, the researchers wrote, is in expanding teachers' knowledge of new instructional practices that will allow them to select and use the right technology, in the right way, with the right students, for the right purpose.

  • And this is where schools of education and district professional learning comes in.
• It felt crazy

  • Why? I don't buy it. It sounds like whatever training this person received regarding tech integration is falling far short of what needs to be offered.
• "The smarter districts use those teachers to teach other teachers how to integrate tech into their lessons,"
• "The dumb ones use vendors to provide professional development and force teachers to attend those sessions."

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• Next, a leaderboard appears, ranking the top five students by points accrued.

  • What does best practice tell us about student engagement? Listing the top five reminds me of Olympics scoring practice, but how does it affect the kids that never place in the top? How do we address this? (Legitimate question, not a roadblock.)
• Still, it’s too early to tell whether Kahoot will ultimately improve learning for students or simply provide edutainment.

  • This depends on how the teacher uses the information garnered from the game.
• engagement,” or the belief that the more an activity interests students, the more motivated they will be to learn. Another is “gamification,” the practice of applying elements from games to nongame realms.
• And many students are playing to win, partly by competing on speed
• But the constant competition and quantification could also be off-putting.

• “Some people love being ranked and having points and status,” says Neil Selwyn, a professor of education at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, who studies how schools use technology. “But I bet it doesn’t appeal to every student in the same way.”

• A small study by the start-up of college students in Norway concluded that there was no significant difference in test results between those who took a Kahoot quiz and those who took a traditional quiz on paper. But the Kahooters reported enjoying their experience more.

  “We are looking at emotional engagement,” Mr. Brand said.

• Nolan Sullivan, a social studies teacher at La Salle Academy, a Catholic high school for boys in Manhattan, prefers to use Kahoot without the video game music or the gong. He says he often asks his ninth graders to devise their own questions on subjects they learn in class, such as medieval or Islamic history. Then he incorporates them into the quiz.

  Asking his students to create their own questions, he says, gives them extra motivation to understand their lessons. It also has them coming back for more.

  “When we are doing test prep, my students will say, ‘Mr. Sullivan, are we Kahooting tomorrow?’” he told me. “Kahooting is an actual word now.”

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