The School Principal Blog

Despite the nation’s commitment to the ideal of universal access to education, our public schools frequently fall short of meeting the changing needs of students across the spectrum. The “no child left behind” mandate has still let some students slip through the cracks, revealing the structural deficiencies in our public school system. Schools struggle under budget constraints, and even the most dedicated teachers are only human. As it turns out, the one-size-fits-all approach is not the best fit when it comes to instruction since there isn’t just a single learning style that suits every student.

New entrepreneurial efforts are answering this need and seizing an opportunity to fill this educational gap with the latest in technology. They aim to provide educational solutions via technological avenues, offering software to supplement brick and mortar school instruction and even operating schools online. Technology offers the hope of bridging skill gaps by customizing instruction to target specific academic needs. And it helps fill the gap in science and math at the teaching level since instructors often lack experiential background in these subjects.

A major force in this new wave of online instruction is Ron Packard, CEO of K12. Inspired by his own futile search for a complete online course to help a daughter struggling with math, Packard devised a business model for a full-fledged web-based school. K12 now provides over 20,000 hours of instructional content covering the full K-12 progression (see story in Forbes). Operating its own web-based school as well as furnishing support to other online schools, K12 serves 70,000 pupils and generates $400 million in revenue.

While K12’s students aren’t a representative sample of the public school population, they all have needs which public schools failed to satisfy. They are students with exceptional talents as well as exceptional needs. Online schools cater to scholar athletes and others who find conventional school schedules conflict with extracurricular passions. In some cases, parents turn to online instruction because they see their own values in conflict with those represented by public school instruction.

Apex Learning is another entrant in this growing field. In operation since 1997, Apex Learning targets poor academic performers who are at risk of becoming part of a growing statistic, the million annual high school drop-outs. In addition to distance instruction courses, Apex Learning markets its programs to public schools, enabling more individualized, computer-focused learning in a regular classroom setting.

Making inroads into the achievement gap, Revolution Prep offers software that helps pinpoint and address concept/skill deficiencies. Its program has been adopted by Los Angeles schools to help struggling high school students pass mandated exit tests.

Confronting the challenges and limitations in our present public school system, technology is helping transform the role of teacher from lecturer to facilitator, and easing the workload on instructors at the same time. Technology provides a workable means of identifying and serving the unique academic needs of diverse students, while freeing teachers from some of the burden of devising and implementing lesson plans, and even filling the gap in subject expertise.

The idea of standardized online curriculum in public schools may strike some as revolutionary. But as weaknesses in the well-intentioned educational policies of the past grow more apparent, the concept seems tailor-made for the future of digital technologies in schools.

Have you used online curriculum from third parties at your school?

This post has been republished from the Intand blog.

David Warlick at 2 Cents Worth shares some ideas on how to create a culture of learning in schools in the blog post 10 Ways to Promote Learning Lifestyle in Your School.

1. Hire learners. Ask prospective employees, “Tell me about something that you have learned lately.” “How did you learn it?” “What are you seeking to learn more about right now?”
2. Open your faculty meetings with something that you’ve just learned – and how you learned it. It does not have to be about school, instruction, education managements, or the latest theories of learning.
3. Make frequent mention of your Twitter stream, RSS reader, specific bloggers you read. Again, this should not be limited to job specific topics.
4. Share links to specific TED talks or other mini-lectures by interesting and smart people, then share and ask for reactions during faculty meetings, in the halls, or during casual conversations with employees and parents just before the PTO meeting.
5. Include in the daily announcements, something new and interesting (Did you know that a California power utility has just gotten permission to start buying electricity from outer space?).

You can read the rest of his ideas at 2 Cents Worth.

These are good ideas to encourage teachers to encourage students to be lifelong learners. While not everyone is as curious as others, there are ways to unleash students’ inner curiosity. Another idea is to encourage students to teach other students what they have learned, similar to the practice of “see one, do one, teach one” in medical schools. Students who have to teach their peers, may be more motivated to learn the material.

At a recent conference on Breakthrough Learning in the Digital Age, Google co-founder Sergey Brin addressed the increasingly prominent role of technology in schools. Paradoxically a high-school drop-out himself, Brin is part of the search engine monolith’s mission to advance the ideal of universal computer access. Stepping up its involvement in the educational arena, Google has lately supplied schools with its top apps at no charge. But the technology giant’s agenda isn’t all altruism. Google’s growing interest and generosity serve a dual purpose, arming the next generation with the latest tools for success while weaning them on Google’s own brand, thus ensuring a pipeline of future consumers already conversant in the language of the company’s product line.

Brin expressed his conviction that today’s curriculum needs to reflect technology’s expanded role, suggesting that the subject of computer science be given a slot alongside math and English in schools. He promoted the idea of textbook downloads and proposed that students be utilized as tech tutors for younger kids as well as seniors. Students, he suggested, could polish their writing skills as Wikipedia contributors. And Brin was adamant that we could not afford to neglect teachers, insisting that our educators need to be better rewarded.

The proliferation of broadband and the increasing affordability of computer equipment are putting technology within reach of greater numbers with each passing day. Yet even as he foresees a future approaching that ideal of universal access, Brin perceives a downside for students in this digital age, recognizing that expanding horizons can be a humbling, ego-deflating experience. Gaining a global perspective can make one’s own talents seem puny by comparison.

Critics might argue that technology and its availability alone are not the answer to what ails the educational system. Putting laptops in the hands of every student is not enough without the input of dedicated teachers, involved parents, and supportive communities. Children are already wired by nature to learn. Sometimes we just need to get out of the way and remove the barriers to learning.

Providing students with the right tools only makes sense. If Google and its counterparts in the tech sector are eager to help underwrite that effort, our financially strapped schools are sure to welcome the support. However, there needs to be a caveat. Not that long ago, schools across the nation were reconsidering having jumped at the chance to earn a few perks by allowing the big soda companies to stock their products in cafeteria vending machines. Whether by coincidence or consequence, a wave of childhood obesity followed. As we usher in the digital age with the support of giants like Google, schools should take care not to sell out the malleable minds in their charge.

Image source http://www.flickr.com/photos/dannysullivan/ / CC BY 2.0

Some schools are attempting to get laptops assigned to every student to help students prepare for a world where computer literacy is becoming an increasingly important ingredient for success. With netbooks costing as low as $250, it seems like a no brainer to equip every child with a portable PC. But then there is the question of whether computer literacy is more important than book literacy. Reading is still an essential part of learning and a lot can be learned from reading books. If you think reading is more important, then you might advocate that every student get assigned a kindle e-book reader.

Here’s a quote from a Scholastic article

Kindles stocked with well-chosen e-books would also allow teachers to flex new teaching strategies, according to Cornelia Brunner, the deputy director at the Center for Children and Technology in New York City. “You could have a very nicely selected group of readings. . . . Kids could read, annotate, and actually clip and be asked to make connections among those clippings,” says Brunner.

Other possible benefits include providing students with more books electronically than is practical in print, reducing photocopying, relieving the unhealthy weight of student backpacks, and—though this case is far from proven—saving school districts money on textbooks.

An education think-tank led be former Clinton advisor Thomas Z. Freedman, even proposed giving a Kindle to every student in the country in a paper titled A Kindle in Every Backpack. According to the paper:

We shouldn’t wait a decade or two to begin to achieve what is inevitable — an education system where each American schoolchild has an eTextbook, like Amazon’s Kindle, loaded with the most up-to-date and interactive teaching materials and texts available,” the paper argues. “The ‘Kindle in every backpack’ concept isn’t just an educational gimmick—it could improve education quality and save money.

One solution may be to use an ebook reader application on the laptops so students can have the best of both technologies.

Do you think it would be more effective for students to have laptops or ebook readers?

Photo by Yutaka Tsutano

The following article from Open Education discusses whether textbooks are becoming less relevant in education due to advances in digital media.

There was a large touch of irony in an August NY Times post discussing the demise of a fixture in the world of education, the school textbook. The article, In a Digital Future, Textbooks Are History, predicts the death of an industry that is becoming “antiquated” with each passing tech innovation.

Though always considered exceedingly expensive, textbooks were once considered as fundamental to the classroom learning experience as the teacher. These tombs were the source of knowledge, the drivers of curriculum, and the teacher’s most important resource.

But all that has changed in the digital world. According to experts, there are two critical factors.

First, there is the assessment of the value (learning produced per dollar) of these texts:

Dollars in the books, isolated on white background, business tra“They are expensive,” writes Seth Godin. “$50 is the low end, $200 is more typical.”

Yet,

“Textbooks have very little narrative,” writes Godin. “They don’t take you from a place of ignorance to a place of insight. Instead, even the best … textbooks surround you with a fairly non-connected series of vocabulary words, oversimplified problems and random examples.”

And of course, in today’s lightening-fast world, they are out of date before the ink is even dry.

Second, while the books are essentially considered less than ideal, we are seeing an enormous change in students based on the fact they have grown up with technology. From the NY Times:

“Kids are wired differently these days,” said Sheryl R. Abshire, chief technology officer for the Calcasieu Parish school system in Lake Charles, La. “They’re digitally nimble. They multitask, transpose and extrapolate. And they think of knowledge as infinite.

“They don’t engage with textbooks that are finite, linear and rote,” Dr. Abshire continued. “Teachers need digital resources to find those documents, those blogs, those wikis that get them beyond the plain vanilla curriculum in the textbooks.”

Beyond Textbooks

Today we offer a Q & A with Andy Chlup of the Vail School District. With experience as a classroom teacher and technology coordinator, Andy is a perfect choice to head up one of the digital learning movements cited in the aforementioned NY Times article, Beyond Textbooks.

Andy notes he has been passionate about utilizing technology in the classroom from the first day he walked into a classroom. His interest in digital learning was spurred on by the wide-spread availability of open-source web-based tools such as WordpressMU, Moodle, DekiWiki, and many more.

Below, Andy discusses the move to a digital learning model, one that actually transcends any discussion of textbooks.

What would you categorize as the three biggest advantages to moving away from textbooks and replacing that tradition with a digital learning model?

• Instant updates. Our superintendent, Calvin Baker, proudly sent out an email message to the school board when Pluto was demoted. In the message he said, we are one of the only districts in the country who’s textbooks are not obsolete.

• Collaboration. At this phase the primary collaboration is happening between teachers but as the tools become more familiar students will be working with each other, their teachers, and the community more and more.

• Costs. While the technology that enables digital learning still costs slightly more than a set of textbooks, it can do so much more. A digital device provides access to content and gives students a platform to create, share, and work.

You can see the full interview with Andy Chlup over at Open Education.

Photo credit:http://www.flickr.com/photos/gingerblokey/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

Damon, a 11-year old student journalist from Florida got an interview with the president at the White House and grilled him on everything from school lunches, to school violence, and improving education. See the following video for more.

Christopher D. Sessums discusses the paradox of learning in the digital era, which is that the internet makes learning both more individual and yet more social. For more on this see the following post from Christopher D. Sessums blog.

The World Wide Web is more than a collection of websites. “It is also what emerges out of the collection of and interconnections among the sites that constitute it, producing software or websites that re-imagine what is possible technologically and socially.” (Thomas & Brown, 2009, p. 37) This emergence of interconnections has resulted in what we might refer to as the digital era.

However, there is a paradox associated with learning in the digital era: Learning may be at once more individual, shaped to one’s own style, eccentricities, and interests, yet more social, involving networking, cooperation, and collaboration (Weigel, James, & Gardner, 2009).

Unfortunately, in an environment of standardized testing linked to school funding, the implementation of new digital media in the classroom along with constructivist learning principles may be considered too risky, thus the innovative aspects of new digital media becomes shelved if not ignored altogether (i.e., the relevance gap).

As evidence grows concerning the knowledge, skills, and competencies gained through engaging new digital media, conventional notions of “school as the ideal locus of the full range of learning” are being overshadowed (Weigel, James, & Gardner, 2009, p. 9).

“If schools do not take seriously the positive and negative potentials of digital media for learning, they risk becoming increasingly irrelevant to the lives students lead outside of school and to the future which they are being prepared” (Weigel, James, & Gardner, 2009, p. 14).

What will change schools?
If a successful learning practice depends upon “an independent, constructivistically oriented learner who can identify, locate, process, and synthesize the information he or she is lacking” (Weigel, James, & Gardner, 2009, p. 10), then systemic change and widespread adoption requires

• informed leadership (Fullan, 2007);

• all stakeholders (teachers, principals, parents, community members) to be aware of and familiar with the innovations associated with digital learning (Ellsworth, 2004); and

• schools must adopt digital learning wholesale today (not tomorrow) (Christensen, 2008).

To those who read about and engage in the new digital media, what, in your opinion needs to be added to this list? What steps are you taking? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments or in your own Web space.

This article was republished from Christopher D. Sessums blog and is licensed under the Creative Commons 2.5 license.

Photo by Unhindered by Talent

A new charter school in New York may answer the question- what would happen if you paid teachers really well? Would you attract top talent and would that improve school performance?

From The New York Times-

The school, called the Equity Project, is premised on the theory that excellent teachers — and not revolutionary technology, talented principals or small class size — are the critical ingredient for success. Experts hope it could offer a window into some of the most pressing and elusive questions in education: Is a collection of superb teachers enough to make a great school? Are six-figure salaries the way to get them? And just what makes a teacher great?

The talent question may have already been answered. The school had their pick of 600 applicants including a former personal trainer of Kobe Bryant and graduates from top US colleges. The school’s founder, Zeke M. Vanderhoek, interviewed 100 applicants to build a teaching dream team for the school that is set to open in New York’s Washington Heights area.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

See the full New York Times article.

The book Brain Rules discusses how what we know from brain science can be applied in the classroom. It describes the University of Bologna, one of the first western style universities which was established in the 11th century. The science lab involved a mixture of astrology, religion, and dead animals, yet the classroom was remarkably familiar to today’s classroom. The standard 11th century Bologna classroom included a lectern surrounded by chairs, which begs the question - could it be time for a change?

A recent post at Open Education suggests a student-centered classroom instead of the traditional teacher-centered classroom.

As we move towards greater use of technology within education, there is a push away from the traditional, teacher-centered classroom to one that is student-centered. While offering some very interesting potential for teachers, one element that appears to be taken for granted as we seek to make a student-centered classroom work is the need for a motivated learner.

One of the most significant criticisms leveled against teacher-centered classrooms is that such an environment actually fosters a level of student passivity over time. The belief is that using more of a “guide on the side” or a discovery-learning approach featuring essential question formats would be far superior to our current practice of a set curricula driving classroom instruction.

That belief is founded in great part on the notion that curiosity is an innate characteristic in children. Therefore, in teacher preparation programs, the focus should be on developing a teaching arsenal that unleashes this fundamental human trait.

Such a belief has lead to a discussion that we should replace traditional pedagogical or “child-leading” teaching strategies with andragogical or “man-leading” approaches. The shift is seen as moving away from “taught” education to learning that is self-directed.

But as we noted earlier, such a shift is dependent upon a certain level of motivation from the learner as well as the notion that curiosity is innate.

If students were given a more active role in the classroom, I think it would make for a much more effective education system. The challenge is how to tap into the innate curiosity and desire to learn, which may be the “holy grail” of education.

A survey by Vanderbilt University found that 50 percent of teachers “are not prepared to teach students how to write well and rarely assign complex writing tasks.” The research by Vanderbilt professor Steve Graham was published this spring in the Journal of Educational Psychology.

According to the article at Vanderbilt’s News Network:

The lack of writing and writing instruction was more pronounced in social studies and science, but even language arts teachers provided little writing instruction for their students,” Graham said. “Another disturbing finding was the sizable number of teachers who made few or no adaptations in their teaching efforts to assist weaker writers.

According to the results, teachers rarely ask high school students to complete assignments that involve writing more than a single paragraph, and most common writing assignments involve little to no analysis or interpretation. Some teachers reported using a variety of effective writing practices, but indicated that the use was infrequent, removing their effectiveness.

Writing is an important tool for educational, occupational and social success,” Graham said. “Writing instruction needs to be reformed to improve high school student work as well as strengthening the ability for success in college and beyond.

This is an alarming study because the ability to write effectively is an important skill in the workplace and you could argue it is becoming more important as professionals are more likely to write for a work related blog whether they are in business, journalism, or other fields. The growth of the cell phone and social media culture can develop bad habits such as poor grammar and punctuation that should be addressed in the classroom. Teens with cellphones avg 2,272 text messages a month, compared with 203 calls according to a Nielsen study.

One simple way that could help students to become more effective writers is to encourage student blogs. Blogs require students to write long form compositions that require analysis and critical thinking. Since it is publicly viewable, students will want to proofread for correct spelling, punctuation and grammar. It is also a fun way to express yourself and can even encourage a passion for writing.