Technivista's School Renewal Project

Online Learning...let the game-changing begin

2010-01-29T16:01:00.000-08:00

The game is changing in education. The power behind the change is the Internet. Taking advantage of the web’s unique capabilities as an effective delivery method is transforming learning, and public awareness is increasing. News reports concerning e-Learning quadrupled during the last six months of 2009. For example:

- On January 27, CBS 2 Chicago featured a story on how the Chicago Public School system has begun outsourcing tutoring via the Internet to India. The results: students who averaged 27% correct on a test, took the 15 hours of online tutoring from India and shot up to an average of 72%.

- The same day, the New York Times' most e-mailed technology article was "The Web Way to Learn a Language." The article describes how language learning programs like RosettaStone, TellMeMore, and Livemocha are about to get web-enabled.

- The day before (1/26), CourseSmart posted a YouTube demo of its vision for an "e-Textbook/Backpack" tablet-based application.

The web has the power to completely transform the learning process. Education can be tailored for each student with a prescribed set of materials based on individual goals and previous accomplishments. The Internet allows content to be updated immediately and as often as needed. It also promotes collaboration in a way that has not been possible before with software-based learning. Collaboration can now occur not only with other students in class, but also with a student half a world away, like India.

Let the game-changing begin.

Teachers giving their passwords to students...seriously?

2010-01-22T08:53:00.000-08:00

Scenario #1: A teacher gives her password to a student class leader so he can go on the school's student information system and record the daily attendance for the class. The student logs in and does the attendance. But the student now also has access to the holy grail...grade reporting.

Scenario #2: A teacher grades student papers and writes the letter grade at the top of the each paper. He gives the stack of graded papers to a trusted student, writes down his password on a slip of paper, and asks the student to go over to the computer and enter the grades in an electronic grade book while he the teacher spends time helping students one-on-one. She logs in, enters the grades, and throws the slip of paper in the classroom garbage can. Another student sees all this, waits a bit, crumples up a sheet of paper, walks over to the garbage can, puts his paper in the can while grabbing the password paper, and now has the key to the kingdom.

I've heard Scenario #1 dozens of times. I've heard Scenario #2 just once, but for brevity I didn't write about the 32 other one-time scenarios I've heard about where teachers or administrators shared their login IDs and passwords with kids causing security breaches in electronic grading systems. These breaches aren't always done by the kids who are directly given access by teachers, but rather by their friends who they pass the passwords to.

Someone almost always gets caught but that's not the point. Under no circumstances should school staff be giving students access to grades. I was with a group of teachers and many admitted giving their IDs and passwords to "trustworthy" kids because the students could do the things that the teacher didn't have time for because they had to spend the little time they had doing actual teaching. And they wondered why this was a problem. Seriously?

Recipe for School Success: Get the right people on the bus, but first get the right leader, the right data, and the right plan

2010-01-08T07:33:00.000-08:00

In the bestselling book Good to Great Jim Collins says, "...to build a successful organization and team you must get the right people on the bus." His research shows that great companies and organizations do this. They get the right people and put them in the right seats (job responsibilities).

He's right, of course, but a lot of people say "Thanks, Captain Obvious." Lke any organization, districts/schools must first get the right leader in place (superintendent/principal) with the right data to analyze, and the right improvement plan, AND THEN work on getting rest of the right team members on the bus. How will you know who the right people are to get on the bus in the right seats unless you know exactly what pieces of the plan they will be responsible for and how their effectiveness will be measured?

My experience is that most educational institutions get the order of action incorrect. There are already people on the bus and they're usually the wrong people with the wrong talent or motivation, working with old, failing approaches, with little or no relevant data. There are enough challenges in education without having the impossible task of creating high performing schools using this fatally flawed equation.

One of the critical flaws right upfront is that local school boards are charged with selecting the superintendent. Rare is the great superintendent. And even more rare is the board that is collectively qualified and able to identify and select the great superintendent. The board relies on a professional search firm to identify and screen candidates. Like other headhunting firms, the firm's primary motivation is money. Their objective is to find a hirable candidate and get the position filled quickly so they can fulfill their job and get paid. The longer a search takes, the more time and money it costs the search firm.

Regardless, once the superintendent's on board. Then he or she must be able to see a clear picture of all things considered mission critical: finances, student performance, staff performance, building/safety conditions, cultural climate, community relations, parent involvement, technology use, legal issues, communications. More times than not, superintendents are forced develop this understanding on bad information, usually in the form of the opinions of others or, what those in the quality business call anecdotal evidence. Even the financial data is usually confusing at best and misreported at worst.

These days, one of the first orders of business that great superintendents embark upon is to get quality information/data systems in place so they can a) figure out what's really going on, and b) measure the impact of their decisions and actions going forward. Once they can see where they're at, then they can identify areas of strength and weakness and use their talents to develop a goal-oriented plan of action with valuable deliverables supported by intelligent data. Only then should they work on getting the right people on the bus in the right seats in order to execute the plan that will significantly improve the quality of their schools.

U.S. intelligence community underfire for not "connecting the dots." Schools have the same problem.

2010-01-06T07:58:00.000-08:00

Because of the recent terrorist attempt on Christmas, the United States intelligence community is taking a public flogging for failing to "connect the dots" as the intelligence info to stop the threat seemed to be available but nobody put it together effectively. As I watched President Obama speak on this last night, I thought of schools having the same type of challenge only in the case of education. Most school systems have the performance data on their students, teachers, and finances but few institutions put it all together, intelligently analyze it and then plug this intelligence into a system where relevant action can take place. Without doing this, the crisis in education cannot begin to be tackled because educators don't know where the problems (and successes) lie within the system. They really don't know where the system works and where it fails. Similar to the intelligence agencies, schools must begin to effectively identify, collect, organize, and leverage their valuable data.

"In other words, this was not a failure to collect intelligence; it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had," the president said. "The information was there, agencies and analysts who needed it had access to it, and our professionals were trained to look for it and to bring it all together."

Obama said he could accept the imperfect nature of intelligence work, "but it is increasingly clear that intelligence was not fully analyzed or fully leveraged," he said, adding: "That's not acceptable, and I will not tolerate it."

The president's statement on intel applies to schools as well. And school leaders and the American public should find it equally unacceptable and intolerable. The failure is costing us our kids' future and the future of our nation.

Reverse neglect: What about the smart kids?

2010-01-05T10:06:00.000-08:00

I was a member of a high school's long range planning committee. Our subcommittee focused on academics. Other teams concentrated on activities, finances, technology, or other strategic areas. A group of high school teachers who participated in my group explained that their students fell into three catagories: high achievers, average students, and "strugglers." I asked, given these three groups of kids, how did they teach their class? Did they teach to the average group? The response was no. They spend the majority of their time during the semester trying to teach the strugglers. I asked what do the high achievers and average students do during this time. One teacher said he let them "listen to their iPods or do their homework."

High achieving students "essentially know what has to be done to get an A. And they'll do the work on their own to get it done." The question becomes, do they really need teachers for instruction during every school day? They are intrinsically motivated to do well in their schoolwork.

The average students will do enough to get the B or C to keep their parents off their backs. In general, they will memorize enough to do OK on the tests but what did they actually learn about the subject?

High achievers in this high school (and most other high schools) find the greatest learning experience in AP (Advanced Placement) classes where the curriculum is most rigorous. In non-AP classes, they're very bored.

Organizing classrooms by "leveling" (grouping students by ability level) is highly unpopular among most teaching staffs. I guess it's because few teachers want to end up with the strugglers. Who wouldn't want to lead the classes made up with the highly motivated "best and brightest?"

A lot of the media attention and government money goes to helping struggling student groups and poor performing schools. It's clearly the right thing to do. But shouldn't we be devoting as much attention and money on further elevating the opportunities and development of the kids who are demonstrating extraordinary talents or the average students who may possess the capability to rise up to that higher level. At least in the high school classrooms where I served on the committee, those kids aren't much of a concern because for the most part they get by as best they can on their own. For them, rather then strap on the iPod, I think there's a terrific opportunity for technology in the classroom to serve as a tool for self-directed, individually-paced learning. Some, but not many good schools have embraced this approach. I wonder...what's the holdup for wider adoption?

Interactive White Boards...seriously?

2010-01-04T07:11:00.000-08:00

I recently went to a school district that was hot on Interactive White Boards (IWB) a couple years ago. They went out and purchased dozens of them. I asked what applications they were running on them today. I had visions of being told they were doing things that you see when CNN's John King stepped up to his "magic board" during the 2008 presidential campaign. You know, things like tapping on various places on the U.S. map and bringing up relevant stats, drilling down to individual locales, integrating with Google Earth, calling up videos. But the disheartening answer was the teachers primarily used the IWBs to show their PowerPoint presentations and sometimes to project DVD videos. As far as getting students up to the board to do...something "interactive"...well, "we don't really have much of that going on but we plan on doing a lot more of that." Really? When? How? Schools seem more interested in just HAVING the IWBs to show to parents ("See? We really are a 21st century school!"). Are the students learning more or is more "engaged learning" going on as a result of the IWB? I seriously doubt it. And that is one of the problems with technology in schools today. Few, very few places are getting the most out of it. It's kind of like a Christmas toy. It gets a lot of attention for a short time and then, well, as one teacher told me, "It just sits over on the side of the classroom."

Schools need data mining...and fast

2009-12-31T08:34:00.000-08:00

Simply put, data mining is the ability to take large amounts of data and find patterns (or exceptions). Schools need this capability to better figure out curriculum effectiveness, teacher/classroom quality, counseling needs, financial models, intervention flags, etc. Most schools have an abundance of data (although data quality and organization are usually weak) but the data is almost always analyzed too late to be effective and/or not utilized at all. What are the obstacles?

First and foremost, schools tend to be very slow to adopt new ideas and technology. The reason is a combination of money and an attitude of business-as-usual. The thinking is that systems are expensive. And they're right. But so are teachers, administrators, building additions/repairs, transportation, and other big ticket expenses. In a tight economy there is the stuff that's essential and the stuff you think you can do without. IT tends to fall in the latter category. The problem is that schools need a top-notch student information system, HR system, and financial management system combined with a data warehouse and data mining system to have any chance of quickly knowing what's working, what's not working, and what can be done NOW to improve student learning, classroom performance, and financial efficiencies. Nowadays, if these basic IT systems aren't in place and constantly used in medium to large schools or districts, their ability to dig out of the ditch of "under-performing" is next to impossible. And it's an unnecessary disservice to the students, parents, and school staff.

Why some Illinois schools don't want to Race to the Top

2009-12-28T18:02:00.000-08:00

Arne Duncan's Department of Education has put together the "Race to the Top" - the $4.35 billion competition to improve American schools. According to the Dept. of Ed's website, states must jump through four hoops to win a piece of the prize:

- Adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy;
- Building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction;
- Recruiting, developing, rewarding, and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most; and
- Turning around our lowest-achieving schools.

Illinois' Race for the Top application will be submitted by January 19th and will have a lot going for it including the state presenting a comprehensive plan, and, probably of utmost importance, the political clout of having President Obama and Secretary Duncan with Illinois ties.

But many school officials with whom I've spoken are skeptical and don't want to waste their time on it. Here are the concerns they mentioned:

- They doubt the state's ability to manage the program effectively.
- They don't think the teachers union will ever agree to tie teacher salaries to student performance data.
- They don't want the hassle of increased reporting and tracking data.
- They don't think "turning around low-achieving schools" can be achieved in Illinois unless "turning around" has a broad definition that includes "slowing down the decline."
- They complain about the low quality of teacher candidates coming out of colleges. One said "It's pretty abysmal."
- They don't see the Race to the Top program as having legs because they believe the Obama administration and a lot of current congress may not be around for too long.
- The program is big on charter schools which are politically risky.

It will be interesting to see how all of this plays out. Winners will be announced in April. Illinois figures to be one of them. Then what happens?