By Ronald J. Bonnstetter: Available http://wolfweb.unr.edu/homepage/jcannon/ejse/bonnstetter.html

When I first started exploring inquiry-based learning several years ago, I found this chart to be extremely helpful in identifying different levels of inquiry. It was a way to look at a process to get students to think deeper and use problem solving and critical thinking skills in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. In traditional and structured inquiry, and even in guided inquiry, the teacher maintains control of the learning by providing the topic, question, materials, and procedures to assure students are learning what they need to learn to meet the requirements of the course, yet students are still exploring big, essential questions.  It was a good starting point for teachers who were uncertain about this model of teaching.

Recently, as I have been exploring the topics of personalized learning and curating, I have come to the conclusion that the two converge in the last column of this chart, labeled “student research.”   This column represents to me what personal learning is or can be.  Moving from the left to the right side of the chart, as the author Ronald Bonnstetter describes, is a paradigm shift –from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning.  He states, “This is the inquiry ultimate goal. At this point the student simply needs support and guidance from the teacher.”

Also, as we move from the left to the right side of the chart, students are taking more and more ownership of the learning.

The recent think tank organized by Discovery Education, “Beyond the Textbook” produced some great ideas and reflections from the participants as they brainstormed and shared ideas on what the future of textbooks should be.  Two comments in particular caught my attention:

Mary Beth Hertz wrote:

I imagine a techbook looking like a science notebook or journal. It would be a place where students can take notes, pin articles and videos, record experiments and discussions or lectures, organize data tied to these experiences sketch out ideas in words and pictures, and send and receive emails or other messages.

Frank Noschese wrote:

For me, going beyond the textbook means giving students a toolbox rather than an instruction manual…So what would a student see when they first opened such a book? It’s blank.

I agree with them.  And I think these are both descriptions of the last column of the table. If students can engage more in inquiry of their own making: questioning, curating, designing, and real-world problem solving, then students will own the learning.  This, to me, is what personalized learning should look like.

Photo by CRDM. http://crdm.wordpress.com/2010/12/10/crdm-speed-dating/

participants to initiate sign-ups for peer observations would work great in a faculty meeting. I called it “speed dating” because they really were setting a date –to do a peer observation!

Teachers in our DODEA grant project (K-12) have worked all year to design four in-depth units using the Understanding by Design process.  Most of these units will be implemented sometime this semester.  I had set up a Google Doc for teachers to post when they would be teaching a unit and would welcome peer observers so that other teachers could sign up to visit.  This idea looked good on paper, but it was just too messy, I think, and so no one was signing up either way.   That is when I thought of the speed dating idea.  Here is how it worked:

Teachers were instructed to prepare to share one of their units. They had 5 minutes to share during each rotation. Here are the directions they were given.

During each rotation, meet with a different teacher to exchange brief information about at least one UbD:

-Title/Subject/Grade Level
-Transfer Goal
-Understandings
-21^st century skill being modeled/taught/assessed
-Essential Question
-Performance Assessment

• “Sign up” with each teacher you are interested in observing
• You will have 5 minutes for each rotation – be prepared with what you will share since time will be short!  A music jingle will be played to signal time to move to the  next teacher. (“The Dating Game” theme)
• Online teachers will provide information about how their online classes can be “observed” asynchronously
• All  observation information will be transferred to our online Google Doc for peer observations

Room Set up:

The expectation was that by the end of the meeting, everyone would have signed up to observe at least one other teacher, and have at least one person coming to observe them.  In reality, most teachers came away with 3-4 peer observations to participate in.  (We are fortunate that our grant is paying for sub time for these peer observations to happen.)

Below are the documents I created for the activity. Feel free to share/use/adapt!

SPEED DATING Activity to review UbDs and sign up for observing

DATES CARD for Speed Dating

Observation Checklist and Comment Form

The Managing Complex Change Model is credited to Dr. Mary Lippit: http://tinyurl.com/c974qdw

CC Licensed by Mike Oliveri. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeoliveri/6300500597/sizes/z/in/photostream/

As we prepare to implement a pilot 1:1 program with iPads in my district, I keep thinking about this model which hangs prominently in my office.  Certainly the lessons learned from other districts who have gone before us indicate that this is a pretty good guide to use to steer us towards a successful 1:1 launch.  For instance, in the report, Examining Issues Critical to a 1:1 Learning Environment: Principal Leadership, it states “…schools must have the capabilities and strategies for the laptop use to be effective (Warschauer, 2006). This includes technology support, resources, and strong leadership guiding the programs.”

I decided to take a closer look at each of the elements in this chart and translate to the situation at hand.

Vision

Without vision, confusion is the result.

In our IT-Education Services department, we continuously share our vision that technology is not the “end” – but rather the tool that will allow teachers to transform learning for students.  We are working on a plan to use the Technology Integration Matrix  developed by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology to help them understand the vision of what transformation looks like. The matrix contains links to excellent short videos that show various levels of technology use and depth of learning across all subject areas and grade levels.

Skills

Without skills, anxiety is the result.

We are beginning to outline a plan for professional development for teachers who will be in the 1:1 pilot using the Understanding by Design model.  Thus, we are starting with the end in mind –our overall transfer goal of students using the technology at the point of need to connect with the “real world” and to allow choice in how they learn as well as in time, place, path, and/or pace in learning. (Innovative Innosight’s Blended Learning Model).  In following the UbD 2.0 Template, we are also identifying understandings, knowledge and skills that teachers will need to be successful with achieving the long-term transfer goal and vision.  We recognize that skills with using the technology are just as important to address as the vision and goals, and that we will most likely be working with teachers who are at many different levels in terms of their current skill and comfort level of using technology.  That is where the Technology Integration Matrix will come in handy – so that we can let teachers self-evaluate where they are currently in their practice, and then we can plan a tiered approach to the professional development to meet them where they are and help move them to the next level.

Incentives

Without incentives, change is more gradual.

In our situation, offering any kind of monetary incentives to teachers in the 1:1 pilot to learn new skills and pedagogy is probably not going to be possible.  We will do the best we can here, getting an iPad in their hands well in advance of deployment with students so they can begin to get comfortable with the technology. Additionally, we always make it possible for teachers to earn professional development credit towards recertification and incremental salary increases.  The thing is, we usually find that access to the technology itself for the teacher and their students is a HUGE incentive – for perhaps all except for the laggards (on the Diffusion of Innovation scale).

Resources

Without resources, frustration ensues.

We realize that resources can be everything from people (tech support) to tools, accessories, apps, best practice information, and robust networks.  Our 1:1 plan does call for beefing up the network in the pilot schools, and we will be sharing app information via our district’s iPad User Group wiki. One of our biggest areas of concern, however, is tech support.  The district has invested in 2 additional positions at the district level, but it will be up to the individual schools to decide whether or not to add additional tech support at the building level.

Action Plan

Without an action plan, you will be subject to a series of false starts – “the treadmill effect.”

The action plan is currently being written. We are linking this closely with the vision, objectives, tactics and action plan developed by the schools for learning and student achievement in general.

I’d really like to hear from anyone who has already implemented a 1:1 with iPads about what worked and what didn’t.

Roger Henson, Coordinator for the Schools of Innovative Learning & Technology, leads teachers through an exercise using the Technology Integration Matrix.

Yesterday, we brought together a small group of teachers in my district who I would describe as innovative leaders in the integration of technology to transform learning.  While we are not anywhere near 1:1 in our district, we will be piloting a 1:1 program in three of our schools next year.  We hoped to gain some ideas from these early adopters on how to best prepare the staff at the schools piloting 1:1 to use technology effectively.

The day began with the group of 12 teachers describing the kinds of technology currently available to them, and ways that they use this technology with students.  As the teachers described multiple innovative uses of technology for learning, I made note of some common themes:

• The technology enabled 24/7 learning – and students, on their own, extended their learning through the use of the device
• The projects the teachers shared, in addition to being technology-rich, all had some kind of personal connection for the students. For example:

• Using iBooks to create personal narratives
• Using the technology to connect with an authentic, sometimes global audience (Skype, wikis, blogs,etc.)
• Using technology to respond to student questions at the point of need
• The technology allows teachers to differentiate and blend learning
• Students are highly motivated  - “sparked!”
• Technology is used to create and share
• Students have some element of choice in the process of learning with the technology,  (freedom in how they researched, took notes, etc.) or the tool they use to create the final product i.e. – the less control a teacher exerted – the better!

What struck me most was that technology is used in these teachers’ classrooms to help students learn in ways that wouldn’t be possible without the technology. In other words, the technology wasn’t simply replacing an old way of doing things.

Here are some common characteristics of this group of teachers – including some that they expressed about themselves:

Tenacity: “It takes time to learn how to use the technology – but it’s worth it!”

Fearlessness:  “I’m an all or nothing kind of guy!”

Reflective:  These teachers are continuously evaluating and changing to meet the needs of the students.  For example, two of these teachers were our earliest adopters of flipped classrooms. They now have moved away from this practice, but shared that it was a very important step in getting where they are now in terms of using technology to transform learning.

Learning-Centered:  Technology is not the focal point.  These teachers use backwards design, so they start with what they want students to know and be able to do, and then design a performance assessment that allow the students to transfer the understandings – often in completing an authentic task.  Once these are determined, the learning activities are put into place.

What I am wondering now is this:  How can we help all teachers in our 1:1 pilot be successful with integrating the technology in their classroom?  If a teacher lacks the kind of tenacity and fearlessness that these teachers displayed, can they still learn and be successful in using the technology as effectively with students?

I’d love to hear from you! What kind of professional development has worked best for teachers of all abilities in 1:1 settings?

As teachers are beginning to share their units within their assigned peer groups, they are wondering how to best provide feedback to each other on one particular element that we requested, which is not specifically a part of the UbD  process. That is to purposefully incorporate at least one of Colorado’s 21^st century skills into the design.

To help them with this task, I created the following checklist:

What is it you want students to know and be able to do?

___Stage 1: One or two 21^st century skills are identified as learning goals under “skills acquisition”

Probably all of the 21^st century skills will be practiced at some point in the unit– but this skill will be purposefully modeled, taught, and assessed.*

How will you know that they know it and can do it? 

___ Stage 2: The performance assessment task provides ample opportunity for students to practice and demonstrate the skill(s) identified in stage 1.

___Formative assessments  (checklists, conferencing, peer assessment, reflection, etc.) are used frequently during the unit for the identified 21^st century skill(s)

___Students receive regular, timely, useful feedback via the formative assessments of the 21^st century skill(s)

The Learning Plan

___Stage 3:  The 21^st century skill(s) identified in stage 1 are taught through modeling and/or direct instruction as appropriate

*Note: This is not necessarily about “grading.” It is about creating opportunity to give students feedback on the 21^st century skills so they can improve!

What are your thoughts? What else should be included in this checklist?

School structure can easily be described as containers of time, space… content, standards…accountability.   This is the reality of today’s education system.  How does this fit with the real world need for developing entrepreneurship, creativity,  and invention?   Can these skills—habits of mind—be developed within the confines of our current school structure?  Where does discovery, through the process of inquiry, come in to play?

We ultimately need novel ways to support the practices embodied by the information flaneur in curiously and critically moving through information landscapes and creatively constructing meaning.

This conclusion is from the research paper by Marian D¨ork, Sheelagh Carpendale and Carey Williamson, The Information Flaneur: A Fresh Look at Information Seeking,  addressing the need to develop technology tools and landscapes to benefit information seekers. It has me thinking about different structures – the structures of education.  I believe we ultimately need novel ways to support students so they can have the heady experience of serendipitously encountering just the right piece of information  to help them understand or make sense of something– like finally seeing how puzzle pieces will fall into place, and suddenly being able to see the big picture.  Students need to have the time and space to “curiously and critically move through information landscapes and creatively construct meaning.”

It seems that time is the greatest enemy –how can teachers possibly give up precious classroom time for this kind of free-style inquiry? There is content to cover, tests to prepare for, grades to be doled out.

But inquiry is at the heart of learning. Can true inquiry be contained? Within the boundaries of our education system , inquiry does occur, but tends to be highly structured, with little room for choice, free exploration, and sense-making.

Perhaps a first step is to allow students the opportunity to curate information. By curate, I mean more than collecting, but synthesizing, discarding what doesn’t fit as our understanding shifts and grows, creating context, and sharing with a broad audience (More on curating here) Even within our highly structured environments, we need to carve out time and space for students to truly explore, possibly find that spark of curiosity to dig deeper, make connections, and ultimately take ownership of their learning.

Inspired by Tim Wray’s post (discovered via Robin Good on Scoop It):  Collections As Landscapes: Part 1: Empowering Spatial, Experiential Interaction , which linked to The Information Flaneur: A Fresh Look at Information Seeking by Marian D¨ork, Sheelagh Carpendale and Carey Williamson

Assessing skills like collaboration, information literacy, creativity, self-direction, and critical thinking seems like a difficult task–when you think of assessment as “grading.”  To understand what is meant by assessment of 21^st century skills we need to examine the term “assessment.”  At its core, assessment should be thought of as an opportunity to give feedback. Without giving students specific, targeted feedback on how they are performing these skills, students will have little opportunity to understand how to improve their level of creativity, become better researchers through increased information literacy skills, become better at collaborating with groups for project creation and problem solving, or develop good habits of mind to become self-directed learners.  Feedback is critical to help students improve.  Another essential element is to design learning that gives students authentic opportunities to practice the skills.

So to effectively assess skills and habits of mind –we must design a performance task for the students. An assessment director in my school district once said, “If you want to assess if a student can play basketball, you don’t give him a multiple choice test!”  How valid would a multiple choice test be in telling us if the student could pull together all of his knowledge and skill, to actually collaborate with his teammates and perform during a live game with an audience? If you’re thinking multiple choice tests won’t work in the basketball scenario –then you also need to think again about what assessment of 21^st century skills should look like.

One of the most difficult tasks of designing an effective formative assessment tool for 21^st century skills is deciding what criteria should be included. The criteria should be descriptive enough to provide guidance to students of things they can do to improve that particular skill.   For example, if you were trying to put in kid friendly language a formative assessment tool of the 21^st century skill of creativity, we need to think about what processes and habits of mind contribute to being creative.

These items become the criteria upon which a rubric or checklist can be built. As you can see, these items are not necessarily things that you can assess in one project. Additionally, they might be best used in self-evaluation, followed up with conferencing for an opportunity to give more in-depth verbal feedback.

Another great strategy for building a formative assessment of 21^st century skills is to seek input from the students.  Brainstorm as a class what they think contributes to increased creativity, self-direction, collaboration, etc.

There are many excellent resources available via the Web to begin the process of creating a formative assessment tool for a particular skill. My favorite is the Intel Assessing Projects Database.  (click on “workspace” to create a free account – then explore the library of hundreds of formative assessment tools for 21^st century skills!) I have also assembled several formative assessment tools of the 21^st century skills on my wiki which you are welcome to access and use.

Additionally, below you will find my slides from a workshop I have created on assessing 21^st century skills.

The purpose of a textbook originally was to deliver content during a time of information scarcity.  We can no longer think of the textbook as serving this purpose. Teachers who rely solely on a textbook to deliver content in this century are not preparing students to deal with the realities of information abundance (overload!) – and the skills needed to deal with that – how to efficiently and effectively locate, evaluate, and synthesize information.  This also includes new literacy skills needed to effectively navigate, read, comprehend, and decode online content.  Continuing to spoon feed information to students through lecture and textbook (whether it is print or electronic) and failing to plan for a way to move beyond this delivery of knowledge and content method will be disastrous for our students.

It is my hope that school districts will keep the recommendations in SETDA’s report in mind as they pursue not necessarily just “etextbooks” – but a larger possibility of what learning might look like if students have access to multiple digital content sources. As we explore blended learning, curating resources (by both teachers AND students) and begin exploring concepts such as personalized learning (or as Will Richardson says –PERSONAL learning), we should be creating processes and practices for students to access information and to learn from multiple sources: online, print, face-to-face (or virtual face-to-face) with experts, and in context through virtual or actual field trips to museums and historic places.  While we are at it, we need  to make sure  active learning and real-world problem solving are not just an occasional event, but are the expectation for all students.  Technology makes it possible.

Will Richardson states in his wonderful new book, Why School:

“As globalization and connectedness ramp up, traditional definitions of employment are being rewritten. Based on existing trends some now predict the year 2020 will see 56 to 70 million freelancers, consultants, and independent workers representing more than half of all US employees. That is four times the number today.”

The problem is, today’s schools are still preparing students for work in the last century –not this one.  If we continue down this path, or  settle for simply replacing a print textbook with an electronic one, we will not be preparing today’s students for this workforce reality.

Now is the time. Schools, districts, and state departments of education are all feeling the urgency to come up with a plan for digital textbooks. Let’s recognize that textbooks –print or electronic – won’t provide the transformation in learning that our students so desperately need. Let’s use this opportunity  to come up with a plan to re-imagine what learning should look like to prepare students for working in this century.

Last year, the teachers that participated in this project seemed bogged down by all of the technology tools and many just didn’t embrace the backwards design aspect, resulting in various levels of completing the project and successful impact with students. This year, we are changing things up a bit.

This change came about as a result of attending Advance UBD training with Grant Wiggins in July.  I wrote earlier about one of our big take-ways from this –we need to think like a designer –a designer of learning. This applies not just to teachers designing learning for the classroom, but to those of us charged with designing learning for teachers. We used the Understanding by Design process to design this professional development course.  The first step in the process is to determine what it is we want students (in this case teachers) to know and be able to do.  Here is our transfer goal:

Students(Teachers) will be able to independently design, develop, and evaluate authentic learning experiences and assessments incorporating contemporary tools and resources to maximize content learning in context and to develop 21st Century knowledge, skills, and attitudes.

From here, we determined our goals for understanding and acquisition goals for our teachers:

The students (teachers) will understand that an intentional shift in content delivery and instructional practices, away from the traditional schooling model, transfers the ownership of learning to their students.

Additionally:

• What Blended Learning is and how it helps students
• What UBD is and how it helps students
• What 21st Century learning is and how it helps students

This gave us a much better place to begin designing our learning activities, always looking for alignment to assure we are on target to help our teachers reach these understandings.

Last year, our kick-off meeting focused on Moodle. We gave a brief presentation on what Blended Learning is – then proceeded to focus the majority of the workshop on getting each teacher onto Moodle where they could start building the online portion of their course.  We did provide a series of tutorials on the backwards-design process which they were expected to have watched prior to coming to the first work session, though we know that few did (Moodle provides pretty good stats on that)- and the result is as we should have expected – the focus was on the technology, and not on how to design learning.

This year, after deciding on our learning goals for the teachers, we knew this had to change. We decided it was critical to focus this first half-day workshop on bringing teachers to an understanding of the importance of being designers of learning, and to have a unified understanding of what blended learning means.  Rather than just telling them how we define these concepts, we started with a Socratic Seminar. We believed this kind of activity would be a way to honor the expertise in the room, let them construct their own knowledge, and to model and activity that they might use with students.  A brief but thought-provoking blog post by Anders Norberg was used for the Socratic Seminar. The 6 small groups were randomly formed, and each group had a good mix of teachers from different grades, levels, and subject areas.  The resulting discussions were rich and insightful.  It was tempting to jump in and steer their conversations, but our team recognized the importance of allowing the conversations to go where they needed to go.  Fears about technology and in many cases a lack of technology gave way naturally to discussions (“Is this what we are supposed to be talking about?”) to find answers to the guiding questions “What is Blended Learning” and “Why Blended Learning.”   At the end of the 20 minute conversations, they shared out with the whole group and had pretty much nailed the definition on their own.

Following this, we gave a  brief presentation on Blended Learning, (offering the definitions given in the Innosight report)  and then moved into an activity to help teachers understand where Blended Learning fits in the learning design. Each participant was given a strip of paper with one element of learning or teaching printed on it.  We projected the Venn Diagram you see below:

Teachers were asked if the item would be classified as something that mostly would be in a traditional classroom, blended classroom, or could be in both.

Some of the elements that they needed to place on the diagram included:

-Worksheets
-Online Quiz
-Face-to-Face collaboration
-Video Podcast
-Students playing games
-Database resource link
-Instructional Design
-Formative Assessment
-Students reading a textbook
-Teacher lecturing
-Project based learning
-Motivated, Successful Students
-Online collaboration
-Threaded discussion
-Simulation

The “aha” for our teachers was that nearly all of these elements could fall into any area of the chart. This became clear as the person with the title, “Instructional Design” and the person with the outcome, “Motivated, successful students” placed their strips of paper on the diagram.

Another “aha” moment was that as a Designer of Learning, they manipulate all of the other pieces- but to create a blended learning environment – they need to allow students to have some element of control over time, place, path, and/or pace.  .  As a Designer of Learning, they decide which elements are best delivered in a traditional manner, and which could be enhanced through technology. As a Designer of Learning, they decide what is best taught through direct instruction, and what might be self-paced.  Direct instruction –what many think of when they hear the term “teaching” – is just one of the elements. A Designer of Learning carefully plans how all of the elements will be deployed   to assure that students achieve the learning goal.

The interesting thing about this space pod is that the aliens did not include a chair of any kind in the plans for the space pod. The engineers felt it was critical for the safety of the person traveling in the pod to be in some kind of chair.  It was the way things had always been done in Earth’s space travel experience.

Shortly after the journey begins, and she is shown to be traveling through a series of wormholes, the chair begins vibrating intensely, and it is obvious that this is causing some distress and discomfort to Dr. Arroway.  When she notices her necklace break loose and that it floats effortlessly inside the pod, she releases herself from the chair. Almost immediately after Dr. Arroway releases herself from the chair, it breaks off its pedestal and violently crashes into the ceiling.

This scene reminds me of our current educational practices: students all learning the same thing at the same time, in the same space, using the same textbook.   It worked for previous generations, so it should be good enough for present and future students, right?  Students are in effect, strapped into a chair, and given very little wiggle room to really explore things in-depth, follow their path of interest, creatively problem solve, or practice other vital learning skills.  We seem to lack the imagination or ability to break free from the environments that we have always built for learning.

It is said that it is more difficult to unlearn old ways of doing things than to learn something new. So many people are weighing in on the need for educational reform, but with such limited visions of how to go about preparing today’s students for the world in which they will be living, with its profound technological advances and ability to access unlimited information, communicate globally, create, and share new information and ideas. How can we structure learning to allow students time to practice these skills, while still assuring students receive the needed base of knowledge to actually do something with the information they acquire?

While we are seeing more and more use of technology in classrooms, it is not often in transformational ways .  Technology has the potential  to personalize the learning experience for each student – yet as long as teachers feel the pressure to “cover content” – they are wary of using valuable class time or taking the risk of letting students use technology to explore and learn things that they are passionate about.

Let’s reimagine what learning looks like through the power of technology. If the structures we have in place such as traditional classrooms, schedules, seat time requirements are holding us back- then we need to open our minds to new possibilities.