Jobs on computers in schools

From the New York Times, 5 November 2011. I guess it does take more than a computer for learning to take place.

Even Mr. Jobs, Apple’s co-founder, turned skeptical about technology’s ability to improve education. In a new biography of Mr. Jobs, the book’s author, Walter Isaacson, describes a conversation earlier this year between the ailing Mr. Jobs and Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, in which the two men “agreed that computers had, so far, made surprisingly little impact on schools — far less than on other realms of society such as media and medicine and law.”

The comments echo similar ones Mr. Jobs made in 1996, between his two stints at Apple. In an interview with Wired magazine, Mr. Jobs said that “what’s wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology,” even though he had himself “spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet.”

The Blame Game

Add Steven Brill's Class Warfare to the propaganda machine laying ALL the blame for the problems in American education at the feet of teacher unions. [Note that I emphasize the word ALL because the problems in schools are deep enough that every stakeholder has part to play in fixing them.]

Thank you to Richard Rothstein's piece in Slate picking apart Brill's newest addition to the smear campaign against public school teachers.

Chimp vs. Room 318

Currently, the Grade 6 Humanities classes are studying early humans and the development from early bipeds such as Sahelanthropus tchadensis all the way to modern Homo sapiens. An underlying and constant question has been, "What makes us human?"

On Friday, 28 January 2011, Room 318 (my - Mr. Denby - classes) and Dr. Everett's classes took part in an experiment pitting teams of Grade 6 students vs. a solitary chimpanzee. The goal? To get a single peanut out of a deep graduated cylinder without moving the cylinder.

The results? Well, watch and find out to see how things played out.

What if Reading On the Computer Means We Don't Get It?

After having recently read The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, I decided to do an experiment with my students. According to the research described in the book, reading comprehension is highest with traditional paper (book, article etc.).

I have been trying to minimize my environmental impact both in my personal and professional life for many years. Since joining ISB, I have been able to make great strides towards reducing my/my students’ paper consumption because of the availability of electronic texts. I post articles on my class blog for students to download or read online.

Knowing that reading is often not enough to come to a deep understanding, I teach my students to use tools like the highlighting and note-taking functions of Preview (on a Mac), diigo.com and coda notes (to name just a few). These allow users to make notes, highlight and mark up webpages/texts just as they would with paper and pen.

Like most people, and like most of my students, most of my reading for information happens on a computer these days. I read the news, read scholarly articles for my Master’s research project and find class texts online. I feel like my comprehension is excellent. So, when I read The Shallows and the research it references about the difference in comprehension with paper reading, I was truly skeptical. I believed, if anything, that the difference came down to individual reading/learning styles and decided to test it myself.

I chose three different articles that are about the level that I would normally assign for current events, two of them from the New York Times. For Grade 6, this can be a fairly challenging reading level. Each article was followed by five questions related to comprehension of the key information from the article. The subject of each article was familiar but the information was ‘new’ to the students. I did the experiment with both of my Humanities classes – about 40 students.

For article one, students read entirely online. They could take notes on paper or using an online tool.

For article two, students read a pdf version stripped of all ads (using the ‘READER’ function of Safari). They could then take notes on paper or using Preview (which allows them to take notes and highlight the text easily).

For article three, students received a paper copy of the article and could write on it if they needed to. If I am being honest, this article was in fact the longest and most complex.

The results?

For the first article (reading online), the class average was 68%, a D+.

For the second article (a pdf version that allowed note-taking), the class average was 72%, a C-.

For the final article (a paper copy), the class average was 89, a B+.

I shared this information with my students and I am sharing it now because we all need to know how we are most successful. So far, I am not printing all new readings for my students, but I am encouraging them to print them if they need to. I make pdfs available for all readings and encourage students to print them if they find them difficult.

I was skeptical and am still not entirely convinced, but these results are pretty compelling. If it were just my little experiment giving these results, I would not take it as seriously, but my results reflect the result of large academic studies. The results are too important to ignore them. I still want to go paperless, but I believe that we should all know that how we do things has an impact on how successful we are. I want my students to think of that as well.

cognitive coaching (lower case intentional)

Cognitive Coaching

Okay, I have to say it. Call me a cynic, call me a grumpy old man. Call me whatever you need to, but I still have to say it. You don’t have to convince me that cognitive coaching is worthwhile – I think it has tremendous potential just from my brief encounters with how it works. BUT, and this is the thing I have to say, the “Components of the Cognitive Coaching Model” on pages 6-7 is a little over the top.
To accept it at face value, we would have to accept that the cognitive coach is some kind of enlightened being, a pedagogical arhat whose enlightenment shines like a beacon in the educational wilderness. Given that this was written by someone who is a cognitive coach, I think it fair to say that someone forgot a bit about the “humility and pride of admitting that there is more to learn (p. 7).”
By the way, I am pointedly NOT using uppercase when referring to cognitive coaching. As a practice, cognitive coaching incorporates a set of beliefs in guiding its practice/implementation, but one tremendously powerful aspect of it seems to be its flexibility. Giving it the caps? Well, that (perhaps symbolically) gives it the weight of dogma and dogma has no place in educational practice.

First rant of 2011 is now over and I can proceed.
The distinctions between coaching, consulting, collaborating and evaluating are excellent. The table format on pages 14-15 also provides an easy reference point for side-by-side comparison. Understanding the distinctions between the four ideas would make it easier for me as an educator to feel safe being coached and to develop as a coach myself. Clarity of purpose leads to clarity of thinking.
Most importantly, the cognitive in cognitive coaching provides the time – the pause – to think and examine what we/I do. Somewhat like parents who learn the most about parenting from their own parents, as teachers I believe we are initially shaped most by our own teachers. For example, as a new teacher twenty years ago, I at first fell back on my experience as a student to inform my teaching. It took some reflection and time to examine what I was doing and come to see what I wanted to be as a teacher. I was lucky to have quite a few good teachers, but I wanted to be something different. In other words, I needed to “transform the…mental models, thoughts and perceptions” (p.14) of what a teacher is.
This kind of change is not a matter of learning tricks or curricula. Instead, it is an intellectual refinement, an enhanced clarity of thought about what we do and how we do it that comes best from time to think. Further, I believe strongly that talking with someone trusted provides one of the most effective times to think. Every year at back to school night I tell parents that it is the time to talk with others and to think that is the most important part of the classroom.

Professional Development

It is immensely frustrating to know that actual research has been done relating to the efficacy of the professional development models. If research has shown that “neither importing experts nor sending teachers to conferences has shown itself to be particularly effective in improving instruction,” why then is this the model followed so often?

Particularly with a large and talented faculty like the one at ISB, it would seem to be a more effective model to allow teams to truly select goals, develop expertise through shared research, and then work to improve practice. As mentioned in my first post, context is everything and the ineffective model described by Powell robs professional development of context.

A recent consultant had to be reminded many times that the grade 6 team is not new to using computers extensively in the classroom. She is/was a tremendously talented educator with tons of expertise but, robbed of the context in which we work, she was not as effective as she could have been in meeting the needs of the people she was supposed to be helping. It is important to note that she was invited without input from the teachers she was to work with and a fairly significant effort had to be made to have her visit in any way tailored to the needs/requests of the faculty.

In the interest of being productive, I will stop ranting. This has been the model I have seen in just about every school in which I have worked. I also know that ISB has been making an effort to get away from this model, as evidenced by the recent PD day in which many teachers led workshops and, perhaps more importantly, conversations about teaching. When there is time, teachers seem to come together around issues they find in teaching; we are lucky to have so many teachers who love what they do and care about doing it better.

All complaining aside, I know that I tend to work in isolation in some ways. I get immersed in the tasks I have to do and rarely leave my classroom. This leaves few opportunities for the casual and organic conversations that are often the springboard for much more in depth conversation. I have been lucky in teaming with great people in the IS grouping of my Humanities classes, but I also know that both of my partners were, like me, always rushing to finish class related tasks. Within my team, I am active in working to make our curriculum and practice relevant and vibrant, but this tends to happen within meetings.

I am particularly interested in the model of cognitive coaching. In the Powell course here at ISB, we engaged in short practice coaching conversations and I found the model to be very effective. I saw, both as coach and coached, how the focus on one student had me examining my practice in the classroom. I visualized my actual movements in the classroom and re-enacted key moments with individual students and with the class as a whole. I was actively reflecting on better meeting the needs of individuals and the group.

This seems like a powerful way to achieve what we are seeking with looking for learning while also developing the kinds of relationships between colleagues that will create a learning community. I have been lucky to have a wife with whom I have this type of conversation frequently and several colleagues with whom it seems like a natural next step.

Best Practice?

"Research and experience demonstrate that solutions are not necessarily interchangeable." Oh how true that rings. When we talk of best practice it sometimes makes me cringe. Every generation of teachers has heard about 'best' practice in some form or another. Every generation of teacher has seen 'best' practice change over time. Every generation of teacher has seen 'best' practices that do not suit the needs of the learners in their classrooms or the personalities of the educators.

Assuming that solutions/practices are interchangeable is simply another tweaking of the original factory/industrial revolution philosophical underpinnings of our educational system. Our students are not part of a closed system in which we can apply universal methods of 'production'. They are human beings.

Thankfully we have legions of researchers publishing their findings about effective teaching strategies and, increasingly, the actual function of the brain during learning activities. It is, however, up to us to apply the 'best' approaches to our classrooms. We are the field testers who must find what works best within the context of our classrooms, our student bodies, our institutions and our own personalities.

[As an example, I think of the KIPP schools in the United States. I would not think the regimentation of KIPP would be suitable to our community. Nor would I be presumptuous enough to say that the KIPP approach is 'wrong'. Further, I am self-aware enough to know that KIPP's approach would likely not suit my teaching style. I would not be an ideal teacher for a KIPP school because of how I teach and because of what KIPP wants/needs.]

This is where the true value of a reflective teacher and a reflective learning community come into play. A truly reflective community values the discussion of philosophy and practice. The community actually values QUESTIONING AND DIFFERENCE. The community actually values GOING SLOW because it recognizes that we must take think through our decisions and see how they apply within the context of our individual students, classroom and institutions.

We must also face the fact that there are powerful forces that work against this recognition of the overwhelming power of context. Corporations sell 'best' practices through kits/programs/texts/consultants. There is a lot of money to be made in identifying a 'best' practice.

Further, it is easier to choose a 'best' practice. It makes the job of planning, implementing and even talking about your program easier because it is clear cut.

Context matters.

Photo credit: Mike Defiant