Today, I begin with with Sal Khan and his journey to reinvent education. I had the opportunity to visit with Sal, prior to his keynote speech last week, at the 2011 CCSA conference in San Diego. It was great to share ideas with and ask question of someone helping to radically impact education. During our conversation, we spoke about the disruption the Khan Academy has presented to traditional education. Sal began with a decidedly low-tech approach to teaching and posted his lessons to Youtube. Since 2004, he has created more than 2,100 videos that receive millions of views each year.

I was able to record a ten minute selection of our conversation. Listen to Sal explain the Khan Academy and his vision for the future of education.

• Sal Khan-Khan Academy (MP3 Audio File)

As always we look forward to hearing your thoughts and comments. You can find us on Twitter (@darylljohnson or @sroner) and Facebook (EDBuzz).

Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was awarded the Hart Vision Elected Official of the Year Award. Mayor Villaraigosa has been a passionate advocate of the charter school movement. He oversees the Partnership for LA Schools, which runs ten of the lowest-performing schools in the district and is seeing improvement in test scores. Mayor Villaraigosa challenged charter schools to not only build new schools, but to take on the lowest performing schools and turn them around. In addition, he urged the charter school movement to hold itself to a higher standard of performance and shut failing charter schools down. By taking on the lowest performing schools, turning them around, and holding charter schools to the highest standards, Mayor Villaraigosa insisted that charter schools can destroy the myth that they are cherry-picking the best students.

Sal Khan of the Kahn Academy delivered a powerful keynote address that showcased the power of disruptive technology. His Kahn Academy is very reminiscent of what Clayton Christensen speaks of in his book Disrupting Class. From humble beginnings tutoring his niece, Sal has been noticed by Microsoft, Google, and Bill Gates as an educational innovator. In highlighting the future of his non-profit Kahn Academy, Sal pulled back the curtain on what has become an increasingly hot topic, inverting or flipping the traditional teaching model. By making the lecture content available for the student to access outside of class, the teacher is allowed to focus on the critical learning moments in class and once again truly teach.

Much attention has been focused on tracking student learning and providing meaningful data for both teachers and students. Despite the detractors that feel it discourages innovative learning, it is a vital step in truly personalizing a students learning. Several vendors provided a look at how schools can improve this process. Both Illuminate and Scantron show-cased platforms to help this task become easier and more efficient.

The march for schools to more fully integrate cloud resources was readily apparent. CloudConnect, sponsored by the San Diego County Office of Education, is a browser-based platform that incorporates virtual learning environments, single-log-ins, data storage, and curriculum offerings for both schools and individual teachers. It leverages the mobility of cloud resources to provide a dynamic and 24-7 learning option. EduTone is another vendor that provides software-as-a-service and bills itself as connecting all the dots. They provide a single-sign-on gateway for their customers and have leveraged the power of the Google App Marketplace. In addition, they have a marketplace of services that can be added to their customers menu of options. This provides a slick and cost-effective environment for schools looking to save on their IT budgets.

Finally, it was great to meet so many of you that are engaged in making education better. The conversations and ideas that were shared will fuel my own work for quite a while. As always, feel free to share your comments and I look forward to hearing about your experiences.

According to Hack College, which broke the story, the 7cubed team skipped class and challenged themselves to create seven apps in seven days. Quick Cite took about eight hours to write and is the first app to be released. More are expected to be released in the future.

The 7cubed team acknowledges that the app isn’t perfect and would like to find time to schedule future revisions. It seems the catch is that it is apparently difficult to schedule the time for them to all skip class. The ability to effectively transfer citations between styles was mentioned as one area to improve. Another challenge may be the issue of bar codes only coming into use in the 1970′s. This may hamper the app’s effectiveness with older books.

As a real-life exercise, the 7cubed team has come up with a remarkably effective app in a short amount of time. Hopefully this will encourage other students and faculty members to develop more useful apps in the near future.

The goal of this category is to provide school administrator’s with easier access to school-focused applications. This new offering is aimed at helping solve some of the unique issues faced by education institutions. These include lack of financial resources, security for a customer-base that is under 18, and the ability to access current technology. Google’s new education category is designed to offer cutting edge collaboration tools.

Here’s a quick video explaining the category:

With the creation of the Education category, Google has highlighted two significant benefits for schools.

1. Access to cutting-edge tools
2. Easy Integration

With more schools embracing Google-driven, cloud-based platforms, integration becomes a breeze. GrockIT, Aviary, LearnBoost, BrainPop, and others have lined up to provide innovative tools for teachers and students. For schools usng Gmail for student and faculty accounts, adding these applications makes real sense.

Shawn and I have been working with our IT department to provide a more robust Google apps implementation for our school. We will share more of our experiences along the way, please share yours.

This is the perfect time to look back at 2010. Several events stand-out in 2010. Here’s a quick walk down memory lane.

Shawn’s post Using Facebook to Improve School Communication continued to be of great interest. The great reception of this article led to several opportunities. One of the more interesting of these being chosen as guest contributors to Clara Shih’s revision of The Facebook Era (2nd Edition). Our collaborative rewrite of this article provides a streamlined guide to leveraging the communication power of Facebook for schools. The Facebook Era (2nd Edition) continues elaborating on the phenomenon of Facebook and its implication in all areas of life (business, education, and leisure) and is a great read that we recommend (Note: We have no financial interest in your purchase, we just like it!).

In March EDBuzz.org delivered a very well received conference session at the 17th annual California Charter Schools Conference Web 2.0 for Teachers. In this session we highlighted several current Web 2.0 tools and illustrated their benefits for both teachers and schools. In addition, teacher’s and administrator’s were excited by our examples of their successful implementations.

In June, teachers were urged to look at the 2009-2010 school year and reflect on their craft. The popular article End of School Reflections provided a process for teachers to assess their performance. Identify opportunities for change, and create a growth plan.

2010 has truly been a great year here at EDBuzz and we look forward to the next year. The shear amount of  innovations and entrepreneurial spirit directed at education is incredible. Implementing this knowledge and the opportunities provided will continue to be a great challenge for education as a whole.

At EDBuzz.org, we realize that our current projects have a great impact on our future direction. We would like to share the areas that have attracted our attention and energy. Both currently and moving into 2011, we are focused on a variety of projects, the largest of which include creating a new hybrid school (online and traditional classroom learning) and creating a open high school Economics course that demonstrates Layered Instruction (personalized learning path).

The hybrid school project is a joint-venture between a San Diego based education foundation and the Pollinate group. Its focus has been to deliver twice the education at half the current average price. Our focus of this project has been to identify key areas that can be transformed to achieve these goals. Among these are the teacher’s role, the way students spend their time on a topic, and Web 2.0 tools, as well as other technology tools, to better accomplish these goals. This project will provide numerous posts and opportunities for community discussion.

The Economics project focuses on three key concepts. The first is the implementation of differentiated learning and options for students. The second is to incorporate current Web 2.0 technologies to improve collaboration. The third is to provide an example of how an Open Course (available for all to be used) can be constructed and implemented. This project is ongoing and should be available to all in the second quarter of 2011.

Now it’s your turn. Where have you been? What are your reflections of 2010? In what project are you engaged? What trends do you see? Are there any goals that you would like to share? Where do you want to go in 2011? Take a minute today to join our community and share where you’ve been and where you’re  going. You can post here or reach out to us on Twitter at @darylljohnson or @sroner. We look forward to hearing from you…

Effective reflection should involve four steps: Assessment, probing deeper/looking for meaning, planning and review. The act of reflection becomes tremendously powerful when we couple it with the discipline of taking action and checking for results. We will look at each of these steps and offer a set of simple tools to help you improve your reflection practices.

Now, while the memories are hopefully clearer, is the perfect time for you to conduct intentional reflection on this past school year’s performance.  These questions should provide a systematic questioning or assessment of your performance in several key areas. To give you a starting point, four key areas have been pinpointed and several questions to ask yourself are provided. As you answer these questions, be sure to record your observations in a special notebook or computer file for later reference. If you have questions that you feel will serve you better, feel free to replace the ones provided  with your own.  What’s vital is that you answer the questions honestly and as fully as possible.

1. The Big Picture (school year as a whole).
   • What is my overall view on the school year?
   • In what situations did I or did I not really succeeded this year?
   • Have I been more tired  or spread thinner than in the past?
   • Does this fit with my personal mission?
2. Planning/Instruction
   • How was the pacing?
   • What lessons seemed less effective this year than in the past?
   • Am I teaching a specific lesson out of laziness?
   • Are there any students that I am under-serving or having difficulty reaching?
   • How can I make my classroom better serve my students?
3. Relationships
   • How are my relationships with the administration, fellow teachers, students and parents?
   • What could I do to improve these?
   • In what ways could I experience growth in my relationships?
4. Professional Development
   • What would I like to learn to improve as a teacher?
   • What do I need to commit to learn in order to stay relevant?
   • What additional actions could I take to meet my personal mission?

Step two, consists of studying your responses and performing a deeper analysis of these responses. This is done with the intent of finding shared commonalities or previously unidentified connections. In the process of reflection, it’s quite common to identify the surface symptom rather than the less visible core cause. By digging a little deeper, this misdirection can be significantly reduced and allowing for the crafting of solutions that will be more effective. Several questions that will help in this process are provided below.

• How are these successes/problems connected?
• Could this be a result of classroom management?
• Is this connected to scheduling or planning?
• Is this a result of teaching methods?
• Could this be caused by my limited knowledge of a subject?
• Is this a failure of technology?

Following the deeper analysis, it’s time to create a plan of action. With the core causes identified, rank the identified solutions in order of importance. It may help to separate these into three categories based upon urgency. Those needing a short-term response (one month or less), longer-term  attention (greater than one month), and those of questionable importance. From these groups, pick the actions to which you are most committed and determine the logical time necessary for their accomplishment. Use a calendar and set a target date for completion of these actions. Hint: Make sure that you set clearly definable actions as your objectives (i.e. Read The Elegant Universe by August 1^st or create a good writing habits poster by July 17^th). Furthermore, it is very important to select reasonable completion dates.

The fourth and final component of effective reflection is to review your progress. Often goals and deadlines are set but there is no follow-up to see if they were achieved. To minimize this, pick at least one day each month and set half an hour aside to review your progress (try and make it the same day every month). Goals that are met may be crossed off the list, while those that haven’t been achieved will need a little more attention. As you examine these, see if you still believe in their importance. If you still feel that they are vital, go ahead and revise your process or completion date in the manner that makes the greatest sense. Those that no longer maintain relevancy can be dropped. Reviewing your progress on goals not only brings great satisfaction from seeing the progress, it will make you a better educator.

So take an hour or so and put these tools to use before you find yourself saying, “I can’t believe I let another year go by without really reflecting.” There’s no better time than today to reflect on your past year and begin crafting the future.

The professor, David E. Pritchard, led a research team that analyzed student performance in an online homework system called MasteringPhysics.com during four different semesters. The researchers were able to measure the time spent on each question and look for suspicious work patterns. If a student took less than a minute each answering several complex questions and got them all right, for instance, the system flagged that as likely cheating. “Since one minute is insufficient time to read the problem and enter the several answers typically required, we infer that the quick-solver group is copying the answer from somewhere,” said the researchers in a paper due out today in the free online journal Physical Review Special Topics–Physics Education Research.

Based on later surveys of the same students, researchers found that the culprits typically copied answers from friends, by logging onto a friend’s account on the system to copy work or by getting answers via e-mail or instant message.

For veteran teachers this is hardly a surprising revelation. The complexity of cheating and plagiarism schemes has increased with the rise of technology and ability to transfer information digitally. Cellphones and other devices have made cheating easier than ever, see The Cheating Heart for an overview. Furthermore, despite the education aimed at informing students about copyright and intellectual property, it is clear that generation y and future generations seem to have a different perspective regarding copyright.

While many would point to this as indicating the need for better detection systems, real success comes from successfully encouraging students to choose not to cheat. Restrictive access to technology and more robust detection schemes may seem appealing but lead to students and teachers engaging in a never ending cycle of trying to outsmart one another. This doesn’t mean ignoring cheating or giving it a free pass. In this Web 2.0 world, it does mean, demonstrating a better way and allowing students to make choices. If unethical, according to Professor Pritchard, these choices mean that cheaters will earn the scores they deserve.

In my next article I will outline three keys to building an environment supportive of ethical decision-making. Until then I’d like to hear your comments and observations.

As with any new technology, there are challenges (legal and technical) to its implementation. Additionally, some are more apt to embrace its use while others are more cautious or even try to block them. We will discuss this in depth in future posts. For now, I’ve posted our presentations below. Feel free to use them, we only ask that you attribute them to us.