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.

I’m feeling motivated…

The future of mobile learning!

I came across this graphic while reading Darren Kuropatwa’s blog which I think wonderfully summarizes the sorts of leadership principles that are necessary to promote meaningful educational reform. Effective change requires a clear vision, appropriate skills, meaningful incentives directly related to outcomes, necessary resources, and a well thought out action plan.

When a lack of vision exists, organizational confusion occurs. This is why it’s important for school leaders to work with administrators, faculty members, and parents to construct a meaningful vision and expend the necessary time and energy to clearly articulate it to the school’s community.

Preparing a school or district for significant change also requires building organizational capacity for this type of change. Simply put, administrators and teachers must have the knowledge, skills, and resources necessary to make change happen. When team members lack these skills,  a sort of professional anxiety results which usually cripples an organization.

Perhaps the most difficult challenge facing school leaders is the general resistance to change that is often expressed by teachers. Many schools face the seemingly insurmountable task of convincing their faculties of the necessity of implementing the sort of systemic change discussed earlier. Without meaningful incentives, resistance naturally occurs, particularly when the extent of the organizational change is significant.

Another important roadblock for school leaders to avoid is frustration that results from a lack of resources. With the terrible budget cuts facing most schools, building organizational capacity for change is as difficult as ever. Building a 21st century learning environment sounds great when teachers have fast computers, a network that is reliable, the technological resources necessary, and worthwhile professional development. But, how many administrators have access to the sort of capital that would enable them to build the type of  infrastructure necessary to transform their schools?

Finally, when the leadership doesn’t present a clear, common-sense action plan, the school finds itself on the “treadmill of change.” Effective change requires an effective action plan that includes all the aforementioned principles.

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Pew recently conducted a survey of 895 technology “stakeholders,” comprised of both technology experts and individuals who represent the Internet savvy public. The survey presented “potential-future scenarios to which respondents [reacted] with their expectations based on current knowledge and attitudes.”  According to Pew,

“Respondents to the Future of the Internet IV survey, fielded from Dec. 2, 2009 to Jan. 11, 2010, were asked to consider the future of the Internet-connected world between now and 2020 and the likely innovation that will occur. They were asked to assess 10 different “tension pairs” – each pair offering two different 2020 scenarios with the same overall theme and opposite outcomes – and they were asked to select the one most likely choice of two statements. The tension pairs and their alternative outcomes were constructed to reflect previous statements about the likely evolution of the Internet.”

To complete the study, Pew based their survey on the following five questions.

Pew’s first question addresses the widespread concern that the Internet is adversely impacting people’s thinking skills. In 2008 Nicholas Carr, writing for the Atlantic Monthly, wrote a provocative piece with the cover line, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Carr argues that the nature of online searching and reading are limiting people’s ability to concentrate in a way that promotes “The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author’s words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds.” Carr’s argument has touched off a firestorm in academic circles. In response, Pew decided to probe Carr’s concerns as part of their study. Is the Internet making us stupid? According to the survey,

“Google won’t make us stupid: 76% of these experts agreed with the statement, “By 2020, people’s use of the Internet has enhanced human intelligence; as people are allowed unprecedented access to more information they become smarter and make better choices. Nicholas Carr was wrong: Google does not make us stupid.”

Pew’s second question focuses on the impact the Internet will have on important literacy skills. According to the report,

“Reading, writing, and the rendering of knowledge will be improved: 65% agreed with the statement by 2020 “it will be clear that the Internet has enhanced and improved reading, writing and the rendering of knowledge.” Still, 32% of the respondents expressed concerns that by 2020 “it will be clear that the Internet has diminished and endangered reading, writing and the rendering of knowledge.”

Pew’s third question is interesting: Will the technologists be able to effectively identify important trends in innovation? The survey found the following:

“Innovation will continue to catch us by surprise: 80% of the experts agreed that the “hot gadgets and applications that will capture the imaginations of users in 2020 will often come ‘out of the blue.’”

Pew’s fourth question addresses an important concern of most educators: Will information continue to flow freely and with minimal regulation of the Internet? Again, the respondents to Pew’s survey provided interesting insight.

“Respondents hope information will flow relatively freely online, though there will be flashpoints over control of the internet. Concerns over control of the Internet were expressed in answers to a question about the end-to-end principle. 61% responded that the Internet will remain as its founders envisioned, however many who agreed with the statement that “most disagreements over the way information flows online will be resolved in favor of a minimum number of restrictions” also noted that their response was a “hope” and not necessarily their true expectation. 33% chose to agree with the statement that “the Internet will mostly become a technology where intermediary institutions that control the architecture and …content will be successful in gaining the right to manage information and the method by which people access it.”

Pew’s final question addresses an important concern most technologists have with the growing threat to online anonymity. According to the 895 respondents,

“Anonymous online activity will be challenged, though a modest majority still think it will possible in 2020: There more of a split verdict among the expert respondents about the fate on online anonymity. Some 55% agreed that Internet users will still be able to communicate anonymously, while 41% agreed that by 2020 “anonymous online activity is sharply curtailed.”

What will the Internet look like in 2020? I’d like to hear your thoughts.

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Don’t make me choose!

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.

According to Pink,

“What’s alarming is that our business operating system– think of the set of assumptions and protocols beneath our businesses, how we motivate people, how we apply our human resources– [is] built entirely around these extrinsic motivators… [This] is actually fine for many kinds of 20th century tasks, but for 21st century tasks, that mechanistic, reward and punishment approach often doesn’t work and often does harm.”

Because extrinsic rewards narrow human focus and concentration, they seem to work really well for tasks that involve a simple set of rules and a clearly defined result. But when the task involves utilizing creative thinking and complex problem solving skills, extrinsic motivation seems to hinder productivity. The problem, says Pink, is America’s economy requires the sort of problem solving skills that are based on creative thinking. In other words, today’s problems require the sort of conceptual, the sort of creative thinking that extrinsic rewards seem to hinder.

If we accept Pink’s argument, then what should businesses do? Pink suggests building a new management system based on intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic motivation. Moreover, this new operating system, should be based on three important psychological principles:

1. Autonomy– The urge to direct our own lives
2. Mastery– The desire to get better and better and something that matters
3. Purpose– The yearning to do something in the service of something bigger than ourselves

I spent the past few days thinking about how Pink’s argument might be applied to education. I think most educators would agree that today’s educational model is based almost entirely on what Pink would call an extrinsic motivational model. Simply put, students are rewarded for good behavior and specific types of productive academic performance and punished for poor behavior and specific types of unproductive academic performance.

A potential problem with this model, at least in today’s context, is its educational focus is too often narrowed to discrete and, often times, simplistic forms of learning outcomes. At a time when today’s global employers expect their employees to possess the sorts of problem solving skills that involve complex thinking, innovation, and creativity, our students are participating in a learning model that promotes 20th century thinking skills. Rather than learning how to effectively integrate complex pieces of information into meaningful arguments, quickly process information, or creatively solve real-world problems, too many public school students are stuck in 20th century classrooms surrounded by chalkboards, wooden desks, and unimaginative teaching. This classroom promotes a different set of life skills that may have been beneficial during the industrial age, but today’s economy demands a different set of skills, one that is appropriate for today’s information age.

Perhaps what is most alarming about the learning model prevalent in most public schools today is its reliance on extrinsic motivation to foster the development of 20th century skills. In the age of NCLB, schools are being forced to narrow their academic focus in order to meet the myriad of state and national accountability standards. As government accountability efforts pressure schools to demonstrate improvement, schools are tempted to rely on the types of extrinsic motivators outlined in Pink’s lecture.

If Pink is right, how might we apply his analysis to public education? I think the answer is our schools need a different educational model, a new type of management system based primarily on intrinsic motivation. This new teaching  and learning approach should emphasize a radical notion of self direction. In other words,the 21st century learning model should build effective learning experiences that incorporate student autonomy, learning mastery, and individual purpose. Learning experiences that incorporate these skills tend to foster a healthy sense of motivation and individual purpose for the learner. In a time when the extent of student apathy and disengagement seem to threaten the very success of many of our schools, a new model that promotes motivation, self-direction, and individual responsibility couldn’t come soon enough.

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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.