Napa New Tech: School of the Future is Here, Tina Barseghian

Pay Attention, T4 – Jordan School District

Math Class Doesn’t Have to Suck, The Innovative Educator

Wikipedia Turns 10: Are we Banning or Boosting?, Doug Johnson

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 study, entitled Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies, involved a rigorous evaluation of more than a thousand recent studies of online learning. Of the collection of empirical studies examined, the research team identified forty-six studies that could be subjected to meta-analysis. The meta-analysis involved examining the conclusions of the various studies in order to construct a general conclusion (composite estimate) regarding online learning.

The research analysis is based around four important questions:

1. “How does the effectiveness of online learning compare with that of face-to-face instruction?”
2. “Does supplementing face-to-face instruction with online instruction enhance learning?”
3. “What practices are associated with more effective online learning?”
4. “What conditions influence the effectiveness of online learning?”

Not only are all four questions very interesting but they are the sorts of questions commonly asked by educators when considering the efficacy of online learning.

In terms of the effectiveness of online learning compared to face-to-face instruction, the study found that “students who took all or part of their class online performed better, on average, than those taking the same course through traditional face-to-face instruction.”

The study also found that blended learning measurably enhanced student learning as compared with instruction solely based on face-to-face interaction. Moreover, it found that the effectiveness of online learning programs seems “quite broad across different content and learning types.”

The study identified three important best practices related to online instruction:

1. “Online learning can be enhanced by giving learners control of their interactions with media and prompting learner reflection.” The study seems to indicate that online learning environments improve student learning when students are able to manipulate instruction based on their particular learning needs or when the online curriculum provides learning mechanisms that trigger student reflection or self monitoring of learning.
2. Online learning is more effective when the curriculum includes blended learning elements (e.g., face-to-face interaction, online collaboration, independent practice, etc.).
3. Effective online learning environments include a variety of learning activities. The simple inclusion of online learning activities such as video or online quizzes do not necessarily improve student learning. Although these sorts of instructional activities are often recommended by educators, the study was not able to find a significant connection between the activities and improved student achievement.

Although the authors of the study determined that blended learning measurably increased student learning, they were not willing to simply attribute the higher achievement to the instructional approach itself.

It’s also interesting to note that the study concluded that time on task is more beneficial to learning in an online environment than in a face-to-face environment.  This seems to confirm what many educators already know: Online learning activities enable teachers to effectively differentiate instruction and tailor learning to meet individual student needs. It seems to make sense, then, that online learning can be highly effective because it enables educators to design instruction that addresses the specific learning needs of students, provide more efficient and individualized student remediation, and individualize instruction based on student aptitude, different learning styles, and interests.

The study did acknowledge that the implications of the its findings are limited and more research regarding online learning is needed. Moreover, the implications for K-12 are very limited due to the small sample of k-12 based research analyzed in the study.

Nevertheless, the study’s analysis is very important. As many schools today face difficult economic challenges, blended learning programs may provide a more efficient and cost effective way to deliver instruction. At the classroom level, blended learning seems to offer important advantages over traditional face-to-face instruction. Perhaps the most important advantage is improved use of instructional time. By utilizing effective blended learning practices, teachers can better maximize limited instructional time while providing interesting and meaningful student-centered learning activities.

Texting girl falls into NYC manhole– Andre Yoskowitz, Afterdawn.com

Richard Baraniuk on open-source learning– Richard Baraniuk, TED

Psyched Out– The Economist

Network Skills– Tony Karrer, e-Learning Technology

Intel Social Media Guidelines– Intel

Google Calendar Goes Gadgety– Adam DuVander, Programmable Web

Dave Eggers Confident that America’s Literature-Devouring Youth Will Save Print– The Cajun Boy

Layoffs prompt teachers to move online– Laura Devaney, e-School News

Software rivalry gives schools more choice– e-School News

Classrooms Go High-Tech to Engage Students– Megan Scott, U.S. News

Edmomdo 2.0

Twitter has brought the concept of micro-blogging to the attention of much of the world. The recent Iranian election drama that played out on a world stage, certainly would not have been possible without Twitter. Facebook and Friendfeed have also jumped into the instant update arena to keep up and provide interesting options themselves. In a previous article, I outlined the idea behind micro-blogging and some of the complaints associated with it.

In today’s article, I want to take a look at a great way to develop a light-weight, easy to use, Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

While Twitter is lean and sticks to it’s singular purpose (the 140 character post), there are some challenges to using it in an academic setting. Enter Edmodo.

Edmodo is built in a lightweight fashion without all the bells and whistles of a traditional learning management system (lms) and that is really its charm. It is designed like a teacher would design a simple learning environment. Like Twitter, it contains a micro-blogging interface to allow a feed of messages to be sent and viewed. Unlike Twitter, because Edmodo was designed for use on the Web, it doesn’t use the annoying #, @, etc. While this may be appreciated by many, it brings attention to a rather large drawback of Edmodo. Currently you can receive notifications (the 140 character posts) via email, Twitter, or SMS, however, you can’t publish to your feed via SMS. This negates the huge benefit of using a cell phone. Hopefully this will be included in the near future.

As privacy is one of the major concerns in education, unlike Twitter, Edmodo is based around groups. A teacher creates groups along with an access key for their students. This is an obvious benefit for the classroom and ensures easy collaboration with the necessary privacy for those involved. This group feature is pivotal for the remaining features to function appropriately.

Assignments can be created with due dates. In addition, files can be attached to the assignments. This can be very beneficial if a specific format or template is to be used. As is expected, students can reply to complete the assignment, attach a file, or add a hyperlink in their reply. The last option is great if a blog or Wiki contains the product of their assignment. A calendar provides event notification for the group and due dates for assignments. Grades can be attached to the submitted assignments and in version 3.0 a gradebook is scheduled to be introduced.

Links to interesting or important websites and files can easily be distributed to group members. Furthermore, Edmodo provides a nice storage area for these that can be easily filtered as the list becomes longer. An additional feature of Edmodo, is the ability to create public pages. These are pages that can viewed by the general public and not just group members. In addition, public pages provide the ability for a user to subscribe to their RSS feed. The value of public pages will become more apparent as I discuss possible uses for Edmodo.

Here are several obvious and some not so obvious benefits and uses for Edmodo:

• Allows students to receive and submit assignments online (a core concept of the VLE)
• Privately allows teacher to student and student to student communication. Thereby creating a more collaborative learning environment.
• Provides an easy way to share necessary files and important or interesting links.
• Provides a clear class calendar. No more guesswork as to when assignments are due and what has been assigned.
• Groups can be used for clubs and teams, not just classes.
• Public pages are perfect for letting parents see class assignments, due dates, etc. No more questions about not having homework. Furthermore, if the parent subscribes to the RSS feed, they don’t even have to visit the Web page again, the information is delivered to their email inbox.
• Collaborative tool for teachers as well as professional development. Edmodo minimizes the isolation that teaching all day in the classroom can create.
• Major school news, events, sports, emergency announcements, etc. can be easily sent to all parents and students (Twitter may have an advantage here).

Here are some potential pitfalls or areas that should be addressed:

• Students still forget their passwords. While these can be reset, it distracts from teaching. What about integrating Facebook Connect or OpenID?
• Greater amount of work and time spent in front of the computer for the teacher. In the beginning, the time required to set up a group and create the required content can be rather large.
• No two way SMS posting! See early comments in the article.
• Quizzes or tests are not supported in version 2.0 but are scheduled to arrive in version 3.0.
• New semester or school year requires any information with a date to be either re-created or best-case scenario edited to be appropriate.
• Illegal file sharing, ethics issues involving cheating, etc.

With it’s great privacy features, collaborative tools, micro-blogging, and ability to connect, Edmodo is rapidly becoming one of my favorite tools for creating a VLE. Teachers should strongly consider adding it to their technology toolbox. As always, I appreciate your feedback. Let me know how you are using Edmodo or what tools you use to accomplish these activities.