You Can't Replace a Teacher #edchat

I couldn't have said it better than David Brooks did when he recently wrote about The Campus Tsunami of online learning in The New York Times:

“The most important and paradoxical fact shaping the future of online learning is this: A brain is not a computer. We are not blank hard drives waiting to be filled with data. People learn from people they love and remember the things that arouse emotion. If you think about how learning actually happens, you can discern many different processes. There is absorbing information. There is reflecting upon information as you reread it and think about it. There is scrambling information as you test it in discussion or try to mesh it with contradictory information. Finally there is synthesis, as you try to organize what you have learned into an argument or a paper.” 

On this National Teacher Appreciation Day, be thankful you have had wonderful opportunities to learn from real flesh and blood throughout the years. I don't remember a thing about my first game of Pong (or subsequent games for that matter) or what I might have learned by playing it, but I do remember every one of my teachers and that says a lot about the impact they had on my life.

Is your school's technology just more litter on the same battlefield?

I'll try to keep this short and succinct. Suppose you were the commander of an early 20th century military unit mounted on horseback and a major war came along. Somebody, somewhere sees the utility of combining automotive technology with materials that protect you from enemy fire. So you trade your horses for these new-fangled vehicles but you line them all up in a row and advance on the enemy's positions just as the British did during the America Revolution. But alas, the other side rapidly discovered a new missile technology that pierces your armor protection and unleashes it on your advancing throng of vehicles. Nevertheless, you are a stubborn commander and don't change what you are doing because that's the way mounted troops have fought battles for centuries. When the shooting stops, the battlefield is littered with smoking hulks and dead soldiers all because you refused to see the new technology as a way to change your tactics and get more desired outcomes. You just replaced your horses with "faster horses."

Ok, that's a bit morbid so here's another analogy. What if when cell phones first came on the mass commercial market, all we did was purchase one simply to use in our homes or offices. We didn't take it anywhere with us and in fact, out of a sense of nostalgia or just fear of losing the small device (actually, they weren't that small back then), we chained it to a desk or wall. In this hypothetical example, despite the fact the cell phone was designed to provide mobile anytime-anywhere communications, we couldn't shake the tradition that talking on the telephone was only done in the sanctity of the home or office. If we had thought that way, personal and business communications would still be the same today.

My point in both of these analogies is that unless we use technology as a lever to significantly change what we do to get at a desired outcome, what good is it? If we merely use netbooks or other computer devices so that students can sit in rows of desks independently typing on word documents, is that using technology to change the learning process? If we drop iPads or other devices on our students so they can access e-texts instead of printed texts, but those texts are nothing more than digitized print is that really leveraging technology for change? If we're still chained to desktops in labs or media centers that are open only during school hours or restricting students to only use devices that schools provide in a designated location for computer use, is that adapting the learning process to the power and mobility of technology tools? I'd say the answer to all of these is a big fat NO.

Right now I would guess that most schools -- even those that claim to be 1:1 or BYOD schools (or a combination of both) -- are still nothing more than industrial-era models of learning. Instead of textbooks or paper on their desks, students have shiny toys that merely serve as replacements for yesteryear's tools but the structures (calendars, schedules, bells, teacher-student-ratios, assessments, classroom walls and furnishings, etc) haven't changed a bit. In the end, classrooms are littered with underutilized devices but the learning outcomes are the same because we didn't change our tactics.

We need to build a new education system that fully considers the learning needs of 21st century students and capitalizes on the power of technology to serve as a learning tool. Until then, we've just replaced horses with "faster horses."

Moving from simply painting the Model T to real education reform

I've been reading Off the Clock: Moving Education From TIME to COMPETENCY by Fred Bramante and Rose Colby. It's a compelling read that causes you to question just about everything that contributes to our outdated education model.

The authors first take aim at decades of reform efforts that have been akin to "putting a new paint job on a Model T." We hang on tightly to the school structures and cultures we so dearly came to know during our own 13-plus years of experience as students. As parents, we are even more adamant about hanging on to the experiences we remember and wanting our children (and then grandchildren) to have the same. It's a debilitating mental model that prevents meaningful transformation of a system that was never even designed in the first place based on best practices for learning.

The 20th century model of delivering content inside of classrooms during specific times is so highly flawed that it will never work the way it needs to work, but we continue to put in an honorable yet futile effort into trying to make an outdated system better.

Until we deconstruct our current model of K-12 education, our efforts to reform teaching and learning will only produce incremental changes. The biggest obstacles to higher student achievement have little to do with the ability of teachers to teach or students to learn. They are grounded in the archaic (and abusive) structures that fall under schedules:

Schedules drive schools -- daily schedules, yearly schedules, and examination schedules -- all are part of the current framework. In order to move to 21st century learning, we must first begin by deconstructing the elements of the 20th century model of school structure and operation. We must deconstruct the elements of the framework that obstruct the natural process of teaching and learning.

To not address reform head on by first destroying an outdated system is foolish and a waste of valuable resources. 21st century learners learn differently by virtue of some very organic changes in their brains, according to the authors. We can continue to reform this 20th century model, but we shouldn't think that we will get different results.

This book suggests we rebuild schools from the ground up focusing on mastery rather than time and competency-based learning vs. the 20th century Carnegie unit as a measure of learning. That's where I'm at right now but it didn't take me long to realize that this work by Bramante and Colby is not for those who cling only to what they know.

A great read that I'm considering using as a book study with our administrative team and Board of Education this coming fall.

The hidden questions behind Caine and his Arcade

You have to watch this amazing short video about Caine's Arcade. You'll be puzzled, you'll smile, you'll choke up and all at once. Have tissue in hand.

Then, you might even get mad and wonder why learning can't be more like this for every kid like Caine.



And to think no one had to test little Caine or his Arcade's learning outcomes to determine if he was proficient. No one checked to see if it was aligned with the government-mandated curriculum or met the state's one-size-fits-all graduation requirements.

No data was collected on his "teachers" and no one was fired over the results. No schools were labeled as failures or closed.

Yet he learned! How the hell could that happen without state or federal intervention?

Things aren't always what they seem to be...

For a number of years now, public schools, teachers and administrators have been under assault by a certain faction whose obvious aim is to eliminate public education in America. Now they won't admit to that but if you study the many one-sided debates and main-stream media-aided attacks on public schools, you would be deft if you considered any other conclusion.

The anti-public education group claims that public schools aren't cutting the mustard anymore. Many sound like CNN's Fareed Zakaria when he laments, "Part of the reason we're in this crisis is that we have slacked off and allowed our education system to get rigid and sclerotic." If you read the rest of Paul Farhi's latest analysis (Flunking the Test, American Journal Review) of this doom-and-gloom chanting, which I strongly encourage you do, you will quickly begin to see the pattern of flame-throwing in the world of sensational journalism, with public education right in its path.

Zakaria's take, however, may be a perfect distillation of much of what's wrong with mainstream media coverage of education. The prevailing narrative – and let's be wary of our own sweeping generalizations here – is that the nation's educational system is in crisis, that schools are "failing," that teachers aren't up to the job and that America's economic competitiveness is threatened as a result. Just plug the phrase "failing schools" into Nexis and you'll get 544 hits in newspapers and wire stories for just one month, January 2012. Some of this reflects the institutionalization of the phrase under the No Child Left Behind Act, the landmark 2001 law that ties federal education funds to school performance on standardized tests (schools are deemed "failing" under various criteria of the law). But much of it reflects the general notion that American education, per Zakaria, is in steep decline. Only 20 years ago, the phrase was hardly uttered: "Failing schools" appeared just 13 times in mainstream news accounts in January of 1992, according to Nexis. (Neither Zakaria nor CNN would comment for this story.)

Another group of so-called reformers love to spin the argument that charter public schools are more superior to traditional neighborhood-based public schools. But when they are called on the carpet to defend this statement, they can only point to a handful of successful endeavors, then completely ignore the fact that there are more than a handful of traditional public schools also succeeding. That's like kryptonite to Superman.

Several recent articles on Mlive.com have confronted the myth of superiority championed by the anti-public education group. They are well worth the read and once again demonstrate that things are not always what they seem to be, no matter how many times you hear it from the main stream media or political power-brokers.

In Michigan charter schools, results no better than other public schools (March 13, 2012)

Michigan charter schools spend more on administration, less on instruction, study finds (April 14, 2012)

Does it matter that charters spend more on administration, less on instruction? (Julie Mack blog) (April 15, 2012)