Daily Archives: 12/6/2004

Session IV: Integrating tech in science and social studies

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The ATLAS Academy uses the ISTE model to produce lessons that promote technology integration in science and social studies. Grants have funded opportunities for teachers to work together and with facilitators to develop innovative curriculum. The last ATLAS Academy Workshop had approximately 300 participants.

Approximately 15 ATLAS participants are presenting some of the curriculum they developed as part of the last ATLAS workshop. The workshop lasted from a Friday night through Sunday and the participants developed some interesting projects.

Example #1: The periodic table

Teachers developed multimedia presentations. Students then identified an element of interest and developed their own multimedia presentations. The students’ work was linked together into a complete periodic table.

Example #2: Latin American geography

Middle school students created a scavenger hunt for “artifacts” from Latin America. They do multimedia presentations describing where the artifacts came from.

Example #3: Web site creation

Teachers used the McGraw Hill Learning Network’s free Web site building tool to create Web sites that communicate with students and parents.

This looks like a great way to get some concentrated curriculum development time. I love the idea of getting teachers working together away from the distractions of school. The conversations that happen in the off hours are often some of the most valuable.

Session II: Bridging the Achievement Gap

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Cheryl Lemke, CEO of the Metiri Group, is sharing her thoughts about technology solutions that help bridge the achievement gap. She is emphasizing research-based solutions in her presentation. This is especially relevant because of the federal government’s requirement in the NCLB law that new initiatives have a base of research supporting their use. Links to the Web sites she mentions in her talk are available separated by K–6 and 7–12.

Two types of research are important: impact studies and theoretical research. NCLB calls for demonstrated benefits. Some technology products have been “ported” from non-technology uses. The Lexia company, for example, took their effective phonemic awareness program and incorporated technology.

Cheryl is showing the WISE Project site at Cal Berkeley. The site features inquiry-based science units that deeply integrate technology. The students do their work through the Web and their progress is tracked on the site.

There are some products that have good scientific evidence supporting them. She’s talking about Read 180 from Scholastic. This is a product we use in our district. There are impact studies that support using Read 180 with struggling readers. Another product that has good impact study results is Fast Forward from Scientific Learning. Next is Little Planet from Sunburst, an early intervention reading program.

An interesting resource is the Metiri Group’s Tech Solutions That Work site. Like the CARET database, this site includes analyses of the research on various educational technology products. This is a good reference to use to challenge the software vendors’ sometimes exaggerated claims.

Another tool with good research is Cognitive Tutor for better algebra performance. The Apple Classroom of Tomorrow had some interesting results as well. Though the students with computers didn’t have significantly better academic performance, nearly all ACOT student went on to college which greatly exceeded the performance of the non-ACOT students.

Now Cheryl is talking about the theoretical studies. She’s talking about visualization as a tool for teaching and showing a graph depicting the power struggle between Jack and Ralph in the novel Lord of the Flies. The teacher who created that graph had the students create their own and combined their results to generate the graph.

Session I: Evaluating Teachers’ Technology Skills

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This session is presented by my colleague Jon Berry who, in cooperation with our district’s staff development and mentorship coordinator, Debbie Ondov, developed a set of technology standards for our district’s non-tenured teachers. They combined Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for effective teaching and ISTE’s NETS-T standards.

The Danielson framework has four domains and 22 individual measures, but doesn’t include a technology or equity component. A couple years ago, a discussion began to add these missing pieces to our evaluation system. A 5th equity domain was created and technology measures were added to all five domains. The other influential document in this process was the Hopkins Instructional Technology Standards (HITS) which defines technology skills in grades K-6 and was drawn in part from the NETS-S.

Lots of questions about the HITS. These standards were built by media specialists and teachers to reflect the NETS and the existing Hopkins curriculum. These standards show up on students’ report cards which helps emphasize their importance.

Some of our next steps include expanding the technology standards to the tenured staff.

Monday keynote: Cheryl Lemke, Metiri Group

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Cheryl Lemke is the first keynote speaker. She is President and CEO of the Metiri Group, an educational technology consulting company. Her talk is about the changes that need to be made in education to address the needs of 21st century learners.

Cheryl is talking about the current job market and the need for students to be prepared for a knowledge economy. She says that 50% of jobs in the U.S. are with companies that have fewer than 25 employees. Industrial workers are measured by their efficiency. Knowledge workers are measured by their effectiveness. Kids born after 1983 are called “millennials” and have different needs than students from earlier eras. (It will be interesting to see how her comments fit with Prensky’s digital immigrant-digital native work.)

Key 21st century skills include digital-age literacy, inventive thinking, effective communication, and high productivity. These aren’t new concepts for educators. We could use this list of skills as another filter for our existing curriculum. Check out the Born To Be Wired Web site for more information about what today’s students are like.

Five responses to school tasks: authentic engagement, ritual engagement, passive compliance, retreatism, rebellion. The Metiri Group did a survey of a midwestern high school and found only 15% of the students fit in the “authentic engagement” category. Cheryl showed a video demonstrating how students can be engaged in simple problems like learning to calculate slope equations using simulations via the IMMIX site. The work the students did hit on many 21st century skills beyond the basic mathematical operation of calculating slope.

It’s possible to affect students’ ability to direct their own learning. Teachers can encourage or inhibit self-direction based on the way they interact with students. Too much testing inhibits self-direction. (Are you listening Federal Dept. of Ed?)

There is a study out by Fred Newmann called Improving Chicago’s Schools that examines the type of assignments that teachers give their students. His conclusion was that teachers who give intellectually stimulating assignments produce higher-achieving students. Instead of “drill and kill” exclusively for kids who need basic skill development, make sure those students get a chance for more challenging work. Markers of stimulating assignments include relevance beyond the school day, deep knowledge required, and construction of new knowledge.

Her final questions: Is it malpractice if teachers don’t take advantage of technology that is known to be effective? Whose malpractice is it? Teahcer, administrators, or both.

Links to the sites Cheryl mentioned are available on the Web.