How to Develop a School Culture That Helps Curb Bullying

After years of dealing with school bullying through traditional punishments, Carolyne Quintana, the principal of Bronxdale High School in New York City, introduced restorative justice approaches at her school because she wanted students to feel trusted and cared for.

“It wasn’t just about bullying incidents, it was about the whole school culture,” she said.

To build community and handle “instances of harm” among the students, teachers bring the kids together to talk in “restorative circles,” where everyone has an opportunity to listen and be heard. Bronxdale uses circles for most of its group communications, including parent meetings and ninth-grade orientation. The circles are a natural outgrowth of the Socratic method teachers use in class, Quintana said.

What’s crucial in building the right culture is the twice-weekly advisory sessions—“the hub for restorative circles,” Quintana said—and the distributed guidance system at Bronxdale, which calls on all adults to look out for the social and emotional well-being of the students.

Bronxdale doesn’t track bullying rates, but Quintana said that students are now more conscious of the forms bullying takes, and are more apt to express concern for their peers and to sign agreements with one another. Some students who didn’t like to come to school because of bullying now do, she said. Further, students who misbehave are still held accountable.

“Restorative practices don’t get rid of discipline,” Quintana added. Rather, they supplement other discipline, so that kids who are suspended, for example, learn what they did wrong and why it matters. “It’s the restorative practices that will prepare kids for the world beyond high school,” she said.

Treating bullying as a hurtful act that violates shared values, rather than as a character defect, encourages kids to understand why their behavior was wrong, and to apologize and make amends, according to James Dillon, a retired school principal and author of Reframing Bullying Prevention to Build Stronger School Communities.

“Bullying shouldn’t ever be acceptable, and students should be held accountable—but also learn how and why what they did is wrong, and not just suffer the pain of consequences,” Dillon says.

This restorative justice model, where kids are coaxed to accept responsibility, figure out ways to remedy the harm and restore the damaged relationship, helps them learn from their actions and internalize a moral code.

“Punishment makes things worse,” said danah boyd, author of It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. “Schools have to start from a place of empathy. Why is a student doing something harmful to other students?” she added. Zero-tolerance policies toward student misbehavior have been shown to have the opposite effect of what was intended by their adoption: A task force set up by the American Psychological Association to study the issue found that zero-tolerance policies in schools worsened school climates, provoked more student misbehavior and led to higher expulsion and suspension rates for minorities. And no-questions-asked penalties against kids who mistreat their peers stunts the growth of personal conscience; the punished child will instead fixate on his “unfair” penalty rather than the harm he committed.

And when it comes to social media, ugly exchanges among kids can feel like a scourge to school administrators. But the customary ways schools have responded, including some variation of assemblies, lectures, and disciplinary action, seem to have had little effect.

“The current rules and punishment-based approach that schools are using is not working to address the concerns of bullying in school,” says Nancy Willard, director of Embrace Civility in the Digital Age. “And it certainly will not be effective in addressing hurtful acts via social media, because schools are not making the rules for social media.”

What can schools do to reduce bullying among students on school grounds and online?

Drawing from social science research and experience in schools, some experts on bullying, learning and social media have fresh ways of thinking about and responding to the problem.

Build the right culture. “It is easier to think that the problem is because of character flaws in a few students or to blame parents for not doing a better job of raising their kids,” says Dillon.

In fact, to reduce aggression among kids, school leaders need to start with the climate within the building. Schools with an authoritarian and hierarchical ethos teach kids that obeying rules as decreed by the grown-ups in power is what counts; this only exacerbates jockeying for status among the students, which inspires bullying. A better approach would have school officials and teachers talk with students about what matters and then rally around the collective values and beliefs on which they agree. When adults try to influence rather than control kids, the grown-ups are more likely to be heard. “Real accountability should be toward those commonly held and articulated values of the school community,” Dillon said.

Encourage influential kids to take the lead in changing the culture.In an ambitious yearlong study of 24,191 middle school students during 2012 and 2013, social scientists Betsy Levy Paluck, Hana Shepherd and Peter Aronow found that kids with abundant social connections were effective in changing school norms. Anti-bullying messages created and propagated by these influential students reduced conflict in school by a statistically significant margin. Notably, the student body, rather than the teachers, identified the well-connected kids.

Introduce social and emotional learning for students and teachers.“What’s been missing from school is the affective dimension of learning,” says Janice Toben, who heads up the Institute for Social and Emotional Learning in Menlo Park, California. For 27 years, Toben taught elementary and middle school children how to self-regulate and handle conflict, and now educates teachers on best practices for social and emotional learning.

“We challenge teachers to engage in the social and emotional dynamic of their students, because learning is social and emotional,” she said.

Schools could make space for more face-to-face interactions among students, and encourage all teachers to ask reflective questions and focus on students’ personal or social insights. Sharing responses like these builds empathy and develops emotional skills in children; they learn how to construct an emotional vocabulary, communicate honestly and directly, and resist online retaliation.

One method she designed is called “Open Session,” where adolescents share their worries and challenges with one another; in return, they receive support and real-life wisdom from their peers, and clarify for themselves the real source of worry. Regular meetings like this, along with mindfulness practices and even improvisation, can give kids the tools to understand themselves better, react less impulsively, and show more compassion for others. Teachers, too, need social and emotional support, Toben adds, and would benefit from Open Sessions with their colleagues. What’s essential to making this kind of learning work? “Time,” Toben said.

Work with the majority of kids who don’t bully and don’t approve of it. Fellow students are well-situated to deflate a bully’s barbs, but few kids intervene when they see abusive behavior directed at their peers. Student witnesses to bullying are more likely to stand up for peers in schools with caring and inclusive climates because bullying violates school norms. But how can school leaders get those kids to step up? First, don’t alienate them with language that seems to blame them for a behavior — bullying —t hat they didn’t commit. Instead, tell them how important they are in building a stronger school; they are leaders and allies in constructing a better school environment, and should be told so repeatedly. “The most important belief driving positive change and reframing bullying prevention,” Dillon writes, “is that students are the solution to the problem not the cause of it.”

Ensure that teachers, coaches and school administrators aren’t modeling bullying. When kids see adults at school mistreat one another, they can’t help but conclude that such conduct is actually OK, regardless of what they’re told. Of even greater harm is when teachers and coaches oppress the kids they’re instructing; screaming at athletes for making mistakes, for example, or humiliating kids in the classroom, underscores a message that harsh interpersonal behavior is the way of the world.

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10 Must-Watch Videos for Flipped Learning

“Meris Stansbury has compiled an offering of 10 great videos for fostering flipped learning, in the following eSchool News article. Is Pluto a real planet? How vast and uncharted is the world inside a drop of water? What do we really know about Vatican City? What if the Death Star actually existed? These burning questions and more are answered in the videos below.”

via eSchool News

From STEM videos to history lessons, YouTube can be a one-stop shop for flipped learning

If must-implement educational trends were narrowed down to a small group, flipped learning would be among the top contenders. But flipped learning doesn’t have to consist of videos of a hand on a whiteboard, and it doesn’t have to discuss how to multiply fractions in monotone—after all, there’s a whole YouTube world out there.

Part of the fun of flipped learning is introducing brief questions on relevant curriculum topics that students can discuss or use to create projects during class. For instance, based on historical definitions, should Pluto be a planet? If some products in the U.S. are identified through numbers, could replication of those numbers be made illegal? In other words, could a number itself be illegal?

It’s these types of short videos, based in research and made for education (with interesting animations and vivid explanations), that can be a solid foundation for inquiry-based learning. They also can provide real-world examples of what’s being taught in schools.

Do you have a favorite video you show your students? Do you think flipped learning can help in inquiry-based or project-based learning? Let us know in the comment section below.

1. Life in a drop of water (Science): A drop of pond water viewed through a microscope; filmed and edited with a smart phone. Ask students to try and identify what they’re seeing in the drop.

2. What if the Death Star was real? (STEM): Using dimensions and design specs from the Star Wars website, imagine how the Death Star might impact Earth. A bit of fun with Professor Mike Merrifield from the University of Nottingham.

3. Illegal numbers (Civics/Math): Could some numbers be made illegal in the U.S.? This video features Dr. James Grime:https://twitter.com/jamesgrime

4. What if you were born in space? (Biology/Health): Delve into how gravity and other natural forces can affect the body once in space. Provides a look at current science research.

5. CrashCourse U.S. History Part 1 (History/World Culture): A very animated historian discusses the Native Americans who lived in what is now the U.S. prior to European contact. John Green also discusses early Spanish explorers, settlements, and what happened when they didn’t get along with the indigenous people. The story of their rocky relations has been called the Black Legend.

6. Vatican City explained (History/World Culture): Using drawings and historical photos, this historian simplifies world issues in a fun way, allowing for open discussion.

7. Super expensive metals (Science): Inside a Noble Metals factory, where even the dust on your shoes is too valuable to ignore! Make the Periodic Table of Elements come to life.

8. Grammaropolis noun song (English/Language Arts): Think of this as an updated Schoolhouse Rock.

9. Negative numbers introduction (Math): Khan Academy incorporates real world examples into a very basic math concept explanation.

10. Is Pluto a planet? (History/Science): Learn about how Pluto came to be called a planet based on historical definitions and scientific inventions, to its eventual fall from the planet category.

2013′s Complex Social Media Landscape in One Chart

I (Jeff Piontek) have used this before and it is amazing to get your point across and showcase how social media has changed the internet landscape and how we do business.

via Mashable

When Brian Solis introduced the first Conversation Prism in 2008, the world was a seemingly simpler place. There were 22 social media categories, each of which had just a handful of brands. (“Video agreggation” had only one brand: Magnify.)

Flash forward to 2013, and the latest Conversation Prism (click here for the high-res downloadable version) has four additional categories with at least six brands in each. Like other Conversation Prisms, the data visualization attempts to illustrate the array of social media choices available to marketers. Various channels are classified by their function to the end user (i.e. “photos,” “music” and “social curation.”

The net effect: While the 2008 chart looked like a flower, the latest one resembles a kaleidoscope. Solis, principal analyst at Altimeter Group and a prominent social media marketing expert, says redoing the chart this time around has been instructive. “Things are changing so fast,” he says. “We don’t even realize [the landscape] is shifting.”

The chart also points out that, for many, membership in the social media ecosystem is fleeting. While some brands like Xanga, Kyte and Utterz have disappeared, others that weren’t around five years ago — like Path and Banjo — are now among category leaders.

Images courtesy of Brian Solis, Jess3

2013 Version

Disney ‘Connected Learning’ Aims To Infuse Games with Learning

Via edSurge

By contrast, the launch of the Disney Connected Learning program has been as subtle as, oh, say a green screen.

Six years ago, Disney began exploring how use its considerable design, entertainment and financial muscle in the “learning” arena. It decided to try to create games that children would find genuinely entertaining that were nonetheless built on legitimate learning “goals.”

Over the past two years, it has quietly been refining eight games based on learning objectives in its wildly popular online site for kids, Club Penguin. Several of the games have been hits. “Pufflescape,” for instance, is the second most popular game in Club Penguin. More than 30 million children have played it over the past two years.

“No child should have to choose between a ‘learning’ game and ‘fun’ game,” says Starr Long, who is executive producer of Disney Connected Learning.

Whether the students are learning anything deeper than they do when they play the purely “entertaining” games in Club Penguin, however, is still anybody’s guess.

Disney, on the other hand, has learned a lot in the process. This has been a long project: After a slow two-year start, in 2009 it recruited top talent in the massively multiplayer online industry–Starr Long, who started his career as director of Ultima Online, now the longest-running MMO in history. It convened a team of more than a dozen well-regarded educators including Stanford’s Roy Pea and the University of Georgia’s John Olive and Linda Labbo. Together, they identified 2,500 learning goals, or targets–crucial concepts that students need to understand by the fifth grade. They worked through the ideas until they had learning concepts for students from preK through 5th grade. The goals could not contradict the Common Core standards, noted Long, but they also had to be relevant around the globe. “One woman even wrote a dissertation on this,” Starr says.

“No child should have to choose between a ‘learning’ game and ‘fun’ game,” says Starr Long, who is executive producer of Disney Connected Learning.

Over the next four years, Long’s team built a programming environment to support how to connect those learning goals to “events” or actions. They also built a developer’s platform, a parent-facing app, the digital plumbing to report children’s progress through the games to that app and so on. They evaluated between 20 and 40 game prototypes. Two years ago, they began beta testing their eight top game picks.

Currently three of the 26 or so games in Club Penguin incorporate these learning goals: Pufflescape, Jelly Bean Counter and Bits & Bolts. (Another five games are slated to go online in April.)

In Pufflescape, a creature (a Puffle) bounces and glides through an obstacle courses, collecting prize tokens and unlocking higher levels.

The Puffles interact with their environment according to the rules of Newtonian mechanics. Different levels of the game encode or represent different learning goals.

Meanwhile, about 30,000 parents of those Penguin-playing kids have download a Facebook app that creates a “profile” as the kid plays through the games, letting parents know what learning concepts their kids have played through. Play through a level and the app will share that you and your Puffle have experienced simple levers or more complex ones. “We want to empower the parents,” Long says. “There’s a real need for parents to connect with kids who are living a different life than we did.”

(Parents get other benefits from their Facebook app, too, such as learning “secret” codes that they can share with kids who get stuck on games.)

The three learning games currently in action in Club Penguin echo familiar game play themes that were pioneering in the likes of Donkey Kong and even Tetris.

But these are just the beginning.

Long says that Disney will soon be releasing five preschool titles for mobile platforms, created from scratch, that use Disney characters such as Cinderella, Toy Story, Ariel, Cars and Fairies–and are based on the scaffold of learning goals created by the team of educators. “We want to build content and long-term, want to work with other to build content” based on the Connected Learning platform, Long says. Disney has not yet worked out the specifics of its partner strategy.

But will kids absorb mechanics or the rules of motion from their Puffles or whatever characters are in the game? Will they understand that the rules of physics will dictate how a creature will bounce or if it can catch a lever in motion at a certain moment? Or, skeptics will ask, couldn’t kids just go outside and throw a baseball at the roof of the house and watch it fall?

It’s too soon to tell what kids will learn from the games, Long says.

“We’re not making any claims about what they’re learning,” he observes. “We are just saying that the child is exposed to the concepts that are inherent in the game play.”

Many edu-game companies shy away from any efforts to do rigorous testing of how much learning might happen in their game. Long isn’t daunted by the problem; he believes that Disney needs more data–say, enough games that at least half the learning objectives were covered by games. So far, the games constructed cover less than 5% of the concepts, he says.

What he has learned is this: “You can make these games as compelling and exciting as one that don’t have learning concepts embedded in them.”

Can Student-Driven Learning Happen Under Common Core?

via Mindshift

Teachers use different strategies to help students learn. With the inevitable arrival of the Common Core State Standards, however, the big unknown is what will happen when the assessments are released and the states and the federal government develop policies to accommodate them. If the assessments fall back on the kinds of narrow questions we saw with No Child Left Behind, and if governments create the same kind of high-stakes accountability, teachers will be herded back towards lower levels of prescriptive learning that leave little room for student voice and ownership.

But if assessments mirror the broad principles and effective pedagogy that the CCSS authors have championed, there is hope that rote learning and teacher-driven classrooms will not be necessary in order for students to pass the test.

STUDENT-DRIVEN LEARNING

Most student-driven classrooms start with a question. It’s usually one that springs from a common place but allows for individualization by students based on their interests. It allows them to build questions and go about answering them, utilizing the skills and knowledge that the curriculum provides. The teacher facilitates this learning, to be sure, but also gives authority to the student to “own” their question. The student moves to center stage and the teacher assumes a supporting role.

Three of the eight mathematical practices that lie at the heart of all the Common Core’s K-12 math standards could be statements that describe a student-centered classroom.

For example, the capacities stated in the CCSS to “make sense of problems and persevere in solving them,” “reason abstractly and quantitatively,” and “construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others” are all integral to successful units where students ask and answer their own questions — and to a classroom where they see their viewpoint as valuable to the educational process.

The “tension” will come when the the goal of student-driven learning bumps up against the traditional teacher’s instinct to provide the context and the questions for students to use. Especially in the beginning years of CCSS implementation, this tension will be heightened as teachers learn what they are expected to teach (not just content but things like “sense-making, “reasoning,” and “constructing”) but have not yet figured out the places where they can turn the reins over to students.

HOW DO WE TEACH PERSEVERANCE?

A key CCSS principle (Math Practice MP1) is to “make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.” The alignment between student-driven learning and CCSS is very close here. Student-driven learning revolves around identifying problems that students believe are important to them and applicable to their real life, and then finding ways to solve them. The CCSS encourages teachers to help students “find the meaning of a problem and look for entry points…analyzing givens, constraints, relationships and goals.” If a teacher has already established (or begun to establish) the student-centered classroom, this will be familiar territory.

Through artful inquiry-based instruction, teachers can co-learn along with students by gently guiding and providing probing questions of their own. We have to be patient as our kids gain the ability to do this. Students who have spent years in NCLB classrooms will struggle to find how to make sense of problems. Why? Simply because they have seldom been presented with complex scenarios. The deeper student learning that can emerge from this style of teaching can’t be assessed with a multiple choice question. So we haven’t encouraged teachers to become skillful in this way, and we’ve raised a generation of rote learners.

Most student-driven classrooms start with a question. It’s usually one that springs from a common place but allows for individualization by students based on their interests.

Even so, our students can reconnect with their innate curiosity and excitement about learning. Over the past several years of shifting my practice, I have seen their natural curiosity return. When it does, persevering isn’t nearly so hard. Until it does, teachers will have to continually re-assure and support students in building deeper, higher level kinds of questions.

ELA STANDARDS AND STUDENT-DRIVEN TEACHING 

Within the first ELA strand, writing, the Common Core articulates steps for writing a good argument and defending it. Details about how these skills are going to build up from lower grades (with increasing amounts of sophistication) are not present in the standards. That will fall to the collective expertise of teachers working together to make this happen, and to curriculum writers at the district or state levels. We will have to work at understanding what kinds of vertical alignments are needed so we can craft lessons to be matched with our students’ needs at each level.

Common Core writing standards appear to emphasize “the ability to write logical arguments based on substantive claims…reasoning…and relevant evidence.” If students were able to demonstrate this ability in their writing, they would be able to describe and defend their ideas to others. And that empowering skill set is exactly what a student-driven classroom seeks to achieve.

THE INTERSECTION OF ELA AND STEM SUBJECTS 

More tension will arise for traditional teaching as educators are called upon to expand the student’s understanding of non-fiction and technical topics, like those associated with STEM subjects and social sciences. In recent years, students have been heavily focused on writing narrative and creative writing kinds of pieces. The expansion of real-world study topics called for in the Common Core should open up the student-driven classroom even more.

Writing’s partner is speaking and listening. In a student-driven classroom, there is much “argumentation, debate and discourse” as students wrestle with the questions. The best of those classrooms foster respect between students as they learn from each other. They have to develop the ability to hold their own during small group discussions as well as classroom discussions.

What should please teachers is the fact that the CCSS standards address the formal, stand-in-front-of-the-class presentation and the collegial discussions between students. When I read about “….informal discussions that take place as students collaborate to answer questions, build understanding and solve problems,” I see support of student choice. These words underscore the importance of students’ conversations about what they are learning and the interpersonal skills that are necessary for undertaking co-learning of ideas and content. Building understanding and solving problems are goals that demand we address the group dynamics involved in studying a real-world situation and brainstorming ideas back and forth.

Ultimately there is room in the Common Core’s vision and principles for advocates of student-driven learning to thrive. As teachers gain experience in the CCSS standards that apply to their grade level, they will identify places where there are opportunities to put student questions at the forefront of their lesson plans. Over time, as students build up their ability to read, write, speak and find solutions to increasingly more complex kinds of problems, they will be able to take more and more ownership of the learning process.

All this assumes, of course, that the large-scale assessment and accountability systems are designed to promote this potentially powerful marriage of the Common Core and student-driven learning. I’ve been teaching a long time. I know how big that assumption is. But at the classroom level, the best way I know to make it happen is to show what could happen. So I’m going to keep doing that.

Marsha Ratzel is a National Board-certified teacher in the Blue Valley School District in Kansas, where she teaches middle school math and science. Her book about shifting her science teaching practice to emphasize student-driven learning will be published this spring by Powerful Learning Press. A portion of this post originally appeared on Voices from the Learning Revolution.

How Are Smartphones Being Used? [Infographic]

via Tatango

Is it Really Hip to Flip?

via The Journal

Hardly a week has gone by in the last year when educators have not been bombarded by news articles, blog posts, or invitations to attend webinars and conferences focused on the flipped classroom. Flipping has become a hot topic among both educators and school leaders. But there are some legitimate concerns. A major one is the rationale for selecting the flipped method in the first place, which might displace other valuable, technology-based instructional strategies.

A flipped lesson incorporates viewing instructional videos for homework. It’s not the use of video that might make educators skeptical of this strategy, but how and where it is used in instruction and its effect on learners as homework.

Although an instructional video can be a valuable tool, is this current focus on the flip being made at the expense of other technologies that should play a role in instruction? Certainly, if educators are going to create videos for learning, they can’t just “wing-it and post-it” and assume learners will be engaged. If you are skeptical and unsure about trying flipped instruction, particularly for mathematics, the following questions and considerations for the design of instruction involving video might help you decide and avoid a flip-flop.

Initial Questions
Over the last 30 years, many instructional strategies have been introduced aimed at increasing mathematics achievement. “Individualized instruction, cooperative learning, direct instruction, inquiry, scaffolding, computer-assisted instruction, and problem solving” are among those, according to NCTM’s President Linda Gojak (2012, para. 1). Whenever a different strategy comes along, educators wonder about its potential, including for the latest addition–the flipped classroom.

How does flipping work?

A typical cycle might occur over two days. On the first day learners begin their exploration of concepts via an activity that builds on prior knowledge.  They would view instructional video that night for homework, which replaces the traditional in-class lecture.  The video may or may not involve interactivity.  Learners might complete a reflective activity as proof of viewing it.  On day 2, discussion ensues so that they get their additional questions answered.  Learners then engage in activities for applying their knowledge, working on problem sets from learning packets. They might complete those for day 2 homework and also prepare for an assessment the following day (Saltman, 2011).

An instructional video has advantages, such as the ability to pause and repeat; but but it has disadvantages as well: An instructional video is a lecture, just a different form of “sage on the stage.” It is not by itself learner-centered. And unlike a face-to-face lecture, which might also inspire and be meaningful to learners, it has an additional disadvantage in that learners do not necessarily get their immediate questions answered by a pause and repeat. Learners need interactivity and engagement. Proponents know that. Indeed, Jon Bergmann (2012) views “flipped learning as a transitional pedagogy/technique. We are transitioning from the old industrial model of education to the learner centered, active class of the future” (para. 3). Actually, educators should have made that learner-centered transition well before flipping became the hot topic.

It’s not the use of video that might make educators skeptical of this strategy, but how and where it is used in instruction and its effect on learners as homework.

An initial question often surrounds access to appropriate technology for viewing video outside of class time. There’s something to be said for needing one-to-one and BYOD initiatives in connection to success of a flipped class. Even with Internet access at home, what do you tell a family that has only one computer, more than one child, each of whom might have more than one video to view for homework, resulting in lack of time and frustration for each to complete it? Proponents say there are solutions, such as using school computers before or after school, or during the school day in a study hall. Even that has limitations considering that the only transportation to and from school for many is the scheduled school bus. Giving more time during a week to complete viewing the videos is not a complete solution, as without the video lecture there’s a huge gap in learning to fill at day 2 in a flipped class cycle.

Would it be appropriate for all to use instructional video as homework?

The type and amount of homework to assign at each grade level and whether or not to grade it has also been problematic. Consider the extent of diversity among learners, including their varied learning and thinking styles. As they also vary in mathematical maturity (Morsund & Ricketts, 2012), math educators would be particularly interested in the potential for increase in math anxiety from digging into video content alone and the degree to which learners will accept the challenge.

How often and under what circumstances should the method be used? Not all educators have found success in their implementations. There have been learners themselves who rejected the flipped classroom, preferring a traditional approach. Bergmann (2012) indicated that for lower grades, the method might only be appropriate for selected lessons. Shouldn’t this selectivity be considered for all grades?

Certainly, a video must convey more than what can be read in a traditional textbook. If all learners had Internet access outside of class time, why would educators want to focus on instructional video for homework? There is a wealth of digital content for teaching and learning mathematics. Types include tutorials, skill builders with drill and practice, comprehensive courseware, test prep, problem-solving challenges, simulations and visualization tools, and serious educational games (Schneiderman, 2006). Some of those offer global challenges with other learners. Add Web 2.0 tools for collaboration. This does not mean that those who flip would not use them, however.

Given limited time for professional development and so many technology options for instruction, educators might also ask where their technology integration priorities should lie. Two years ago, I commented on the need to ensure learners gain expertise using technologies that will be included in upcoming online Common Core assessments. Gray and colleagues found relatively low percentages for technology use in classrooms for such activities (Deubel, 2010). As math homework often involves using paper/pencil to complete problems independently, would this be the best use of time in a flipped class in light of this need to expand technology use? Or, would digital resources be available for such practice, which also track progress?

What evidence is there that the method is effective and leads to student achievement? An entire school has adopted the model owing to data from piloting it, which indicated fewer failures, better discipline, increase in homework completion, and more students reaching proficiency (Saltman, 2011). As everything educators do should lead to achievement, results from a 2010 national online survey by PBS & Grunwald Associates might make one wonder about the longevity of a method that features video. Over 1,400 preK-12 teachers participated. Although 82 percent believed video content is more effec­tive when it is integrated with other instructional resources or content, less than half believed video content directly increases student achievement (42 percent) and is more effective than other types of instructional resources or content (31 percent).