“4” Social Media Listening Strategies for 21st Century School Leaders

4 Social Media Listening Strategies for 21st Century School Leaders

Summer Reading List….

Presentation at American Education Research Association

This was an honor and privilege to present a paper about the “Walmartization of Charter Schools” which focused on the accountability issues with “big box” companies and public education.

New Scoop-it about “online and blended learning”

Superintendent has the RIGHT IDEA!!!

Photo credit: Illustration by Christopher Serra |

McGill: Rating won’t help teachers or kids

The State Education Department has mandated a new evaluation scheme for New York‘s teachers. In what Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo describes as a “groundbreaking” move, everyone now will be rated on a 100-point scale that relies heavily on classroom observations and students’ test scores.

What could be wrong with that?

Pretend you want to evaluate 150 people in your organization. You have three objectives. Assure a high level of effectiveness. Constantly improve everyone’s performance. Screen out anyone whose efforts aren’t acceptable.

You want to base your evaluation plan on several principles. You know that performance improves when people collaborate and when they get good coaching. Good coaches take information from multiple sources and use it to give considered feedback. Their charges get ample opportunity to practice under supervision. Evaluators also need standards and strong evidence to hold employees accountable.

Most of the people in your organization want to succeed. A few are truly exceptional. A larger number have mixed strengths and weaknesses. A smaller group is less competent. Everyone works independently much of the time. You don’t have the resources — enough supervisors or time, for example — to give everyone the continuous, thorough feedback needed to change complex behavior intentionally. So you focus your energies.

Some of your people are relatively new. They need more support and mentoring. You get several supervisors to collaborate in observing these newcomers and in working to bring them along. You’re less interested in comparing them than in whether each is becoming fully proficient — and then getting even better .

Some people are more expert. You check in on them less often to be sure they’re meeting core standards, cooperatively plan for their development, and offer them opportunities to hone their skills and absorb emerging knowledge about their field. Again, you’re less interested in how they might rank and more in their staying vibrant and continuing to grow.

You know from your periodic checks and from informal feedback that some folks aren’t measuring up. Supervisors either collaborate to help them upgrade their performance or develop extensive evidence for their dismissal.

That’s effective evaluation in a rational world. Not in the world of Albany. Albany wants to rank people relative to one another.

But why?

If the point is to help them improve, they need insightful advice and good coaching, not numerical rankings. If it’s to screen out less competent teachers, the only relevant yardstick is whether performance is up to standard. Who cares whether Ms. Jones is number 34, 35 or 36 out of 150?

The state’s rationale is that the metrics will drive people to compete for better scores. But what’s the point when the numbers lack meaning? Everyone knows that standardized tests aren’t good measures of who’s a good teacher, for example. Few, if any, researchers believe they can be used to make fine distinctions among practitioners, as the state plan tries to do.

Regardless, quantification is the name of today’s game. Student test results or classroom observations determine at least 71 points of a teacher’s score. The local schools control the remaining 29 points, but they have to be divided up in some set way: so many for planning, so many for taking part in professional activities, and so on.

This numbers game already drives teachers to spend increasing time prepping their kids for exams at the expense of other learning, and to play the system so they can amass points strategically. It’ll discourage collaboration, as well. As one veteran recently said, “Why should I do anything that could help someone else get a higher score than I do?”

Meanwhile, no rigid scoring formula will anticipate all possible situations. Let’s say Ms. Smith’s special needs kids are constantly the brunt of her dark sarcasms when nobody’s watching. That’s unacceptable. Whatever her strengths, credible student and parent feedback should lead supervisors to judge her performance inadequate. In Albany‘s 100-point world, however, she may well pile up enough points to be “proficient.” All she has to do is deliver a coherent lesson in front of an observer, produce decent test scores and strategically get a few more points here and there.

In short, the supposed strengths of this one-size-fits-all approach are really weaknesses. The “objective” numbers don’t judge people accurately. One state-wide evaluation framework doesn’t make sense for every school, and this one restricts the human judgment that’s essential to effective evaluation.

This is teacher appreciation week. In place of well-meaning sentiment, New York State should appreciate its teachers meaningfully. Rather than impose its uniform evaluation template on everyone, it should enable districts to develop their own plans and their capacity to evaluate effectively. A real service to teachers would be to help them understand whether teaching is the right career for them and, if it is, how to do an even better job of developing the determination, initiative, and thinking skills standardized tests can’t measure.

Michael McGill, superintendent of the Scarsdale Public Schools, is participating in a panel about the misperceptions and realities of the state’s teacher evaluation system on Saturday, May 12, at Bank Street College in Manhattan.

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The difference between Learning and Instruction

One thing I am proud of is that I am an avid reader as I was reading an article tonight I thought I should write a post about it and share my opinions. The article appeared in American Educator which, essentially, argues that educators who believe in the value of experiential, problem-based learning, are misguided fools, and I thought OK let’s see where this misguided fool has gone wrong. The article titled: ‘Putting Students on the Path to Learning: The Case for Fully Guided Instruction’, written by Clark, Kirschner and  Sweller seeks to basically put an end to any debate  around which mode of learning is best: partially-guided instruction (as seen in discovery learning, problem-based learning, or inquiry learning) or direct instruction. Where does this fit into the blended/hybrid world?

It’s a long article, so I’d urge you to read it for yourself, but not at night unless you have insomnia. But the basic premise of it is something like this: advocates of constructivist approaches to learning are wilfully ignoring decades of rigorous research who proves, beyond doubt, that for novice learners, (defined by the authors as almost all of us) fully-guided instruction is the way to learn. I spoke recently to a colleague who is undertaking her PhD at USC and this was one of her issues that the research they are using to frame arguments is from the 70’s and 80’s!!

I don’t know about you, but my hair on my neck rises when I see professors seeking to “put an end” to debate to make something the final word, it just wreaks of absolutism. I have issues with this as there is a detachment from schools or education and researchers many times to the reality of school today. Some of them might need to get out of their ivory towers and actually go to a school. If that’s the case then I have a few arguments to counteract their points.

There is, however, another aspect to this kind of academic arrogance that gets under my skin and raises my hair, or as I would have said a few years ago “pisses me off”.

Why do these arguments get presented in such a manner? Who said it was either/or? And, of course, minimal guidance during ‘instruction’ is pretty pointless – it barely counts as guidance.

This article points to an even bigger question, for me, though. What do we mean by ‘learning’? The authors imply that learning is simply about reaching into the long-term memory data banks to find previous ‘worked examples’ which will provide a solution to presented problems. They cite chess masters as prime examples of this, are you kidding me “chess masters'” where is their creativity or innovation? They state that by being able to beat several opponents at once by retrieving data on previous moves from their memory banks is the base for the research model. I don’t know much about chess, but I do recal Bobby Fischer emphasising the importance of speculation and intuition.

In a future where a connected mind is likely to be at a premium, should we not be seeing ‘learning’ as more than just store-and-retrieve? Sure, their ideas might help you pass a standardized test (which is another post in itself), but will it help you put two ideas together to create a new one? And, if a student becomes engaged (and inquiry and problem-based approaches seem remarkably good at engaging students) aren’t they going to be more likely to apply some discretionary energy into learning more about concepts and theories, because doing so could explain why an experimental didn’t work fully? We do know that, if knowledge isn’t re-visited regularly, we lose it. This explains why most of us can’t remember much of what we rote-learned in our childhoods, no matter how guided the instruction. If we weren’t engaged at the time of the instruction, we aren’t likely to want to re-visit it.

Solving problems, recognising the part our emotions play when learning, following hunches, daydreaming might seem to Profs Clark, Kirtchner and Sweller as ‘inefficient’. I would love to have the opportunity to argue that they all help engage the learner and without engagement, there’s no deep, or lasting, learning. It is about passion based, passion driven learning with guidance from behind.

This is a true example of how this concept is in real life,  visit Caine’s Arcade, in the video below, and ask yourself if you think that he will have long-term memories of how he solved problems through experience, experimentation, emotion and intuition? BTW a week ago when I was first sent the video (thanks Ana) I watched it five times, just to watch the look on the boys face as he saw his dreams coming true as he built his “field of dreams”. Let me know what you think..

Link to Caine’s Arcade video…http://vimeo.com/40000072

Teacher Professional Development???? My take on Teacher Improvement and Professional Development. What do you think?

Warning: this post may incite, annoy or even anger some people but I am hopeful that it will also encourage and motivate change. I am coming at this post from the point of view of an educator for many years, a staff developer and a lifelong learner. I believe there are so many issues today with the fact that people believe “Teacher Professional Development” to be as simple as going online or attending a conference or a single day workshop for a few hours. The single day workshop commonly referred to as “drive-by PD” and many of the other models are not successful. The main reasons are because they are not ongoing, sustainable and high quality. Quality teacher professional development is a real issue and will always be an issue.

Let’s start with the problems. One is that “Professional Development” by definition assumes you have an innate skill or proficiency. My belief is that the term should be broken down into three specific terms. The initial term or concept should be “Professional Exposure”, giving others exposure to an educational expert. For new, impressionable teachers, this is important because they are most likely to get pumped and run with the new ideas. We must ensure however that the correct and appropriate effective pedagogical approach is being implemented. Also, when the concept is being implemented, it must be assessed correctly at the appropriate Depth of Knowledge level or taxonomic level. I personally have seen many teachers implement a program without fully knowing how to implement or assess it.

The second term “Professional Improvement” takes the concept that you already have some inkling of the concept and are going to improve it. This is crucial to the success of all teachers or individuals being that one must be a lifelong learner and have the inner drive to improve.  If one does not have the impetus for learning, then self-improvement will not happen.

The final term “Professional Development” (PD) and the ideal for this is something that is built upon concepts of effective PD. This occurs through coaching, reflection, or reviewing results. It may occur individually, in pairs, or in collaborative learning teams when educators plan, implement, analyze, reflect, and evaluate the integration of their professional learning into their practice. It occurs within learning communities that meet to learn or refine instructional strategies; plan lessons that integrate the new strategies; share experiences about implementing those lessons; analyze student work together to reflect on the results of use of the strategies; and assess their progress toward their defined goals.

Before schools can adopt these new 21^st-century standards for teacher professional development, Hirsch (of Learning Forward formerly known as the National Staff Development Council) said there are some prerequisites: (1) Educators must commit to ensuring that all students succeed, (2) Educators must be ready to learn continually, (3) School district leaders must understand that professional learning involves collaborative inquiry and learning, and (4) School district leaders must understand that educators learn in different ways and at different rates.

Learning Forward’s seven standards for professional learning that increase teacher effectiveness and results for all students are:

1. Learning Communities: Groups of teachers who are committed to continuous improvement, shared responsibility, and collective goal alignment.
2. Leadership: Skillful leaders who develop capacity, advocate, and create support systems for professional learning.
3. Resources: Prioritizing, monitoring, and coordinating resources for professional learning.
4. Data: Using a variety of sources and types of student, educator, and school system data to plan, assess, and evaluate professional learning.
5. Learning Designs: Integrating theories, research, and models of human learning to achieve intended outcomes.
6. Implementation: Applying research and sustained support for implementation of professional learning to foster long-term change.
7. Outcomes: Aligning outcomes with educator performance and student curriculum standards.

The issue with professional development many times is that the person responsible for organizing professional development, do so in ways that alienate rather than engage and assist educators. Those organizing the professional development may not be clear about specific improvements in educator and student performance that should result, or may not carefully determine what steps will lead to the desired performance levels. In addition, educators often complain that they are required to participate in poorly conceived and ineffective professional development leads to complaints professional development that does not address the real challenges they face in their schools and classrooms. They resent “one-size-fits-all” professional development that targets large numbers of educators from very different schools and classrooms who have students with different needs. Also, the professional development may not consider educators’ varying levels of motivation, interest, knowledge, and skill. This is the rationale for the differentiated approach to PD just as we differentiate with our students.

All schools should be places where both adults and students learn. Unfortunately this doesn’t happen. Most of the time, teachers and administrators develop their own knowledge and skills, which they model for students. This can be dangerous if it is not done properly and could have detrimental effects on student learning and their success. The concept of continual or ongoing development creates a culture of learning throughout the school and supports educators’ efforts to engage students, expected of a lifelong learner. An organization that organizes team-based professional development or professional learning networks and expects all teachers and administrators to consistently participate — though for different purposes, a different times, in different ways — shows that the organization values and is serious about all educators performing at higher levels. As a result, the entire school is more focused and effective.

With my experiences in education, it is my belief that research has shown that teaching quality and school leadership are the most important factors in raising student achievement. For teachers, school and district leaders to be most effective, they need to continually expand their knowledge and skills to implement the best educational practices. Educators learn to help students learn at the highest levels. They need to be able to move from exposure to improvement to finally and most importantly, professional development and SUCCESS!!

‘One Size Fits One’ at Hawaii Tech Academy

‘One Size Fits One’ at Hawaii Tech Academy

Reflected in a mirror, art teacher Malia Andrus helps Alyssa Hartley with a project at the Hawaii Technology Academy. The school has quadrupled its enrollment in two years to become the fastest-growing charter school in the state.

—Dennis Oda /Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Educators there blend online learning with face-to-face instruction

The line began forming before dawn at a drab, mixed-use building overlooking Farrington Highway in Waipahu as parents vied for a chance to sign up their children for a slot at the Hawaii Technology Academy. Just a small white sign tips off passers-by to the location of the fastest-growing charter school in the state, on the second floor above a kayak store.

“One family came at midnight, and by 5 a.m. we had 51 people waiting outside,” said Jeff Piontek, an energetic New Yorker who heads the school, Hawaii’s largest charter.

Launched in 2008, the charter school has quadrupled its enrollment over two years, with 1,000 students at last count. On March 1, it opened 250 additional slots for this fall, triggering that line of parents. The school can grow so quickly despite its limited space—10,000 square feet—because its students work mostly at home. They come to the learning center, on average, twice a week for face-to-face classes, with additional time for electives.

“It’s one size fits one; it’s not one size fits all,” said Mr. Piontek, formerly the state science specialist for Hawaii’s public schools. “If you’re a 4th grader and don’t know fractions, we can teach you. If you don’t know how to conjugate a verb, we teach you. Every child has a customized learning plan.”

So-called hybrid schools that blend face-to-face teaching and online learning are one of the fastest growing models of e-learning, according to organizations such as the Vienna, Va.-based International Association for K-12 Online Learning. Experts say hybrid schools such as the Hawaii Technology Academy are trying to use this approach to do a better job tailoring teaching and learning to students’ individual strengths and weaknesses while still maintaining some face-to-face interactions.

Students at the Hawaii Technology Academy undergo a baseline assessment before they start school. Teachers review their performance every Monday and adjust each student’s agenda for the coming week. The school uses a standardized online curriculum purchased from K12 Inc., a Herndon, Va.-based e-learning company.

Academy teachers say success depends on two factors: an engaged parent and a motivated child. “Your parent or guardian is actually a teacher; they’re responsible,” said middle school teacher Tiffany Wynn. “It’s not sitting your child in front of a computer and saying, ‘Here you go, good luck!’”

‘Work at Your Own Pace’

Hawaii Tech’s students score well, with 85 percent proficient in reading and 45 percent proficient in math last year. But the school’s close connection with K12 Inc. has raised a red flag with the state auditor’s office, which is examining Hawaii’s charter school system.

The for-profit firm gets 41 percent of the school’s allotment of funds from the state. Under its contract, it also pays the principal. That means Mr. Piontek is a private employee, not a state employee like other public school principals.

“That is a huge issue with a lot of people,” said Mr. Piontek, who makes $115,000 a year. “They are afraid the curriculum company is running a public school. I would much rather be a school employee, and so would the local school board.”

The board has been trying to renegotiate its K12 contract, which was signed before Mr. Piontek was hired and runs until 2014.

‘Work at Your Own Pace’

The academy enrolls students from South Point, on the Big Island, to the North Shore of Kauai, some of them competitive surfers or performing artists who need a more flexible schedule. The school’s individualized approach has struck a chord, especially with military families and home-school students.

Mr. Piontek pulls up some profile data with a few quick strokes on his laptop: 47 percent of students came from regular public schools; 31 percent are military dependents; 20 percent were home-school students; 12 percent came from private schools; 2 percent came from other charter schools.

“I could fill the whole school with military, but we want it to be a local school,” Mr. Piontek said. “Our plan caps it at a third.” Despite the building’s bleak exterior, cheerful posters hand-lettered by students decorate the central hallway. An art teacher enlightens her pupils on the concept of proportion at one end of the hall, while biology students dissect rats in its science lab.

“I really like this school because it’s challenging,” said Joelle Lee, a soft-spoken 7th grader with a flair for drawing. “You can work at your own pace. If you get it down in most schools, you have to wait for everyone else. This one, you learn it once and you get ahead and go on to the next thing.”

Technology Evolves to Offer a Clearer View of Science

Schools incorporate computer simulations, 3-D modeling

In virtual labs that give high school students remote control of real-world lab equipment, the constraints and artificial simplicity that a 50-minute class period imposes on an experimental design fade away.

And in role-playing challenges, the technology fosters collaboration and critical thinking and relays data, but the crises themselves remain in the imaginations of the students.

Perhaps nowhere are there more diverse possibilities with great potential to transform teaching with multimedia tools than in science education. But experts say that, for teachers, it can still be a long road from a primitive depiction of electron transfer in static electricity to a lab where high school students measure the radiation in a strontium-90 isotope sample halfway across the country.

“Depending on which type of technology you’re talking about, there’s different levels of uptake,” said Albert Byers, the assistant executive director of e-learning and government partnerships for the National Science Teachers Association, in Arlington, Va. “The nexus, the teacher, is where we need to focus. The software, the technology, will follow suit.”

Teachers appear willing to embrace simple models that illustrate a scientific concept on a computer screen and allow the user to adjust variables to get different results. One example is the PhET Independent Simulations project, an initiative of the University of Colorado at Boulder that began in 2004 and is considered among the leaders in educational science simulation.

During 2010, students ran about 15 million single simulations at the PhET site, which gets funding from the National Science Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, among others. (The Hewlett Foundation also provides grant support for coverage of “deeper learning” and the economic stimulus by Education Week.) In 2011, it’s expected that the site will host 22 million simulations, according to Katherine K. Perkins, the site’s director, a far cry from the mere thousands of simulations that ran in the program’s first year.

The PhET site, which originally stood for Physics Education Technology, hosts more than 100 models that address concepts across physics, chemistry, biology, and calculus, and are available for free to teachers and students. It’s also become the object of commercial inquiries from various online content providers that wish to incorporate some of its simulations into various science curricula, a step Ms. Perkins says is necessary.

“If you open a simulation, you will see it is a really flexible tool,” she said. “But what they don’t do is they don’t come with a curriculum around them. They don’t come with any particular set of steps you have to do. They’re really just open play areas, so teachers are free to write activities around them and add specific learning goals they want to address.”

One recently developed simulation allows a user to observe how light refracts through glass, water, and other substances, with the user able to alter the color of light and the surface the light passes through. Other more recently developed simulations allow users to run mock nuclear-fission reactions, toy with the fragile gravitational relationships between the planets and sun in our solar system, and cause genetic mutations in bunnies by fiddling with their natural habitat.

‘How Science Works’

But getting beyond computer models and using real-life virtual labs on the high school level is far less widespread.

Kemi Jona, the director of the office of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education partnerships at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Ill., says one reason is that many virtual labs—which are becoming increasingly common in the undergraduate world—have material that is potentially suitable for high school use, but is difficult to understand for teachers as well as students because it is presented in an overly technical, jargon-laden manner.

Mr. Jona helps oversee Northwestern’s iLabCentral program in its effort to design virtual labs targeted toward high school teachers and students, as well as to connect those students to other existing virtual labs. The site links to 21 virtual labs from sources throughout the world, but only eight are deemed appropriate for high school students, and only one was created by the iLabs project team.

In the lab created by Mr. Jona’s team, students remotely operate a Geiger counter to measure how the intensity of radiation changes with distance, and ultimately answer the question of how much exposure to a cellphone is too much. A controlled pilot of the lab in the fall of 2009 saw 1,000 individual labs run, said Mr. Jona, while 3,700 labs have been run independently since then.

“We know we need to build out more labs so we have a range of different courses,” he said. “One lab is not going to change the whole world. But teachers are really excited about it.”

He said the site, which is free to use, is constructing other labs and is encouraging more-advanced high school students to try using the undergraduate-level labs. And while he understands that many teachers might feel more comfortable using PhET-style simulations, or even running simple, in-class experiments, he stresses that virtual labs offer a far better window into real-world science.

Often in virtual labs, he said, students need to calibrate machines to ensure accurate measurements, try to parse meaningful observations out of “noisy” or unclear data, and even run numerous trials over days or weeks to test findings for efficiency.

“We need to be teaching them that [science] is a slow, careful process,” Mr. Jona said. “You can’t do very sophisticated things [in a classroom] because they can’t fit in a 50-minute period. You only get one shot out of it, which is not how science works at all. In fact, it’s the opposite of how science works.”

Scientific Collaboration

Bruce Howard, an independent consultant and former program developer at the Center for Education Technologies at Wheeling Jesuit University, in Wheeling, W.Va., adds that collaboration is also a key element of real-world science. And it’s an element students can learn through “e-Missions,” or simulated, problem-based, learning adventures.

In e-Missions, the digital technology is used not only to model a scientific phenomenon or give data feedback, but also to help students collaborate via email, instant messaging, or videoconferencing. Wheeling Jesuit University offers 11 such missions via its Challenger Learning Center (one of about 50 such loosely affiliated centers across the country), with subjects ranging from weather catastrophes to space exploration.

One of its most comprehensive simulations is based on the 1995 eruption of a previously dormant volcano on the 7-mile-wide Caribbean island of Montserrat. In the simulation, students are given data both from the eruption and an approaching hurricane, as if the two are happening in real time, and are assigned the role of hurricane, volcano, evacuation, or communication specialist. The four must then collaborate to decide how best to protect the island’s population.

“Students are more sophisticated all the time, especially when it comes to graphics, because they’re spoiled by Hollywood,” he said. “You’re learning all those great21st-century learning skills—the collaboration, the listening skills.”

He adds that such simulations can give students science-career ideas they previously may not have considered. For example, while students know the roles of doctors and nurses, they may learn of other medical professions in a collaborative simulation in which students act as a medical team at a hospital.

“You don’t think about the radiologist, or about the phlebotomist. Those are interesting career fields also,” Mr. Howard said.

3-D Modeling Tools

At the 1,000-student Hawaii Technology Academy, a charter school based in Waipahu, just west of Honolulu, that blends face-to-face and online learning, students take the collaboration a step further.

The school’s students have collaborated with ichthyologists, who study aquatic life, and used free 3-D modeling tools like Google SketchUp to create computer images of newly discovered extinct species of fish. And high school students regularly create games and simulations for academic use by middle schoolers at the school, which is three years old and now spans grades K-12.

High tech and analog technology mix in the computer lab at Hawaii Technology Academy in Waipahu, Hawaii.

—Elyse Butler & Matt Mallams for Education Week

The school’s founder and head of school, Jeff Piontek, who was formerly Hawaii’s department of education state science specialist and before that was the New York City school system’s director of instructional technology, recognizes that not all schools can go to the same lengths to immerse so many students in multimedia creation. But he says adopting a little bit of what the Hawaii Technology Academy does at a traditional, district-run school is easier than most educators think.

“What people don’t understand is the tools are free, and if it’s not free, it’s of minimal cost,” Mr. Piontek said. “The biggest thing you need to look at is to look for a teacher or an advocate for science and using technology and let them run. Don’t tie their hands.”

The NSTA’s Mr. Byers says the use—and possibly even student-led construction—of all types of simulations will grow in time. But he warns that both creators and participants have to be sure that simulations mesh closely with instructional standards. He also adds that simulations are by no means the only area in which multimedia tools are transforming science instruction.

Content repositories that house online presentations, lessons, and videos; video games based on a scientific premise; and even mobile-phone applications that allow students to easily record and transmit scientific data from the field all have the ability to transform the science classroom, Mr. Byers says. And he hopes the movement toward standards that stress critical-thinking skills will only help the adoption of all such tools.

“The world is awash with tons of different types of learning media,” Mr. Byers said. “There is something for everyone between the two-minute video, the single simulation, and a six-week moderated simulated course. … With new standards that are more critical-thinking-aligned, that’s going to generate more curriculum adoption and professional development in support of that.”