Jeff Piontek is an author, keynote speaker and teacher (most importantly). He has worked with many at-risk school districts nationally and is a thought leader in on-line and blended learning.
Today, Google announced that using Google Apps for Education is going to get even easier to manage- this September,Classroom, the new learning management system developed by Google themselves will be available. It is intended to help ”teachers create and organize assignments quickly, provide feedback efficiently, and communicate with their classes with ease.” On the flip side, it will also allow students organize their work, complete it, turn it in, and communicate directly with their teachers and each other in a more streamlined manner.
Some of the expected features include:
teachers can create and collect assignments, paperlessly
choose to share a single document, or make a copy for each student
will automatically create Drive folders for each assignment and each student
students will have an assignment page, where they can manage timelines and due dates
improve teacher/student communication allowing teachers to make announcements and ask questions
Teachers and professors can apply for a preview of Classroom. Google says Classroom will be available in the fall to any school using Google Apps for Education.
If you’re a developer or partner, sign up to learn more about integrating with Classroom.
Maps seemed to be everywhere in 2013, a trend I like to think we encouraged along with August’s 40 maps that explain the world. Maps can be a remarkably powerful tool for understanding the world and how it works, but they show only what you ask them to. You might consider this, then, a collection of maps meant to inspire your inner map nerd. I’ve searched far and wide for maps that can reveal and surprise and inform in ways that the daily headlines might not, with a careful eye for sourcing and detail. I’ve included a link for more information on just about every one. Enjoy. 1. Where the world’s people live, by economic status
Those dots represent people: the brighter the dot, the more people. The color shows their country’s average income level: blue is richest and yellow is poorest. I want to start with this map because it’s a reminder that the world is first and foremost made up of people; to me, the best maps are primarily about showing us people, not politics or geography. It’s also a way of looking at the divisions in the world other than by political borders; that’s a theme we’ll come back to. (One caveat to this map: it doesn’t show economic variations within countries, just the national averages.)
2. How humans spread across the world
Human beings first left Africa about 60,000 years ago in a series of waves that peopled the globe. This map shows where those waves of migration went and when they occurred (the “40K” over Europe means humans arrived there about 40,000 years ago). You can see that humans have the most history in the Middle East, India and of course Africa itself (the map does not show the much longer history of migration within Africa). We are relative newcomers to the Americas, one of the reasons it has not until very recently been as densely populated as other parts of the world.
The Mongol conquests are difficult to fathom. Although their most important technology was the horse, they conquered much of the known world from China to Europe, a series of wars that killed tens of millions of people, then a substantial chunk of the world’s population. The Mongols also established what may well have been the largest empire in history until the British surpassed them six long centuries later. It’s difficult to understate how much we still feel their impact today; the country we know of today as Iraq has never fully recovered from the 1258 sacking of Baghdad, which until then had been a center of global wealth and knowledge.
4. When Spain and Portugal dominated the world
This map shows the Spanish and Portuguese empires at their height. They didn’t hold all of this territory concurrently, but they were most powerful from 1580 to 1640, when they were politically unified. Portugal would later pick up more territory in Africa, not shown on the map. We often forget that Spain controlled big parts of Europe, in Italy and the Netherlands. In the Middle Ages, Spain and Portugal were so powerful that they signed a set of treaties literally dividing up the globe between them. They became so rich so quickly that their trade with the Ottoman Empire, perhaps the other great imperial power of the time, filled the Ottoman economy with more gold than it could handle and plunged it economy into an inflationary crisis so severe that the empire never fully recovered.
5. Major shipping routes in the colonial era
Data source: Climatological Database for the World’s Oceans (James Cheshire)
This map shows British, Dutch and Spanish shipping routes from 1750 to 1800. It’s been created from newly digitized logbooks of European ships during this period. (Unfortunately, the French data is not shown.) These lines are the contours of empire and of European colonialism, yes, but they’re also the first intimations of the global trade and transportation system that are still with us today. This was the flattening of the world, for better and for worse.
6. Actual European discoveries
Click to enlarge.
(Bill Rankin/Radical Cartography)
Americans have mostly come around to accept that, despite what our grade school teachers may have told us, Europeans did not “discover” America; the original arrivals had done that 15,000 years earlier. But Europeans did discover lots of land that had never been before seen by human eyes. You can, embedded in this map, see successive waves of European exploration: first the Portuguese, then the Spanish, then the British and much later the Americans. The map’s creator, the always-insightful Bill Rankin, writes, “this map particularly underscores the maritime expertise of Pacific Islanders. Unlike the islands of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, nearly all of the Pacific was settled by the 14th century.”
7. How countries compare on economic inequality
Bluer countries have better income equality. Redder countries are more unequal. Data: CGDev, DIIS (Max Fisher / Washington Post)
Yes, the United States has worse income inequality than Nigeria. That’s according to a metric called the Palma Ratio that measures economic inequality. Read more here about how the metric works and the fascinating results of using it to compare the world’s countries.
It’s not clear precisely when the polar ice caps will melt completely. But if and when they do, sea levels will rise by 216 feet. This map shows what the world would look like then. Given how many people live near coastlines today, that’s not good. You can see National Geographic’s wonderful, full interactive here.
9. Where the world’s 30 million slaves live
Share of each country’s population that is enslaved. Data source: Walk Free Global Slavery Index. (Max Fisher/Washington Post)
This is not some soft, liberal, by-modern-standards definition of slavery. This is slavery. There are 30 million people living today as forced laborers, forced prostitutes, child soldiers, child brides in forced marriages or other forms of property. There are 60,000 right here in the United States – yes, really. This map shows the proportion of each country that is enslaved. It’s highest in Mauritania, a shocking four percent, due in part to social norms tolerating the practice. A little more than one percent of people in India are enslaved, which translates to 14 million Indians living as slaves today. You can see the breakdown by numbers of slaves here.
10. Our globalized economy: What it takes to make nutella
Click to enlarge. (OECD)
Put this map alongside No. 5 above, of European colonial-era shipping routes. This is the end product of today’s ultra-globalized economy. A simple jar of Nutella requires natural resources from four continents, vast manufacturing facilities in entirely different countries and a supply and distribution chain that spans the globe.
11. Where populations are growing and shrinking
Blue countries have growing populations; red countries are shrinking. Purple are growing slowly or not at all. Data source: United Nations Population Fund. Click to enlarge. (Max Fisher/Washington Post)
The world is in for some major demographic changes over the next generation or two. Populations are booming in Africa, growing faster than ever before, just as they’re slowing in Asia and outright shrinking in Japan and Eastern Europe. What’s most interesting about these population changes is what demographers say they will mean for the world’s political and economic future. For more, read: The amazing, surprising, Africa-driven demographic future of the Earth, in 9 charts.
The world is in for some major demographic changes over the next generation or two. Populations are booming in Africa, growing faster than ever before, just as they’re slowing in Asia and outright shrinking in Japan and Eastern Europe. What’s most interesting about these population changes is what demographers say they will mean for the world’s political and economic future. For more, read: The amazing, surprising, Africa-driven demographic future of the Earth, in 9 charts.
12. Walls of the world
Source: “Atlas des migrants en Europe. Géographie critique des politiques migratoires européenne,” Armand Colin. (Nicolas Lambert / MigrEurop)
A French non-governmental organization put together this map of the world’s major physical barriers – its most consequential walls. The red lines indicate walls and barriers meant to prevent or control immigration; you see a number of those particularly where there are rich countries next to poorer countries. The green walls are mostly political barriers, such as the 1,700-mile-long “Moroccan Wall” dividing Morocco-occupied Western Sahara, the West Bank separation barrier and the Korean demilitarized zone. No single map of something this controversial and sensitive is ever going to satisfy everyone, but it’s a fascinating glimpse into why and where we choose to limit human movement.
13. The Arctic land grab
(The Economist)
As the polar ice caps melt, it’s creating something that the world hasn’t seen in a long time: vast, unclaimed territory. That territory also happens to include oil and other natural resources, as well as valuable trade routes. Five countries are competing to claim the new land: Canada, Russia, Norway, Denmark and the United States. How the Arctic land-grab resolves is so potentially important that even Canada is getting much more assertive.
14. Who wins Nobel prizes (and who doesn’t)
Click to enlarge. (Max Fisher/Washington Post)
It’s no secret that Europeans and Americans win most Nobel prizes. But just how much more is pretty astounding. When I looked into how the Nobel prizes have broken down over their century-plus history, I was surprised by the results, which you can see here illustrated in maps and charts. One of several facts from the data: More than one in every three Nobel laureates is from the United States. Put another way, the United States has 4 percent of the world’s population and 34 percent of its Nobel laureates.
15. The 17 countries that could have housing bubbles
The 17 countries identified as having potential housing bubbles. Click to enlarge. (Washington Post)
You probably remember the U.S. housing bubble burst of 2007 (it was pretty memorable). According to a recent economic estimate, a full 17 countries could face potential housing bubbles today. Alarmingly, that includes China, the world’s second-largest economy. Read more here on the countries at risk and what could happen if they burst.
16. The happiest and least happy countries
Data source: Columbia University’s World Happiness Report. Click to enlarge. (Max Fisher/Washington Post)
A recent study conducted by the United Nations and Columbia University attempted to infer happiness measuring a series of social metrics and survey results. Some of the results are unsurprising: wealth, health, political stability and economic equality all appear to coincide with happiness. But there are some real surprises in the data. Latin America and the Caribbean are, by this measure, the happiest on average in the world. Here’s why that might be and more lessons from the data.
17. All terror attacks worldwide in 2012
Click to enlarge. (Start GTD)
This study by the University of Maryland-based National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism tracked every single terrorist attack in 2012 (the most recent year for which all data was available). This should drive home how remarkably safe Americans are from terrorism today. It drives home who the real victims of terrorism are. And it reveals some of the global hotspots for terrorist activity and all the instability and mayhem that can bring. Some readers might be surprised to see how much terrorism there is, for example, in Nigeria, in Kenya and most especially in eastern India, where the Maoist “Naxalite” insurgency has been wreaking havoc for almost 50 years.
THE AMERICAS
18. North America’s languages, before colonialism
Click to enlarge. Data source: Ives Goddard. (Wikipedia Commons)
This a remarkable reminder of the diversity and cultural richness of North America before it was so completely transformed by the arrival of Europeans – to the terrible detriment of the societies that once proliferated here. It’s also a reminder that some of these societies had spread widely and established themselves deeply, despite the common American perception today of a mishmash of disparate and unconnected tribes.
19. Where place names come from in the Americas
Click to enlarge. (Bill Rankin/Radical Cartography)
This map shows the origin language for place names in the Americas. For example, the word “Texas” comes from the Caddoan language, of the Caddo people who lived in what is today East Texas. It’s a fascinating lens into the Americas’ history, of which Europeans arrived or conquered where, as well as a legacy of the people who lived here first. Bill Rankin, the map’s creator,has this chestnut: “‘Huron’ derives from a French slur for the hairy natives (it shares a root with ‘hirsute.’)”
20. American ancestry by county
Click to enlarge. (U.S. Census Bureau)
This map, which shows the dominant ancestry in each U.S. county, is a wonderful show of American diversity and a living museum of America’s history of immigration, voluntary as well as forced. There are countless stories embedded in this map, and not just American stories. Much of this immigration was driven by far-away wars, economic catastrophes, famines or other major historical events, most especially the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In that sense, America’s diversity – like this map showing it – is a global story.
21. What territory Mexican drug cartels control
Click to go to source. (Farhana Hossain and Xaquín G.V. / The New York Times)
This infographic shows which Mexican drug cartels control what territory. It’s a staggering indication of how powerful these groups have become, as well as a glimpse into the vast cartel economy they collectively run – one in which territory is especially important.
AFRICA
22. The empires of Africa, before colonialism
Click to enlarge. (Wikipedia)
This map of indigenous African empires is not exhaustive. It spans two thousands years from 500 B.C. to 1500 A.D., so these empires were not concurrent; some existed centuries apart. But it shows that, like with North America and perhaps even more so, sub-Saharan Africa was rich with vast and powerful empires long before the Europeans arrived. (One of the biggest, Ethiopia, was actually unusually and perhaps uniquely successful in resisting European imperialism.) The Songhai Empire, at its peak in the 14th century, was a global center of culture and learning, based in the still-famous mosques of Timbuktu.
23. What Africa might look like if it had never been colonized
Click to enlarge. (Nikolaj Cyon)
Historical counterfactuals aren’t much more than informed speculation, but this one is still awfully interesting. Made by the Swedish artist Nikolaj Cyon, the map asks what Africa would look like today if colonialism had never happened. (Africa’s present-day borders were determined largely by colonialism, which continues to create lots of very big problems.) Cyon drew these boundaries based on a study of political and tribal units in 1844, the eve of Europe’s “scramble for Africa.” He oriented it with south at the top to subvert the traditional Europe-on-top orientation. You can see it here with north on the top, if that’s easier for you to read.
24. The amazingly diverse languages of Africa
Data source: World Language Mapping System/Ethnologue. (Steve Huffman/WorldGeoDatasets)
This is another way of looking at and thinking about Africa’s divisions, without seeing them through the European-imposed colonial borders that we have today. Each shade is a language; each color is a group of languages. Yes, there are an awful lot of languages in Africa, reflecting the continent’s deep history and its diversity. You can see that a number of the borders, such as in Kenya or Cameroon or Nigeria, overlap big swathes of people who speak entirely different language families.
EUROPE
25. Europe, as mapped by tweets
Each color represents a different language. See global version linked below. (Kalev H. Leetaru, Shaowen Wang, Guofeng Cao, Anand Padmanabhan, and Eric Shook)
This shows tweets made in Europe in location and language between Oct. 23 and Nov. 30, 2012, with each language shown in a different color. It’s no surprise that more populous and richer countries have more tweets. But what’s most interesting is places where languages don’t quite line up with national borders. Look at all those German-language tweets in the parts of the Poland that once belonged to the German Empire. Or look at how Belgium seems to disappear, the French- and Dutch-speakers merging into France and the Netherlands. More on the findings here; click here for amuch larger version that shows the whole world and with the languages labeled.
26. How the Barbarian Invasions reshaped Europe
(Wikimedia commons)
Europe was completely reshaped in the third, fourth and fifth centuries. The Huns of far-Eastern Europe and Central Asia invaded Central Europe, destroying the Gothic kingdoms. Germanic tribes conquered much of Spain and North Africa. And, of course, the Visigoths of southeastern Europe sacked Rome in 410 A.D. All of this destroyed the Roman Imperial system, starting the dark ages. But it also sparked mass migrations throughout Europe that reshaped the continent in ways that are still with us.
27. When the Vikings spread across Europe
Click to enlarge. (Max Naylor/Wikimedia Commons)
A few hundred years later, the Vikings had their turn. We often forget just how far they spread. Red, orange and yellow shows areas under their control. Green shows areas where they frequently raided. The word “Russia” actually comes from the Rus tribe, who were descendants of Viking settlers. The “Vikings” who took over Sicily and southern Italy were actually Normans, Vikings who had conquered parts of Northern France, settled in, and then later sailed to Italy. Their descendants also included William the Conqueror.
28. World War II in Europe, day by day
This one speaks for itself and is a fascinating watch; there are countless stories embedded in these frames. If you enjoyed this, I would encourage you to watch this version that includes Asia and the Pacific as well.
29. The word for “bear” in European languages
Click to enlarge.
The Cold War taught us to think of Europe in terms of East-versus-West, but this map shows that it’s more complicated than that. Most Europeans speak Romance languages (orange countries), Germanic (pink) or Slavic (green), though there are some interesting exceptions.
30. People who die trying to immigrate to Europe
Click to enlarge. Data source: UNITED For Intercultural Action (Olivier Clochard/Migrinter)
This shows where and how people die trying to migrate into Europe. In October, when 300 would-be African immigrants to Europe died when their boat capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa, it was seen as a sign ofhow dangerous and deadly migration paths into Europe had become. It’s a result of wide economic disparity between Africa and Europe as well as European policies to prevent immigration. It’s an ugly issue and, as this map shows, it kills many, many people every year.
THE MIDDLE EAST
31. The Islamic states of the world, from 1450 to today
(M. Izady/Gulf 2000 Project)
This doesn’t show all Muslim-majority countries – southeast Asia and parts of Africa aren’t included – but it does show the history of political borders and nation-states in most of the Islamic world from 1450 though today. You’ll notice themes of invasion and occupation, or empires rising and falling.
32. The 1916 European treaty to carve up the Middle East
Data source: The Gulf/2000 Project and United Nations ReliefWeb (The Washington Post)
In 1916, French, British and Russian diplomats signed an agreement to divide up the Ottoman Empire into areas of direct control and “spheres of influence.” It’s easy to overstate how big of a role this treaty actually playedin designing modern Middle East borders; in many ways, those divisions had already organically occurred during Ottoman rule. Still, it did fall along the Middle East’s problematic present-day borders, and you hear about that a lot today, so here it is.
33. The religious lines dividing today’s Middle East
Data source: The Gulf/2000 Project and United Nations ReliefWeb (The Washington Post)
Religious distinctions are deeply important for many of the problems in today’s Middle East, particularly between Sunni and Shia Muslims in Syria and Iraq. This map shows not just that those divisions cross of national borders, but that they’re all over the place. This is one of many reasons why these conflicts can be so persistent.
34. How the 1948 Arab-Israeli war helped lead to Israel’s borders
(Wikimedia commons)
Lots of maps show Israel’s territory from the 1967 Israeli-Arab war to the present, but I thought I’d show this map from the country’s 1947 founding onward. The leftmost map shows, in blue, Israel as established by United Nations resolution in 1947. Red shows the initial Arab state; green is the Arab state after the 1949 armistice. The center map shows the first months of the 1948 Israeli-Arab war and the advance of Arab armies to retake what they saw as rightful Arab land. The right-most map shows the advance of Israeli armies in the latter half of that war. At the end of fighting, Israel occupied much of what is considered Israeli land today.
ASIA
35. Percentage of Indian homes with toilets
Click to enlarge. Data source: Indian census, 2011 (Avinash Celestine / Data Stories)
India’s ongoing rise as a new economic powerhouse continues to be an amazing story. But much of the world’s second-most-populous country still lives in poverty or in otherwise difficult conditions. This map, created from census data by the designer Avinash Celestine, shows what percentage of families in each district have a toilet in their homes. As you can see, it’s less than half in huge swathes of the country, a reminder of how far India still has to go.
36. The languages of China and the surrounding area
Each shade is a different language; each color is a language group. Click to enlarge. Larger version linked below. (Steve Huffman / World GeoDatasets)
This map, for me, is a wonderful way to observe China’s very long history of expansion and consolidation. Remember that each shade is a different language. Even after thousands of years, Chinese itself remains remarkably diverse, particularly in the country’s dialect-rich southeast. And there are many entirely different language families: Mongolian in the north; the Turkic language Uighur in the West and; in southern Guangxi province, the Zhuang language that’s closer to Thai. This is another of Steve Huffman’s amazing creations; see a larger version here.
37. The WWII firebombing of Japan
Click to enlarge.
This map shows each Japanese city that was bombed during World War II, an American city of equivalent size, and the percentage of the city estimated destroyed by the bombings. All Americans learn about the two atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan at the end of the war, and we’re starting to become more aware of the firebombing campaigns that wiped out much of Germany, including civilians. But we are nowhere near confronting the U.S. firebombing of Japan, which killed several times as many people as the atomic bombs and devastated Japan’s wooden-constructed cities. By the time the war ended, 30 percent of the residents in Japan’s largest 60 cities were homeless.
38. Territorial claims in the South China Sea
(Voice of America)
It’s no secret that China claims islands and maritime territory in the South China Sea that other countries see as theirs. But this map shows just how assertive China’s claim is – Beijing claims everything in red, a giant scoop of an area way, way beyond Chinese soil. China’s neighbors are very, very conscious of feeling a bit bullied, and this map shows why.
39. The naval firepower in the Pacific
Click to enlarge. (Cameron Tulk)
The Pacific Ocean, after being set on fire by World War II, is still heavily militarized. Japan, even though its U.S.-imposed constitution bans warfare and codifies pacifism, still has a pretty substantial navy. So does Russia, a legacy of the Cold War. And China’s is, of course, growing substantially. All of this combines with rising nationalism in East Asia, China’s not-misguided fear that the United States is attempting to contain them and growing concern about China itself.
40. Every airline flight in the world over 24 hours
Original video source here. Data source: AirTraffic LIVE. (Zurcher Hochschule school of Engineering)
This map shows every airline flight around the world during a single 24-hour day, looped endlessly. To me, it’s the perfect way to end. Even with no borders, you can still see so much of how the world is shaped. Where people are connected and not, where they are wealthier and not, how and where people have made social and economic connections and how deep they go.
If robots are ever going to take over humanity, it’s going to be an uphill battle. Undoubtedly, the engineers who create them will be tough to match wits with, at least if they come from the STEM labs in our classrooms today.
Research shows that robotics is an effective tool for improving students’ 21st century skills. And teachers have taken note. In various school settings and across all grade levels, students are engaging in programs teaching them to design, build, and program their own bots. As they do, they are developing their creativity, collaboration, self-direction, and communication skills too. So whether you want to prepare your students to withstand the bionic revolution or hasten its coming, the following educational robotics programs will serve you well.
When it comes to school robotics programs, LEGO Education is the big fish in a little pond. Their Mindstorms robotics package, designed for upper-elementary and middle school students, is a natural extension of a childhood love of LEGOs. A computer-based brick, specialized LEGO pieces, a swath of sensors, and programming software, Mindstorms kits power 21st century learning without the accompanying learning curve of new technology. Not only are classrooms and after-school clubs utilizing LEGO Mindstorms for their ability to boost students’ interest in science and technology, many of them have formed teams and compete annually in FIRST LEGO League challenges which take place locally across the country.
For early elementary students who won’t wait for middle school STEM classes, WeDo (also by LEGO) will help to create learners who don’t just know about robotics, but do robotics. Designed specifically for the early emerging engineer, WeDo enables teachers to tailor activities to specific curriculum subjects or project-based learning. A simplified version of LEGO’s Mindstorms offering, WeDo comes with a user-friendly software interface and a “plug’n’teach” activity pack that helps teachers cover science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in an engaging hands-on, minds-on way.
If your focus is on programming robots rather than building them, Sphero might make you feel magical. At the very least, its going to make you forget that you’re really just playing with a ball. As the name implies, Sphero is a sphere. But it’s one that you control from your iOS or Android device. Make Sphero move, spin, change colors, and more. “Sphero is an interactive and engaging robot that brings programming off the computer and into real life.” With over 25 apps now available for Sphero 2.0, robotics enthusiasts are using Sphero to drive through homemade racecourses, turn their classroom into an augmented reality video game, and engage classmates, friends, and family in multiplayer fun. If you can pry it out of your students’ hands, you will see why Orbotix says that Sphero is “One smart ball [with] infinite ways to play.”
Play-i is so 21st century that it’s not even out yet. Still this crowd-funded project has been popular enough that over $1 million worth of pre-ordered Play-i robots sold out in the first month they were available. To get your hands on your own, you’ll have to order now in time to get Play-i by Christmas 2014. But when engineers from both Google and Apple get together to teach kids how to code, the wait for what they made is definitely worth it.
What everybody wants, but nobody has is a duo of robots that fuse storytelling and play with programming. Bo, a mobile three-wheeled bot, and its stationary sibling, Yana, teach kids how to code through narrative. Controlled via Bluetooth-based remote app, children as young as five can learn to use Play-i by looking at and touching the script on an iPad. Bo and Yana can sense each other, respond to objects, play music (literally. . .on a xylophone), and even deliver a freshly picked flower to a friend. But most important, the Play-i robots help kids learn about if-then code without requiring them to master a programming language. It gives them access to computer science education before they’re even old enough to know what that is.
Whether or not our good intentions will lead to the demise of mankind is yet to be determined. But with the opportunities to engage in STEM-based learning listed here, at least we can ensure that our downfall will be fun.
Lest our fears get the best of us, it’s important to remember that even Isaac Asimov, the face of futuristic science-fiction writing said, “I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them.” Additionally, the author of Robots and Empire believed that “The true delight is in the finding out rather than the knowing.” So, instead of protecting ourselves from our own creations, here’s to our blissful ignorance of a potential apocalypse, even if it is one LEGO brick at a time.
I’ve recently been binging on math-related TED Talks and all the great ideas out there almost make me wish I taught math. While I have yet to create a museum exhibit about math, wouldn’t it be great to teach it like something people want to learn instead ofhave to learn?
Math teach Dan Meyer says we need to focus more on teaching math reasoning in a way that students will actually retain it (check out his TED Talk). No problem worth solving is simple, he says, adding a quote from Einstein: “The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.” To that end, Meyer spends 90% of his prep time turning boring problems from math textbooks into conversations that build math reasoning skills by eliminating the step-by-step instructions and neatly packaged information provided for solving the problem. This force students to figure out what information and formulas they need for themselves. He encourages math teachers to turn word problems into real problems. Check outMeyer’s blog for lesson ideas and math fun.
Conrad Wolfram argues for computer-based math in his TED Talk. His suggestion: instead of giving students the formulas and making them compute the math by hand, we should teach students to conceptualize real world problems, pose the right questions, apply the right kind of math, and use computers to compute the math. “Math is not equal to calculating,” he says. Driving a modern car is not the same as engineering a car–and math instruction should focus on the driving (using math to solve real problems) rather than the engineering (with some exceptions). Make math more practical and more conceptual by teaching students to program computers!
And speaking of making math fun, check out…
Math + Origami = fun, science, space telescopes, air bags, and life-saving medical devices
I’ve heard blogging referred to a couple of times recently as a mixture between an art and a science. If this is true (and I think it is), there’s no ‘right way’ to approach blogging if you want to be successful. There are plenty of people who’ve done a great job of it though, and I thought it would be useful to learn from them.
These 16 bloggers shared one important tip each for blogging beginners. No doubt, even if you’re not a beginner these tips will probably prove to be useful.
1. Get ideas from your audience
Create blog posts that answer the most interesting questions from people you engage with on social media.
This can be a great way to gather ideas of what topics people would most like to read about, which will help your blog grow! One of the best ways I’ve seen this in action is through blog comments or Tweets. In one example, here on FastCompany a lot of people requested a post that features more women entrepreneurs:
Now, a few weeks later adding such an article where just women contributed and built great businesses was a big hit:
2. Understand your audience
Understand your audience better than they understand themselves. It takes a lot of upfront research, and often means being a member of the very tribe you’re trying to lead – but it pays off.
Understanding your audience better means you’ll have a better idea of what blog content will resonate with them, which is a good start when you get to writing blog posts.
A great technique for doing this is to simply ask your readers first on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn with an engaging quote. If people respond well to it, than this is probably a great topic to write about. An example for this comes from Andrew Chen who famously “tests” his blogpost ideas on Twitter first.
And so does Joel here at Buffer. Take this example from a recent Twitter post of his, where he simply tweeted one quote to see how well people liked a topic before he blogged about it:
3. Write for yourself first
Write for yourself first & foremost. Ignore the fact that anyone else will read what you write; just focus on your thoughts, ideas, opinions and figure out how to put those into words. Write it and they will come.
Adii’s experience in writing for himself firstly has made a difference to his blog in ways he didn’t expect:
Yes, since I’ve been writing for myself, I’ve found that I write more and I publish more often. I think though that the main reason for that is that I don’t decide whether to publishing something based on the traction / reception that the post will receive within my audience; instead if I want to publish something, I do so. For myself.
4. Build your email list
Start building your email list from day one. Even if you don’t plan on selling anything, having an email list allows you to promote your new content to your audience directly without worrying about search rankings, Facebook EdgeRank, or other online roadblocks in communications.
When you’re asking readers to sign up for your email list, you might want to try experimenting with different language. Willy Franzen found that his subscription rate jumped 254% higher when he changed his call-to-action from “subscribe by email” to “get jobs by email”:
Using this phrase more clearly tells Willy’s readers what they’re signing up for, which clearly worked well!
5. Love your existing readers
Love the readers you already have. A lot of bloggers get quite obsessed with finding new readers – to the point that they ignore the ones they already have. Yes – do try to find new readers but spend time each day showing your current readers that you value them too and you’ll find that they will help you grow your blog.
Focusing on your readers is a great way to get to know them better (see tip #2). I love the way Daniel Burstein describes blog readers’ expectations of you as a blogger:
A blog is really two things. One, simply a piece of technology, a platform. But, two, it is a promise in the minds of most readers, who expect that the blog should have actual content with some elements of value that is hyper-targeted to their needs. Much like with a newspaper. Readers don’t just look at a newspaper as newsprint that is delivered on their driveway every morning. They look at it as valuable information about their city, where they live, and the things that they do.
6. Focus on building an amazing call-to-action
I screwed up for years. I’d blog and blog. Some of my posts were doing very well on places like Hacker News, but I had such hard time getting return visitors. And very few people bothered to follow me on Twitter.
Don’t rely on people to do the work to find your Twitter account. Don’t rely on them to do the work to find your details in a sidebar. People are blind to sidebars. Thanks banner ads!
Finish your blog post with some kind of call to action to signup for an email list or follow you on Twitter. When I started doing this, I immediately increased my Twitter followers by 335% in the first 7 days.
Nate uses a simple call-to-action on his blog now, that looks like this:
This particular technique we’ve also tested here on the Buffer blog and found it to work amazingly well to bring attention to other blog posts we’ve written, like this:
or to Buffer product features, like this:
7. Give stuff away
Give away free content that adds value to people’s lives “until it hurts” and they will love you and become loyal fans.
A great example of this is the research done by Incentivibe, who found that adding a giveaway contest pop-up to the bottom-right of their website led to 125% more email subscribers.
8. Be consistent
Consistency is one of the most important things that bloggers tend to forget. It’s much easier to lose your traffic than it is to build it up, so make sure you consistently blog.
A study by Hubspot showed that consistent blogging actually leads to higher subscriber growth rates:
Over a two-month span, businesses that published blog entries on a regular basis (more than once a week) added subscribers over twice as fast as those companies that added content once a month.
9. Give away your knowledge
Don’t be afraid to showcase what you know. Too many bloggers hold back the good stuff out of fear of giving away the “secret sauce.” There is no secret sauce in a world where everyone has high speed Internet access at all times. Today, you want to give away information snacks to sell knowledge meals.
Jay’s advice is to share the knowledge you have, rather than keeping it tucked away for a rainy day. Chris Guillebeau follows this advice by offering two free, downloadable PDFs to his readers. Chris also does what Jay calls giving away “information snacks to sell knowledge meals.” On both of the free PDF download pages, Chris markets his book on the right-hand side.
10. Be true to your voice
Stay true to yourself and your voice. People don’t care to follow sites so much as they care to follow people.
Another blogger who advocates the importance of the writer’s voice is Jeff Goins. He says that your voice is the most important, yet over-looked part of blogging:
Writing isn’t about picking the right topic; it’s about finding the right voice. What matters, what readers really resonate with, isn’t so much what you say, but how.
11. Give it time – This is why
Plan to invest in blogging for a long time before you see a return. The web is a big, noisy place and unless you’re willing to invest more over a greater period of time than others, you’ll find success nearly impossible. If you’re seeking short-term ROI, or a quick path to recognition, blogging is the wrong path. But if you can stick it out for years without results and constantly learn, iterate, and improve, you can achieve something remarkable.
Rand shared these great images with us from his wife’s travel blog, Everywhereist, which shows just how long it can take to see a return on your efforts:
12. Give your email list priority
If you’re blogging to create a business, a movement, or to support a cause, then you need to build an email list. It’s not an option. I don’t even consider my blog to be my community, my email list is my community. Caring about these people, writing for them, and delivering value to them should be your number one goal.
When the New York Public Library focused on growing email subscription rates, this simple home page design with information about what readers could expect to receive boosted numbers by 52.8% over a more complicated version with less information about the actual newsletter:
13. Write catchy headlines
No matter how great your content is, it won’t matter unless you have an amazing headline. People have a split second to decide if they should click on your post, and your headline will make them decide. The headline is also essential in making it easy and desirable for people to share your post. Keep your headlines SPUB: simple, powerful, useful and bold.
Something we do at Buffer is to test several different headlines for each of our blog posts to determine which ones works best. Here’s an example of what that might look like:
There isn’t one specific set of rules to be successful in blogging. When I started blogging, I had the opportunity to learn from experienced and successful bloggers in the industry. One of the best lessons I’ve learned from them is to simply be me. I didn’t have to be too “professional” or use “big words” to impress others. I had to simply be me.
By being me, I enjoyed writing and the process more. It had me writing more than I usually would too. If you look at the the most successful writers like Seth Godin and Chris Brogan you’ll notice that they are different and unique in their own ways.
Working out the best length for your blog posts can be tricky. You generally need about 300 words minimum to get indexed by search engines, but otherwise the length of your post is up to what you think feels best.
Derek Sivers noticed recently that his shorter posts were much better received by readers and seemed to be shared more, unlike his longer posts:
When I’ve written articles that were too long or had too many ideas, they didn’t get much of a reaction.
When I read books, I often feel bad for the brilliant idea buried on page 217. Who will hear it?
Stop the orchestra. Solo that motif. Repeat it. Let the other instruments build upon it.
The web is such a great way to do this.
Present a single idea, one at a time, and let others build upon it.
According to this Chartbeat graph below, many visitors to your site won’t bother scrolling, and most visitors won’t read more than about 60% of what you’ve written. Keeping it short and sharp then, could be worthwhile.
If you’re looking for a general guide to blog post length, Joe Pulizzi’s blog post, “A blog post is like a miniskirt” might be useful:
A blog post is like a miniskirt.
It has to be short enough to be interesting, but long enough to cover the subject.
16. Make it worth referencing – here is how:
One thing I always try to keep in mind before publishing a post is would anyone want to “cite” this for any reason? Just like interesting research is great because it leaves you with a fascinating finding or an idea, I like for my posts to be the same. That doesn’t mean relying on research, but simply making sure each post has an original lesson or actionable item, making it “citable” on the web.
Technology in education isn’t new, despite what it might feel like. The Internet is older than most beginning teachers and depending on how you define “technology,” you have to admit that it’s always been an iterative change process.
However, it does seem as though we’re finally at a breaking point where our old systems have stretched to their absolute capacity for the influx of new technologies. In layman’s terms: we’re maxed out and something has to change. Here are 9 problems that #edtech needs to fix, in 3 categories: #1-3 are about Communication, #4-6 are about Visibility, and #7-9 are about Pedagogy.
Parents. No, not the parents themselves, but rather our communication channels with them. We need better methodologies in place to have open, honest, transparent conversations with the parents of the students we teach. Involving parents in the educational process is the single greatest contributor to an increase in student achievement.
Students. I’m sure education would be much easier if we just had robots for kids, right? But that would be boring and that’s not our world. Nobody signed up to be a teacher because it was easy and that would be a waste of our talent. Instead, we need an edtech solution to how we can keep communication channels open with our students about their learning. Much like we need more dialogue with parents, we need students as active participants in their own learning as well. Students need to have voice and choice when it comes to their learning and so far, edtech has provided a lot of choice, not so much voice. Tools like Remind101 and Edmodo are changing the paradigm around the conversation of student learning and I encourage others to follow suit.
Universal IEPs. This is a problem you probably didn’t know we had. Here’s the scenario: students identified as qualifying for special education services have a meeting once a year where their teachers look at the instructional practices that work or don’t work for that specific student. They set goals for the year and identify any new strategies that could be tried. They talk about the future of this specific child’s education and, as a team, commit to working together for their benefit. Oh, and did I mention that the student is part of this process as well? They are in the room while this is taking place, interacting with these educators, administrators, diagnosticians, and their parents. They are actually a co-creator of their learning. Why don’t all students get this? Time and money. This represents the single biggest opportunity of edtech, in my humble opinion. Show me a tool that provides easy pathways to have a conversation about a specific student with all of their stakeholders with identifiable outcomes and recommended practices for the upcoming school year and I will show you a billion-dollar idea and one that will completely change the face of education.
Data. Teacher-accessible data that is clear and easy to understand just doesn’t exist. Data analysis is right up there with ‘root canal’ in most teachers’ prep times. And let’s not even start down what data visibility looks like for students and parents (it’s nonexistent). Companies like Eduvant and Metryx are looking to change this, but the edu-pool is big enough for all to play in. Let’s stop talking about data-driven decision-making and actually do it.
Soft Skills. Remember, back in the day, when we had character education? For some, it was even a class! We’re pretty focused on cognitive skills (reading, writing, arithmetic) but we’ve passed the buck on our non-cognitive skills like empathy, respect, and leadership. Yes, we could point fingers at why we think these skills have fallen by the wayside, but the past doesn’t have to determine the future: we can choose to value these again and edtech can help. We need tools to help us track and identify the impact of these skills. We need to be able to demonstrate them and show employers how valuable our skills are: cognitive and non-cognitive.
Lesson Planning. Somewhat surprisingly, we still need edtech to step in when it comes to lesson planning. We need embedded state standards. We need collaboration. We need idea discovery mechanisms. We need sharability. We need transparency. There is so much opportunity here and I am excited to watch companies likeTrinket, Planboard, and Common Curriculum as they seek to innovate this space.
New tools. This one might seem a little ‘meta’ at first, but hang with me. Teachers need to know what to use in their classroom and how to use it. It needs to be easy and it needs to be fast. Please don’t tell a teacher to go to a conference or “search the Internet” or “join a Twitter chat” to find the latest tools. Yes, these will work, but they are horribly inefficient. Keep an eye on great tools like EduClipper and what they’re doing in this space.
Entrepreneurialism and the Maker Movement. Teachers desperately need help here. If we want to see more entrepreneurs and more makers, we’ve got to create the spaces for our students to not only discovery but develop these skills. For this to happen, there need to be the resources in place to facilitate this kind of learning. It represents a pedagogical shift for sure, but education is ripe for this kind of innovation and we think the edtech community is primed to bring it. Here’s the bottom line: if you want entrepreneurs and/or makers and you are one, you need to create something to help expand the playing field. You need to get more folks into the game, not less.
The Nature of Learning. The massive influx of personal computing devices into classroom environments represents a tidal shift in pedagogy. If we want teachers to be successful with these pedagogical shifts, we need to give them the support and resources they need to make them. More than just an app or a tool, teachers need training and practical steps to help them cross this chasm.
The 21st century is here and it’s brought some baggage. How will you turn it into an opportunity? Teachers, which of the above most resonates with you? Be sure to leave some feedback for us in the comments.
As online, or digital, learning grows across the nation, state legislatures are feverishly passing bills in an attempt to shape, propel, and, in some cases, stunt its growth. In 2012 alone, according to Digital Learning Now!, a national campaign run by former Florida governor Jeb Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, more than 150 bills related to K–12 digital learning were signed into law. State legislatures were hardly less busy in the spring of 2013. But for all the action, nothing is happening in K–12 education that is remotely comparable to the pending digital disruption of the higher education system.
Many predict that recent innovations—including low-cost online universities, competency-based instruction, online partnerships between for-profits and traditional universities, and MOOCs (massive open online courses)—will quite literally transform higher education, as they threaten the future of large numbers of traditional postsecondary institutions. Although there are certainly political and policy obstacles to creating online educational opportunities in higher education, a great deal of innovation can take place outside of the reach of regulation. In the K–12 education system, however, replacing traditional schools with new schools powered by digital learning would require wholesale policy changes. As a result, even as digital learning grows rapidly in both sectors, the regulatory infrastructure that shapes K–12 education is likely to exert far greater influence on the ultimate effects of online learning.
The reasons for this disparity are many. In higher education, students have far more choices than they do for secondary school. College attendance is voluntary, and students can choose from among hundreds of institutions of varying cost and quality, including formal credentialed learning experiences and informal ones. Many people choose not to attend postsecondary institutions at all, as they find them too inconvenient or expensive. This creates opportunities for entrepreneurs to launch disruptive innovations that will likely replace many mainstream colleges.
But in the K–12 school sector, there is virtually no nonconsumption, that is, nearly every student has access to a government-funded school of some sort, and in fact state laws make attendance compulsory to a particular age. As a result, creating new digital-learning schools presents a direct challenge to the traditional education-system monopoly. Policymaking around digital learning in K–12 education is accordingly becoming more contentious as online opportunities expand. Because of these dynamics, the bulk of K–12 online learning will likely develop within schools rather than in competition with them, and squarely within the reach of regulation.
These realities became increasingly clear as the 2013 legislative sessions unfolded across the United States. Although many in the burgeoning education-technology start-up world downplay the role of policy, ultimately policy is decisive in a highly regulated system where school districts hold near monopolies over publicly funded instruction. Policy helps to determine the rules of the public education–technology marketplace: what will and won’t be funded, and what incentives will and won’t exist to create products and services that boost student outcomes.
Although students and families often have little consumer power in public K–12 education, and providers operate within a highly constrained system, digital learning is making headway, even when policy is less than fully supportive. In California, for example, schools from Silicon Valley to the inner-city neighborhoods in Oakland and Los Angeles are using blended-learning techniques to provide exciting new learning environments (See “Can Khan Move the Bell Curve to the Right?” features, Spring 2012, and “The Promise of Personalized Learning,” features, Fall 2013). Part of the driving force have been the cost constraints imposed on schools by the recent financial crisis. Such growth in digital learning, even without new state policy initiatives, may yet transform K–12 schooling, but it could also reinforce the inequities and weaknesses of the current system.
In the 2013 legislative sessions, the assortment of bills focused on K–12 digital learning ranges from the creation of commissions to study the modality to the funding of infrastructure to addressing student data issues. The most significant legislation in the states, however, clusters around three categories: 1) creating opportunities for students to take courses from alternative providers; 2) placing caps or moratoriums on full-time virtual charter schools; and 3) increasing flexibility in state requirements to make way for innovations such as competency-based learning.
Letting the Student Choose
The Florida Virtual School (FLVS) is one of the oldest, most established, and most highly praised staples of the K–12 digital-learning scene (see “Florida’s Online Option,” features, Summer 2009). When the state of Florida moved FLVS from a year-to-year line-item appropriation in the annual budget to a per-pupil funding model in 2003, public funds began following students to the FLVS course of their choice. Enrollments in FLVS soared. More than 148,000 students took FLVS courses in the 2011–12 school year. The funding does not just follow students to the online course; it also creates an accountability mechanism of sorts, as FLVS only receives payment when a student passes a course.
In 2011, Utah went a step beyond Florida and passed SB 65, which freed state education dollars to follow any high-school student to pay for an online course offered by any school district or charter school. If a student living in the Salt Lake City school district wants to take a particular online course that a full-time virtual school outside the district is offering, he or she now can, and the school district is not allowed to stand in the way. Utah’s funding mechanism pays online providers 50 percent of the per-pupil funding up front and 50 percent upon course completion. Currently, funding is not tied to any independent assessment of student performance. The amount the state pays per online course depends on the course subject. If a student takes an academic course, such as one in math, science, or language arts, the maximum payment permitted is $350. If a student takes a course in financial literacy, health, fitness for life, computer literacy, or driver’s education, the maximum amount that can be paid is $200.
Louisiana’s legislature has enacted similar legislation as part of an overall reform effort that included vouchers for students to attend private schools. After the state supreme court struck down the proposed funding mechanism, the Louisiana State Board tapped $2 million from an oil and gas trust fund to pay for the course-choice initiative. The law will accomplish many of the same things as Utah’s program. Dollars will flow to the provider that offers the course the student selects. The legislation authorizes up to one-sixth of 90 percent of the state’s basic per-pupil funds to follow a student to a state-approved online course. Students can take more than six online courses with public funding so long as the total cost is less than 90 percent of the state’s basic per-pupil funds. As in Utah, the online provider receives 50 percent of the funding up front and 50 percent upon student completion within the course’s published length. The course instructor, not an independent assessment, will decide whether the student has done well enough to complete the course. Unlike Utah, however, the state of Louisiana must first approve a provider—whether governmental, nonprofit, or for-profit—before it can offer courses to students. In addition, the new funding plan includes an cap on course enrollments of 500 per provider.
More states are following suit this year. Florida passed a bill allowing dollars to go not just to FLVS but also to other online providers, be they districts or even MOOCs. Texas passed a bill that expands on its Texas Virtual School Network (TxVSN) structure and created a choice program that, like those in the aforementioned states, gives students the right to take courses from online providers outside the district. The law is limited, however, as it only allows students to take up to three online courses in a given year, and the payment mechanism in Texas appears to be more ambiguous than those in other states. Michigan passed a similar measure that expands the online choices available to students. Governor Rick Snyder’s budget bill allows students to take up to two online courses offered by another district each semester without having to receive the consent of the student’s resident district except under a few limited circumstances. The state will maintain a catalog of available online courses, and the resident district will pay 80 percent of the cost of the online course upon enrollment and 20 percent upon completion as determined by the outside district.
Course choice programs create considerably more options for students, but questions about their potential impact remain. First, it’s not clear how many students will avail themselves of the new options. In Utah, the only state with a program that has been in operation for any length of time, the number of courses taken outside the district appears to be modest thus far. Still, some argue that the number of students who take advantage of their new choices is less important than the competitive environment the program creates. Because funding can follow the student out of a school district at the course level, districts have a new incentive to bolster their own digital-learning offerings and keep the funds in the district. Consequently, one way to gauge success may be monitoring how districts respond to these measures. Indeed, several districts in Utah have created blended-learning schools, in which some instruction is online. Also, the shift from funding mere enrollment to funding course completion may be an important milestone on the road toward a competency-based learning system. Still, today, most initiatives do not go so far as to tie funding to independent assessments of student performance, thus replicating some of the counterproductive incentives in the existing system to serve students but not necessarily serve them well.
Capping Full-Time Virtual Schools
Political battles over virtual charter schools provide even more compelling evidence of the strength of the opposition to online learning within K–12 education. In higher education, it has proven politically impossible to prevent even for-profit, fully online universities from competing directly for students with brick-and-mortar institutions. Although these institutions have come under pressure from the U.S. Department of Education for inducing students to take loans that they will not be able to repay, the for-profit university bird is still flying. But in K–12 education, access to full-time virtual schools, which provide comprehensive education services to their students, remains uneven and, in many states, highly controversial. Districts are usually free to start up full-time virtual schools for their own students, but operating full-time virtual schools for out-of district students or statewide is a different story. In the school year ending in 2013, 31 states allowed full-time, multidistrict online schools. The previous year they served roughly 275,000 students. But continued growth may be stymied by legislative action in the same ways that states have placed limits on the numbers of charter schools that can be authorized and the numbers of students who can attend them.
In Tennessee this year, a new law places a ceiling of 1,500 students on initial enrollment in any full-time, multidistrict virtual school. It also dictates that students outside the district in which the virtual school is operating may not comprise more than 25 percent of the school’s enrollment. If a public virtual school meets expectations under the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System, then the school may grow, but no matter how well a virtual school does, its total enrollment may not exceed 5,000 students.
Political drama has followed in Illinois as well, where a full-time virtual charter school’s plan to operate across 18 school districts prompted legislators to draw up a moratorium on new virtual charters and to charge a charter commission with studying the matter.
The campaign against virtual schools is also under way in other states. A bill introduced in Maine prohibits any new virtual charter schools. In Pennsylvania, spurred by stories about underperforming virtual schools, legislators have proposed stark funding limits for existing full-time virtual schools as well as a moratorium on the establishment of any new one before 2016. Opposition to digital-learning opportunities can break out even where no virtual schools exist. The New Jersey Education Association filed a lawsuit against two blended-learning charter schools that opened this past year in Newark. Absurdly enough, the lawsuit alleged that, in essence, the schools should not be allowed to operate because they were virtual schools, even though they were not. The union lost the suit, but the fight is not over.
If one wants to generalize from New Jersey, a case can be made that online learning via virtual charter schools is essential to the broader digital-learning movement, because they absorb the opposition’s main line of attack. In the absence of full-time virtual schools, teachers unions and other opponents use their resources to attack blended-learning charters, even though the latter do not differ in legal structure, brick-and-mortar presence, or enrollment practices from other charter schools. Although digital learning in K–12 education may not grow significantly outside of existing school structures as it has in higher education, pushing for policies that safeguard the development of new models of online schooling may be critical for digital learning to have any transformational impact, even inside existing schools.
The opposition has cited concerns about the quality of virtual schools as the chief justification for stalling their growth. An increasing number of full-time virtual schools are simultaneously growing enrollments and failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in states across the country. Some of the most critical studies ignore the fact that virtual schools now serve many high-school students who had previously dropped out of or had significant problems in more traditional schools (see “Questioning the Quality of Virtual Schools,” check the facts, Spring 2013). Barbara Dreyer is CEO of Connections Education, the second largest full-time virtual-school provider in the nation. In an article in The AdvancED Source, Dreyer discusses the students who enroll in Connections Academy and notes that “33 percent indicated they have not been successful academically,” and “about 30 percent of the new students [Connections Academy serves] enroll after the start of the school year.”
A 2012 report by iNACOL, the International Association for K–12 Online Learning Association, titled “Measuring Quality from Inputs to Outcomes: Creating Student Learning Performance Metrics and Quality Assurance for Online Schools,” argues that none of the existing metrics for judging schools captures adequately the true performance of full-time virtual schools. It suggests that a better accountability system would look at five indicators: student proficiency, individual student growth, graduation rate, college and career readiness, and closing the achievement gap. Because no states today track these measures adequately, capturing the true performance of full-time virtual schools has been difficult. As a result, efforts to expand the schools or cap their growth make judgments based on limited information at best. Advocates argue that access to a full-time virtual-school option is critical for those who need it; others say we need more time for study before extending such access to be sure it is a high-quality option. Without a valid accountability system in place, it is hard to know.
Unseating Seat Time
For digital learning to succeed, students need to be given credit mainly for the amount of knowledge they have acquired, rather than for the amount of time they have spent taking a particular course. But seat time in a classroom has been the measure of elementary and secondary education for more than a century, and most state aid formulas are based, in some measure, on the number of days a student is in school. The policy change that is potentially most transformative would alter the rules for compensating school providers to reward knowledge and skills acquired instead of time served.
In an effort to move toward an education system that is focused more squarely on student outcomes than on inputs, advocates for digital learning have identified policies and regulations that lock in rules around seat time as some of the most pernicious. Competency-based learning—in which a student only progresses once he or she has demonstrated mastery of a concept or skill—is critical for digital learning to optimize the experience for each child. For true competency-based learning to emerge, policy changes are necessary. This is true not only for K–12 education, incidentally, but also for the majority of colleges and universities. Institutions that choose to implement competency-based learning may need to seek waivers from current regulations in order for students to obtain access to public funds, such as student loans and Pell grants. Policy change is less important for the few emerging forms of higher education that are so affordable that their students do not rely on public funds.
A scant few years ago, the mention of competency-based learning in a state legislature would draw blank stares. Increasingly, however, states are seeking ways to move beyond the seat-time system, with its accompanying pacing guides and tests given at fixed times, toward competency-based measures of learning. Some legislatures are working to give greater flexibility and autonomy to schools and districts in hopes of spurring innovation, whereas others are directly creating competency-based pathways for students.
Legislation that gives students a choice of provider for each course begins to unshackle learning from seat time by affording students the flexibility to progress at their own pace through their online courses. Utah is taking further steps toward competency-based learning for all schools: in the 2013 legislative session it passed a law that requires the state board of education to make recommendations about the funding needed to develop and implement competency-based education and progress-based assessments prior to the 2014 legislative general session. The bill lists the issues the board must think through in determining an appropriate performance-based funding formula and permitting a school district or charter to establish curriculum standards and assessments that would result in course credit if the student demonstrates competency in the subject. This legislation could move its current online course-choice program from rewarding mere course completion to rewarding true student performance.
In Idaho, legislation recently enacted expands on an existing pilot program. The law allows any district or charter school to submit an application to move to a mastery-based progression system of learning. Just how many institutions will apply and win state approval remains to be seen.
Competency-based learning is on the agenda in other states as well. A Vermont bill that Governor Peter Shumlin signed into law, called the “Flexible Pathways Initiative,” requires each K–12 student to have a personalized learning plan, but it also includes a variety of pathways in which “credits awarded shall be based on performance and not solely on Carnegie units [a measure of hours spent in class].” In Texas, a new law offers similar opportunities, as it allows students to accelerate through grades or courses if they pass a board-approved test that must be administered by districts at least three times a year. Although not actually competency-based learning, the measure breaks down the artificial distinction between secondary and higher education and might open up more opportunities for competency-based funding of courses in the longer run.
Other states are offering more flexibility for school districts to spur innovation. In Florida, a new law allows school districts to establish innovation schools of technology, or blended-learning schools. The Alabama Accountability Act permits “programmatic flexibility or budgetary flexibility, or both, from state laws, including State Board of Education rules, regulations, and policies in exchange for academic and associated goals for students that focus on college and career readiness.” To receive this flexibility, districts must submit an innovation plan for approval.
Conclusion
As all this suggests, state policy is crucial to the spread of digital-learning opportunities at the elementary and secondary level. A review of recent legislative action reveals policies that are constantly in flux and differ quite markedly from one state to another. Some have hoped for model digital-learning legislation that could handle all the various issues related to digital learning and push it to be of high quality and student-centric. Others have hoped to isolate digital learning from other policy issues, and yet digital learning touches on several areas of state code. Even adopting model language for funding online courses from one state and transporting it to another creates challenges for legacy state codes. One-size-fits-all legislation that creates a coherent framework in which digital learning can grow is, as a result, likely a pipe dream.
The only guarantee seems to be that even as K–12 digital learning—or certainly the hype around it—continues to expand, efforts to regulate and channel the new instructional models will be both frantic and uneven. Some will fight to stunt their growth, and others will seek to give them more freedom. Still others will seek to provide more access, so long as it is focused on student outcomes. If the digital transformation of higher education continues apace, it will have a major impact on secondary schooling as well. However things end up, state policies seem certain to play a major role.
Michael Horn is executive editor at Education Next and executive director of the education program at the Clayton Christensen Institute.
In 1859, Charles Darwin advanced his theory of natural selection. It states that for a species to survive, production of variations in traits needs to occur throughout generations. Though he formed his theory while observing animal species on an island chain over 150 years ago, Charles Darwin could have just as easily been talking about teachers today. As such, there are certain characteristics of effective teaching that lead to an extra survival probability in the classroom. After reading the following six traits, ask yourself, are you primed to remain relevant, or a potential victim of educator evolution?
Pursuing professional development is not an exception, it’s the rule. Blogs, Twitter, wikis, podcasts, Edcamps, and other social-learning activities are not simply add-ons, but complements to what thriving teachers and principals do. In the 21st century, best practices are being crowd-sourced and largely found online. Whether or not you have time to log on isn’t a relevant concern anymore. It’s an expectation.
Collaborating with colleagues is a fundamental extension of a willingness to grow. About as obsolete as classroom desks are classroom doors. Successful educators are engaging in rich and meaningful discussion with professional learning communities on a regular, if not daily, basis. Contrary to using their prep time for photocopying or updating grades, collaborative colleagues analyze student data and create differentiated instruction to meet individual learners’ needs so that every student has an equal opportunity to grow, succeed, and achieve.
Creating context in the classroom isn’t explaining when math students are ever going to use the quadratic formula beyond Algebra. It is students engaging in work that actually matters. Teaching content standards is important, but learning in a meaningful context is essential. To survive as a teacher today, ensure that your students are too busy asking how they can demonstrate their learning to be asking how much work they actually have to do.
Sharing student work on social platforms follows from adding context to the curriculum. Instead of asking students to turn their work in, require them to publish it online. Why else would we spend our time working on a project if we weren’t going to share what we did with the world? In addition to creating an authentic audience to motivate quality engagement with learning, having students publish their polished projects on the Internet is assisting them in establishing a positive digital footprint long before they will ever wish they had one.
Offering autonomous learning paths is also a practice whose time has come. School is the only place where we are expected to leave our personal pursuits at the door. Apparently, they aren’t valuable enough to budget classroom time for. Not anymore! Allowing students to design self-directed learning projects isn’t en vogue. It’s encouraged by neuroscience. Whether that is time carved out of the day for Genius Hour or a pedagogical approach through quest-based learning, it is imperative that we empower our students by acknowledging that what drives them is at least as important as what drives the curriculum.
Building bridges beyond the blackboard through connecting with other classrooms, experts, and cultures can not only transform your teaching but take instruction to new heights. No longer do you need a school-bus, permission slips, and a cooler full of sack lunches to leave the classroom for the day to explore the greater world. With an Internet connection and a webcam, endless opportunities abound. Software such as Skype, Google Earth, Adobe Connect, and Ustream, along with social networks including Twitter, Google+, and Instagram provide a number of avenues to exit the classroom for an academic journey that will move students to higher order levels of thinking. By designing virtual field trips, video conferences, live streamed productions, and more, your classroom can be as large as you allow it to be.
It’s not sexual selection, but it’s just as important; adopting characteristics of effective teaching leads to survival of the fittest in education. Failure to evolve most likely won’t cost you your job. Much worse, it will cost you your students as they disengage and daydream about getting back to real life, real meaning, and really anything other than what you have to offer. So, are you willing to steer your own HMS Beagle or let natural selection happen to you?
If you ever watched Bill Nye the Science Guy, you probably remember the song parodies his episodes featured, which rewrote the lyrics of popular songs with scientific themes. Sure, getting the song stuck in your head will probably help you remember a few facts, but the benefits of music to learning science could go beyond just helping your memory.
Check out this recent article from the University of Washington, which suggests that music can help you learn science not necessarily by including mnemonics, but by relaxing and engaging you. After you read that, check out SingAboutScience.org, a database of thousands of songs about science and math. Their navigation isn’t the most obvious–search for songs under ‘Find/Add Songs’ and click on the little purple buttons by each song.
