Hi parents. Thanks for taking a minute to read through this post.
When we started the year in Algebra I, we knew that the calculator would be taking on a bigger role than it has in the past. What we didn’t know was how difficult it was going to be to get every student on board and ready to go.
Right now we have about 25% of students that actually have the TI-Nspire technology that we are requiring. Another 20% that have a high school ready calculator (one that has graphing and pseudo-spreadsheet capabilities), and the rest of our students either have a middle school calculator or no calculator at all.
This creates two issues that are holding us back from doing and learning what we need to do and learn. The first is that students do not have a high school ready calculator. The reality is that the tools we once used to learn and do mathematics are not the best tools for the job anymore. As obvious as the difference is between a slide rule and an electronic calculator, the same differences exist between middle school and high school calculators.
The second issue we have found is that even among high school ready calculators, the technology is too different for everyone to choose their own brand and model. Cell phones come to mind for me as an analogy. Each different calculator that a student brings into the room is like a different model of cell phone – a different operating system and a different way to use each one. Imagine trying to teach a class of 30 students how to send a picture text message on 8 different types of phones all at the same time. Then, realize that a picture text message is a task which is 10 times easier than the most basic tasks we will perform on the calculators we use.
I’d like to show you a concrete example of what I mean. A large part of Algebra I is connecting algebra symbols and operations to geometric representations. If a students needs to solve an equation, we want them to know what that equation looks like from a geometry point of view and an algebra point of view at the same time. A starting point for all of this is finding the intersection of two lines. Both of the following videos accomplish the same task. The eventual goal is to turn what we do here into solving the following equation: 4.13 = -0.78x – 8.
There is a significant difference between the calculators. Teaching a room of students how to do this on just one version of the calculator can take in excess of one-half hour, not to mention trying to teach two or more versions. The overall experience is different as well which is why we are requiring the TI-Nspire. For example, in the Nspire video we stayed on one screen the entire time and watched the solution unfold. The notation is accurate and visible on the Nspire. The final solution is shown as an ordered pair (which is what we were looking for). The work on the Nspire is dynamic. Clicking on the axes allowed me to move it and resize it. If I wanted to I could have changed the lines we were using by just clicking and dragging them. By contrast, what you saw on the TI-84 (and similar calculators) was a static picture. Not movable, not explorable, just a picture.
I’ve said too much already, but I need to be clear that the technology is necessary and (since we are educating groups of students) really only works when everyone in the class is ready to go. My advice is that you check Amazon often (I just looked today and found price points of $69.99 for brand new Nspires) and also check eBay as well. Do not purchase an Nspire that has a “click-pad” and do not purchase a “CAS” version. Picutres of what you want are shown below.
Moving ahead, here is how I would like to be part of the solution. I have started doing some leg work for you and have been purchasing used-but-almost-new and brand new TI-Nspire and TI-Nspire CX (the color version) calculators from places like ebay. I will sell them to students on a first come, first serve basis for the exact amount I paid for them, including shipping. The savings over a new purchase from a store is substantial to say the least. A new TI-Nspire might go for $100 in a store but I am getting them for $46 and less so far. I will keep a list here of what I have available and update it when any are sold or replaced.
You can return the favor by letting me know when you find a good deal and I will share it here.
Steve mentions we need to make sure that we aren’t doing “old things in new ways”. He mentions the TechBook and describes how it drives teachers crazy at first because there is no chapter one. We need to do new things in new ways. Beyond the textbook sort of thinking.
Steve talked about his son and the fact that he wants the opposite of what most school districts are trying to provide. He wants his son’s first and last name and location attached to everything that he does. Why wouldn’t he want that? We are all making a digital footprint, why not make the experience into a professional portfolio starting at a young age. A good example of this is College Confidential. Used appropriately, this kind of site can be used for long term planning. Colleges are sure to be looking at a site like that.
Crowdspring is another interesting place that evens the playing field for anyone. Students can be participating in projects there right now. Kickstarter is another project based place. Here students come up with a business plan and actually set it into motion in the real world. These are the places that kids need to be to work on their digital portfolios. The reality is that places will not hire unless you have a positive presence on the internet. Don’t bother with a traditional resume – it isn’t worth anything. Having no presence at all is just as harmful as having a negative presence.
Steve shared a story of a CEO that looks for his VP’s on World of Warcraft and not on the golf course anymore. If you can lead a guild on World of Warcraft, you have the same skills that you need to lead in the corporate world. If you have 10,000 followers on Twitter, that has to mean something about you as a leader.
We must be prepping students to thrive in the digital world. It is open and transparent.
Steve shared some sites that are worth looking at:
The bottom line is: How can we use sites like the ones listed above in a way that they were not intended for? We can’t fall into “Box of Legos” syndrome, where we only build what is on the box.
Disclaimers out of the way first. Wisconsin DPI has an agreement with Google that makes sure that what happens in Google complies with FERPA. Apparently that is a good thing.
Google forms have the advantage of being free, viewable with internet access, and can involve some collaboration. There are various types of forms. Just a text box the title of which can become the header of a column in a spread sheet. You can have a paragraph text, multiple choice, multiple choice but you are choosing from a drop down list, check boxes, a scale sort of rating kind of thing, and a grid which is a scale but for multiple questions at once.
Accessing a Google form is as simple as signing in to your Google account (create one here) and then selecting Docs in the tool menu. From there select Form and you are ready to go. From here on out you are playing around and making your forms.
The bigger question for me is: How can I use Google Forms to improve student learning?
As a followup to this mornings keynote this session is a conversation with educators regarding the ideas from that session.
Scott started by mentioning a post-literate society: maybe there is a time ahead when many of us don’t need to read because electronic devices may be able listen to us and respond. Dependency on text is on the decline.
Second topic: How do we get staff moving and motivated?
Initial urgency and maintenance urgency are the two main issues.
Scott mentioned Mind Dump which is a place where little snippets of information can be found to aid in chipping away at resistance.
Teachers are rational and have real reasons to be resistance. Those issues need to be addressed. They are legitimate.
We need to be aware of the “implementation” dip. How do we make it as shallow and as short as possible? Multiple support structures need to be in place. “There is no place you can turn and not get support.” See the book Influencer: The Power to Change Anything.
Third topic: What do we do about teaching to the top of Bloom’s (top 3 levels) and still maintaining AYP. Testing is asking us to live on the bottom.
What we remember is what we attach meaning to. Decontextualized stuff needs to live in contextualized place. We have to find ways to stay in context so we get the benefit of the top three levels and build meaning for the “remembering” of skills and facts.
Aside: Where do keyboarding skills stand? It should start as early as possible. Keyboarding may be replacing cursive handwriting in terms of time and necessity. In 10 years though keyboarding may not exist.
Fourth topic: What do we do about filtering?
Logging software may be useful.
We spend way too much time locking stuff down instead of teaching appropriate use.
We typically lock 95% of people down for the sake of the 5% that are the problem.
Fifth topic: How can we implement changes in the structure that we currently have?
Imagine that we start with 9th grade. There are no bells, class schedules. You give 15 teachers and every student a laptop and the current curriculum standards and that’s it. What can you build? What can you do?
Sixth topic: What would you implement for 1 to 1 initiatives?
Not an iPad. Not enough content creation – they are mostly content consumption devices.
Maybe a Netbook. Best option is a laptop.
A BYOD policy mirrors what happens in the real world, however there are equity concerns.
See Scott’s link (above) for a research brief on 1 to 1 initiatives.
Seventh topic: How do you know when you have to take a step back and avoid burnout.
Be aware that you need to either give stuff up or find more support structure. See this.
How do we take a school through the process of technology integration? How do we get teachers excited and how do we become good technicians of implementing change?
Screenagers today are hyper-connected. How do we make learning a freeing experience, rather than a dictated one. RSS feeds, Wiki’s, blogs, etc. Any of these tools must be used with high expectations of quality.
Everything is Scott’s presentation this morning is available here. We can also follow whats going on at TodaysMeet.com/mcleod This is a nice way to follow #slate2011 tweets.
Scott started by introducing #pencilchat as a hash tag where educators take pokes at excuses for not integrating technology into the classroom. Pithy stuff.
Scott’s first point is that We All Now Have A Voice and his second point is that We Can All Find Each Others Voice and then We Can Easily Work Together. This has to change the way we do things. Access is completely mobile now and we can get it anywhere. The lines are blurring now, say, between work and home or between local and global. Google’s Art Project is a great example of blurring the lines. So is Google maps in terms of being in one place but seeing another in “real time”.
We now live in an era where a 12 year old guitarist can get 90 million hits on youtube. That kind of thing used to be reserved for huge record contracts. Lines between producer/consumer and expert/amateur are clearly blurring. Another line that is blurring is the one between Us and Them. What kind of jobs are location dependent versus location independent. The internet is destroying geography. The jobs that we are going to grow and not see disappear because a robot can do them are
those that involve critical thinking, problem solving etc. This needs to be the focus of our classrooms. Not things we can look up on Google. Dan Meyer puts it best when he says “The robots are going to eat our lunch if we are not careful.” We need to spend classroom time doing the things that the robots can’t. Making connections, diagnosing and treating misconceptions, creating perplexing problems that create patient problem solvers, etc.
The University of the People and MIT Open Courseware are blurring the lines between formal and informal learning. Can a student learn on-line all they need to know to pass a bunch of AP Exams and get college credit for that? Why or why not?
Next part of the session Scott challenges us to discuss how we operationalize changes in our schools that actually lead to student learning. What are we doing to combat low-level, wrote memorization, naked skill pedagogy? The first premise is that we need to invent our own solutions. The answer is not “out there”. We need to work it out and make it happen. Do it.
Next we took a look at this Mission Impossible: How do we get rid of textbooks? Each group put ideas into a Google Spreadsheet and then each group looked at someone else’s spreadsheet, identified 2 good ideas and put them on a summary page. We did this as a discussion around textbooks but also to see the value added by doing this is a digital way.
Scott also did a short segment on his iPad and looked at some really decent apps: Algebra Touch is a great looking app for the iPad for Algebra.
So is Word Wit for English. iMuscle for kinesthetics. NYPL Biblion for History (The World Fair). The Waste Land for Poetry/literature.
The underlying ideas here are, first, that when students see grades they think something is finished. They look at the grade and either smile or frown. Then they file the paper away – too often in the circular file. Secondly, even if I have provided feedback on the paper, the grade rules and the feedback is generally ignored. So, in the footsteps of one of my heros, Shawn Cornally, I got rid of the problem – the grades.
My thinking has shifted on assessment lately also. I used to think that if I was studying domain and range with my honors precal kids, then my assessments should be a few domain and range problems. Usually they are pretty low level Bloom’s stuff and kids that could memorize and repeat had an advantage. I hate admitting this about my assessments, but in general I think teachers test what is easy to test. The thing that changed my mind though was realizing that these same types of problems that I was testing on were the problems we were already looking at in class. What data was testing on them going to get me that I didn’t have already?
The students complete those in around 15 minutes each and then I put feedback on them that night. I try to stagger them, so I only have one class to do per night. They are handed back the next day(ish) and the students respond to my feedback. This feedback loop continues until I feel like I’ve gotten the most I can out of the majority of the students. I think 3 revisions is the most I’ve done. Both the original shot at it and the revisions are all done in class under test like conditions.
For the first four weeks of school the two problems above were the ones that I decided would make up a students grade so far. I decided on this format for helping the students reflect on their work. Below the dotted line is where it’s my turn to make comments.
My comments on the grade summary were directed at advice to help students get better, a goal for the student, and/or a statement of agreement or disagreement with the student’s evaluation. Parents would have an idea of what their student’s grade was before progress reports came out and more importantly, some concrete information on why their grade is what it is.
Next thing to think about is how to have students summarize a grade for themselves for an entire quarter worth of work (and eventually a semester). They have 2 assessments on domain/range, 2 on functions, and 1 on transformations of functions. Maybe a summary of each idea which is then somehow combined into a single letter grade, or maybe a holistic approach that looks at their overall progress. I’m open for suggestions.
That’s right! I have not put a grade on one piece of work so far this year.
Here are the pro’s:
Students don’t ask what their grade is.
Students don’t ask why their grade is what it is.
Parents don’t e-mail me and complain ask about their student’s grade.
My students are enjoying learning for the sake of learning.
My students are revising their work and are showing gains in understanding.
I can see students getting better and I actually feel like I’m developing talent in them.
Students are evaluating their own work and justifying their evaluations – based on the work.
I am communicating with parents about student work and their understanding of it.
CagleCartoons.com
Here are the con’s:
I have more work to do than “usual”.
My friend and colleague Dave has a lot more and it may make him explode (or implode).
I have to provide 2 progress grades per quarter and 1 final semester grade per administrative rules. It is becoming difficult to provide a “final” letter grade when nothing is graded.
Very concrete minded kids feel that if their work is not judged in a sort of right/wrong/ABCDF way they aren’t anchored to anything.
All in all I am really very happy with the results. Especially my Juniors – I have never enjoyed my Juniors in Honors Precalculus more than I do this year. I thought about if it was just the kids or how I am rolling now with grades. I distinctly remember liking previous classes until the grades started rolling out on assessments. Then it quickly became nit-picky, negative, and sometimes confrontational. In short – we were having conversations about grades rather than having conversations about math. That sucked and I hated every minute of it. By the end of last year a lot of my kids would roll their eyes and go “Oh boy, here it comes” anytime someone brought up their “grade”. Grades do not equal learning and in many ways I think they prevent it. If kids don’t need them to learn and we don’t need them to teach, then why do it?
I’ve left a lot out of this story and if anyone is interested, I’ll share more of what I am doing in place of grades. My challenge now is to figure out how I’m going to have the kids justify their quarter grades…
