Catching Up - part 1

I started this blog as a way for me to reflect on teaching.  It is easy to spend all of your time on the day-to-day details and activities of teaching and let your own education grind to a halt.  I like to stay energized by talking to teachers in my own school, talking to teachers at other schools, and attending conferences.  While I was attending a conference, it hit me that I had let my blog go unattended. It is now time to catch up!

Notes from Brain Workshop at Harvard

• Students have learning preferences, but if you emphasize them too much, then students will develop negative meta-cognition and be unwilling to learn in certain circumstances.
• You will know that kids are engaged in the lesson when they ask questions that extend beyond the lesson.
• "In the US, we expect students to be good at everything."
• The jury is still out on rewards for motivation.  In some cases, it can help students with little or no intrinsic motivation.  In other cases, it can sabotage students who have intrinsic motivation.
• We should support and promote academic risk-takers.  In high-stakes environments, the "failure" rate will be low.  Only in low-stakes environments, will high failure rates be successful.
• There is a network effect in education.  Similar types of students tend to group together to create a social network. 
• Metaphors are very powerful and this extends into the classroom with teacher and environmental cues. 
• Experiment using college students to rank people as "warm" or "cold" using profiles.  In some cases, students were given lightweight and heavier clipboard.  In other cases, the instructor was drinking hot or cold coffee.  The results were influenced by the clipboard and coffee temperature cues. 
• Other studies have shown that vegetables at the entrance to supermarkets induces people to buy more junk food and people who commit crimes are more likely to wash their hands more often.
• Cues are even more powerful when stereotyping is involved.  Claude Steele (1997) has shown that members of stereotyped groups may perform below their capacities on tasks that their group is expected to do poorly on, especially if they are reminded of their group membership.
• To understand the best memorization techniques, think about (1) things you learned and have not forgotten, (2) things you have not formally learned and have not forgotten, and (3) things that you tried to learn and could not.
• Be aware of the way journals and product companies co-opt new technologies and elevate their importance beyond their real usefulness in education.
• When teachers design lesson plans, they need to incorporate cognitive theories and motivational techniques to ensure that the lesson motivates students.  Motivation is a combination of competence, control/autonomy, and interest.  Below are elements that can be influenced by teachers:
• setup student to be engaged (priming)
•  individual buy-in based on why is this important to each student
• provide positive support
• may include recreational breaks (i.e., 5-minute video game break)
• remind students of positive work and lessons
• positive cuing, "you are going to do well"
• sustained effort (progress)
• this provides motivation by setting expectations about how much more work is needed to complete the learning outcome (similar to wait times at Disney World)
• will the progress show mastery (individual progress over time), or performance (i.e., winning percentage, progress versus others, etc.)?
• personal dashboard with scores over time or units/steps completed
• scoreboard showing top scores or other metric (i.e., number of books read)
• choice
•  menu of activities (multiple paths)
• choices to personalize the lesson (also provides teacher insights about students)
• NO choice to learn or not
• status/recognition
• informal recognition when students work collaboratively
• formal recognition, such badges, etc.
• Learning requires practice, emotion, and connections.

 
Notes from the Alan November webinar about personalizing learning

• Critical issue is who owns the learning?
• Video games are attractive to students because students have autonomy/control and they get immediate feedback.
• The first few days of each school year should be dedicated to learning about the students and setting expectations.
• Build trust between teacher and students as you set expectations.
• Teachers should be learning everything they can about their students.
• Learn their backgrounds and family situations.
• Learn about them as individuals.
• Learn how well they work with others.
• Introduce a project that is fun and has nothing to do with the curriculum.
• Watch how they problem solve.
• Watch how they work together.
• Watch how well they work on the task.
• The current teaching model values teachers for their expertise in a subject and traditional lesson plans are based on this knowledge and are not based on student knowledge.
• Create lessons around student background knowledge, conceptions and misconceptions.
• Capture this student knowledge by collecting and analyzing their questions.  At night, review questions from the day and plan/adjust the lesson for the next day.
• Capturing the questions will likely require some form of social media technology (i.e., Edmodo, etc.).
• This question database will be key to personalizing and individualizing the curriculum.  
• Flipped classrooms are also a way to individualize the curriculum because students can watch the videos in a manner what works best for each of them.    
• Give students work a global audience.
• Let them collaborate and peer review work with teachers and students from other schools and countries.  
• Students feel that teachers who don't know them personally provide a "better"critique of their work.
• The larger audience will create higher stakes.  In one example given, a middle school created a wiki about Africa.  The teacher reported that students wanted to edit their work from years prior.  That is, high school students wanted to revise what they had written in middle school.  
• Our current assessment practices run counter to the research.
• The more you grade students, the less they will work - choosing instead to figure out the "easiest" path to a good grade.
• Students will work for hours to create a movie for an assignment, but will likely rush through homework problems.
• Involve students in creating the rubric to grade a project.
• You can see individualization in action when you walk the hallways.  Who is working harder - teachers or students? 
• Classrooms should be organized more the work environment in businesses.  Students working together on a common goal and contributing in different ways.  The roles rotate so students learn different skills.  Have a social media backchannel for questions and discussions.
• In this project-based environment, teachers have time to observe students, work with them and interact with other teachers.  In this capacity, teachers become curriculum researchers to improve what they teach and possible create interdisciplinary projects.