Rewired Learning Blog

Teaching with the inverted bell curve (well curve) pt.1

             Most classes have a grade arrangement where upon examination the scores fall into a bell curve or some pattern that looks similar to one. What happens if the reverse is true? There is no bell curve but instead you see a “well curve” where it looks like the bell curve turned upside down.

            I can think of two reasons for this occurrence. First is jus a bad spate of randomness. If you go to a casino and visit the roulette table, you might see a digital chart of the last 10 numbers rolled for that game. Look around at enough tables you are bound to see a section of 6 numbers in a row that all come up red. Having red come up 6 times in a row is a worse than a 1-to-64 chance (because there are two green spots as well) yet is does happen. Taking 4 people from the middle scoring group of a class and replacing them with 2 above average students and two below average students can severely alter the class makeup, grade breakdown, and the manner in which the class is taught.

            The second reason is because of some barrier in place. If I pour a cup of sand on the ground, it piles up in a pyramid or conical shape. If I pour the sand on my closed fist then let it go to the ground, there will be two smaller mounds on either side of my hand. This creates the double bell curve or a well curve.

            For schools, specifically high schools, this blockage would be another course. Often it would be a course offered in a limited manner such as an AP course where only one section exists and must be placed at a specific spot in the schedule. Because of this one class will probably exhibit the normal distribution, but the other class (receiving the fallout from the blockage) will be sure to suffer. Two large groups of distinct abilities will prevent the teacher from using specific techniques to enhance either side to their full extent if it does not coalesce with the opposing group.

            While probably needed to fulfill certain school or class requirements, it must be weighed and given regard the differences in classroom abilities that are then constructed.

Properly using Wiki in the classroom

    Last week, an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education reported on the use of Wikipedia in the college atmosphere. The high use of Wiki in for college research is not really surprising, and unless there are some great measures curbing the use of Wiki as a research tool, I doubt that this will change much. The argument against the use of Wikipedia is simple and straightforward: anyone can write something on Wikipedia. Where was this dependence on Wikipedia created? Well….simply…in high school.

    Millions of high school students are taking a class in U.S. History right now. Those same students will all be learning about Andrew Jackson and I assume that thousands of students will have to write something on this moderately known president. Google Andrew Johnson; the first entry is Wikipedia while the second one is from the White House. Even more Wiki describes it’s entry on the Google page as the following:

 

“Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the seventh President of the United States (1829–1837). He was military governor of Florida (1821)…”

 

While the next best informative description of the ten on the first Google search page is from the State Library of North Carolina stating:

 

“A brief biography of Andrew Jackson who became a national hero during the War of 1812, was a Congressman, a US Senator, a Judge on the Tennessee Supreme ...

 

The Wiki entry, besides being the first entry, provides more topical information immediately and provides numbers (for those teachers who test on dates). It is much more alluring. All it takes is for a teacher to ask, “When did Andrew Jackson…” and the student knows they need a date and they know that this site has them. What ever worked in high school will be the first thing they will try in college. Why change if success was achieved?

 

    Those that ever did any type of in-depth research at the college level know that while Wiki might have some background, it is not for research. The report does point out that students use it as an intro to the topic which they are researching, just to get background information. Personally, I agree with this use of Wikipedia.

    So where does this leave a high school teacher in preparing students for the future concerning research and the use of Wikipedia? The answer is creating an awareness of Wiki limitations. Here are some easy ideas to create awareness (not suspend or forbid the use) of Wikipedia in the classroom (this also works well for colleges):

 

1)   Purposely use Wikipedia – Have the students copy one or two entries and submit it before the due date of the actual assignment. Now every one can see up front what is on line. On completion of the assignment ask one more question: Are there any differences you discovered between Wiki and the actual research? If there are then you are fostering an awareness of the limitations (omissions or untruths) of the site. Deeper research will not be there but simpler high school and intro topics will be there. Forbidding and disregarding some elements of research does not create awareness, but ignorance.

2)   Create a Wiki page that is fictitious and ask the students to report on the topic – Some will say that the topic does not exist, showing they actually did research. Some will just copy the wiki site. “Punish” them for not realizing what they are doing. This again creates awareness…mean grading is optional.

The New "New" Four Day School Week

    This week is graduation testing in Georgia. For those not familiar with graduation testing…they are simply tests given in 11^th grade that you must pass in order to graduate. There are four tests given (language arts, math, social studies and science) and passing each one is required for graduating high school in Georgia. The tests themselves are not the subject of this but more the time away from classes.

    I have already shown my agreement for many of the ideas written in John Medina’s book Brain Rules, but I want to take one of those ideas a bit further. He writes that repetition is key for learning. Revisiting old material and multiple shorter classes in the day are a few of his ideas to increase learning in the school atmosphere.

    The testing this week makes me think of the frequent breaks we have from class time. The calendar I have is speckled with little colorful squares highlighting days off, breaks and teacher work days. If you add in all days for graduation testing, state course testing, checkpoint tests and midterms/finals, I can make my own visual depiction of a grocery store earring tree.

    As a parent, I see that routine is very important in managing people for performance. Variations and differences in routine are important to keep motivation and interest, but these should be breaks and asides. Schools, and I’m talking about many throughout the nation, are in this frequent “break in routine” philosophy. It actually becomes a small running joke amongst students and teachers that there are so few five day work weeks in the spring.

 

 

    Imagine going to work and being assigned a different task. Not a harder task, but a not quite related task. Think if you worked as a car mechanic and one day you are asked to run the cash register. Not really a bad thing, it is nice to have an occasional interesting day and a break in routine, but that is a break, not a constant habit. The four day “work week” is becoming normal with all the testing and materials on which students need to be checked. The car mechanic example is not bad, but in learning, where repetition is key to memory and understanding, breaks are not beneficial. I have no hard evidence to back this up (since this is mostly an opinion blog), but when 20% of the year is not part of the “regular” learning routine…it becomes another type of routine…one with less instruction.

I like the educational model of the four day work week, and recently many districts are changing to this model to save money. I believe four days can work when done right, but we have to eliminate the average of one school day a week not used for education.

When education is too bright and shiny for education

Recently we had a presentation from a map company since it was our turn in the school system to purchase maps. He offered the traditional, never replaceable pull down maps as well as many other hands-on materials that we have other editions of. Then he presents a new on-line product linked with multiple overlay maps and satellite images.

As someone who writes on the idea of using technology in school, at first I thought it was great. There is a learning curve and there are some limitations on the amount of people that can use it at one time and who can use it, but I am sure that properly done it could be an asset. Here is the problem though: it is almost too cool. Almost too advanced for maps. Maps are flat, colorful, sometimes bumpy and always fairly large. The leap from this to a fully interactive multi-layered item with dozens of features from zooming to labeling is quite dramatic.

Obviously I am not disregarding the whole material at all. I should show that my mantra is to go nearly totally paperless with wireless access points nearly everywhere and classrooms that are flexible because of this. If you take a country boy and put them in the city and tell them there are more opportunities there, what might the reaction be? Some might adjust well, some might freak out and go back to the country and others might just go wild with opportunity. I fear the third one here.

Remember the internet 1.0? from books and libraries to everything immediately all at once. Laws were created, addictions started and online bullying became a phrase in the public schools. Obviously there have been huge benefits from the internet from the point of a tool, but it can be used negatively as well.

Again, I can’t disparage the map system, but it does raise the question: Can technology that is bright and flashy be just a little too bright and flashy in the classroom?

Why education on-line improves due dates

Why? No forgetting. Working on-line means having the access of creation and submission at your fingertips. It is like writing a birthday card at the mailbox and forgetting to send it. Creating something or preparing a project on a computer often means printing it out or burning it to a disk in order to physically hand it to the teacher. Admittedly I am not quite to the level of all electronic submissions, but I should be and tend to be soon...although that is a future topic to discuss.

As our world is increasingly electronic, it makes little sense for us to assign things that we know are are done or completed electronically, but we require a hard copy. One thing would have to be changed though: more sever penalties for late submissions. The two people that can tell liars better than anyone else are cops and teachers. Due dates can be fudged and have excuses made for and sometimes the teacher (possibly me) will buy into it and give an extra day. On-line submissions release teacher error in this manner. The following is possible now:

Student: I left my assignment at home

Teacher: Why

Student: oh I just forgot it (or my printer died or i dont hav a printer). Can you be here after school (or my mom can drive it in)

Squishy teacher like me: ok but you have 30 minutes to get it here (or by the end of the day or you have to email it to me by 5pm)

Student: ok

The conversation would switch to the following:

Student: I forgot to send in my assignment

Teacher: Why

Sttudent: I did it but I just forgot to email (or what other type of electronical submission you want it in) it to you.

Teacher: So you mean to tell me that you spent an hour doing this and could not spend the next 90 seconds opening up your email and sending it to me...???

Student: Um...yea

Teacher: That does not make sense. I dont believe you did it.

Student: No really I did!

And of course the conversation can continue but tht teacher has more ammuniton instead of an innocent sounding "oops!"

As I said, my and other teachers not accepting online submissions is a problem for another entry, but when the decision has been made to accept all outside classwork electronically, starting this process must be thorough:

1) For homework the first week, each student has to email you.

2)  You must email the students back.

3) The student needs to printout a a copy of the email you sent for verification

4) Everything must then be electronically submitted and if not, must be handed it physically (if they feel there is an error)

5) Policy needs to be changed to at least 50% off for the first day late

6) Policy also needs to be changed to a form where if they send it in one day before it is due, they have an opportunity to see if the teacher received it and after that the previous policy goes into effect (this is for anyone who claims email problems which are nearly non-existant unless the sender gets a error message)

A slow implimentation towards this end will increase proper use of technology and instill timliness amongst students, preventing extreme procrastination.

Bank taxes and education

It would seem that a site about education would not be a place for any type of specific political ideas. Yet this is a site trying to explore, though not as much recently, ideas and uses of technology, and some have to be funded along the way. My school district, and many others nationwide, have experienced teacher furloughs where there are days that teachers are just not paid and don’t come in. Often these days are teacher workdays and the students are not affected. Still, I have seen my salary decrease by around 3.5%, relatively a reverse cost of living adjustment. Along with this is the oft cited mantra "Well at least I have a job".

Now let’s compare this to the idea of the proposed bank tax. There is opposition to this, as to any tax, although there is some traction recently concerning some level of taxation. The issue many Americans have with some of these financial institutions is the excessive bonuses that are doled out to some members...even as their companies were hammered in the recent recession. Their mantra was "We need the bonuses to keep the best talent".

Let’s use that idea for education. If money keeps the best talent and public education is getting hit nationally, we are losing the talent we already have. Yet the loss of this talent is much like smoking, the effects take time to show, and therefore is ignored. Whereas in banking, one can publically see the results in three months. Education creates the talent that is later used. Without the creation and development of talent, the pool of able people starts to shrink.

So where are we? Education is losing funding and cannot keep the best talent. Banks, ignoring the precept of moral hazard, continue ways that eliminated some banks and caused others to borrow tens of billions just to survive. Their money did not buy the best talent, evidenced by the bad business decisions that led to the proposal to tax them. If the banks could not do it, maybe education should try.

The proposal will collect around $110 billion over ten years. The United States has around 7 million elementary and secondary teachers. Giving this chunk over from banks to teachers would increase the salary over $1500 per year for every full time teacher in America for 10 years. Scaling those with the highest and lowest salaries could then allow for some districts to have yearly increases of $3000. Scaling it more to new teachers (1-5 years) to get them into the system and stay there could make starting salaries, some starting salaries in the most needed districts could top $5000.

With some poor districts having starting salaries under 30K this would mean an immediate 17%-20% incentive. Obviously the plan could be altered where you have to stay in for two years to start earning the bonus to make sure there is teacher follow through, but those are the details.

Using slideshare and student projects...again

With finals in December it has been quite a time since I updated the site. Back in the swing after a week it is time to start taking some time to look at tasks again to update them out of archaic manners to a more computer friendly sphere.

Last week my AP Psychology students were asked to create 6 slides on PowerPoint. Three were to be how they view their gender role and 3 were to be how they view the roles of the opposing gender. I asked them to email me their slides and I will compile them. I did one of my periods so far and it can be viewed at bit.ly/6qIm34. Then I used that period's slides and shoed them to all my other AP Psych classes as a reflection on how a sample of their peers viewed gender roles. They were pretty solid talking points and I would have to say that I had a much higher than average interest level in the classroom. Here is the easy way to do this task as a teacher:

1) Have them email their PowerPoint presentations.

2) Save all their attachments into one folder on  your hard drive.

3) Open PowerPoint, and use the merge presentation feature to combine all thier slides.

4) Using Adobe Acrobat (the one where you can create your own PDF's) or the newest version of Microsoft PowerPoint, change the presentation to a PDF file.

5) After you created a slideshare account, upload your file and present it to the class via projector, individually in a lab or as homework and have an assignment with it.

Now you can stop at step 3 and just present to your class, but the purpose of using slideshare is to introduce your student to the interactive web. Additionally slideshare enables others to view your presentations, publically or privately

 

 

Trying to ride the Wave...Google style

So today I got the Google Wave invitation. I'm playing around with it now and for classroom uses, I see two issues so far. First - because it is still in limited release, getiing a whole classroom of people to independently to get the wave is a logistical challenge. Second - many schools are Microsoft IE, there needs to be a Google Chrome install that would have to be on every computer in the lab. Obviously the second point is negated if they have a project to work on at home. But that would bring up the second problem of home internet access. There does seem to be a learning curve as well. My first two uses will be for students to create their own tests (yes there is explaining here that will be done later) and to have real time note taking. I'll update more as I figure (and configure for HS classes) the Wave.

What do you want me to teach you?

Today I gave my classes an outline for the last chpater we are responsible to know before the winter break. The 12 page outline had about 30 blanks in it (primary vocab words from the chapter) and one student asked if we were going to go over the blanks. I am not sure if they were serious or not, but I have not done something like this before because I thought it was too much like hand feeding them information. Now giving them those 30 blanks would be just like giving them an outline and have them not read the book at all, that and with that we take away the motivation to do better.

But...having said that, and having listened and read to ideas about popular branding (Obama bumper stickers) I think that for the first test next semester, I am going to ask my classes what and how they want me to teach. This is obviously contradictory to every teaching and authority idea.  I think it will work. Having others take control of your idea is a good thing. It works in marketing and many educaitonal ideas say it should work here as well (but they dont go quite as drastic) so i'll try it. What is the worst? I'll make an outline of a chapter and give it to them? Maybe worse, but maybe worse might help them. Obvioulsy I'll reply here with some results.

NCSS 2009 - The state of technology in High School Social Studies Education

This past weekend was the 2009 National Council for the Social Studies convention in Atlanta, Georgia. While I will have other posts on the materials presented, the one thing that was lacking was the presentations concerning new ways to teach or present materials. Many of the sessions were material related, which is needed because there are many minute instances in history that are unique teaching moments that create interest in the student. Still, providing students with the tools they will need in college and beyond is critical in the education of the student. Web quests and PowerPoint’s worked in 1998, but now we have a palate of delectable electronic materials that are used every day by students, but not in an educational setting.

One session, Social Networks in the Social Studies: Promise and Potential, was disappointing from the perspective of who attended. Only 31 people attended. A presenter at the seminar related the story of Club Penguin, a self described social networking site for 6-14 year olds, is a place with over 10 million registered members. With this ease and popularity of social networking among pre-High School students, why is it suddenly dying and then rearing up again in college? It seems that there is just a general lack of interest in this new wave of Web 2.0 interaction. Personally I believe that it is a stagnation of teachers to learn new materials when the old material "works" Additionally, with focus on curriculum and material and responsibility to parents who might only know the dangers of social networking and not its benefits, change is lagging. The attendance is sad, but I guess I cannot blame them.

The one enlightening seminar was by Kelly Jones-Wagy who teaches at Brighton High School in Colorado. Less than half of her students have internet access but over 1/3 of her grades come from online activities and exercises. She podcasted the 2009 Obama inauguration and has her classes do wiki's for grades. Quite possibly she was the most innovative of all the session presenters. Unfortunately she had the smallest room, available and it was packed, with a good 40-50 people. Her conference title, Wiki’s! Podcasts! Blogs! Great: Now How Do I Use Them?, is a much more friendly title and less scary than "social networking". Her materials are available at http://ncss2009.pbworks.com/FrontPage, are user friendly and quite possibly the most comprehensive recap of a presentation of any of the ones at the conference. In five years I hope that all the presentations from the NCSS conference are as accessible as this one.