It Should Keep Getting Better

Projects - Love them or hate them, but you will have them.  This is especially true in science.  There are some concepts that simply must be learned by doing, not to mention all the non-academic learning that comes from projects (which I should write a post on in the future because it is so important).  Because projects matter so much, it is important that we use reflective professional judgment to decide how students can best use their time rather than throwing every good idea we have at them, overwhelming them with work.

When deciding on whether to do a new project, tweak an old one, or keep it exactly as it was this year, there are some questions you need to ask yourself.
1.  What is the academic objective?
2.  What is the "other" objective?  (This could be social, behavioral, or even spiritual)
3.  What are they learning from this project that they cannot learn by doing it some other way?
4.  If retooling a previous project, what can I do to reduce confusion or increase efficiency?  What did someone do last year that I can incorporate this year?

After asking those questions, you may reach one of three conclusions about your project.

1. It should be dropped altogether as it has become a Grecian Urn.  If you don't have time or inclination to read the excellent Cult of Pedagogy post about Grecian Urn projects, here's the summary.  A Grecian Urn is any activity whose time and effort are disproportionate to the learning outcomes.  Something might be fun, but if it is taking days of class time, it should also be rather meaningful.  If it is not, drop it or give it to kids as an optional at home (extra credit if you believe in that sort of thing) activity.  If it is that fun, they'll want to.  If they don't, it probably wasn't as fun as you thought.

2.  The project should stay exactly as it is.  I'm going to suggest that this particular conclusion is rare.  It is difficult for me to believe your project is perfect exactly as is and that making changes could only do damage to the result.  Some projects are classic traditions that everyone should do (e.g physics egg drop project) because it unites us as learners across generations, but that doesn't mean those projects shouldn't change with technology or renewed priorities.  Before you settle into this conclusion, give it some serious thought.

3.  Tweak the project.  I submit to you that this is going to be the answer about 75% of the time.  If you are a creative and interesting teacher who cares enough about your skills to be reading education blogs, you probably had a good idea.  The process of reflection should allow you to identify what was really good about that idea and what needs to be changed.  This may happen only a couple of times, or it may happen every year of your time teaching a course. 

An example will likely help, so let me tell you about a project in my physics class that used to be called "The Electricity Project."  Warning: It plays out over multipl years, so it is long.

I have a healthy respect (that sometimes rises to the level of fear) for electricity.  It's one of the few things in my home I won't tackle on my own.  I don't know what caused this in me, but I don't want to pass it on to my students; so fifteen years ago, I started assigning a project in which they simply had to do some electrical circuit building (series, parallel, and combination circuits were my only requirements).  Many of them built a model of a house and lit each room.  Some built models of car lots or airports and lit each car or plane in series but the runway or lot lights in parallel.  These were all fine and accomplished the instructional objective "recognize the three types of circuits" and my personal behavioral objective "don't be afraid of 9V batteries."  This was fine for a time, and the kids enjoyed it.  They were also nice to have at student showcase nights.

Seven years ago, two students asked if they could do something that was electrical but didn't fit the project instructions.  If you teach high school, you know why I heard this with a skeptical ear at first.  Then, they proposed their idea.  They wanted to build an electric guitar from scratch.  "Umm, that's the coolest thing I've heard.  Yes, of course, you can do that."  I changed the rubric, not just for that year but for the future.  Instead of "build a model with circuits," the requirement became "build a functioning electrical device."  It still fulfilled the objectives the previous version had, but you wouldn't believe the difference in creative projects I got.  I had students who built games that would allow a bell to ring or light to come on when you got a correct answer.  I had some fun electrical versions of tic-tac-toe.  A student attempted to build a theremin.  I even got a Jacob's Ladder and a tiny rail gun that fired paper clips one year and a Tesla coil that had to be operated outside the next.  Because they were so interactive, we had a day of electrical fun, setting them out all over the room and inviting people to come and play with them. 

Four years ago, our school started really pressing in on the idea of Challenge Based Learning.  What would kids do if we took the constraints off and gave them a real-world kind of problem?  Knowing that the addition of another project would be burdensome to all involved, I brainstormed with our technology coach about how I might adjust an already existing project to become challenge based.  I decided on the electricity project.  Given how many people around the world have limited access to electricity, that seemed an ideal problem to solve with their knowledge of physics.  Also, at that time, our IT director was a former missionary to Haiti, where he had his own challenges with keeping electricity consistent in his home.  "Out with electrical device building . . . In with electrical problem solving," I thought.  I don't have time to tell you about the epic failure we had in the first year of this project, and I've already written about it, so read that here.

The next year, as I reflected on the project, I decided that clearer instruction was needed.  Perhaps I had taken the challenge based learning tenant that the teacher shouldn't have an end in mind a little too seriously.  I assigned groups and adjusted directions but had essentially the same project (check here for those adjustments).  Things were better but still not what I was hoping for (I've blogged about this a lot, apparently - see here for that year's result).  I wanted some real ideas, not just windmills.  The next year, we began our year with brainstorming groups in teacher meetings.  If you had an idea but needed input, you presented it to other teachers (mostly outside your own area).  Two teachers said, "It sounds like your idea is a little too hypothetical.  What if you gave them a real place?"  When we began brainstorming sessions last year, I was astounded by the difference that made.  Suddenly, I heard them taking weather into account because "you can't have solar panels in a place with sandstorms all year."  They were discussions about how difficult it would be to find diesel fuel in their particular part of the world or whether it was even windy there.  The fact that they were researching the resources of the area brought this project so much closer to what I envisioned.

Then, the biggest change happened quietly and almost accidentally.  The group that was assigned to Yemen came to me and said that the biggest problem with their lack of electricity was that they had so little clean water.  "Can we build a solar-powered water pump?"  As with the electric guitar, I didn't want to say no to a good idea just because it didn't fit what I had in mind.  Of course they could build a solar-powered water pump.  Aside from the atrocious spelling in their video, this was the best project of all the groups and the one people talked about the most.  They were compelling and knowledgeable and, most of all, invested in their solution.  This challenged me to change this project once again.

I consulted with our current tech coach about broadening the project.  Instead of focusing on electricity, I would assign the area.  Then, they had to decide what was the most critical challenge before them that could be addressed by physics/engineering.  Not knowing what they would decide, I wasn't sure building something was practical, so he suggested grant-style presentations with PSA videos.  Yes, this was coming together.  Of the 8 groups, six said lack of access to potable water was the biggest need in their area, one said flooding led to disease and water problems, and one said sanitation was an issue (because they had garbage and raw sewage in their streets).  In the six groups that addressed water access, there were six different solutions.  This showed me that they did, in fact, research what made the most sense for that country.  I was so proud of their results, and we got great feedback from those who attended the forum.  This was finally the challenge based learning project I wanted it to be.

You may have noticed that the objectives had changed.  No one built anything that had to do with circuits.  I accomplished that objective in one day of handing out 9V batteries, wire, and Christmas tree light bulbs with the instructions to "play and tell me what you learned" after a day of teaching about the different circuits.  That was a memorable day as one group pretty much tased themselves for twenty minutes by linking 32 batteries together and touching wires, showing that they weren't afraid of it.  This project is so much more meaningful that I can't imagine going back to building a simple model to show you can make circuits.  They can learn that another way.  This project now gives them things they couldn't have learned in another way.

If you teach for several years, your project should be getting better.  You may not have one that changes as much as this one did, but don't be afraid if you do.  Share the progression with the students.  They need to see that we continue learning.  They need to know that you have deep thought about the reasons for what you assign them.  They need to know that we haven't arrived at perfect ideas yet but that we are always reaching for them.  If you want them to keep getting better, you should be too.

Personifying the Elements

There are a lot of ways to teach the elements.  If you type chemical elements into youtube, there are over 641 thousand results.  Google shows 102 thousand news stories, almost 1.5 million books, and countless images.  As I have mentioned in this blog before, I did the same element project for years.  Each student built a model of the atom for a certain element and then wrote a paper (or podcast or webpage, depending on the year) about that element.  Last year, I tried replacing it with a nuclear energy project, but it didn't have the effect I had hoped for.  I was ready to do it again with some tweaks, but my co-conspirator, Kellie, had a better idea.

I was skeptical at first.  She came to me after last year's collaboration on the Mars paper and said, "I have an idea for another paper your kids can write."  My half-joking response was that I only grade one paper per year.  Then she said, "What if they have to make a case for an element as "the best element?"  Oh, that's interesting.  I may have to grade a second paper.  When talking about it with our tech coach, she said, "How is anyone going to make a case for anything besides carbon or oxygen?"  Hmm, that's a thought.  How were we going to do that?  Kellie said, "What if it is running for President, and they have to talk about the strengths that would make it a good candidate?  There are a lot of qualities that might make a good candidate."  Now, we were really onto something.  There's a lot of talk in education right now about doing things that cannot be googled, and both we and our principal agreed this was a way to do that.

I don't teach English, but I assume there are a lot of ways to teach personification.  If I remember correctly, I learned it in a poetry unit.  I think a tree was talking or something.  I never thought about it existing outside a poetic context, but this collaboration allowed kids to apply personification to science, especially when we decided it should be a speech instead of a paper.  Students actually spoke AS the element (or a spokesperson for the element).  The described its strengths (noble gasses have stability, bonding means working well with others, etc.) and accomplishments (hydrogen being the fuel of stars, sodium keeping you hydrated).  I even had someone make a case that radon could be a means of population control.  We gave our students the option of doing their speech on video if doing it live was too intimidating.  If you would like to see the results of that work, here's the playlist of their work.

I have enjoyed a lot of collaborations, but this one may be my favorite.  Kids learned the properties of elements in an interesting way.  They learned personification.  They overcame their fear of public speaking.  We have management tweaks to make for future years, but this was a great project.

Next week, I start a new collaboration, this time with history, a video project about inventions and their impact on culture.

#gcsinnovates - Part 2 - Innovative Relationships

I have mentioned before that our school has a great position - technology coach.  We had one on campus.  Then, she moved, and we had her by Google Hangout.  Then, she decided to work where she lives, so we added the job of technology coach to our media specialist, Daniel O'Brien.  He was actually doing quite a lot of tech coaching before, so this really formalized and added to what he was already doing with us.  He has taken the baton and run with it.

Teachers learn from watching each other, so Daniel instituted a Pineapple Chart.  Pineapples are a long known symbol of welcome, so when you put your name on the Pineapple Chart, it means anyone is welcome to come observe your class that day.  Whether it is technology related or not is up to the individual teacher.  I put my name down when my kids were designing aluminum foil boats, a thing that has only a little tech.  Another teacher invited us in to see her kids use Google Docs for peer editing of AP Language papers. Another has invited us, both physically and digitally, to observe a Twitter chat she is doing with her students.  Our AP Psychology teacher invited us to be sharks in a Shark Tank-style presentation her students did on developmental toys.  It has been great observing other teachers, especially those outside my own discipline area.  Thanks to Daniel's willingness to manage the chart, we get to see the innovations of our teammates and get ideas for our own classrooms.

Another great thing Daniel has done is send out a weekly tech digital newsletter.  It is essentially a vlog.  He talks to us about events of the week, reminds us who is on the pineapple chart, and chats about new tools.  One of my favorite parts of the newsletter is the point/counterpoint videos he includes.  Each week, there is a youtube link to an EdTech related video.  The first week was Digital Aristotle, in which the case is made that schools will soon be radically different as each child will follow their own digital path of learning.  The next week was a video that countered that one, called This Will Revolutionize Education.  In that video, the presenter pointed out how many technologies that statement had been applied to (pretty much all of them) and discussed why technology doesn't change education in quite as extreme a way as we expect.  These were great for me to discuss with myself and my friends.

One Friday of each month, Daniel hosts Innovation Pods during our lunch.  This is when teachers who have the same grade levels (and therefore, usually the same lunch periods) can sit together and talk cross-curricular projects or brainstorm ideas with him.  The first one didn't have a ton of attendance, but those who did attend got some great benefit.  I encourage people to come to the next ones.  On a different Friday, he set up our new VR Goggles in the library and encouraged us to come learn about them so that we could explore different ideas for their use in our classrooms.  That was super fun, and I personally had dozens of ideas, not only for my classroom but ones that I could share with my colleagues as well.

Basically, Daniel is making an effort to give us as many venues as possible to spark as many ideas as possible.  Way to go, Daniel.

I think the greatest innovation GRACE has isn't really an innovation itself; it's the openness to innovation.  It isn't at all unusual for an English teacher and a science teacher to collaborate on a project.  If I need to talk through an idea, I have administrators and IT people that I can sit down and brainstorm with.  We set aside meeting times specifically for the purpose of discussing innovative ideas that we have.  Our students may not know to call it innovation, but they know that we are working together and are not stagnant.  Thank you GRACE administration for allowing and encouraging all of this.

#gcsinnovates - Part 1

According to my computer's dictionary, innovation is the act of making changes to something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products.  Contrary to what we are told at education conferences, educators have been involved in innovation for the past two hundred years.  Yes, I've seen the side by side pictures of classrooms that appear to have undergone minimal change, but the photographer in me knows that those pictures show one momentary snapshot of seating.  They do not reflect the whole story.

If you walk into a classroom, no matter how traditional the desk setup, you will hear discussions among students and teachers that you would not have heard even ten years ago, much less one hundred years ago.  In fact, a person from one hundred years ago might believe you were speaking a different language.  The use of youtube as a teaching tool and students creating work rather than simply consuming it was something that couldn't have happened in my own schooling because the tools had not yet been invented.  The focus on collaboration that has taken over education is a massive change from what the parents of current students will remember.  Schools have definitely changed, and I don't think they are given enough credit for it.

I teach in a one-to-one environment, and my school has been growing in our application of this program for the past six years.  We are asked to use technology in our classrooms but not just for the sake of using technology.  We are asked to consider what technology makes possible that wasn't possible without it.  For example, our students who are reading The Scarlett Letter participate in Twitter chats.  The teacher of this class didn't choose Twitter just because she likes Twitter.  She chose it because it allows the students to communicate with each other (normal before technology), students in other classes (difficult before technology), teachers across other grades and classes (difficult before technology), and anyone in the world who catches the hashtag (impossible before technology).  This is a case in which the use of technology not only improves the lesson but actually makes parts of the lesson completely different than they would have before.

This summer, our faculty all read The Innovator's Mindset by George Cuoros.  Despite my irritation with Cuoros' abrasive personality in live workshops, there is much to like in this book.  He asks the question, "Would you want to be a learner in your own class?"  He poses the challenge to think of yourself as a learner so that students can see your learning process and realize that learning doesn't end when school does.  We are asked to think about innovation, not for the sake of innovation, but for what it can bring to your students.  Our theater department is putting on a production of Peter Pan this year.  We cannot use the traditional cable system to allow our students to fly, so our theater teacher innovated.  She asked her students what ideas they had about alternative "flying methods."  One of her students is proficient in a program called Blender.  He creates incredible works in it and suggested that the students could be scanned, animated, and projected in flight.  If she were not courageous, humble, and innovative enough to ask the students, we might not have had the ability to fly our students to Neverland.

One thing that I most appreciate about my school is the recognition that sometimes technology is the best way, and sometimes it only makes sense to use paper and a pencil.  Sometimes, an innovation is best, and other times the time-tested way is the best way.  We are given freedom in our professional judgment to do what we believe is best for each lesson in our classroom, but we aren't left to figure it out alone.  Our media specialists are also technology coaches.  Since this post is getting a bit long, I'll talk about how our new technology coach is innovating next week.

Backwards Planning

Our school has summer assignments for teachers.  We read a couple of professional development books and do discussion boards.  This year, we watched Oscar worthy safety videos (don't touch blood or stand on unstable surfaces, that sort of thing) and do an activity called "Backwards Planning."  This is the one thing I have not yet completed.  I've thought a lot about it, but I just haven't gotten in down on paper yet.

I casually said to a few people last week, "Isn't that what all teachers do anyway?  It only makes sense to figure out what you want to do and then figure out how to get there."  Those people looked at me like it was cute that I thought that.  Apparently, some teachers just start teaching and see where it goes; I didn't know that.

Whether by training or personality, I have always been that way.  The yearbook really couldn't happen if I didn't think that way.  You have to see an end and then take the photos or gather the materials it takes to get that result.  Our professional development coach tells me that I can do my assignment as a blog post, so here goes.

As a means of learning about rotational motion, I have my students design and 3D print spinning tops.  We then hold a contest to see who can spin the longest time.  The first time I did this was last year and, while it was fun, I'm not sure how much physics they learned from it.  When it comes down to it, I think I presented things in the wrong order.  They started designing before learning the concepts behind rotation, so they just did it based on other tops they had seen.  To make that better, I'd like to make some adjustments for this year.  The questions we were asked to address in our planning are answered below.

1) What are the desired outcomes?

Answer: Students should be able to explain the relationship between shape, mass, radius, etc. on angular momentum.

2) What evidence shows progress and mastery of the outcome?

Answer: The design of the top will be accompanied by a grid in which students describe the shape, mass, radius, etc. and explain their thinking from a physics standpoint.

3) What activities will effectively get students to the outcome?

Answer: Spend the first day going through the design thinking steps and research online. Spend the next few days designing and refining in the 3D print program and filling out the thinking grid.

4) What is your essential guiding question for the unit?

Answer: What factors influence the angular momentum of a rotating object?

5) Is there an opportunity to connect with another teacher/subject? How could you collaborate to bring your class experiences together?

Answer: While I do that with other challenges, I'm not sure it makes sense here. That said, if our math teachers can think of a way to join in, I'm thrilled to do it.

6) What is the Biblical Integration?

Answer: The creation mandate instructs mankind to subdue the earth. All technology is part of that mandate as we take advantage of the laws of physics and materials from creation to create culture and helpful devices.

7) Add technology last. Where is it appropriate? Where does it provide differentiation?

Answer: We add technology last to make sure we aren't just doing tech for tech's sake. This particular activity benefits from the 3D printer. Although, if a student told me they wanted to carve a top from wood or mold metal rather than design in the 3D design program, I would be thrilled with that - built in differentiation. Their designs also provide differentiation as there is more than one way to be right.

Writing FOR Learning

If written before about wanting to take advantage of the hyperlinking brain of the digital native.  It took me a long time, but I finally found that ability in writing my own 8th-grade science textbook.  You can read about that here and here.  This year, I decided it was time to do the same for my other prep, Physics.

I put writing the book for Physics off longer for a couple of reasons.  First, it is more difficult material.  If I had been learning to use the app and writing for the first time with the most complex material I teach, it might have taken longer to finish the first book than it did.  Also, I wanted to see how the 8th-grade book worked for a few years before I jumped in.  The timing of this worked out well because the students who first used my book in 8th-grade will also be the first to use the physics book.  They know the deal and responded to it well, so they seemed like a nice group to start this book with.

In my posts about the other book, I told you some of the benefits of writing your own.  Among them were arranging it in the order you like, using examples and analogies that work in your classroom, and the increased likelihood the kids will read it.  I also talked a lot about the use of hyperlinks as that was the motivating factor in my effort to teach the digital native.  Now that I have worked with my book for three years and am writing again, I want to discuss other benefits.

1.  Do you have a chapter you struggle with in your teaching?  You try to explain things and find it difficult to get through to students with clarity?  I do.  Teaching electricity has always been difficult for me.  I like teaching circuits, but the explanation of voltage is difficult for me.  My understanding of it is so tenuous that it can be rattled by a student asking a question.  (By the way, to help with that, I show a Khan Academy video that day - Don't feel bad if you need the help of another explainer than you.  It's humility, not weakness.)  Sorry, back to the point of this paragraph - Writing about that topic helps you.  It helps you think through your explanation on a deeper level than you have before.  You read what you have written and realize it needs something.   That forces you to google the topic and find an explanation you haven't read before.  With clarity for yourself, you write a better explanation and include the link to the site that helped you on the page with your explanation.

 2. You will learn things you did not know.  I was writing about color blindness.  I don't spend a lot of time talking about this topic in my class, but I felt I needed a little more than a few sentences if I was going to include it.  I looked it up and learned the causes of 7 different kinds of color vision deficiency and found a great resource in the National Eye Institute portion of the NIH website.  It's well written, interesting, and includes video animations.  I will be using this website in a project assignment next year.  Not only that, I can answer more questions and explain more things to my students.  This happened a two or three dozen times during the writing of this book.  I have more knowledge and more resources for my students.

3.  I wrote about the hyperlinks before, but this morning I had more clarity about them.  I was doing my summer homework in which we respond to a professional development book we all read.  This summer we read The Innovator's Mindset by George Curos.  One of the questions we were supposed to answer in our discussion board was "What do you want students to do with technology?"  This is an important question that EVERY teacher should ask themselves.  You don't want to use tech for tech's sake.  You want to figure out what is important that tech makes possible.  For 18 years, I have hoped to inspire my students to love learning.  I don't believe they will all be scientists, but I hope they will all continue to be learners for their entire lives.  As I wrote about that this morning, I realized the value that the hyperlinks were giving my students.  They saw that I was interested in something outside my curriculum enough to find and provide a link to it.  Perhaps that will inspire them to participate in some self-guided learning.  Here are a couple of examples:

When discussing the trajectory of projectiles, it is fun to talk about food fights.  The greatest food fight happens in Spain every year, so why not include a link that a student might want to follow.  Perhaps, that leads them to learn about Spain or tomatoes.

If you are teaching friction or rotation, it just makes sense to add a link to the science of a thing they like.  Right now, that's fidget spinners.

I wanted some real data to write a problem with.   I knew the information for copper, so I used the Statue of Liberty.  I included the link to her Wikipedia page in the hopes that students would explore the statue, the sculptor, our former relationship with France, etc.

I'm not sure that writing a textbook is for everyone, but I am going to recommend it to anyone who is struggling to teach a specific concept well or wants a good way to model their own curiosity of their students.  You might not want to go as far as writing an entire book.  Perhaps you want to write one concept that you need help with.  Perhaps, you want to write one chapter because the book you are using doesn't handle that as well as you would like.  Writing for your own learning is helpful in a way I don't think I could acheive any other way.

Elements of Successful Innovation - Part 5 - Communication

I almost made this my shortest post ever by saying, "Communication is everything" and being done with it.  I thought you might feel that was clickbait, so I will expand on that.  Communication always matters, but it matters all the more when you are doing something unusual, i.e. innovating.

Communication with Students
If you are doing something new, it is obviously something students have never done before.  You can't expect them to read your mind.  If you want them to present their findings in a specific format, you should tell them.  If you want them to choose the best way to present their findings, tell them that too.  I made this mistake last year.  My physics class was working on their challenge-based learning project on electricity.  These are juniors and seniors, and I want them to make decisions about the best ways to pursue it.  I thought I had communicated this to the students, but the day of the forum, a student came to me in a panic because every other group had made a poster to go with their presentation.  She was worried that she would be graded down when obviously "we were supposed to make a poster."  They weren't supposed to; that was just the choice made by the other groups.  Next year, I will make sure to emphasize the degree of choice they have in this area.  They aren't used to it yet, and it scares them a little.  Most new things scare most of us a little.

Communication with Parents
The more e-mails you send, the fewer you get.  This may be the most important thing I've ever written in this blog.  E-mail (or whatever method of mass communication your school uses) is the greatest tool you have.  Just as students aren't used to things when you innovate, their parents aren't either.  Because we have all been to school, we all think we know what it should be like.  Depending on the grade you teach, most of your kids' parents graduated from school at least a decade ago.  They built dioramas and wrote five paragraph essays.  They did not blog or animate concepts.  When you ask their children to do that, they may not understand why.

It is important to communicate both what their students will be doing and why.  Send them the same set of instructions you give the students.  That will communicate the what and give them the chance to converse with their students whose answer to "what did you do in school today" is usually "nothing."  It is also important that you communicate why you are asking these things of students.  My 8th-grade students blog publically.  Last year, a parent objected to the public nature of the blog.  She had safety concerns, but she also didn't understand why it needed to be public.  "If the point is that he reflects in writing," she said, "why can't it just be turned in to you?"  Let's be fair to her.  She doesn't go to education conferences or attend faculty meeting where "real work for real audiences" is discussed.  She hasn't read the research about why this matters.  She just sees one aspect of "the point" of the assignment.  We compromised by having his blog set to private so that only those people she had approved (his teachers, a few friends) could read it. (I am, after all, not his parent; and she had safety concerns.)  If I had explained the value of public work up front, she could have experienced less stress even though she might have ultimately come to the same conclusion.  In my school, all teachers read the same book over the summer.  We send those book titles out to parents so that if they wish, they can read them as well to get an idea of what the teachers are learning.  If you are innovating based on something you have read, it might be a good idea to include the book title or link to the blog post, research study, or article that explains the value of that innovation.  

When you communicate up front, you get fewer e-mails that begin with "I just don't understand why . . ."  I'm not saying you won't get questions from parents because you always will.  I am saying those questions will come from a place of inquiry rather than doubt in your teaching.

Elements of Successful Innovation - Part 4 - Common, Simple, and Reliable Technology

In recent weeks, I have taken a tweet from Jon Bergman in which he posted a list of elements schools need for successful classroom flipping and modified to apply to any innovation in the classroom.  In this post, I combine three of them because they are all about your school's technology.

There was a time when you could innovate without reliance on technology, but I'm not sure that is possible anymore.  Even if the project or program you want to start in your classroom or school isn't specifically about tech, your students will be using tech to do it.  The biology and anatomy teacher next door to me had to interesting projects last year that we not, on their face, tech projects.  In his 9th-grade biology class, students were assigned to grow food plants, with the goal of reaching 1500 calories by the time they were finished.  They had to track water usage, minerals added, temperature changes, etc.  Given that there is nothing more old school than growing food, you might not think technology is an issue here.  It was, however, a huge part of their research, and those who didn't pay proper attention to the credibility of their sources killed their plants by mixing a lot of Epsom salt to their soil.  (They didn't realize it was good for some plants and not others and that there is a limit to how much they should put in.)  His anatomy class plans a crime scene in which all kinds of evidence is collected.  Other students then ask questions of the group members, which play the roles of suspects, witnesses, and detectives.  Again, this doesn't seem techy up front, and it may not have to be, but it is so much easier for students to print photos, edit them to make the scene, print fingerprints, etc.  Realizing that your students bring their knowledge of technology to any experience means your school needs to have good tech for any innovation you plan.

Common Technology - I understand that this is a controversial topic.  Many schools have gone to a bring your own device model because it is less expensive for the school.  I get that, and it is certainly better than not having any technology, but I don't think it is ideal.  First, it increases the likelihood of a socio-economic achievement gap.  Students who can afford to bring in better devices will have an advantage.  Also, the teacher will spend a lot of time trying to figure out what each student has at their disposal.  When GRACE began one-to-one, we had every student carrying a MacBook.  Soon, they will all be carrying something else, but they will all have the same devices with the same programs.  It means that I don't have to troubleshoot every kind of device when a student can't log into something.  I can assign a video, knowing that all students have a movie editing program.  I can provide a challenge, knowing that the students have access to all the same filtering.

Simple Technology - "Simple" doesn't have to mean cheap, but it does have to mean user-friendly.  There is a learning curve when you implement a new tool.  That is to be expected, but if the new tool is so frustrating to use that it causes students to give up, you are using the wrong tool for your situation.  People say, "Photoshop it," like that is an easy thing to do.  It isn't.  Unless you are teaching a digital media class or an art class that has a unit on digital image manipulation, you probably don't need it.  I teach yearbook, and I don't use it because the extent of my need is cropping, brightening, and the occasional color correction.  Your students need access to the tool that best fits their need, not necessarily the most high-end tool.

Reliable Technology - This is the big one.  No matter how good your tech is, it means nothing when it doesn't work.  Some hiccups are to be expected.  We have had a couple of days when Time Warner was having a blackout.  Those times should be rare, and we are blessed to have an administration that is willing to invest in more than having the technology but making it easy for students and teachers.  If you are going to hand out hundreds of computers, you can't be using the same wifi you did when only your teachers were using it.  Invest in a strong signal speed and access points.  Again, if it is so frustrating that your people want to give up, they will just revert back to pencil and paper.  (By the way, on those days when we were having access problems, my kids were stunned to discover that I could still teach with a white board.)

I had a class in college in which our equipment never worked.  Our professor would come into the lab and give us instruction, then go back to his office while we carried it out.  We would get started, only to find out the machine didn't work.  After troubleshooting for improperly connected circuits and other issues this type of equipment could have, we would go to the professor and tell him.  He asked the same troubleshooting questions we did.  When we gave him answers that indicated we had tried everything, he sent us back to the dorm.  One day I looked at the syllabus for that class and saw that troubleshooting equipment was one of the objectives.  We met that objective; but sadly, I think it was the only objective we met.  Not actually getting to experience the experiments in that lab was frustrating.  When you innovate, you owe it to your students to make it a learning experience, not frustrate them with an inability to achieve learning because your technology is confusing, complicated, or unreliable.

Elements of Successful Innovation - Part 3 - Embedded Support and Community

The post from Jon Bergman's Twitter account came across my feed months ago, but when I look at the list, I'm still grateful to work at GRACE where almost all of these things were part of our culture before we adopted the one to one program.  As we talk about other innovations, we are blessed to still have all the things on this list.

Two of the things Bergman finds critical to flipping that are also important for any innovation are Embedded Support and Community.

By Embedded Support, Bergman doesn't just mean a strong IT department - although that is important and will be featured in next week's post.  He means people with knowledge of both technology and its pedagogical use.  The first step on my road to tech was bringing in my own laptop.  While that went well, it was not particularly innovative; I was using slides and video rather than the whiteboard and overhead projector.  It was not a bad first step, but it would obviously not be enough to have stayed there.  The school bought a few SMART boards, and we were given a day's training on HOW to use them. What we were not given was training in how to incorporate them into a lesson.  I think we did a pretty reasonable job of figuring it out, but we could have implemented it far better if we had someone dedicated to learning as much about the pedagogy of the smart board as possible.  For that reason, when I served on the committee that was choosing our one to one devices, I beat the drum of training.  A board member expressed concern that he didn't want the one to one program to be like the SMART boards.  I knew what he meant.  Those are very expensive devices that were not being used to their fullest potential, and I was one of the people using it.  I said frequently on this committee.  Teacher MUST be trained, not only in the use of the device but in how to best use them IN the classroom experience.  If you want us to innovate with them, we can't rely on what we learned about books and expect it to translate.  Without training, you can get a chisel and stone or an iPad.  The innovation level will be about the same.  The school stepped up in a big way.  Not only did our IT people constantly seek out tools and pass along articles, our administrators sent links to ideas and articles.  Our media specialists became technology coaches and even created a program for our improvement.  There were also a few teachers who were more tech savvy than others who were identified as those you could go to with questions.  We even got special training from Apple (who are better at teaching you how to use it in school than Microsoft - Sorry Microsoft, but your trainers don't see the difference between education and business).   Everywhere you looked, there was support.

In addition to that, we were a community learning together.  It's hard to describe the power of that in the first year of a new, widespread innovation.  We shared ideas all the time, at meetings, in e-mails, on our lesson plans, in online discussion boards.  We were in this together, not just as teachers, but with students.  Students gave me some of my best tools, and they suddenly felt comfortable e-mailing teachers.  They had the ability to do it before, but now they experienced a culture shift that made them feel they could (and boy do they - like all the time).  Our school is already strong in community, but it really showed during this time.  That doesn't happen by accident.  It happened because a culture had been cultivated for years and was intentionally strengthened even more during this time.  Our innovations now are not as widespread.  They tend to be within a grade level or department, but that community still exists.  In an earlier post, I mentioned our project brainstorming meetings.  English, science, art, math, history, and foreign language teachers sitting in small groups have a lot of brain power.  We were able to view projects from such a variety of angles that we couldn't help but get results.

You can innovate alone if you don't have these things in your school, but you should at least seek out support and community online.  There are lots of communities out there.  Search education-related hashtags.  Find teachers to follow on Twitter.  It is better to have it in your building, but if you don't have it in person, have it online.  It makes a difference.  Next week, I'll address technology specifically, but innovation isn't just about technology.  It's about doing something different, whether that uses technology or not.

Elements of Successful Innovation - Part 2 - Time and Focus

This is the second post in a series of thoughts on the elements required to innovate in the classroom.  Last week's post was on the importance of leadership and acknowledgment.  This week, we look at the next features of Jon Bergman's list - Time and Focus.

Time - Everyone wants to innovate.  It is in our nature as human beings.  We don't want to repeat the same things over and over, whether or not they work, as the world changes around us.  We want to take advantage of new research and technology.  The reason we often do not is that doing what we have always done doesn't take any time, and doing something new does.  We have discussed various innovative ideas in our school many times.  We made progress as individuals, but doing it on a large scale takes a lot of committed time, particularly if you want to implement things in a cross-curricular fashion.  It requires discussion with other teachers, writing instructions, constructing rubrics, and figuring out how to answer questions from students and parents, etc.  One of the things we found helpful this year was a series of brainstorming meetings.  A teacher would present a project that needed help or an idea for something new and allowed other teachers across different disciplines to give their input.  For some, it led to joint work between teachers.  For others, it just brought a set of fresh ideas for how to improve.  I enjoyed being part of these meetings both for my own work and as the input person for others.  The side benefit is that you have a better idea of what is happening in your school as a whole and can talk to your students about the things happening in other classes.

Focus - In Bergman's original post, he describes a school-wide focus this way. "The change is a focus of the school, and the school does not have many (if any) competing programs."  I would say this depends on the size of your innovation.  If it is for one unit or only affects a few classrooms or one department, you can have several innovations at once.  If you are doing something big, like implementing a one to one program or trying to create a flipping culture, you should focus on it for at least one year before adding anything else.  No one wants to be a mile wide and an inch deep.  To keep that from happening, there must be time to focus on the best ways to incorporate the innovative idea without competition from other tools.

Next time - Embedded Support and Community

 

Elements of Successful Innovation 1 - Leadership and Acknowledgement

This is the first post in a series on the successful implementation of any classroom innovation.  It is based on the list of elements needed for successful flipping (tweeted by Jon Bergman) that I referenced in my last post.  While the list was posted about the flipped classroom experience, it occurred to me that it reflects the elements needed for any innovation, from flipping to tech integration to project based learning.  Whatever innovation you are trying to implement, apply these needs to it.  I'm combining the first two - Leadership and Acknowledgement - because they fit well together.

If you going to innovate, you must have the support of your school's leadership.  When you try something new, it scares people.  When people get scared, they want you to stop the new thing and go back to what they are comfortable with.  In education, that means nice and safe lectures from a nice and safe textbook.  You will likely end up getting a lot of e-mails and having a lot of parent-teacher conferences.  You are going to need the support of your principal during these times.

The other reason you need a super-supportive administration is that you are going to need cheerleaders to make change happen.  Administrators, avoid the temptation to make this a measured accountability thing.  When GRACE was deciding to have a one-to-one program, there was a brief (thankfully) discussion of how to hold teachers accountable.  It was suggested that we require a certain percentage of time each week be devoted to the use of technology.  I get the desire to hold people accountable and make things measurable, but doing that would have been detrimental to teacher enthusiasm.  When it becomes "part of your job," you meet your minimum requirement only; and you do it without enthusiasm.  Instead, our IT department and administrators decided to be cheerleaders.  They told us what was possible with the innovation, gave us time to share with each other, sent us links and tools that they saw.  Because of this, we jumped in, each at our own starting level and grew.  We were encouraged to think of one big thing each semester, and my goal was to add as many little everyday things (google image diagrams, animations from youtube, collaborating using Google Docs, etc.) as possible every day.  In our faculty meetings, our administration set aside time for us to share our successes and ask questions.

We have been in this for six years now.  While things look different than they did at the beginning, we still take the time to cheer each other on.  This year, each teacher presented a new tool during a faculty meeting and shared how they had used it (or planned to use it) in their own classes.  Every year, we have an EdCamp, where teachers teach each other.  Innovation is exhausting.  It's that good kind of tired that comes from doing something meaningful, but it is exhausting.  A good administrator will recognize that and give you the support you need.  Sharing and acknowledging each other's achievements (and also laughing at your own failures) gives you energy in a great way.  If you want to innovate, but you don't have supportive leadership, make a little team of your own.  It will be harder, but it should not stop you from innovating.

Next time - Time and Focus

Fidget Fads

Fads come and go at a faster pace than they used to.  Social media and youtube have increased the rate of communication about everything, including the latest greatest thing since the pet rock (just in case your generation thinks your fads weren't ridiculous).  Social media and youtube have also given parents and teachers an increased opportunity to fight about the new gadgets, peer pressuring and bullying each other about whether or not the new thing is something their child REALLY needs or the downfall of education as we know it.

Take a deep breath.  Remind yourself that you are a grown up.  Let's have some perspective.

First, fads are not new.  I mentioned pet rocks above, but it goes back farther than that.  For fun, go to this site or this one and have some nostalgia.  We have an astounding lack of memory about the obsessions we had as kids.  That doesn't mean we should mindlessly accept all our students' obsessions, but perhaps it will help you empathize with them.  By definition, they come and go.  Remember rainbow looms and the distraction they were in the classroom?  Now, they aren't there.  Try to remember that.  This year alone, I have seen the rise and fall of bottle flipping, Rubic's cubes, and slime.  Spinners are just the latest one, hardly the worst.

Second, every new fad is a distraction in the classroom.  If a student wants to be distracted, they will be.  We must stop blaming the object as though they wouldn't be distracted if "fill in the blank" didn't exist.  When I was a kid, note passing was a big deal.  Absolutely no one blamed the pencil.  I have watched students read their pencil or stare at their own hands in order to be distracted.  (That student then raised his hand to ask me questions about his fingerprints.)  If you are at your wit's end with spinners, it is because you haven't created parameters for their use.  Tell kids they can have them the first five minutes or the last five minutes.  Tell them they can use them while doing independent work but not while you are lecturing (or vice versa - It really doesn't matter what your boundaries are as long they know you have some and will stick to them).  I say yes until there is a reason to say no, so slime was allowed in my classroom until the day I had to scrape it out of the carpet.  My students learned that the proper use of something yields positive consequences while the improper use of it yields negative ones.  Be the teacher, not the curmudgeon.

Third, every new fad brings an opportunity for engagement and learning.  Personally, I love the spinners.  I teach physics, and there's not much better way to get a kid excited about rotational inertia and the friction-lowering power of ball bearings than these little guys.  They don't make as much noise as the bottles and Rubic's cubes, so I let them experiment with them and ask questions.  I saw a blog post yesterday that bemoaned the fact that if you get one spinning fast enough it will lift off your finger.  I say that was a teachable moment about aerodynamics.  Someone in another article was complaining that her students were trying to spin them on their nose.  There's a teachable moment about the center of gravity and balance that was lost in that classroom.    You may not teach science, but what if you created a writing prompt for English or created a math problem around rotation rate?  The kids are showing us what will engage them, so take advantage of it.

Finally, let's get real about the word "need."  I have read a thousand social media comments from parents who claim their child needs one of these.  You can't need something that was invented yesterday.  As human beings, our physical needs are nutrients, water, oxygen, and the ability to expel waste.  Recent brain research is showing what teachers have known for decades.  Some kids benefit from movement and sensory input during their learning.  Teachers have kept things in their rooms for students to use for as long as I can remember because it helps.  That's not the same thing as a need.  Again, I say take a breath.  Your child will not have their graduation delayed if their teacher makes them put away their spinner for half an hour so that she can concentrate while she is teaching.

Everybody say it with me, "I'm a grown-up."  Now, go be one.

Photography Geek Out

I have been taking pictures since I was a child and started really caring about it around the age of 13.  At that time, I was using a compact film camera, so it was really just about composition.

At 15, my parents bought me a Minolta SLR, and I became an addict.  My dad and I would take 8 or 9 rolls of film each during a 5-day vacation.  We had no idea, of course,  what kind of pictures we had until we took them to the drug store to have them developed.  All of this added up to serious money, and we would often end up with two or three pictures that we liked enough to enlarge and frame.

When digital photography began, I was a little resistant to it.  Strike that; I was a lot resistant to it.  Strike that, I said I would never use a digital camera.  Early digital cameras were TERRIBLE.  You would have been better of taking a writing class so that you could vividly describe what you were looking at than taking a digital photo of it.  They were 2.1 Megapixels.   Even when I started teaching yearbook (12 years ago), I had a tiny 4 Megapixel camera that was more or less useless for volleyball and basketball.  It was difficult at dances, and it couldn't zoom in at a soccer field worth anything.  I found that I was still frequently using film and then having it developed onto a CD in order to use as a digital file.

My first yearbook camera ($110 in 2005)

Digital photography has come a long way since those days.  I now have a Nikon D3100 DSLR, a wonderful camera with 14.2 Megapixels.  While this isn't the highest end camera I could own (I will never be able to afford or justify a Hasselblad for instance, and the 24-megapixel cameras that are currently available are outside of my price range), it has almost seven times more pixels than that first camera!  Please also note that I am not a victim of the megapixel myth. I do know that a megapixel count isn't the only thing that affects photo quality; I use this simply to illustrate how far the technology has advanced in this short time.

The most important feature of a DSLR is the lens quality.  It is actually better to invest in a good lens on a lower megapixel body than the other way around.  The lens determines the stability of your image, the coherence of refractions, and the amount of light gathered.  This is why I always recommend either Canon or Nikon when people ask about cameras to buy.  Neither of those companies will put their name on bad glass, and the glass is important.

This leads me to my most geeky post.  During Christmas break, I bought a new lens specifically with light gathering in mind.   It is not about the zoom as it goes from 50mm to 150mm, but it has an f-stop of f/2.8!  My lowest f-stop prior to this lens was f/3.5.  If you are not a photo geek, that probably means nothing to you, but it is a big deal.  The lower that number is, the more light the lens can take in.  This means I can shoot at a swim meet without annoying officials with a flash (I'll get to test that out next week).  Today, I'll take it into our school gym and take pictures that I won't have to edit for exposure.  This is exciting for me.  I bought it used at Peace Camera in Raleigh, which made it significantly less expensive than buying it new from Nikon.  I'll post more after I've had time to play with it.  So far, I've only used it for pictures of my cat.

I may have to do some weight lifting to strengthen my hands
and wrist because glass weighs a lot!

Accreditation Celebration

For the past two years, we have been preparing for the renewal of our school's accreditation.  For the past two days, we have been visited by the accreditation review team.  This is a great, scary, tiring, exhiliarating, interesting, and unsettling process.  Anyone who gets inspected on their job understands how weird it is to have someone you don't know come in and watch you do your job.

Here's a ridiculously brief summary of how it works.  We start by dividing into committees involving teachers across multiple levels of the school, parents, a student representative, and often an administrator.  Each committee is assigned some aspect of the school to examine.  My committee examined the teaching and learning aspects of the school.  Others involved resource allocation, leadership, etc.  We rated ourselves on various criteria related to that aspect of the school.  We examined everything from whether we think we do it well to whether we think we do it from a distinctly Christian perspective. We gathered evidence to support our opinons (in my case, student work), and we write a report.  Those reports are then compiled into one large report and sent to the external review team.

The team read our report and examined our evidence for about a month before they showed up on our campus.  They wrote questions of things they might like more detail on or would like to see verified.  They toured our campuses, met our leadership, and began their discussions with each other.  Then, they spent most of a day and a half observing our classrooms.  Between them, these six people sat in on 50 lessons.  That's an impressive cross section of our school.  They rated on us the learning environment we provide for our students.

Yesterday afternoon, they delivered their findings (our report card if you want it in school terms) to the administration in detail and then the summary to our entire faculty and staff.  As he began his presentation, I was interested in one thing, the slide with the ratings.  All the other information is helpful and useful, but I wanted to see the brass tacks numbers.  For seven different fields, we were given a rating between one and four during every observation.  Those ratings were then averaged together, and our LOWEST average rating was 3.54!  I believe in what we are doing, but that was an incredible validation of what we knew.  Yes, there were things to improve on, but those were things we had already identified ourselves as needs and are in progress.

I spoke to one of our administrators, who said that our technology program was praised in particular.  He told them that they see a lot of computers and many one-to-one programs, but they didn't see people using it as well as we did.  I would like to point out that this is due to the tireless effforts of several people.  Sean and Diane, you may not be with us any more, but you got us started on the right foot, noticed our plateau / regression year, and took action to move us forward.  Laura, Tomeka, Daniel, and Carol, you have continued to coach us and encourage us to use the technology, not just in new ways but in more meaningful ways.  Dana and Anthony, you tirelessly put out fires and prevent them.  None of this would happen without your continued efforts to make it all work.  Thank you to all of you because we know you work hard to make our work easier.

The other statement made yesterday that stuck with me was that they felt our Biblical worldview integration was natural and unforced.  They even said students had commented on that.  It stuck with me because I came from public school and really had to learn to do it.  For years, I felt that I was perhaps forcing it, and I appreciate that people have taken the time to really help us INTEGRATE, not add, biblical teaching into our curriculum.

We will see the details of this report in days to come and begin work on the areas of suggested improvement; but for right now, we all get to take a deep breath and thank God for the incredible community in which he has placed us.

Boldly Go

It was fifty years ago today that Kirk, Spoke, Uhura, Scotty, and Bones took off on their five-year mission.  Although the show itself lasted only three years, its impact has been felt for fifty.  As a lifelong geek, I'm proud to tell my students I am a fan of Star Trek (even when they insist Star Wars is better as though I am only allowed to like one of them).

Awards shows don't reward science fiction, so the Star Trek franchise has never gotten the critical acclaim it has rightfully earned.  Awards are not, however, the sole measure of successful television.  Star Trek has inspired our culture in more ways than most people realize.  This short list is just what I have thought of.

Science Education - I know more than one person who went into a scientific career because they loved Spock or into engineering because they were inspired by what Scotty was able to do with a warp engine.  They were under no illusion that these things actually exist, but they were inspired by the scientific possibilities.  There is, by the way, a fantastic book out there all about the scientific concepts used in the show.  It is called The Physics of Star Trek.  If you go to GRACE, it is in our library.  There are certainly some things that the show stretched because it is fiction, but there are also a lot of ways in which they were visionaries ahead of their time.


Technology - Speaking of being ahead of their time, take a look at some of the technologies envisioned by the creators of any of the Star Trek movies or shows.  Just in the collection of pictures below, you should recognize the precursors to Palm Pilots, Bluetooth, Google Glass, Skype, Cell Phones, and iPads.  I'm not saying that these wouldn't have been invented without Star Trek, but every invention starts with an idea, a dream of something in the future.  That's what the writers of Star Trek gave inventors.

A Vision of Racial Harmony - When Whoopie Goldberg was cast in Star Trek: The Next Generation, there were quite a few people scratching their heads about why a movie star of her status (which was quite big at the time - Remember Ghost?) would want to be cast in episodic television.  Even Gene Roddenberry didn't think she was serious when she requested a role.  She was asked about it in an interview for the DVD box set, and she said two things that stuck with me.  "First," she said, when you get to be a movie star, you get take the parts you want."  True, but why did she want it?  She said that when she was growing up, she didn't see African American portrayed in roles of authority.  However, in 1966, she watched Lieutenant Uhura command respect and hold her own as a bridge officer.  I've seen interviews with Ronald McNair and Mae Jemison, black astronauts in the 80's and 90's, in which they said the same thing.  They believed that careers in space could be within their reach because of Star Trek.

A Vision of Gender Equality - Lieutenant Uhura also inspired women of other races.  She was on that bridge with men and was a trusted advisor to Captain Kirk.  By the time of The Next Generation, the doctors were women.  There were female captains, and in the episode "The First Duty," the head of Starfleet Academy is a woman.  Captain Janeway commands the respect of her people on Star Trek: Voyager, when they actually benefitted from having a more motherly leader in their captain.

Gene Roddenberry's view of the future may not match our reality, but it does give us something to think about and some things to aspire to.  Thanks for the last fifty years, Gene.

 

More Than Devices

In last week's post, I ended with a shout out to Laura Warmke for helping me work through some new ideas to replace an old project.  This week, I thought I would share about Laura and her role in our school because it might be unique.  At the very least, it is rare; and it should not be.  Laura has made us better teachers, and I'm not sure I can give a higher compliment than that.

Let me start with a bit of history.  When I started at GRACE fourteen years ago, teachers were calculating grades with a calculator and a pencil.  I created a spreadsheet, and I think my colleagues viewed it as sorcery.  During the years that followed, our school slowly grew in technology by allowing students to bring their own devices and encouraging teachers to learn new things.  As new teachers were hired, they brought new skills and ideas.  The whole time, we were encouraged by our IT Director, Diane Scro.  She supported, taught, trained, and cheered us on in our efforts to come forward.  She even convinced our head of school to start implementing Smart Boards in our classrooms.  Big SHOUT OUT to Diane for pulling us forward.  Diane was joined seven years ago by Sean Blesh, and that team was the force behind our one to one program.  Together, they held teachers hands as we learned Mac and began to implement technology based lessons into our plans.  They both understood that they were dealing with teachers across the spectrum of skills and fear when it came to technology and were able to move everyone forward.  Big SHOUT OUT to both Sean and Diane for the way they led us during this time.  They couldn't have been better resources.

Five years ago, our librarian moved to Tennessee.  That's when we hired Laura.  If you are over thirty, you probably think of librarians as older women who tell you to be quiet, lest you disturb the books.  That is wrong.  They are now media specialists.  That's not just a PC term like "administrative assistant."  Media specialists will still lead you to the book you need, but they will also help you find information from credible internet sources, connect you to visual media, make sure you are staying within fair use guidelines, put it in a perspective of research, teach your class to do more than google, and possibly connect you with an expert.  It's not just about books anymore.  Laura is all these things, but she is also someone who cares deeply about teachers and helping them make the best lesson possible.

Two years ago, Laura's husband finished his PhD and got a job in the Midwest.  For some reason, Laura wanted to live with her husband, so she had to move to Indiana or Illinois or whatever too.  I was not okay with this; but as He often does, God made it work even better than we knew.  We now have a wonderful new media specialist, Daniel O'Brien (Big SHOUT OUT to Daniel for implementing Maker Spaces and our 3-D printer), but we also didn't lose Laura.  She became a telecommuting technology coach.

Let me say that in different words.  We have a faculty member who lives over a thousand miles away!  She provides all the support and love she always did, but she does it using Google Hangout (while staying home with her babies).  Every quarter, I have at least one meeting with her just for the purpose of talking through new ways to integrate technology and create more depth in our lessons, especially challenge based learning projects.  She is also available by e-mail, and we share some google docs for things that require more extended collaboration.  She physically comes in for teacher week at the beginning and end of the year and for the North Carolina Technology in Education Conference; but most of the time, we just see her head.  This happened because GRACE understands the need for teacher training in technology.  No matter what devices a school has, without teacher training they might as well be a chisel and stone.  All schools should have someone like Laura (NOT Laura, she is ours), someone who is looking out for the deeper application of technology rather than just the use of it.  It's the way to make your one to one program more than devices.

Trading in Tradition

One of the funniest things I have learned from teaching at a school long term (14th year at GRACE) is that kids are intolerant of new ideas.  Sound crazy?  Aren't millennials early adopters of technology?  Aren't they seeking novelty?  Aren't they progressive?  The answer to all those questions is, "Yes, unless it is about education."

When students come to visit, they remember everything I did with them.  They ask if I have talked about twinkies yet.  Sadly, the twinkiesproject website no longer exists, or I would have used it forever.  They ask if we have done the egg drop project yet.  They even ask about certain jokes I tell.  They remember everything and will not hear of my changing any of those things.  They are traditions, set in stone.  No one is allowed to say they graduated from GRACE without hearing the story of Max (my first cat) getting stuck in a tree.

This year, there is a big change happening in my classroom, and I am already hearing negative feedback from older siblings of my students.  As of this year, I am dropping "The Atom Project."  For seventeen years, I have assigned each student an element, had them build a Bohr model of the atom of that element, and do research on the history and uses of said element.  This year, I am dropping this project in favor of one in which my students will research various topics related to the nucleus of an atom (radiation cancer treatment, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, fusion, irradiation of foods).  Former students have told me I can't make this change.  I don't know what kind of power they think they have, but they keep telling me that their brother should have to make an atom model.  They can't believe I would not have this project.

Don't get me wrong, this was a good project.  I would not have assigned it for seventeen years if it hadn't been.  However, there are reasons to change a project, even a good project.  I modified it over the years.  The model never really changed, but the presentation of research went from a written essay to a podcast to a newsletter to a website.  These were modifications in presentation, not content. They were reactions to technological changes, not scientific ones.

You may be asking yourself (as my former students ask me), "Why change it?"  There are two reasons.  One is personal - the other pedagogical.

Personal Reason:  I'm tired.  I'm tired of grading this project.  I'm tired of counting beads, cotton balls, puff balls, styrofoam balls, thumb tacks, pennies, and the gazillion other materials used to represent protons, neutrons, and electrons.  In a quick calculation, I estimate that I assigned this model to 945 students.  They have built models from carbon (36 particles) to plutonium (327 particles), I believe that I have counted over 185,000 subatomic particles in my career.  Then there is the paper.  I haven't learned anything new about an element in a long time.  When I am a senile old lady, pushing a shopping cart down the street, people are going to be confused why I keep muttering, "Aluminum is the most abundant element in the earth's crust."  It is because I have read at least 30 papers that started with that sentence.  I'm tired.

Pedagogical Reason:  Personal reasons aside, there are real reasons to change projects.  The old way is at a fairly low thinking level.  It is very concrete and doesn't incorporate 21st Century Learning.  Students do come away with an understanding of the atom and certainly some of the applications of elements they might not have known before, but I don't think they come away with much understanding of why that is relevant to their lives.  It consumes from the internet (which has value), but it does not contribute to the internet.  The new project will still require them to understand the nucleus of the atom because they will have to learn in it in order to explain the technology.   However, they will also have to apply this understanding to busting myths about nuclear activity.  They will get to see the relevance of how knowledge of the atom led to improved cancer treatment, or how their food could be preserved if we allowed it to be irradiated with gamma rays.  These are things that apply to the lives they live in the 21st century.   They will get to decide as a class how they want to present the research (make a website, put videos on a youtube channel, hold a summit).  In this way, they will be contributors, not just consumers.

If you are a former student of mine, you should know that some of the things I did with you are different from the class before you (unless I taught you in 1998).  You want teachers to have new ideas.  You want us to improve.  Teachers who have the same year over and over for their entire career are not teachers you want to have.

PS - Big Shout Out to our technology coach, Laura Warmke, for her encouragement and willingness to brainstorm ideas with me.