An Internet PSA from 1995

If you haven't see this yet, then you will probably have the same reaction I did...this has got to be staged.  These kids either had one of the most visionary teachers (secret career of Steve Jobs?) of all time, or they were routinely practicing black magic.  As far as I can tell from my research, it is legit.  I remember that in 1995 I was using Prodigy to get online, and I was constantly checking the little box that said, "Do Not Load Images," so that I could get my pages loaded in under five minutes.

You Don't Know Jack About Learning (and Neither Do I)

I am constantly amazed by how little we understand the learning process.  If you put 20 well-educated people in a room, they will most likely not be able to agree on how learning happens.  Sure, they know it when they see it, and we can tell you how Miss Sally McSmarty learns, but what about everyone else?  Is it any wonder we have so much difficulty making learning "happen" with children with a wide range of emotional issues when it can't be defined? 

Have you ever tried to "teach" someone how to breath?  Of course not.  We are born with an intuitive knowledge of how this process works.  It is something that we all do hundreds of times per day, but it is invisible and automatic.  In fact, thinking too much about your breathing process can cause you to become light-headed and panicky. 

As newborns, we immediately began learning faces, sounds, smells, touch, and eventually language.  Did anyone ever try to educate a newborn on who their mommy and daddy is?  Of course not.  Just put a three-month-old in the arms of a total stranger and see how well they have learned whom their parents are. 

Learning and breathing are automatic processes.  You can't help but be learning all the time.  It is a state of being.  The difficulties occur when we attempt to teach it and break it down for others.  They can become "lightheaded and panicky."  

What would you do in real life if someone walked up to you and began lecturing you on a topic against your will?  You would surely walk away, or find some excuse to leave the premises.  If you were too polite to slip away, you would almost certainly fall into a pattern of nodding and vocal cues - taking in absolutely nothing that they said.

Imagine the same situation, but replaced with you approaching the person and asking, "Could you tell me more about...?"  You would almost certainly be much more naturally present and receptive to the information.

Through our efforts as educators to teach, beat, and conquer learning, we have done much to short-circuit the instincts of our kids.  We have taken the natural God-given curiosity they had fresh out of the box, and taught them that learning is something that happens TO YOU from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. with a textbook and a worksheet.  Nights and weekend?  Nah!  Do your homework (of course), but then just find out what is happening with all of your friends, go online to figure out how to get past those levels in a new video game, and watch YouTube videos on natural disasters...you know..."not" learning.

At what point did we decide that transferring information from a lecture or book to a piece of paper was learning?  I want to see the research that says this is a best practice.  Yet, asking our students to spend hours perfecting this process is common in many school buildings.  Basically, we are training kids to operate as copy machines, except for when we are writing research papers - then it is called plagiarism.

Lest you think I am the all-knowing sage lecturing you from my pulpit on a topic against your will (you clicked on the link, remember?), I want to admit that I am the guiltiest of guilty.  Oh yes, I have been a packet-of-worksheets-stand-and-deliver kind-of-teacher for many years.  The reason I went into teaching was so people would have to listen to me go on and on without being able to complain.  

The problem is that now I know this strategy doesn't work as well.  Sure, I could keep at it with my students (adult learners), but why would I want to...

Flying a Kite & Other Ways to Injure Your Children: School Edition

It was the first day of school today, and I offered to get the kids ready for school so that my wife could get into her classroom and prepare for students.  I thought this was quite noble of me, and well within my talent set.  When the kids were dressed, brushed, and groomed, and ready to eat breakfast at 7:30, I still had a few strands of my vocal chords in place.  Success!

I had prepared myself to NOT enter any classrooms for my oldest two children, but I assumed there would be a moment or acknowledgement from them.  When I pictured my wife doing this the past four years, I had images of hugs, tears, and tender embraces.

This morning my oldest two sons shunned eye contact and sort of skulked off while my back was turned.  There were no tears or hugs.  The closest I came to a hug may have been when my middle son brushed against my leg in his rush to escape and may or may not have attempted to deposit a booger on my shorts.  I express doubt (not because he isn't fully capable of this maneuver) but because he wasn't successful.

My youngest had a non-traditional first day, which required me to bring him back a few hours later.  He played contently while I Skyped and worked furiously to make plans for some eLearning Admin Academy sessions.  As the time approached for his day to begin, he began yelling...no...BELLOWING at me to basically get my butt moving.  I would have been touched by his enthusiasm if I weren't suddenly concerned that I was being bullied by a three-year-old.

He kicked and cheered the entire ride to school.  When we arrived in the parking lot, I unbuckled him, helped him onto the ground, and swiftly closed the door.  At some point in this sequence he did not follow the plan and must have turned back towards the car.  I know this (not because I witnessed the retreat), but because my brain was seared with the image and sound of the car door thunking off of his head.  Thankfully, it was more of a glance not resulting in a goose egg, but it did result in a hug, tears, and an embrace (and he was upset too).

When we approached his classroom door, I saw the mess of parents coddling and coaxing their teary children.  There were choruses of, "It'll be okay," and verses of, "I'll be back before you know it."  As I stood taking in the moment, my youngest promptly walked through the classroom door.  I sprinted after him, but was stopped at the door by the teacher.

"Sorry, the parents are staying outside the room today," I was informed.

"No problem, I just want to wave goodbye to my son because I think he thought I was following behind me, and I don't want him to think I just left him," I replied.

We both stood in the doorway and watched as he hung up his lunchbox, spun in a circle, and walked straight past the door without looking my way.  The teacher looked at me with a pitiful face.

"I think he's okay."

I turned back to the mob of writhing children, and did my best to wade through the slippery tears and snot puddling all over the floor.

A mother nearby said, "I think we make a bigger deal about this than they do."

"You have no idea," I replied.

I walked to my car thinking about how proud I am that my kids are confident and independent.  It did occur to me that it would be nice to get some neediness at some point, but then again, I was the dad who hit his kids in the head with car doors...

Let's just call it even.

Back to the Future...

It is an interesting turn of events that has kept me from posting here the past few months.  Will Richardson pegged me correctly at a regional conference in Evansville, IN when he said, "You have a blog, but you don't write regularly, and you feel guilty about it."  Guilt as charged, Will.

I haven't made this blog a place to discuss personal matters, and yet personal matters have come to affect my focus and content.  In this past three months I have moved from a position as a middle school administrator at Scottsburg Middle School to the Director of eLearning at Five-Star Technology Solutions, which is a technology integration and management company in southern Indiana.  In addition, I am the Strategic Partner to the Indiana Department of Education's Office of eLearning.  Yes, my world has turned upside down, but in a good way.

Yet, as I sit here the evening before school begins again for my own children and former students, I feel quite a tug.  This will be the first August in many many years where I haven't followed suit with millions of kids and started my first day of school for the 30th time.  This year I am missing the new clothes, new shoes, new backpack, stress pimples, and terse Hellos and How was your summer...s.  I am missing them and also missing them.  It is the greatest and worst time of year, and it is thrilling and devastating to watch it as a spectator.

My efforts to live vicariously through my own children were dashed when they told me I would NOT be walking them into their classrooms on the first day of school.  If this is the attitude at six, then I fear for 13.  My last hope is to live through my wife's wonderful descriptions of new students, sore feet, and heavy eyelids at the end of the first student day.

If you are an educator, then as a spectator I cheer you on, and might even try to follow you to your desk with my enthusiasm.  Just politely close the door before I make it into the room.  I get it.  My six year old has already put me in my place.

I share this not to downplay my new role and efforts.  They are grandiose in scope, and I have the opportunity to shape the educational system in Indiana through my work with my company and the IDOE.  There are initiatives I am working on this year that I couldn't be prouder of or more excited by.

Yet, I won't open one jammed locker, or comfort one sniveling 6th grader, and for that (this evening at least) I mourn.

Curating Digital Content: Free Resources

I am leading a roundtable discussion tomorrow (5/04/12) at the Tech & Learning Forum in Chicago. Below are the resources I plan to share with the group. Looking forward to some great conversation and learning! Please share your favorite site for curating digital content in the comments.

• Google Docs - online document collaboration

• My Big Campus - safe, collaborative learning environment
• Bundles
• Edgar Allan Poe

• Edmodo - digital learning environment

• Moodle - digital learning environment, requires hosting onsite

• Google Sites - create a class website

• PBWorks - wiki environment

• iBooks Author - a Mac App which can be used to create interactive textbooks for iPads

• Livebinders - create a class using websites, pictures, and your text
• Edgar Allan Poe

• Bundlenut - quick and easy way to create, curate, and share a list of links

• CK-12 - free configurable and interactive textbooks, can be exported as pdf or ePub

• Blogger - create a blog for class content

• Diigo - collect, curate, share, and bookmark sites

• Delicious - collect, curate, share, and bookmark sites

iPads in Education

While I believe that Apple may have missed the boat with the iTextbook, this still provides an awesome step towards a 21st Century curriculum.  This video is a must-view for anyone wanting to see how iPads could be integrated into the classroom.

Khan Academy: Free Virtual Education

(This is a blog I wrote for the Indiana Department of Education's 29 Day Blog Challenge as part of Digital Learning Day.)

If you are a math teacher looking for a way to supplement your instruction, differentiate your curriculum, "flip" your classroom, or move to a digital curriculum and you haven't heard of Khan Academy, then just what have you been doing this past year?  This TED Talk from 2011 featuring Salman Khan is required viewing for those who have been living under a rock.

Khan Academy is the creation of Salman Khan, who wanted to find a better way to help his cousins with their math homework. What started off as a video on Youtube has expanded to 2,800 videos covering topics such as math, physics, finance, and even history. In addition, there are 300 practice exercises which students can move through at their own pace. Using a Google or Facebook username/password, Khan will keep track of a student's progress and report this information back to their teacher. If your students are under 13, you can apply to get a Google App account for your school.

How much does it cost? Nothing. Zilch. Zero. Khan Academy is a non-profit company with the goal of creating the world's first free virtual school. There are networks of volunteers working to subtitle and translate videos. As of this moment, there are four million students using Khan in 16 different languages.

Check out this informative video from The Gates Notes on how some teachers at the original pilot school in the Los Altos School District in California feel about their Khan Academy experience.

There are at least four different ways I have seen Khan used in classrooms:

Supplementing Current Instruction

There are Khan videos for almost every Common Core Standard. We have teachers who are posting the Khan video for the standard they are covering each day to their website or digital learning environment (My Big Campus). If the student gets home and can't remember how to do that problem, they have a place to go and find the answer.  When I was in school, the best I could hope for was to check the answers for the odds in the back of the book.  Students today can take a teacher home with them.  Posting Khan videos is a great "first step" for teachers just getting started with technology and wanting to experiment with their curriculum. It requires no student login, as the videos are freely available on youtube, archive.org, etc. In addition, there are many other ways to download the videos offline for student consumption so that you can get around internet filtering.

Differentiating Your Curriculum

I know that the word differentiation has almost become a dirty word. It is what we know we need to do to affect student learning, but the one thing we have the greatest problem actually implementing in a classroom setting. If you have the ability to get your students on devices (1:1 program, laptop carts, iPads, computer lab) even once a week, then you can have each student working at their specific level at the same time. My teachers gets their students logged in, and then monitor their progress on the coach's dashboard. All students start with basic addition, and move quickly depending on their current knowledge-base. After one or two sessions, each student will be covering concepts at their specific level until they show mastery.

Khan defines mastery as seven correct in a row. It does accommodate a miss on question seven, by only asking the student to answer three or four more correctly. Through the coach's panel, teachers can see which students are flying (blue), struggling (orange), or stagnant (red). Students struggling or stagnant can be pulled aside in small groups for remediation on that specific concept while the other students are working on Khan at their own level. Eureka! True differentiation!

The "Khan Way"

After writing the blog, "Khan Academy for Two-year-olds? I Guinea-Pig My Own Kids," I was contacted by a representative from Khan about becoming a Khan school. Working with an original pilot school in the Los Altos School District in California, the Khan team developed a plan for how they would like to have schools use Khan. While I won't go into the specific details, it involved the student spending about 30 minutes a day on Khan (at home or at school) watching videos and taking assessments. Khan became the primary source for the teaching, which freed the teacher to look at more "real-life" applications or projects. While this isn't an option we were interested in at the time, it will be very interesting to look at the data once this pilot has been completed.

Assessment Only

We have teachers who completely ignore the videos and just have their students work through the assessment. It gives teachers and students an amazing amount of data about what they really know and where they need help. This is also an easy option if YouTube videos are blocked in your building and you don't want to have to bother the IT department to get the offline videos working. As a teacher, you can set this up yourself and have complete control. I hear that teachers like control.

Wrath of Khan

I wouldn't be presenting the entire picture if I didn't mention that there are some naysayers and critics when it comes to Salman Khan's Academy.  You can find many blogs like the one at Mathalicious which go beyond basic criticism, and label Khan Academy as "dangerous."  Why the worries?  For starters, Salman Khan doesn't have an education degree.  With the Gates money invested in the non-profit, Khan chose to hire scientists before educators, which ignites the argument of content knowledge vs. instructional skills.  Finally, critics acknowledge Khan is likely to get a lot of use because it is free, but, without a research base to back it up, what cost will this be to our children?

Final Thoughts

Our kids deserve to learn using the "tools of their time."  I have seen our students' eyes light up as they have gotten started on Khan Academy and taken control of their own education.  I have also seen these same eyes look bleary and bored after several days of exercises and videos.  What's my verdict?  Khan Academy is one more great tool to use with our students.  Our kids need variety, and the only definite for instruction in any academic area is that the instructional tools must vary.

All math teachers need to get on Khan Academy at some point.  My teachers have used it as a "gateway instructional tool" in that they now film and post their own math videos.  There is no doubt in my mind that video and education will go hand in hand even more as we move more technology into the classroom and our private lives.  

I spent a large chunk of my day talking with kids about their math grades, and kid after kid told me that they feel "stupid" asking teachers to demonstrate a problem more than once.  Imagine the power of putting that instruction at their fingertips with the ability to scrub back and forth through specific steps or watch the entire sequence over and over again without judgement from a peer.  

Self-empowered learning without peer judgement?  

Where do I sign up?

The Challenge

Visit the Khan Academy website. Considering what you see there and what Jason has shared in this post, how do you think you can use Khan Academy in your classroom? If you're already using Khan Academy, share how you use it.