Q&A with Susan Patrick, CEO of iNACOL

Every time I hear or read Susan Patrick’s thoughts on online learning, I’m impressed.  She always presents real-world case studies and/or research to validate her claims/assertions.  I highly recommend this Q&A – she sums up the potential of online learning to transform education and current challenges very well.  It’s worth a review.

“Curriculum Matters” – interesting post

Curriculum Matters’ recent blog post entitled “Two Administrations, Two Approaches to Curriculum?” presents some very interesting observations about the role of curriculum in education reform.  Blog author, Sean Cavanagh, summarizes Grover “Russ” Whitehurst’s, former director of the federal institute of Education Sciences, observations presented in a recent paper on the importance of curriculum in improving schools.

Cavanagh writes:  He argues that the Bush team, in which he served, was very keen on improving curriculum. This occasionally caused problems: the administration was accused of overstepping its legal grounds on curriculum through the federal Reading First program, as Whitehurst notes in his paper. But the administration also delved into the topic in other ways: creating the What Works Clearinghouse to conduct rigorous evaluations of curriculum, and launching a number of other studies of curricula across subjects. (He also could have mentioned Bush’s creation of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, which probed curriculum, as well as other issues, in its study of how to prep the nation’s students for algebra.)

Step Up!

Calling all students who will graduate in 2013 or later (and their teachers and parents)… it’s time to step up!  It’s All About Kids is!  It’s time for students to pledge their commitment to earn the Hawaii State Board of Education’s Step Up Diploma.  The diploma is different from the regular high school diploma.  It includes more challenging coursework in math, science and writing, and it also includes the completion of a senior project.  Of course, the more rigorous diploma comes with some perks – first, students who earn this diploma will be even more prepared to succeed in today’s dynamic economy and, second, there are incentives attached to “stepping up”.  Long-range incentives include money for college (possible greater eligibility for scholarships), admission to Hawaii colleges (the BOE Step Up Diploma with Honors is recognized as eligibility for admission to select Hawaii higher education institutions), and some test exam waivers for job application processes.

It’s All About Kids is proud to join the effort as a Step Up partner.  Step Up is a community-wide campaign of Hawaii P-20 Partnerships for Education.  The campaign promotes career and college readiness for Hawaii’s high school students.  The goal is to have 75 percent of freshmen statewide pledge to earn this diploma.  Students have until January 31, 2010 to step up.  Click here to learn more about the campaign – are you ready to step up?

Intensive Intercession Camps – a solution to limited instructional time

Given the fact that the number of instructional days students will receive this year is down to 163, it seems schools will want to leverage intercession time to run intensive, targeted intervention and remediation programs.  Last spring IAAK partnered with Ka’iulani School to offer a spring intercession H.S.A. Preparation Math Camp to 25 third through fifth grade “tipping point” students (as determined by 2008 H.S.A. scores).  The H.S.A. Math Camp focused on key Numbers and Operations benchmarks utilizing a unique program design that combined individualized computer-based activities with offline collaborative, problem-based learning and games.  Plus, the camp curriculum was aligned to ICLE’s Rigor & Relevance framework, ensuring students progressed through all four quadrants of learning/application.  The result?  Engaged and confident students who demonstrated proficiency on the 2009 H.S.A…. and enriched, inspired teachers!

The data is impressive.  Seventy-two percent of the 4th graders met proficiency and 18 percent exceeded.  In other words, only one 4th grade student did not advance from “approaching” to “met proficiency”.  To learn more about the camp, review this Showcase School report. 

Funded by Title I or ELO sources, the camps are easy to implement.  IAAK staff can implement the entire camp or partner with teachers from your school to run it collaboratively.  With the latter option, teachers receive training from IAAK on the program design, curriculum, and implementation.  Math and Language Arts camps are available for students in grades three through five.  It may just be the innovative solution your school needs to assist with student achievement in these challenging times.

Games, not Grades

Since Daniel Pink recommended this Edutopia video interview with James Paul Gee, professor at Arizona State University, I thought I’d give it a quick review.  It is definitely worth the time – dense with powerful messages.  While most of his messages align with good learning theory (constructivism) and pedagogy, he frames his messages in a 21^st century context, urging the need for educational reform.  Here are my big take-aways:

• We need a major reform in the design of our schools.  Today’s schools are “test prep academies”.  Schooling must focus on helping students learn how to solve problems, collaboratively, so they are able to compete in today’s global economy.  “The group is smarter than the smartest person in the group.”  This aligns with project-based and problem-based learning (not new)… but demands a shift in assessment as well (which leads to his next point about games as assessment)… 
• Games are wonderful models of learning problem-solving skills – essentially, in a game, the player is constantly assessed.  Games do not make the mistake of separating the learning from the assessment.  The use of continuous and immediate feedback helps the player learn as he/she solves a problem.  In this way, knowledge is something that is produced not consumed.
• In games, language is presented “just in time”, allowing the player to immediately apply the language to solve the task at hand.
• Digital tools, including social networking tools, enable youth to easily and quickly join communities centered on their passions.  These “passion communities” are very different than school in that anyone can teach and learn, essentially, roles are fluid.  He mentions that there are very high standards within these communities. 
• Kids seem to understand (better than the baby boomer generation) that media is converging.
• Teachers need to be rewarded for innovation.  The need exists to “re-professionalize” teaching, empowering teachers to build their own curriculum, develop their own practices, etc. – instead of using what the “top” pushes down. 
• We need to make teaching a sexy job.  It isn’t right now because schools are not cool.  Until we design different, innovative educational environments, teaching will not be a “cool” job. 
• Encouragingly, he states that the U.S. does a good job at reform when they are really scared (references the Sputnik period), and we could be at a tipping point.  The new competition schools have coupled with the innovation crisis could lead to a paradigm shift in education.

Are you motivated to join the reform movement?  I am!  It starts within a classroom… so, let’s go for it!

Compass Learning Math Intervention – using RtI

CompassLearning has created a Math Intervention program, aligned to Response to Intervention, for students in grades five and six.  Using the NCTM’s final report on Curriculum Focal Points (released in 2008), CompassLearning created a series of intervention learning paths organized by core concept/skill found in algebra.  All learning paths include embedded progress monitoring to give teachers “real time” data. 

The model is simple yet effective – assign a diagnostic objective-based pre-test to the student.  Based on the student’s score on the pre-test, assign the appropriate tiered learning path.  So, for instance, if the student gets 70% or more of the questions correct, he/she may benefit from the corresponding Tier I Intervention Learning Path.  If the student gets 50-70% of the questions correct, he/she may benefit from the Tier II Intervention Learning Path.  The various learning paths support three tiers of intervention:

1. Tier I – Core students:  those students who, generally at grade level, may need intervention on very focused specific standards.
2. Tier II – Strategic Intervention:  struggling students who have significant gaps, missing groups of skills needed to master concepts and standards.
3. Tier III – Intensive Intervention:  Students with extreme gaps in their learning, who are also failing to make progress is tier II.

The objective-based test can be assigned again upon completion of the learning path to measure mastery.  This model is a great example of educational technology supporting strong pedagogy (RtI) and providing teachers with “real time” data – all to enhance student learning.  If you’d like more information about this Math Intervention solution, call 487-5437.

Case study: Florida Virtual School

The Florida Virtual School (FLVS) has served as a model given its status as the first statewide virtual public school.  Its story is an interesting one – well documented in this recently released case study authored by Katherine Mackey and Michael B. Horn of the InnoSight Institute.  The case study is a quick read (more of a story) about the vision, dedication, and policy that led to the “…development of a disruptive, scalable educational model that has impacted Florida and beyond…”

First, some key facts:

• Growth – the school opened in 1998 with 77 students in six courses.  By 2008, enrollments exceeded 154,000. 
• Vision – the developers created the motto, “Any time, any place, any path, any pace,” to “…reflect its philosophy that learning was an ongoing activity not confined solely to classrooms and class schedules.”
• Funding – the school was conceived with $200,000 grant in 1997.  Then, funding for the school became a line item in Florida’s legislature budget, providing a fixed amount and limiting the number of students served.  In 2003, the Florida Legislature voted to include FLVS in the state funding formula for K–12 education and approved a performance-based program in which the school would only receive per-pupil funds for those students who successfully completed and passed their courses.  “A performance-based funding system made FLVS more accountable in some respects than brick and mortar schools, and it also enabled the school to escape seat-time restrictions and thereby preserve the flexibility that was key to online learning.”

U.H. Study on SES in Hawaii

The Social Science Research Institute of U.H. at Manoa conducted a study (funded by the Hawaii State Department of Education) to evaluate SES programs administered during the 2007-2008 school year.  The report was released in September.  Note:  this is the third year the evaluation has been conducted.  The study addressed three primary questions:

1. Has the provider contributed to increasing student achievement?
2. Are parents/guardians, and other stakeholders satisfied with tutoring services?
3. Are SES providers complying with the terms of their contract and with state and federal rules and regulations?

Here are the facts:

• Eighty-six schools and a total of 5,287 students participated (15% of those eligible) in SES in 2007-2008. However, this represents an increase of 2% over the previous year.
• For the student achievement analysis, the evaluation compared students’ Hawaii State Assessment test scores before (2007) and after SES (2008) tutoring. A total of 1,593 students were included in the reading (654) and math (939) datasets.
• To address the other research questions, customer satisfaction measures (via survey and interviews) were obtained from parents, complex area staff members, and school employees, such as teachers, principals and staff members designated to work on SES.

 

Awesome Promethean IWB Resource

Our C.O.O. found this incredible blog, Technowellies Weblog, that offers helpful and thought-provoking resources on Interactive Whiteboards (in general) as well as specific training supports for Promethean IWBs and ActivExpressions. Check it out!

There is a very interesting presentation on interaction that prompts teachers to think about the way they are using their IWB. “… interactivity has come to stand for interacting with the board itself, not manipulating the concepts the teacher is teaching.” Their analysis of a case study showed that teachers conceived of interactivity in different ways and that impacted the type of pedagogy in the classroom.   The presentation challenges teachers to think of deep, meaningful interaction…

Pop Quiz: Which of the following best describes “interaction”?

1. text + diagram + hyperlink = interactive
2. choices + feedback + challenges = interactive

Key messages:

• Don’t get caught “mistaking IWB for a pedagogy rather than a tool”.
• The teacher makes all the difference. (We knew that!) What’s most important is how the teacher uses the tools available.

Useful Ed Tech Resources

The National Association for State Title I Directors (NASTID) and the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) released two coordinated reports in a resource entitled Leveraging Title I & Title IID: Maximizing the Impact of Technology in Education: A Resource Guide Identifying Technology Tools for Schools.  The purpose of the report is to spark discussion among school leaders, encouraging the coordinated use of funds to implement collaborative and systematic technology integration.  The report highlights case studies, strategies, research, and tips, tying scenarios of use to data results.

The appendix, A Resource Guide Identifying Technology Tools for Schools, is a quick reference guide that highlights the educational value of various technology devices.