Blog Post # 10 - The Future ………… 21st Century Learning

The new buzz word in education as a result of Common Core is 21^st century learning. So what exactly do we mean by that phrase? Well things are dramatically changing all around us in the world and the arena of education is no exception. The massive big world as we once thought it to be is becoming more and more interconnected.  Our environment is becoming less stable, and technology is continuously altering and transforming our relationship to information. Social media has made us information monsters and the changing global conditions demand that we rethink what we learn , but even more importantly, how and where we learn.

Today’s teachers are preparing students for jobs that have not been invented so we need to teach them much more than reading and math.  The term 21st-century skills is used to refer to certain core competencies such as collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills that needs to be taught to students of today for jobs in the future. The incorporation of technology into our curriculum allows us to teach with more enhanced tools and students can locate access, acquire and even create knowledge much more quickly than students in the past.

Today’s higher education classroom is becoming global and students are being instructed in classrooms that it’s not necessarily within four walls. Students can access class information by accessing the Internet through their cellphones, iPads, tablets or computers. Access to professors can be via text, email, Google hangouts in addition to cellphones. Similarly, student to student collaboration occurs in the same way. The virtual classroom is becoming a way of life.

In a 21^st century classroom students learn through meaningful projects. They can design, plan, carry out, and publicly exhibit a project that can benefit their community. Teachers must create an interest in learning through inquiry based instruction that will promote student engagement and academic success. We must as education take advantage of the digital technologies available and help our students become both digitally literate and digitally adept for the future.

Blog Post # 9 Common Core...... the BIG concerns!

Blog Post # 9 Common Core......  the BIG concerns!

California adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) on August 2, 2010.   Each California LEA (local education agency) was charged with developing its own local plan for CCSS systems implementation. 

There are several concerns associated with Common Core:

1.      Concern about the current general lack of content knowledge in math and English language arts and literacy in grades K–8 in the context of the Common Core State Standards.

2.      Concern with the school’s technological capacity to assess students with the new computer adaptive assessments being developed for 2014–15. Concern about the school’s current capacity to facilitate teaching and learning with technology, as well as assessing students with the next-generation assessments.

3.      Concern about the funding, time for, and availability of high-quality professional development, especially for K–8 English language arts and literacy and K–8 mathematics educators.

4.      Concern about the pedagogical knowledge of K–8 teachers to effectively deliver content at the rigorous level required by the Common Core standards

5.      Concerned about aligning immediate implementation to CCSS instructional shifts.

Solution for concern #1 - Professional Development (PD) and Professional Learning Communities (PLC)

• Teachers need to examine the standards and assess what skills and knowledge they already have and determine what skills and knowledge do they need as a group (PLC) and they need to go through the process of unpacking the standards for better understanding of what they are going to teach (PD)
• Plan together in teams (PLC)
• Plan common formative assessments (PLC)
• Teach the lesson
• Analyze data

Solution  for concern  # 2

• Maximize use of  current computer lab and classroom computers by planning structured computer lab time for each class
• Buy more computers

Solution  for concern # 3 

• Send a key teacher from each grade level to conferences that will  help them acquire the necessary tools to come back and impart that knowledge to the rest of the teachers at the school site
• Train the core group of teachers who will in turn train the rest of teachers (math leads and El leads)
• Incorporate  professional development during staff meeting

Solution for concern # 4

• Professional development
• Collaborate in PLCs
• Create units and pacing guides
• Administrative observations/feedback

Solution for concern # 5

• Create incremental goals for implementation
• Set timelines
• Train staff
• Have a core team create units of study or review published curriculum to adopt
• Have select teacher preview and make suggestions
• Redesign units with corrections or if funds are available adopt a curriculum
• Create  pacing guides and assessments
• Professional development to unveil units district wide by grade levels/review newly adopted curriculum
• Grade levels work as teams collaborating and sharing strategies to teach unit/curriculum
• Implement CCSS in all grade levels
• Have administrators become instructional leaders and monitor implementation. They need to decide what they want to see and articulate that expectation to the staff.
• Continue to provide professional development and support as teachers get familiar with Common Core

Common Core from adoption to implementation

Train teachers

Prioritize the standards

Unpack the standards

Construct units of study

Create assessments

Prepare a pacing guide

Implement units

  

Implementation to sustainability

Integrating technology

Monitoring

Continuous training

Technological capacity is a huge topic that must be addressed as we transition to common core and computer based assessments. The district has to ensure that all schools have the necessary hardware to accommodate the computer based assessments. Teachers must also be trained in the use of technology to facilitate teaching and learning for the assessments.

Blog Post # 8 - Badging

Blog Post 8 Badging

Well we talked about the concept called badging in one of our Google hangouts and it sounded really cool so I thought I’ll investigate how this could be incorporated into my educational community.

So what is a badge or badging?

Dictionary.com defines it as a special or distinctive mark, token, or device worn as a sign of allegiance, membership, authority, and achievement. So a badge is a symbol or indicator of an accomplishment, skill, quality or interest. Many communities of practice such as the Boy and Girl Scouts even our Armed Forces use badges to represent some form of accomplishment and communicate success in many contexts. Badges can be used as motivators or goal setters as well.

Doing further research I discovered the concept of a digital badge. A “digital badge” is an online record of achievements, it tracks the recipient’s communities of interaction that issued the badge and the work completed to get it. For those of us that are involved in social media, we can display badges earned or received on our Facebook and LinkedIn pages. This concept can be utilized in the classroom as well. Digital badges can support learning by motivating students to acquire badges for academic success at all grade levels. It validates and displays success. Badges can represent traditional academic achievement or the acquisition of skills such as collaboration, teamwork, leadership, and other 21st century skills.

Examples of badging:

• K classroom – badge issued to students who have mastered letter and number recognition
• 1^st grade – sight words and math facts
• 2^nd grade – Blending, addition and subtraction
• 3^rd grade – multiplication
• 4^th grade – division
• 5^th grade- fractions

I think badging which recognizes achievement will foster community engagement in the classroom. I see it going hand in hand with competency based learning, as students master a concept they receive a badge.  The visualization of the accomplishment will drastically change how students look at their learning.

It’s a new way of thinking about learning and assessments and as the classroom teacher you set the rules. I can see using badges even for staff and teachers to acknowledge dedication and efficiency. Hey I smiled when I saw I acquired 3 badges in this class already.

Read more about it

http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2012/06/13/03badges.h05.html

Blog Post # 7 - Gaming

Block post # 7

Gaming

What’s the big deal about gaming?

My teenage sons can sit for days in front of a computer playing a video game. I may be aging myself but I see it as a big waste of time, before you yell at me I am just sharing my opinion. So for this blog post I decided to investigate what is gaming and what makes people spend hours upon hours in virtual wonder land.

I was quite stunned to find out that the term gaming originated as a synonym for gambling. Although most electronic games today do not involve gambling in the traditional sense one can assume that pleasure is certainly derived from game playing. In the United States, the average video game player is 30 and has been playing video games for over 12 years. Similar statistics are stated for many countries. Indeed gaming and gamers make up a community of practice where the shared experiences are pleasurable as measured by the enormous amount of time spent playing.

So I interviewed 5 ardent gamers to get the big idea behind gaming.

I started with my two sons who told me gaming gives them an adrenaline rush when they have conquered the bad guys and that it is exhilarating. Another gamer told me, it was cheaper than a date and you have just as much or more fun without spending a dime. Yet another explained that gaming saves him visiting the doctor as it relieves the stress after a long day of work and its a way to escape reality. I asked my sister who is also a gamer and her response, it’s a way to bond with her husband. People have many various reasons for becoming gamers and today gaming is an industry that is worth over 44 billion in sales.

As an educator I can’t help but wonder if a game can be invented to teach math facts and parts of speech that would have students so engaged that it would take them hours to play. What if there was a PAC- man game for fractions or vocabulary words? Would we see student scores go up on state test?

Well I tried a game with my boys and found it to be fun. So next time you are stressed out and want to get away, play a video game you just might enjoy it.