Article - Why Ed Tech Is Not Transforming Teaching

Source:
Herold, B., & Smith, C. (2015). Why Ed Tech Is Not Transforming Teaching. Education Week, 34(35), 8-14.

Summary:

Schools have spent billions of dollars on technology to create student-centered, hands on and personalized learning experiences to help student achievement grow. However, that largely isn't happening. More teachers are simply using technology to make their lives easier or to supplement their instruction than are to use technology instead of using it to help students take control of their learning. The ISTE standards are referenced along with a quote from someone at ISTE who explains that teachers can do student-centered learning without technology, and have been for years, but technology isn't going away and they want teachers to use it effectively.

A very student centered lesson utilizing iPads is described and a 24 year veteran teacher explains that she had probably only stood at the front of the room for a total of 3 hours. Yet at this school, there is only about 5% of teachers using the technology at the same level as this veteran teacher.

A study done by Larry Cuban from Stanford came across similar findings in a study of a technology-rich Silicon valley school. He had looked at the same school almost a decade before and found that most teachers were using technology in an innovating way. When he looked at them again ten years later he found that most teachers were again using teacher-centered approaches instead of student centered approaches. In yet another study, researcher Kelly Shapely found that teachers found technology more useful for themselves than for the students.

The next section focuses on barriers towards implementing technology, saying that access to technology is no longer as big a barrier as it once was. Instead, the second order obstacles of teacher lack of understanding, and lack of understanding new instructional practices and how to choose the right tool for their students for the right purpose. Other barriers mentioned are the peer pressure more innovative teachers may feel to teach more traditionally, or less experienced teachers being deterred by experienced teachers who think differently. Another teacher expresses that it takes a lot of time and work to do it wholeheartedly as well.

The final section explains different tips for success with technology integration. They mention that the one approach to professional development that many researchers and experts agree on is the kind that takes place consistently during the work day and addresses the specific challenges classroom teachers face, instead of just focusing on the technology. They also mention using the "early adopters" in schools to teach other teachers instead of bringing vendors to teach and forcing teachers to go. Even with these tips, it ends with saying that for the time being, the innovative teachers creating lessons aligned with the ISTE standards will be the outlier.

Reflection:
There are a few quotes from this paper that stuck with me the most, and the were from the beginning and the end of the paper. The first is "The introduction of computers into schools was supposed to improve academic achievement and alter how teachers taught. Neither has occurred." The second quote being "When all the stars are aligned, you can think about fundamentally changing how you've always done business. But remember, changing how we do education is like trying to move Mount Everest."

While these two quotes have more of a pessimistic view to them, I feel like they are realistic. People are resistant to change, even if there is something that is clearly not working, just because it "has always been done this way" people shy away from change. These are slightly disheartening in a way, but I feel that by using those early adopters, and by being an early adopter myself who sees the value in using technology in innovative ways, I can share my enthusiasm and desire to get others on board to slowly but surely help other teachers be more innovative in their use of technology in the classroom. Even if it takes a long time.

Blended Learning - Breaking Down Barriers

Source:
Horn, M. B., GU, A., & Evans, M. (2015). Knocking Down Barriers. Education Digest, 80(8), 18-25.

Summary:

Three authors from the Clayton Christensen Institute explain how California superintendents from several districts are implementing blended learning. They met and discusses the barriers that came up and solutions to those barriers. There were three categories that the barriers fell into, redesigning teacher roles given contract provisions, purchasing and managing technology and infrastructure, and recognizing online classes as valid for universities in California.

 Redesigning Teacher Roles
-Barrier: Elementary teachers have interdisciplinary credentials vs. specialized subjects
-Workaround: Teach English Language Development

-B: Secondary Level teachers have specialized credentials
-W: Teach together in a large space

-B: Per ADA, students need supervision by certified professionals
-W: Open sight lines - certified teacher who can see students

-B: Class size limits
-W: Average the students per teacher across the grade level

-B: Teacher union contracts
-C: Side-letter agreement restructuring the professional day to allow more flexibility

Technology and Infrastructure
-B: Bids for contracts over $50,000
-W: Borrow request for proposals from other districts and tweak them

-B: California guarantees that students can' pay fees to access ED - BYOD could be violation
-W: Don'r require BYOD - provide devices for those who don't have them

-B: Providing access at home and school to all
-W: Allow BYOD and supplement, look for foundations and grants

Postsecondary Approval
-B: UC and CSU require freshmen to have completed certain courses in high school - approval for online classes has changed and creates a lag
-W: Don't designate whether the class was online or face to face on transcript

There is also a list of 11 suggestions from the superintendents.
1. Use qualified substitutes
2. Train learning coaches
3. Develop a professional development center
4. Create professional development time outside of the school day
5. Encourage teachers to design
6. Rely on early adopters
7. Ensure clear communication channels
8. Don't bring admin into classes early on
9. Build a wall around costs
10. Make some decisions centrally
11. Know what's free

Reflection:
I was unaware that there were multiple districts in California taking on a blended learning approach in their schools. Most of these barriers and suggestions are general enough that they could directly benefit almost any school, while the others that are more specific to California could be tweaked to fit. I'd like to look up more information about these districts in California to see how they implement the blended learning in actuality, after reading about their workarounds to the barriers they've come across. How successful have they found this approach to be? What does the community think about it? This has caused me to think of all kinds of other questions.

Technology (and innovations!) of the Past - The Ditto Machine and Peer Editing

In looking for information about the ditto machine, I came across the article referenced above in the infographic I made. I found this article very interesting and made some comparisons to today.

Source:
Bissland, J. H. (1980). Peer evaluation method promotes sharper writing. Journalism Educator, 34(4), 17-19.

Summary:
James Bissland from Bowling Green State University introduces two tools for teachers to use called the Feedback Profile Project and the Peer Evaluation and Review System (PERS). Both tools take student writing and give them lots of audience feedback in addition to the teacher's comments. In the Feedback Profile Project, experts look at student papers with the help of computers. This became problematic because not all teachers have access to computers and finding experts would take time. PERS is a simpler approach. Students write their papers with spirit duplicators and then the masters are collected. They are stripped of their names and given a code to differentiate between them. They are then duplicated and put into packets and given to each student. The order of the stories is varied in each packet, but they all include an evaluation tool.

When it comes time to review the packets, students are told to first rank them in order. The next step is continue looking through the materials and then to explain why they gave the score they did. They would then be graded on their story, get a grade based on their paper's rankings, and finally a grade of their comments on other papers. The work now shifts to the teacher tallying and totaling to get point totals and a ranking system.  Finally, students are given all of the different pieces which provide for a great learning opportunity for students at all levels and discussions amongst themselves. The instructor of this class found that using PERS allows for great amounts of qualitative feedback peer feedback, it reflects the gate keeping decision process, it gives plenty of time for the writers and critics to have face to face discussions, the feedback is based on familiarity with the audience, the judges are guaranteed, the competition increases interest, and having students critically analyze and assess other students' successes and failures helps to compare to their own writing.

Reflection:
I had a smile on my face while reading through this because you can see how much thought and process went into the PERS process and how beneficial and potentially groundbreaking it was at the time. There was a need for qualitative feedback and they had found a solution, largely in part to using an everyday tool (the duplicator) to make the learning happening in the classroom able to reach heights that were not possible before. With having Google Docs now, it is so much faster for students to share their papers and get feedback from numerous people. They can even leave the feedback inside of the document instead of needing to print off copies. It really makes me think about what articles we might look back on more than 30 years for now about an innovative technology integration example that has long since been replaced with something faster, better, etc.