Just Make a Movie About It (Not really)

There seems to be an exorbitant amount of excitement about the abundance of new presentation formats, apps, and websites that are being made readily available for educators to use in the classroom. Not a week goes by without news of a new, simple, free, online resource in which students and teachers can create movies, photo stories, interactive whiteboard presentations, digital puppet shows, or online posters.

While these digital presentation tools offer a variety of benefits, including increased student engagement, differentiated lesson planning options, multiple forms of assessment, authentic peer-to-peer collaboration and the opportunity for students to access material in a way that better suits particular learning styles, I am not convinced that those outcomes are being realized.

One issue is that many teachers do not have the time, experience or expertise to know how to make quality films or other digital media presentations, outside of the tried and true PowerPoint or Prezi. Consequently, asking teachers to begin implementing digital media into their curriculum as a presentation tool and encouraging students to use the same formats as a way to demonstrate learning would be akin to asking a film director or editor to adapt his or her film into a polished novel, and to do so in a week and a half's time without the help of a professional editor. It is a recipe for confusion, frustration, and some pretty painful presentations.

A second issue is that often times teachers seem to be unclear as to the purpose of assigning a multimedia presentation other than they have been encouraged to begin using technology in their practice because it is highly engaging for students. Their approach lacks purpose and therefore fosters an ineffective learning environment and misguided student products.

Creating media within an educational setting is much like consuming media in an educational setting. When showing a film to a class, teachers can either simply show the film, or guide students through the film with a series of well planned activities and a clearly communicated, purposeful set of desired learning outcomes. In the former scenario, students may or may not gain any knowledge, benefit or insight from the experience, while in the latter situation students enter the experience with a clearly defined purpose and are thus much more likely to benefit from the subject matter as it relates to the curriculum to which it is linked.

Having students create digital media requires a similar approach. Too often, teachers use digital media as simply a substitution for a traditional assessment. The thought is "instead of having my students write an essay, I will have them make a film about the topic". Students are not guided through the process in a way that allows them to identify and reflect upon the material they are working with or the learning process in which they are engaged. They are often being asked to simply use a digital format to summarize or prove that they accessed and understood specific information.

In this instance, teachers are allotting a much greater amount of class time, energy, and effort into a project that will produce an equivalent or possibly lower level of leaning than what traditionally occurs with a writing task.

Making an effective film or multimedia presentation takes time, planning, organization, collaboration, and a clear direction. All skills that our students need. With that understanding, if teachers are looking to incorporate complex technology driven projects into their curriculum, they need to allow themselves and their students the necessary time to benefit from all the facets that can be learned from such ambitious endeavors.

Additionally, if the future of academic and professional communication is going to be technology driven, then teachers need to create the expectation of well-planned, quality digital products and provide students with the time and skills necessary to be successful within that framework. Likewise, administrators and school districts need to provide teachers with the technology, training, and time to effectively make the transition to technology driven assessment.

A more deliberate approach to digital presentations will certainly extend the learning curve and the amount of time it takes to fully integrate technology into most teachers' practice, but it is essential to student success that while educators learn to adapt to technology, they also learn to adapt their expectations and standards of acceptable student work.

Thanks for reading. Follow me on Twitter @mrtessier33

Redefining Cheating as "Accessing Knowledge"

A comment on one of my previous posts brought up the notion of cheating in a technology based classroom, which is not a topic I have seen widely discussed in edtech circles, yet certainly needs to be explored. Since the whole edtech concept is still in its infancy, my attempts to personally address that topic have led to a few concrete answers awash in a seemingly unending list of questions.

One fairly simple aspect of cheating, as far as classroom policy is concerned, is plagiarism. Technology does not change its definition, and while technology makes it easier for students to commit, it also makes it simpler for teachers to detect through Google phrase searches or fee based plagiarism detection services such as turnitin.com.

The lines become blurred; however, when considering other forms of what traditionally have been considered cheating. Considering that education is experiencing a paradigm shift regarding planning, instructional strategies, curricular focus, and overall philosophical approaches, it would seem appropriate to seriously reconsider, and possibly redefine the idea of cheating.

Our students now live in a world where virtually every piece of information is literally at their fingertips. Whereas in the past an English teacher might provide students with a list of vocabulary words with the assessment being a quiz at the end of the week, the teacher would expect students to memorize the list and answer the quiz items from memory, without the help of any reference materials. With that being the case, finding the definition by using a smartphone or tablet to access a dictionary website would be considered a form of cheating.

Realistically speaking, that memorization situation would be incredibly unlikely in the modern world for which we are supposed to be preparing our students. A more likely situation would be that students are consuming information (be it written, oral, or through a multimedia format), and they encounter a word that they do not understand. They would then immediately acquire the answer by accessing information on the internet.

Subsequently, if they find the information and can assign relevance to it within their daily lives, then they will remember it for potential future use. If the word seems wholly irrelevant outside of their life's context, then they will dispose of it until they encounter it again in a situation with more personal meaning. This method of processing information is much more consistent with what happens in the life of a professional.

I envision similar situations in other subject areas as well. In a history class, inspiring students with a passion for history and an understanding of how today's world is inextricably linked to the past can ultimately fuel a desire within students to seek that information on their own, which far surpasses rote memorization of facts and figures that are forgotten as quickly as they were learned. In this type of authentic learning environment, students are developing a much deeper understanding of events, creating personal and cultural relevance, and being coached on how to be a learner, instead of simply being scrutinized for possible cheating as they regurgitate seemingly meaningless information.

Similarly, math and science teachers have a significantly greater ability to connect concepts and ideas to the real world through technological means such as computer modelling, virtual field trips, Skype in the classroom, as well as a growing variety of STEM initiatives, grants and collaborative opportunities. Consequently, students accessing online information is done to gain knowledge and understanding in an applicable context as opposed to accessing information for cheating on an isolated assessment.

Essentially, what needs to be instilled in today's youth is the desire to find answers when faced with a challenge. When encountering an idea or concept that is confusing or unknown, the students that have the intrinsic motivation to seek the answers and see the solution through are the ones that will be more likely to experience success in the future. It would be a great disservice to our students (and ironically hypocritical) to prevent them from accessing information that they willingly seek.

From an educator's standpoint, teachers need to embrace the idea that continues to pop up in edtech discussions, that teachers are no longer the experts. While that concept makes many teachers anxious, it can and should be seen as an exciting opportunity. Since we are no longer the "gatekeepers of knowledge", we can shift much of our energy into getting our students excited about learning. In doing so, we can return to an ideal that originally guided many of us into the profession.

Thanks for reading. Follow me on Twitter @mrtessier33

Getting Education Stakeholders on the Same Page

After just returning from a conference organized by the California League of High School on technology and the common core I am a bit conflicted with excitement and motivation from newly learned ideas and applications, mixed with confusion and frustration by the seemingly contradictory messages many educators are receiving.

As you may or may not know, the new common core standards are linked explicitly to technology in relation to how students access and present information. In doing so, the upcoming standards repeatedly task students with analyzing and evaluating information “presented in diverse media and formats, including visually, quantitatively, and orally” in order to “evaluate a speaker’s point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric.”

While these are excellent and absolutely essential skills in today’s world, many teachers are being sabotaged by non-classroom policymakers ranging from school administration, to local superintendents, and school boards. Fortunately, I am not one of those teachers but I read about their struggles daily and this past week spoke with many frustrated peers.

As it is, teachers are undergoing a monumental shift as we:

• struggle to learn, understand, and internalize an entirely new set of standards
• adapt years of proven strategies and unit plans to meet those standards
• understand pedagogical shifts in educational mainstays, such as Bloom’s taxonomy, as they are reinterpreted for a technology driven world
• learn and practice a wide-variety of technology based presentation methods so we can  teach students to “Make strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data to express  information and enhance understanding of presentations”
• develop meaningful ways to assess media-based presentations, so we can provide timely and meaningful feedback to our students
• attempt to understand the ever evolving social media landscape so we can prepare our students’ to be responsible digital citizens leading a safe and productive digital life.

           

Essentially, in addition to teaching our subject matter, we are now also being asked to teach technology, media literacy, and online awareness. Let’s also not forget that the common core standards are requiring teachers of non-English disciplines to teach reading and writing as well as their subject matter and the skills outlined above.

Couple this with the fact that often times outdated and overly-cautious district and school policies are forcing many teachers to teach without technology, and it is easy to understand why many teachers are experiencing feelings of futility and animosity.

According to a 2011 study by the National Center for Education, 78% of teachers in the U.S. are 30 years of age or older. Understanding that most current teachers entered the profession before the invention of the Smartphone, and some before the internet, it is not surprising that there is a great deal of uncertainty, skepticism, and sometimes mild resentment within educators’ circles as they are expected to do a job that did not exist when they began their careers, and are not being provided with the time or the tools to realistically adapt, even if they are excited to do so.

This is not by any means meant to be a rant about the difficulties of being a modern day teacher or to justify the actions and attitudes of recalcitrant educators. Instead, I hope it serves to: help parents understand some of the modern day struggles teachers are currently encountering, assist administrators in understanding the level of support and advocacy teachers might need within their districts, and allow teachers to accept the overwhelming demands being placed on us so all stakeholders can start working together on implementing the educational reforms we all know are necessary. 

When Real Life Clouds Technology's Promises

This school year started out as they all do. Full of excitement, anticipation, and new ideas for the classroom. Additionally, I was starting my position as technology coach for my school, and receiving a class set of iPads and an interactive whiteboard for my classroom. I had previously had iPads for the classroom but they were shared with other staff members. This year I was being given a set exclusively for my classes, and as a result, could customize them with the apps that would allow me to move toward the redefinition stage of my curriculum (based on the SAMR model) in my freshman English and Media Studies classes. 


In addition to my classroom technology, our district moved all student accounts to Google Drive this year so I was excited to shift toward a paperless classroom with the added benefits of more seamless peer to peer, and teacher to student collaboration. Google Drive allows me to provide students timely feedback on their written assignments by providing comments and embedding links into student work that direct them to websites that provide information and sometimes activities that can help them understand the concept with which they are struggling. For instance, I am writing a run-on sentence now which is a common problem for my freshmen as they do not often proofread their papers so I am creating a link within this run-on sentence that will guide them to a website that provides information on what a run-on sentence is and how it can be corrected.  Cool, useful and engaging things are afoot! Right? Well, not just yet.

In order to embark upon this technological journey I needed my students to create accounts on several websites including Twitter, Vocabulary.com and Kidblog.org. Easy enough? Not so fast. My Utopian vision came to a screeching halt when about half of my students had never created an online account before. Consequently, they did not understand the process, nor did they have the the requisite e-mail account necessary to create accounts for most online services. This then created the issue of having to create e-mail accounts that need to be confirmed through a verification code sent via text message to students who did not have cell phones. So much for the "students are the digital natives" theory.

Once the students had e-mail accounts, at the very least, they began creating accounts for the other services I had intended on having them use. When I was confident that the overwhelming majority of my students had created accounts for the various websites, we could now begin our exciting new journey on the technological seas. Right? Not so fast. Let's put it this way: On a Wednesday afternoon, "kitty831" might seem like a perfectly logical password to a fourteen year old girl that was just watching cat videos on YouTube; however, come Monday afternoon when the feel-good feline vibes are no longer present, the password has vacated her consciousness as well. 

At least I had another teachable moment. Monday's lesson soon changed from "understanding complex and compound sentences" to "selecting safe, memorable passwords and how to retrieve them when necessary". In the end, it realistically took over two weeks before my classes were close to being fully functional on the learning websites we would soon be using. Now could I begin creating the dream outlined in the first two paragraphs of this blog? Not quite. To be continued...

Why Students Need to Fail Through Technology

Question: Should students be allowed to use their electronic devices in school and if so to what extent?

Answer: Yes. All day, every day (kind of).

It has been an ongoing debate at schools across the globe since the dawn of portable technology. When I was in high school it was a matter of whether or not students should be allowed to have their Walkmans in school. Obviously, we've come a long way in a fairly short period of time and those periods of time will continue to become increasingly shorter as the speed of technology innovation grows exponentially every year.

With that in mind, we must inevitably embrace our inability to understand, adapt to, and react to, technology at a pace greater than its development. Thus, we must find a way to function and thrive in a perpetual position of uncertainty and unpreparedness. While older generations have a lifetime of context within which to process that idea, our current students have been raised amid this (somewhat) controlled chaos. Therefore, for them it is simply reality.

They do not particularly care if they are sharing ideas, photos, or videos via traditional e-mail, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat, Instagram, Tumblr, Vine, or the next format that will sweep the social media landscape by storm before it meets a quick and unceremonious demise. Today's teens know nothing other than a life of regular OS updates and gadgetry design based on planned obsolescence.

Current students simply care that they are communicating with one another, much like previous generations did by passing notes in class. Therefore it is irrelevant to them whether or not we want them to use their devices. Like teens through the ages, they will find a way to explore the world in which they exist, so they can create meaning and context that is relevant to their personal time and place. Inevitably, their devices are a portal to much of that meaning and context, whether we like it or not.

Consequently, we must accept (begrudgingly or otherwise) that their reality is partially our reality. Current students will soon be navigating a world without pencils, pens, or paper books. Some may never encounter the Dewey decimal system or a Scantron machine. What they will encounter; however, is a world where nearly every piece of information is at their fingertips alongside every imaginable distraction. It is therefore the obligation of today's educators to allow students to be distracted by their devices, simply so we can begin learning how to coach them to tune out those same distractions.

One of the greatest challenges technology has created, for adults and children alike, is the necessity to manage our time along with the distractions that have the potential to consume that time. If we can impart that skill to our students in a safe environment where we control the consequences, we can save many students from making those same mistakes when it could seriously impact their higher education or their livelihood.

My next blog post will go into detail about my experiences, challenges, frustrations and successes in implementing the above concept into high school classrooms.

Technology's Promises and a Teacher's Skepticism

Teachers seem to be an idealistic bunch. At the end of the day, regardless of student successes and failures, administrative and government mandates, pedagogical paradigm shifts, and societal finger-pointing, we keep coming back for more. Many teachers possess a level of expertise in their respective areas of study that would make them ideal for much higher paying jobs in the business sector. Others, including me, have forsaken previous lucrative careers in order to live as an educator. The reasons that teachers decide to enter and continue with this profession are vast, but some commonalities often revealed in conversations with peers include:

• wanting to make a difference in children's lives 
• wanting to provide a positive educational experience that was lacking in one's own childhood
• wanting to influence society in a positive manner
• wanting to affect change from within a misguided system

It is with the latter two reasons that I struggle when it comes to massive, short-sighted integration of technology in the educational process, because that is what I am sensing is happening. Districts are receiving technology funding from various sources and are under pressure to spend it (quickly) or lose it as is often the case in large bureaucratic entities. As a result, massive amounts of technology are being purchased with little thought into how and why we are adopting these tools, or more importantly what are the long-term affects on students and society as a result.

As I write this blog using Google, I am simultaneously excited about the ease of use in sharing my thoughts and ideas in an open collaborative forum and skeptical about the massive collection of data being consolidated into the hands of a few incredibly powerful and globally influential mega-corporations. As my students use district created Google Drive accounts, I am simultaneously enthused by the ability to share, collaborate, and provide timely, meaningful, rich feedback with my students, and concerned that "8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week)".

I am concerned that as an entire society, a vast majority of us are blindly embracing and promoting the tools, networks, and information controlled by a power structure and system that we outwardly distrust and protest. As an aging punk-rocker with rebellious spirit that still burns brightly, I am struggling with teaching my students to embrace a paradigm shifting dichotomy that potentially negates my deeper seeded motivations for becoming a teacher. 

Like any new tool or technology that drastically changes how things are done or perceived, there comes great reward as well as great risk. As I read about all the daily excitement, discovery, and success in articles and edtech blogs I only hope that people are sincerely considering both sides of the equation and treading at least a little bit cautiously.

Misconceptions of the “Digital Native”

I have some serious issues with the idea of our students as “digital natives” and the older generation being labeled “digital immigrants”. As a 40-something year old educator that is also a technology coach, I have been on the forefront of my district in implementing technology into my curriculum. For several years, I have encouraged students to bring their own devices as well as successfully been able to secure devices when necessary to get close to a 1:1 technology ratio. My conclusion after several years of experimentation: Students have little idea what to do with their devices.

I teach high school at a district that is low performing, and socio-economically challenged with a significant population of English Language Learners. In my two classes of freshmen students, less than 7% of them are reading at grade level, with some of them reading at levels below third grade. The reasons for this situation are complex and varied and will probably fill many of my future blog posts. The point, however, is that most of my students do not have the educational foundation, nor the intrinsic motivation to organically learn through technology. They come into class expecting the traditional lectures and pen and paper assignments with which they began their academic career.

Current high school students have grown up during the rapid development of smart phones and tablets. Consequently, most of them remember the days of only texting and calling from their devices. They were not born into the wonders of iOs and modern Google capabilities. They witnessed their evolution just like us “old-folks”. As a result, it seems that texting, using social media, and watching videos online are the skills they have truly developed. So, for this current generation of high schoolers, there is a long way to go for them to catch up to the group of children one generation behind them.

I would argue that many of our current teenagers were born on the wrong side of the technology cusp. If we as educators simply assume our students know what to do with their devices, then we are doing them a great disservice and potentially preventing them from being competitive with the true digital natives that are on the heels of the current teen generation. This group needs a significant amount of coaching and guidance when it comes to using technology for academic or learning purposes. The idea of giving them a device and saying “surprise me” is not quite here yet.