21st Century Education

Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World, by Heidi Jacobs was given to me in the spring of 2011 when I accepted the position of Technology Integration Specialist at the K- 6 private school where I had been teaching 6th grade. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it the first time and planned to use its many ideas when writing the five-year technology plan for the school. In July of 2011, my life took a sudden turn when my husband was offered a lucrative job opportunity in Seattle. In less than one month, we found ourselves 3000 miles from home in the 108 year old town of Issaquah, Washington. My children were enrolled in the local schools and my husband was getting used to his 45-minute commute to Seattle. Meanwhile, I focused on completing a master's degree in Instructional Design and Technology.  This spring, I started the job search process focused on 21st century learning, so I decided to re-read Curriculum 21.

 

I plan to use the next few posts to share some of the ideas that I find intriguing and hope that my followers will share their thoughts and how these ideas are evident in their work.

Heidi Jacobs begins her book with a profound question, "What year are you preparing your students for? 1973, 1995?" (2010, p. 1). I feel this question is one that educators, curriculum specialists, and school administrators must ask themselves when planning the direction of their school or district. I was very fortunate to have worked in a private school where the administration fully embraced the commitment to place the needs of the learners as the number one priority and gave us the tools, training, and freedom to achieve this goal.

Our school fed into the best public and private college preparatory middle schools in the city. As 6th grade teachers and our student's last teachers at the school, our team felt it that it was our responsibility to make sure students were fully prepared for the rigors of middle and high school classes. Our students ranged from average to gifted abilities and included those with learning differences. Our team created differentiated classroom environments and strove to use tools that would meet each of our student's needs.  As with all goals there were triumphs and setbacks. I always wanted to find that magic activity that would succeed with all my students, where those who were struggling with a concept would suddenly "get it." Fortunately, most of the time we were successful in finding the best approach for each student, but the times that I felt I wasn't able to stick with me to this day. These are the times that I find myself searching for the magic activity to help the student "get it."

So, how does this relate to 21st century education? Giving students the ability to find the tool they need when they need it is 21st century teaching. What do students need to be successful in their future? What tools do they need to move to the next level of education or to successfully join the workforce? Do I think it is all about technology? No. But I do believe that as technology changes our students need to know how to adapt. How are we to teach them this skill when we don't use technology as a part of our daily lessons? On the other hand, if we are to make sure students are able to use technology as a tool, how do we make sure students also master course content? Curriculum 21 focuses on ways to integrate technology into daily lessons in a way that course content is mastered and students learn to navigate the technology tools that are currently available and how to discover on their own how to use tools that have yet to be invented.

Egypt Immersion...a year later

The Egypt Immersion (a year later)

This event seems so long ago. Since the publishing of the Postmortem of the Egypt Immersion post, I have completed my masters program and moved 3000 miles to the great state of Washington. I was not able to oversee the implementation of this project this year and wonder what the teacher who replaced me did to improve it. I have sent an email and hope to update this post with those results. 

Looking back now on my experience as a teacher at this wonderful school, I realize I was given many opportunities to be creative with my lesson plans.  Projects such as the Egypt immersion allowed me to think beyond my classroom and include all team members in lesson planning. I think the ideas we decided on to improve the immersion were good and hopefully were useful for the new 6th grade team. I still believe conducting a post-mortem as soon as a project is completed is very important. It is easy to forget what has worked and what hasn't if too much time goes by. I thank my team members for being such good sports and supportive of this work intensive unit.

Scope Creep

Scope Creep is defined by Portny, Mantel, Meredith, Shafer, & Sutton (2008) as “The natural tendency of the client, as well as project team members, to try to improve the project's output as project progresses” (p. 350).

When I think of scope creep, I can't help but think of my school's calendar. During the spring, a calendar of events is created for the next school year. These events include school wide functions as well as field trips and grade level events. Every year our Head of School promises to keep the scheduled events to a minimum so that we can focus on teaching. Once the new school year begins additional events creep onto the calendar even though the schedule is supposed to be “set in stone”. This results in teachers grumbling about time taken away from the classroom. Most of the time the additional events come from the parents who, in our case, are our clients. These events range from additional class parties and unscheduled assemblies to school wide fundraising events. Ultimately, it is the school's administration that needs to put a stop to the unplanned additional events.

Portny et al suggest using scope control to minimize the impact of unforeseen additions. “Scope control involves trying to contain changes to project scope when that is possible and managing changes when they must occur. When scope changes are unavoidable, the project manager should identify their impact on the project plan and obtain approval from the customer and sponsor” (p.96). In our case, refusing the majority of requests and then consulting with the effected grade levels when it seems impossible to avoid a request would help reduce the impact of these unscheduled events. Sometimes the added events come from well meaning resource teachers who want to expand their lessons with field trips to museums or scheduling additional concerts at the school. These requests go straight to the office and suddenly we have an email stating the scheduled date and time of an unexpected event. No thought is given to consulting the grade level teachers to ensure it fits in with the curriculum.

Because a teacher's schedule is filled to capacity at the beginning of the school year, I believe more emphasis needs to be placed on making sure the classroom teachers have the time to cover the material expected in the state standards. Enrichment is very important to a child's education, but it has to be balanced with the core curriculum. Ultimately, it is the job of the school administration to make sure that each teacher has the time to cover the material.

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Communicating Effectively Week 3

This week were asked to receive a request for information through email, voicemail and then face to face to determine which form of communication most clearly stated the intent of the message. The message was an informal reminder to submit needed back ground information on a project. The recipient was involved in a long meeting that day which had nothing to do with the communicated request. I found that in this case, communicating the message through voice mail was the best. It allowed me to hear the inflection of the request as well as to replay the message if needed. The email was poorly written and difficult to follow without the inflection that a voice can give to a message. The face to face message was too informal and if given during the break from the long meeting could easily be forgotten. A voicemail message can be checked when the receiver is ready for the message as opposed to over the cube wall in between meetings as was the case in this scenario.

According to Portny et al. (2008) formal requests should always be completed in writing or if in a face to face meeting a follow up email or document should be sent. This scenario was an informal request so a voice message or clearly written email would be best. Stopping someone in the hall or peeking over the cube to deliver the reminder just asks for it to be forgotten. Ultimately, we should always attempt to use the right form of communication for the subject matter and the recipient. Portny et al. (2008) succinctly states “The key to successful project management is effective communication – sharing the right messages with the right people in a timely manner “ (p. 357).

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Project Post-Mortem

The Egypt Immersion Fiasco 

This spring I led a project that culminated in the creation of an ancient Egyptian tomb in my 6^th grade classroom. Though the tomb looked great and the students had a great time, the quality of the learning was questionable. The project is part of our school's global studies program in which students travel virtually with a teacher to another country. The 6^th grade focus country is Egypt which fits within our standard study of ancient civilizations. According to the grant which funded the overseas trips, we are to immerse ourselves in the country of study across all subject areas for two weeks. As the 6th grade World History teacher, I am considered the leader of this project each year for my grade level.

The 6^th grade Egypt Immersion Unit was written six years ago by the teacher who traveled to Egypt and created the Egypt Blog for the school. In this unit each academic subject area is assigned different tasks which culminate in the creation of the tomb. For history, students were asked to research then create models of ancient Egyptian artifacts that might be found in a tomb and to create key historical event timeline entries for the hall-length timeline. In math, students were asked to use their knowledge of negative and positive number sequencing to create a 20 foot timeline on which to place their event entry. They also calculated the surface area of one of the pyramids at Giza to figure out how many gallons of liquid protectant it would take to coat the pyramid. In science, they studied the different chemicals that could be used to protect the pyramids from erosion caused by sandstorms. In language arts, they used the writing process to write and then create a digital story book using pictures from the Egypt Blog for their first grade buddies. They also wrote informational summaries about the artifact they created and included these with their artifacts in the tomb. Finally, students used murals containing pictures of the ancient Egyptian gods, hieroglyphics, and Pharaohs to create a mysterious passageway leading visitors through a display of artifacts to a chamber with King Mizar's mummy.

All seemed to be going well enough until the day of the tomb tours. As I watched my students describe their artifacts and guide students from all grades of the school through the tomb, I realized that the students had no clue what they were talking about. The 6^th grade students were supposed to act as knowledgeable tour guides and archaeologists who had discovered the tomb. Needless to say, the stories I heard that day were at times quite humorous. Students seemed to have no trouble when reading the information about the artifacts to the guests, but when they had to ad-lib, they were clueless.

A week after the infamous tomb tours our team sat down to do a post-mortem of the immersion. Though we did not have a set of post-mortem questions like those described by Greer (2010) to guide us, we were able to come up with a list of changes that should make this project much more successful in the future. Each of us had taken time to review our part of the project before meeting, so we had a lot to talk about. We quickly discovered that the biggest problem was due to the age of the original unit of study. The program was six years old and many changes had occurred over those years. New teachers were in place, several of the textbooks were changed, the student population was different, and technology had advanced.

Another problem stemmed from scheduling issues. The immersion weeks landed in the spring during our study of Ancient China instead of Egypt. We studied Egypt in depth in October, but six months had passed when it came time for the immersion unit and students were left to review the basics on their own. In regards to math, this group of students had a lower math ability than the original group which caused issues with the geometry assignment. As for language arts, the study of narrative writing had already taken place in January rather than late spring, so this project interrupted the poetry unit. Language arts was most effected by the change in technology. The installation of Windows 7 on the school computers caused Photostory to no longer work. We had to scramble to find a different way to complete the digital story. Students ended up combining Audacity and Windows Movie Maker which, due to compatibility issues, kept the students from being able to complete their projects on time. Finally, our wonderful science teacher had to fit the study of erosion and chemistry into the middle of a unit on human biology.

After much discussion, we came up with a plan to redesign the Egypt Immersion Unit content. First we had to determine the most important objective of the Unit. Was it to study geometry, chemistry, writing, or Egyptian history? We decided the objective was to expose our students to another culture through the study of its history. Ultimately, the history department gets priority and choice of timing. We set next year's immersion dates to coincide with our normal study of Ancient Egypt. Next, each subject area teacher was tasked with creating a new project that integrated the study of Egypt with the concepts they would be covering at that time. I was tasked with gathering all the documents and creating the new Egypt Immersion Unit. Finally, we agreed that the ability to be flexible was key to ensuring a successful project.

I have included an Animoto video in this blog post which includes pictures of this year's Egypt Immersion and highlights of our Greek Olympic games that was held in February at the end of our study of Ancient Greece.

Greer, M. (2010). The project management minimalist: Just enough PM to rock your projects! (Laureate custom ed.). Baltimore: Laureate Education, Inc.

San Jose Episcopal Day School. Egypt Blog. http://www.sjeds.com/blog/egypt/

Project Management in Education and Training

Hi Everyone,

I am excited to start the next class in my journey towards earning a Master's Degree in Instructional Design and Technology. I look forward to posting discussion prompt responses here and reading your comments.

Anita

Reflection on Distance Learning

Reflection on Distance Learning

Distance education is an innovative and creative way to distribute learning opportunities to a wide variety of students. Negative perceptions of distance learning is a problem that instructional designers must face when first implementing at-a-distance courses into an environment that has historically used face-to-face instructional techniques. I believe that some of the negative perceptions of online degree programs stem from the lack of positive and effective marketing by well-known universities. In a study Gambescia & Paolucci (2009) concluded, “The findings of our study clearly show that very few institutions are leveraging their existing traditional programs (faculty and curriculum) and standards (quality) when creating and delivering their equivalent online programs, opting to use “convenience” and “flexibility” more frequently to promote their online degree programs to prospective students” (under summary). Well-known universities do have online options, but because they tend to hide the fact, at-a-distance classes are not getting the respect that they could have if these well-known universities touted them as an important part of their program. Ultimately, the negative opinions of virtual schools create an atmosphere where instructional designers must prove that their programs are as, if not more, efficient and effective as traditional learning programs.

Perceptions of distance learning have changed over the past ten years; though, many detractors can still be found in all fields and all levels of our population. I can only imagine that online learning will gain an even stronger place in the market over the next 5- 10 years and then again in the following 10 -20 years. Primary and secondary school parents will be looking for an alternative to traditional education as over crowding and budget cuts affect their child's education. Turning to virtual school programs is one of those alternatives that is cost effective for the parent as well as the school district. Online degree programs will also be in more demand as an alternative to traditional brick and mortar universities. These programs give the student a flexibility of time and location of learning that is not found in face-to-face instruction. Simonson, Smaldino, Albright, & Zvacek (2009) assert “....students are increasingly demanding to be allowed to learn at a distance” (p. 5). As universities become more crowded and funding drops they will also be looking for other options for their students. Participating in the online learning community will enable the universities to meet the needs of more students and include students from all over the world. In the corporate world, the bottom line is return on investment. As technology becomes cheaper and easier to use, online training programs will replace face-to-face programs. With this demand and increase of use, the perception of distance learning can only improve. Siemens (2011) asserted that those who have little experience with distance learning were the ones who had the most negative opinion of distance education.

Instructional designers hold an important role in creating a positive perception of online education. To change the negative opinions, they must create strong programs that adhere to best practices and keep the needs of the learners and the instructional goals as the focus. National education standards must be kept and used as the basis of each course. Instructional designers must also be advocates for the online learning experience. Simonson et al.(2009) state, “Actually, the evidence is quite clear that students of all ages can learn from instruction delivered using technology, and that distance education works” (p. 8). This message must be delivered by instructional designers. They should share their ideas and observations with other educators and be open to new and innovative teaching techniques. Finally, this negative perception will be changed as long as instructional designers create quality programs each and every time.

As a teacher at a brick and mortar elementary school, I am already able to advocate change in a positive way. I teach my students how to effectively use online training material and to discern the good from the bad. I expose my students to various methods of online learning and how to conduct valid online research. I share with my colleagues online tools and classes that are directly relatable to the classroom. I mentor new teachers as they use the technology the school offers and am an advocate for online learning experiences. Teaching my students how to use the technology tools that are currently available and also how to figure it out themselves is the key for ensuring that they will be prepared for education in the future whether online or on-ground.

I believe that distance learning is the way of the future. Over the next 20 years, as technology advances, school funding gets cut, classrooms more crowded, and the cost of doing business rises, parents, students, and businesses will be looking for cost effective alternatives that distance education can provide. As long as quality distance programs are created, this increased use of at a distance education will in itself change the negative perceptions of distance education to positive.

References

Gambescia, S., & Paolucci, R. (2009). Academic fidelity and integrity as attributes of university online degree program offerings. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 12(1). Retrieved from http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring121/gambescia121.html

Siemens, G. (2011). The Future of Distance Education. [video program]. Laureate Education, Inc.

Simonson, M., Smaldino, S., Albright, M., & Zvacek, S. (2009). Teaching and learning at a distance: Foundations of distance education (4th ed.) Boston, MA: Pearson.