Tag Archives: education

Novel ideas can spread from a novel virus

I travelled to China during the early H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic in 2009. Concerns were low in Canada and there wasn’t a travel warning at the time. On my flight to Japan there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. However after leaving Japan, when we landed in Chana we were asked to stay on the plane and remain seated.

A team of people masked and dressed in white came on board and used an infrared thermometer to take our temperatures. Two rows in front of me a person that was coughing and unwell, and her husband, were escorted off the plane first. I remember thinking, ‘Oh man, sucks to be you!’

I thought that was it, but after leaving the plane I guess that we passed a heat sensor camera because I was tapped on the shoulder and pulled aside. A lady in a mask, shining a red light on my forehead, took my temperature and said, “Too hot.”

To say that I was freaked out is an understatement. I was visiting for 1 week to learn about my future job as a school Principal, and visions of quarantine in a foreign country, where I don’t speak the language, swirled through my head. Fortunately, a second reading was done and I was fine. I think a coffee right before landing, plus the fact that I run a little hot anyway, might have been the initial trigger.

Still, that shook me a little. I wondered about why these measures were not happening elsewhere? The response in China seemed preventative, while in other countries it seemed merely reactive. I’m not sure too many lessons were learned and the novel Coronavirus currently spreading across the world will likely have a significant impact on our globe before things get better. Yet I don’t mean that to sound like foreboding, and ominous foreshadowing. This virus will run its course, then some valuable lessons will be learned that were not learned by viruses like this in the past. Lessons that will hopefully help prevent the severity of a future pandemic.

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I read in interesting article, “How the coronavirus will shape the future” and want to expand on one section as it relates to schools and education:

If the growing novel coronavirus outbreak becomes a lasting pandemic, it could accelerate fundamental changes in the economy, politics and the workplace...

Going remote: Videoconferencing and remote work have exploded as the virus has spread.

  • According to Kentik, a global provider of network analytics, videoconferencing traffic in North America and Asia has doubled since the outbreak began.

  • Led by tech firms like Twitter and Facebook, companies are encouraging and even requiring their employees to work from home, both to slow the spread of the disease now and prepare for the worst should offices be closed in a quarantine.

  • Many experts believe business leaders will come to see that central offices and face-to-face meetings are less vital than they thought. “We’re going to see that work can be tied to productivity anywhere rather than putting time in an office,” said Peter Jackson, CEO of the digital collaboration company Bluescape.

At Inquiry Hub Secondary every assignment is already available online. Students have access to Moodle, Microsoft OneNote, and Microsoft Teams from any connected computer or mobile device. The Microsoft tools also have immersive readers and dictation tools to support students no matters where they are learning from.

Using Teams, I can invite colleagues or students into a virtual classroom, sharing video including either my or a student’s screen, and we can all link to resources in the Chat. Students could collaborate and do presentations, submit work, and get feedback without entering a school. That creates a lot of opportunities that weren’t previously available. I have no idea if this is something that will become necessary in the coming months, but in some parts of the world schools have already been closed, and so the idea that this is possible becomes a topic of discussion.

Discussion about the possibility of remote learning invites questions about blended learning where some of the work, both asynchronous and synchronous, is done remotely. It also invites conversations and questions about what we should be spending our time on when we do get together?

We might not have to change anything to deal with the Coronavirus, but the fact that this virus is impacting the world the way it is might impact how we think about operating our schools and businesses in the future. What excites me isn’t the idea that more work might be done remotely, but rather the ideas behind what we do when we connect face-to-face, and how we use that time? Will we focus more on collaboration, team building, social skills, construction and creation of projects, and more personalized support? How will we engage students in learning when they might not be coming to school every day?

Learning Through Failure vs Failing to Learn

We talk a lot about learning through failure, but not a lot about failing to learn. When we fail because of lack of resources, lack of support, lack of knowledge, and/or lack of reflection, it’s just a failure. We do not necessarily learn.

When we talk about learning from failure, we are not actually talking about failure, we are talking about perseverance, and resilience, and tenacity. We are talking about coming up to resistance and unplanned outcomes and working through them to achieve a goal. We are talking about students learning significantly more than if everything went their way.

Who learns more, the person who follows the cookie-cutter curriculum and content-focused assessment, or the student who tries something really original, challenging, and maybe even epic? Even if both paths led to the coveted mark of an ‘A’, which path holds the most promise for deep learning?

We never want students to fail, but we also don’t want them to have such an easy path to success that the learning is forgettable. The struggle that potential failure can create is something that separates learning through failure from failing to learn.

(Image by Bill Ferriter)

Just follow the steps

I enjoy solving puzzles like this:

The thing about these kind of puzzles is that if you don’t see the solution, you make a guess, you toss around ideas, then you eliminate them, and suddenly you see the pattern… you’ve figured out the steps, and you know you are right even before you’ve completed the answer. At that point you just follow the steps.

Easy… Or is it?

Sometimes the solution eludes you. Sometimes you just don’t see the pattern. In the example above, I can even tell you the next line of numbers and if you don’t see the pattern, it won’t help you understand: (13211311123113112211). The new row I shared would just become another set of confusing numbers. The solution won’t help you figure out the steps.

For some learners, getting started on a project or an assignment is like this. The blank page is daunting, giving no hints as to what to do next. Interpreting the question is too hard even before thinking about possible answers. For others, getting started is easy, but knowing how to finish involves a roadblock such as, explaining a process, collecting relevant data, summarizing information, extrapolating what the teacher wants, understanding the conclusion, or figuring out the purpose of even doing the assignment in the first place.

It took me about a minute and a half to solve this question, with half of that time doing the simple math to ensure I was right:

Find next number in the series:
23 21 24 19 26 15 28 11 30 7 36 ?

If you know the pattern, great! But if you don’t and I told you the answer is 5, that wouldn’t actually help you figure out the next number in the sequence.

When you know or understand the steps to get to the end of an assignment, it’s just a matter of doing the work. When you don’t understand the steps, or when a learning challenge gets in the way, then the steps become cliffs, too big to climb.

How often do we ask learners to climb cliffs?

Kids do well if they can

I love this video by Ross Greene:

Moving from ‘kids do well if they wanna’ to ‘kids do well if they can’ is a significant change in philosophy. I like that Ross admits that this philosophy is “a lot harder and… more productive”.

It’s easy to blame a kid who doesn’t want to do school work. It’s hard to figure out what’s getting in the way of their learning. But which of these models provides the most reward, for the student and the educator?

I know there are students who are really hard to figure out. I know there are students who refuse to accept help. I know there are educators willing to bend over backwards to support kids who still opt out. But if you believe they will do well if they can, then you are still in a better mindset to find a way to support a student than you would be believing they just don’t want to do the work.

Kids do well if they can.

In whose eyes?

The term ‘firm but fair’ has two components. First, it suggests that if a child or a student, (in the case of a parent or an educator), is not acting appropriately, then a firm consequence is put in place. The second part is that the consequence is fair. This means that the consequence is fitting, rather than either soft or overly harsh, and it also means there is consistency in what the consequences look like for similar instances.

The often overlooked aspect of this is that fairness needs to be measured by the person who is receiving the consequence. It should be ‘firm but fair’ in their eyes. If you think you are being fair but the person dealing with the consequence does not, then that mismatch will undermine the value of the consequence, and likely not deter the kind of behaviour you are hoping to reduce.

For a parent, this can often be an issue where anger levels can undermine consistency, where the consequence is unfairly harsher because your kid was driving you crazy for an hour before the issue came up, compared to a less harsh consequence just because you are in a good mood. For an educator, this issue can often come up when consequences are not consistent between different students for similar issues.

An important concept to remember is that if you are wanting to be fair, fairness needs to be perceived by everyone involved. In whose eyes are you being firm but fair?

Artist

A Place to Dream, Create, and Learn

Imagine a school where you are given time every day to Dream, Create, and Learn.

I’m writing this Tuesday evening before our annual Open House and publishing it on the morning of the event. I popped in earlier in day to see how things were going. The teacher who has worked with the students the most on this event has Tuesdays off. Another teacher is working with students on displays in the hallways, a third teacher is popping his head into the gym periodically to see how things are going and if he can help. A former student is working with a crew to get the sound up and running, and our show director is setting up the order of entrances and exits to ensure mic hand-offs go as planned. I was invited back at 2:30pm to see the final run-though. I arrive at the end of the ‘cold open’ musical performance and stand next to another former student, who ran the open for the last two years. He speaks first, “This will be the best Open yet.” The song finishes and I ask our student director? Did you write that song? “A group of us did.”

I watch the rehearsal and there are issues with sound, and a video not working properly. I am not worried about this. Last year Alvin Law did a presentation at our school and he told me that he’s presented to large corporations with massive budgets and he was never treated as well by a sound crew, or had a sound system work so perfectly, as he did at our school. I would have thought he was just being polite had he not repeatedly emphasized this, even when we were saying goodbye at his car. My sound crew know that their job is to be invisible… unnoticed because sound is never an issue. I know that they are students and it might not be as perfect as that, even if the last 3 shows were.

I only had two suggestions: First, a pair of presenters did not have a strong ending to their talk, so I suggested they present what’s coming up next; Second, one of our Grade 12’s starts with a personal story then gets lost in a list of things she accomplished. I suggested she remember to go back to storytelling and share why that list of things are important to her. Our show director has a lot more to say. She is as in control of this rehearsal as any teacher could be. She is critical, for example: “That was really good except your timing drifted off,” she says to the guitarist and piano player. She is encouraging, “I like the way you two play off of each other.” And most importantly, she is respected by the performers and presenters, and they know and understand that she has their best interest in mind.

A student designed the advertising.


Two students are working together on thematic ads for Instagram:

Coder Chef Artist

The Foods class have created custom deserts. All the clubs have representatives to share what they’re doing. Freshly created student work is on display on our walls. This isn’t just an open house, it’s a showcase. It is an opportunity for students to present to an authentic audience, by students who love the fact that they don’t just sit in classes all day. A presentation by students that get to design part of their day. They get to throw themselves fully into running and presenting at an even like this… they get to Dream, Create, and Learn as part of their school day.

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I’ve written about Inquiry Hub Secondary a few times before, most recently in March, on my Pair-a-Dimes Blog. Here is information for educators.

Better for who?

Teaching is a challenging art. It takes patience, skill, and adaptation. It isn’t easy, but it is very rewarding.

Teachers are selfless in many ways, they put a lot of their own time into making their lessons great, and many even use their own money for supplies.

However, sometimes teachers make changes because it makes things simpler for themselves. A multiple choice test is easier to mark than other forms of testing. A video is more convenient to prep for than an interactive lesson. But is that test or that video better for the students?

An important question to ask when you are trying to make things better is,

‘Better for who?’

Of course ‘better for everyone’ is an ideal answer, and while it might seem idealistic, increased student engagement and understanding are beneficial for everyone!

Teaching and Learning Beyond Google

When students get time in their day to solve interesting problems, they need to learn to ask questions that go beyond Google. The problem isn’t interesting enough and worth solving if the answer is easy to find, if the data has already been collected, if the information is readily available.

If students are asking interesting questions, the teacher can’t be the content expert, they can’t know the answers that every student is seeking to discover. So, the teacher becomes the compass. The guide that points students in the right direction. Teachers steer students away from questions that are too general and easy to solve. They help refine questions that are too vague or too hard to accomplish. Teachers in the era of Google must still provide content knowledge, but they know that this knowledge is the foundation for discovery, not just the information to be learned. Learning is a process, not a product.

When learning goes beyond Google, students need to be supported in learning to communicate and collaborate with others. They need to seek experts outside the classroom. They need to solve authentic problems in the community or in students’ lives. Sometimes the teacher needs to create or help create the questions; They need to provide the scaffolding, direction, or support to ensure students are becoming competent learners. Sometimes teachers need to step back, get out of the way, and let students lead, teach, thrive, and even fail… on the path to learning through discovery, trail and error, and reflection.

The journey is seldom a straight line. The path is seldom easy, and well defined. It is not the teacher’s job to remove obstacles on the path to to solving interesting problems. On the contrary, they must ensure that there are enough obstacles in the way, and that students are challenged while not being overcome by obstacles too big to navigate. The compass does not know the final destination, or even the best route, but gives direction by pointing to north. This is the art of teaching in an era of learning beyond Google.

Design vs Use

One of our middle schools in the district sits on the edge of a steep hillside. There is a large set of stairs, and to the side of that, a long wheelchair ramp. Between the stairs and the ramp is a steep grassy wedge. There is a huge forested area with trails nearby, but three boys, two with GoPro cameras on their helmets, are riding up the ramp, and riding down the grassy embankment as well as the stairs. You can see a trail down the embankment from continued use… use that was never intended.

I remember reading about a new college or university that didn’t install walking paths until after students had created foot trails through the grassy openings between buildings, allowing form to fit function.

There are so many ways that poor design misses the point that the use of an item is more important than the look. Here in Vancouver, the overhangs in front of malls, stores, and buildings will have massive gaps between them. But these are decorative, not functional. They might ‘work’ in California, but it rains a lot more here in Vancouver, and people would rather be dry, instead of having decorative overhangs that let the rain come through.

Design vs Use in Schools

Schools lack inviting spaces to hang out that result in the use of hallway or stairwell alcoves where kids like to congregate, making the hallways and stairways more of a hangout and much less functional to walk through. Rectangular desks only let chairs fit in 2 of the 4 sides. Library stacks don’t move, making the design of the library fixed in form and function.

Multiple choice tests are easy to mark, but force the focus of tests towards content. “All of the above” answers allow student to be partially correct but not get credit for knowing what they know. The questions are ‘closed’ as opposed to open ended.

The bell schedule with blocks of time push schools into teaching subjects in silos. Blocks limit collaboration between teachers. Grouping students by age in those blocks limits the ability to combine students by passion and capability.

We should always be thinking about designing for use. We should have empathy for the user. And we should celebrate when users make the design work for them.

Smart A$$ Responses

Ask yourself, if you aren’t getting the answers you want, are you asking the right questions?

Here are 2 worksheets where students got very creative with their answers.

Did the students give the teacher a response that they wanted? No.

Did the students deserve the response that they got? No.

Regarding the first worksheet, I created this image to make fun of it:

“You’ve got to ‘love’ worksheets typed on a typewriter and copied so many times that parts of the letters are missing.”

Did the student spell any of the 10 words wrong?

What if the teacher said, “Haha, that was sneaky, now look around the room and find 10 more words that you can spell”?

Looking at the second worksheet, what if the student gave the examples shared as their answers? What would the teacher have done then? (And who ‘jumps’ with their family???) The question coupled with the examples makes this a painfully boring task. The musical response by the student actually makes the assignment interesting.

Why the big red X?

“Not the answer I was looking for.”

No it wasn’t, but it is a very clever answer! One that should be recognized as creative.

What if the teacher said, “Haha! That’s great! What other action verbs do you know?”

Is the purpose of a worksheet to get the answers right? Is the purpose of assessment to count marks or to check for understanding? When someone doesn’t give you ‘what you are looking for’ does that mean their response is wrong and deserves a big red X?

Or is a smart a$$ response a wake up call that maybe you can ask better, more interesting questions?