Tag Archives: learning

What’s on the test?

With students across the world doing schooling from home, teachers are finding it challenging to get authentic assessment. One of the more difficult issues is trying to administer formal testing.

Have a look at this TikTok by @tamarciment:

If you can Google the answer, students will find a way.

If you can Google the answer, is that a question we need to ask questions on a test?

Is a test the best form of assessment over a Zoom call? What are some better options?

It’s tough to navigate this new environment, and we aren’t going to do it perfectly, but these are questions that we should be asking… and our answers won’t just aid us during this pandemic, our answers will also help us when we have all students back in school too!

How long does this need to be?

As a teacher, this was always a tough thing to hear. You pour yourself into a lesson and then get to the assignment and a kid asks, “How long does this need to be?”

I hear this and in my mind I hear an underlying second question, “What’s the least amount I need to do to get this done.”

My response wasn’t really liked, but it was honest:

“It needs to be as long as it needs to be. I’ve read 3 brilliant sentences that said all that was needed to be said. I’ve read three sentences that told me nothing. I’ve read paragraphs that are eloquent and beautifully written, which cover everything needed. I’ve read entire essays that are crap. The length isn’t important, the quality and thoroughness of the writing is.”

If what’s being assessed is an essay, a response should be essay length in an essay format. Beyond that, does length of a response really matter? Does the format make a difference if the message is well conveyed? Does your next assignment require a minimum length, or does it require a response that clearly demonstrates understanding?

How long before ‘Un’school is the kind of school most kids choose?

This Hyderabad-based edtech startup aims to help students ‘un’school themselves

This is an example of disrupting higher education that I wrote about recently.

An affordable online learning ecosystem which provides a course, mentorship, projects, and guaranteed internship opportunities.

I’ve wanted to see opportunities like this at Inquiry Hub (at high school). Not for every kid, for kids that want it. But I also think that as we create these opportunities, more students will want it… if not in high school, certainly instead of an overpriced college education.

How is ‘un’schooling going to change the look of schools and universities in the future?

AI, Education, and Teachers

Have you ever had a medical scan? Have you looked at the scan afterwards? While it’s easy to look at an X-ray and see a broken bone, something like an MRI is much more difficult to read and interpret. And while an X-ray is a single shot at each angle, an MRI is numerous shots of the same angle in many layers. MRI’s create a massive amount of data for a technician or a doctor to look through. Already there are computers using Artificial Intelligence (AI) that are better than humans at finding anomalies that doctors would want to know about.

In education there are AI tools being developed that can make incredible diagnostic and pedagogical decisions to help a learner. An example is in Math: A student solves a math problem and gets the answer wrong. The AI looks at the error and recognizes it as a common mistake made by a certain percentage of students, and then suggests a tutorial (interactive) video that helps over 95% of students who make that error learn from their mistake. Just in time teaching based on responsive feedback from the learner.

AI can be a great teacher for computational thinking problems, teaching algorithms, and content-based information. If that’s all a teacher did, that teacher could be replaced. But that’s not all a teacher does! Algorithms can inform us of a real world problem, like climate change or air pollution, but they won’t necessarily help us solve these problems.

AI is decades away from being able teach us to be more collaborative, better citizens, or creative problem solvers. These skills are what teachers of the future will focus on. Let AI teach kids the basics of math, but then use that math to solve interesting problems – “The way to teach your kids to solve interesting problems…  is to give them interesting problems to solve.” ~ Seth Godin

We need to help students solve interesting and messy problems, we need to give them voice and choice, we need to help them develop their leadership and collaboration skills. We need to foster creativity, and allow students the opportunity to think outside the scope of questions that have a single answer.

If we don’t do these things in education, then not only are we going to give up our jobs to AI that can teach basic knowledge better than we can… we are also doing a disservice to our students, who deserve to learn skills that make them better, more useful, and adaptable citizens in an ever-changing world.

The teachers you remember, remember you

It’s a simple formula: Get to know your students and they remember you. They might remember one awesome lesson you did, but in more examples than not, it’s not only about the things they learned but the relationships you’ve developed.

Many high schools are opening with less face time with students and/or shorter semesters. There will be an appetite for teachers to ‘get to business’ and to ‘cover the curriculum’. But the start of the year is a great time to ‘get to know your students’ and to work with them to ‘uncover the curriculum’.

Spend time connecting with students. Let them spend time exploring and discovering what they must learn. Do this and not only you, but also the things you have taught, will be remembered.

What does it mean to be tech savvy?

A number of years ago, I wrote this:

 I am not Tech Savvy! If I had a pair of dimes for every time someone said, ‘Dave, you are good with computers, can you help me with this…” then I could retire early. I’ll explain this with a tangent example: The fact is that I happen to be a very good driver. Put me behind the wheel of a car, even in a snow storm, and I’ll get you to your destination safely. However, don’t ask me to do anything more to the car than put gas or windshield washer fluid in it… maybe check the tire pressure… that’s it! Give me a working computer and I can do pretty good there too! Not because I’m savvy though… just because I spend hours trying things.

Yesterday @AubreyDiOrio tweeted:

And I responded:

Then @RobHeinrichs replied to me saying:

We are all good at different things that we are also not necessarily experts in. Our mindsets really do matter. Our willingness to be patient, ask questions, and tinker also matter.

When I say I’m not tech savvy, it means that I don’t know how to code or do programming. It means I can’t build a computer without a manual, a dozen YouTube ‘How to’ videos, and phoning a friend. It means that when I see an error, I can only fix it with the help of Google… if I can fix it at all. It means I point people to tech support after I’ve failed to help.

Yet I’m asked tech questions all the time. I’m looked at to solve problems that I don’t know how to solve when I’m asked. But I’m willing to put in the time, research, and energy to figure it out… and I’m not afraid to ask for help myself. That’s not savvy, that’s patience and effort, all dressed up to look like savvy… it’s a fun outfit, and you can wear it too.

Getting back in gear

We had an incredible holiday planned this summer before COVID-19 hit the world. A trip to Barcelona, a cruise with stops in Spain and Italy, and a week in Portugal. This didn’t happen, but we still had a wonderful summer with BC based destinations. I had my email vacation auto reply set up, and for the first time in years I really ‘let go’ of work.

This week we’ve already had a few virtual meetings and I have one more today and tomorrow, before kicking it into high gear next week. But I have to admit that these meetings, where we are planning for September, have my mind racing as I think about the new school year.

The biggest things in my mind are:

1. For Coquitlam Open Learning – how do we maximize support and appropriately staff for an unknown influx of students?

2. For Inquiry Hub Secondary – how do we maximize the learning experience while focusing on safety, and also considering possible changes in phases?

In the end, much decision-making is out of individual control as our district makes a concerted effort to meet the needs of all learners. But unlike other schools, COL and iHub are different, and need special attention and considerations.

I don’t have answers to many questions yet, but I’m getting more comfortable in not having immediate answers, in living with ambiguity. But as High MacLeod says, “‘Learn to live with ambiguity’, but do not live in it.”

As we get into gear planning the new school year, I’m sure we are bound to find ourselves with more questions than answers. Patience, thoughtful questions, and priorities around care and safety of our students will help us find a good, supportive path for our schools and our learning communities.

Disrupting higher education

Universities and colleges are going to be around for a while, but two things are disrupting the need for many students to attend an expensive school for four or more years;

1. Targeted Certification

2. Coronavirus

Tackling the second one first, students are questioning the value of what they are paying to go to school, when suddenly most or all of their courses are online due to COVID-19. The interesting thing is that not all of them are going to head back to class and think that the experience is still worth it. Smaller universities are already struggling and if things don’t bounce back, the cost of doing business on a smaller scale are going to force costs to rise. Lower enrolment and higher costs are a double edged sword that some universities won’t survive.

As mentioned, targeted certification is another blow to the modern university. Have a look at this article Google Has a Plan to Disrupt the College Degree. For the cost of textbooks for a semester, Google is providing certification, in just 6 months, in fields where students can come out to decent paying jobs.

A few years back my nephew took an 18-month comprehensive course that cost a lot of money. The program could be paid up front, or by giving up a percentage of salary for the first 2 years after graduation. The skills training was so good and in demand, that most students took the expensive choice of paying up front, knowing they were likely going to land a 6-figure (or close to 6-figure) salary when they came out. It was a hard 18 months, but my nephew (who lives in California) landed a job with a Silicon Valley start-up soon after finishing this program.

Engineers, doctors and nurses, and other professions that require comprehensive certification will still require a university degree for quite some time now, but there is going to be a big shift to certifications and polytechnical schools.

I’m happy to have started higher education with a general arts degree that took me longer than 4 years to get. It was an amazing time. But I was able to get that degree with under $10,000 debt to my name. Many students today leave their first 4-year degree with much much more debt, and only the promise of more schooling before they can find a job and start paying back their debt.

Universities are becoming the place to either get professional degrees, or places for the affluent to spend a few years growing up, or a place for less affluent students to start accumulating debt. Meanwhile, job specific skills training and certification programs are sprouting up and challenging the need for many to go to university. This disruption is coming fast, and I think we are going to see many universities struggle to transition what they look like for a lot of students who will opt out of this path of higher education.

Nostalgic for Twitter of the past

I’m a huge fan of Twitter. I love it enough that I wrote an ebook about how to get started with it. I use it as a learning tool. I connect with amazing people on the platform, and I have made some wonderful friends along the way.

But recently I’ve struggled to stay engaged. It seems that anger is ever present. Fear is a persistent theme. Teachers with limited resources are asking others to help #clearthelist of teaching resources and items they want others to purchase for them on Amazon. I can’t even begin to talk about the vile that surfaces in political tweets.

I’m lucky that I’ve taken the time to create a great Twitter List of people I most enjoy conversing with and learning from. This reduces the distractions of things I don’t enjoy. But I just can’t help but wonder where tools like Twitter are heading, compared to where it came from?

Beyond sticking to my closed list, and ignoring the rest, I’m not sure how I will engage with Twitter going forward? I used to use it to fill me in on news, but the things that trend upward seem too negative. I used to go to my timeline to find engaging articles to read, now I spend more time editing my choices to focus on, rather than actually reading any links.

Maybe I lived in a safe bubble in the early days of Twitter, shielded from everything except my interests in education and learning? Maybe I allowed too much in? Maybe the tool itself is inviting the wrong kind of engagement? Maybe it’s time to take another break?

The Twitter of old was a really special place, and after spending some time on the tool this morning, I’m feeling nostalgic about what it used to mean to me.

How do we get to ‘YES’?

I watched this Peter Hutton TEDx talk tonight and more than one part struck a very familiar chord with me and the things we do at Inquiry Hub.

The part of the talk I want to discus is this one:

“We have a saying that ‘Yes is the default’. So, the firth thing about that is if any staff, student, or parent has a suggestion or a request, the answer has to be ‘Yes’. Unless it would take too much time, too much money, or negatively impact on somebody else.” ~ Peter Hutton

My mantra over the last 8 years at Inquiry Hub has been:

“How do we get to ‘Yes’?”

The reality is that at our school the teachers are always trying to say ‘Yes’ already. Or, they are trying to guide students to a path where ‘Yes’ can happen. If it gets to me, there is already a reason for it to be a ‘No’, and it’s my job to figure out how do we get to ‘Yes’ when a teacher already couldn’t get there?

Here are 3 concrete examples:

  1. Students wanted to put our garden onto the concrete and not just in our courtyard. They were told ‘No’ by the district, because it would be in the way of maintenance vehicles. I had the students go back to the district and ask how far out it could go and not still be in the way? They didn’t get what they wanted, but the small encroachment onto the pavement was a win for them.
  2. In our second year one of our students wanted to grow hemp in our garden. We were a young school, still not fully developed, and our courtyard has no fencing, and is open to the public. I could only see bad (misinformed) publicity coming from this. I suggested a couple indoor plants and the student wasn’t interested. In the end, I could see a lot of downside beyond the project, and felt I had to say ‘No’.
  3. A student wanted to bring his Jeep engine block into the school to work on it. He had his own hoist and equipment. We don’t have the supervision and it would be completely unsafe, and would break all kinds of rules put in place to protect students. This was a hard ‘No’. So, we invited him to bring in anything he could lift without a hoist, and he could work on it with hand tools, or electric tools with supervision. We did have to have a few conversations about flushing gas/oil smells out of the parts he worked on before they came to school. But overall it worked out. We simply couldn’t bring items big enough to crush someone, or their finger or foot, into the school to be worked on.

Our default tends to be ‘Yes’, but that default doesn’t always work. When we can’t get it to work, then next question is, “How do we get to ‘Yes’? The answer isn’t always ideal, but it means something to our community for staff and students to know that we are all at least trying to get to ‘Yes’.

~ Also Shared on Pair-a-Dimes For Your Thoughts.