Flexible furniture—and learning - eSchool News · avatars, and these can be inserted direct-ly...

By Bridget McCreaThey’re used to charge, secure, store, and

distribute tablets, laptops, and mobile devices—and in schools that aren’t using one-to-one take-home initiatives, they’ve become a mainstay.

Carts, those waist-high metal cabinets onwheels, often hold dozens of devices, perfectfor classrooms that need technology on thego. The elementary English teacher who isusing a blended learning approach in her

7 questions for newteachers 18

Inside This Issue

Technology News & Innovation in K-12 EducationAugust/September 2016Vol. 19, No. 3 eSchoolNews.com

By Dennis Pierce For generations, most high

schools have been designed with acookie-cutter approach “that can bereproduced easily,” said AshleySmith, who works with the architec-tural firm Smith Design Group. Butthat’s certainly not true of the newTHINC College & Career Academyin LaGrange, Ga., which Smith helped design.

Housed in a building on the campus of WestGeorgia Technical College, THINC looks noth-

ing like a traditional high school. Instead, it hasthe look and feel of a Google office building,

Flexible, page 20

Flexible furniture—and learningThe way classroomsare designed can havea big impact on howstudents learn

By Kristina HolzweissWhere others see trash, I see treasure.

Reusing, repurposing, and recycling itemsthat can be found in the kitchen garbage can,on the curb, or collected by friends and fami-lies help educators save money while protect-ing the environment.

Today, our library makerspace has devel-oped into a 21st-century learning laboratory,with funding from grants and through thegenerosity of individuals and organizationsthat support our DonorsChoose projects. Butit wasn’t always this way.

In 2013, I began creating a makerspace inour library with only recyclables such asyogurt containers, bottle caps, and toiletpaper tubes that I had been saving over thesummer. I scoured the library storage cabinetsto find office supplies including markers,

Makerspace, page 12

Carts, page 24

Making themost of carts

How to gamify writing 4

Music adds STEAM tolessons 13

A makerspacefor less thanan iPad

Research shows environment can affect learning outcomes.

Dark fiber’s bright future 22

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3August/September 2016 • www.eSchoolNews.com

Con t e n t sAUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2016 Vol. 19, No. 3

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP1 Flexible furniture—and learning

8 Engage parents using the tech they already use

14 Why digital PD needs an urgent overhaul

18 The 7 questions every new teacher should be able to answer

DIGITAL CURRICULUM1 A makerspace for less than an iPad

4 5 ways to gamify writing in the classroom

13 5 ways music and tech are adding a little STEAM to our lessons

IT LEADERSHIP1 Making the most of carts

22 A bright future for dark fiber

26 The simple LMS move that has made our teachers more effective

21ST-CENTURY INSTRUCTION25 What schools can learn from the unschooling

movement

6 Leading change: Let students show what they knowwith these gorgeous slideshows

10 Leading Blended Learning: Stopasking whether laptops improvelearning

15 Future Ready: How some districtsare closing the homework gap

29 eSchool Partners

30 Number Theory (infographic)

1

1

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE

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4 August/September 2016 • www.eSchoolNews.com

By Joan SelbyYou’ve surely noticed how your class

gets engaged as soon as you introduce agame into the teaching process. The stu-dents get competitive, but that’s a healthycompetition you want to nurture.

Have you ever thought about teach-ing writing through games? It’s a greatstrategy that helps students overcomethe lack of motivation they have regard-ing writing assignments. RobertMonroe, a writer for the websiteEduGeeksClub and a father of a 10-year-old, explains how he made writingattractive for his son: “I realized he wasbored whenever he had to write some-thing for school. I know how fun writ-ing can be, so I found a way to turn itinto a game. I set up a private onlinediary and gave him brief prompts everyday. He received points for each ‘level’he passed and a prize for every bigachievement. I noticed great improve-ments in his grammar and style in areally short period of time.”

Needless to say, you’ll need an effec-tive strategy that will help you introducewriting games in the classroom. Readon; we have the tips you need.

Understand the problemBefore you can make your students

like writing, you need to understand whythey don’t. One of the biggest problemswith the assignments is the fact that theyare boring. Plus, teachers tend to makethem more challenging than necessary, sothe students lose motivation even beforethey start working on them.

The entire process of research, out-lining, writing, and editing takes a lot ofcommitment. When you turn it into agame, you need to make it less chal-lenging and more flexible. For example,you can create teams and allow yourstudents to work together on theresearch stage for a day. Then, they canall focus on storytelling according to theprinciples you provide, and you canpublish all stories on a blog.

Give them a competitive edge tomotivate them to achieve better results,and try to create some graphics toaccompany each story. That will be yourreward for them.

Set precise goalsEvery game needs a goal. If, for

example, the point of the game is towrite a story, you need to make it veryspecific. You may ask your students toshow how the main character over-comes a personal flaw, such as shynessor laziness.

Once you set the main goal, break it upin stages. You know that each game haslevels, don’t you? For example, the teamcan write a paragraph to pass the firstlevel. Each member should contributewith their own sentence for the paragraph,and the content has to be coherent. Oncethey pass level one, they can continue to ahigher level, and you ask them to addanother element to the story (such as anew character or a challenge).

Set some rulesA game has to be founded on rules;

otherwise it would quickly get out ofhand. Just as you have a grading systemfor their papers, you should have a pointsystem for the games. If, for example,you create blogging quests, your studentsshould know exactly how many pointsthey need to get onto the next level, andhow they can earn those points.

You can start with a maximum of 30points and reduce 2 points for everymistake in grammar and spelling, and 5points for each mistake in logic. Makethese guidelines clear before the gamesbegin.

Games come with immediateresults

You know how students have to waitfor days before they get a grade on theirpapers? That’s stress they would all liketo avoid. Games give immediate feed-back, so they keep the enthusiasm levels

high. Draw a chart on the whiteboard,so everyone can understand the pointsystem.

When your students realize that theycan do something right now to beat theother team, they will get more engagedto achieve better results.

Rely on the right toolsTechnology can make the gamifica-

tion of the writing process much easier.There are different tools you can use, sodon’t stop exploring what the internethas to offer. You can start with thesetools:

• Rezzly–it enables you to design funquests, which your students can accessthrough their smartphones or tablets.

• ClassBadges–a tool that helps youdevelop a reward system in the formof badges.

• Edublogs–a safe blogging environ-ment that you can use for publishingthe challenges and results.Educative games are a great addition

to the teaching process because theymake the classroom more dynamicwhile enabling the students to developnew skills. Even the most complexskills can be practiced through gamifi-cation. You can develop different gamesthat will make writing attractive for youstudents, so don’t waste time and startexperimenting. Your students will lovethe new approach.

Joan Selby is an ESL teacher and a

blogger at www.medium.com/@joanselby.

5 ways to gamify writing in the classroomBelieve it or not, writing is a natural fit for gamification

Digital Curriculum

Games remove boredom from writing.

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http://www.medium.com/@joanselby

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Powerful EvergreenApps strike a great balancebetween flexibility andease, and can be used inmany different situationsfor a variety of purposes.Take Book Creator, forexample.

Book Creator facilitatesthe easy creation of multi-media books, reports, stories, and manyother variations of written, visual, andaudio communication. Yet, there arecreative limitations to the app that canonly be overcome by app smashingother app content directly into its pages.As I discussed last time, Tellagamienables students to create speakingavatars, and these can be inserted direct-ly into Book Creator pages. App smash-ing Tellagami into Book Creator is oneuseful strategy to enhance the creativepossibilities of a single Evergreen Appand enable students to express whatthey know in different ways.

Another intuitive and versatile app toapp smash with Book Creator (and otherapps) is Shadow Puppet Edu, a freeiOS app that will play on both an iPhoneand iPad. With Shadow Puppet, stu-dents and teachers can easily create avideo slideshow consisting of text,images, narration, animation, andmusic. With these multimedia possibili-ties, it’s easy for a student or teacher tocreate a video presentation, a videotutorial, a digital story, or a portfolio onany number of topics.

Creating with Shadow Puppet Edu iseasy and intuitive. Tap Create New andyou can easily add content from variousresources. Shadow Puppet Edu hasbuilt-in student-friendly resources tomake content insertion easy and safe.For instance, the Education Searchoption includes copyright-free imagesfrom the Library of Congress, the

Metropolitan Museum ofArt, the British Library, andNASA. All a student needsto do is to enter a keywordto discover a series of freeimages around that topic.

There’s also an ImageSearch to locate images viaFlickr and MediaCommons. Other helpful

resources include a Map Search, for acity or location, and a FamousLandmarks section, which includes aseries of historically and culturally sig-nificant places including the Great Wallof China, the Great Pyramids, theRoman Colosseum, Stonehenge, andmore.

Simply tap on an image or videotaken from either your device’s CameraRoll or one of the aforementionedimage partners and then tap Reorder toarrange these items in the order you pre-fer for your slideshow. (You insert up to100 images in any single ShadowPuppet EDU video slideshow and anyvideo can be up to 30 seconds in dura-tion.) Once you have all the images orvideo you wish to use, hit the Next but-ton and start adding various elements toyour presentation. For instance, tap T

for text and add a title, then add anima-tion, such as a title spin, a title zoom, ora title fade-in and fade-out. You canadjust the font size and color as well.

You can add music, too. ShadowPuppet Edu provides eight songs thatyou can choose from to use on a selectslide or as background music for theentire presentation. You can add yourown voice and narrate as well. Simplyhit Start and talk through the slides. So,a slide could contain an image, text,background music, and your voice. Ifyou make a mistake, you can simplyundo it and come back and edit whatyou have created.

When the slides are complete to yoursatisfaction, tap Save and your videoslideshow is saved not only in theShadow Puppet Edu app, but also in theiPad or iPhone Camera Roll. From thispoint, open Book Creator and insertyour Shadow Puppet video onto a page.

Since it’s so simple to create aShadow Puppet Edu presentation, it’snot a stretch for young learners inkindergarten, first-, or second-grade tocreate their own presentations. And ifstudents stay within the EducationSearch section, images are filtered sothat adult content is excluded.

Students can create all sorts of sto-ries, tutorials, portfolios, math explana-tions, and more in Shadow Puppet Eduto complement and support what theymay have already created in a BookCreator report. Need more activities?Just visit the Ideas section in the app forCommon Core-aligned activities organ-ized by Family Heritage Map,Historical Landmark, City Math,Symbolism in Art, Weather Report, andGuess Who?.

In all, there are a bevy of ways stu-dents can use Shadow Puppet EDU toshow what they know about a curricu-lum topic.

Tom Daccord is director of

EdTechTeacher, a professional learning

organization.

Leading Change

Tom Daccord

By Tom Daccord

Let students show what they know with these gorgeous slideshowsShadow Puppet EDU lets students demonstrate understanding in creative ways

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It’s not a stretch for

young learners in

kindergarten, first-, or

second-grade to create

their own presentations.


http://www.elmousa.com

By Kelly WadeTeachers have become pretty adept

at doing more with less, but in ourefforts to offset funding cuts, we oftenoverlook a very important and inexpen-sive resource: parents. In fact, parentscan make such a big impact thatresearchers have found that schoolswould need to increase per-pupil spend-ing by more than $1,000 in order toachieve the same results gained byparental involvement.

The National Association for theEducation of Young Children’s researchon Family Engagement and EarlyChildhood Education notes that:

“When children’s progress can betied to classroom activities and homeactivities, development and learning arestrongly reinforced and further familyinvolvement is inspired. Discussingchanges in a child’s readiness skills canopen a dialogue about the child’sstrengths and any areas of potential con-cern for families or teachers. Then fam-ilies and teachers can work in partner-ship to ensure that children continue toreceive appropriate instruction andrelated experiences to further theirdevelopment.”

I am fortunate to have very involvedparents in my classroom this year, but formany teachers, that isn’t the case. This isnot a shaming of parents. For workingparents, reading a weekly newsletter and

reviewing homework is just one morething in an already jam-packed sched-ule—multiplied by each child in the fam-ily. I get it. It’s exhausting.

Even if parents can and want to beinvolved, there are other barriers, like thefact that classrooms and teaching may nolonger resemble what parents remember.Experiential learning, flipped class-rooms, and new standards have turnedthe familiar into foreign, and this can beintimidating. So how can we bring themback and get them engaged with theirkids’ learning? The same way we engagetheir kids—with technology!

Today, more than 90 percent of fami-lies own mobile devices, and nine in 10families have some kind of internetaccess, even among families below thepoverty level. And we know that regularupdates on children’s growth can encour-age families to engage in more learning-related activities at home. Leveraging thetechnology they are already using can bea powerful strategy to re-ignite parental

involvement.

Social mediaThree-quarters of online parents use

Facebook, so creating a FacebookGroup can be a good way to communi-cate with parents and share information,post student work, and add classroomphotos and videos. However, becausethere have been privacy and legal con-cerns with teachers posting to the popu-lar social media platform in the past,some districts and schools prefer thattheir teachers shy away from usingFacebook. A great alternative isShutterfly—the Share Sites offer a greatway to quickly share compelling class-room visuals with parents, but in a waythat is much more private. Students lovesharing these visuals with their parents,pointing out friends and interestingclassroom elements that paint a betterpicture of what the students’ daily expe-rience looks like, so the conversationshappening between parent and child are

often much richer than what follows“What did you do at school today?”

Digital portfoliosWe use SeeSaw, but there are plenty

of other options in this space. It’s a dig-ital portfolio platform that allows me topost student work and other learningartifacts, so that parents can see exactlywhat their students are doing in theclassroom. And students and parentscan upload content from home throughthe app, which is often more efficientthan signing off on a form that theyreviewed their student’s homework.

Other mediaBlogging: Parents are spending near-

ly 3 hours a day scanning the internet—in line at the grocery store, waiting forsoccer practice to end, etc. Make it eas-ier by providing updates digitally bycreating a blog. Think keeping up a reg-ular posting calendar seems daunting?Give students some ownership and letthem take turns creating posts aboutwhat’s happening in the classroom.

Stories: Most content created foryoung learners isn’t meant for parents,so (shockingly!) they aren’t alwayspumped to watch and learn alongsidetheir kids. There are exceptions, though.My students and parents loveStoryBots, which are short, funny edu-cational videos and interactive learninggames (bonus: it’s free!).

Language tools: Working with ESLparents can be challenging. Andbecause young children can, at times, beunreliable narrators, it is best not to usethem as translators. Services such asGoogle Translate and TalkingPointsallow teachers to communicate in theparents’ native tongue, which is criticalwhen articulating challenges and oppor-tunities for growth.

Kelly Wade is a kindergarten teacher

at Collins Elementary in Grand Rapids,

Michigan.

Engage parents using the tech they love Get more parents involved using phone-friendly video and social media


Thought Leadership

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Let students help with outreach.


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By Peter WestIt’s a question we hear

all too often—from par-ents, technology critics,and, of course, the newsmedia: Do those pricey lap-tops schools buy actuallyimprove academic results?

On the surface, it seemslogical. Schools make biginvestments in technologyand stakeholders want to see a return onthat investment—by way of betterschool ratings or big jumps in testscores. But really, the question is super-ficial and shows a limited understand-ing of what is needed to enhance teach-ing and learning using technology.

Laptops by themselves change little.They are simply one component of arange of things that need to change inorder to leverage technology to enhanceeducation. Introducing laptops whilenot changing the teaching and learningparadigm is of little use, and may evenproduce negative academic outcomes.

Tools alone are not theanswer

The tools alone are not enough. Evermeet someone who decided to get fit,bought all of the best gym equipment,and never did much with it (and didn’tget fit either)? Know anybody who tookup a new hobby, such as photography,and then bought a lot of expensiveequipment such as cameras, lenses, andsoftware, but did little with it? A fewmonths later the equipment was proba-bly stored in a cupboard collecting dust.These cases are not uncommon, and weare usually not surprised as we realizethat it takes more than just buyingexpensive equipment to become fit oran accomplished photographer.

Why do we change these expecta-tions with education? Is it simplybecause laptops are a visible componentand thus are easy to measure? However,a simple measure can produce simpleand incorrect conclusions.

Instead of counting the number of

laptops in an organization,we would be better offwalking around a schoolnoting the number of class-rooms in which teachingand learning havechanged—and I mean real-ly changed, not just replac-ing paper and chalkboardswith a brand-name laptop.

Degree of change in theclassroom

Simply having students using laptopsfor learning is not enough. It is the typeof activities being performed and thedepth of learning that are important.The laptop is simply a window to thelearning. If the “view” is poor, theresults will be poor. If the view is richand meaningful, the results will be richand meaningful.

Is there success? When a change begins in society,

there are usually a number of lone inno-vators who take the change and apply itsuccessfully. They look beyond thedevice, use it as just one of the toolsavailable, and modify their teaching andlearning—and they get positive results.

The concept spreads and eventuallybecomes mainstream. MalcolmGladwell explains this in his book The

Tipping Point.There are many examples of lone

innovators who are achieving success.One example is Stacey Roshan, anAustralian educator who has used flippedlearning with AP Calculus classes toimprove learning. She has qualitative andquantitative data showing her success.

Rob Boriskin has had success flippingthe classroom in the very practical area ofceramics. He has had increased enroll-ments, increased student satisfaction, andincreased levels of skill developmentwith students. The computer and technol-ogy are simply one part of their changedteaching and learning paradigm. Notethat it is a teaching and learning paradigmthat has changed; the technology is sim-

ply an enabler of this change.There are also examples of teachers

who don’t really embrace the changeand “have a go at this laptop thing.”They don’t get improvements and thusfind disadvantages. This doesn’t provethe technology doesn’t work. It is nodifferent than the friend who joins agym to get fit, but complains a lot anddoesn’t take the time to learn how to usethe equipment properly, doesn’t followthrough with the advice of his trainer,and eventually gives up because it hurtsand is inconvenient. Yet nobody wouldimply that gyms aren’t effective forbody building and fitness.

Six main componentsDuring the past year, I’ve identified

six main areas that need to change inorder for organization wide success tooccur. These are: infrastructure; organiza-tional leadership; mindset; staffing; pro-fessional development; and flexiblelearning spaces.

Laptops are one sixth of the firstcomponent—infrastructure; one ofmore than 30 key aspects in all. Yetsome would expect that it is the defini-tive measure for success.

Looking at laptops and infrastructurealone as drivers of academic change issimplistic. It shows a lack of under-standing of the big picture and thechanges that must occur in the entirelearning ecosystem for academic resultsto improve.

It is about time we, as educators,looked deeper and had more sophisti-cated conversations about technology ineducation. This is the biggest shift ineducation in more than 100 years. Itdeserves more-considered attention.Failure to do this would leave educationas the only industry that does not needto evolve to harness the benefits of tech-nology. Do we really believe that this islikely?

Peter West is director of eLearning at

Saint Stephen’s College in Australia.

Reach him at [email protected].

Stop asking whether laptops improve learningLeading Blended Learning

eSN

Peter West


mailto:[email protected]

a fi tahw chair could improve student success?

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Crayons, paper clips, rubber bands,glue, and scissors. Then I began raidingmy own craft supplies. There was aphysical space, and students were mak-ing things. I had a makerspace.

By now you have probably heardabout makerspaces, and you might evenwant to create one in your library orclassroom (or even in your own home).At first, just knowing where to start canseem overwhelming. You’lllikely read many blogs andbooks, follow maker educa-tors through social media, andattend webinars and work-shops. You will either becomeenergized at the thought ofembarking on this journey orelse paralyzed with fear thatyour makerspace will neverbe good enough. Here aresome simple tips to help youalong.

You can make withanything

The first fire was made byrubbing sticks with flint. Withpaper, your students can makeorigami cranes. With wrapping papertubes, they can make roller coasters.And with unmatched socks, they canmake water bottle cozies. Rather thanfocusing on expensive technology youdon’t have, find ways that you can recy-cle, reuse, and repurpose. When iPadtime is over at home, and my childrenare bored playing with toys, they almostalways find themselves digging throughthe “Invention Box” in our living roomto create a Statue of Liberty torch withduct tape and two water bottles. If youdon’t already, start checking out thecraft aisle of your local dollar store.Keep your eyes open for sales, coupons,and clearance stickers. Join theFreecycle Network at and check the freeitems postings on Craigslist. You’llnever know what you might find.

You can make anywhereGary Stager, co-author of Invent to

Learn, once said “The best makerspaceis between your ears.” If you don’t havea space, make it. The average book inmy library was published some time inthe mid-1980s, so it was very easy forme to weed out titles such as How to

Train Pigeons and What the Astronauts

Will Do on the Moon to free up someshelf space. Consider wheeled, metalcabinets that can serve as much-neededmakerspace storage. Attach magnets tothe back of Lego baseplates and thiscabinet can work double duty as a

portable Lego wall. Consider any emptyspace that you have including walls,ceilings, doors, and windows. Any placecan become a blank canvas for making(as long as you respect fire codes).

Someone’s grandmother may havebought more skeins of baby blue yarnthan she needed to crochet her grand-child’s first blanket. Share your visionof a makerspace with your administra-tion and colleagues, as well as your stu-dents and their parents. Do you need 25baby food jars to make water globes?Maybe a new mom on Facebook willbegin saving some for you. Need piecesof wood to make photo transfers? Stopby your local karate studio and ask fortheir broken boards. One of my studentsbrought in a large incomplete Lego set,and a mom answerd my call onFacebook for a blender. Chances are, ifthere is something that you need, thereis someone who can help you.

Your space will be differentfrom everyone else’s

Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Dowhat you can, with what you have,where you are.” There is no one set def-inition of a makerspace. Your space willcontinue to develop and evolve toreflect the needs and desires of your stu-dents; within your comfort level anddesire to learn about new resources; andfunding from your school budget,grants, and donations. Have a vision ofwhere your makerspace is going and

outline a plan to get there.Realize, however, that yourmakerspace will not turn outas planned. Creating a maker-spaces is, in itself, a processof making.

Don’t wait until youare ready

If you keep reading andplanning, you will begin creat-ing reasons why you should notcreate a makerspace. The bestway to get started is to diveright in with what you havebefore you spend any moneyon the bright, shiny things thatcatch our eye, such as the cov-eted 3D printer. Pace yourself,

stop and reflect, and ask your studentsand faculty for feedback. But don’t dwellon it. There will always be some newgadget or idea that will replace the oldone. Consider the lasting effect of yourpurchases:

• Can they be used for multiple activi-ties?

• Can they be used by a multitude ofstudents in a variety of scenarios(age, academic ability, language)?

• Can they connect with other tools orresources that you already have, orwill they serve as launchpads tofuture purchases?

Kristina Holzweiss is a school library

media specialist at Bay Shore Middle

School in New York.

Makerspacecontinued from page 1

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Creating a makerspace is an act of making itself.

Digital Curriculum

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Digital Curriculum

By Jilian Reynolds The holy grail for those of us in edu-

cation is a method that imbues studentswith higher-level thinking skills thatstick, preparing them for what comesnext in their lives. This means not justreaching all students with the contentthey must learn but making sure thisinformation stays around in their headsto improve their school performanceand knowledge base.

As we all know, this can be a tallorder, but in my school district, we’vebeen using the latest and newest tech-nologies that help engage kids in learn-ing. Our results have been significantand, I believe, worth sharing.

My job involves instructing bothteachers and students how to implementtechnology tools into their lessons. Allour middle- and high-school students inMoore County, N.C., haveChromebooks, so our digital tools mustbe compatible. As part of our constantbrainstorming of new ideas and tools,my team heard about an online musicrecording studio called Soundtrap thatruns on Chromebooks, and we devel-oped a curricular program to use it atmany schools in our district. I personal-ly use it at both of my middle schools.One is a Title 1 school with a minoritypopulation of about 50 percent, and afree or reduced lunch status of about 65percent while the other one is not a Title1 school and its minority population isabout 20 percent.

Regardless of how you use music,our results so far are demonstrating thatas a learning aid, music is a powerfultechnique. Here’s how we’re reshapingour classrooms for the better.

It’s captivating kidsMy strategy was to have students take

information and turn it into a song. Assoon as I told the kids that they would bewriting their own songs in class and per-forming them, their eyes lit up. They

were captivated by the idea ofdoing something so creative anddifferent that was still part oftheir lesson plan.

The content could be some-thing about World War I in his-tory or it could be science or beabout the planets or anythingthat teachers want them toremember. All students have todo is transfer it into lyrics andthen record it. We tell the kidsto think of it as writing a poem using theinformation from class. Children at thismiddle-school age have such a strongconnection to music and the famoussingers who perform the music, so thisapproach really reaches them and makesthem feel like they’re little superstars.

Brain research shows keyrole of music

Reinforcing the concept of our pro-gram was the fact that there have beenneurological studies using MRI and PETdevices that demonstrate how as peopleare involved with music, more areas oftheir brain are fired. Music engages prac-tically every area of the brain at once, par-ticularly the visual, motor, and auditorycortices. This kind of thinking boosts theability to plan, strategize, and focus ondetails, which translates to enhancedmemory function.

We’ve seen this play out with ourstudents. Certainly, they’re having fun,but they tell us how easy it is to write anessay now after using the tool to recordthe content, because the information isright there, stuck in their heads like anearworm. Some of our students areusing this music tool to earn higher testgrades, because they’re recalling whatthey memorized much better.

Groups of three are optimalWe put our students in groups of

three; the group dynamic has its ownobvious benefits. One student might

record a beat, the next one record thesong over it and the third could sing thelyrics they’ve written. Or some singtogether and there’s often one “tech per-son” in the group who will save theresults, do the uploading, share with theteacher, and perform other tasks. In themidst of all this, students are also get-ting a healthy dose of the so-called fourC’s — critical thinking, collaboration,communication, and creativity.

Our program grabs students via thecreative aspect of writing and performingmusic while still supporting our educa-tional goals. For example, if we use thisdigital tool in a history class about WorldWar I, the teacher would talk about con-cepts like militarism and nationalism inclass. Then, the students use their com-puters to research the possible causes ofthe war, and create a song about it. It’steaching them, but in a different way thatholds their attention.

Engagement, rather thanpoor behavior

Whenever I come into a classroom todo a creative music lesson in comparisonto traditional pen and paper lessons, thekids are all engaged and everybodywants to participate. This includes thestudents who rarely raise their hands,don’t pay attention, or even misbehave.We’ve had great results in both schools,but particularly in the Title 1 schoolbecause those kids particularly relate to

5 ways music and tech are adding a littleSTEAM to our lessons


STEAM, page 28

Music engages nearly every area of the brain.



Thought Leadership

By Sarah Brown Wessling Like so many of us, I have been

grateful throughout my life for the pro-fessionals I’ve needed to call upon forvital services and expert guidance. Thesurgeon who had years of residency andpractice before treating me on her own.Or the lawyer, who was constantly stay-ing abreast of federal and state regula-tions in order to offer me sound advice.

Similarly, students and parents relyon me every day. As teachers, we areentrusted with our nation’s children andtheir futures, yet many of us find our-selves isolated in classrooms withoutthe right training or support. Others findourselves supported by just one or twoafternoons of professional developmentper year. As we collectively elevateteaching so that it may sit comfortablyalongside other highly respected profes-

sions, we must think carefully abouthow to provide higher-quality continu-ing education for teaching.

The need for more practical andeffective learning opportunities forteachers is especially important rightnow, with new academic standardsbeing introduced and adopted across thecountry. As a teacher leader who hashad this conversation with teachers,administrators, policy makers, and par-ents, I recognize an important distinc-tion to which we must pay attention.People outside the profession oftenwant to see a greater sense of urgencyabout our work. Often, the desire forurgency looks more like drawing smallcircles around teachers through evalua-tion, ranking, and sorting. For a class-room teacher, though, this has the oppo-site effect. When I feel small, I don’tfeel urgent. I feel scared and uncertain.

If we want a teaching force that isbold and innovative, then we must fightisolation, because when we’re workingtogether, we’re sharing the responsibili-ty to do better for our students. I amurgent when I see what my colleaguedown the hall is doing and I want to getbetter. I am urgent when I watch videosor read about other teachers doingamazing work.

In an increasingly connected world,educators need access to on-demand,online resources, with tools andplatforms that facilitate collaborationand knowledge-sharing. More impor-tantly, teachers should be able to seeproven teaching methods in action, withstudents, in the context of their curricu-lum requirements and academic stan-dards. But we’re not there yet.

Teachers say that professional devel-

opment doesn’t help educators preparefor the rapidly changing nature of cer-tain aspects of their jobs, like usingtechnology and digital learning tools.That’s important insight, given that theadoption of new initiatives withoutproper training or professional develop-ment can be a major source of stress forteachers in the workplace.

There’s little question a change is inorder. The Every Student Succeeds Act(ESSA) provides a clear definition ofhigh-quality professional developmentand will create new opportunities forstates and local districts. Not to mentionthat the new federal legislation clearlydefines effective professional develop-ment as “sustained” and “intensive, col-laborative, job-embedded, data-driven,and classroom-focused.”

We’re in a moment when the policy,the need, and the demand are aligned, so

it’s time to take action to improve learn-ing opportunities for teachers at everystage of their careers. But it’s up to dis-trict administrators and school leadersto implement real change.

The National Board for ProfessionalTeaching Standards has a vision for howthat can happen. As a natural extensionof its mission to maintain high and rig-orous standards for what accomplishedteachers should know and be able to do,it is expanding access to what accom-plished teaching looks like in practice.In 2015, the Board introducedATLAS—an online platform that giveseducators at every level the ability tostudy the practice of national board-cer-tified teachers through in-depth casestudies and instructional videos. Eachteacher featured in a video case studyprovides a written annotation of his orher lesson, allowing users to see thethinking behind each decision andreflection on what worked or didn’twork. Though it is just one example ofwhat next-generation professionaldevelopment resources look like, it’s astep in the right direction.

Having the opportunity to analyzeand reflect on what constitutes accom-plished practice is why the nationalboard process was instrumental in mygrowth as a teacher. It’s why I under-stand the power of video and digitalresources. It’s why I know that makingvisual cases of exemplary instructionavailable to teachers through resourceslike ATLAS will help overcome feel-ings of isolation and foster an elevatedteaching profession. When educatorscan see first-hand how to implement ateaching method that’s aligned with aspecific framework, they can moreeffectively translate that knowledge intoaccomplished teaching practice.

Sarah Brown Wessling is a 17-year

veteran of the high school English class-

room, a National Board Certified

Teacher, and the 2010 National Teacher

of the Year.

Why digital PD needs an urgent overhaul

eSN

In an increasingly connected world, educators need access

to on-demand online resources, with tools and platforms

that facilitate collaboration and knowledge-sharing.



The growing ubiquity ofinternet access and perva-sive use of online informa-tion has changed the learn-ing landscape forever.Students continue to bene-fit from enhanced connec-tivity throughout the for-mal school day, thanks to a$1.5 billion increase in E-rate funding in the last 18months. However, demand and expecta-tions for learning outside the school dayare on the rise—and there are still manystudents struggling to complete home-work online.

It is estimated that 5 million house-holds with school-age children do nothave high-speed internet service athome. Low-income households, espe-cially black and Hispanic households,make up a disproportionate share of that5 million.[1] The under-connection oflow-income families is a real issue.Clearly, there is a great deal of work thatneeds to be done to narrow theinequitable homework gap.

This issue constitutes a new civilright; the right to digital equity; the rightto connect to needed resources—any-where, anytime. This is a civil right thatcannot be achieved by school leadersalone. A holistic approach will ensurethat school-aged children aren’t reducedto little or no access. It calls for commu-nity leadership—connected and collab-orative leadership.

Together, we’re betterIn 2014, nearly 75 percent of school

systems surveyed did not have any off-campus strategies for providing connec-tivity to students at home and afterschool. Today, we see innovative lead-ers and students from schools workingin collaboration with community lead-ers and organizations to narrow theaccess gap. Collectively, they have agreater capacity to gather and leverage

resources to provide cre-ative and effective solu-tions to the gap.

Paul Dakin,Superintendent of ReverePublic Schools, teamed upwith Mayor Daniel Rizzoto accomplish togetherwhat individual agenciesmight not have been able toachieve alone. Strategies

identified to address digital equityinclude allowing computer labs accessbefore and after school, working withthe public library to provide communityaccess and literacy programs, and part-nering with community businesses toget their businesses online. Revere wasrecognized as one of three winningcities for its student-led effort in theGetting Your Business OnlineCompetition.

In Charlotte-Mecklenburg SchoolDistrict in North Carolina, students areplaying a major role in igniting a com-munity-wide effort to provide studentaccess to both computers and broad-band outside of the school day. A 12-year-old student initiated this communi-ty engagement vision. She quickly andconvincingly partnered with parents, themayor, corporations as well as leaders.E2D, Eliminate the Digital Divide, anonprofit organization has been formed,and together, their collective impact ismaking strong headway.

These examples offer great visionand ideas that can be adapted for othercommunities along with a notable andgrowing list of others: Coachella Valley,Calif., Chattanooga, Tenn, Provo, Utah,and Beaufort, S.C.

CoSN released the Digital EquityToolkit in early 2016 to help schoolleaders and their students get communi-ty-based collaborations underway. Thekit offers case studies, survey tools,and strategies for establishing partner-ships to create collaborative and cre-

ative solutions for out-of-school accessfor students.

Interested in getting your school dis-trict and community connected? TheDigital Equity Toolkit can help you getunder way with four key steps: conduct-ing a survey, engaging your community,ensuring sustainability through commu-nity assets, and considering outside-of-the-box solutions.

E-rate focuses only on school andpublic library connectivity, yet the pub-lic-private initiatives of theConnectHOME, ConnectALL programsand modernization of the Lifeline pro-gram are all designed support building anaffordable means of home internet accessfor all. Community-wide efforts are “onthe grow” and gaining momentum quick-ly throughout the country. The GigabitCity movement and the National DigitalInclusion Alliance met in Kansas Citylast month to share successes and tostrategically plan for increased collectiveimpact in the year ahead.

This summer, CoSN, the organiza-tion Student Voice, and other partnerswill launch the National StudentLeadership Challenge, encouragingschool leaders and their students to takean active role in increasing digital equi-ty within their communities during the2016–2017 school year. Students makefor energetic and knowledgeable part-ners, and they will be working hard toincrease out-of-school access, growingthis Future Ready dimension, and nar-rowing the homework gap within theircommunities!

Keith Krueger is CEO of the

Consortium for School Networking

(CoSN).

1 John B. Horrigan, The numbersbehind the broadband ‘homework gap’(April 2015) http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/20/the-numbers-behind-the-broadband-homework-gap/

How districts are closing the homework gap3 out of 4 districts have no plans to provide off-campus internet. But there are solutions

Keith Krueger

Future Ready By Keith Krueger

eSN


http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/20/the-numbers-behind-the-broadband-homework-gap/

ADVERTORIAL

Too often, children who grow up in poverty start school wellbehind their peers academically, putting them at a disadvantageright out of the gate—and they’re frequently not able to catchup. But the School District of Hillsborough County, Florida, isusing Waterford curriculum to make sure that doesn’t happen.

“Our goal is excellence in education, and our superintendentbelieves that starts in preK,” said Head Start SupervisorEvelyn McFadden. “We want to make sure we’re doing every-thing we can to make our students successful.”

Through the Head Start program, a delegate to the Board ofCounty Commissioners, Hillsborough County has federally fund-ed preschool programs in 56 of its nearly 200 elementaryschools, serving close to 2,000 children from low-income families.

The district had experienced great success in usingWaterford Early Learning with its K-2 students, and soMcFadden and her colleagues were excited to try the com-pany’s preschool curriculum, Waterford SmartStart, with stu-dents in the Head Start classrooms as well.

Individualizing instructionDesigned to complement existing curriculum or as a stand-alone solution, SmartStart includes everything educatorsneed to provide a developmentally-appropriate curriculum fortheir preK classrooms—including books, hands-on activities,software, professional development, and an app so childrencan practice their skills outside of school.

The software component is similar to Waterford EarlyLearning in that it adapts to each child’s skill level automati-cally, giving young children a unique learning experience thatis tailored to their own pace and abilities. As the childrenprogress through the engaging songs, activities, and othermultimedia lessons, they are learning reading, math, and sci-ence skills that target their specific learning needs.

Each of Hillsborough County’s 94 Head Start classrooms hasat least three computers, and the children use the SmartStartsoftware for 15 minutes per day as part of a station rotation.

The software also generates progress reports for teachersand administrators, so they know which children need extrapractice on which sets of skills. Armed with this information,teachers know exactly what they need to focus on in theirone-on-one interaction with each child.

“This helps us individualize instruction for all of our children,”McFadden said. “In the past, that’s something we have strug-gled with. But Waterford makes it easy.”

About a third of the Head Start classrooms also have aninteractive whiteboard, and teachers in those classrooms useWaterford’s Classroom Advantage activities in their wholegroup instruction. The interactive curriculum “helps bring les-sons to life,” McFadden said.

‘Remarkable’ successIn addition to providing the curriculum materials, Waterfordsent representatives to Hillsborough County to train the dis-trict’s Head Start staff on how to use these tools effectively.

“The quality of the professional development involved willmake or break your program,” McFadden said, noting that thetraining her teachers received from Waterford helped ensuretheir success. “Our staff come in at various levels of proficien-cy with technology. The professional development we receivedwas more than just that: There were relationships built, and areal rapport with our staff in the classroom.”

With help from Waterford SmartStart, children in the district’sHead Start program have made significant gains in theirphonemic awareness, math, and science skills, setting them upfor success in kindergarten and beyond. They also are learningimportant technology skills that put them on an equal footingwith their peers from more affluent households.

“You would not believe the gains we have seen,” McFaddensaid. “To see these preschool children actually reading by May,and parents stopping you and telling you how proud they are oftheir children—it’s a great feeling. We’ve found a way to advanceour students, and we’ve had remarkable success.”

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Children who are from low-income or minority families or live in rural areas are even

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Sources: National Institute for Early Education Research and U.S. Department of Education

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Thought Leadership

By Alan NovemberNot long ago, the leadership team of

a school district I was working withasked me: “If you were going to hire anew teacher, what would you ask in theinterview?” They were concerned thathiring teachers with the right skills nowcan save a district a lot of money in staffdevelopment later. Moreover, theywanted to hire teachers who would beopen-minded about changes to come.The problem is to balance the reality oftoday’s pressure for test scores andrequired teacher evaluation with thechanges that can be anticipated duringthe next two decades.

The traditional skill we valued inteachers when paper was the dominantmedia—the ability to transfer knowledgeof a subject—is becoming less important.Increasingly, a teacher’s knowledge canbe found online and in various learningstyles. As the internet drives down thevalue of a teacher’s knowledge, their abil-ity to personalize learning with resourcesfrom around the world will increase. Wewill have more data generated about ourstudents as we build out our online com-munities. We will need teachers whounderstand how to use this data to person-alize learning for every student from avast digital library of learning resources.Also, their ability to teach students to beself-disciplined about how “to learn tolearn,” is of increasing value. Rather thanlosing overall value, teachers will bemore important than ever.

The big change is not adding tech-nology to the current design of theclassroom, but changing the culture ofteaching and learning and fundamental-ly changing the job descriptions ofteachers and learners.

I offer seven questions we typicallyask of teachers in the interview process,along with corresponding questions I

think are geared to align with how theinternet will force the redefinition of ateacher’s added value:

Current question: What do you

know about your subject?

New question: How do you manage

your own professional growth?

We typically hire teachers for whatthey already know, subject knowledge.But what may become more importantis to hire teachers who have a greatcapacity for continuous learning. How

do you find resources around the world

that you can share with your students?

How do you continuously learn?

I would hope that candidates wouldbe able to demonstrate how they followcritical hashtags on Twitter and howthey participate in professional commu-nities online, sharing with other teach-ers from around the world. Or maybethey’ve taken online courses on theirown, from sources such as EDX.org orCoursera.org

Current question: How do you

share what you already know with

students?

New question: How do you teach

students to learn what you don’t

know?

A common interview question is todemonstrate a lesson you’ve created.But at a time when knowledge transferis less important than learning how tolearn, we may need to reframe thisquestion to: How can you teach students

how you learn?

Increasingly, teachers are going to bein positions where their students willhave jumped ahead in the curriculum asthey explore YouTube and iTunes U forcontent in the subject. Increasingly,curious students will come to class ask-ing questions about the subject and theteacher may not know the answer.Teachers can either encourage this sparkof curiosity and “awe and wonder,” ornot.


teach students to solve problems?


students to become problem designers?

With relatively limited access toinformation in the world of paper, wegenerally give (maybe spoon feed) stu-dents the problems they need to solve.We emphasize finding and memorizinganswers. But now that the internet isreplacing paper as the go-to media, weneed to balance our students’ skill sets

The 7 questions every new teacher shouldbe able to answerTeaching for the 21st century looks a lot different. Here’s what you need to know for job interviews and beyond

Today’s teachers must make sense of data and online communities.


from finding answers to asking the mostinteresting questions.

A seminal moment that jolted me tounderstand the value of teaching stu-dents to ask questions came when I hadthe chance to spend most of a day withStephen Wolfram, who invented thecomputational search engineWolframAlpha, along with his brother,Conrad. He was showing me theremarkable capabilities of this “knowl-edge engine,” which can instantly pro-duce answers (and very often all of thesteps) to traditional assignments, suchas how to balance a chemical equationor to solve a math problem (even wordproblems). By the end of the day, it wasclear to me that his tool was disruptiveto giving students traditional assign-ments. We would either have to block itto prevent students from findinganswers (cheating) or we would have touse it creatively to reach higher levels ofcreative thinking (teach invention).

I asked Stephan, “What do you thinkis the most important skill for studentsto learn, given their access to a knowl-edge engine?” He immediately said,“The ability to ask good questions.Almost all of the answers to traditionalschool problems are on the internet—What is not on the internet are the ques-tions.”

If I were interviewing a new teacherI would love to hear their answer to“What do you believe are the mostimportant skills to teach your students?I would hope that a successful candidatewould answer, “Teaching students howto ask the most interesting questions.”


assess student work that is handed in

to you?

New question: What are your

expectations for students to self-

assess their work and publish it for a

wider audience?

Researcher John Hattie has poredover nearly 1,200 educational studiesfrom around the world to identify thefactors that most strongly contribute tostudent success. Of the 195 independentvariables he has identified, self-assess-ment ranks third on his list.

We need graduates who are inde-

pendent. Yet in our schools, too oftenwe’re fostering a culture of dependency,where kids are waiting for teachers totell them how well they are doing. Insome cases, our system of assessmentbecomes a ceiling for higher-qualitywork. Many students will ask, “What doI need to do to get an A?” The rubric foran A can stop students from creatingtheir very best work.

Giving students the tools to self-assess their work helps them develop asense of autonomy, and research suggests it can lead to deeper self-reflection.

The good news is, we now havemore tools to help students self-assess.For example, after a student attempts tosolve a math problem or balance anequation, he or she could produce ascreencast explaining the thinkingbehind the answer. So now you’re get-ting students to reflect on their work,instead of just providing the answers.What’s more, you could have studentsgo to WolframAlpha, type in the equa-tion, and then compare their work to thesteps that WolframAlpha provides.They can reflect on how their own workcompares and where they might havegone wrong. This provides deeperinsight for both the student and theteacher, and you’re also helping stu-dents take ownership of the assessmentprocess.

Current question: What is your

contribution to our faculty?

New question: What is your global

relationship?

Many schools have formed profes-sional learning communities in whichfaculty work together to improve instruc-tion. Who can argue against the value ofeducators sharing best practices and howto help specific students? However, if allthese conversations are limited to peopleyou see every day, within the structure ofa school, there is a very real danger thatan echo chamber will develop that hasserious limits to professional growth.There is even a danger of unknowinglyperpetuating bad practice.

If you look at research on effectivesystems, it turns out that systems withsome outside influence tend to become

stronger over time. But many schoolsdon’t really operate this way.

We need educators who value theideas wherever they can be found. Weneed teachers who are willing to sharetheir work and seek feedback from col-leagues all over the world. For example,my colleague, Kathy Cassidy, first-grade teacher from Moose Jaw,Saskatchewan, seeks ideas from col-leagues in Argentina, Italy, and manyother countries. She shares student workwith these global colleagues and is con-tinuously gaining insights.


make sure students are on task?

New question: How do you give

students an opportunity to contribute

purposeful work to others?

This comes from Dan Pink and oth-ers who have written about purpose, andwhy it’s such a motivator for doing ourbest work. Educators know that all stu-dents aren’t motivated by grades;achieving a higher grade is an externalreward (or punishment) given by some-one else—the teacher. By adding a larg-er purpose to the design of studentwork, we may be able to have more stu-dents who are much more likely tobecome engaged and self-motivated.

For example, a friend of mine whoteaches geometry in Istanbul had herstudents design the entire geometry cur-riculum for blind children. This requiresa very deep understanding of geometry,because it’s challenging to understandphysical concepts when you can’t visu-alize them.

My friend had her students visit withchildren who came to a center for theblind every Saturday, and over time, herstudents got to know these children well.When I talked to her students, it wasclear that designing this curriculum gavethem a deep sense of contribution or pur-pose. They went well beyond therequired number of hours. When I askedthem why they were spending so muchtime on the project, they said, “Thesekids need us. They expect us to come, asdo their families. We have to do thiswork.”



7 Questions, page 28



Thought Leadership

with brightly colored carpet tiles, lots ofglass walls, and stylish furniture thatcan be moved around easily to createflexible, collaborative workspaces.

Within those spaces, students workin teams to design and build parts forforestry machines, market a collegeradio station, or launch their own start-up company. To complete these activi-ties, they use the same technologies thatprofessionals in those fields would useto do their jobs.

The school’s innovative design sup-ports a more modern learning experi-ence, in which students complete hands-on, collaborative projects. It’s a perfectexample of active, 21st-century learn-ing, where students are fully engaged intheir education rather than just passive-ly listening to lectures.

For instance, in the engineering path-way, students work with engineers fromconstruction equipment manufacturerCaterpillar to design and build parts formachines used in forestry. Studentsdesign the parts using AutoCAD, printthem with a 3D printer, and when a partmeets the engineers’ specifications, theyuse a computer numerical controlmachine to mill the part out of metal.

“They’ll be taking the part fromdesign to actual use,” said DirectorChris Williams, who serves as theschool’s principal. “That’s what wewant students to experience: taking aconcept on a piece of paper and turningit into something they can use in the realworld.”

The school’s design plays an impor-tant role in supporting this active learn-ing model, right down to the furnitureused in its classrooms and work spaces.

THINC’s planners wanted tables andchairs that could be moved around easi-ly and arranged in flexible groupings tofacilitate student collaboration. Theyapproached a local company, Loy’sOffice Supplies, which recommendedthe EDU 2.0, a line of furniture from themanufacturer Bretford.

“A key differentiator was the avail-

ability of power suppliesin all of Bretford’s furni-ture,” said Chad Williams,vice president of Loy’s.With these power suppliesreadily available, studentscan plug in their digitaldevices and work com-fortably wherever theyhappen to be sitting.

THINC students areallowed to use their ownlaptops, tablets, and smartphones in support of theirlearning. Throughout itsclassrooms and commonareas, the school containscommunal docking sta-tions and tables with videomonitors, where studentscan plug in their devicesand share their screens asthey work together on projects. Soft,comfortable chairs with built-in poweroutlets dot common areas and serve asplaces where students can work inde-pendently or in small groups.

Flexibility is keyHow classrooms are designed can

have a significant effect on how stu-dents learn, research suggests—andschool leaders can encourage moreactive and engaged learning with theway their design their learning spaces.

Having flexible seating with readilyavailable power supports many differentmodes of instruction and makes it easyfor students and teachers to transitionfrom whole-group lectures or discus-sions to small-group activities. Becausethere will be times when teachers willwant to use each of these strategies intheir classrooms, flexibility is importantwhen designing learning spaces, saysNancy Van Note Chism, a former edu-cation professor at Indiana University.

“A group of learners should be ableto move from listening to one speaker… to working in groups … to workingindependently,” she writes in LearningSpaces, a publication from the higher-education technology advocacy groupEDUCAUSE. “While specialized

places for each kind of activity … canaccommodate each kind of work, theflow of activities is often immediate. Itmakes better sense to construct spacescapable of quick reconfiguration to sup-port different kinds of activities, [using]moveable tables and chairs.”

A recent study by the University ofSalford in England confirmed thatclassroom design can have a 25 percentimpact, either positive or negative, on astudent’s progress over the course of anacademic year, and flexibility—definedas how easily a classroom’s furniturecan be rearranged to support a variety ofactivities—was one of six key environ-mental factors that showed the mosteffect.

Arranging classroom furniture inways that make it easy for students topair off or work together in smallgroups not only supports active learningmore readily—it also encourages thisvery behavior among students, whilemaking it more likely that educatorswill use active learning strategies dur-ing instruction.

In a 2012 study at the University ofMinnesota, research fellow D.Christopher Brooks observed two sec-tions of a single course taught by thesame instructor, with one section meet-

Flexiblecontinued from page 1

THINC Academy in Georgia.



ing in a traditional classroom space andthe other meeting in a classroomdesigned specifically for active learn-ing. He found that both the instructorand the students behaved differently,depending on the type of classroomthey were in.

The traditional classroom had rowsof tables facing the front of the room,while the active learning classroom wasmodeled after classrooms from NorthCarolina State University’s SCALE-UPinitiative. In these classrooms, studentswere seated at large round tables thateach hold nine students, making it easyfor them to break off into groups ofthree for collaborative work.

Students in the active learning class-room—who had significantly lowerACT scores, on average—overcame thepredicted achievement gap to earn thesame average grade as their peers in thetraditional classroom setting. Evenmore significantly, how each space wasarranged affected the kinds of activitiesthat occurred there, despite the fact thatthe instructor tried to use the sameteaching methods and materials.

For instance, lecturing occurred in77 percent of the observational periodsin the traditional classroom setting andonly 55 percent of the periods in theactive classroom setting. What’s more,class discussions occurred in 48 percentmore of the observational periods in theactive learning classroom than in thetraditional classroom.

Acquiring key 21st-century skills “isenabled or disabled by the physicallearning space,” said Sean Corcorran,general manager of SteelcaseEducation. He agreed that the physicalenvironment students learn in can beoptimized to support different kinds ofactivities, such as thinking, making, orsharing.

For sharing ideas, he said, it helps ifstudents have the ability to share digitalcontent or their screen at the simplepush of a button. Google Cast couldfacilitate this by allowing users to proj-ect content from any device to a speakeror display using Google Chrome, andSteelcase sells a switching device,

called media:scape, that allows a smallgroup of users to project their screens toa shared display.

Design also affects sensesand emotions

The design of a classroom not onlyinfluences the kinds of learning activi-ties that take place there—it also canhave a profound effect on how studentsfeel, which affects their learning.

At the THINC Academy, “the wholespace breathes this atmosphere of cre-ativity and excitement,” Smith said.“We wanted to give the space a fun vibethat would be stimulating for teens.”

Saluda Trail Middle School in RockHill, S.C., received a 2015 ActiveLearning Center grant from Steelcase,which supported the physical transfor-mation of seventh-grade Englishteacher Julie Marshall’s classroom. Therows of static desks and chairs werereplaced by brightly colored chairs onwheels and desks that could be groupedinto different configurations easily tosupport more active and collaborativelearning.

“We now have brought life into thisclassroom,” Marshall said. “I can rollright up next to [students] and they canroll up next to me [or] to each other. Youcan feel that bond that’s being created ineach class. One of my kids said, ‘Ourclassroom is like the family dining roomtable.’ There is incredible engagement.”

Many of the school’s 850 studentslive in poverty, and they have beengiven the message their whole lives thatthey don’t matter, Marshall said. Butthat changed when their classroom wastransformed.

“The first day they walked in, theycould not believe what they were see-ing,” she said. “They had never experi-enced this kind of environment before.And their first reaction was, ‘I cannotbelieve that somebody cared enoughabout me to give this to me.’ Every daythey look forward to getting in theroom.”

Dennis Pierce is a contributing writer

for eSchool News.

eSN


http://texasmacrepair.com


IT Leadership

By Bridget McCreaAfter taking steps to update and

increase funding for the E-rate programin 2014, this year the FederalCommunications Commission (FCC)began allowing applicants to apply fordiscounts for dark fiber and self-provi-sioned fiber.

Seen as a way to give institutionsmore tools for meeting connectivitydemands, these “smart fiber” optionsare already being used by schoolsnationwide. With the expanded E-rateopportunities, the number of K-12 dis-tricts exploring their dark/self-provi-sioned options could grow significantlyover the next few years.

What is dark fiber?Self-provisioned options let schools

build new fiber networks without usingexisting fiber optic cables. Schools thenown those networks and, as such, areresponsible for the related operations andmanagement costs.

According to the WisconsinDepartment of Public Instruction, lit

fiber refers to a leased fiber service thatthe school does not own or manage. Inthis common scenario, bandwidthamounts are controlled by the terms of acontract with the service provider (i.e.,100 Mbps for $3,000 per month).

Dark fiber refers to physical fiberthat the school owns, leases, or IRUs(indefeasible rights of use, or permanentcontractual agreements). The schoolthen “lights” the fiber by connecting itsown network equipment to it or by con-tracting with a third party to provide andconfigure it. Bandwidth amounts arecontrolled by the school, and deter-mined by the capacity of the optical net-work equipment.

Sheryl Abshire, CTO at CalcasieuParish Public Schools in Lake Charles,La., sees E-rate’s expansion to includedark fiber provisioning as yet another

way for U.S. schools to compete in theglobal marketplace. “We have an obli-gation to meet the growing need forbandwidth and to produce young peoplewho are digitally literate and globallycompetitive,” says Abshire, whose dis-trict utilizes leased lines but is exploringits self-provisioning options.

“We have to remember that studentsin Latrobe, Louisiana, aren’t competingagainst pupils in Houston. They’re com-peting against students in Finland,Germany, Singapore, and Bangladesh, toname just a few,” says Abshire. “I’vespent considerable time at schools inAsia and Scandinavia, and I can tell youneither has bandwidth problems or spin-ning rainbows on their [laptop] screens.”

Pros and cons of DIY fiberWhen the FCC opened the door for

K-12 public schools to explore theirsmart network options, it also put awhole new set of challenges in front ofthe district that decides to build its ownnetwork. To help schools determine thebest connectivity approach in an erawhere 68 percent of district technologyleaders say they’re struggling with thisissue, the Consortium for SchoolNetworking and the Berkman Centerfor Internet & Society at Harvard

University developed Maximizing K-12

Fiber Connectivity Through E-Rate: An

Overview. The toolkit includes anoverview of the E-rate program, impor-tant considerations for schools as theyassess their options, and a call to actionfor school systems to begin takingmeasurable steps toward deciding onand making effective use of today’sfiber connectivity options.

Abshire sees affordability as one ofsmart fiber’s main attractors forschools. Play by the FCC’s rules by cre-ating a request for proposal (RFP),building out the network, and thenmaintaining it over time, she says, andover a five-year amortization period, theinitiative will probably be more costeffective than leasing lines over thatsame period. “Districts have the chanceto think out of the box and maybe evenbuild more bandwidth betweenschools,” says Abshire, who notes thatsuch initiatives aren’t for the faint ofheart.

“A CTO can’t just go out on a limb,develop an RFP, and go through themotions without factoring in ramifica-tions like maintenance, uptime, proper-ty rights (e.g., for burying cable),” saysAbshire, whose team will take part inCoSN’s Teaming for Transformation

Dark fiber upgrades take time, but could save money in the long-term.

A bright future for dark fiber Dark fiber is helping some districts scale broadband for tomorrow, not today.

Is it the future of networking?



project in the spring and visit a districtthat’s already built its own fiber net-work. “Here at our vast district, I’ll haveto talk to every community agency andeven railroad companies (for runningthe cable under the trestles) to be able toget the job done. It’s a lot of work.”

Smart-fiber upgrade It’s been about 13 years since

Cypress-Fairbanks Independent SchoolDistrict (CFISD) in Houston beganbuilding out its own fiber network.Frankie Jackson, CTO, has been withthe district since 2013 and says her teamis now in the process of upgrading to a100G high-capacity network that willsupport its 128,000 students and staff.The third largest school district inTexas, CFISD is deploying a privateoptical network leveraging high-capaci-ty networking solutions fromPhonoscope LIGHTWAVE, a privatefiber-optic network service provider,and Ciena.

The network, which is being funded inpart by the E-rate program and designedin accordance with the Smart EducationNetworks by Design (SEND) Initiativethrough CoSN, will support the districtsbring-your-own-device (BYOD) strategywhile improving access to web-basededucational resources. Jackson says thesmart-fiber upgrade is part of the district’sMission 2020 plan, which was developedby a 150-member long-range planningcommittee.

Part of Mission 2020 focused on cre-ating a high-capacity network that wouldoffer 100 percent system availability on a24/7/365 basis. “We compare networkavailability to a utility; you expect it tobe on just like you’d expect your water

or electricity to be on,” Jackson says. Tosupport the district’s BYOT initiative,that meant the network would have toaccommodate one device per elementarystudent, two for every junior high schoolpupil, and three for each high school stu-dent. “We plugged the formula into anExcel spreadsheet and factored in teach-ers’ devices, visitor usage, and then dis-trict growth over the next 20 years,” saysJackson. “Then we said okay, this is whatwe need to build to accommodate theseneeds.”

Using SEND’s guidelines for net-work design as a framework, Jackson(who participated in the creation ofthose guidelines) says she enlisted ven-dors, such as Cisco and Brocade, to helpdevelop the district’s upgraded network.Some of the key early steps includedsegmenting the 200-square-mile districtinto six hubs (two junior high schools,one service center, and three highschools) and installing dual connectionsthat link data centers to each hub and

then out to the respective sites. “We’reusing dark fiber to connect each of thosesites,” says Jackson, “and it’s runningbeautifully.”

For every self-provisioned networkthat runs beautifully, there’s at least onethat requires a little extra elbow greaseto build, maintain, and support. In somecases, the challenges surface duringRFP creation; others rear their headsduring the permitting/permission stage(i.e., running cable under railroadtracks), and still others come once thesystem is up and running.

For a smart fiber initiative to go assmoothly as possible, Jackson says dis-tricts need to avoid the “quick fix”approach to their connectivity problems.

“Everyone wants their technology com-ponents to work flawlessly 100 percent ofthe time,” she adds, “but they need tospend the time working on the foundationto assure that it can support all of thedevices being brought onto the network.”

At Bartholomew ConsolidatedSchool Corporation (BCSC) inColumbus, Ind., Director of TechnologyMike Jamerson says the district has his-torically relied on a common carrier toprovide the district’s managed fiberservice. The district also has some darkfiber in areas where schools are separat-ed by a street. The latter has been inplace for about 15 years in some loca-tions, says Jamerson, who sees permit-ting and easement permissions as one ofthe most difficult aspects of installingdark fiber.

“It’s pretty easy when you’re doing iton your own property,” says Jamerson.“When you have to go out any distanceor run it under railroad tracks or acrosswaterways, it can get pretty time con-

suming.” Once those issues areaddressed, the district also has to regis-ter the fiber so that it can be located inthe future. And don’t forget to factor inlong-term maintenance issues andexpenses—particularly if you’re usingaerial fiber.

“When you’re using aerial fiber onsomeone else’s poles, there will be rentalexpenses associated with that strategy,”says Jamerson. “And what happens ifthere’s an ice storm? These are all con-siderations that need to be worked out inadvance if you’re going to self-provisionyour own network.”

Bridget McCrea is a contributing

writer for eSchool News.

eSN

A bright future for dark fiber Dark fiber is helping some districts scale broadband for tomorrow, not today.

Is it the future of networking?

For every self-provisioned network that runs beautifully, there’s at least one that

requires a little extra elbow grease to build, maintain, and support. In some cases, the

challenges surface during RFP creation; others rear their heads during the

permitting/permission stage (i.e., running cable under railroad tracks), and still others

come once the system is up and running.



IT Leadership

classroom, for example, has come torely on that cart of fully charged iPadsor Chromebooks that’s rolled into herclassroom at 8 a.m., ready for a full dayof tech-based instruction.

Unfortunately, a lot can go wrongbetween the time those devices werelast used and the English teacher’s firstclass. A scheduling argument, a cartloadof devices that didn’t charge properly,or a logistical snafu that ends with thecart situated clear across campus can allwreak havoc on a seemingly solid tech-nology initiative.

“Myriad challenges can come upwhen you’re trying to manage hundredsof devices across dozens of carts andcampuses,” said Herb Haubrich, technol-ogy director at Waunakee CommunitySchool District in Waunakee, Wis. “Justmanaging the sheer number of devicesalone can be daunting, not to mentiongetting the iPads or Chromebooks outinto learning environment and ensuringthat they’re scheduled, distributed,charged, and then prepped for the nextday’s use.”

Recently, we spoke with three tech-nology directors and one cart vendor,and asked them to share their best prac-tices for iPad and Chromebook cartusage in the K-12 setting—from boththe IT and instructional perspectives.

Understand the learningspace

Don’t just roll a few carts into aschool building and hope that they fitwell in the learning space. Instead, sitdown with teachers and talk to themabout how they transition between sub-jects, activities, and classes. In a blockedscheduling environment, for example,they’ll need charging support that goesbeyond just a few hours (since multipleteachers will need the carts back-to-backthroughout the day). “Understand theenvironment that instructors are workingin,” said Rob Dickson, executive directorof IMS at Omaha Public Schools inOmaha, Neb., “and then develop a cartstrategy based on those requirements.”

Build a schedule that worksfor everyone

When Waunakee CSD brought in1,200 Chromebooks for grades four to12 last year, Haubrich’s team built out aschedule that allowed teachers to signout the carts as needed. “We found thatonly works if teachers play by therules,” he said. For example, some sci-ence teachers decided to sign up to usethe carts every week for the entireschool year. “Our schedule blew up inour faces,” said Haubrich, whose teamsat down and talked to the teachersabout “equity and fairness,” and thendeveloped a SQL-based scheduler thatit uses to more fairly distribute the cartson campus. Anne McEntire, ed-techspecialist at Easton Independent SchoolDistrict in Easton, Pa., uses GoogleCalendar to address her district’s cartscheduling challenges. At the elemen-tary level, for example, teachers aregenerally limited to using the carts forjust 40 minutes (as noted on the calen-dar, which everyone can access). At thesecondary level, instructors who teachthe same class all day need extendedaccess to the carts—an accommodationthat’s also noted on Google Calendar.

Make the library a centralcart hub

Dickson sees the school library as acentral hub for media services and digi-tal citizenship. With this in mind, hesaid, the library can serve as the perfect,centralized location for cart manage-ment, storage, and scheduling. “From alogistics standpoint, libraries havebecome a focal point for schools in thisdigital age,” said Dickson. “If thelibrary can oversee the movement andorchestration of the carts, you can gaina lot of leverage while at the same timeenhancing the library’s already-impor-tant position on the K-12 campus.”

Do your homework beforebuying

Rob Fox, national sales manager atBretford Manufacturing, said schoolsshould factor in some key considera-tions before purchasing their carts. For

example, the entire dimension of themobile device—including spacing forthe power adapter when plugged intothe device—is an important point. Makesure there are external outlets forperipherals (i.e., printers, projectors,access point, laptop on top, etc.), hesaid, and factor class sizes into youractual plan for deploying/utilizing themobile devices and carts. “Carts comein a wide variety of capacity sizes,” Foxsaid, “so ensure the capacity size meetsthe needs of the usage model.”

Learn the difference betweentimer charging and smartcharging

Timer charging essentially rotatesthrough power banks in pre-set timeincrements. Smart charging intelligentlymeasures power demand and deliverspower when and where it is needed.Another important differentiatorbetween the two: Timer charging is lessexpensive than smart charging. Whenconsidering which carts to select, “It’simportant to understand which powermanagement system works best for aschool’s specific needs,” said Fox.

Give teachers and studentssupport in small bites

McEntire avoids overwhelmingteachers with dozens of new mobileapps or usage tips for their devices, butshe does want to help them get the mostout of their cart-based iPads,Chromebooks, and laptops. To achievethis balance, she sends out a short list ofapp recommendations every Tuesday.“We’re a 9,000-student district withlimited time for professional develop-ment, so it’s hard for our teachers to seeall of the cool, new, fun apps that are outthere,” said McEntire, who also workswith students in the classroom, showingthem how to use larger applications likeGoogle Classroom. “I find that betweenthe information sharing and the timespent in the classroom, we’re able toleverage our investment in carts anddevices pretty well.”

Bridget McCrea is a contributing

writer for eSchool News.

Cartscontinued from page 1

eSN



21st-Century Instruction

By Michael NiehoffWith the onset of the so-called “new

economy,” much of our educational sys-tems are being questioned. With morethan 40 percent of future work beingindependent contract work, what is thebest way to learn or prepare for a career?

Most of us associate learning andcareer preparation with school.However, learning exists outside theformal constraints of institutions.Whether it’s employment (on-the-jobtraining), real world experiences, ortravel, we understand that learning canbe self-directed.

This realization has led to anincrease in what is often calledunschooling or even hacked education.Although often associated with home-schooling, unschooling is somewhatdifferent. Homeschooling often uses setcurriculum and instructional approach-es, whereas true unschooling is directedby the learner.

The approach is unconventional, to besure, but it recently gained more atten-tion when Tesla/SpaceX founder ElonMusk created a learning alternative forhis children embracing unschooling,self-directed learning tenets such asexploration, choice, natural life experi-ences, and visits to real world learningcenters (museums, zoos).

There may now be a growing aware-ness among some parents, educators,and even students that traditionalschools may not, or cannot, meet theindividual needs of the learner. At thesame time, the approach could hold les-sons and implementation strategies forall of us in education.

What is unschooling?According to many practitioners,

unschooling is a learner-centered peda-gogy. Learners choose their own pathbased on interests throughout their nat-ural lives including, but not limited tonatural play, household responsibilities,

work-based experiences, travel, socialinteractions, and family.

Unschooling is about one’s personallearning journey—operating on thepremise that the more personal thelearning is, the more impactful it willbe. By design, unschooling questionsthe relevance of standard curriculumand instructional approaches, as well aselements that will often impede learningsuch as grading. In the end, unschoolingpractitioners would argue that the self-directed learning approach truly pre-pares students for the real world insteadof a formal education.

An unschooling profileMatt Powers, a former public school

teacher, decided that an unschoolingmodel would be best for his sons.Powers’ eldest son has had no formalmusic training, but can play guitar,piano, and drums proficiently. He alsouses Logic as well as Minecraft severaltimes a week while also hunting, cook-ing, farming, and traveling.

“It’s authentic learning,” saidPowers. “Tests include things likeworking with a wild horse, learning aninstrument, and studying a passion in-depth for years. Because of hisunschooling, he’s much more confidentin his beliefs and personality.”

Project-based learningWith the demands of meeting 21st-

century educational needs, project-based learning has gained tremendousrecent attention as a pedagogical path.In addition to being about solving realworld problems and doing public work,PBL also focuses engaging students inowning their learning—an approachsimilar to unschooling.

High school history teacher JahmaalSawyer embraces this approach whenhe offers his students the opportunity tostudy what he calls the “History ofAnything In U.S. History.”

According to Sawyer, who teaches atMinarets High School/Minarets CharterHigh School in the rural foothills ofCentral California, the U.S. History proj-ect was developed in response both creat-ing a project that allowed students highlevels of autonomy, as well as to developa project that sparked student interest.

Sawyer said the focus is on appropriateresearch skills, accuracy of information,and creating a thesis-driven project on theoverall historical significance of the event,person, or item they have chosen.

“As someone who has studied histo-ry for many years, I echoed the con-tempt that many students have todaythat history doesn’t hold a relevantplace in their academic life,” saidSawyer. “I have very few students whodo not accomplish this project success-fully, and I attribute that to studentshaving a say in their project.”

20Time projects / GeniusHour

Originally based on the corporate cul-ture of Google where employees weregiven 20 percent of their time to pursueprojects of their choice, teachers haveevolved the Genius Hour concept into apractice of giving students focused timeto pursue ideas of their own volition freefrom the constraints of grades, standards,and other educational criteria.

Much like unschooling advocates,Genius Hour practitioners believe that ifstudents are given complete autonomyto learn what they want to learn, they

What schools can learn from the unschooling movement

Unschooling goes beyond home school.

Learn, page 28



IT Leadership

By Gary Brantley Teachers today are responsible for so

many things.They have to plan instruction for all of

their classes. They have to tie this instruc-tion to rigorous state and national stan-dards. They have to assess their students’understanding on an ongoing basis, lookat what the data say, and adjust theirteaching based on the results. They haveto differentiate instruction for every child.They have to foster deeper understandingamong their students, addressing not onlycore content standards but also key 21st-century skills such as communication,collaboration, critical thinking, and prob-lem solving.

Teachers can’t do all of that if they’reconstantly logging out of one softwaresystem and into another. It’s far toomuch for them to manage.

That’s why we at DeKalb CountySchool District—Georgia’s third largestschool system, with about 103,000 stu-dents and 14,000 employees in gradesK-12—set out to find a single systemthat could tie together assessment, datamanagement, and instruction. We want-ed our teachers to be able to manage theentire learning cycle through one easy-to-use platform with a single sign-on.

We suspected that having a single plat-form unifying instruction and assessmentwould make our teachers more produc-tive—and more likely to use data to drivetheir instruction. We’ve found that to betrue, while realizing a number of otherkey benefits as well.

A single platformOur search process began in early

2015. We wanted representation from awide range of stakeholder groups, espe-cially those who would be using the sys-

tem in their classrooms every day. So,we convened an evaluation team thatconsisted of about 70 teachers, curricu-lum specialists, principals, and assistantprincipals, along with another 15 tech-nical personnel.

We invited the companies that Gartnerhad identified as the top seven providersof learning management system (LMS)software to visit us and tell us about theirproducts, and we set up a “sandbox”environment in which teachers and otherscould evaluate these systems.

Our evaluation process lasted severalweeks. In the end, we chose itslearningas our new learning management plat-form. Not only did we like the system’sfunctionality, but we also liked howwell it integrated with all of our othersoftware programs, such as InfiniteCampus, our student information sys-tem, and TrueNorthLogic (PerformanceMatters), our professional developmentand talent management system.

With this LMS platform, teacherscan create, share, and assign lessons totheir students; build and deliver a vari-ety of assessments and checks forunderstanding; track and analyze stu-dent progress toward learning goals;and extend their students’ learningbeyond the school day with rich discus-sions and activities—all from a singleinterface.

Delivering SLO assessmentsWe have been rolling out the LMS

platform to our teachers in phases, usinga “train the trainer” model. Because wewanted teachers to be invested in theplatform right away, we began with aprocess they were already familiar with:delivering assessments built aroundStudent Learning Objectives (SLOs).

We have pre-loaded existing SLOassessments within the system thatteachers can administer electronically totheir students, and teachers are able tocreate their own SLO assessments aswell. Teachers use the information theyreceive back from these assessments toguide their instruction and help closeachievement gaps.

Although the data dashboards withinthe system allow for rich analysis of theassessment results, we have built ourown data visualization tools using ananalytics program called Tableau thatwe use to supplement this information.From within the LMS interface, teach-ers can drill down and see exactly howtheir students are performing in relationto each standard and learning objective,and they can group students appropri-ately for small-group instruction orassign personalized content to eachchild to help fill the gaps in students’learning.

Having access to all of this informa-tion in one simple place makes teachersmore effective. It’s something ourteachers are very excited about, becauseit allows them to be much more produc-tive. But they’re also excited about thepossibilities for teaching and learningthat the platform opens up for themmoving forward. These include oppor-tunities to create communities for col-laborating across the district; share,rate, and review instructional resources

The simple LMS move that has made ourteachers more effectiveMigrating to a single platform for assessment, data analysis, and instruction has simplified most everything for one district

A single platform reduces complexity.



from a single location; communicatethrough discussion boards, chat, andvideo conferencing; have students cre-ate electronic portfolios demonstratingtheir work; and extend their students’learning online.

Extending the learningNow that every teacher is using the

system to deliver SLO assessments andtrack student progress, we’re moving tothe next phase of our rollout, which is touse the system for online and blendedlearning. We currently have about 750early adopters using the platform toextend learning opportunities for theirstudents online, and our goal is to haveall teachers doing this as of August.

Our early adopters are finding thatstudents are using the platform’s onlinediscussion tools to connect with eachother outside of class, leading to power-ful discussions that take their learningdeeper. Teachers are finding that stu-dents are more likely to open up in thisonline format; it’s a lot easier for themto ask a question or comment on eachothers’ ideas when they don’t have tospeak up in front of the class.

What’s more, the system also givesparents a window into how their childrenare learning, so they can participate morefully in their children’s education. It’sleading to greater engagement amongboth students and their parents.

One of the most common reasons

teachers don’t use technology to supporttheir instruction is because of the com-plexity involved, and that includes havingto remember multiple passwords and login and out of various systems all day.

We’ve imported more than 250courses into the platform, and teachersand students can access all of their con-tent and all of their data from a singleonline interface. By adopting a singleplatform for assessment, data analysis,and instruction, we have reduced com-plexity and improved the learningreturn on our ed-tech investment.

Gary Brantley is the chief information

officer for Georgia’s DeKalb County

School District.

eSN

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will not only be more engaged, but alsowork at levels exceeding standard class-room expectations and processes.

Hacked leadershipIn addition to building more person-

alized learning experiences for students,Illinois Elementary Principal KathyMelton believes that unschooling caninfluence how we lead professionaldevelopment for teachers.

“All of us enjoy learning what we areinterested in,” said Melton. “Unschoolingchallenges me to create autonomy forteachers in their professional learning.”

When we create systems, saidMelton, we could ask if they are a natu-ral response to learning or a contrivedsystem forced upon people.

“The environment in the classroomreflects what environment we create forour teachers,” said Melton. “Find outabout what people are passionate aboutand allow them the freedom to maxi-mize that.”

Gap Year(s)Although not a new idea, more and

more students are participating in sojournsinto unschooling with a Gap Year. Manycollege-bound students have considered, aswell as executed, a year between highschool and college dedicated to travel, realworld experiences, work experience, andself-directed learning. But it’s not just forcollege-aged students. Ken Durham, ahigh school principal, is embracing a gapyear for his 12-year-old daughter. Insteadof attending sixth grade, she will live inAustralia with her grandmother who hasParkinson’s. She will also travel to Japanand New England while doing things likeLit Trips of the places she visits.

“We want her to explore the world,”said Durham. “We don’t want her learn-ing to only be from a book, a device, ora classroom.”

Michael Niehoff is a former high

school principal and the current CTE

grant manager for College of the

Sequoias in California.

August/September 2016 • www.eSchoolNews.com28

music. Our students there have a greatlove of rap music, and they relish thechance to create their own beats andlyrics. These kids are performers wholove to get up and present their cre-ations. For them, it’s also a confidencebuilder and a way to prove that theyhave what is takes to be successful inschool.

I’ve worked with many digital toolsthat exploit various creative areas but thefocus on music has been the kids’favorite. By comparison, I’ve taughtgraphic design using online poster-mak-ing software based on their class content,but I don’t get the same engagement thathappens when the medium is music.

An extension, notreplacement, of regularlesson plan

Naturally, pen-and-paper lessons arestill a key part of the curriculum, butwe’ve found that having lessons like thisusing music once a week or every otherweek are crucial. Without effective digi-tal tools, teachers will lose the kids, sotapping into their creativity and interestsusing music as the medium is a powerfulinstructional technique. Most peoplehave an innate response to musicality inits many forms, so tapping into the basicresponse to music makes the learning ofcontent so much more effective.

Jilian Reynolds is digital integration

facilitator for Moore County Schools in

North Carolina.

eSN

STEAMcontinued from page 13

Learncontinued from page 25

manage your classroom?


students to manage their own

learning?

Traditional teacher evaluation sys-tems often focus the evaluator’s obser-vations on the teacher’s behavior. Muchof this behavior is focused on teachingstudents to become dependent upontheir teachers. Many classrooms are setup to teach students “how to be taught.”What we need are teachers who canteach students to “learn how to learn.”

In a teacher-centric classroom, stu-dents are dependent on the teacher fordirection. But compare that to a teacherwho has taught her students to be self-directed and collaborative learners.Our society needs people who can fig-ure out ideas from all over the worldand manage their own work. This is areally important skill.

Learning how to learnNotice that there are no interview

questions that ask about the candi-date’s technology skills. While anunderstanding of technology is essen-tial, these questions revolve around the

application of technology to funda-mentally change the culture of theclassroom.

Collectively, the questions moveaway from a classroom that is designedto “learn how to be taught” to one thathighly values “learning how to learn.”In some ways, the teachers we needmoving forward are the antitheses tothe teacher skills we have beendemanding. It will be difficult to avoidthe tension that would naturally evolvebetween the two approaches to manag-ing a classroom.

While disruption of the traditionalclassroom culture is inevitable, itwould be impossible to simply flip aswitch to the new one. We will needleaders who understand how to manage the transition. Now is the timeto rethink the added value of a teacherin the age of the internet and toredesign our hiring practices to matchthis new role.

Alan November is senior partner and

founder of November Learning. Follow

him on Twitter @globalearner.

7 Questionscontinued from page 19

eSN

eSN

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ONLINE ADVERTISERS

PRINT ADVERTISERS

August/September 2016 • www.eSchoolNews.com 29
















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Number Theory


The reality of virtual realityFor many, virtual reality conjures up images of bulky headsets capable of transporting users

around the world—or the galaxy. Despite recent advances, its place in the classroom is probably

more theoretical than practical. Plenty of teachers would like that to change, though, according to

a recent survey of 1,000 K-12 teachers from Samsung, which found an overwhelming majority of

participants (83 percent) said virtual reality could have a positive influence on learning outcomes,

although only 2 percent have tried it. Here’s where the teachers think it holds the most promise:

Source: Samsung and GfK http://www.slideshare.net/SamsungBusinessUSA/is-virtual-reality-ready-for-the-classroom

ROB HAINERSHUTTERSTOCK.COM

68% Help supplementcurriculum like viewing chemical

reactions

72% Simulate

experiences like flying early biplanes

69%Travel to

global landmarks in virtual field trips

42%Tour college campuses

http://www.slideshare.net/SamsungBusinessUSA/is-virtual-reality-ready-for-the-classroom


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