21st C. Learning Summit – And End and a Beginning

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On Thursday, October 14, 2010, Solution Tree’s 21st C. Learning Summit closed with provocateur Will Richardson. For the first time that week, rather ironically, the speaker established a backchannel for behind-the-scenes conversations and questions. For the first time that week, rather ironically, the speaker used a share-able presentation tool that required no paper.

https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ah8n38hnwpnq_765gr5sjmd9

With a similar message to that of Chris Dede, Will Richardson compelled the audience to realize that learning is a 24-hour-a-day possibility with the advantages of countless learning networks. Education is distributed now, and it is no longer essentially confined to the time and space called school. In fact, school sometimes gets in the way of deep, efficient learning, because it often is the slowest institution to change and adapt. Students utilize smart phones rather effortlessly to stay connected and to learn, but schools often ask students to check their phones at the door. Cheryl Lemke had said it the day before – school is now but one of many nodes on a stident’s primary learning carrosel, and we need to accept that we no longer occupy the most important or central position…not while we lag behind this generations normal modalities of learning and growing. Doug Fisher, too, practically scolded us for banning cell phones from students in school. If we don’t teach students to use their networks and tools wisely, who will? Schools, let’s make sure we stay relevant and provide the coaching and immersive education that students deserve.

Great Expectations

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When I returned from Chicago recently, where I was attending a 21st C. learning summit, I was excited to hear how the eighth-graders at my school had responded to a new experiential ed initiative. In particular, I was excitedly interested to learn how the students in Synergy 8 had faired. I mean, they had had nine weeks of collaboration practice that the other eighth-graders had not had. They should be able to set the standard high for experiential education. To my surprise, however,a trusted colleague reported to me, almost in a glib way, that the Synergy 8 students had seemed more dysfunctional than the other advisement groups. “What?,” I wondered, “How could that be?” Then, other adults corroborated the stories. The Synergy 8 students seemed to suffer from more-than-usual disagreement and angst. They seemed to be victims of indecision illness. Certainly not all 24 of them, but that’s how adult after adult seemed to describe their issues.

Of course, people had higher expectations of the Synergy 8 students. Why? And why did the students fall short of the expectations? Do they want to be the problem-solving experts of the middle school, or is this just another class that takes 55 minutes a day. I look forward to discussing with the students.

21st C. Learning Summit – in progress report

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During this week, I am attending Solution Tree’s “21st C. Learning Summit” in Chicago. So far, we have heard from Ken Kay of P21, Rick DuFour (one of my main heroes)of PLCs, and Chris Dede of Harvard and “immersive learning.”

Ken Kay’s message, in my own words, is that we need to blend the 3Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic) with the 4 Cs (critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity) to facilitate interconnected content and skill development for students in the 21st C.

Rick Dufour made the case that we can only get to Ken Kay’s vision if we have a plan for teacher learning – professional learning communities that provide workplace learning everyday instead of workshop learning a few times a year. The evidence of PLC effectiveness is convincing and compelling. We just need to do what we know works! Learning must be the focus, collaboration must be the culture, and results must direct our course. Four Qs should guide us…1) what should students learn? 2) How will we now that they have learned? 3) What will we do when they don’t learn? 4) What will we do when they already know it. We teachers should model the four Cs in the way we work…modeling is a powerful teacher for students.

Chris Dede spoke of distributed education – a system that extends beyond the school in space, time, and people. And learning should happen through collaborative problem resolution via mediated interaction. We should help students with real life by making learning less segmented and more integrated through projects, situated learning, and immersive learning. Furthermore, good formative and diagnostic assessment could replace summative assessment as we scale effective assessment of skills and content in context.

Daniel Coyle’s Opening-of-School Letter

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Thanks to Leslie Ann Little for sending me this from Daniel Coyle’s blog. I am pasting the content below. http://thetalentcode.com/2010/08/24/letter-to-students-cliffs-notes-for-a-faster-brain/

“Dear Kids,

Happy first day of school! I’ve got good news and bad news.

First the bad news: You are about to spend hundreds of hours learning a bunch of small, interconnected facts, most of which you will never, ever, ever use again. (Proof: ask your parents how to calculate the area of a rhombus. I rest my case.)

Now the good news: school is hugely, amazingly, life-changingly worthwhile. Here’s why: learning bunches of interconnected facts makes your brain faster and stronger. School is like a machine for improving your brain. But in order to improve it the most, it helps to know the basic rules of how that sucker works.

(Why don’t more schools spend time — a half-day, say — teaching kids the how their brains work? This state of affairs seems utterly crazy to me. Would you try to teach someone to drive a car without showing them the accelerator and steering wheel?)

So before you get started filling your brains with facts, here is a (very) brief user’s manual for your brain.

Rule 1: Feel the Burn

If you want strong, fast muscles, do you:

• A) do nothing and wait for your muscles to get strong

• B) Go to the store, buy bags of marshmallows and lift them over and over

• C) Go to the gym and work out until your muscles burn

Congratulations for picking C) – because here’s the deal: your brain works exactly like your muscles. To get stronger and faster, you have to push yourself right to the edge of your ability, until you feel the burn — which in this case is that spot where you make mistakes.

This is not easy. It feels uncomfortable – sort of like lifting a heavy weight. But it’s how you’re built. Struggle is not optional – it’s a requirement.

• Do: Be willing to make mistakes, fix them, reach again. Mistakes aren’t verdicts – they’re navigation points for the next try.

• Don’t: Sit back and let information flow over you like a warm, comfortable bath. This feels good, and it’s an absolutely terrible way to learn.

Rule 2: Repetition is Underrated. (Repetition is Underrated.) Also, Repetition is Underrated.

When it comes to learning, there is nothing (repeat: nothing!) you can do that is more powerful than repetition when you are pushing yourself to the limits of your abilities, practicing, making mistakes, evaluating, making corrections and practicing again. Practice makes permanent! The reasons are complicated, but boil down to this: intense repetition makes the wires of your brain work faster. A LOT faster.

• Do: Picture the wires of your brain working faster and faster with each rep.

• Don’t: Think of repetition as drudgery. It’s not like doing boring chores. It’s a lot closer to installing high-speed broadband.

Rule 3: Steal From the Best

Look, I know your teacher and parents tell you that you are special and unique, but the truth is, you aren’t the first person in the history of the world to do math, music, art, or sports. In short, it’s not about you. When you encounter a problem, look to others. Find the people who do it well, and copy how they study, how they listen, how they take notes. Rip them off. Steal their habits, figure out the way they think, break into their vault. Your brain is built to mimic.

• Do: Keep a list of useful habits you’d like to steal.

• Don’t: Take defeat too personally. (Same with success, for that matter.)

In sum, making your brain fast and strong is all about doing the three R’s: Reach, Repeat, and Rob the Banks.

Good luck!”

From (with minor editing):

http://thetalentcode.com/2010/08/24/letter-to-students-cliffs-notes-for-a-faster-brain/

Students Lead Email Conference with Parents

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This past week in Synergy 8 – the interdisciplinary, problem-solving course in Westminster’s Junior High – students emailed their parents with two document attachments. The first was a collaboratively created newsletter that hosted six stories from student teams and an article from Ms. Gough and me. The story teams consisted of four students each, and the teams addressed a major question that parents had expressed at Class Rotation night. By responding to these parent questions, such as, “What is Synergy 8?,” students detailed what we’ve been doing in this learning environment for the past month.

Even more importantly, though, students attached a personalized progress report with anecdotes about the learning and growth that each had experienced during the first month of Synergy 8. In the past, marking periods at school involved at least two adults “talking” about a student’s learning. A teacher wrote a comment to a parent, and the student sat relatively passive, waiting to read the comment until it was published. This week, however, the students returned to the drivers’ seats, in the position of first-hand describers of their own learning and growth.

In addition to thinking back with the use of the newsletter articles, student reflection began with a rubric that Ms. Gough and I designed (a portion is pasted above). The rubric organized the twelve essential learnings of Synergy 8 into four categories and students indicated their perceived learning and growth using a four-point scale with simple criteria. Then, students selected their greatest area of learning and growth – their “bright spot” (a la the Heath brothers’ Switch) – and engaged a writing exercise to explain their development in that area. During the drafting and revising stages, students posted their rubric ratings and writing samples to a GOOGLE form so that Ms. Gough and I would have the student data. After completing a revised draft, students sent a progress report that included at least two drafts of their reflection and writing. Parents and teachers (copied on the e-mail) could read about the student’s learning and growth, and we could see the actual progress of the writing by way of the multiple drafts included.

Here’s an example of one student’s reflection:
“Synergy 8 is not the most typical class in school. It is very different from other classes. ‎The teachers are more our equals than our teachers. We are all learners in this course. However, ‎because Synergy 8 is a new course, we still have to work out the kinks. I have become an ‎excellent problem solver because of this. I have been taking notes in my observation journal to ‎help me identify ideas or problems. Through these notes, I have asked questions about our school ‎and our community. I have also posted on Grou.ps to help others solve their problems.‎
“One specific journal entry I have written is about cell phone usage during school. This ‎was one of my early journal entries. I asked some questions concerning cell phones during school. ‎When we started using Grou.ps as a communication tool, I found that others had similar ideas on ‎cell phones. From here, many of us have commented on whether they think cell phones would ‎work during school. Beau M. says of cell phones, “It all depends on how you use the device. ‎If you use it responsibly, it’s beneficial. If people can’t use it like they should, well, it’s not ‎beneficial. The 6th grade laptops could be used as “what’s for lunch” devices, but they use them ‎correctly. I think we have enough responsibility to do the same.” I agree with Beau. With cell ‎phones, we can take notes and search questions or ideas we have during class. The next step for ‎this is to take action and create an experiment. This way, we could see if this is a realistic goal.‎
“From a small journal entry, we have created something much more. We have produced ‎rich conversation on this topic, and this is what Synergy 8 is about. For me, learning how to ‎identify a problem and take action to fix it is what we need to do. This is why we are here. From ‎Synergy 8, I have learned to take note of the world around me—to live in the now. There will ‎always be another challenge waiting for me if I look around.‎”

Don’t we want students in middle school to take more ownership of their own learning and growth? Don’t students have the capacity to describe their own development? Shouldn’t students be able to explain what and how they have learned? Instead of having students read an adult conversation about their school experience, I am thrilled that the Synergy 8 students directed that conversation this week.