Problem #6 in the Solving Problems in Unit Design is something that drives me and my learners crazy. It's all my fault too. For way too long, I chased too many objectives and goals. I would start to design a unit and realize that there were other standards, goals, and learning going on. I thought that it made my lesson planning better by having all of these tangents identified and listed out. It was not uncommon to have 10 or more standards being the focus of a project.
It became a real mess. The rubrics were huge. It was not uncommon to have a rubric that was 3 or more pages long. It was insane. No one knew what to focus on. We were trying to hit every target at once. No matter how hard learners worked, there was always something that was left out. It was frustrating for all of us. That has changed. Now, we focus on only one or two standards. Sure, the work will cover other things, but we don't assess that part of it. The rubrics are now only a couple of lines long. Usually only 2 or 3 things. Amazingly, my learner have been better able to really focus on what I want them to learn and then demonstrate it.
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Accuracy is just as important. Accuracy comes from the quality of the work. Something that is sloppily done, but correct isn’t really accurate. The answer may be found by accident. Being accurate and precise takes time and pride. Striving for accuracy will lead to the right answer, but it is mostly focused on the journey. The right answer is a part of the journey, not the destination. We can push toward professional-quality work, especially in high school. Should be moving in that direction. Each day should get better.
Finally, there is precision. We let our learners get away with poor communication. We let them quit early because we will accept imprecise work that we as the teacher deciphered instead of making the learner fix it. Don’t accept imprecise descriptions. Language plays a key role. Learners must communicate clearly and precisely. Don’t use vague and imprecise language. Use the correct terms. Look them up. Don’t memorize words, use words. Be precise in pronouns. Generalizations don’t lead to precision. Speak specifically about who and what you mean. The process makes learners dig deeper into the material. I now find myself being pushed by persistence, accuracy, and precision. Not a calendar. Funny side note: I had a misspelling in the title and had to go back and fix it... Here’s the third part of this discussion. I talked previously about setting up all students for success. Let’s get back to it...
Scaffolding, multiple approaches, and an iterative cycle of attempts and feedback is making use of the state of brain development my students are presently at. A “one-and-done” approach to grades ignores brain development completely and is really in-humane. For that reason, after I determine what will be taken for a grade after I have put together a body of learning that should be appropriate for every single learner in my room to master the material that is necessary for future success after the year is over. Every single one of these learning activities are critical. There is nothing there that can be skipped. Seriously. If it is fine for a learner to skip it and “just take a zero”, then why in the world am I wasting class time on it? Everything gets completed to the minimum acceptable standard. We stay at it till it’s done. I make it abundantly clear, that I the work is necessary and I won’t budge. They will do it and do it well. We are in it together and I am going to be there with them until they get it done. It’s my job to support them in their learning and help them be successful. Making every learner complete everything requires me to be very particular in the things I assign and the timing of the assignment. Not everything is for a grade, but everything is critical and leads to the grade. My goal is that by the time we get to the “graded” assignment, the grade is usually a non-issue. We have been working at all of the lead with so much depth and feedback that mastery has been accomplished. That’s the goal. It’s not always the outcome. There are times that we still need to work on it. A clarification: there is a monumental difference between not mastering content according to an arbitrary deadline and willful disobedience. Interestingly enough, they are both directly related to brain development, but come from different circumstances. On that note, if a student struggles to master a concept in time and gets punished for it (getting a zero, etc), will quite possible end up being a behavior problem in class. It all goes back to brain development and the amygdala. I will keep working with my learners until they master the content. Even with all of the supports and planning, there are times that learners need extra time. Fine. I give both of us that breathing room. First of all, I don’t take many grades. It goes back to how I use grades. It’s a measure of mastery, not compliance. If you don’t allow learners to retry the work after giving quality feedback, then you need a ton of grades to make sure you reduce the impact of outliers. A good student who misses one assignment should fail. But you also have to be honest with yourself. It also means that the “slacker” can’t raise their grade by suddenly turning something in on time. In this case, grades are about compliance and punishment. I don’t subscribe to that philosophy. The grade is the goal we are working toward. I am going to do everything I can to support each learner in achieving the learning and earning the grade. If I have a bunch of grades, then the work we do in class never gets beyond surface level work. Depth of learning takes time and iterations. Additionally, I don’t have graded assignments scheduled for the last week of the grading period. I want to give time for everyone to achieve mastery. I usually don’t have more than a couple of students who need this leeway. What’s cool is that this process self-creates small-learning groups that I can easily identify and support. If a lot of learners need this time, then I messed up in my planning and need to adjust accordingly. The fault is not with the learner. The fault is with me. This brings me back to feedback. A number or letter grade is not quality feedback. At best it’s blunt tool to metaphorically hit kids over the head with. Again, it goes back to brain development. If you get a zero, then you don’t know this material, so what chance do you have in learning the next material, so why bother doing anything else at this point? Quality feedback points out the things the learner did well on, the things they missed, and points them in the right direction toward fixing the mistakes. I’m going to go back to Rick Wormeli, “The one who edits is the one who learns.” The learner needs to do the work, but they need to know where the did well and where they need improvement. This feedback takes time. There is no way you can do it if you are grading several assignments a week. This is why I love quality projects. First of all, I can break the learning down into small pieces that lead to inevitable learning success. Second, while the feedback I give takes time, I don’t have to do a lot of it every day for every learner. It gets spread out. I have time for those that need me the most. Third, learners start to develop an intrinsic motivation to learn. They develop a true learner’s mindset because they have choice, voice, and ownership. Now, grades are a statement of mastery. Continuing my discussion of grades... I’m not in the business of being a gatekeeper of knowledge and learning.
Last spring, everyone’s focus had been on the things that are most important for students to learn right now. That concept doesn’t have to change. I’m not advocating to get rid of grades. There must be some measure of progress that is clear and understandable. No one would play a game for long if we didn’t keep some kind of score. In little league, they don’t keep an official score, but everyone on the sidelines knows the score. So do the kids. Human beings are naturally goal driven. When things get tough, we give ourselves small little goals to reach to keep us “in the game”. In schools, like it or not, grades fill that role. A few parameters first. My school has some requirements for grades. We have specific categories and a minimum number that must be taken. We also use a 100 point system for reporting grades to the school and parents. Those are external requirements that I can’t do anything about. We all have them. Anything else that I do in regards to grading is of my own volition. The number of grades above the school minimum is a choice. The timing of the assignment is a choice. The rubrics I use are a choice. The way I apply the grade is also a choice. Since these are all choices that I make, I make them last. I start by building out my learning environment first. In short, I determine what my learners must master this year and I structure everything around making sure that the least capable learner in my room has all of the supports and resources necessary to be successful. I am not going to set up my class with the idea that some percentage of my students are not going to pass. It’s my job to do everything I possibly can to support them in mastering the content. To that end, I have to take into account brain development, social-emotional well-being, pedagogy, along with a good measure of humanity and respect. In short, I don’t want to be a “gate-keeper” determining who gets knowledge and who doesn’t. That means that I have to do more than just “present” a lesson. There is scaffolding, there are multiple, varied approaches provided for learners to acquire the content, and there is a steady and on-going supply of feedback for learners to use to retry and correct mistakes. If we want our learners to be actively engaged, then they have to truly believe they can be successful and they have to truly believe that we want them to succeed. They must know that we will do whatever it takes to help them reach their goals. I will get more into this in my next post...
The important thing for teachers and administrators is to be very honest with ourselves about why we are giving a grade for an assignment. Is the grade a measure of mastery of content, is it a tool to keep students compliant, is it a ranking system, or is a carrot/stick reward system?
For me, it is a measure of mastery. I know that I hear that same sentiment from teachers and administrators everywhere. Since I use grades as a measure of a learner’s mastery of the skills and knowledge I need them to acquire to be successful after my class is over, I must be intentional about how I use them. Using grades for mastery is tricky. It is too easy for grading to slip into being a punishment system or a crude sorting method. I won’t delve into it here. Check out Rick Wormeli’s video on that here (link). He does a great job of laying it out. Grades being a reflection of mastery goes back to my philosophy of learning (see post here). I have to be very careful and intentional about how I use and apply grades. If it starts becoming a carrot/stick or compliance tool, then I will squash any hope of developing a growth mindset in my learners. Learning must come from within. As I get ready for the year, I have to be careful to nurture the learner’s mindset within my students and allow them room to grow. I will get more into this in my next post... I recently read two things that were related, but not something that most people would read one after the other. The first was the Course Information from a Stanford Computer Science course. The next morning, I can across an article about the Siemens Company’s new permanent work policy. It doesn’t seem that these are related, but the are. They also hold important things for us to remember. Siemens’ new policy is just two sentences, but it speaks volumes. As a teacher, it tells me which way industry is going and reminds me of how I should be in class. The two big take always from the statement:
This goes hand in hand with a part of the Stanford Description. I’ve included and excerpt here: Guiding Principles for Teaching and Learning in a Time of Pandemic (by Prof. Brandon Bayne, UNC – Chapel Hill; with light adjustments for CS103)
This just speaks for itself. When you get down to it, Items 2-4 should be how we teach all the time. There isn’t anything about it that isn’t great teaching practice to make sure that all learners have the opportunity and supports to succeed. As I am writing this, a tweet popped up from a friend of mine, Mary Kemper. It’s about creating supports for learners to help them be successful. Like I said the other day. The tool isn’t the key. The most important thing is that the tool helps us get the result we want As we move into the new school year. Keep these things at the forefront of everything you do for class, and you can’t go wrong. The old ways of doing things just won’t cut it any more. It’s time to support everyone and empower everyone to be successful.
Finally, I have to say that I am proud of the collaborative team I am on. We have been taking these things to heart. Over the summer, we have reworked our curriculum many times. We got clever and creative as we tried to think about the situation and shoehorn our old curriculum into the new reality. The other week, we made the decision to keep it simple, focus on one thing only and go deep. We are still bringing our learners to mastery of our content, but we have changed to be laser focused on doing one thing and doing it great. I can’t wait. I was just listening to the Automators podcast today. In the discussion, one of the hosts (David Sparks) told about the time he took advantage of the opportunity to learn from a master woodworker. In the early part of his time there, David was studying the tools in the shop. The artist stopped his work to refocus David. The artist said that the tools were immaterial. He "would use his teeth if he had to." Too often, we make the same mistake in school. We focus on the tools and design our lessons that way. When I say tool, I am talking about all sorts of things, such as devices, web interfaces, and apps. Starting to design a lesson or even unit of study by picking the tool is wrong on so many levels. I’m not saying that the tools we use are important. Far from it. What I am saying is that we should pick a tool based on how well it helps learners reach the learning outcome we are looking for. Let’s be honest. The digital tools of today are going to change and evolve soon. Who knows what we will really be using in 5-10 years. When we look at what skills are being sought after in the workplace, it’s not the technical skills at the top of the list, it is the “soft-skills.” I talk about the need for soft skills and several articles highlighting this need in my post here (link) No digital tool in existence (or in the future) is the end all, be all. What matters is the teacher designing lessons built on relationships and strong, research based pedagogy. Digital tools offer us opportunities that we didn’t have possible before. We have the ability to collaborate with others that are not in the room with us. We can design experiences and challenges that require learners to work on interdependent teams, develop stronger personal accountability skills, and interact with a wide range of people in and out of the classroom. As learners work with these challenges, they must build the necessary content skills and learning needed to solve the problem. In other words, the tool(s) should be chosen to suit the need. When we teach learners to analyze a situation and problem and then select an appropriate tool to use, we empower that learner to be more confident in any situation that arises. LinksIn January, I was doing my typical thing and doing two things at once. Ironically, one of the activities was a #AppleEDUChat Twitter chat dealing with goal setting. One of my big goals was to not take on so much and do fewer things better. It wasn't really a good start. During the evening, I was asked about doing a "90 Days of Coding" activity. I run into a lot of people with questions about app development and design. That night was no different. For those that don't know, this is a challenge where you explore a topic every day for 90 days and journal your activities on Twitter. I run into a lot of people with questions about app development and design. That night was no different. I was wanting to get back into Swift Playgrounds and play around again.I had not been able to do anything with it since starting my Masters degree.This seemed like a good way to do two things at once. It would also force me to limit the amount of time I spent on coding each day. I was all in.
So, I got started. I cleared out all of my data on Swift Playgrounds and began exploring. It was a lot of fun. I became reacquainted with the app and had the chance to explore many new challenges within it. It was really great to be able to try things out and again. It was also a little bit intimidating to have to create a video reflection each day. I was putting myself out there in a whole new way. But, this was just the beginning. The Blink app reminded me of digital simulations I had seen before, such as the wolf-sheep predation simulation from Netlogo (https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/WolfSheepPredation). Without thinking twice about it, I started to see if I could change up the Swift Playground book Blink to be a predator/prey simulator. It wasn't easy. In the middle of it, Apple released a Mac version of Swift Playgrounds. I took the opportunity to see if that would help me with my goal of redoing the simulation. I was able to get farther, but still not get things working correctly. So, without looking, I just jumped off the next ledge. I started building an app from scratch. I had not built an app in a long time. This wasn't going to be easy. I started building and realized that I had never worked with SpriteKit before. SpriteKit is a way to use graphics, called sprites, in an app. It is used in most games in the App Store. I needed help. So, I turned to a website that I have used for coding lessons that go beyond the Everyone Can Code curriculum. I like the raywenderlich.com website. It has a lot of free tutorials and examples for people to use. They also have a huge library of videos and books to go deeper into coding concepts. I purchased a guide on 2D games. It was a great purchase. I journaled my learning as I gained the skills needed to make my simulation. It's not easy saying you don't know something. It's even harder to let people watch you go through the learning process. I did it anyway. By the end of the 90 days, I had a rough app that worked. I had solved a lot of problems and issues along the way. I still have a big one to solve, though. I can't get the grass to "die" yet. But, I'll get it yet. I want to finish this app and actually get it into the store. This has been a fun journey, but it isn't over yet. Learning never stops. Check out the archive of all 90 days here. I was given the great opportunity to work with Douglas Kiang this summer in the Community Education Initiative Summer Coding Academies. There are so many amazing stories and experiences that came out of the events. I could go on for hours about all of it. This post is about one specific activity, though. A large part of the event centered around app design. We modeled a way for these k-12 teachers to bring app design to their own classes. The great thing about this process is that it doesn't require professional equipment or even coding knowledge. It's about being creative and solving problems. This could all be done on paper without a computer. Coding is a tool to solve problems. It isn't a thing unto itself. I've never met a student who wanted to learn about arrays or methods because it was coding. Those that really wanted to learn about them had a problem to solve and needed this knowledge in order to solve it. Designing and app to solve a real problem in the community can provide this opportunity. At the ADE Institute this past summer, I had a plan for what I wanted to work and develop as my project. It was something that was a need in my district and I though it would be a good project. By lunch time on Monday, I had several people all ask me about designing apps and helping them with their ideas. It as eye-opening. I had an even bigger need in front of me. I teamed up with Stephanie Bauer and Christopher Barnabei and to take the app design process we had used in the coding academies and put it together in a book. At the time, there was already plenty of books and materials teaching coding through Everyone Can Code. Within the guides and materials was a Keynote deck, App Design Journal. We used the journal all summer as a guide for teachers to use in their class. I used the guide all the time in class and it was just second nature to me. As I worked with teachers all summer, I realized that not everyone saw things the way I did. I had the benefit of lots of conversations, lots of different events, and a lot of time spent with people much smarter and talented than I am. These teachers didn't have all of the experiences I did. We took the process I had been using in class and taught in the academies and wrote it all out for other teachers to follow. The book helps teachers employ a Challenge Based Learning approach to providing app design to their learners. I've heard it said many times before and I say it myself, "A great app is one that people download, keep, and can't imagine their lives without." Creating tis kind of app is not easy. It takes a lot of work to really understand a person's needs and then figure out a way to help them solve it. A app may only have 10 downloads, but if it changes the lives of those 10 people, then that app is a great app. This is the goal we are driving for with this guide. We are helping teachers find ways to connect with their community to bring authentic problems into the classroom that the learners can design solutions for. Along the way, they get closer to their community, help solve real problems, and maybe even create an app. The guide starts with finding a challenge within the community to design solutions for. At the end, the book finishes with learners pitching their app designs in a Prototype Showcase. Along the way, the book helps guide teachers through using Challenge Based Learning as they help learners understand the problem at hand, come up with ideas, and finally refine it into a workable prototype. In my own class, this prototype was used to spur my engineering class to learn Swift and eventually publish their own apps for our special education teachers. We hope the guide is useful to you and helps bring app design to your classroom.
Reference
Couch, J. (2018). Rewiring education: How technology can unlock every student's potential. BenBella Books, Inc. Dallas, TX |
About me & this blogThis blog is for things related to my class, PL, coaching, or just teaching in general. You can follow me on Twitter @myakSTEM Archives
June 2021
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