Moving Forward Together

About twenty years ago, my wife said "You have to meet them where they're at." I'm not sure if she was referring to teaching, though I suspect she was, but the thought has stayed with me ever since. It may have been my first introduction to D.I. Educators are keenly aware that students come to them with completely different capabilities and attitudes toward learning. I'm not sure that anybody in education today could successfully argue for a 'one size fits all' education system.

Once again, I find my thoughts (and words) drifting toward the topic of professional development. A few days ago, I was one of a group of 10 people involved in a full day P.D. session where we were examining research (Fisher and Frey - Reading Comprehension Strategies) in order to address a student need in our building. The group was trying to come up with a strategic plan to put in place so that the entire staff would be able to help our students make meaning from what they are reading. No small task! A couple things jumped out at me.

First, there is always the nagging "90%" statistic in the back of my mind. No real student gains are realized until 90% of the staff are well beyond the beginning stages of use for a specific task/practice or strategy.(1) With that in mind, we are always trying to come up with something for the entire staff to do, and furthermore, something easy to implement. The Panama Canal was a solution to a problem. Solutions to difficult problems are messy and require a lot of work and effort. I'm afraid that by trying to find a quick and easy solution (to ensure staff participation) that we are digging a moat rather than a canal. At these meetings, we will all agree to try something new, and report on the success of the initiative.  Ten staff members out of 80, working on something new for 1 week (or even one month) flies in the face of the research. How can we inform our practice based on statistically insignificant findings?

Secondly, there is D.I. (Didn't think I was going to tie it back in, did you?) Only this time, I'm NOT talking about students. Each staff member has different ideas, skills and attitudes when it comes to teaching (especially when talking about trying new things ESPECIALLY when those things are based upon research that doesn't agree with your own personal view of how things work!) We talk about each staff member being at a different place in their 'continuum of learning', yet we try to come up with a one size fits all policy toward educating students. P.D. funds are spent on the willing and eager - people that are less likely to need the P.D.

I believe in what we are trying to do. I don't believe that anybody is at fault. I am confident that what I am engaging in is making me a better teacher, and that my students benefit from it (at least in a limited capacity while in my class -- are they transferring their skills to other environments?). I do not regret the work, but I don't want it to be in vain either. I am afraid that we are in over our heads.

So, here is the crux of it all.
i) How do we, as a school, keep from spinning our wheels?
ii) What do we need to do to collectively move forward?

As always, your suggestions/comments appreciated.

(1) Adapted from Fixsen, D. L., Naoom, S. F., Blase, K. A., Friedman, R. M., & Wallace, F. (2005). Implementation research: A synthesis of the literature. Tampa, FL: University of South Florida, Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute, NIRN (FMHI Publication #231).

Interesting Update from TD

I was shocked today to find the following statement on my TD Visa bill --

COUNTRY SANCTIONS AND FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS ON YOUR CARD. YOUR CARD CAN BE USED ALL OVER THE WORLD EXCEPT IN CERTAIN COUNTRIES WHERE THERE ARE ECONOMIC AND TRADE SANCTIONS. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY TD CANADA TRUST CREDIT CARDS (TD US DOLLAR CARD INCLUDED) CANNOT BE USED TO PROCESS TRANSACTIONS FROM IRAN, MYANMAR (BURMA) AND NORTH KOREA. IN ADDITION, TRANSACTIONS ON TD U.S. DOLLAR CARDS CANNOT BE PROCESSED FROM CUBA, SYRIA AND SUDAN.

I find it a little odd that a company I choose to support through use of their product is telling me where I can use it.  There must be huge governmental pressure on these companies.

Technology in the Classroom

My school purchased 14 iPads.  The principal asked via email that if anybody wanted to use them in their class, they just let him know how and what for.  I strained my brain and couldn't think of what to do with one (aside from projectile motion analysis in angry birds -- thanks @fnoschese), so I didn't respond.  You see, I am one of those rare individuals, that though I love technology, don't have a laptop or even a cellphone. Why?  I am unfortunately one of those common individuals that is basically broke.

Now that it is summer, and I've been doing a lot of work trying to think of ways to get students to use a blog or multimedia for labs, and poll everywhere etc, I thought I'd ask people (I know I should use a poll actually), "How do you use iPads for education?"

I took two home for the summer and I have been fooling around with them, getting a feeling for their usefulness and capabilities.  I love them, but I am just starting to see ways to incorporate their use in class, and to be truthful, it is in more of a novelty fashion than in a learning fashion.  For instance, I have a digital periodic table app installed.  I have some mind mapping software on there (as readers of my blog might have guessed I would), and some drawing apps that could replace (in some ways) a smart board.  I've also installed some digital info banks on the solar system, the particle zoo, and things like that.  I also have some digital textbooks installed in the ebook reader.  Not much that is truly interactive.

I am very eager to learn how to use them and how you are using them.  So please, respond and share this blog post with your friends so we can all help one another out!

Thanks.

Misconceptions Assignment -- part 2

So, I believe my last post (about a month ago) was in reference to an assignment on misconceptions.  It was quite well received, but thanks to google and the 'quicker is better' mentality that is prevelant today, about half of the reports dealt with the infamous "penny from the CN Tower" misconception.

I'll summarize the results of my little misconception assignment experiment.

1. The students enjoyed it, and so did I (in theory)
2. In practice, the students didn't challenge their preconceived notions.  They tackled items that they had already come to understand and didn't really include any personal commentary about what they used to think about the concept or why they found it challenging originally.
3. Also in practice, kids love to see themselves on video and think quality video editing and stylish end-titles make for good physics.
4. Lastly, and this is to be expected but is still unfortunate, students just don't know how to ask the right questions.  They really led their subjects.  Sometimes, the question was posed in such a manner that there was only one answer possible, or the question itself was so confusing that the subject couldn't fairly answer it.

So, how could this assignment be salvaged or work better in the future?

1. Outline my expectations more clearly and build success criteria with the students instead of handing out a rubric and hoping against hope that I get some real gems.  In short, I didn't specifically outline my wishes for the assignment, and not surprisingly, I didn't get what I was hoping for.
2. I will definitely have students write anonymous critical analyses of one another's work, with focus on questioning technique and on the explanations offered to the subjects afterward.
3. They will comment on whether the misconception was clearly introduced and whether sufficient evidence was offered to challenge the misconception.
4. Finally, I might have to do something about assigning specific misconceptions to students.  I originally avoided this because I wanted students to be passionate about their personal selections and to choose something that had personal meaning to them, but that didn't seem to work.
   

It's been too long

Where have I been and what have I been doing?  Too much educational reading can get in the way of one's passionate writing about education it would appear.

I have much to say, but I don't have the desire to say it all at the moment.  What inspired me to write today is the current buzz about physics education, modeling, and inquiry.  I guess I'm upset about the all or nothing approach to educational practices.  Is there no value to socratic lecture, or investigation, or guided inquiry?  Of course each method of instruction has some merit, and yet people want to overload and employ a single approach to accomplish a complex task.  Did you know that if one breathes pure oxygen at depth while scuba diving it is toxic?  The answer isn't always 'more of a good thing is the best thing'.  Perhaps a new way to look at differentiated instruction is to actually differ instructional methods for everybody regularly.  Newton was a genius because he could decipher observed phenomena without the benefit of instruction.  I am not so lucky.  Are your students as gifted?

This sounds like I am defending lectures, and maybe I am, I don't know.  What I do know is that all of my students, without exception (and there have been some potential Newtons amongst them), have at some point needed some help and a direct explanation of the concept with reference to some real life examples of where the concept could be seen and/or is useful, has helped them.

Blech.  Edited out some garbage at the end there...  Some of you are wondering 'How bad must the drivel he edited out be if this is the stuff that he kept!?'.  Touche.

How twitter changed my plans for the week

Wow.  Where does the time go?  And why does it seem like just when things are slowing down, they ramp right up?

Oh well, I'd rather be busy than bored.

So last week as I was perusing my twitter account, I came across a much RT'd post about the Khan academy and numerous pedagogical arguments behind demos and videos and student learning.  I spent about an hour or two reading through posts and watching 1Veritasium's videos on YouTube and it reignited my passion for misconceptions.

I showed some of the videos to my Grade 12 University physics students, and I tried to put them in the most meaningful order.  We talked about each, and I paused a lot during them to check their ideas.  I talked with them (at great length) about preconceived notions and the difficulties in convincing them of something that they already know to be true, but really isn't of course.  When the class was just about to let out, on a whim I posed a question to them with strict instructions that they were forbidden to look up the answer or discuss their ideas with anybody.  Their only homework was to <prepare to gasp> think <gasp> about the answer and be prepared to share it.  The question was "Why are there phases of the moon ie full moon, quarter moon etc?"

Immediately a couple of students dismissed it and wanted to just tell me their answer.  "Sir, that's too easy, I already know why."  One even got so far as to mention shadows before I shut him down.  Another student suggested that they do a video project debunking some misconception.


That night I wondered what I was going to do to challenge their ideas.  You see, I knew most (if not all) of them thought that it was Earth's shadow playing across the moon in various amounts.  What I had to do was figure out a way to present some evidence that they were easily able to understand and that they knew to be true that could challenge their preconceived notion and force them to come up with an alternate theory.  I think I came up with some good ideas.  You can be the judge of that by checking out the work sheet I gave them the next day by clicking here.

At the end of the "lesson", I prompted the students to see who had maintained their initial hypothesis.  Only a few did.  I didn't really provide them with sufficient time to come up with an alternate theory (though I did ask them for one), which I know could have been a valid learning moment for them, but I did not do nevertheless.  Instead, we went through the sheet, we shared some answers, and in the end we modeled the moon orbiting the Earth, with the Sun (me with a bright spot-type light) shining ever forward.

A few interesting things happened.  One student shared that even though he could not use his shadow theory to explain a single discrepant event, he wouldn't abandon it and kept trying to make it fit instead of coming up with an alternate solution.  Students were eager to discuss their wrong ideas and why they held them.  They weren't embarrassed or timid about being wrong; being wrong was the point of the exercise.  It has taken me a long time to convince the students that being wrong is o.k., and that learning from the process or even figuring out why something is wrong is way more important than the result.

Their project due date is May 2nd (other stuff is going on and I didn't want to rush them).  I'll write about the results then.

A little help from my friends

In the interest of students becoming more self sufficient, a group of us at work have decided to implement an idea that Barrie Bennett mentioned in passing at a p.d. session we were involved in.  He talked about a homework circle.  I don't know about you, but I get really frustrated taking up questions in physics class for the first 30 minutes of class, especially when it only benefits the couple of students that tried that question.  The other zombies just watch and hope to learn through some miracle.

Barrie Bennett suggested that you have students form homework circles and the instructions to them are that for the first 10 minutes of class, they are responsible within their own circles to catch everybody up on the homework and to make sure everybody within their group understands it.  If a student in the group consistently isn't pulling their weight, the group may impose sanctions and the offending student may be jettisoned from the group for non-contribution.  The decisions are made by the group with regards to their own welfare without teacher intervention.

In the event that multiple circles haven't been able to figure out a particular problem, that problem can be done on the board by the teacher to the benefit of all in the room and perhaps additional instruction in that area is required.

I put out an email to about 15 people, and 7 responded saying that they were eager to try it.  Other than me, the breakdown is 1 science, 1 history, 1 english, 1 music, 1 family studies, 1 business, 1 math.  Interesting eh!?  I intend to do this with my 4U physics, but not my 1D science.  4U is more consistently homework heavy and I think they have the maturity and are responsible enough to handle it.  Others are trying it with all grade groups. 

I informally introduced it to the students on the first day of the semester, and they didn't even bat an eye.  It seemed to them to be the most natural thing, especially when I framed it with acknowledging their collective capabilities and university implications.  Now, this will take some getting used to for them, but I can see it working really well.  Just yesterday, in way of reviewing concepts and mechanics of problem solving that they should have retained from their previous foray in physics, I put some problems on the board and told them to try to work out the solutions, either individually or in groups.  At one point, their was a dispute between two groups regarding the correct answer.  Their first course of action was to ask me to referee and tell them which was the correct response.  Of course my response was to trade solutions with one another and look for the mistake in the other groups' work.  They did it instantly and within moments had determined where the mistakes had been made (in this case, only one group had made an error, but it would work well even if both groups had the wrong answer).  Once they get used to this idea, I can see it really benefiting them in a few ways and clearing up a bunch of time to examine the curriculum a little deeper.

One final note, I learned how to, and subsequently added an RSS feed to my class website for the students.  I was getting tired of constantly reminding them to check the website for updates and hopefully this will encourage them to use it more frequently.  Since mentioning it to them, I've had about 30 hits.  It was at just below 1000 hits and I told them that whoever was the 1000th hit, if they took a screen shot would get a heartfelt congratulations from me  ;)