Why Integrate Technology into the Curriculum?: The Reasons Are Many

This article originally appeared on edutopia.org. It takes a look at integrating technology into the classroom and why it's a good idea. This is a great read to share with your customers. Let us know what you think in the comments!

 

There's a place for tech in every classroom.      

"Technology is ubiquitous, touching almost every part of our lives, our communities, our homes. Yet most schools lag far behind when it comes to integrating technology into classroom learning. Many are just beginning to explore the true potential tech offers for teaching and learning. Properly used, technology will help students acquire the skills they need to survive in a complex, highly technological knowledge-based economy.

Integrating technology into classroom instruction means more than teaching basic computer skills and software programs in a separate computer class. Effective tech integration must happen across the curriculum in ways that research shows deepen and enhance the learning process. In particular, it must support four key components of learning: active engagement, participation in groups, frequent interaction and feedback, and connection to real-world experts. Effective technology integration is achieved when the use of technology is routine and transparent and when technology supports curricular goals.

Many people believe that technology-enabled project learning is the ne plus ultra of classroom instruction. Learning through projects while equipped with technology tools allows students to be intellectually challenged while providing them with a realistic snapshot of what the modern office looks like. Through projects, students acquire and refine their analysis and problem-solving skills as they work individually and in teams to find, process, and synthesize information they've found online.

The myriad resources of the online world also provide each classroom with more interesting, diverse, and current learning materials. The Web connects students to experts in the real world and provides numerous opportunities for expressing understanding through images, sound, and text.
New tech tools for visualizing and modeling, especially in the sciences, offer students ways to experiment and observe phenomenon and to view results in graphic ways that aid in understanding. And, as an added benefit, with technology tools and a project-learning approach, students are more likely to stay engaged and on task, reducing behavioral problems in the classroom.

Technology also changes the way teachers teach, offering educators effective ways to reach different types of learners and assess student understanding through multiple means. It also enhances the relationship between teacher and student. When technology is effectively integrated into subject areas, teachers grow into roles of adviser, content expert, and coach. Technology helps make teaching and learning more meaningful and fun" (www.edutopia.org).

Project Based Learning

The following article originally appeared on edutopia.org. It presents an inspirational story about a high school in Texas that uses Project-Based Learning. Take a look and think about how you can incorporate technology into schools that take this approach. Very insightful and a great read to share with customers!

What Makes Project-Based Learning a Success?

At one high school in Texas, where every class in every grade is project based, the answer is devotion to a consistent process, belief in relationships, and commitment to relevance and rigor. Results? Hard to beat.

There is a small town, about 12 miles east of Austin, Texas, where a high school devoted to teaching every subject to every student through project-based learning (PBL) opened five years ago. On its own, this would not have been a noteworthy event. The list of schools across America deepening the learning process through PBL has been growing for quite some time. But few schools have fine-tuned the process like Manor New Technology High School in Manor, Texas, where 98 percent of seniors graduate and 100 percent of the graduates are accepted to college. Fifty-six percent of them have been the first in their family to attend college.

Manor New Tech was started with a $4 million grant from the Texas High School Project as part of an initiative to develop schools dedicated to science, technology, engineering, and math in Texas. The school is part of the New Tech Network, a nonprofit with 85 schools in its nationwide network that provides services and support to help reform learning through PBL. Overall, the network is doing very well, with an 86 percent graduation rate; 67 percent of graduates apply to college and 98 percent of those are accepted. But Manor New Tech is a standout even by those standards. To find out what makes their ship sail so effectively, Edutopia followed one sophomore classroom for a few weeks to observe a project from start to finish.

What we found -- and what we believe is the key to Manor New Tech's success -- is a schoolwide, unwavering commitment to the design and implementation of a PBL model that includes evidence-based strategies and drives students to actively pursue knowledge. From the moment a project is introduced, students are responsible for figuring out what they need to know and for doing the legwork to find the information, analyze it, and present it. Teachers are there every step of the way to guide students through the process and to provide workshops to help clarify any concepts.
(See our article, "A Step-by-Step Guide to the Best Projects," for more details on Manor's PBL process.)

Relationships Before Rigor

Their PBL protocol is designed to put students in the driver's seat of their learning and is followed consistently throughout Manor. Some elements may be common, such as peer reviews and ongoing assessments, but it's the sum total of the process, as well as the fidelity with which it is followed, that are a big part of Manor's success.

No less important, though, is the school culture that supports it. It is a culture of enthusiasm and determination that begins with founding principal Steven Zipkes, whose zest and passion for his students and his school make him a one-man pep rally.

Zipkes begins with the three R's, which he is quick to note should be engaged sequentially, but not in the conventional order of rigor, relevance, and relationships. Rather Manor begins by building relationships, then incorporates relevance and rigor. "Many schools try to put the rigor in first, but then they've already lost many of the students," he explains. "If you don't have a relationship with the students, they're not going to do anything for you; if it's not relevant, you're going to bore them. But when you look at relationships and relevance and then rigor, you're going to hit all students."

Ownership and autonomy are also essential to Manor's PBL, and they operate on every level. Zipkes requires that all teachers start with the state standards and that they observe and stay true to the school's PBL model; beyond that, he leaves it to their creativity and expertise to design the projects and guide their students through the process. Similarly, teachers strive to give their students latitude in how they choose to demonstrate their knowledge, as long as they aim for the learning outcomes defined in the rubrics. This belief in each other's capabilities fosters trust and a kind of self-regulation that frees Zipkes to be the visionary leader rather than the heavy, the teachers to be facilitators rather than disciplinarians, and the students to be learners rather than test-takers.

One of the familiar refrains at Manor is, "This is our house." And they mean it. Everyone, teacher and student alike, is there because they choose to be. Not a single student has dropped out in its five-year history, nor has any teacher left due to dissatisfaction. At one all-school assembly we attended, Zipkes made his way through the crowd of students, bellowing into the mic like an inspirational speaker. The students cheered him on, genuinely enthused by his energy. With this unity of purpose, process, and passion, Manor New Tech's continuing success seems inevitable (www.edutopia.org).

To read the original article, click here.

Long Road to Simple

This article, published by Metropolis Magazine, takes a look at the extensive research Steelcase did when designing new solutions for the classroom. Steelcase reveals the laborious process it was to create a simple solution that was flexible, mobile and easily adaptable to the many modes of learning. Take a look and share these insights with your customers. Share your thoughts in the commetns below!

"Considering Steelcase’s new Verb classroom system, I am reminded of (who else?) Frédéric Chopin. “After playing immense quantities of notes, and more notes,” the composer declared, “then simplicity emerges with all its charm, like art’s final seal.” The product line, which makes its debut at NeoCon this month, seems, at a glance, to be simplicity itself: variations on a table for students, a “teaching station,” and individual whiteboards. Yet Verb is the outcome of immense quantities of research and more research—as well as prototyping and testing—all aimed at perfecting a classroom tool that supports nothing less than the future of learning.
The Verb saga begins with Steelcase’s unusual approach to product development, which starts with open-ended research. Typically, the company decides on a potentially profitable market—in this case, classrooms—then studies trends within that market to understand the direction in which it’s headed. “Four years ago, when we started to focus deeply on education, we discovered a growing outcry for greater student success,” Sean Corcorran, the general manager of Steelcase Education Solutions, recalls. “Then we asked, ‘How do we get there?’” According to Corcorran, Steelcase found that although “students have different backgrounds and experiences than they did fifty years ago, and they’re deeply immersed in diverse technologies and multimedia environments,” the classic sage-on-a-stage classroom model, with people fixed in columns and rows, still predominates. Coupled with the company’s secondary research into how information is absorbed—which revealed, Corcorran says, “that people learn best when they construct their own knowledge, as opposed to just having it given to them”—Steelcase came to the conclusion that the twenty-first-century classroom needs to be a more “flexible, active, multimodal” environment that helps students to learn in a broad range of ways.
Released in the summer of 2010, the first Steelcase product to respond to this need was Node, a tablet arm-chair with casters, a swivel seat, and, beneath it, a dish capacious enough to hold a backpack. These small but transformative changes to traditional classroom furnishings permitted students to look around easily and thus better relate to one another, to rapidly arrange themselves into small or large groups, and, thanks to the under-seat dish, to not waste precious time gathering up their things whenever they moved.
Yet, while Node facilitates the swift reconfiguration of a classroom to accommodate different styles of learning, it remains, says Lennie Scott-Webber, Steelcase’s director of education environments, “a chair-based solution. You need to provide different choices for different scenarios, and some people want a table-based solution.” Accordingly, Verb—the name is derived from Steelcase’s overarching focus on active learning—scales up the Node concept for situations requiring larger work surfaces, but does so without sacrificing flexibility. “It allows many different kinds of teaching modalities, as well as an easy switch between those modalities,” Scott-Webber says. Corcorran calls it “a classroom ecosystem.”
Verb’s signature component is a two-student table that’s V-shaped on one side, flat on the opposite, and slightly angled on both ends. “We tried hundreds of different shapes, and built prototypes and tested them with students, before landing on this one,” Corcorran recalls. This particular iteration carried the day because, as Steelcase discovered, it successfully balanced privacy, communication, and flexibility. The V-shaped side lets students sit next to one another at an angle, facilitating eye contact and collaboration, but preserving a sense of separation. Two Chevron tables (as they’re called) can be pushed together so that their flat sides touch, forming a four-person team table. And when they’re butted end to end to form rows—“we call that ‘lecture mode,’ ” Corcorran says—the angled table ends produce a gentle curve that enables students in the row to see and to communicate with one another more effectively. (In keeping with Verb’s goal of maximizing utility, student tables are available in five widths, three depths, and three shapes, including four-person “double chevron” and rectangular team tables. All come with casters, to facilitate quick shifts between individual, team, and lecture situations.)
The student tables can also be accessorized with side hooks and board holders, which allow students to hang up the Verb system’s individual whiteboards when they’re not in use, or to mount them for display. There are also small center troughs for stashing markers and erasers. “I call it a ‘team machine,’” Corcorran says of the fully equipped table. “When you move, everything can be stored and nothing gets in the way.”
As for Verb’s double-sided, ceramic-and-steel whiteboards, in Corcorran’s view, “they hold the whole system together,” enabling students to take notes or sketch individually, to share information with a desk mate or a team, or to make class presentations using Verb’s mobile easel or wall-track display systems (on which the boards can be hung singly or in groups). When I confess to Scott-Webber that I come from the pre-whiteboard age, and don’t grasp the boards’ value, she explains that the Verb version is actually a new take on a popular, preexisting Steelcase product called the Huddleboard, which caught on “because it was giving students permission to actually use different tools in the classroom.” The whiteboard stresses the continuing importance, in an increasingly digital world, of analog capture and display. “More and more, 3M Post-it pads are used in generative, team-based projects,” Corcorran observes. The whiteboard “gives you a non-disposable, quite ‘green’ alternative to that.” (The whiteboards can also be attached at the midpoint of the tables and used as screens when students are taking tests.)
The teaching station—perhaps Verb’s most elegant component—grew out of what Scott-Webber calls “our ethnography research, where we spend time in the classroom doing participant observation and taking photographs, so we can bring information back, code it, and look for patterns.” One of the things this Margaret Mead–meets–Mr. Chips exercise revealed was that the head of a classroom is often plagued by what might be described as teacher-station creep: “We noted that there was often a lectern on the floor or a half-lectern on the teacher’s desk, and then there was a table you might have for a student conference,” says Scott-Webber. Verb’s solution is an object with different zones: a standard writing surface, a built-in lectern, and an end designed to make it comfortable for a student to pull up a chair for a one-on-one powwow. “In a much smaller footprint, you are enabling a teacher to work in three separate modes,” Scott-Webber says. The lectern, in particular, reflects the thoughtfulness with which the product has been crafted. Mounted on a curved arm that rises from one side of the desk, the lectern can rotate 360 degrees, allowing a teacher to use it above or beside the desk, and it has ample room for papers and pens, because teachers, Scott-Webber observes, “are always losing their stuff.” The designers also added a cup holder, and a bag or briefcase caddy to provide quick access to books and papers during lectures.
“Our overall focus is on doing research that leads to insights that we leverage into solutions,” Corcorran says. Or, as Scott-Webber puts it, the products consist of “evidence-based information implanted into design.” Verb, an active-learning system meant to support and encourage classroom success, represents that philosophy in action" (www.metropolismag.com).

"8 Insane Schools, Playgrounds, And Libraries Of The Future"

Check out this great post by FastCo.Exist about the schools, playgrounds, and libraries of the future. Get ready to be inspired!

"School is a lot more fun when the entire building is covered in astroturf. Or when your playground is an abandoned oil rig. Architects and educators are finding new ways to engage kids in learning through the built environment, and the results are out of this world.

Gone are the days when schools and libraries were large, impersonal institutions of learning. Today, architects are pushing the boundaries of learning spaces, putting kids in environments that we may not recognize as a school. Instead of a drab classroom, students are now learning in bizarre environments, designed to stimulate their imaginations. When they go to the playground, it’s not to play on a simple jungle gym, but to interact with objects and materials that create new and exciting discoveries each time they’re outside.
Learn for Life: New Architecture for New Learning chronicles some of the most exciting of these projects, from an outdoor library in Germany to a park made of recycled materials from oil rigs. We’ve chosen some of the most fun and interesting of the projects, which you can see in the slide show above. Perhaps youth is not wasted on the young, after all" (www.fastcoexist.com).

To view all images, click here.

All rights 2012 Gestalten

What Exactly is Understanding?

What Exactly Is "Understanding?" And How Do We Assess It?

An interesting look at what understanding is...check it out and let us know your thoughts in the comments! For the original article, click here http://www.edutopia.org/blog/slippery-notion-assessing-understanding-terry-heick.

"Assessing understanding might be the most complex task an educator or academic institution is tasked with. Unfortunately, professional development gives a lower level of attention to developing quality assessments, training that is rarely commensurate with this complexity. The challenge of assessment is no less than figuring out what a learner knows, and where he or she needs to go next.
In other words, what does a learner understand?
This in itself is an important shift from the days when curriculum was simply delivered regardless of the student's content knowledge.
Among the big ideas Richard and Rebecca DuFour brought to the educational mainstream consciousness was a shift from teaching to learning, a subtle but critical movement. But even with this shift from curriculum, instruction and teacher actions, and toward data, assessment and learning, there remains uncomfortable murkiness.

Planning for Learning

In a traditional (and perhaps utopian) academic structure, learning objectives are identified, prioritized, mapped and intentionally sequenced. Pre-assessments are given as tools to provide data to revise planned instruction.
Next, in a collaborative group (PLCs and their data teams being the current trendy format), teachers together disaggregate data, perform item analyses, identify trends and possibility, and differentiate powerful and compelling instruction for each learner with research-based instructional strategies. Then student understanding is re-assessed, deficiencies are further remediated -- rinse, repeat -- until the learner demonstrates acceptable evidence of understanding.
But even this Herculean effort -- which incredibly leaves gaps nonetheless -- is often not enough because of the nature of understanding itself.

Defining Understanding

In their seminal Understanding by Design series, Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe discuss the evasiveness of the term "understanding" by referencing Harold Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Cognitive Domain, a book project finished in 1956 by Dr. Benjamin Bloom and colleagues. Quoted by Wiggins and McTighe, Dr. Bloom explains:
" . . . some teachers believe their students should 'really understand,' others desire their students to 'internalize knowledge,' still others want their students to 'grasp the core or essence.' Do they all mean the same thing? Specifically, what does a student do who 'really understands' which he does not do when he does not understand? Through reference to the Taxonomy . . . teachers should be able to define such nebulous terms."
Wiggins and McTighe go on to say that "two generations of curriculum writers have been warned to avoid the term 'understand' in their frameworks as a result of the cautions in the taxonomy."¹ Of course, the Understanding by Design (UbD) series is in fact built on a handful of key notions, among them taking on the task of analyzing understanding, and then planning for it through backwards design.
But to pull back and look at the big picture is a bit troubling. There are so many moving parts in learning: assessment design, academic standards, underpinning learning targets for each standard, big ideas, essential questions, instructional strategies -- and on and on and on in an endless, dizzying dance.
Why so much "stuff" for what should be a relatively simple relationship between learner and content?
Because it's so difficult to agree on what understanding is -- what it looks like, what learners should be able to say or do to prove that they in fact understand. Wiggins and McTighe go on in the UbD series to ask, "Mindful of our tendency to use the words understand and know interchangeably, what worthy conceptual distinctions should we safeguard in talking about the difference between knowledge and understanding?"²

Alternatives to Bloom's Taxonomy

Of course, Wiggins and McTighe also helpfully provide what they call "6 Facets of Understanding," a sort of alternative (or supplement) to Bloom's Taxonomy. In this system, learners prove they "understand" if they can:

1. Explain
2. Interpret
3. Apply
4. Have perspective
5. Empathize
6. Have self-knowledge

Robert Marzano also offers up his take on understanding with his "New Taxonomy," which uses three systems and the Knowledge Domain:

1. Self-System
2. Metacognitive System
3. Cognitive System
4. Knowledge Domain

The Cognitive System is closest to a traditional taxonomy, with verbs such that describe learner actions such as recall, synthesis and experimental inquiry.

Solution

Of course, there is no solution to all of this tangle, but there are strategies educators can use to mitigate the confusion -- and hopefully learn to leverage this literal cottage industry of expertise that is assessment.
1) The first is to be aware of the ambiguity of the term "understands," and not to settle for just paraphrasing it in overly-simple words and phrases like "they get it" or "proficiency." Honor the uncertainty by embracing the fact that not only is "understanding" borderline indescribable, but it is also impermanent. And the standards? They're dynamic as well. And vertical alignment? In spots clumsy and incomplete. This is reality.
2) Secondly, help learners and their families understand that it's more than just politically correct to say that a student's performance on a test does not equal their true "understanding;" it's actually true. If communities only understood how imperfect assessment design can be -- well, they may just run us all out of town on a rail for all these years of equating test scores and expertise.
3) But perhaps the most powerful thing that you can do to combat the slippery notion of understanding is to use numerous and diverse assessment forms. And then -- and this part is important -- honor the performance on each of those assessments with as much equity as possible. A concept map drawn on an exit slip is no less evidence of understanding than an extended response question on a state exam.
In fact, I've always thought of planning, not in terms of quizzes and tests, but as a true climate of assessment, where "snapshots" of knowledge are taken so often that it's truly part of the learning process. This degree of frequency and repetition also can reduce procedural knowledge, and allow for opportunities for metacognitive reflection post-assessment, such as the "So? So What? What now?" sequence.
If you are able to show all assessment results -- formal and informal -- for the most visible portion of the learning process, the letter grade itself, learners may finally begin to see for themselves that understanding is evasive, constantly changing, and as dynamic as their own imaginations" (www.edutopia.org).

---

¹Understanding by Design, Expanded 2nd Edition (9780131950849): Grant Wiggins, Jay McTighe: Books. Web. 07 May 2012.
²In fact, in Stage 2 of UbD design process, the task is to "determine what constitutes acceptable evidence of competency in the outcomes and results (assessment)," deftly avoiding the term "understanding" altogether.

Density: It ’ s not just for physics anymore...

Density in the classroom is an ongoing struggle. The most efficient classroom layout for density might be rows of chairs without tablet arms or tables, but this isn’t conducive for learning and prohibits interaction. On the other hand, most active learning solutions require an average of 25 or more square feet per student and many schools may not have the luxury of being able to dedicate that amount of classroom space to support an active learning pedagogy. This is where node comes in. node can handle the density challenge as well as any seating solution with an average of about 17 square feet per student. In addition, node provides the added advantages of comfort, flexibility and mobility that allow it to support active learning. node is unique in that it not only redefines classroom seating but continues to outperform the competition. Let’s take a look at one way node does this by comparing its footprint against the Learn2 chair from KI.

The node chair keeps its footprint small

while still providing a non-handed

worksurface, personal storage and a seat

that swivels 360 degrees. It does this by

providing a worksurface wide enough to

support both left and right handed users

without requiring the support arm to swivel

all the way around the chair. This

maximizes utility to the student while

keeping the footprint in check.
node square footage = 7.3

Based on preliminary dimensions

provided by KI, you can see the

change in overall footprint. The

support arm on Learn2 swivels 220

degrees around the chair, which

has to be accounted for when

doing classroom planning. The

result is a footprint more than twice

the size of node and which does

not provide as much personal

storage space or 360 degrees of

swivel in the seat.

Learn2 square footage = 15.8

2012 Most Connected Classrooms

Recognizing the rapid growth of technology in classrooms, U.S. News surveyed schools from our Best High Schools rankings to find out how connected they are. The following schools are the top ranked high schools in U.S. News's first Most Connected Classrooms rankings.

Scroll through the images to see how different schools are embracing technology and encouraging students. Tell us how you see technology integrated into the schools that you work with in the comments!

Click here to view the schools.