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Towards a more open curriculum

I've been busy working on a small project for the last several weeks. Initially it started as a way to easily share the resources I've been using in my class with other teachers in my building. It quickly morphed into something more. As long as I was organizing things in this manner, why not just publish it all online?

I believe education related materials should open and available to use by anybody who has a use for them. Materials that are locked behind stringent copyright regulations or locked up on a teacher's hard drive aren't always able to be used by students, educators, parents, or others in ways that they may like.  If someone finds what I've created useful I want them to be able to use it in whatever manner they find it the most useful. Alec Couros has done a lot of thinking about what open teaching is all about, and I've come to take many of his ideas a challenge to think about how I choose to control the materials that I create (see his recent posts: Visualizing Open/Networked Teaching and it Revisited). The way I control media- and mentor that to my students- should reflect the values that I hold.

A timid step

Towards becoming an "open/networked teacher," I've decided to release my curriculum resources to the internets. Curriculum Science is a wiki I've set up where I'll be posting all my handouts, presentations, and projects under a GNU Free Documentation License (hat tip to Dan Meyer who planted seeds he posted his full geometry curriculum). Though it won't matter to many people, I've also aligned them with the Connecticut standards for 9th grade Integrated Science. It's a work in progress that will be updated as I make my way through this semester's curriculum. Not all the material I would categorize as "my best stuff," but it is "my real stuff."

A little help

I don't have this whole teaching/technology thing figured out. I've spent a lot of time considering how to be the most effective teacher possible, but that requires constantly revisiting what it is that I'm doing and how it is that I'm doing it. A few things I'd enjoy hearing my readers thoughts on:

  • Is the GNU Free Documentation License the way to go for this? Would a Creative Commons license be a better match? I'm a little fuzzy on the specific definitions of the various licenses.
  • If you have ideas for how to get at the content in a more effective manner than I've done in my curriculum please let me know. Lately I've been feeling that my ideas for new materials have been stale and not as effective as I'd like.
  • If you use or remix anything I've created it'd make me happy to hear back on what you thought of it or how you changed it.

The Resources

Curriculum Science

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The importance of stupidity

Martin A. Schwartz in an essay titled, The importance of stupidity in scientific research, published online by the Journal of Cell Science, says:

...I don't think students are made to understand how hard it is to do research. And how very, very hard it is to do important research. It's a lot harder than taking even very demanding courses. What makes it difficult is that research is immersion in the unknown. We just don't know what we're doing. We can't be sure whether we're asking the right question or doing the right experiment until we get the answer or the result. [...]

Second, we don't do a good enough job of teaching our students how to be productively stupid – that is, if we don't feel stupid it means we're not really trying. I'm not talking about `relative stupidity', in which the other students in the class actually read the material, think about it and ace the exam, whereas you don't. I'm also not talking about bright people who might be working in areas that don't match their talents. Science involves confronting our `absolute stupidity'. That kind of stupidity is an existential fact, inherent in our efforts to push our way into the unknown. Preliminary and thesis exams have the right idea when the faculty committee pushes until the student starts getting the answers wrong or gives up and says, `I don't know'. The point of the exam isn't to see if the student gets all the answers right. If they do, it's the faculty who failed the exam. The point is to identify the student's weaknesses, partly to see where they need to invest some effort and partly to see whether the student's knowledge fails at a sufficiently high level that they are ready to take on a research project.

As a teacher who seems to constantly be changing, updating, redirecting, and otherwise in flux with the curriculum that I present to my students each semester (even if I'm teaching the exact same classes every semester), I identified strongly with feeling stupid.

I'm constantly wondering if there aren't better ways to do the things I'm doing; constantly doubting whether I can get the important bits of science through all the standards, state assessments, and district requirements.

This article reminds me why I constantly change things up. I could rest on my decent curriculum & teaching skills and take it easy. However, decent isn't enough. I may never be great, but I'm sure I'll avoid being mediocre. I may fail in some pursuits, but I hope that those failures can guide me to successes.

What I'd love: to work alongside teachers and administrators who enter this realm of stupidity to try to figure out a better way than the current way.

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C(R)APT testing

I truly believe that it is possible to have a standardized test that does at least a decent job of measuring student achievement. That being said, I have yet to see one that does.

Exhibit A

I snapped a quick pic of a CAPT (Connecticut's standardized test of choice) practice sheet that was left sitting by the copying machine on Friday.¹

Question 1

My favorite part of this? It includes the little bubble-it-in-grid. Not because this particular worksheet gets scanned, but it's just practice so students know how to fill in bubbles. As if there's nothing more important in our students lives than learning these valuable life skills (Objective A.12.34: Students will display proper usage of No. 2 pencils and bubbling technique).

These tests always seem to be trying to trick students. The questions asks for the answer given to the nearest gallon. Doing the math without rounding gives you an answer of 12,990.6542 gallons. The bubble grid includes space for decimals. How many students put in 12,990.65 and get it marked incorrect? What are they supposed to bubble in? 12,990? Would that get marked wrong because the last two decimals aren't filled in? 12,990.00? That's technically incorrect² but I can see how a 15 year old who is really trying to follow directions to a "T" would answer in that way.

Question 2

What knowledge is this question testing? At first it seems to be a question about proportions (40 gal. sap : 1 gal. syrup), but then it throws this whole gallons into quarts thing in at the end. Thus this question only tells us if students understand the conversion and the proportion concepts.The test can't determine if they understand one but not the other. Thus, the test doesn't determine what a student actually knows with any degree of accuracy.

Furthermore, how important is it for students to memorize conversion factors? Especially in Imperial Volume Units? I can barely keep those straight (and have little reason to). Anytime I really need to convert these units, I pull up Google and use their handy unit conversion tool.

What's the big deal?

This isn't a problem unique to Connecticut. It's a general problem that is pervasive throughout the high-stakes standardized testing world. How can these tests accurately determine what students know if they're poorly written? How can districts be told they're failing their students if the instrument used to determine that students aren't learning has serious validity problems? How can the entire education system in the United States buy into these tests as the best way to measure success?

Who are the people that write these tests? Do they read the questions they've written?

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¹ Sorry for the poor quality images of the tests. They were taken with my camera phone.

² The reason 12,990.00 is incorrect because it implies that the measurement is accurate to the nearest one hundredth of a gallon which is a higher degree of accuracy than can be ascertained from the given information. In fact, the correct answer should be 13,000 gallons, due to the total dollar value being given as the entirely vague "about $556,000." This implies that the final answer can only be accurate to the nearest thousand. Thus ends the quick & dirty lesson on significant figures.

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Playing it too safe

One of my big arguments against filtering teacher and student internet access at schools is because it blocks connections to amazing resources. Students should learn how to form personal learning networks, and teachers should be utilizing them in their practice as well. Case in point:

Out of the (relative) blue, @nporter threw a link at me as a result of my recent post on filter troubles. The link turned out to be a gem of an article on Edutopia written by Suzie Boss, "Stumbling Blocks: Playing it Too Safe Will Make You Sorry."

Great article. If you're at a school that filters out blogs, wikis, YouTube, etc. read it.

Now.

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A hole in the(ir) filter (logic)

I officially addressed the rest of the school improvement team with my concerns over the draconian level of filtration at my school. I essentially said something like, "We're charged with educating students for the 21st Century, yet we're telling them they can't use the tools of the 21st century. We're missing a major opportunity to educate these students on how to use these tools."

Initially there was no response. About 15 minutes later, after the discussion had moved on, a student piped in describing how YouTube could enhance his Physics class. Teachers brought up the fact that you could simply use VTunnel.com to get around the filters.¹ Further, they pointed out that all the students know about VTunnel, and if a teacher doesn't know how to use it, they could ask one of their students to help them with it.

Umm...err...so...

Why am I meeting resistance over this filtering issue? If there's a hole in the filter that everyone knows about and everyone is using, why don't we just adjust the filters appropriately?

Are my logic circuits out of whack? Is there a point to extremely tight filtration if most people know a somewhat reliable way to circumvent the filter?

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¹ VTunnel doesn't work from my school computer for whatever reason. It's blocked. Some teachers also mentioned that it tends to be unreliable. It'll work some days but not others, which keeps me from hopping on VTunnel with my students to utilize blocked sites. If it was totally reliable, I'd so already be there.

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Better teachers make better schools

Teachers are the key. To be more precise, highly effective teachers are the key. Putting high quality educators in every classroom would increase student performance more than any other reform movements. This isn't just my opinion, it's also the opinion of Professor Edward L. Glaeser according to his op-ed in the Boston Globe.

Dr. Glaeser proposes that step one to getting high quality teachers into the classroom is getting highly capable people into teaching. He suggests increasing teacher compensation as well as making the certification process less of a bureaucratic nightmare. I think both ideas are promising. I've certainly had to (and continue to) deal with the mess of getting certification and keeping it current.

Step two involves keeping these high quality teachers in the classroom. Teacher burn-out is a serious problem, especially among highly motivated, highly effective teachers who spend countless hours planning and prepping for those pivotal few minutes actually spent in contact with their students. People who are highly motivated and very capable also tend to have no problem adapting to careers outside of education.

Step two is where I'd really like to agree with Dr. Glaeser, but perhaps I'm just too cynical to really think things would work out as well as he hopes. Glaeser says, "Perhaps teachers unions could start endorsing the use of test scores to evaluate their members and determine tenure."  Look, I totally agree the current seniority based pay scale is not helping our education system. There's simply no incentive to work hard. I get a raise next year whether I bust my behind or just slide through the year. However, tieing test scores to salary gives me the willies.

Why basing teacher pay off student test scores scares me

  1. Test validity. Most state sanctioned standardized tests have a better correlation with socio-economic status than a students ability to think critically, scientifically, or those other skills that actually matter. If a standardized test could be shown to reliably measure the ability to think scientifically, mathematically, critically, etc. then I'd be much closer to liking this idea.
  2. The measurement of instruction affects instruction. Once you pick an instrument, that instrument determines what and how instruction will occur. If my salary is tied to successful test taking, I'm much more likely to focus on test taking skills or knowledge that students need for that one test. Gone is the focus on life-long learning.
  3. Local policies. What happens if my students don't do so hot on the test one year? Or a couple years? Who determines that policy, and how fluid is it? Perhaps it's just my cynicism, but I can envision too many ways this type of system could be used to keep the "good ol' boys" employed while pushing out innovation.

Things my salary should be based on

  • Classroom observation. Watch me at work. If you're paying me to interact directly with students, my salary better be based upon you watching me do that.
  • Student improvement in the areas of critical thinking, literacy, numeracy, and scientific thinking. I realize the standards say students need to know the difference between an element and a compound, but isn't it more important that my students know how interact with scientific information? We need to be teaching students more than facts.
  • My role as a professional educator. Am I a leader in the school? Can I be counted on to work for what's best for the school community?
  • Personal improvement. Am I reflective about my practice? Can I effectively target when things have gone poorly and change things to improve my weaknesses?

I'm unaware of any instrument that measures all the variables above. I'm not sure if that instrument existed if that would be the solution to our educational woes.

What things should your salary be based upon? Discuss.

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Making my case for unfiltration: Images

I'm trying to convince my district to lax their filtration policies. Currently all blogs, social media sites, image hosting or searching sites, and many other online tools are blocked. I've met with and sent out emails to our tech directors and principals explaining my concerns. So far I haven't received any response to my emails and my face to face meetings haven't yielded any progress. I've decided to send out one email a week to the tech directors and principals explaining why various online tools should be unblocked. I'm also trying to work other angles (Curriculum directors, School Improvement Team) as well.  Here's this week's episode.

Image Hosting and Searching

Reasons for images being blocked (as I understand it)

Many image hosting (Flickr, Picasa, etc.) and searching applications (Google Images, Yahoo Images), even with a “Safe Search” setting turned on, will still occasionally turn up  inappropriate images. As a district, we want to prevent these images from being accessible to our students.

Reasons for unblocking image hosting sites and searching

Humans, by nature, are visually oriented. As a species we’ve been honed to analyze visual information for as long as there have been humanoids on the planet. Written language and text is a much more recent invention than sight. While it is an effective method of communication, visual stimuli trumps text-based stimuli in our brains. Therefore, students pay more attention (and generally learn better) when they are visually engaged or are able to exhibit their knowledge through visual modalities.

The ability to search for Creative Commons licensed or other fair use images allows students and staff to publish their work online. One major hurdle that has to be overcome to legally publish content online are copyright laws. However Flickr allows people to publish their image under Creative Commons (CC) licenses (here’s my photostream). These CC licenses can allow third parties to legally use and republish their images in any format. There are several web sites that allow you to easily search the content on Flickr for CC-licensed images (Flickr’s own, Blue Mountain, Comp-Fight). As a result, I can publish presentations online for students and other teachers to access from anywhere without having to worry about copyright infringement. Students can publish projects and other works online; accessing a global audience for feedback on their work. Research is heavy with studies showing how authentic publication of student work increases student performance.

Students can create high quality projects. Previously, I have had students create artifacts of their learning to demonstrate their understanding of the concepts being covered in class. Invariably, high quality projects include images. What good is a text-based description of a stratovolcano when you can have images of real stratovolcanoes? Why simply have a description of what the element lead looks like when you can also have a picture of lead.

Filters generally won’t be an obstacle in any other environment. I am not suggesting we unblock everything and let students do whatever they’d like online. However, most students are accessing the unfiltered internet at home. When students graduate from Fitch they will go on to educational and professional settings that will more likely that not either not have filters or have very lax filtration. In many of those places, student computer use is unsupervised. In school, all student computer use is supervised. This provides us with a wonderful opportunity to teach students how to work with sites where they may run into objectionable content. As a school, we should be jumping at the chance to teach students skills they’ll be using the rest of their lives. Instead, we’re running away from one of the best lessons we can teach our students.

Again, I thank you for your time. I feel that we need to have an open discussion concerning filtering policies concerning what is best for our students.

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The power of talking with (not at).

Deborah Meier:

"There's too often a very off-putting kindergarten teacher's voice, and so on all the way through the grades. I catch myself speaking that way on occasion. What would schools be like, I imagine, if we learned to use our conversational adult voice within its four walls. It might immediately remind us that we are keeping company with kids, not lecturing at them. It might also suggest to them that they might speak to us in the same way. After all, our way of talking, arguing, persuading, and thinking aloud are, however unintentional, models for those we share the space with. How might we, in short, create for the young settings in which they learn how to join us in the adult world?"

A student critiqued my discipline style this week: "Is that how you yell? It's not very scary. I think you should yell louder when you get mad."

I wasn't trying to yell, but clearly the student (and I doubt he's alone) has certain expectations for how he'll be talked at by teachers. I'm pretty laid back to begin with, but I try hard to not let those moments of frustration lead me into moments I'll regret. I'm not an authoritarian. I tried it out for awhile when I first started teaching but it didn't agree with me. I just ended up feeling like a jerk. And my students, though perhaps quieter, were more distant and no more engaged in their learning.

As my authoritarian regime failed, I began focusing on engagement. If students are engaged and interested in what they're doing, they're not going to be planning a coup d'etat. Too often teachers are only interested in keeping their students quiet and looking industrious. Learning in real life is usually loud, awkward, messy, and full of failed attempts. I'm still not very good at incorporating authentic real life learning in my classroom, but when I get do it's full of beauty, relationships, and often complaints from teachers in rooms neighboring yours that your class was making an ungodly amount of noise. They couldn't be further from the truth.
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Quotes from Bridging Differences: Keeping Company With Kids, Not Lecturing at Them

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Filter frustration

Monday Afternoon

The school tech came into my room and asked me to restart my computer for the work order I had put in. I told him that I hadn't put a work order in. He told me that he still needed me to restart my computer because of an update they did with the school's web filter. He left. I obediently restarted. Upon rebooting, I no longer had access to the filter override account. I couldn't access any blogs (including my own), any social bookmarking sites, Flickr, Google image search, twitter, and so on. I had previously been using these resources to improve the content I pushed toward my students in the classroom.

Tuesday Morning

I still was unable to bypass the filter. I sent an email to the school help desk and the school tech who visited me Monday afternoon explaining that I couldn't bypass the filter and that this was negatively impacting my ability to prepare quality content for my classes. The school tech emailed me back promptly explaining that he wasn't the person in charge of the filtration settings and to be sure that I filled out a help desk request (which I did).

Wednesday Morning

I still was unable to bypass the filter. I sent another email to the help desk and the school tech again explaining that I couldn't bypass the filter. This time I also included a list of several web sites that I was using from school to improve teaching and learning in my classroom that were now inaccessible. The school tech dropped by in person to explain that he personally couldn't do anything about it.

Wednesday Afternoon

I dropped by my local vice principal's office after school. I explained the situation to him, and he called down the school tech. The school tech again explained that he had no control over the school filtration setting, and that he asked his boss (the district head of technology) about it. Turns out that previously when one person used the filter override password, it shut down the filter for the entire district. As a result, they eliminated all override accounts. I asked about setting up a tiered filtration system- different filtration for staff than students. He said it's possible but it would take time and money, and since I was the only person who had a problem with the filter, it's not a priority. He suggested talking to my principal, who could talk to the superintendent, who could then tell him to set up tiered filtration. Did I mention we're between superintendents?

Seriously.

I have several major issues with this whole situation:

  1. As educators in the 21st Century, we need to be preparing students for the 21st Century. Draconian filtration protocols don't help this situation. I understand the need for filtration at school. I don't understand the degree to which it currently is enforced.
  2. The district has no educational technologist or whatever the title is. All tech personnel have no education experience. They're solely concerned with protecting their network. This is poor policy. Someone needs to stand up and fight for the educators using technology.
  3. I was told half-truths on Monday and Tuesday about what was happening. I asked why I needed to restart and then why the filter override wasn't working for me on Monday and Tuesday. My questions were not directly answered until today. I don't understand the reason for this.

What next?

I've emailed my principal and overseeing vice principal outlining my concerns with the filtration and explaining how it is negatively impacting my instructional practices. I'm extremely frustrated. I was never exactly happy with the level of filtering at the school, but because of the override I could get to enough resources that I wasn't going to raise much of a stink about it. Now I'm raising a stink- and now that I'm at it, I want students to have increased access as well.

Looking for help

If you have experience at a district with more lax filtration or tiered filtration at a school district, I'd love to hear from you- especially if you're in Connecticut. I was told by our district tech administrator he couldn't even unblock specific sites per teacher request- said the filtration system didn't work like that. That doesn't seem right to me. Is he right? Are filtration systems really that screwy?

Anyone have any success stories on pushing for more lax filtration?

You'd think this would be easier.
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Some related posts:

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Playing to weakness: Our weakness

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach says¹:

"We have got to move from a deficit-driven education system to a strength-based education system. Kids come to us, we diagnose what their problem is and we teach to the gap. And the problem with that is if we spend most of our time trying to help kids just meet the gap, they are never going to realize their full potential- they are never going to achieve excellence. [...] The weaknesses will take care of themselves if you appeal to [the] passion [of the kids]."

Not to mention focusing solely on students' weaknesses (their least favorite things), we're convincing them this "learning thing" is just not for them.

My district is very focused on data teams & data driven decisions. We're supposed to figure out what skills students are doing poorly and have them practice these skills more. A good idea in theory. In reality it's like this:

Teacher: "We're going to do more reading."

Student: "I hate reading."

Teacher: "That's why we need to do it more, because you don't like it."

Student: "I hate this place."

Compare to this tact:

Teacher: "What things do you really love to do?"

Student: "I like werewolves & vampires & monsters & stuff."

Teacher: "Sweet! You know, I know of a few books that are all about monsters like that. I'll bring them in tomorrow."

Student: "Awesome!"

Same mission. Different tacts. Very different results.

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¹ Quoted from her keynote at ACTEM 2008: "Schooling for the 21st Century: Unleashing Student Passion" given October 17, 2008. Thanks to Bob Sprankle's Bit By Bit Podcast for pushing this out there.