Teaching With Tech

How devices, software, and the Internet are changing the classroom dynamic.

What It Takes to Become an All Project-Based School

May 16, 2013 | 7:00 AM | By Katrina Schwartz

New Tech Network

In many schools, project-based learning happens in isolated cases: in certain teachers’ classrooms here and there, or in the contexts of specific subjects. But for students to benefit from project-based learning, ideally it’s part of a school’s infrastructure — a way to approach learning holistically.

For one quickly growing network of schools, project-based learning is the crux of the entire ecosystem. New Tech Network, which was founded 15 years ago, is taking its school-wide project-based model to national scale. The organization, which offers a paid program for schools to use its model, began with a flagship school in Napa and has grown to 120 schools in 18 states, most of which are public schools.

The network has not only grown in size, but also in notoriety. President Obama visited Manor New Tech High School in Texas last week, as part of an effort to promote an education agenda focused on producing graduates that can compete in today’s global economy.

The nod from the president comes at a time when New Tech is attempting to position itself as a successful model to follow. But rather than relying on test scores and such quantifiable numbers to prove its value, New Tech’s own 2013 annual report frames success by focusing on deeper learning that can’t be measured by standardized test scores and their college readiness. Yet it’s that lack of emphasis on test scores, an all-consuming worry for many districts, that makes it more difficult for the organization to pin point numbers to tell its story.

“From where we stand, public school districts are as capable of innovative schools as charter schools.”

Here are a few of the statistics New Tech has gathered from their schools: students graduate at a rate six percent higher than the national average and enroll in college nine percent more than the average. They also persist in four-year universities at a 17 percent higher rate and 46 percent higher rate when it comes to two year colleges. Perhaps most importantly, they claim that Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, New Tech Network, personalized learning, professional development, project-based-learning, school culture

With Tech Tools, How Should Teachers Tackle Multitasking In Class?

May 15, 2013 | 7:00 AM | By Holly Korbey

Lenny Gonzalez

Important research compiled on the effects of students multitasking while learning shows that they are losing depth of learning, getting mentally fatigued, and are weakening their ability to transfer what they have learned to other subjects and situations.

Educators as well as students have noticed how schoolwork suffers when attention is split between homework and a buzzing smartphone. Many students, like Alex Sifuentes, who admit to multitasking while studying, know the consequences well. “When I was grounded for a couple of months and didn’t have my phone, I got done extra early with homework,” Sifuentes wrote in response to Annie Murphy Paul’s article, “How Does Multitasking Change the Way Kids Learn?”

Parents also see a big difference in their kids’ studying habits. Jenifer Gossman reported that her 17-year-old daughter asked her brother to hide her phone so she could study for several important exams. After hours of studying, Gossman’s daughter reappeared, amazed at how productive she’d been without her phone by her side.

“Devices that once were just an entertainment tool are also becoming our educational and work tools.”

But for many, the solution isn’t simply to do away with the gadgets — mostly because they’re the same tools that actually help do the work, and it can be confusing for young adults to distinguish the difference between work and everything else.

“We have a new problem forthcoming and that is our devices that once were just an entertainment tool are also becoming our educational and work tools,” wrote commenter Des. “And with this all combined into one, it’s hard to put one away without the other being easy to access. With these things being integrated, we also start to lose sight of what is actually work and what is entertainment.”

While some teachers want to remove all digital distractions from the classroom, others say Generation M’s biggest challenges — like giving schoolwork undivided attention — require learning Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Research, Teaching With Tech, multitasking

Google Glass: Vision for Future of Learning?

May 14, 2013 | 2:00 PM | By Katrina Schwartz

This is a shamelessly promotional video for Google Glass, but it shows the possibilities this tool opens up for learners. Andrew Vanden Heuvel teaches advanced physics online to high school students whose schools don’t offer the course. He explores CERN, the famous particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, bringing it back into the classroom in real time with Google glasses.

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, Google, videos

Paint or Paint App? Value of Creating Digital Vs. Traditional Art

May 10, 2013 | 7:00 AM | By Holly Korbey

Flickr: Naomi Chung

While it may be easy to imagine how iPads can support classroom studies with reading, history, or science, some of the most groundbreaking — and creative — work with digital tools may be happening in arts classes. Schools using iPads are incorporating them in art and music classes, too — and not only as tools for measuring and remembering, but for creating as well. Whether or not students grow up to become the next David Hockney – who has created several New Yorker covers using the iPad’s drawing tool – teachers say there is value to learning to create using digital tools, especially when blended with more hands-on means of expression.

Susan Sonnemaker, a middle school chorus and band teacher at San Francisco Day School, uses school-provided tablets in limited amounts throughout the year. She finds them most useful for managing technical aspects of music class with record speed — like recording practice sessions, using a tuner app to help kids tune their own instruments, and collecting digital practice sheets. For practical matters, Sonnemaker says, the iPad has been invaluable, because streamlining and managing tuning and practice leaves more time for actually playing or singing music.

“You can create something digitally that would be impossible to create by hand. Conversely, you can create something by hand that you cannot replicate digitally.”

But what about using tablets for inspiration and creating new music? When it comes to creating something new, Sonnemaker says that technology helps her students be more creative, not less: “In regards to composition, students are not only more engaged in their own projects (with iPads), but they’re using real life technology,” she said. “We still do a good deal of composition exercises using old-fashioned pencil and paper. But using Garageband on the iPad is what many professional musicians use, so students are also acquiring skills to compose in the real world if Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, art, iPad

FUTURE OF TABLETS

The Future of Tablets in Education: Potential Vs. Reality of Consuming Media

May 8, 2013 | 7:00 AM | By MindShift

Flickr: Flickingerbrad

By Justin Reich

The Someday/Monday dichotomy captures one of the core challenges in teacher professional development around education technology. On the one hand, deep integration of new learning technologies into classrooms requires substantially rethinking pedagogy, curriculum, assessment, and teacher practice (someday). For technology to make a real difference in student learning, it can’t just be an add-on. On the other hand, teachers need to start somewhere (Monday), and one of the easiest ways for teachers to get experience with emerging tools is to play and experiment in lightweight ways: to use technology as an add-on. Teachers need to imagine a new future—to build towards Someday—and teachers also need new activities and strategies to try out on Monday. Both pathways are important to teacher growth and meaningful, sustained changes in teaching and learning.

In this four-part series, we’ll use the Someday/Monday template to explore four dimensions of using tablets, such as the iPad, in educational settings, examining how teachers can take students on a journey from consumption of media to curation, creation, and connection. Here, we’ll start with consumption.

Part I: Consumption

In the apocryphal photo of the iPad, the tablet rests in the lap of Steve Jobs, sitting on the stage at the iPad release demonstration, reclined in a leather chair. This was a device made for reading and watching, for sitting back, for passively consuming media. One of the signature challenges of the surge of interest in iPads is helping educators imagine the device as more than a library of books Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, iPad, Mobile Learning, tablet

Parents Want Kids to Use Mobile Devices in Schools

May 7, 2013 | 8:00 AM | By Ian Quillen

Flickr: jhaymesisvip

Smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices have gained popularity as educational tools in part because of the belief those devices could cut across the digital divide created by socioeconomic boundaries.

Now a new study reinforces that perspective, finding that students’ access to mobile devices, in this country anyway, is more often a question of parents’ attitudes toward mobile learning than a family’s income or the mobile device provisions of that family’s local school district.

The report published by Grunwald Associates and the Learning First Alliance with support from AT&T, found that, according to data from a representative nationwide sample of nearly 2,400 parents, more than four in five K-12 students at least occasionally use some sort of computing device, including mobile devices like tablets or smartphones, or laptop computers.

“The ubiquity of mobile technology in everyday life I think comes through loud and clear in this study. Families own multiple devices, even families that are not well off.”

Further, although there was some association between parent income and the 18 percent of students who don’t use devices at home, more than half of those non-using students were found to live in houses where parents own at least one such device, often a smartphone.

The cause of non-use in those cases is “some other reason that probably revolves around the attitudes of parents and, by extension, the students toward the smartphone,” said Peter Grunwald, the president and founder of Grunwald Associates, a research firm based in Bethesda, Md., known for its work on ed-tech related projects. “The ubiquity of mobile technology in everyday life I think comes through loud and clear in this study. Families own multiple devices, even families that are not well off.”

Income did affect the number of computing devices per household, however. Overall, the study found families with an income of under $25,000 were found to own an average of 3.3 devices per household, a figure that includes desktop and laptop computers, tablets, and smartphones and Continue reading →