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Shifting Tactics: Rocketship Will Change its Computer Lab Model

January 22, 2013 | 10:58 AM | By
Rocketship's Learning Lab.

TB

Rocketship's Learning Lab.

Rocketship Education, a network of charter schools based in California, is changing the way students will use computers in its Learning Labs. Rather than spending chunks of time in computer labs with divided computer stations, students will be using computers in their classrooms, with the help of teachers and aids.

“The integration between the classroom and the Learning Lab was an area that could improve. That’s part of the reason that we made this shift,” said Charlie Bufalino, National Development Associate and former Online Learning Specialist at Rocketship. By moving computers back into the classroom, Rocketship is hoping to form a better connection to what students are doing on computers to what they’re learning in class.

In a PBS Newshour special last month, several teachers said that Learning Lab practice isn’t linked closely enough to what happens in class. Bufalino says that teachers have always been encouraged to use data from online learning to inform their teaching; that said, at its most basic level, the function of the Learning Lab was for skills practice, while teachers focused teaching on what they call higher order thinking skills in class. Now, Rocketship is hoping teachers will have more control over both.

“The integration between the classroom and the Learning Lab needed improvement.”

“The idea is that in this more flexible model, there will be more time for teachers to diagnose and look at the data,” Bufalino said.

The data, however, can be overwhelming for teachers to analyze. Rocketship uses six different online programs, all with separate mechanisms and criteria for feedback. Rocketship’s national office has been working on building proprietary systems that unify all the data, so teachers look at one screen that compares apples to apples at a glance. Their integration system is aligned to the Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, blended learning, individualized learning, Rocketship

Will Rocketship Change Its Learning Labs?

January 2, 2013 | 3:00 PM | By

Rocketship Schools in the Bay Area have been one of the trailblazers in the ever-changing landscape of blended learning. Located in low-income neighborhoods, the schools’ Learning Labs — where students spend up to 90 minutes a day on computers working on math and literacy software — has been one of its defining characteristics.

But this model isn’t working, some Rocketship teachers say, and because it’s a charter school network with evolving systems, it may soon be changing, according to this PBS Newshour story.

“There’s definitely an aspect of us kind of not knowing enough about what’s going on in learning lab to be able to use that in our classrooms,” said teacher Judy Lavi.

“We don’t yet get data that says, OK, teach this differently tomorrow because of what happened here. And that is — that is a frustration point,” said teacher Andrew Elliott-Chandler.

Adam Nadeau, principal of Rocketship Mosaic Elementary, says he doesn’t think the Learning Lab model will continue next year. And Elliott-Chandler sees a different function for the computers.

“Next year, we’re thinking of bringing the computers back to the classrooms and the kids back to Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, blended learning, Rocketship

What Will Work in New Blended Learning Experiment?

October 17, 2012 | 10:32 AM | By

Lenny Gonzales

By Katrina Schwartz

As the blended learning movement grows in the U.S., schools will need to experiment with what works best in different types of settings. There’s still a lot to learn about different types of blended learning models, and a new nonprofit called Silicon Schools will raise and invest $25 million toward that effort.

With partial grants from the Bay Area’s Fisher family (owners of Gap), and the advice of board members Michael Horn from the Innosight Institute and Salman Khan of the Khan Academy, the nonprofit, which has raised $12 million so far, aims to fund new and innovative approaches in existing blended learning programs with grants to each school.

The effort is led by Brian Greenberg, who chronicled the successes and challenges of piloting the Khan Academy in Oakland’s Envision Schools on the Blend My Learning blog. During that process Greenberg and his staff were very open about the pros and cons of integrating technology into the classroom, and other educators added their perspectives to what worked and didn’t work on the blog. Greenberg points to the parts of the program that worked well, namely letting the technology do some of the heavy lifting in terms of grading, lesson planning and collecting analytics that free up teacher time to focus on students.

The movement is in its infancy. There is no blended-learning canon that can be taught to teachers — they are the ones who need to write the playbook.

Giving students more responsibility for the learning process was also a significant outcome of the Envision pilot program. “What we’re finding is that if you make the steps clear and make them accountable, the more you put them in charge of the process the more they amaze,” Greenberg said, referring to students. The pilot program also helped move the class toward “proficiency-based learning,” in which a student is responsible for an intended outcome, but not penalized every step along the way.

Greenberg intends to apply one important lesson he learned from the program to the schools funded by the Silicon Valley Fund: Technology in no way replaces the teacher. At some point the usefulness of technology runs out and the educator’s role is crucial. He also says that technology Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, blended learning, Envision Schools, Flipped classroom, Khan Academy, Rocketship, Silicon Schools

Charter School Network Offers Its Own Data System to All Schools

September 11, 2012 | 12:00 PM | By
By Lillian Mongeau

As gathering data about student performance becomes a bigger priority in education, schools are faced with different choices on how to capture that data. A slew of tech companies offer a variety of products they’ve developed for schools, but some school districts are creating their own data systems.

California-based charter network Aspire Public Schools is one of them. The school created a data system called Schoolzilla, a web-based data platform that is now available to any school who wants to use it for free. Teachers or administrators can sign up at Schoolzilla to get started. Aspire offers implementation of the system for a fee. So far, there isn’t a set price for the service; it depends on the degree of help each school needs to set it up.

The data tool, originally developed three years ago, allows teachers to synthesize data from multiple sources and create reports. Teachers can see whether the entire class is struggling on a particular math standard, for example, or whether specific students are falling behind. The idea is to help teachers decide what tack to take with individual students.

“Teachers spent hours pulling data out of the attendance system, then the gradebook, then the tests, then matching it all together.”

But academic performance numbers aren’t the only data captured. Since the platform accesses multiple databases at once, teachers can compare things like student absenteeism to their grades. Or they can compare students’ grades to their scores on standardized tests in the same subject. Or they can compare the frequency of calls home with the number of disciplinary actions needed at school.

“Teachers spent hours pulling data out of the attendance system, then the gradebook, then the tests, then matching it all together in massive Excel spreadsheets,” said Anna Utgoff, Aspires’ Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Teaching With Tech, Aspire, data, Rocketship, Schoolzilla, student data systems

Combining Computer Games with Classroom Teaching

January 23, 2012 | 7:00 AM | By

Rocketship Education, the Bay Area network of charter schools, is poised to grow big and bold in the next few years. Hinging its success on its own brand of hybrid learning — combining online and teacher-guided instruction in a tightly engineered school day — the charter network will grow from five schools open now to 25 by 2017-2018.

But it hasn’t been an easy trail to blaze. Skeptics from the San Francisco Unified trustees, which voted against approving a Rocketship charter in a low-income neighborhood, called the network’s tactics “an unsound educational program” and characterized its computer lab time as a “drill and kill” approach, according to a recent article in Thoughts on Public Education. In the end, however, the State Board of Education granted a charter to Rocketship.

“Instructors have to find the balance between occupying students with something fun, and giving them an opportunity to learn something important.”

The computer lab time they’re referring to is Rocketship’s now-famous Learning Lab, where students go twice a day, for 50-minute computer sessions in both reading and math. The online exercises are like short video games, featuring cartoon characters that reward students with points when they get the problems right.

Eight-year-old Xochitl Reece might not agree with the “drill and kill” characterization. Xochitl is a third-grader at Rocketship Los Suenos Academy in San Jose, and during a recent visit, was playing a math computer program. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Teaching With Tech, blended learning, Rocketship

Jeb Bush and Rupert Murdoch Spotlight Ed Tech at SF Event

October 13, 2011 | 12:26 PM | By

Flickr: Shankbone

Rupert Murdoch is slated to attend ed tech event in San Francisco

Reported by Ana Tintocalis

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush says he knows how to fix education in America and he’s convening a national summit in San Francisco today to promote his ideas. Bush formed The Foundation for Excellence in Education after he was termed out of office four years ago.

For this week’s event, he’s recruited media tycoon Rupert Murdoch to be a headliner. For those who don’t know what the controversial name has to do with education, it brings up some questions.

“I was dumbfounded. Rupert Murdoch as the keynote speaker? Would you want your children in a classroom with him?” said Ken Tray a San Francisco history teacher and union leader.

What Tray and others might not know is that last year, Murdoch purchased Wireless Generation, an ed tech company that produces learning software, and is behind the School of One program in New York, which tailors each students’ day based on data-driven performance records.

Patricia Levesque, from Foundation for Excellence in Education, says Bush has been on the forefront of provocative reforms, including expanding access to online schools.

In fact, the key focus of this year’s summit is innovation in classroom technology – specifically blended learning. Levesque says the foundation chose San Francisco as the site for the Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Foundation for Excellence in Education, Rocketship, Rupert Murdoch, Wireless Generation