Erin Scott

When it comes to language arts, the jury’s still out on the quality and effectiveness of the available software. Some schools are investing and experimenting with different products, with mixed results, while others are working with free available web 2.0 tools. Here are two case studies examining each approach.

THE SOFTWARE APPROACH

Firstline Schools, a public charter school company in New Orleans operating five schools, has aggressively pursued blended learning with hopes to help students who have fallen behind — especially after the devastating effects on schooling after Hurricane Katrina.

“We can’t imagine going back to a traditional model,” said Chris Liang-Vergara, director of instructional technology for personalized learning at Firstline. “It seems crazy with the amount of differentiation we need.”

Firstline uses Achieve3000 in some schools, a program that allows students to read a nonfiction

article everyday and answer questions related to it. But the program is dry, according to Liang-Vergara, and it can seem random and disconnected to the rest of what students are doing in class. He says he’s seen it used well, but usually by experienced teachers who are empowered to use it for the best kind of differentiation. If the teacher takes the time to search the Achieve300 database for nonfiction articles that are relevant to other class work, discusses them, and wraps them into the curriculum that works best. And the software does provide differentiation, increasing the difficulty of vocabulary and sentence structure as a reader progresses.

“When you show it to any experienced teacher, they get very excited because they think about how much time they’ll save and how much information can be at their fingertips,” said Liang-Vergara. It’s easier for the teacher to see what the student has learned and whether their reading comprehension skills are improving, while saving her grading time.

Overall, Liang-Vergara hasn’t seen the success in language arts blended learning that he’d hoped for and Firstline schools have scaled back the amount of time they use digital tools in English class. Liang-Vergara admitted that some schools have stopped using Achieve3000 partly because kids were quickly bored by it.

[RELATED: To Make Blended Learning Work, Teacher Try Different Tactics]

“The biggest issue I still see is that people are still trying to break it down when
it needs to be combined,” Liang-Vergara said. Learning to read and write requires many complimentary skills working in unison and offering a program that addresses just one skill doesn’t work as well to promote literacy as whole. Vocabulary in a text contributes to understanding meaning, literary structures give it depth, and non-fiction works about the subject matter help deepen understanding. These things can’t be parsed and require frequent back and forth with the teacher.

Still, Liang-Vergara says some software has proven more successful – like Vocab Journey, which puts words in context and uses pictures and gamification to make learning new words fun. Even putting a small portion of assessment online saves teachers time, a big factor in English classes where teachers have to grade writing. “English teachers spend so much time on assessment that it causes them not to assign much work because they know they’ll have to correct all of it,” said Liang-Vergara. Removing some of that burden with programs like Achieve3000 or Vocab Journey allows them more time for one-on-one instruction.

Liang-Vergara says software developers he’s spoken to at conferences aren’t as interested in working on innovations in language arts software as they are in math. He believes the whole market has a lot of growing to do.

THE WEB 2.0 APPROACH

For Catlin Tucker, a high school teacher in Winsor, Calif., her school has not focused on blended learning the way Firstline has, partly because the cost of software and infrastructure has been a barrier. Even if she had the choice, though, she would not use what she refers to as “canned content.” Instead, she started integrating technology naturally into her classroom on an experimental basis using free web tools.

Tucker started off by trying to improve her students’ communication skills both online and in-person by using the free online platform Collaborize Classroom, which offers more tools than an average discussion board. The online discussion, debate, and collaboration replaced homework, with assignments like posting a response to the discussion topic and responding to three peers. “It was interesting to see students who don’t engage verbally with their peers be super engaged in the online space,” Tucker said. Once those students found an online voice, she said they participated more in class discussions too.

She also realized that just because students have been exposed to technology at young ages and use it often doesn’t mean they know how to have an appropriate online discussion, a skill Tucker knows they need.

With the success of Collaborize Classroom, Tucker began to slowly integrate her classroom time with online spaces, making the transitions fluid with a clear focus on the learning goal, not the technology. She might start a discussion in class, extend it online, require collaboration through Google docs, deepen an understanding of the topic through a TED-Ed video, then pull it back into the classroom with extension activities.

For example, her vocabulary lessons — one of the few areas where she still found herself lecturing, and a necessary part of any English class — have been transformed. She now starts out by having students look at words in context and predict what they mean. Then they go home and watch Tucker’s video lecture. When they come back to class, they use mobile devices to find synonyms and antonyms, then go home and incorporate them into poems or stories. They share their work online, the class votes and the winner gets to read aloud in class. Suddenly vocabulary, a traditionally dull aspect of English class has some spice and students find a personal connection to the words they’re using.

[RELATED: How Teachers Mix Online Math With Classroom Instruction]

Tucker doesn’t teach in a wealthy school district where every student has access to a smartphone and a home computer. But if there’s one phone for every three to four students, the activity can still work. And, she doesn’t allow home computer access to become an excuse not to participate – instead she connects her students to free online resources in town.

This blended teaching style has completely changed Tucker’s classroom. “So much of my creative energy was being drained by managing the paper load,” Tucker said. “Now I read their online discussions, I see how they’re engaging in that space, but I’m not the only one giving feedback; they’re getting it from their peers too.” And while teaching this way doesn’t make her job easier, she’s more engaged too. “This is so much more creative, inventive and exciting,” she said. “As a teacher I am so much more energized.”

And she’s assigning more work than ever before. “Everything that happens online requires that they’re reading and writing as well as thinking critically, so all these different skills are being developed,” said Tucker. For her, blended learning is a good way to get away from collecting and disseminating information, instead helping students discover it on their own.

Technology has become a seamless part of students’ lives in and out of the classroom, and schools must find ways to integrate it. This is one of the conclusions in a report by the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE), which states that policymakers at the highest level need to understand the trend and form a cohesive course of action for schools to follow.

In Born in Another Time: Ensuring Educational Technology Meets the Needs of Students Today — And Tomorrow the NASBE focuses on the importance of understanding students’ needs, ensuring that teachers are prepared to meet those needs, and shoring up the technical infrastructure that will allow schools to participate.

Up until now, much of the enthusiasm for education technology, blended learning, online courses and other digital aids in the classroom have come from teachers themselves. In fact, many ed-tech companies are pursuing a teacher-first strategy, opting to hook the educator and avoid the complicated bureaucracy of selling to school districts. That has left a patchwork of tools and uncertainty among some teachers who would like to take advantage of new tech tools, but aren’t sure how to get started.

“State boards of education along with their state education agencies are key to providing the leadership on education technology issues our school systems need to ensure students are ready for life and work in a digital era,” wrote the NASBE study group tasked with investigating emerging tech trends. At the same time the report acknowledges that the current landscape is a “wild, wild west” of various products and approaches. “Because of their formal responsibilities, state education systems are the only entities able to offer a sustainable platform for aligning these promising—but still fragmented and rapidly changing — forces,” the report said.

This excerpt addresses how educators and the Board should move forward in the shifting landscape.

CHAPTER 1: ADDRESSING THE VOICE AND NEEDS OF TODAY’S STUDENTS

Much has been written about the cohort of students in school today, who are generally considered digital natives. Commentators frequently point out how these children have always lived with computers in their homes, cell phones in everyone’s pocket, and hundreds of channels available on their televisions. They easily adapt to every new piece of technology that arrives in the marketplace and can text as easily and quickly as adults can talk. They are constantly “plugged in.” For this generation, there is no divide between “technology” and their daily lives.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Today’s students have never lived in a world where the internet wasn’t in their homes and cell phones weren’t in everyone’s pockets. For them, there is no divide between “technology” and their daily lives.
• “Our kids are digitally savvy when it comes to gaming, texting, and social networking,” one expert told state board members, “but when it comes to information, even the best students can be digital doofuses.” In other words, just because they have a more intuitive grasp of how to make technology “work” doesn’t mean students automatically know how to use it as a tool for learning. Students still need to be taught foundational research skills and processes that can be enhanced by technology use. This means  students—and educators—need to understand that doing research is more than just sorting through what pops up via online search engines.
• Internet information often does not have the ordered structure provided by textbooks or other resources for students. Educators need to be sensitive to this, and to their students frame of reference in regards to online searches, when integrating technology into their lessons.
• With increased access to many different types of tools for learning and socializing and ever-increasing multitasking, it has become even more important to teach students how to focus their attention.
• One of the great advantages of technology is its potential for personalizing instruction. Students are used to being able to personalize how they receive information—and when schools don’t present information in the same way, they sometimes become bored and disengaged. Instruction should be designed to take advantage of each student’s personal style of learning.
• Because online problems can cause disruptions at school, there is a role for schools to help students learn to be safe, responsible, and respectful digital citizens. But in order to do so, school teachers and staff have to be prepared and equipped to monitor and instruct students in safe environments that are close to what they will experience once the filters and monitoring are removed.

Erin Scott

By now, most would agree that technology has the potential to be a useful tool for learning. Many schools have invested in some form of technology, whether it’s in computer labs, tablets, or a laptop for every student, depending on their budget.

But for many schools, finding a way to integrate the use of tech in a traditional setting — teacher-centered classrooms — is proving to be a challenge. What educational software should be used? What criteria should the software be judged against? And what happens to the role of the teacher and classroom activities when students are using software for practice exercises?

At this point, just a couple of years into the movement, there are no definitive answers yet. Different schools are trying different blended learning models. Most schools allot a designated computer lab time when students use computers for math, literacy, or other type of software. But teachers who are more advanced in using technology and more comfortable with experimenting have students rotate through different learning modalities at different times, including time for online learning, working with the teacher face-to-face, and working on projects in groups fluidly. In the most extreme cases, students spend most of their day on computers, just as they would in the workplace.

But for any of those tactics to work, educators agree that the key is to have a clear vision of what the technology is being used for, and how that will affect the teacher’s role. For schools just beginning to dabble in classroom technology, that’s a daunting idea. Many aren’t willing to upend the existing systems for this new model.

Catlin Tucker, an English teacher in Windsor, Calif., who integrates tech into her students’ school and homework, takes full advantage of what the technology affords her. “Shifting some work online to complement traditional classrooms creates much needed time and space in the classroom,” Tucker said. If technology can replace elements of in-class instruction, classroom time can be leveraged to deepen learning. “[Teachers] can embrace project-based learning and create student-centered classrooms to build on the work that’s completed online.”

That might be easier said than done. While Tucker has come up with a strategy that works for her, it doesn’t always work for others. Liz Arney, Director of Innovative Learning at Aspire Schools, which has a small group instruction model, says students follow the teacher’s pacing guide, which doesn’t always align with what level they’ve progressed to on the software. Kids could be coming into the teacher-taught space at very different points in their online learning. It’s up to the teacher to figure out how to reconcile the two.

What’s more, the quality of the available software isn’t always great. “The programs are just really mediocre,” Arney said. “No one has any business in my mind letting the program tell them what to teach. The programs are just not strong enough.”

The software also promises to provide educators with valuable information on students’ progress day by day, but Arney doesn’t believe the data on student comprehension is reliable.

“It’s a fair question to ask if the technology is good enough or the system is strong enough,” said Brian Greenberg, a Bay Area educator who’s been practicing different ways of using tech in schools.

He’s optimistic that the software will get better, but he’d like to see small-scale experimentation before disseminating ideas to schools everywhere.

CHALLENGES ARE OPPORTUNITIES

One of the biggest challenges of blended learning is also what excites advocates most — allowing kids to progress at their own level and pace. “We will move to a model where we don’t assume all kids are learning the same concept in any given day or week,” Greenberg said. “It’s going to be more about teachers having nimble classrooms.”

But teachers already have a mountain of work and asking them to keep track of where each learner is on the software — which may or may not correlate to core standards — is a tall order. Greenberg says the teacher is crucial to ensuring that blended learning is effective. The technology should free educators to do more of what only they can do — give context to concepts.

Tucker says the teacher needs to have a strong sense of what the technology accomplishes and how her teaching can encourage students to think creatively. “Computer programs alone will not radically change the teaching paradigm,” Tucker said. “Learning does not take place in the act of listening to (or viewing) information explained, but rather in the moments when we are asked to make sense of that information, to wrestle with ideas, to apply, evaluate, synthesize and use what we have learned to create something,” Tucker said.

CASE BY CASE

It’s important that schools show a commitment to the coming change, Arney said — and to have a strong staff and principal.

“The tech is going to kill you the first year. Everything is going to go wrong. You have to have the stomach for that,” she said.

Greenberg’s organization, Silicon Schools Fund, will experiment with blended learning models to find what works for different kinds of school structures and populations. He doesn’t believe anyone has gotten it quite right yet.

“I think the right tone in this world is to be cautiously optimistic. Anyone who says this is easy you should walk away from,” Greenberg said.

“Siri, can you tell me what 2x+7 is?”

You know the future is rushing towards us when students no longer ask the teacher if they can use a calculator, but instead ask if they can ask Siri.

Siri shows a plot of the equation, what kind of geometric shape it is, and loads of other things that are well above the needs of eighth-graders. The image on the screen looked remarkably like the data one finds at the Wolfram Alpha site. And sure enough, turns out Wolfram is built right into the Siri help menu.

Clearly it won’t take long for students to realize how easy this is to access. In a year’s time they’ll likely be well entrenched in using Siri or some Siri surrogate to find the answers to math problems and potentially lots of questions in other subjects.

In that light, how should teaching change?

Short of banning smartphones (a short-term solution, at best), the evolution of artificial intelligence services like Siri means that there will be a shift from a focus on finding the answer as the endpoint to a greater focus on analysis. You have the answer, but so what? What does that answer mean in a real-life situation?

Should teachers just take the bit that they have traditionally needed for this kind of problem or should they figure out how to use this extra information provided by Siri to push students’ thinking beyond where it usually goes with eighth graders?

Taking digital tools and mobile technologies into account (not to mention Common Core expectations), it’s obvious that multiple-choice and true-false questions are not going to cut it anymore. Instead, educators have to design questions that force students into drawing conclusions and using the proof process that many of them haven’t encountered yet.

One method of practicing problem-solving is giving students both the question and the answer and asking them to explain how to solve the problem — how you harvest the information from the problem and show the steps in the solution.

Here’s an example: Instead of reviewing the commutative and distributive properties with a worksheet where they would be able to enter the equation into Siri and get the answer, you ask the question in a different way. You can ask them… “Is 5(5x+7) = 25x+7 always, sometimes or never true?” Or you might ask “Is 3x-9 = 9-3x always, sometimes or never true?”

In the first example, they simply have to answer the question and Siri can help them find the answer pretty quickly. In the second example, students have to test out their idea with different kinds of numbers; positive, negative, fractions, improper, zero and big numbers. They search for an example that proves the equation true, or they search for a counter-example that proves what they conjecture to be false.

BALANCING ACT

Changing instruction in this way is a balancing act. Lessons are now designed with the assumption that students will use readily available technology, and build on prior knowledge so the learning will stick.

For example, when we study parallel and perpendicular lines, the objective is for students to learn how the coefficients of these lines are the same and how they are different. It’s easy to give them a definition to memorize, but will they remember it? Connecting the idea to something tangible that they’ve done will ensure that they will.

Many students already have free graphing calculator apps on their phones and use it regularly. They even send screenshots to show what they’re thinking or where they’re stuck on a problem. In this case, the app is used just as pencil, notebooks, and graph paper.

IMPLICATIONS FOR OTHER SUBJECTS

Siri is helping students in other classes too. She’s very capable of finding the capitol of a state, the 22nd president of the USA, and who wrote the phrase “Four score and seven years ago.” She knows the plot of every book in the Google Library and won’t hesitate to define “iambic pentameter.” Chemical symbols? Physical laws? A snap.

I wonder how other teachers might have to rethink their teaching and assessment strategies — with Siri and her A.I. colleagues at our students’ beck and call?

Marsha Ratzel is a National Board-certified teacher in the Blue Valley School District in Kansas, where she teaches middle school math, science, and sometimes social studies. A version of this post originally appeared on Voices from the Learning Revolution.