technology

The best use of technology in the classroom

Posted on by Mark Isero

 A friend called me a few days ago for help on an upcoming interview. He’s applying to become a social studies teacher, and he wanted tips about how to answer the question, “How would you use technology in your classroom?”

I know the “right” answer, the one the interviewers want to hear. You’re supposed to link technology with large-scale, authentic projects. You’re supposed to talk about video and audio and new, obscure Web 2.0 tools. In this answer, the role of technology is to shock and awe.

That’s fine. I like snazzy tech tools, too. But that’s not the real right answer. Today I came across a tweet by Franki Sibberson, a literacy advocate and blogger at “A Year of Reading.” This is what she thinks about the role of technology:

In other words, rather than saving technology for flashy, end-of-unit projects, teachers should use technology day-in, day-out to advance the core components of learning, like reading.

I totally agree. In my class this year, my students and I used technology, and sure, we had fun projects, like “Tech Danger,” a music video exploring the role of technology in Frankenstein.

But the true power of technology in my classroom was less sexy. Here are three examples:

1. Google Docs. Many teachers see Google Docs as old-hat. Been there and done that. But Google Docs was crucial for my students’ writing. They drafted their essays, received feedback from me, a peer, and an online writing mentor, and reflected each week on their writing growth. Less time was wasted printing, waiting for feedback, and making improvements. Writing gets better with extensive practice, and Google Docs is the reason my students were able to complete 16 essays this year.

2. Mass texting. More and more teachers are using texting to communicate with their students and to build relationships. I used texting this year to extend the learning day. After all, five hours a week of class time is not enough to meet ambitious learning outcomes. Time after school and at home are imperative to accelerate learning. To encourage studying after hours, I used SmashText to send texts to all my students. Texting was a popular and effective intervention for my students, who appreciated the reminders and words of encouragement.

3. Class Blog. Teachers have had websites for years, usually to share information, but few have opened them up to their students as shared learning spaces. (My favorite is “Word Choices.”) Last year, I decided to let my students post to iseroma.com however and whenever they wanted, not just for assignments and projects. This decision built classroom community and gave students an authentic space for their work. It made my students’ work and thinking more real and more public.

I’m pretty happy with how technology in my classroom materialized this year. For technology to be useful, it must take hold; in other words, students must return to the same tools over and over again, rather than just one time.

Next year, I hope to expand my use of technology, this time to improve reading. I’m looking at using ipadio or Evernote to record think-alouds and text-based discussions. Capturing students’ annotations will also be important. If they’re on paper, I can just snap a picture. But I’m also thinking of using Google Docs or Diigo (my favorite, though clunky) or another annotation tool (they aren’t that good, actually) to promote a sense of shared reading and thinking.

Please let me know what you think. How do you use technology in the classroom? 

reading/teaching

Teachers should assess reading directly

Posted on by Mark Isero

 The best assessments are ones that are authentic and directly tied to the skill being assessed.

For example, if you’re a pianist, the best assessment is a piano recital. If you’re a football player, the best assessment is a football game. And so on.

In schools, teachers often do a great job linking skills with assessments. Writing is a good example. We want students to improve as writers, so we have them write. To assess speaking, we assign speeches.

With reading, however, teachers don’t know what to do. We give pop quizzes, which often test recall. We assign reading questions, which involve writing (and guessing what we find important). Or we have students do Socratic seminars, which assess discussion skills. In short, teachers haven’t found a direct way to assess how students make meaning of what they read and what they understand from a text.

That’s why I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about how to assess reading. Doing so is not easy. After all, reading is private and usually done silently. Reading is thinking. And there’s a lot of fake reading, a lot of hiding. By the time they enter high school, many students (and some teachers) have a fixed mindset about reading. You either have it or you don’t.

Reading needs to get out there, to become public. Over the next few months, I hope to figure out ways to assess reading directly. I want to find ways that students can show me how they made meaning of a text and what they understood from it.

Here are my two initial ideas:

1. Teach students a consistent way to annotate texts and then assess their reading from their annotations. There would be two layers of annotations: process and meaning. In the process layer, students would demonstrate how they made sense of a text. In the meaning layer, they would show what they understood, the connections they made, the significance of the reading.

The good news is, My colleagues and I already have done some work on annotations. The next step is to streamline the system and come up with a consistent way to teach it (almost like the five-paragraph essay).

2. Teach students how to talk about texts and do recorded think-alouds. Instead of asking students to participate in a Socratic seminar, which comes later in the reading process, teachers could capture students’ initial thoughts, either while they read (process) or right afterward (meaning). It’s pretty easy now to record audio using a smartphone. Using ipadio or Evernote or another application, students could collect their thinking about their reading without having to stop to write down annotations. These short clips could offer teachers another way to assess how their students are reading.

* * *

I know, I’m early in my thinking about this. There’s much to do. But I think something is certain: We need to make reading more public, to unveil what’s happening with our students (or what’s not happening) when they read, and to assess reading more directly, instead of throwing upon additional layers of reading questions or pop quizzes or double-entry journals or other extraneous assessments that drive students away from the reading task.

Please tell me what you think. 

teaching

The no-zeros grading controversy

Posted on by Mark Isero

 A teacher in Canada was recently suspended because he gave students zeros for missing work, which was against the policy of his school district.

Whether or not to give zeros is a big controversy among teachers.

Some say that if a student doesn’t turn in work, the zero is an accurate assessment and appropriate punishment. But others, like Joe Bowers and Ken O’Connor, say that giving zeros amounts to hurting children and discouraging learning. If an A is 90, a D is 60 and an F is 50, then why go down to zero for missing?

This debate is fraught with emotion. Everyone has gone through school, so the typical way we think of grades is deeply rooted. The 100-point scale seems natural, and so does the zero for missing work. After all, isn’t school supposed to prepare students for the real world, and shouldn’t they be held accountable for messing up?

I’ve thought about grading policies for a while. Some years, I’ve tried standard-based grading systems, which largely get away from the 100-point scale and emphasize progress toward learning outcomes rather than student effort. Other years (like this one), I’ve gone with an extremely traditional grading method: a strict 1,000 points for the semester.

And this is what I’ve realized: Assessment and grading are two completely different things. Yes, students should know their strengths and weaknesses, and giving them a grade or points by assignment does not help them grow. On the other hand, the grade is a helpful summary of a student’s performance in your class — and a requirement in most schools at the end of the semester.

I’ve also realized that although I appreciate the no-zero philosophy, grades must reflect the combination of performance and effort. After all, to be a good student does not just mean knowing the content or being able to write a good essay. Rather, it means having the habits of being a good student.

The answer to the no-zeros debate is to separate big, required assignments from small, practice assignments. If a student misses a small assignment, she should receive a zero and be factored into the habits-of-work grade. But if a student misses a large assignment, which aligns with one of the major outcomes of the course, she should receive an incomplete and be required to complete the work, hopefully within a one-week window.

(Getting students to make up missing work, of course, is the hardest part. And one more thing: What’s the proper penalty for late work? More about those things in an upcoming post.)

What do you think about this grading controversy? Readers, I’d love to hear your viewpoints. 

issues in education

The false dichotomy of the education debate

Posted on by Mark Isero

 Since the movie Waiting for Superman came out two years ago, a deep debate has emerged about how to improve public education in the United States.

As with all debates, there are two sides.

Some people — like Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, and Bill Gates — think that the problem lies with teaching, and if we improve teaching, students will do better.

Other people — like Diane Ravitch and Stephen Krashen — think that the problem lies with poverty, and if we deal with poverty, students will do better.

With the election coming, the debate is heating up. Here’s a PBS NewsHour segment featuring Diane Ravitch from just a few days ago. In addition to poverty, Ms. Ravitch argues that growing racial isolation has also contributed to the problems of public education.

As with all debates, the problem is that there are two sides fighting it out, and instead of having an honest discussion — that actually, the problem is both things, the solution is dealing with both things — the two sides are clinging to their arguments because listening would mean weakness, yielding to the other side, losing the debate.

And losing the debate means millions and millions of dollars in funding. And it means huge ramifications for our public school system and for the lives of our young people.

I am hopeful that schools and local school districts can have more meaningful conversations, even if the national ones are strident. But maybe that’s not possible. What do you think? 

everything else

My favorite 5 posts this year

Posted on by Mark Isero

 This was one of my best years teaching. Thank you to my students, colleagues, contributors, and donors. You’ve made teaching fun again.

This is also the first year I’ve written consistently about my teaching. I’m grateful to all the Iserotope readers out there for being interested in learning more about my random thoughts.

The past few days, I’ve been in a reflective mood, so I’ve looked back at some posts. Here are my favorite five posts of the year (in no particular order). Take a look if you’re interested!

1. Your homework is due tonight.
Why have your homework due at the beginning of class when it can be due the night before? Isn’t homework supposed to be done at home, anyway? Although my students protested against this new policy, they turned in a higher percentage of homework on time when it was due at night.

2. “I’m still here.”
I battled with a student the first semester. She thought I was doing too much. I thought she was doing too little. But then one Sunday in February, this student asked for help online, and I didn’t let go.

3. CCSA’s public call for charter school closures is wrong.
My school nearly closed this year because a state charter school association sent out a mean-spirited memo. This post analyzes the association’s faulty reasoning and ridiculous logic. Luckily, our District saw through it all and unanimously renewed our school’s charter in February.

4. Donate your old Kindle to my classroom!
This is the tiny post that started the Kindle donation deluge. Who would have thought that 100 words would yield 10 Kindles and 130 e-books? I was blown away by the generous donors who believe strongly in reading and my students. Iserotope readers contributed a total of more than $3,000 to my classroom this year. Sure, I taught my heart out, but you need high-quality materials in order to teach well. Plus, kids like stuff.

5. “He used to hate reading.”
As a society, we really believe that young people don’t like to read. This is just false. If we give students choice in what they read, and if we give them time to read, students will read and will enjoy reading. This post was just one of the many reading transformation stories that occurred this year. As a teacher, there are few things better than witnessing a student getting re-hooked on reading.

Do you have a favorite post that I missed? Please share it! And thank you again for a great year.