How well does your school meet student expectations? Take this quiz to find out.

The Leaving to Learn movement, started by Elliot Washor and Charles Mojkowski is built on the idea that a great way to learn to find success in the world is to be in the world. The first step is taking down the barriers between school and the outside world and letting students leave, to learn. Washor and Mojokowski recently published a book on the topic. In it they bring the philosophy to life via real examples from schools following the Big Picture Learning model. If you're unfamiliar, students in these schools usually spend a couple days each week in the world pursuing their passions. What sets these students apart from those in traditional schools is that upon graduation, not only are these students deeply connected to that which they are passionate about and others who share and can help them pursue these passions, but they also graduate with authentic, real-world experience and expertise.


At the heart of this philosophy is the idea that learning should be student centered. To do that we need to be clear on the expectations students have our their schools. The following diagram outlines the ten expectations which young people want from their schools.

Read more about these expectations and watch videos of this in action here.

Start the New Year with a new way to look at students who don't seem to care

There is more than one way to look at someone.

"My students don't know how to learn.  They don't know how to succeed.  And, it doesn't seem like they care to change any of that. " -Crystal Kirch, My biggest struggle this year High school math teacher Crystal Kirch’s biggest struggle of 2012 was met with both cheers from those who could commiserate as well as jeers from those who were concerned that students were not the culprit, but rather the victims of a system that set them up for failure.  Earlier this year, Kirch found it so difficult to consider feedback from those who saw things differently that she censored comments calling them "intense attacks" and blocked those who made them on Twitter. Kirch isn't the only one who refuses to learn from those outside the echo chamber. Ira Socol recently had a similar experience when offering an alternate perspective to a teacher about a student and parent that opposed forced classroom testing.

But here's what these closed-minded educators are missing.

An important benefit of the read / write web is the ability to hear and potentially gain another way of seeing things.

Gary Stager explains what those offering an alternate perspective to these student-blaming teachers were doing: 

"Those of us who know better, need to do better and stand between the defenseless children we serve and the madness around us. If a destructive idea needs to be challenged or a right defended, I’ll speak up." (Au Contraire, Nov 2012)

When I initially wrote the post explaining that a personal learning network was not an echo chamber, readers questioned my assessment of the comments that Kirch censored. Some thought, maybe Kirch was being honest and they were attacks. Maybe the comments on Kirch's blog from others who blamed students weren't that troublesome. 

As requested in the comments, I'll let readers decide for themselves. If you were one of those teachers that think students don't know how to learn and don't care, perhaps you'll think again about how you look at these students after reading some alternate perspectives.

To follow are reactions from teachers who shared frustration over the struggle of kids who they felt don't want to learn followed by insights Kirch called "intense attacks" from those who defended children and challenged this point of view.

Rethinking Learning with A Child-Centered Lesson Plan

Editor’s note:  After reading How Andgragogy Might Look in the Classroom on the Mystified Mom blog, I asked if she could pull out the parts regarding lesson plans so that people could get a better idea of what a learner-centered lesson plan would look like. 


Guest Post by Mystified Mom

People often claim that learner-centered methods are not practical for mass delivery systems due to the fact that standards have to be met. As a veteran educator, I have not found this to be true. To follow are the eight parts of a lesson plan and my comments about what could be added to gear them toward how students learn best. 


Header
The header typically include the teachers name, grade level, topic, and time allotment. This is all standard information. The one piece of information that can be rethought is the time allotment. Unless things have changed, the typical time allotment for a lesson is 30 minutes to an hour. Every now and then, I will see lessons that take longer or will span the course of a few days. Students and teachers should allot more time to do lessons. 

School is Not School. A Place Where The Community, Not The School, Provides Learning.

I recently shared three radical ideas to transform education without school.  In it, I shared Linda Dobson’s timeless article, When the School Doors Close:  A Midsummer Night’s Dream where she outlines the transformation that would occur if schools ceased to exist and instead we engaged in community-centered learning.  Rather than compulsory, age-based facilities, with community learning people choose to attend and learn about topics of deep personal passion and interest.  There would be many options available to individuals of any age.  The community takes ownership and responsibility of the learning and well-being of others.  As my wise friend Jeff Pulver recently said, “The only difference between a dream and reality is making it happen.”  

There is a community that is doing just that.  I learned about this community from Arif Hidayat.  Although we aren’t the same age, live on opposite ends of the earth, and don’t speak the same language we are connected by our passion to  provide children with learning opportunities that best fit their needs. Through the wonders of Google Translate we have been able to engage in an ongoing dialogue where he has shared stories about two Learning Communities in Indonesia. 

The Contraband of Some Schools is The Disruptive Innovation of Others with BYOT (Bring Your Own Tech)

Guest post by Tim Clark @timclark45 on Twitter

In New York City students who BYOT have it confiscated by police
and placed with other contraband like guns and knives

While cities like the one where The Innovative Educator works view student owned devices as contraband, I have found one of the most exciting disruptions to traditional teaching practices to be extending to students the invitation to “Bring Your Own Technology” (BYOT).  Last year, Forsyth County Schools in Georgia  modified their technology guidelines to do just that! They permitted students to bring their personal technology devices to school to assist in their learning.  

Forsyth County Schools has always pursued the use of technology to improve educational opportunities. The district’s vision for classroom technology after-all is “to engage students in asking questions and choosing tools to facilitate real world problem solving.”  Classrooms are each equipped with an interactive whiteboard, teacher laptop and four student desktop computers.  There are also student laptops available at each school and there are peripheral devices such as student response systems, digital cameras, scanners, and document cameras.  Yet, despite all this district-provided technology, the most impactful and influential gadgets are not any of these. Instead after 20 years in education I have found that empowering students to use their own personal technologies is the game changer when it comes to learning.

Student Driven Learning = Passion-Based Classrooms

I often speak and write about differentiating instruction. Unfortunately, when I go into schools I see very little differentiation occurring.  This is the case even schools who have bought "magic bullet" programs like Renzulli Learning who tout themselves as a "Differentiation Engine."  I have visited about a dozen schools using such programs but without a solid foundation in what differentiation means.  Instead, they have all their students working within the learning management system on the same thing!

When I dig a little deeper about why this is happening teachers confide that they can't possibly create 32 different lessons for each of their students.  When I hear this, I realize they're not getting something very important.  The students own the learning.  When we give up control and empower the students to learn the way they want with the tools they want, the results are terrific and the students are partners with their teacher in designing learning methods, tools, and environments that are best for them.  

Josh Stumpenhorst recently celebrated the results of this method of teaching in his blog in a post called, "Student-Driven Learning." In the post he shares the ways empowered students learned the literacy standards they were mandated to meet.  Here's what he did.

See what happens when students are allowed to embrace free range learning

If we allowed digital devices in school,
it would be chaos!

New Cannan High School is unique in that it provides a free range learning environment, meaning, what is contraband in places like New York City is embraced at this school. Students are free to bring their own personal learning devices (i.e. cell phones, iPads, laptops, etc.) and they are not blocked from gaining access to any website. In fact sites like Facebook and YouTube are embraced as powerful learning tools. 

Unfortunately, it seems teachers where the devices have been treated as the enemy, have bought into this idea, but where students are given the freedom to learn and create using the tools they want about subjects in which they're passionate, the school environment can move from celebrating success over scores on a bubble sheet, to celebrating success on the creation of a YouTube video viewed and commented on from folks around the world.

That was the case this week, when Michelle Luhtala's students created this video as part of American Library Association teen video contest, Why I NEED My Library! Contest winners can receive thousands of dollars for their library.  Not only do these students create a great video, but they also make a great case for school libraries everywhere.  The video was the result of what happens when teachers support (rather than control) their students passion-driven learning and allow them to use the tools they embrace in the real world inside schools.

Here's the video. Please watch and if you enjoy it, please "like" the video.



To read more about this project visit their librarians blog post, "What kids can do when they love what they do."

What if kids designed their learning? Here are some resources to get started.

If you are, or want to be. a fan of project-based learning (PBL), this site (http://pbl-online.org/default.htm) funded by the Buck Institute has some terrific resources. Project-based learning is great, but what if we took the idea of PBL and married it with learner-centered instruction or democracy education or unschooling. Well, that equals something rather significant. Instead of teachers owning the learning, teach kids how to design their own projects and let them gather by area of interest or passion. Like Shelley Wright, who engages her students in Real Life Learning, teachers may feel weird about doing this because it kind of seems like we're making kids do the job of a teacher and HEY! Teachers are the experts in designing learning opportunities. Kids can't design their own. Hmmm...or can they?

Below are the resources you'll find on the site. Depending on the level of your students, you may want to simplify material to accommodate their reading level or...if you have mixed reading levels in each group, the students can probably work that out too.

Welcome to PBL-Online, a one stop solution for Project Based Learning! You'll find all the resources you need to design and manage high quality projects for middle and high school students. You can:
	Learn how to Design your Project. Plan rigorous and relevant standards-focused projects that engage students in authentic learning activities, teach 21st century skills, and demand demonstration of mastery.
	Search for projects developed by others or contribute your own projects to the PBL-Online Collaboratory and Project Library.
	Learn important strategies for teaching online and learning online.
	Learn what defines Project Based Learning and the PBL-Online approach to successful project design.
	Review research and find web resources about effective Project Based Learning.
	Purchase the BIE Project Based Learning Handbook which is the foundation for the PBL-Online

Ensuring Data is Driving the Right Kind of Instruction

Should Data Be Driving Instruction or Should Students Drive Learning?

Editor’s Note: This post was written in response to a job interview question. I thought it was a relevant, thought-provoking question and a great interview exercise. This was some of my thinking on each of the topics.

When educators and administrators think of data driven instruction, they often think of stand-alone assessments taken by students, many of whom believe has little relevance to anything connected to their lives outside of school. In fact in an increasingly connected world where 21st Century literacies are a requirement for success, it is interesting to note that as stated in the recent report, “Beyond the Bubble: Technology and The Future of Assessment,”

There’s one day a year when laptops power down and students’ mobile computing devices fall silent, a day when most schools across the country revert to an era when whiteboards were blackboards, and iPhones were just a twinkle in some techie’s eye—testing day.

Unfortunately in places like New York City and beyond, as I visit classrooms, even in schools with 1:1 environments “testing day” isn’t just a day. In fact, during a visit to a 1:1 school last October I did not find a single student or teacher using technology. Why? As the principal explained, “We don’t use laptops until after the tests in March since kids aren’t allowed to use them on the test.” Yikes!!!! If you’re thinking this is a unique situation, unfortunately, I can assure you, it is not. Furthermore talks of delivering the test in June frighten me, as many educators share the dirty little secret that the real, creative, innovative learning doesn’t take place until after the tests in March.

In an era of data driven decision making, these are NOT the decisions we need to be driving our leaders and students to make. It is imperative that we are collecting and using the “right” data and that, the data is connected to competencies of today, rather than yesterday. During a recent conversation with an innovative principal about the Acuity assessment used in his school he confess that most of the activities recommended are dry and do not appeal to his student’s interests. When the data we are collecting is completely absent of the tools available in today’s world, and the instruction that it’s driving is not engaging, can the data really be effectively use to drive instruction? I would argue no. Especially in light of the “Beyond the Bubble” findings that state,

Efforts were abandoned to produce assessments that more faithfully reflect how
learning would be used in non-test situations, assessments that were guided by
an underlying theory of teaching and learning drawn from the cognitive sciences.
The reason being, that these assessments were costly and technically inadequate
for use in school accountability systems. So, states began to move away from
performance-based assessment systems, back to less-expensive multiple-choice
assessments.

In contrast, many innovative educators, have stopped saying, “hand it in,” and started saying, “publish it.” Once students reach their real goal of becoming producers and creators of content, authentic assessment that is meaningful to them can begin to take place and will certainly drive personal learning. Innovative educators know that many students are already involved in the business of using data to drive instruction. Unfortunately these worlds are largely devoid of educators, parents, or other adults. However, even in their absence, students are publishing content and using data to drive their work. It is the responsibility of educators to tap into these worlds and into student’s interests to begin aligning instruction to the type of data that drives students! If we put aside the profitizing, monetizing testing companies, and look at how students are already assessing themselves, absent us, we may save a lot of money and gain a lot of engagement. Let’s take a step back and think about some of the things we really want students to know and be able to do. The National Education Technology Standards indicate that the following standards should be met for students to learn effectively and live productively in an increasingly digital world …”

• Creativity and Innovation
• Communication and Collaboration
• Research and Information Fluency
• Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
• Digital Citizenship
• Technology Operations and Concepts

I don’t see the data we’re using to drive instruction aligned to these standards. But, this is not as hard as one may be led to believe. At a recent Teaching and Learning conference Sir Kenneth Robinson shared that we’d be much better off in schools if we looked at assessing schools more like Zagats assesses restaurants (imagine British accent and captivating tone). But, this really isn’t such an outlandish idea, and this type of assessment is already occurring in the lives of children. Take a site like Fanfiction where literally millions of students around the globe from the age of 10 on are joining other fans, as old as seniors and are writing and sharing their own stories in genres of deep personal interest for themselves and their fans. They are assessed by 1) Popularity measured as the number of fans who subscribe to them, 2) Reviews from an authentic audience. Kids are engaging in robust, meaningful conversations with real audiences for authentic purposes getting meaningful data they can put right to use to refine, revise, and create new stories. Of course this type of work is happening on more mainstream sights like YouTube as well where students are producing content and success is measured by 1) Popularity measured in number of views 2) Star ratings from viewers 3) Viewer comments. Additionally, unbeknownst to most digital immigrants these sites can be as public or private as you wish and content can be moderated by student or adult.

There are already schools engaging in this type of work. I am fortunate to have been able to support many such schools in this endeavor. Take for instance CIS 339 known for bringing professional learning communities into the 21st Century where they frequently showcase The Power of 21st Century Teaching and Learning by Bringing it to Life at Thel CIS 339’s Open House. They are using tools like Google collaborative documents and wikis to drive and inform everything from instruction to their student behavior system. At the Science Leadership Academy ELA students are collaboratively writing using Google docs and then publishing their work to YouTube where it will be reviewed by classmates, and the world. This definitely drives the students to refine, revise, and modify their work for success. Or, The Island School where they have partnerships with numerous organizations that allow for truly authentic assessment and audiences to drive their learning. For instance, they have a partnership with Rosie’s Broadway Kids. The students are guided to produce a performance. Students are driven to succeed because those who show the greatest talent win scholarships to attend Rosie’s Broadway Kids academy where they are likely to end up on a New York City stage. They also have many students who produce blogs. I spoke to one young lady who is working with a reporter to provide a student perspective on education issues in a local news agency. This happens because the school believes in doing what Sir Kenneth Robinson identifies as helping them find their “Element” and then supports students in connecting with those who can help them to use their passion and talent to drive instruction.

Another place where you can see authentic work and assessment is at IS 93 where students are publishing to an eZine and are completely engaged by the process of authentic publishing. These students are driven to keep learning, revising, and researching based on the comments and ratings they receive from people they care about…other students. Marco Torres is another well-known advocate of authentic purposes driving instruction. His students produce digital videos that are viewed around the world. Students are driven to learn because of authentic causes and passions that they can capture to effect change and bring attention to issues of deep personal importance to them.

In addition to the Zagat’s style assessment there is also real-time, on-demand assessment and instruction when it comes to game-based and digital learning and simulations. These are being widely used in industries outside of education (i.e. military and medical industry) to assess and prepare professionals. Though they are rarely seen as assessments in schools, these type of assessments are available now and lauded by educators like Marc Prensky who shares examples in his book, “Don’t Bother Me Mom, I’m Learning.” In digital and game-based environments students are continuously engaged and forced to make decisions that require learning. However, unlike school, if they make a mistake they get to try again and again until they get it right, and…they get to work on their own level and at their own pace. Additionally, these type of environments are designed to adjust to the level of the learner.

Though the types of assessments I’m advocating may seem out-of-reach to those who have been educating since the 2002 enactment of No Child Left Behind, this was not the case prior to enactment of the policy where there was a movement among educators to provide opportunities for authentic assessment. As stated in Beyond the Bubble: Technology and The Future of Assessment,

The enactment of NCLB in 2002 further complicated attempts to develop new types of testing. NCLB, which mandates that states give annual tests in reading and
math in grades 3-8 and once in high school, resulted in a sizeable increase in
the number of standardized tests given each year—now more than 45
million—creating a situation in which both test- and policymakers scrambled just
to get the tests into the hands of teachers and students. This tremendous
increase in test taking, combined with the limited capacity of state departments
of education and the nation’s testing industry, encouraged state testing
officials and testing companies to continue to use the same kinds of tests
instead of pursuing innovations in assessment.

It is time we remember why we got into the business of teaching and explore options that move away from what is easier for testing companies, accountability systems, and policy makers and start remembering the kids like Peggy Sheehy’s students who remind us that instead we should leave No Future Left Behind and help our students find their passions and talents that will drive their success today and in the future.