Drones over New Jersey? Here’s the original UFO tale…

“We have no evidence at this time that the reported drone sightings pose a national security or public safety threat or have a foreign nexus,” declared the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security

Sure, folks. Nothing to fear here…

This isn’t the first time flying objects have been reported over New Jersey. In 1938, Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast made people panic.

Here it is, remastered for your listening pleasure…

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What Do Democrats Need to Do?

Either democracy was on the ballot in November or it wasn’t, and if it was, it makes no political, ethical or strategic sense to act as if we live in normal times. – Jamelle Bouie

Will AI Transform Teaching and Learning?

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Larry Cuban has some great thoughts–as always–on the potential of AI to change education.

Yet there is little evidence that classroom use of these previous technologies forced classroom teachers to rethink, much less reshape, instruction. Nor have I found convincing evidence that these technologies altered fundamentally how teachers teach, increased student engagement, or raised test scores.

So I have concluded that those pushing AI use in classrooms fail to understand the complexity of teaching.

Yes, there have been any number of technological revolutions meant to forever change the landscape of teaching and learning. Most of these revolutions have fallen by the wayside or have never seen their true potential realized. I’m looking at you, 1:1 computing initiatives.

I’m of the mind that the failures of these technologies to revolutionize teaching and learning don’t fall on the technologies. They are, after all, just tools with no consciousness, no agenda, and no determination of how best to use them.

That part is up to us, the human implementors of said tools. When we can’t figure out how to leverage tools properly or, as is far more often the case, refuse to implement the tools, failure is assured.

Far too often, I hear the argument from some teachers that, “What I’m doing works, and I don’t need to learn anything new,” or the ever-so-sinister, “I only do my learning in the summer and don’t have time for this.”

Perhaps most damnable is this statement: “Technology has never been shown to increase test scores, so we don’t need to use it.”

Because all we’re worried about is test scores. And that’s the real problem.

OpenAI partners with Wharton for a new course focused on leveraging ChatGPT for teachers

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OpenAI has partnered with the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School to launch a new course titled “AI in Education: Leveraging ChatGPT for Teaching.” This initiative aims to empower educators to effectively integrate generative AI into their teaching practices, enhancing learning experiences.

The class is just as much about what you as a teacher can do with AI to make your life better and make you a more effective educator, a less stressed out educator, as much as it is about how do you create assignments for your students? – Ethan Mollick

Professors Lilach and Ethan Mollick, co-founders of Wharton’s generative AI lab, co-teach the course. They emphasize the program’s dual focus: assisting educators in using AI to improve their teaching efficiency and developing assignments that engage students with AI tools.

Ethan Mollick notes that while discussions about AI in education often center on concerns like cheating and plagiarism, the course aims to highlight AI’s positive transformations to pedagogy. By embracing AI, educators can create more dynamic and personalized learning environments.

This collaboration reflects a broader trend in higher education to adapt to technological advancements and prepare educators and students for the evolving landscape of AI in the classroom.

Dissertation Tales, Part 1 – A first draft of my introduction

Because I believe each of us is responsible for sharing our learning with the world, I’m sharing a bit of my work.

As my prospectus meeting approaches in a couple of weeks, I’m racing through revisions to my work. I know it won’t be perfect, but I still have a lot I want to complete before that meeting.

Why? Because writing can constantly be improved.

So, a big chunk of the introduction to my dissertation is presented here with little comment unless you know something about my research. At least, this is where it sits right now.

Introduction

The idea of distance learning, the forerunner of online or virtual learning, is not new and has been a topic of exploration for a significant portion of human history. Members of Plato’s Academy used the technology of writing to study Socrates’s great conversations from a distance (Nagy, 2020). Caleb Phillips launched the first shorthand correspondence course by mail in 1728 (Tulane University, n.d.). In the 1890s, the company that would become known as the International Correspondence School (ICS) and later Penn Foster was launched. Within a decade, there were some 250,000 students enrolled worldwide (Buesch, 2020). In 1932, the University of Iowa broadcast programming on the first educational television station and received mail from viewers as far as 500 miles away (University of Iowa, 2022).

Of course, the world of science fiction is no stranger to the idea of distance or virtual learning, as Isaac Asimov, in his 1951 short story, “The Fun They Had,” saw students learning from mechanical teachers (1974) while the children of Ray Bradbury’s seminal “Fahrenheit 451” learned through interactive screens since books were no longer legal (1953). Andrew “Ender” Wiggins spent much of his education in an immersive virtual learning environment, including hours of military simulations disguised as games (Card, 1985). In the far-flung space of the 24th century, crew members, students, and their families aboard the USS Enterprise NCC 1701-D join essentially any time or place and experience events directly in a fully immersive virtual environment through the ship’s Holodeck (Fontana & Roddenberry, Allen, 1987). The virtual learning world even attracts those beyond their schooling years who want to escape their ordinary lives, much like the earthly society depicted in “Ready Player One,” as millions live their lives inside the OASIS (Cline, 2015).

But here in the real world, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a rapid and unprecedented expansion of virtual academies within public schools in the United States. This urgent shift to virtual learning responded to the imperative of continuing education while ensuring safety. The pandemic forced a sudden transition to online education in spring 2020, initially as an emergency measure (Black et al., 2021). This shift introduced many students and educators to virtual learning, previously available to a small percentage of the student population. Before the pandemic, only 3% of school districts in the United States operated virtual schools. This number grew ninefold by the 2021-2022 school year (Diliberti & Schwartz, 2021). While the COVID-19 pandemic brought about significant growth in virtual academy offerings, it also destabilized many of the foundations of public education, creating an urgent need for rethinking public schooling (Ladson-Billings, 2021).

Many school leaders agree that teaching students skills for repetition, recognition, memorization, or any skills related to collecting, storing, and retrieving information are in decline, giving rise to a set of contemporary skills that includes creativity, curiosity, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, growth mindset, global competence, and a host of other skills (Zhao & Watterston, 2021). These skills fall within the overarching concept of deeper learning, a set of competencies students must master to develop a keen understanding of academic content and apply their knowledge to the classroom and 21st-century job problems (William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, 2013). The science of how children learn, grow, and master complex skills has made significant strides in recent years, supporting the ideals of deeper learning. One of the critical components of the science of learning and development is creating learning environments filled with safety and belonging (Learning Policy Institute, n.d.), whether the environment be in-person or virtual. This knowledge is essential for the education of all children, but it has particular strength in achieving educational equity in areas where we have previously fallen short.

References

Asimov, I. (1974). The best of Isaac Asimov (1. ed). Doubleday & Company.

Black, E., Ferdig, R., & Thompson, L. A. (2021). K-12 virtual schooling, COVID-19, and student success. JAMA Pediatrics, 175(2), 119. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.3800

Bradbury, R. (1953). Fahrenheit 451. Ballantine Books.

Buesch, K. (2020, October 6). New exhibit: 1920s distance learning. Clarke Historical Museum. http://www.clarkemuseum.org/12/post/2020/10/new-exhibit-1920s-distance-learning.html

Card, O. S. (1985). Ender’s game. Tor Books.

Cline, E. (2015). Ready player one (First mass market edition). BDWY Broadway Books.

Diliberti, M., & Schwartz, H. L. (2021). The rise of virtual schools: Selected findings from the third American school district panel survey. RAND Corporation. https://doi.org/10.7249/RRA956-5

Fontana, D. C., & Roddenberry, G. (Writers), & Allen, C. (Director). (1987, September 28). Star Trek: The Next Generation [Broadcast]. In Encounter at Farpoint. Syndicated.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2021). I’m here for the hard re-set: Post-pandemic pedagogy to preserve our culture. Equity & Excellence in Education, 54(1), 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/10665684.2020.1863883

Learning Policy Institute. (n.d.). Science of learning and development. Learning Policy Institute. Retrieved March 13, 2024, from https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/topic/science-learning-and-development

Nagy, G. (2020, March 26). The idea of immediate learning in an age of necessitated distance education. Classical Inquiries. https://classical-inquiries.chs.harvard.edu/the-idea-of-immediate-learning-in-an-age-of-necessitated-distance-education/

Tulane University. (n.d.). The evolution of distance learning. Retrieved September 20, 2024, from https://sopa.tulane.edu/blog/evolution-distance-learning

University of Iowa. (2022). Milestones in University of Iowa history. https://175.uiowa.edu/milestones-university-iowa-history

William & Flora Hewlett Foundation. (2013, April 23). Deeper learning defined. https://hewlett.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Deeper_Learning_Defined__April_2013.pdf

Zhao, Y., & Watterston, J. (2021). The changes we need: Education post-COVID-19. Journal of Educational Change, 22(1), 3–12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-021-09417-3

Empowering Students, Relieving Teacher Burnout

From a practical perspective, you are doing all the work, delivering whole-class instruction to learners—instruction that you are staying up until 2:00 a.m. to design. As a result, students come to believe it is your job to do all of the work. You are exhausted, and students are disengaged or excluded. That is a bad deal all around.

In education, we often find ourselves trapped in a cycle where teachers shoulder the bulk of the responsibility, crafting lessons late into the night and delivering instruction to a room full of passive learners. The quote above from “The Shift to Student-Led” by Catlin Tucker and Katie Novak captures this predicament perfectly:

From a practical perspective, you are doing all the work, delivering whole-class instruction to learners—instruction that you are staying up until 2:00 a.m. to design. As a result, students come to believe it is your job to do all of the work. You are exhausted, and students are disengaged or excluded. That is a bad deal all around.

This dynamic leads to teacher burnout and deprives students of the opportunity to take ownership of their learning. When teachers do all the work, students become passive recipients of knowledge, disengaged from the learning process. This traditional model of education is unsustainable for teachers and ineffective in fostering deeper learning and student agency.

The science of learning and development emphasizes the importance of creating environments where students are active participants in their learning journey. By shifting to a student-led approach, we empower students to take charge of their learning, make decisions, and engage in meaningful, authentic tasks. This increases their motivation and investment in the learning process and helps them develop critical skills such as problem-solving, collaboration, and self-regulation.

From a practical standpoint, this shift can significantly reduce the burden on teachers. Instead of spending hours designing one-size-fits-all lessons, teachers can focus on guiding and supporting students as they explore, inquire, and create. This approach fosters a more dynamic and interactive classroom environment where students are at the center of their learning experience.

The transition to student-led learning is not without its challenges, but the benefits far outweigh the effort required to make this shift. Teachers can reclaim their time and energy while students develop the skills and mindset needed to succeed in an ever-changing world. It’s a win-win situation that promises to transform education for the better.

A Study In…

Diving into more authentic learning topics, I’ll share some insights from Jay McTighe’s book “Teaching for Deeper Learning” which has some great ideas for making learning more meaningful.

One of the first concepts McTighe discusses is framing learning around big ideas. Curriculum experts advise prioritizing a smaller number of conceptually larger, transferable ideas because there is too much information to cover everything (which is why essential standards are important), and trying to do so results in superficial learning. Focusing on larger ideas enhances knowledge retention and application, which is crucial in our rapidly changing world.

One way to reimagine how we plan units is to think of them as “A Study In…” some concept or big idea. McTighe gives these examples:

Argument Writing: A Study in Craftsmanship
Impressionism: A Study in Revolution
The Four Seasons: A Study in Change
The Pentagon Papers: A Study in Deception
Four Films by Hitchcock: A Study in Obsession
Weight Training: A Study in Proper Technique
Whole Numbers: A Study in Rules and Relationships

This is a very different way of thinking about unit planning, and it would be a great conversation for teachers, coaches, and principals as we begin another school year.

The Importance of a Graduate Profile

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Graduate Profile. Portrait of a Graduate. Portrait of a Learner. Three different names for the same thing.

A Graduate Profile is a set of competencies that define the “enduring skills” schools want their students to have when they graduate.

Why is it important to have a graduate profile?

Battelle for Kids, a thought leader in the Portrait of a Graduate space, released a report this year called “The Future of the Portrait of a Graduate” and shared this reminder:

I’ve often heard the Portrait of a Graduate or Graduate Profile referred to as the “north star” for our work, which is appropriate. Everything we do should align with our Graduate Profile as we prepare students for a future we can’t predict, but we can give them the skills for success.

Focusing on those enduring skills prepares our students for those changes we can’t see. Remember when no one knew about generative AI tools like ChatGPT? And now people are using those tools with great success!

“I say this often in regard to generative AI, but it’s worth repeating: Prior to the arrival of ChatGPT in November 2022, very few people had any hands-on experience in interacting with and using large language models. The people who are using them productively today are not trained in the specifics of generative AI but in ways of thinking that allow one to make use of the tool as an aid to the human work, rather than outsourcing our thinking to something that does not actually think or reason.” – John Warner, Inside HigherED

Always look to the future. As Wizard’s Seventh Rule tells us, “Life is the future, not the past.”

No More Warehouse Institutions

When will we finally stop sending our kids to huge buildings managed by bureaucracies that are more concerned with making sure everyone changes class on time than they are with making sure that everyone is prepared to participate in our society?

From Redesigning High Schools: 10 Features for Success

Moving from “doing school” to “learning”

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I love learning—I really do. But my dreadful experience with “school” still influences much of my work in education.

I hated “school.” It was pointless for me, as it is for so many other students.

From John Warner:

One of the distinctions I often draw in thinking about engagement and education is that there is a difference between “learning” and “doing school.”

Learning is, you know, learning. Doing school is engaging in the behaviors that result in satisfying the demands of a system built around proficiencies as determined by assessing the end products of a process. You can successfully do school without learning much of anything. At least that was my experience through many periods of my own schooling.

My belief is that organizing schooling around doing school is part, a big part, of the current problem of student disengagement. When classwork is purely an instrument for getting a grade and moving on to the next check box, learning becomes incidental. It may happen, but it doesn’t have to happen.

Warner interviews Susan Blum, author of I Love Learning; I Hate School and Ungrading: Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead), on her new book Schoolishness: Alienated Education and the Quest for Authentic, Joyful Learning

JW: One of my personal obsessions is thinking about the difference between “learning” and “doing school” where doing school is essentially just a series of behaviors designed to achieve the desired grade with the minimal necessary effort. This seems counterproductive on its face, but you say it’s even deeper than that.

SB: Given how much time, energy, and money nearly everyone in our world spends in school, this “doing school,” as Denise Pope called it, is tragic. Students have learned to imitate learning; to provide a performance, a facsimile of whatever each teacher demands as evidence of learning. So much of what we do in schools doesn’t work, whether by “work” we mean learn or thrive or prepare for a competent, meaningful life beyond school. The central organizing concept for me was a contrast between alienation, brought about by numerous sorts of disconnections, such as doing things only because of coercion, and authenticity, which is connection, meaning, genuineness, and even use.

Read the full interview here