Teaching Fast and Slow Lessons from Art TEAMS Weekend

 This week the Art TEAMS teams got together again to start our Fall activities. We had a joyous day reconnecting and discussing the work we have started doing with our students based on the summer courses. The meeting has taught me a few lessons that will sit with us as we plan the interactions throughout the semester.

Lesson 1:

The impact of deep learning in the summer has already created impact on classrooms. Many of the teachers have reported implementing the Creative Research Journals and even starting the Inquiry Cycle. While it is hard to attribute the implementation to a specific cause. I believe that it was the mix of highly motivated teachers and the powerful learning we had in the summer.

Lesson 2:

Movement is still magic. We started the day with movement, and the teachers are hungry for more movement that is applicable for the classroom. We can make a real difference if we help teachers figure out this part of their work.

Lesson 3:

We always try to teach too much. We have provided our teachers with many tools. Now is the time to create more "air" in the curriculum and make sure teachers have enough time to share their work, plan next steps, and think deeply.

Finally a personal lesson from my reflection about the EMA project led by the Fabulous Gretchen Larsen.

When ideating, go slow and make sure that you spend enough time thinking about the centrality of your idea and my real commitment to it. I have moved too fast to really evaluate my commitment to the purpose of the design. Now I am slowing down and evaluating my project in early iteration. More soon!

Measuring Long-Term Impact of 21st Century Learning

I was traveling with my kids this weekend across two states and the majestic views of the plains and the west. If measured correctly at the end of the drive, or even the end of the year, I am sure that there is no measurable impact on their standardized test achievement. Does that means they should stay home? Or conversly that we shouldn't teach 21st century skills.

The same question can be asked about any field trip, shadowing, or performance students are exposed to. Does that mean we should not do them? If the answer is no, we should continue doing these things as a part of a whole child education What then is our verdict about the quality of most of our educational research?


If we focus on short-term simple effects right after an intervention of any kind, we may well be missing two things: the long-term impact (or lack thereof- what Calfee called the poop-out effect), and exploring the impact of hard to measure meaningful activities.

How would we measure the impact of Day of Code, Read Across America, or Project based Learning?

I would argue that we need new paradigms, new instruments, and a vivid imagination exploring what outcomes of note can be. The relationship between researchers, teachers, students, and community members should change. The goal of research should change and become a cooperative endeavor that requires different structures than we have now. For example, a school can have a resident researcher who teaches and conducts a design experiment that serves school goals, as well as increasing our research knowledge. This is especially true of digital and other 21st century skills one's we know very little about. Still thinking about it...

QuizUp- Motivation, Learning, and Dashboard Design, and 6 ways it can work in education

QuizUp is one of these flash in the pan games that takes the mobile world in a storm. In less than two months it amassed over 5 million users. If you haven't tried it you should, but not just because it is addictive, but also because it points to some aspects that QuizUp does well, and that we can do better in education. In short I believe that some of the things QuizUp does right we can use in education.


The key is motivation, and QuizUp uses every game mechanic and social aspect to drive you to use the system out of your own volition. First QuizUp allows the user to select the areas they want to be a part of. While we can't always let students choose what they want (vs. need) we know there is great motivation in choice. Second comes the sense of developing an area of expertise. I am for example the "Best in Ancient Rome in Nebraska" a dubious title but it works! We can imagine a best in multiplication in Mrs. Hendriks class or best in Ancient Greece in Washington Elementary.

QuizUp adds to it achievements (win 500 games, get a perfect score). We could structure those in more meaningful categories, imagine an achievement for knowing all the characters in Othello or all the multiples of 9, or the features of the table of elements. Points also work to motivate users, you get points even if you lose (although less) making sure that your effort is always rewarded. In short QuizUp activates all the short reward cycles that make us persist at game based tasks.


Feedback in QuizUp is exceptional. Beside the obvious leader boards, levels and points there are a slew of ways to get feedback. After each game you can study the questions and your responses, you can also see a graph comparing your score and you opponent's. The dash board is the most brilliant piece of design in the game. As you can see on the right one of the main dashboards shows you the areas you have been participating in and the level in each. It allows in one glance to see where the user had put the most effort and how well the user have been doing overall.

QuizUp has some challenges as a learning idea as well. The format of multiple choice works well for this kind of work but it does limit the sophistication of questions as they relate to different levels of learning (think Bloom's taxonomy). In my own participation I figured out I actually think through my responses through the first 15-20 levels. After that my responses are increasingly automatic as I have seen most of the available questions and must activate my mnemonic devices and memorization based on repetition.

So how does it fit into 21st century learning? Well:
1. It is a great way to develop basic knowledge
2. It is a great way to develop fluency (word recognition, basic math facts, historical facts). This will allow the teacher to focus on more meaningful material in class
3. Taking away the time element can help in some cases.
4. Have enough questions in any bank to remove straight forward memorization except when it i the goal (say multiplication facts).
5. The complexity of the question is up to the author, even in a multiple choice format you can get sophisticated thinking
6. If students can actually create questions it becomes a much more sophisticated task (the feature is available)

The Bridge, Layering Information and Redefining Literacy

The Bridge is a new FX TV show that I picked up on demand recently. The topic of a thriller around the border crossing between the US and Mexico seemed like an intriguing opportunity to examine how pop culture is viewing the issues.

While I found the series thoroughly enjoyable I was even more intrigued by their effort to integrate media. The website for the show includes everything in both English and Spanish just like the show itself alternates between English and Spanish as appropriate for a scene.

In addition the series created a free iBook that provides additional textual and photographic layer. I think that this aspect of the show is very interesting for educators trying to create content that is interesting, integrated, and meaningful. The way I think about it is purposeful layering of information in different information without guiding the conclusion. For example the series shows many facets of immigration and the people who are impacted by it but it does not come at it from an obvious pro or con stance. The book just thickens that layer and allows those who are interested to explore further.


In a way the show is a good example to how popular culture and the entertainment industry are seeing as the next step and I see as a redefining of literacy. Literacy is no longer primarily reading and wring on paper but instead a multimedia weave of forms and content- including visual, audio, video, word, and social. It is as interactive and social as we'd like to make it. The layering allows each person to choose an entry point and explore in different directions.

Making a difference

This week I visited the Avenue Scholars Foundation in Omaha. Jef Johnston their chief operating officer said something that resonated with me. Referring to recruiting diverse teachers he said (I am paraphrasing here): this problem is solvable, if it has not been solved yet it is because they don't really want to.

I found this approach to be very much inline with my feelings about many of the problems I encounter in teacher education.

At the heart of it it is a design problem- not the external shiny stuff but design in the full sense of the word- the way someone like Steve Jobs would use it:

In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains of the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a human-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.

Steve Jobs