E Readers and Young Students

At AERA I went to a superb session about the impact of e readers on young students engagement, vocabulary and reading success. The results were very positive. They are even more encouraging since tablets and other mobile devices have been making their way into a majority of homes.

Unique among all of it was the leadership of Kathy Roskos.

In her presentation she concluded:
Results show the impact of device on key multisensory behaviors of children’s engagement with ebooks. In general, mobiles appear to afford more looking and touching but less moving and gesturing than the desktop; none of the devices favored listening. Given the increasing role of haptic perception in digital reading, access to mobile devices may favor behaviors that nurture literacy motivation and participation, especially for less attentive children, and support ongoing engagement with ebooks for all children.

Here is the section description:
The surge in ebooks on a wide range of e-devices (whiteboards; touchscreens; mobiles) has dramatically increased their appeal as an option for shared reading with young children, although research evidence as to their impact on early literacy experience remains slim. This symposium contributes to the knowledge base on ebook reading in early childhood and lays the groundwork for further research that examines ebooks in the learn-to-read process in informal and classroom settings. Papers examine book vs ebook differences in parent-child reading, highlighting benefits and drawbacks; describe the technical adequacy/usability of an ebook quality rating tool; examine differences in device on engagement with ebooks; and report effects of temporal contiguity of picture/print in digital reading on vocabulary learning.
Research is emerging and soon we will be able to add to it. The greta thing is that the research produced is nuanced finding that some e books are better than others. We can actually identify the elements of good ebooks for young children including:

1. Limited interactivity (to not distract from the text too much)

2. Interactivity that is there should focus on main story features and relevant vocabulary

3. Device matters with increased engagement with truly mobile devices

4. E books can change the interaction between adult and child in dialogic reading and so requires a somewhat different training for adults.

Conferences, Engagement, and Ethics

I am on my way to the American Educational Research Association meeting in San Francisco. This is one area that even the best of current technologies cannot compete with. Despite the best of technology an online conference experience is still far removed from the real deal. In a way its like the idea of a pilgrimage. We need the physical distance and separation to create enough space in our goal system to allow full engagement with the conference. For online conferences to be as successful there is a need to simulate among others that separation.

Figuring this out is not a minor concern, as research and information become globalized we have to travel great distances to present and hear. This limits our ability to interact effectively, engage scholars from less affluent communities and to do so with lower impact on the environment. This important for professional development as well.

I often participate in webinars, hangouts and other digital formats and the expereinec for me is not even close. Mostly I am in my hometown, my office or home and all the daily distractions and goals are still ever present taking away from my engagement and making the experience less satisfactory.

So what can be done, well perhaps the key is creating a blended experience. First scholars and professionals in each of the locations need to be both consumers and producers of presentations. Participants are sequestered during the day in a separate location with peers say a hotel with meeting rooms. Each location can have a moderator and a tech staff making sure that tech problems do not become an obstacle to a good experience. Online informal meeting rooms can be set up for chats. Social can be used just as it is in F2F conferences to help direct traffic and enhance the participant experience.

This version of a virtual conference is considerably less cost effective than a series of webinars or Google plus hangouts- but it would be far more engaging and deeply interactive.
Until then I will enjoy San Francisco seeing old friends and my overpriced hotel room.

Grading, Creativity, and Teacher Education- Making Room fo Complexity

I caught the middle piece of a radio lab broadcast on choice. In it Gladwell (of Outliers and Blink) discusses the impact of explaining choice on the decision making process. In the battle between system 1 (quick snap judgements as in Blink) and system 2 (deliberate thinking), the latter seems to try and counter bias system 1- with the results being less than satisfactory (I borrowed the system 1 and 2 from Kahneman). In this he quotes Tim Wilson's work from VGA.

I started thinking about this effect as I was grading my students work on a rubric. I just finished grading and it dawned on me that my very specific rubrics, valued by my students, seem to encourage students to back away from ambiguity and complexity. In simple terms it means that when the rubric is specific it is economically beneficial for students to respond with simple lessons than complex ones, to choose one or two objectives than a complex integrated lesson. Going back to Gladwell (not fully Wilson's et al. point) forcing students to explain in detail may push them to make simplistic choices and shy away from complexity.

As  nation our testing system seems to be having exactly the same effect. Measuring creativity a popular subject recently may have the same exact effect. By clarifying what we mean by creativity we may be losing sight of the big picture...

Adding to my challenge is the fact that I do not control the milieu for the assignments. It is a negotiation between our students and their cooperating teachers. It is not always clear who sets the tone for the lesson- so I cannot penalize students for having simple lessons because it is not always up to them. The question is how do we make room for complexity- reward it in this context.

I suggest simply rewarding complexity (I know it when I see it) and demanding that simple lessons (like simple dishes on cooking challenge shows) are perfect. This note just like myself is a work in progress: We need more poetry! (A quote from a recent presentation by Sarah Thomas)

On Grades, Grading, and Educational Reality

I am writing this post as a response to a blog post by Dr Bernard Bull on Five Common Reasons for the Importance of Letter Grade. I am not necessarily arguing with Dr. Bull's comments but instead I am using them as a starting point for my own thinking about grades in a teacher education program. That is I do not fundamentally disagree with the points made in the post that seem to be aimed at the overabundance of the letter grade in secondary schools.

For full disclosure I would like to point out that I hate grading. As my 9 year old son says "I hate [...]. I know it's a strong word but that is just how I feel". I know I am not alone in this. As a result I have tried to effectively do away with grading in some of my classes. I have yet to make it work. Now, about a decade ago most students in our program received A's almost always making it effectively a Pass/Fail structure. It is not like that anymore and that is an improvement.

My students seem to have been conditioned by years of letter grades. They are masters of counting points, figuring out averages and what they need to do to get the grade they want. I would love to take all that energy and turn it into a focus on mastery and field based performance. This just doesn't happen, sometimes it even backfires. So here are my five consequences of moving away from grading on an individual instructor basis.

1. External evaluation. Outside agencies (in my case NE dept of ed) have set criteria for performance defined in certification requirements. Without grades my students cannot be certified. More than that regulations prevent me from creating Pass/Fail grades in certain classes.

2. When I have a class that de-emphasizes grades my students seem to be making strategic decisions that seem to be something like this: Guy does not grade us, so, since R. P. and Q. do I will put more of my time in these classes so I can keep my GPA.

3. After many semester of frustration with the low levels of reading before class I finally asked my students what would compel them to read they answered "quizzes, give us quizzes". That for me goes back to the idea of conditioning. I think in their minds if it doesn't carry a grade it isn't important.

4. Students clearly want to be recognized for effort and hard work in ways that count. I still remember a student who thanked me for having grades that she perceived as being fair because those who were not invested actually got a grade that reflected it.

5. Students are motivated to redo assignments and reach mastery because the grade is a meaningful consequence. For me it is the reverse math from number 2.

So... Any change to grading has to be wider than any one teacher, instructor and to consider outside demands. We also must consider how to slowly change the perception of students. Moving away from grades we will essentially have to retrain their brains after 12-14 years of schooling, not an easy task. Perhaps we can borrow from the feedback that video games provide- in the form of badges, awards and small markers that signal mastery and capacity to meet standards.

I started this blog post from a this can't be done stance but as I write this I can see some potential for systemic change relying on technology as a rich and quick feedback loop. hmm...

Art and Sensory Overload- A Floridian Note

This past week I visited Florida with my kids. One day we chose to go to Young at Art an active arts experience in Davie Fl. It was a great facility with a lot of materials, styles and sensory inputs to explore. The place offered a plethora of art ideas from digital media, to architecture, plastic arts and visual arts. It also included music (mostly through percussion) and drama.

I was really looking forward to sharing this experience with my kids, but the place actually made it difficult to do that. What welcomed us was a wave of sights sounds and materials that overwhelmed not just my older than the mean senses but my kids (7,9, and 16) and their cousins (4,6,8). Every time I tried to stay at one point to explore in depth and create the eye of the child I was with at the time was immediately drawn to a different sound or sight beyond what we were doing. In a way the place was an invitation to not attend to anything but instead just move through the space constantly stimulated but never truly attending to any one thing.

I love art/science spaces designed for learning and I agree that we do not need stuffy old museum in which you have to stay quiet and not touch anything. But this option was so far the other side- that it serves to reinforce the idea that this generation of kids needs to be constantly bombarded with new inputs. This isn't true in any way but if we only create such experiences our kids and students will come to expect them. Just like my undergraduate students expect lecture, powerpoint presentations and letter grades. They are not wrong to expect them, it is what they grew up with. These are schemas that are usable even if not the most efficient.

The over-stimulation of spaces (real or digital) designed for kids may create a short attention-span generation, but this development is in direct conflict with the way our brains are designed. We can attend to only a few things at a time and develop deep understanding only given the time to focus on one thing without disruptive sensory inputs.

Technology, Attending, and the Arts

I have three iPads, a laptop (or two) a smart phone and an e-reader. When I work at home I have 2-4 devices open. The evidence has been in for a while we cannot truly attend to more than one thing at a time. In fact, trying to attend to multiple things at once results in n effective execution of both in most cases.

Why am I bringing this up (again)?

One, I left my phone behind when I snuck away to write at my favorite spot, the Village Inn around the corner. I had my laptop only. I ate lunch and got the two most productive focus time hours. I was online but I resisted answering emails.

Two, my undergraduate student all have devices of some sort that I encourage them to use. This, however, sometimes have negative consequences when they are unsuccessfully trying to multi-task listening to class discussion or lecture (they asked for it) while on Pintrest, Facebook, registering for classes, or one of the thousand other things they can do online.

Three, I am reading Getting Things Done, and am surprised to find interesting parallels from the beginning of the mobile era.

So... Technology has its down side. I love it, I use it every day, but it has a dark side. We have to teach ourselves to attend to the world around us. After we find ways to do it ourselves, we must find ways to teach it to our students.

I think one tool to teach students to attend, is through genuine engagement with art. It can be visual art, plastic art, movement or music. In all of these activities success can be found when you are fully attending. The lure for students (and adults) is the unique feeling that feel when you reach Flow. If someone asks why the arts, one possible answer can be that art creation can teach students to experience focus attending fully to a task. These moments of creative joy can serve as an idea of what we can achieve when we are fully present.

Now I will leave the computer and go attend to my children.

Testing Teachers: Arts and Technology Integration

This week I was invited to participate in a state panel examining which test Nebraska should use as one of the criteria for certification. Teacher testing has become very popular across the states with encouragement from the office of education. There is very little evidence that such tests are connected in any way to teacher quality. For example in a recent report Angrist and Guryan (2013) say: "The results suggest that state-mandated teacher testing increases teacher wages with no corresponding increase in quality." The tests, however, are apparently here to stay and even Nebraska usually one of the last holdouts on testing has decided to cave in.

Nebraska has chosen to work with ETS and our task at the panels was to review from a selection of tests and make a recommendation about which tests are most appropriate and what should a cutoff score be. One of the more relevant options we considered was the Parxis II with emphasis on pedagogical decision making. As we read through the items (which I cannot disclose) I found that quit a few addressed arts integration through theatre, movement and visual art. It was clear that integration ideas were well integrated (at least into the version of the test I saw). 

Technology was mentioned in two items only. The technologies mentioned were: looms and books on tape... There was nothing that incorporated Internet searches, evaluation of Internet resources, reading on screen, or any of the other skills mentioned in our state standards, the common core standards and professional organizations. Now, I know there is no consensus over what exactly do new teachers need to know, but no technology integration, no reference to digital modes of literacy?

We made sure our concern registered. I worry because tests (even marginally reliable ones) cause some educators to "reverse engineer" their curriculum. We need more about technology integration in our pre-service programs not less. As for the tests, they need to adapt quickly to these changes to stay relevant.