Online Making Headlines

More and more rumblings about online teaching or online applications are being heard in education circles. Just this week the following healines made the news:

• Free Online Tool Help Teachers to Track Student Progress (T.H.E. Jornal) reports on a new tool to help teachers monitor student progress towards classroom and state goals. This free online grade book records comments and student grades compared to state standards. Washington and Oregon standards are completed, California, Alaska, and Idaho will be added next.
• Texas Students, Teachers to Share Materials on iTunes Channel (The Dallas Morning News) explains how students and parents in Texas now have free access to multimedia educational materials that are uploaded by teachers through the Texas iTunes U Channel. It allows teachers to share and comment on each other's videotaped lessons. (This is new to me!);
• Chicago Pilot Program to Extend School Day with Online Instruction (Chicago Tribune) reports on a proposal to extend schooling for 15 elementary schools by adding 90-minutes to the end of each day. The block would be used for math and reading using a combination of online instruction and nonteacher supervision. Union leaders are naturally upset.
• Early Elementary iPad Use Sign of Things to Come? (Converge Magazine) informs us that more than 20 city public schools are testing the new tablet computing device this year to run applications that help early elementary students answer abstract questions, refining their handwriting, take audio notes, and produce their own multimedia projects. The reference is not to fist and second year college students, but early elementary students!

These headlines are mentioned as our family embarked on an interesting experiment this year: total virtual school for our daughter. Instead of a 180 school days, she is enrolled year round. Instead of access to teachers for six hours a day, she has access to teachers 12 hours a day. Instead of a heavy carry bag full of books, everything (literally) is delivered online. Instead of having a close circle of friends (clique), she has met tons of new friends at the local home school group and home school sports clubs. Together with a councilor and teachers, we as parents dictate the pace and schedule. We reward or discipline. We have a choice of a regular pace or accelerated pace, regular curricula or accelerated content.

Come to learn that last year 24,000 students were enrolled full-time in virtual school in our state. These students were supported by over 1,000 full-time teachers. Online schooling (virtual school) are no longer an experiment. It is the fastest growing sector in the education market and soon to be mainstream. Question is, when do you embrace it?
Michael Cordier

The Learning Process

Someone once said that when we stop learning we might as well die. It is for this reason that two sciences developed in the field of learning: Pedagogy - the teaching of children; and Andragogy - the training of adults. Both groups of students set out to absorb new content but is motivated by different outcomes. We can agree that any learning should develop critical thinking and problem-solving in our modern society. Or should it?

The London-based Institute of Education just published a study under the direction of Chris Watkins in the Research Matters journal that ties the current discussion over how to teach modern critical thinking and problem-solving skills back to the decades-old discussion of students' motivation in the classroom. They found that two parallel motivations drive student achievement:

1) "Learning Orientation" - the drive to improve knowledge and competency;
2) "Performance Orientation" - the drive to prove that competency to others.

Guess which orientation is being developed under the current US-style assessment accountability system?

Watkins found the highest-achieving students had a healthy dose of both types of motivation, but students who focused too heavily on performance ironically performed less well academically, thought less critically, and had a harder time overcoming failure. Improving meta-cognition (exercises such as journaling or class discussions) does not always take place in a Learning Orientation environment which robs a student from showing or proving competency. On the flip side, a Performance Orientation emphasis does drive up competition in a classroom (which I personally don't think is a bad thing).

Education Week (Aug 17, 2010) which highlighted this study reports that the likelihood of U.S. or British schools moving away from high-stakes accountability is low, and the Research Matters review suggests educators should stop thinking of learning and performance as diametrically opposed. What educators should be aware of is that both motivators exists for optimal learning and to incorporate it in their teaching strategy.
Michael Cordier

Teacher Takes a Stance

Kate Quarfordt is a mother, teacher, artist, and writer. But she is not a policy wonk who scrutinizes education proposals for legislation. That is until she was asked to appear at a briefing on Capitol Hill representing practitioners to discuss policy recommendations for the Well-rounded Education in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

The act itself sounds great after years of hearing about math, science, reading and writing being highlighted in the 'No Child Left Behind' education policy. The budget request for ESEA in 2011 does reflect an increase of 38.9 million in funding to support teaching and learning in arts, history, civics, foreign languages, geography, and economics. But it seems as if this increase is achieved by combining eight subject-specific grant programs into a single competitive grant program.

Kate realized that disciplines other than math and science will have to compete against each other, "with some of them undoubtedly getting the short end of the stick". She further recognized the fact that pitting subjects against each other will undermine or eliminate the spirit of collaboration among disciplines in schools aiming to provide a well-rounded education.

My problem in addition to those stated by Kate lies in the small increase to cover so many important disciplines. $38.9 million dollars in the overall education budget is a proverbial drop in a bucket and will not have any impact on our 100,000 public schools. Neither will it lead to a truly comprehensive, well-rounded education program. A small comparison would be to look at the fully fledged foreign language schools in India and Pakistan to prepare their youth for the global markets. Or China focusing on world history and economics for the next generation to be the new world power.

The argument for more funding for the so called 'core subjects' is a mute point by now. It is well funded and fully integrated. The challenge now is to position our students to be competitive against students from the rest of the world. Somehow that critical point is lost in translation.

Michael Cordier