Class 9 & 10: 09/22/11-Expert Blindspot/Petrosino

After a few weeks without Dr. Petrosino, class began with an air of anticipation. Dr. Petrosino would speak to us in a matter of moments. A classmate remarked, “I don’t even know what he sounds like.”  Class, however, began as usual with the previous nights’ reading being introduced to us by Dr. Petrosino.  He asked the class, if any, what made this reading relevant to the course.  After a few haphazard answers, the class seemed to give up.  “Because your Professor is some narcissist, egotistical, self-absorbed jerk!” said Dr. Petrosino.  From there the basic tenets of the article were covered in depth.  The results from this study performed by Dr. Petrosino revealed interesting data from which a pattern began to arise.  Having expert knowledge in any given field, does not necessarily confer one the ability to teach within that field. 

As a result, a so-called ‘blind-spot’ exists.  Blind spot refers to the phenomena where by experts fail to realize the shortcomings of novices. Dr. Petrosino surmised the point that experts think of information in their field in an implicit fashion and construct schemas of information and recognize only patterns in their fields.  Their ability to innovate in their field is hindered by how experts process information.

Of interest, a student asked a question that had to do with how reliable was the information that stated students in the study ranked math problems in that level of difficulty. To which Dr. Petrosino responded that many studies had been conducted over such knowledge, so much so that it was almost considered a fact or a kind of “truth”. This segued into an interesting analogy brought up by Dr. Petrosino.  His analogy invoked some ideas brought up by Vygotsky.  He drew on the board one world in which the novice lives in the world of the student, child, learner or beginner. There is an element of not knowing and almost allowing for magical thinking to pervade because of the ignorance of the beginner.  In another world, there lies the scientific world a world of hard facts, patterns, ‘the ivory tower’ and hard logic.  In order to cross over from the world of the student to the scientific world, the beginner/novice must cross a bridge. Being that bridge, the teacher must fluidly traverse both worlds in recognizing the needs of the students and the structure of the expert world.

Another interesting issue that came up had to do with the act of teaching in a classroom that stemmed from the apparent problem presented in the previous analogy. Why is being a teacher so hard? More importantly to some of the class, what did PBI attempt to do that could be practical in a classroom setting? Many of the classes that we take in the UTeach program seem to deal with theory and how they might apply inside the classroom.  It seemed as if the class was beginning to question the point of PBI.   One not only need to be an expert in their content knowledge, but also in child development, classroom management, interpersonal relations, public relations, pedagogical expertise and etc…

From that point, a student argued that maybe this article has the wrong approach and a better approach might look at what kinds of things work in helping people arrive at the ‘right’ conclusions.  Dr. Petrosino commented that the current research is exploring something similar called learning progressions.  In these studies, researchers are looking at “what it means to move over time toward a more expert understanding.” (Pearson, 2010)

(Expert Blindspot discussion continued on 09/27/11)

Continuing from the previous class meeting, the first order of business was to address our weekend visit to McKinney Falls State Park.  “Did you get your lesson plans worked out?” asked one of the TAs. The class seemed to squirm in their chairs because the big day is fast approaching. We will have to teach! Logistics aside, Dr Petrosino continued to explore the tenets of the article.  One of the results that really stood out from the study seemed almost unbelievable. The result said that high school teachers with high context knowledge predicted that symbolic math problems are easier than verbal math problems.  In fact, the opposite holds true and students to do better at verbal math problems rather than symbolic math problems. Expert blind spot in a nut shell. Just because someone is considered an expert in a field, they may not know how others will approach that given field as a novice.

From there an interesting point came up.  How is it that high school and college instruction vary so vastly.  Why are the ideas researched at the university level in education not applied at the university level?  To which Dr. Petrosino answered, that he didn’t really know.  It could be personal preference, legal obligations on the state level, more freedom is allowed at the college level hence not as structured, and other external factors that influence each respective arena.   

At the end of his lecture, the class was left to work on their lesson plans. Having met Dr. Petrosino and experiencing his lecture, he is not to quote him “narcissist, egotistical, self-absorbed jerk”.  He’s funny and really likes what he does.  He only teaches two days out of the week, but the work that he does influences people all over the world.  It’s this far-reaching effect that others may not understand at first glance.  Despite his loss, Dr. Petrosino is a self-deprecating, funny guy.  Glad to have him as my prof!

For a quick look at learning progressions and an idea of what they entail, go to:

http://www.pearsonassessments.com/NR/rdonlyres/6C8F4D6F-EFB1-47CE-9247-3712D274190F/0/Bulletin_12.pdf

or for a look at different definitions of learning progressions, go to:

http://www.cpre.org/ccii/images/stories/ccii_pdfs/learning%20progressions_heritage.pdf

Works Cited

Pearson. (2010). Test, Measurement, & Research Services. Bulletin , Issue 12.

Expert Blindspot Presentation

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class.  Today’s blog is brought to you by ­­­Jose.

Class 7: 09/15/11-Backwards Design/ Wiggens & McTighe

UbD

Today, class began with a discussion of chapters 1 & 10 of Understanding Design by Wiggins & McTighe. Students were concerned that the Backwards Design framework would be hard to implement in public schools, in which teachers had to cover specific materials and had specific teaching roles. Teachers would have to choose activities on certain bases, such that he/she would have to think of what they wanted students to accomplish before making a decision on an activity, and teachers would have to identify with the way students solved problems.

According to the authors, the idea of Backward Design laid out a framework, not a specific project or a 1-day activity, and it was focused on a larger scale. Students discussed the “6 facets of understanding,” which included Empathy, an emotional word, not formally associated with teaching. The TA asked how empathy applied to teaching math and science and how we would interpret empathy. Students suggested that we would have to make an emotional investment in the students; others said that there was a buy-in, that students would see the value in a lesson and have an emotional response, like feel motivation. Empathy in science would help create connections between the material covered and the students, or that students would make the connections themselves. In the discussion of the 6 facets of understanding, the TA brought up the updated Bloom’s Taxonomy, and how it was useful in classrooms for teachers, especially when creating tests for students and to self-evaluate.

The authors of the reading specifically pointed out that Backward Design was not a prescriptive program, philosophy of educations, or intended for indirect lesson planning, and the TA went on to discuss how it included very general steps. In connection to our reading in the previous week (Barron, Krajcik), all authors brought up the importance of content-specific goals, motivating questions, and so forth, and the fact that many or most teachers do not do this in their classrooms.

The discussion then turned to textbooks and the TEKS. Textbook writers (experts) create books in a way that may match or don’t match up to the TEKS, and follow a very different or strange way of ordering subjects.  Students asked, how are teachers supposed to organize their curricula in a way that makes sense for them and the students, and do we have to make a list of or prioritize TEKS? Activities and chapter orders have to be decided on by the teachers so that it makes logical sense for students as they go through the curriculum.

Teachers make the decisions to emphasize one thing over another (based on personal preferences). Teachers must make an emphasis on the large concepts that span their subjects, so that, when students are learning, they don’t get the impression that everything they are learning has the same weight in the real world. Furthermore, we have to respect the standards (TEKS) set for us so that students do come away with some understanding of specific content, and it really does give us a framework of what the students will be learning. Of course, creating priorities for students varies with the teacher, but overall, large concepts that students retain are similar from classroom to classroom.

The “Twin Sins of Design” were also discussed: coverage and “Hands-on without Minds on”.  Hands-on without minds on is the idea of an activity in which the teacher is hopeful that, through the activity, the students will somehow learn something. The TA asked how many students had gone through courses like these, and most of the class raised their hands (chemistry & physics labs at the university level included). The idea of coverage was also discussed and relates back to prioritizing the TEKS and spending different amounts of time on specific parts of the curriculum designed by the teacher. TEKS should be rated and ranked based on several factors, taking into account that some show up more frequently on the TAKS and also based on students’ prior knowledge.

Finally, class ended with a wrap-up discussion of the 3 steps of creating a backward design and a template worksheet was passed out (from the reading). The template, unsurprisingly, uses many of the same factors included on the 5E lesson plan model used by UTeach, including “Students will be able to”, and the Explore, Evaluate, Elaborate, Explain, and implicitly, Engage.

The template will be used for our field lesson and we will be expected to note down questions that we plan on asking the students to help focus the lesson.

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class.  Today’s blog is brought to you by Sarah. ­­­

Class 6: 09/13/11-Petrosino (2004)

Tara, our teaching assistant, began the class discussion for today with a review of the critical aspects of Project Based Instruction (PBI) as defined by the readings for 9/8 (Baron et al and Krajcik & Blumenfeld).  The six most important components of PBI discussed were the driving question or challenge, scaffolding, collaboration, creation of a tangible product, ample assessment opportunities throughout, and authenticity or a “real-world” situation.

The importance of PBI as opposed to traditional laboratory and mathematics approaches was emphasized with the above "Ted Talk" video of Dan Meyers entitled “math needs a makeover” and the following quote from Ausubel

It should seem rather self-evident that performing laboratory experiments in cookbook fashion, without understanding the underlying substantive and methodological principles involved, confers precious little meaningful understanding, and that many students studying mathematics and science find it relatively simple to discover correct answers to problems without really understanding what they are doing.

The class then discussed what it would mean for the Petrosino case study of an astronomy class to follow the “How People Learn” text.  The How People Learn framework is focused on four classroom environments: knowledge centered, learner centered, assessment centered, and community centered.  Knowledge centered environments focus on student understanding of content, not just their memorization and requires meaningful engagement.  Learner centered environments draw on students’ prior knowledge, skills, and cultural experiences.  Assessment centered environments provide feedback on assignments whether these assignments are tests, worksheets, or assignments.  The feedback does not necessarily have to be tangible though.  For example, a teacher can jot down notes to themself on student productivity or have a conversation with a student or group of students.  A community centered environment creates connections between the school and the outside world.  Connections are made between the home, school, after-school programs, and experts.  Perhaps even more importantly, community centered environments form a community within the classroom and give students individual roles that draw on their strengths.  Great classrooms incorporate all four of these components.

Petrosino’s data collection methods were then reviewed with a focus on the type of data collected.  He used interviews (with the teacher, students, and colleagues), email correspondence, field notes of classroom observations, classroom artifacts (copies of the lecture, notes, handouts, computer programs, and class projects), and he focused on the photometry topic of the unit only instead of analyzing all topics covered.  These methods are qualitative, not quantitati/div>

Lastly, the class looked at whether the unit the teacher in the case study taught followed the How People Learn framework.  The majority of the class felt that the unit was knowledge centered because students actually used software and telescopes instead of learning about them.  The concern was brought up, however, that there was a focus on skills in the class rather than understanding but after some discussion there was a consensus that the ability to learn new skills is important and an ability the kids must have for future careers.  The class taught them HOW to use technology which prepares them for their future jobs that we may not even be able to picture yet.  Most importantly, the students understood by the end what a scientist is better than students that did not take this course.

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class.  Today’s blog is brought to you by Rebecca. ­­­

Class 5: 09/08/11-Fundamentals of PBI-Barron/Krajcik & Blumenfeld

I will begin with a one paragraph summary of the class session and then describe it in a roughly chronological fashion. The major topic for the class session can be summarized by the question “What is Project Based Instruction (PBI)?”  The content (particularly after the first few minutes) was also focused around two papers: Barron et al on the one hand and Krajcik and Blumenfeld on the other.  The session consisted entirely of discussion: most of the time the entire class participated in a discussion together, but at one point the class was divided into table groups.  There were four major points of discussion, all of which were introduced by Sara, who ran the class (Dr. Petrosino was unable to attend class). The direction of the discussion was visibly influenced by the questions and comments of the students.  The four topics were: (1) the students’ prior experiences with projects, (2) a description of teaching practices that use projects but do not qualify as PBI, (3) a comparison of the two major schools of thought regarding PBI (as expressed by the papers), and (4) a discussion about the advantages and difficulties of implementing PBI.

Sara, after expressing the importance of the two papers, began class by asking the students to describe projects that they had completed previously.  Specific projects that were described were: an at-home project in which students constructed a Styrofoam model of a cell, a project in which students designed drugs to fight cancer, AP English projects in which the student (according to her choices) drew pictures and made crossword puzzles, a project in which a student built a castle, and a physics project in which students designed containers to protect eggs as they were dropped from a substantial height.  Many other students named characteristics of typical projects without describing any individual projects.  According to all these comments, Sara wrote on the white board a list of typical projects characteristics: taking place at home or outside of class, allowing student socializing, encouraging fun, involving rubrics (some but not all), involving research (some but not all), eliciting creativity, often taking place after the lesson to which they related, and involving freedom. 

Sara then informed that class that two major schools of thought exist in the educational research community surrounding PBI.  The first is centered at the University of Michigan and the second at Vanderbilt University.  She said that one of the papers the class read, Krajcik and Blumenfeld, was representative of the former and the other, Baron et al., was representative of the latter.  She also said the two schools have many similarities but that they also have differences.  After making this important point, she asked the class to engage in a discussion about characteristics of teaching is not PBI but still involves projects.  Based on student comments, she wrote the following descriptions on the white board: involving busy work (defined by the class to be repetitive work that does not introduce new concepts), completely teacher-run, involving only passive learning (or only lecture), one-shot only (that is, not involving revisions), involving recipes or step-by-step instructions, individual, and containing a closed or fixed ending.

Sara then asked the class to discuss with their tables the differences and similarities between the two papers.  After allowing for a few minutes, she asked the class to report the characteristics of the Baron et al. paper.  The class named: (1) non-specific feed back and revision, (2) appropriate social groups, (3) learning appropriate goals, (4) scaffolding, and (5) real word content (these are recorded as named by the class, not as written in the paper).  Regarding learning appropriate goals, Sara remarked that successful implementation can be deceptively difficult and she references the model rocket example from the paper. 

Sara also asked the class what was meant by the word scaffolding and the class (and the TAs) eventually stated that scaffolding is any structure meant to assist the students (like the structure of a building). Some examples given were lessons, labs, activities, problems, having students hold meetings, and deadlines.  These examples led to a discussion regarding the “hidden curriculum” of schools which is the attempt to teach “21^st century skills” such as collaboration, numeracy, critical thinking, responsibility, etc.  Some examples of this practice were mentioned by the students, such as a teacher requiring students to have a planner and to write down learning objectives.  Both TAs stressed the important of this sort of teaching and Tara emphasized the importance of being explicit with the students that it is part of the learning objectives.  They also highlighted the usefulness of having the schedule and/or current learning objectives hanging in the classroom.  Sara said sometimes one can feel like they are treating the students too much like children but it is okay. 

There was also a discussion about the importance of deadlines and both TAs said they were somewhat relaxed, but that it was important not to be too relaxed.  Sara emphasized that teaching is “a balancing act,” and in this case the competing forces are a desire to let students slow down to learn more effectively or complete projects if they fall behind (a concern raised by a student) and the requirement to cover the scope of the curriculum.  Prudie added that often in AISD, “curriculum roadmaps” are required, particularly in schools with low exam scores.  Sara reported that her success with meeting curricular benchmarks led the district to give her more freedom.  On the importance of deadlines, Prudie explained that the best philosophy depends greatly on the personality of the teacher: deadlines are very important to her and she is strict about them.  Tara emphasized that, with regard to deadlines and in general, the first project will typically go poorly as both the students and the teacher need to adjust.  She said that it’s important to have intermediate deadlines because otherwise students will try to do everything at the last minute, especially the students who are used to being successful.

After several minutes of this discussion (which stemmed from the characteristics of Baron et al), Sara refocused the class on the papers and asked the students to name the characteristics considered by Krajcik and Blumenfeld.  Throughout the discussion, the students named: (1) social organization, (2) scaffolding, (3) technology, (4) tangible products, (5) a driving question, and (6) situated inquiry (the latter two were named after Sara prodded the class; she also asked what was meant by situated inquiry and a student responded that the projects should be related to real life rather than demonstrating learning just for the sake of learning). 

There was substantial discussion regarding technology in the classroom.  The general consensus was that technology can be an added challenge because students are learning content and the functions of a device at the same time but that technology can be quite engaging to students.  Tara emphasized the important of teaching devices and technology to students rather than only teaching them to perform certain tasks (such as finding the point of intersection between two functions on a graphing calculator).  She warned against assuming students understand technology already: students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and do not all have access like we might think they do. 

In regards to tangible products, Sara pointed out that when students invest in something, it can make their work more meaningful.  As an example, she described a project in which her students picked a mythical creature or superhero and decided, with regard to organ systems, whether the creature could actually exist.  The tangible products in this case consisted of power point presentations, movies, or even skits (as their form was left open to the students).  She added that it was one of her favorite projects and that the students went much more in depth than she had expected.

For the final discussion point, Sara, asked the students to share their honest thoughts and feelings about the prospect of implementing PBI.  Most of the students seemed to imply that they liked the idea of PBI: one student said there seemed to be lots of possibilities, one said he was hopeful, one said she saw lots of value, and another that she liked the avenue for creativity.  On the other side, some concerns were expressed: one student said he was scared, another that she was afraid it would take too long to cover curriculum, and another that he was worried administration wouldn’t allow this sort of the teaching.  Sara explicitly recognized the legitimacy of these concerns and said that the students should always feel free to express their honest opinion, even if it feels contrarian.  Both TA’s expressed the importance of a willingness to learning alongside the students and Tara said she felt that administrators were beginning to come to an understanding of the importance of PBI.

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class.  Today’s blog is brought to you by ­­­David.

Class 4: 09/06/11-Legacy Cycles/Klein & Harris

The discussion in our PBI class today opened up with this question, “As Project-Based Instruction revolves around the central idea of creating and implementing strong, solid Legacy Cycle projects, a firm understanding of what this is essential.” Below is a general schematic of a Legacy Cycle:

As defined by a student in the class, a Legacy Cycle is a type of problem-based learning that starts with a challenge being posed to the students. It goes through a cycle of generating ideas and gathering multiple perspectives on those ideas and assessing the various sources of information before going on to a process of researching and revising. Finally, when the students feel ready to "test their mettle", there is some form of assessment that evaluated their progress in their research. When their results are deemed satisfactory by their supervisors and peers, the cycle draws o a close with the final step of presenting their findings to the public in some way. Finally, if their findings prompt another challenge or prove unsatisfactory, the cycle starts again from the top.

So how is this different from a 5E? A 5E lesson plan is the template Uteach students used from Step 1 of the program until this class. The 5 E's in order are Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate - a very rigid and effective way to plan a lesson.

Of course, there are similarities between these teaching formats. Both include types of formative assessment and require the students to provide artifacts of their learning, both important tools that let the teacher know how the students are progressing. Both are templates, meaning that we can tweak the little things - they're backbones structures for lessons, there to provide a type of structure to the way we teach. 

But there are some noteworthy differences between 5E's and Legacy Cycles. In a way, the structure of Legacy Cycles is less strict, giving the students more free reign than in the case of a 5E lesson plan. In a Legacy Cycle, there is more room for multiple answers from the students. It also includes a revision step, in which the students may change the way they approach the problem if they find that they are stuck. The 5E's exploration is laid out for the students, but it's not as guided in Legacy Cycles. The 5E format does not have to start with a challenge, though it can. All in all, a Legacy Cycle encourages more independent thought; it's more open-ended. It's a more mature version of a 5E lesson plan.

The most vital part we as teachers need to get right in a Legacy Cycle is the initial challenge. A good challenge could fuel effective student work for the duration of the project. A sub-par challenge, however, could lead to massive confusion and a failed opportunity for productive learning.

This means that it is vital to know the qualities of what makes good challenge. Some ideas the class came up with were as follows.

A good challenge:

• provides more than one way to arrive at the/an answer. 
• provides foundation something that the students can build on for multiple or future challenges (scaffolding). 
• is Interesting to all members involved (students, teacher, community, etc...) 
• takes into account what the students already know, and relates to the students' lives and prior knowledge. 
• helps build students' confidence. 
• takes time, makes the students think. It teaches them to think.
• gives the student the chance to self-assess through reflection. 

With these ideas in mind, the class split off into our prospective teaching groups and researched the Legacy Cycles on Dr. Petrosino's website from students in the past to try to come up with a tentative lesson idea for this semester's teaching field experience. Our results can be seen in the below presentation that we collaborated on in class through google presentations.

PBI 9 6 Legacy Cycles

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class.  Today’s blog is brought to you by Diana.

Class 3: 09/01/2011-Ethics & Field Observations

Today Dr. Petrosino joined the class via Skype for a while and led a discussion over the Eratosthenes problem and how it related to us as future teachers. He explained that problems and information come in three types or levels: factual, conceptual, and innovation or transfer. The factual information, contained in the pre-quiz we took online, is an area that the United States is very good at teaching and assessing. Conceptual information involves synthesizing ideas from several sources, making inferences and applying ideas within a field. Innovation or information transfer involves taking information learned in one field and using it in different ways in another field. Factual information is very critical to know, but it has been shown that experts have conceptual and transfer abilities that we need to pay more attention to and encourage.

The Eratosthenes problem synthesizes math and science concepts and requires innovative, creative transfers between the fields. Dr. Pertosino explained that the reason he introduces these complex problems to us as students it so get us use to using all three levels of problem solving and information. These creative problems are difficult, even if the factual information is already known, as many groups found out in Tuesday’s activity. This semester, our goal will be to move from consumers to producers of complex problems, coming up with ways to design, assess, and form lessons around them.

We spent the remainder of the class period discussing the safety and ethical standards of teachers. Prudie, our  UTeach master teacher, led a discussion using the below “Ethics and Resoponsibility presentation.  Below is a summary of what we discussed in class (3.1-3.7), but you can also review the entire Texas Teacher Code of Ethics here.

Ethics and Responsibilities

3.1: The educator shall not reveal confidential information concerning students unless disclosure serves lawful professional purposed or is required by law. We decided that confidential information included everything from grades, learning disabilities, and behavioral or medical issues to personal contact information.

3.2 The educator shall not knowingly treat a student in a manner that adversely affects the student’s learning, physical health, mental health, or safety. This means knowing the individual needs, considerations, personalities, and boundaries of your students. It includes being fair with participation and not picking favorites. Sara and Tara also pointed out that most students do NOT understand sarcasm and to resist using it until you are absolutely certain the student(s) can handle it.

3.3 The educator shall not deliberately or knowingly misrepresent facts regarding a student. Do not assume things about your students’ lives or abilities. If necessary, approach another teacher who interacts with the student or a counselor with questions or concerns, but do make sure that you are looking for solutions and not just gossiping about problems.

3.4 The educator shall not exclude a student from participation in a program, deny benefits to a student, or grant an advantage to a student on the basis of race, color, sex, disability, national origin, religion, or family status. This means making sure accommodations are met for ESL students and students with disabilities during field trips and other activities to assure they can participate. We also noted that athletes should not be given special treatment and to stand your ground against inevitable pressure from family, coaches, and others to make sure things remain fair to all of your students.

3.5 The educator shall not engage in physical mistreatment of a student. This seems really obvious (don’t hit your students, duh!), but as Tara pointed out, you are legally not allowed to touch students even if you are being attacked, students are fighting, or a special ed student has an episode. In these cases, get an administrator or person who is trained to handle these problems! In more general, less severe cases where you just get frustrated take a time out and think before you yell or act.

3.6 The educator shall not solicit or engage in sexual conduct or a romantic relationship with a student. This one also seems really obvious, but the point is to not even allow a situation to occur where these types of behaviors might be inferred. That means, don’t Facebook friend your students, text them, or be alone with them in a place that could not be observed by another adult.

3.7 The educator shall not furnish alcohol or illegal/unauthorized drugs to any student or knowingly allow any student to consume alcohol or illegal/unauthorized drugs in the presence of the educator. Again, another one that seems obvious, but “unauthorized drugs” includes everything from the illegal ones to benign ones like Advil and cough drops. We also took this opportunity to point out that tobacco products are not allowed on school grounds whether you’re a teacher or student. If you smoke, leave your cigarettes at home!

Other rules and standards include:
* Showing up when you’re supposed to be there and being early so you can deal with any unforeseen circumstances.
* Dressing professionally: ladies, watch your neckline and remember leggings are not pants. Field trip attire will be discussed at a later date.
* Being respectful to your supervisors, peers, students and mentor teachers.
* Making your personal webpages private and removing inappropriate material from the web.
* And more! Again, check out the powerpoint for lots of important extra information.
* (For our experience at MNTH) DO NOT EAT PEANUTS OR HAVE PEANUTS ON YOU OR EVEN THINK ABOUT PEANUTS (okay, maybe you can think about them...) at MNTH because a student there is super highly allergic to them.

Last minute things: Prudie passed out our teaching assignments and a field observation form. We need to observe our mentor teacher, obtain a roster and note any attention getters and procedures the teacher uses during class sometime in the next week or so. Figure out what technology is available to you and how to work with it (set it up, practice with it, and talk to your mentor teacher about special glitches). It is also encouraged to go around seeing other classrooms and teachers to get a feel for the project based learning environment.

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class.  Today’s blog is brought to you by ­­Katye.

Class 2: 08/30/2011-Introduction/ Eratosthenes Problem

Class began with everyone giving a short introduction to the class.  The introductions included majors, what lead to us Uteach, plans after graduation, and interesting facts. 

After this, we watched the first five minutes of video clip in which Carl Sagan discussed the ancient academic Eratosthenes.

Dr. Sagan related the story of how Eratosthenes deduced that the Earth was curved, and was able to calculate the circumference of the earth based on the observations of shadows made by upright sticks in two different African cities.  Before he explained how this was accomplished over two millennia ago, the clip was paused so that the class could try to solve the problem: Given the observations that the distance between Alexandria and Syene was approximately 800 kilometers, and that an upright stick in Syene will cast no shadow and a stick in Alexandria casts a shadow of about 0.1219 meters, how would one calculate the circumference of the Earth?

The class broke up into eight groups of three, and each group was given one copy of the problem to solve (I note this because Tara pointed out that giving a group only one copy of a problem encourages collaboration, otherwise each member would simply read their own copy independently).    After working on the problem in groups, we had a class discussion about how our groups came to a solution. 

One group presented their solution to the class and illustrated it on the board; one group member explained that since the Sun is so large in relation to Earth and is so far away, rays of light that reaches the Earth from the Sun travels parallel to each other.   Also, if two parallel lines are cut by a transversal, the corresponding angles are congruent.   The two sticks (the one at Alexandria and the one at Syene) both point to the center of the Erath, where they form and angle (Angle A).  Based on this information, one can know the value of Angle A based on the value of its congruent angle, namely the angle formed by the hypotenuse of the triangle formed by the stick at Alexandria and its shadow (Angle B).  One can get the value of Angle B by solving for the inverse tangent of the ratio of the stick length over the shadow length (which is about seven degrees).  Since there are 360 degrees in a circle, it stands to reason the ratio of 7/360 is the same as the ratio of 800 and the value of the Earth’s circumference.

Most of the groups solved the problem in the same way. When asked if anyone got stumped anywhere the groups who had not reached a solution said that they just needed more time (that other groups had gotten to the solution before they had).  Some groups said that when they were setting up the problem, they drew a diagram with a small sun shown next to a large Earth. They said this was misleading because, even though many of them knew that the rays of light from the Sun strike the Earth parallel to each other, their picture made it seem that they would strike at different angles.

In solving this problem, it was necessary to know certain factual information (which was in fact tested in the online Diagnostic Test from our homework).  Conceptual information and problem-solving skills were also needed.  These three prerequisites are also called facts, concepts, and transfer, but these were not discussed in any detail.

Each day in PBI a different student takes responsibility for blogging about what goes on in class.  Today’s blog is brought to you by ­­­Joan.

Why won’t Michelle Rhee talk to USA Today?- By MICHAEL WINERIP NY TIMES

Michelle Rhee has refused to talk to USA Today reporters about a schools scandal.
Related

Ms. Rhee, the chancellor of the Washington public schools from 2007 to 2010, is the national symbol of the data-driven, take-no-prisoners education reform movement.

It’s hard to find a media outlet, big or small, that she hasn’t talked to. She’s been interviewed by Katie Couric, Tom Brokaw and Oprah Winfrey. She’s been featured on a Time magazine cover holding a broom (to sweep away bad teachers). She was one of the stars of the documentary “Waiting for Superman.”

These days, as director of an advocacy group she founded, StudentsFirst, she crisscrosses the country pushing her education politics: she’s for vouchers and charter schools, against tenure, for teachers, but against their unions.

Always, she preens for the cameras. Early in her chancellorship, she was trailed for a story by the education correspondent of “PBS NewsHour,” John Merrow.

At one point, Ms. Rhee asked if his crew wanted to watch her fire a principal. “We were totally stunned,” Mr. Merrow said.

She let them set up the camera behind the principal and videotape the entire firing. “The principal seemed dazed,” said Mr. Merrow. “I’ve been reporting 35 years and never seen anything like it.”

And yet, as voracious as she is for the media spotlight, Ms. Rhee will not talk to USA Today.

At the end of March, three of the paper’s reporters — Marisol Bello, Jack Gillum and Greg Toppo — broke a story about the high rate of erasures and suspiciously high test-score gains at 41 Washington schools while Ms. Rhee was chancellor.

At some schools, they found the odds that so many answers had been changed from wrong to right randomly were 1 in 100 billion. In a fourth-grade class at Stanton Elementary, 97 percent of the erasures were from wrong to right. Districtwide, the average number of erasures for seventh graders was fewer than one per child, but for a seventh-grade class at Noyes Elementary, it was 12.7 per student. At Noyes Elementary in 2008, 84 percent of fourth graders were proficient in math, up from 22 percent in 2007.

Ms. Rhee’s reputation has rested on her schools’ test scores. Suddenly, a USA Today headline was asking, “were the gains real?” In this era of high-pressure testing, Washington has become another in a growing list of cheating scandals that has included Atlanta, Indiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas.

It took the USA Today reporters a year to finish their three-part series. So many people were afraid to speak that Ms. Bello had to interview dozens to find one willing to be quoted. She knocked on teachers’ doors at 9:30 at night and hunted parents at PTA meetings. She met people in coffee shops where they would not be recognized, and never called or e-mailed sources at their schools.

Hari Sevugan, a spokesman for Ms. Rhee, said the reporters were “provided unprecedented time and access to report out their story,” including many meetings with senior staff members and the chief of data accountability. By last fall, Mr. Sevugan said, district officials’ patience was wearing thin. The deputy press secretary, Satiya Simmons, complained in an e-mail to a colleague, “Jack Gillum isn’t going away quietly, Uggh.”

“Just stop answering his e-mails,” advised Anita Dunn, a consultant who had been the communications director for President Obama.

The reporters made a dozen attempts to interview Ms. Rhee, directly and through her public relations representatives. Ms. Bello called Ms. Rhee’s cellphone daily, and finally got her on a Sunday.

“She said she wasn’t going to talk with us,” Ms. Bello recalled. “Her understanding was we were writing about” district schools “and she is no longer chancellor.”

On March 29, the day after the story came out, Ms. Rhee appeared on the PBS program “Tavis Smiley” and attacked USA Today.

“Are you suggesting this story is much ado about nothing, that this is lacking integrity, this story in USA Today?” Mr. Smiley asked.

“Absolutely,” Ms. Rhee said. “It absolutely lacks credibility.”

Mr. Smiley asked if she was concerned that she had put too much pressure on teachers and principals to raise scores. “We want educators to feel that pressure,” she answered.

Ms. Rhee emphasized that the district had hired a top security company, Caveon, to investigate in 2009, and was given a clean bill of health. The district released a statement from John Fremer, Caveon’s owner, saying, “The company did not find evidence of cheating at any of the schools.”

However, in subsequent interviews with USA Today and this reporter, Mr. Fremer made it clear that the scope of his inquiry was limited, and that the district had not requested that he do more. Indeed, Caveon’s report, posted on USA Today’s Web site, was full of sentences like, “Redacted was interviewed at redacted.”

Teachers described security as “excellent” and “very vigilant,” and investigators, for the most part, took their comments at face value.

It did not take Ms. Rhee long to realize she had miscalculated. Three days later, she told Bloomberg Radio she was “100 percent supportive” of a broader inquiry.

Still, she would not talk to USA Today. Mr. Sevugan gave no explanation, but pointed out that she had spoken with several other news outlets.

The reporters did not give up. On April 26, Emily Lenzner, a spokeswoman, wrote Mr. Gillum, “Michelle is willing to do an interview, but we’d like to do this in person.” She asked if they could hold their story, and arranged for a meeting on May 3 at the StudentsFirst office in Washington.

On May 2, another Rhee spokeswoman e-mailed to say the reporters were too interested in cheating and not enough in StudentsFirst. She said they could submit a list of questions.

There were 21 questions; Ms. Rhee did not answer 10 of the 11 about cheating.

Mr. Gillum, who recently took a job at The Associated Press, said he was surprised by how unresponsive Ms. Rhee has been. “She talks about how important data is, and our story is data driven,” he said.

So that people could make their own judgments, Linda Mathews, the project editor, posted the relevant public documents on the USA Today Web site.

Shortly after the follow-up story appeared, the district’s inspector general began what was supposed to be an inquiry, but in July The Washington Post reported that just one investigator had been assigned. “Basically it was one guy in a room who made 10 phone calls,” Mr. Toppo said.

Officials with the federal Department of Education have indicated that they are assisting with the investigation.

In Washington, two investigators spent five days at eight schools. In Atlanta, the state deployed 60 investigators who worked for 10 months at 56 schools. They produced a report that named all 178 people found cheating, including 82 who confessed. There was not a single case of “redacted and redacted doctoring redacted grade answer sheets at redacted.”

People in Atlanta could go to prison. Last week, a grand jury issued subpoenas seeking the names of school employees who had received bonuses for test scores. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that there were subpoenas for “signed copies” of “any and all oaths of office” taken by Beverly Hall, the former superintendent.

The three reporters still hope to interview Ms. Rhee. “Absolutely,” said Mr. Toppo.

Which brings things full circle: Why won’t Ms. Rhee talk to USA Today?

E-mail: oneducation@nytimes.com


Picture: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Hoboken - Commissioner's Placement Letter 2011

The following is the most recent report on the results from the 2011 QSAC (The Quality Single Accountability Continuum) evaluation for a school district in New Jersey. QSAC looks at five primary areas or DPR's (District Performance Reviews) including Operations, Instruction and Program, Governance, Fiscal Management, and Personnel. Also, you may want to review the original statue which initially defined and justified QSAC's creation. Recall, Hoboken (the school district used in this example) is the district in which I served as the Assistant to the Superintendent from 2007-2009. Please review this report along with reports from previous years (posted here and on my other Education blog) and identify trends, areas of improvement, areas of challenges and areas of success. How does this parallel or run contrary to experiences of your own in your district, school system or educational setting? My plan is to discuss this further during seminar.

For those interested, portions of this work along with some other related research will be discussed in a forthcoming chapter I am writing and will share in seminar and online later in the Fall.

QSAC Report SPG 2010

QSAC Report Aug 2009
Hoboken - Commissioner's Placement Letter 2011

Note: Some of this research, and other research conducted looking at educational systems, may require the utilization of the Open Public Records Act. Here is a link for your review.

Picture: An example of a NJ QSAC monitoring form used in evaluating a school district along a particular DPR.

States must cut red tape to attract more qualified teachers By Justin D. Martin | Christian Science Monitor – Mon, Aug 15, 2011

My wife has a master’s degree in education from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has lived in four countries, speaks a good deal of Arabic and some Italian, and has been either teaching or conducting education research for the better part of a decade. She taught at a private school in Seattle so esteemed that Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos (the founder of Amazon.com) sent their children there.

Yet according to box-checkers at Maine’s Department of Education, she is not yet qualified to teach 10-year-olds in the state’s public schools. Because she studied history and art as an undergraduate and has not undergone public school certification in another state, the state of Maine denied her application for initial certification to teach, insisting that she must first complete an undergraduate English course at her own expense. This is only for initial, temporary certification, after which she must take no fewer than five additional college courses, five standardized tests, and complete a year of supervised “student” teaching.

RELATED: Education reform: eight school chiefs to watch in 2011

Just about anyone considering teacher quality in the United States laments that classroom instruction needs substantial improvement, and low teacher pay is often cited as the reason the profession doesn’t attract and retain talented candidates. This is no doubt part of the problem; in Maine, a starting public school salary pays like a full time job at a Waffle House.

Another major problem, though, is that states often make it unconscionably difficult for qualified teachers to work. The result is that would-be teachers often do something else or they work for private schools, where teachers don’t need the same bureaucratic stamp of approval. For that same reason, private schools often attract highly qualified, educated individuals who may not have the traditional teaching certification.

Four days after arriving in Maine, my wife was offered a job at a prestigious private school that is less shackled by the state’s bureaucratic vise grip. She accepted.

Maine should be sending cookie bouquets to talented teachers. The state’s 4th-graders have the lowest reading scores of any state in New England except Rhode Island, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. (Wholly related: My wife’s master’s degree is specifically in childhood literacy).

But Maine officials can take heart that other states chase good teachers away, too.

RELATED: Teacher layoffs ahead: Should seniority prevail? Six considerations.

Bureaucratic restrictions frustrate talented teachers even after they’ve gotten their foot in the door. A friend of mine eventually quit his job teaching biology at a public high school in North Carolina and as a cross country and track coach, in part because the state wouldn’t pay him the standard increase in salary for having a master’s degree. He was teaching biology courses, and was told that his master’s degree in physiology didn’t count as a graduate degree in his area of educational certification.

Not only did he have a master’s degree in the sciences from a major research university, but he had previously coached a high school cross country team to four state championships in California, where he was an "All-American" runner in college.

States should certainly have high standards regarding who can teach their children, but high standards need not be synonymous with needless restrictions. States can have a system for evaluating aspiring teachers who don’t have traditional certification, without being punitive and pushing talent away. That can and should involve case-by-case considerations.

RELATED: Persistent achievement gap vexes education reformers: Six takeaways

While alternate certification programs exist, aimed at getting talented individuals into the classroom, those programs often require candidates to jump through another set of bureaucratic hoops and demanding commitments. These programs also have limited regional scope and may demand would-be teachers spend significant money up front simply to start the ball rolling.

Maine’s Bangor Daily News ran a July editorial arguing that when it comes to demanding high-quality teachers, America's states could learn from Finland’s approach to improving its schools, where “every teacher got a master’s degree, not in education but a content area” and “[o]nly one in 10 applicants was hired to be a teacher.” But Finland’s demands worked in large part because of systemic and cultural factors that don’t exist in the US. The country’s tough standards got high quality teachers into the classroom, rather than keeping them out.

Rigid standards are fine as long as state officials have broad authority to use common sense and wave requirements for exceptionally trained applicants. Red tape will always exist, but it doesn’t have to bind and gag talented professionals eager to serve as teachers.

Justin D. Martin, Ph.D., is the CLAS-Honors Preceptor of Journalism at the University of Maine and a columnist for Columbia Journalism Review. Follow him on Twitter: @Justin_D_Martin

Sign up for our weekly Opinion and Commentary newsletter (every Thursday). You can also add Commentary to your daily Monitor newsletter.

photo: Erie Lackawana Station, Hoboken, NJ - Hoboken City Hall website

Project-based Learning Approaches with Technology

Intel® Teach Elements: Project-Based Approaches

http://www.intel.com/education/elements

Using specific classroom scenarios, teachers explore characteristics and benefits of Project-Based Learning (PBL). Throughout the course, teachers consider their own teaching practice as they follow a teacher new to project-based learning who discusses strategies with a mentor teacher. Planning and project design modules guide teachers through organizing the curriculum, the classroom, and students for successful 21st century projects. The assessment module demonstrates strategies for assessing students’ 21st century skills throughout an open-ended project. The course offers opportunities to apply the PBL concepts with action planning exercises. (Design)

Intel Education: Designing Effective Projects

www.intel.com/education/designprojects

Includes models of meaningful classroom projects, along with tools and strategies for developing your own exemplary technology-supported units. Topics include project design, thinking skills, a unit plan index, and instructional strategies. (Examples and Tools)

Intel Teach: Assessing Projects

http://educate.intel.com/en/AssessingProjects

When assessment drives instruction, students learn more and become more confident, self-directed learners.Assessing Projects helps teachers create assessments that address 21st century skills and provides strategies to make assessment an integral part of their teaching and help students understand content more deeply, think at higher levels, and become self-directed learners. (Examples and Tools)

Buck Institute: PBL-Online

www.pbl-online.org

All the resources you need to design and manage high quality projects for students. 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. PBL-Online will guide you through the development of engaging, standards-focused projects. When you are ready, you can download a Project Planning Form to write down your project plan.

Project planning is organized according to five design principles. Each design principle is supported by a set of resources and advice from expert PBL teachers. (Design, Examples, and Tools)

Edutopia: Project-Based Learning

www.edutopia.org/project-learning

Project learning is a dynamic approach to teaching in which students explore real-world problems and challenges. With this type of active and engaged learning, students are inspired to obtain a deeper knowledge of the subjects they're studying.

The site includes current articles and videos to support a project-based classroom. Edutopia is one of the newest resources for examples of PBL in schools and a driving force for education reform. (Examples)

Recipes for Success Project Learn (must have an IDEAL account to access for free)

http://www.recipes4success.com The ProjectLearn process provides step-by-step assistance for designing effective classroom projects. Explore these strategies to help support the project work your students are completing. (Design)