Author: davidbeaty

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MOOCs for Life

MOOCopoly

Photo Credit: cogdogblog via Compfight cc

 I remember years ago when I was in university our education department motto was “Teacher as Facilitator of Student Success”. I graduated in 1996. Almost 20 years later we are still moving slowly in that direction. Even back then we recognized that the teacher was not doling out knowledge, just fascilitating the learning. Of course then the Internet was alive and well (I think I was still getting AOL diskettes in the mail though…) so it was true. You could learn anything you wanted all by yourself. You did not need an expert to teach you. Honestly I think this has been true for more than a century at least. The Internet and Web 2.0 has made things easier and faster, but haven’t you been able to learn just about anything that you desired if you were well connected enough? First there were correspondence courses, then the radio, then TV, then the Internet. You’ve been able to learn almost anything imaginable for quite a while. For some reason the School of the Air in Australia always stands out as a favorite example for me.

I love MOOCs. (can you picture the t-shirt?) The idea that organizations are putting up their content for free/low prices is insanely great. I am also a strong defender of the the concept that we should be able to prove what we know, diploma or not. I honestly wish that employers would look strictly at a combination of our character, knowledge and skills, and experience. In too many cases the person with the degree will get the position, regardless of whether or not they are better suited to the job. MOOCs transcend that problem and do a lot towards eliminating it. Udacity in particular has made a move over the last year or two to target people who are looking to advance their career but who recognize that they can gain a lot from not only another degree, but also what they call “nanodegrees” – certifications in particular areas.

If it were up to me and if it were more widely accepted I would certainly LOVE to proceed with using MOOCs to get numerous nanodegrees/certifications. Currently I am not sure an employer would “recognize” the effort put into my MOOC participation. There is, of course, a bump in pay for graduate degrees. I have been told, and I know, that my career path will be limited without more letters after my name. Okay, I don’t want to digress here, but I just want to show the opposing forces here. To oversimplify it’s “real learning” vs. “the system”.

I think the walls of traditional higher ed are being shaken. With programs like Harvard’s Open Learning Initiative the concept of credit and degrees is being disrupted. When you can take a course, even get assessed (graded) on how you did, then how much does it matter that you can show an official “for credit” transcript?

MOOCs are bound to be a major part of education in the future. Of course there are certain things, at least for now, that we all need to know as a foundation to learning. Reading, for example, is pretty important. Certain other skills such as tech skills are not something we can do without. But the need for courses that fill in certain gaps in your knowledge will only increase. Sure we can Google things when we need a quick answer but when you really need to understand a concept there is nothing like a structured, well-thought out course. Think about it, we do not typically offer a PD with no title. (Okay so we sometimes do an open lab type of PD) Most of the time we run a PD like “Save Time with Google Docs” There is a structure and a focus because we as the teachers of the PD know how the teachers will best absorb the content. My point here is that the course structure will not fade away, but rather we will need particular courses to fill certain needs in our career paths. That’s where the real power of the MOOC will be.

I only hope that employers and organizations will catch on and recognize the MOOC as the real life, just right learning that it is becoming. I for one, will do my part to recognize their value in my organization.

So what about you? Are MOOCs a good fit for your career path? Will you avoid them because your employer will not give you “credit”? Or will you take the plunge and learn something new over the next few months, regardless of the payoff?

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To Flip or Not to Flip is Not the Question

Over the last few years there’s been a lot of talk out there about flipping classrooms. Of course, the main idea is to give you more time with students when they need it the most: when they are working on their “homework”, when they are applying their learning, when the deeper understanding is taking place.

I’ve read articles that claim the flip does not work because students will be lost without instruction. Just asking students to watch a video will not work. I’ve also read the opposite, that teachers need to spend 100% of class time helping students think, not teaching content. This camp would advocate that if it can be Googled or viewed on a website or video you should not be covering it in class.

There are a lot of factors at play that make flipped instruction work differently for different situations. I would even argue that it works best in certain subject areas. And I will admit there is power in the flip. But I think the real power of this whole flipping idea comes when teachers really reflect on their practice and consider how their students learn and how to best engage them.

If you teach the humanities for example there is a lot of benefit to using flipped instruction. Sure there are endless facts and dates that are just begging to be memorized (that can happen during the flip time), but isn’t the main event, the big idea, to learn about people? And what better way to do that than through interacting in class, debating and discussing ideas, the sort of thing that is tough to do with standard flipped instruction. On the other hand, courses like math or other courses that have that “exact answer” nature may be better suited to flipped instruction.

The most skilled teacher will certainly flip parts of their course, knowing that students can learn certain content on their own and do the real processing and consolidating in class. They will also recognize that there are times when their classes need some direct instruction.

This is absolutely true in the classroom of life, where I have three students (my own kids in grades 1, 3 and 5). Just the other day my son and I were stacking wood. Winter is coming here in Norway and we heat our home mostly with a wood stove. My son was very excited about the gigunda pile of wood that was dumped into our yard. As he and I started working on the stacking process I noticed he had no idea how to stack wood in such a way that it would stay put against the wall. After a minute or two of watching me my 6 year old quickly figured out how the wood fit best. There was simple task to be learned, the sort of thing we can flip as a teacher.

A day or two later I was helping my 3rd grader with spelling. Truly this is the sort of thing kids can learn on their own. It’s classic “drill and kill”. Especially in the English language I find myself saying to my daughter, “I don’t know why it is spelled that way, it just is.” This is the perfect opportunity for flipped instruction. There’s not a lot of consolidation and processing needed here, just get the facts in your head, right?

My 5th grader, on the other hand, is at the age where she is starting to think more deeply about friendships, why people do what they do, etc. Our talks tend to be more of a learning conversation. For example she has been working lately on a persuasive essay about school uniforms. We’ve both been enjoying the conversations that have been sparked at home since this project was assigned. Something as simple as the persuasive essay needs a conversation and cannot be taught completely through reverse instruction. To me, the perfect hybrid of Flipped and Traditional teaching would be to have my daughter watch a persuasive video (or ask a parent to advocate for one side of the argument during dinner) You get the benefit of the flipped classroom but the student is not being asked to “learn it all on their own” via videos.

So where are we heading now? What are we to do? I’m advocating for flipping as needed and thinking carefully about what content we flip. I maintain that the best teachers know what needs to be done in class and what might be possible at home. The strongest benefit is that all of this flipped classroom talk is making teachers think again about their approach to teaching and learning. Honestly that may be the most powerful benefit behind most of the trends we see popping in and out of education. They make teachers reflect on their practice!

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Works Cited

“The Flipped, Flipped Classroom.” Stanford Daily. Web. 01 Dec. 2014. <http://www.stanforddaily.com/2013/08/05/the-flipped-flipped-classroom/&gt;.

“We Need More EdTech, But Less Technology In The Classroom.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine. Web. 01 Dec. 2014. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2013/08/26/we-need-more-edtech-but-less-technology-in-the-classroom/&gt;.

 

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From Oregon Trail to Classcraft – Immersive Games in the Classroom

I have never been a gamer in the traditional sense of the word. Of course I had a Nintendo and I admit to playing Parsec on the TI-99 (that was a computer not a calculator). But I have never really been into games like many people. But I did play games in school. Specifically I spent a lot of time on Oregon Trail and LOGO. And I loved them. I know for a fact that time spent on “games” like those had a major impact on my love for technology and certainly increased my knowledge and skills in other areas.

It is certainly true that games have their place in schools. Few people out there would argue that fact. After all computer based games have been used in schools since the personal computer was invented and games in general have been used in school since the beginning of time. There are the drill and kill basic games that help us remember multiplication facts or the Period Table of the Elements. There are even some more advanced games that involve some kind of reward and a bit more competition. But please allow me to make a distinction here. The use of games in school is one thing. True gamification is another.

As a director of technology I always like to use the business world as an example so here goes. Look at the number of apps and websites that gamify everyday things. There is the OKDOTHIS app which allows users to “challenge” each other to create new photographs. It’s a fun app, and I personally love the idea that people can challenge each other with the latest “DO of the Day”.

We can find another example in the once-popular 0boxer.com tool. The idea was that you got badges/awards for getting your inbox numbers down. I tried it back in the day and it was just plain addictive. I actually found myself deleting messages that I may have genuinely needed,  just for the rewards!

And don’t even get me started on the gamification of fitness. Robert Appino has a great post about some of the popular apps that could be models for schools.

My contention here is that the games, the plain old games, will always have their place in schools, but the gamification of learning has massive untapped potential. Imagine if your history class was nothing but a huge immersive game. You’d have to carefully construct the reward system and be aware of the benefits and pitfalls of serious competition in your classroom, but I think the risk may pay off.

My first exposure to immersive games was probably when I was about 10 years old when I learned to play Myst. This game takes the player to a foreign world where there is not just one thing to do or just one goal. Basically the user is immersed in a world where they can do anything virtually. Today some of these games have taken the form of MMORPG and other immersive fiction games.

The type of immersive games I am interested in exploring are those that involve the whole class over an extended period of time. I’ve seen a few examples of this like The Dragon Collective that are immersive games where the entire class is involved. In The Dragon Collective students are learning Chinese while at the same time being immersed in a game that keeps them motivated. Students collect clues, solve riddles, etc. This idea reminds me of the Assassin game. I have always loved the immersive nature of this game and would love to see how teachers could use a similar technique to involve kids in learning via immersive game play.

These games’ value lies in the fact they they are so engrossing. Using this type of game in education could be as powerful as language immersion is for language learners. The idea behind language immersion is that when a student is surrounded by the language and many times the culture, they will learn by osmosis.

What do you think the potential is of immersive games in the classroom? Is anyone trying something like this? Hit the comments section and let me know.

Update: Has anyone seen the immersive game of “Classcraft“? In my research for this post I have stumbled upon this site. It’s an online game designed to be used in the classroom all year with all your kids involved. I love this concept and would like to investigate further!