What creativity, time, and interest can produce

I have often felt that the current focus in the US system has lost is creativity. As China focuses their research on moving to a more creative system, the US has moved to "standardizing" which kills creativity. Pushes in creativity within the educational system has resulted (usually after a lag time) of great prosperity. This can be seen in the 60's and the 90's.

This spring and summer, my daughter had more time on her hands. She also attends a school that is 100% project based learning. One of the unexpected results of project based learning is the increase in creativity. The initial focus of the school was to improve STEM education. However, where students excel on standardized tests was English and History. Why? I believe it is because these topics allow for greater levels of creativity within the testing assessments. However, STEM needs personnel that have a high level of creativity.

With this in mind I began to think of what conditions are needed (and that her school includes in their curriculum, including STEM). If STEM assessments began to include creativity in their assessment, teaching within STEM would need to change. So what would need to be included? In looking at the work my daughter has done over the last 3 months, I would say that creativity needs time (to try things out), interest (see Dr. Margaret Haviland's post on project based learning to see how to integrate student choice into the curriculum), and student accountability/self direction.

Examples

My daughter set a goal to get on the dance team at her dance school despite the fact that she did not know how to tap dance. She taught herself how to tap using YouTube and spending three hours a night a week before tryouts practicing. When she got stuck, she would ask me (6 years of tap). She used both online tools and personal experts to help her to learn something that was needed to achieve a personal goal she set. Part of the goal setting was due to her school, as was finding resources to achieve that goal. However, the other part was time (she did this during a week off from school) and passion (not for tap, but for dance in general).

During the month of May, my daughter finally found herself with time on her hands as school work was winding down and she no longer had any extra curricular activities (plays, dance). She took this time to play around with audacity, a program she had learned about school. She has been very focused this year on developing her music skills, both in her piano/keyboarding skills and singing. She spent hours putting recording her singing and putting together harmonies. This was the result:



The entire piece is her voice (6 tracks) that she figured out and recorded on her own.

Finally, again using a combination of YouTube and experts, my daughter has taught herself to sing. Again, this is something that she takes seriously and wants to be able to do without hurting her voice. She has acquaintances who have lost their voice (as teens) because of improper use.

The end of the school year in New York State

I know that I have a number of readers of this blog from New York state. However, many are from outside of the state and the country. I am always interested in the blogs that I read, about learning what their end of school year is like. So I decided to write a "cultural" piece about how students (at all levels of education) end their school year in our state. Interestingly, it has not changed much since I was a child (in the dark ages of the '70's and my mother assures me it was much the same when she was a kid in the '40's).

Our school year starts late (first week of September, just after labor day or the first Monday of Sept.) and ends late (third week in June). In addition to finals, high school students take the regents exams, which goes back as far as my mother's time. Regents exams are curriculum based topical standardized exams (i.e. algebra, geometry, living environment, foreign language, world history, english, etc...). These exams are given usually the second and third week of June which is why our school year is so long.

At the grade school level, the last week of school usually has a number of half days involved. Students help the teachers pack up the classroom, have some fun activities such as school field day (outdoor activities and games), school picnic, or other community building activities. This is also when the kids get the assignment for the summer (usually summer reading requirements).

At the university level, most schools end in Mid-May. There is usually the end of classes the first week of May, followed by a "reading day" in which students can study for exams. Exams may be anywhere from 4-10 days depending on the university. The weeks leading up to the end of the semester, students start looking for summer or permanent jobs. Even during finals week, many students go home, returning their possessions they use during the year to their homes or moving into off-campus housing (for the following year) and/or looking for summer jobs. This year was especially hard for our region to find summer jobs as many of the chronically unemployed and senior citizens now work the traditional summer jobs year round so temporary part-time employment is not available. As a result, many college students are working retail and camp jobs, often the jobs taken by high school students.

After finals week, there is usually a week of activities for graduating students culminating in the graduation ceremonies.

High school students don't graduate (for the most part) until the third week of June. Often, high school seniors are done with their regents exams so most seniors are finished with school by the first week of June. Between exams and graduation, seniors take their class trip, attend their senior prom (formal dance for those outside of the US), participate in College orientations/registration (although this may happen throughout the summer) if they are attending college or begin job training (for those going to work right out of high school). For those with jobs (which I mentioned is low this year) they begin to work a full-time shift.

After the graduation ceremonies, either the day or weekend of, or during the summer, most students have graduation parties. These parties can either be elaborate (rented hall) to simple (family in the backyard) or anywhere in between (combined with others, at a park, etc...). Usually, the students receives cash to use in college or to establish themselves (i.e. deposit on an apartment) if they are going to be working full-time. Throughout the summer, graduates will attend parties for their friends. My son has 2-4 parties a weekend, every weekend until he leaves for college in August.

Interestingly enough, college graduation usually does not result in a big party. It is high school graduation which is considered the important milestone. The other important milestone (though not as much as high school graduation) is the transition from Middle School to High School. Often there is a middle school graduation, at the end of the school year. Most people I know have a small family party to mark the middle school graduation, but more often than not, this is celebrated by going out to dinner. Some schools also have a formal dance, but often that is the private schools rather than public schools.

Once the school year is over, many families take a vacation. Depending on the year, the end of the school year might fall close to the end of June which allows for an extended vacation over the 4th of July holiday. At any rate, most people in New York take their vacations the end of June, or first week of July or during the week before Labor Day (the end of August). Most camps start right after July 4 and do until the first or second week of August.

So how does this compare to the end of the year for where you are? I'd be interested in knowing what some of the rituals are for others outside of NY state.

Unofficial first day of summer

Memorial Day in the US (the last Monday of May) is the unofficial start to summer. Most of the country will have already finished up school last week and will be finishing school this week. But New York state doesn't end until the end of June.

Growing up, this was always the toughest time of year as we were expected to keep focused on the end of the school year, tests, and finishing up the last bits that we did not yet cover. Most universities (like my own) are out of school and college students are looking for summer jobs. However, High School sports are just finishing up, and between studying for exams and finishing up the sports year, it is hard to find time to look for a summer job, especially when the unemployment rate for teens under 20 is at 40%.

For me, however, this is when I get all of my work (writing, research, next year's courses) done as the kids are still not home bugging me. So as we enter June, for those in the northern hemisphere, happy Summer (I know it doesn't officially start for three weeks) and for those in the southern hemisphere, hunker down for the coming winter ahead!

Am I being too picky?

My son is doing a review poster for his college level history course. In it, he has to take major events in American history and explain what the event was and why it happened.

Now, I have no complaints about his critical thinking skills. But he wrote the following:

New Netherlands stretched from the Delaware River Vally (Delaware was owned by the sweetish but later owned by the Dutch).

Both my husband and I thought that he should rewrite this, but my daughter and he did not see that there was even a problem.

What do you think? Do you think I'm being too picky? (just to warn you, if you do think I am, I DON'T).

Are there differences in learning at different educational levels?

I have addressed this issue in the past in which I find many people at different educational levels (primary, secondary, higher ed, adult/training) differentiate the learning at different levels. What I always find interesting is that K-12 teachers discount me because of my limited experience in formal primary and secondary schools (although I have extensive experience in informal learning at these levels) and training professionals discount much of what I say as not being relevant for the workplace (despite the fact I my first 5 years of teaching was at the corporate level).

Recently, I commented on another blog in which many of the blog basically discounted what I had to say because they labeled me an "educator" rather than a "trainer". One person commented that because I used "student" instead of trainee, that I really was speaking from the traditional "education" sector (as if this were different than corporate training). This has been bothering me for a while and I finally tried to reflect on what the differences might be.

In my experience (informal education at the k-12, formal education in higher ed, and formal and informal education at the organizational level) basic learning concepts are the same. I try to be student centered, while at the same time maintaining a "teaching presence" and being aware of the technology, social and cognitive presence of the content and learning environment (Garrison and Anderson, 2003). I feel Garrison and Anderson's model is universal in today's learning, regardless of mode of delivery, content, or level of education (even though the model was developed for elearning).

HOW a teacher, instructor, or trainer makes their presence known and the amount of support a student or trainee might need in learning IS dependent on the level of knowledge the student/trainee already possesses about the topic/content, their motivation in learning, the amount of time they have to learn something, how they will be assessed in their learning, and their expectations for instruction.

For example, my daughter goes to a school that is based on experiential and cooperative learning methods. Most of the students who go to the school come from traditional educational environments. It takes the students about half a year to become familiar with these methods. By sophomore year, they need less direct teacher instruction, and thus less teacher presence. However, newer teachers have difficulty balancing student need with teacher instruction. It takes a new sophomore or junior level instructor about half a year before they become comfortable allowing students to come to them. This, in fact is no different than a trainer understanding when to direct trainees and when to react to their questions.

Suddenly, as I began to work through this difficulty I had with different levels of education thinking that they are different in their approach to teaching, I realized that the 21st century needs a new model that will follow through all levels of education. I saw a model on a blog this year (I can't remember whose or where it was...let me know if you have the post so I can bookmark it!) that was a grid of formal and informal learning and on the other axis, the level of complexity of the content. The intersection resulted in different categories of learning objects. I could see this adapted so that there were different categories of syllabi or curricula based on the level of formality of the learning and the complexity of the content.

All of this points to me the need to train teachers and trainers in the art of developing a flexible curriculum and syllabus. My point in the comment in which the trainers did not like what I posted was that sometimes there needs to be a more rigid structure for training (i.e. to comply with professional laws, such as CPA's, healthcare providers, or lawyers) and other times there can be more flexibility. However, there should always be structure. Just like an open amphitheater can deliver the same service as a music hall or arena (a venue for concerts for example), to do so there has to be some structure (seating area, performance area, acoustics). But definitely it's structure is much more open and less formal than the other two venues, so some concerts will have different "feeling" in an amphitheater than in a small concert hall or a large arena . Likewise, the "feeling" of learning will differ with different learning structures.

Resource: Garrison, D., & Anderson, T. (2003) . E-learning in the 21st Century. London: RoutledgeFarmer

The best teachers don't give you the answers

My family likes to watch the new series "Glee", usually on Sunday mornings on the internet. Since they need to get up early in the morning for school, the 9-10 PM time period is a bit late.

I think what has struck a cord for them in this program is that they bring up issues that are relevant to all high school students, often in a humorous way. In this week's episode, the teacher for the Glee Club has been suspended and cannot accompany the group to the Sectional competition. The students are upset as they complain that they won't be able to do well without their faculty adviser. However, he replies that he has every confidence they can do it without him. "The best teachers don't give you the answers."

I was surprised when my daughter whole heartedly agreed with this. She goes to an alternative school which is project based learning, using groups. "That's how it is in my school," she commented to her brother, who also agree with her. Perhaps there is hope for the future of education if society begins to understand this.

Valuating expertise

Ken Allen had an interesting post recently about expertise . I have become very interested in expertise as its definition within a group seems to be a key element in collaborative writing and knowledge creation.

Specifically, how "expertise" is defined varies among group members based on their professional development, the politics of the organization and department, and their own epistemology (often a result of schooling, culture, and reference groups).

The problem is that defining expertise is often implicit. As a result, when interacting with others, decision makers will impose their own definition of expertise if they don't first interact with those who will be impacted by their decision. If a decision maker's definition of expertise is different than the stakeholders, there will be discontent and the appearance that the decision maker is inept (after all, s/he should not make "stupid" decisions based on "false" data).

This is especially true when there are multi-generations. Some of the older expertise may be undervalued by younger stakeholders and some of the younger expertise may be undervalued by older stakeholders. Rather than merging the expertise, taking out the best for the situation, one or the other will be discounted.

This recently happened to me (and it is not the first time). As an expert on instructional technology, with a deep level of experience in multiple contexts, you would think that a school would reach out to have my input on instructional technology and its instructional design. Instead, my daughter worked on a distance learning component of her school (high school level) yesterday, experiencing a number of factors that are common mistakes made by first time distance learning instructional design. As I mentioned before, this is not the first school to discount my expertise because I am a parent (you wouldn't understand, you only have college level experience, you're a parent...not a teacher).

I am disappointed because I expected more from the school as it is an alternative school. However, upon reflection I realized that there are different definitions of expertise working here and that admitting a lack of expertise is a difficult as redefining "expertise" and "knowledge". There needs to be tools, especially in the current "objective" standardized educational system the US has been moving to, to allow for new ideas, new ways of doing things, but also the maintenance of old ideas and ways of doing things that may still work in different situations. One advantage of the current technology is that there is a more permanent record of not only new ideas, but old ideas as well. I need only peruse my blog as I develop my syllabus for next semester and see what worked, what didn't, and what situations I might need to deal with next semester.

I am especially concerned with the current recession, as the 50+ workers are being laid off, that some of the time tested ways of doing business will be thrown out (the good with the bad) and the same mistakes will be made (and covered up). Let's hope that the amount of expertise that is out there will be used rather than wasted.

Integrating elearning into the classroom: the preliminaries

The first step in integrating elearning into the classroom, either as an activity, a day of training, or a semester class is to establish why you have chosen elearning in the first place.

• What are your goals in using elearning?
• What do you expect your students to get out of the experience?
• Do you have the support of administrators (resource, moral, or technical)?
• If not, where will you get the resources or technical support, and how will you motivate students to use the elearning as a way of learning?
• How much time do you have to develop the activity, course, project? How much time do you have to implement the activity, course, project?
• What are the expectations of stakeholders in using elearning?

Once you have answered these questions, you can begin to determine if this is really something you can implement. While I am a great supporter of elearning, nothing is worse than having very little time to train instructors on the use of technology for use in one day's time (yes, I have seen that happen before, resulting in total failure of "elearning"). Likewise, many organizations opt for elearning as a time saving mechanism or cost cutting. If time is not saved (which most of us involved in elearning know is rarely a savings in time, but rather an increase) or costs are decreased, but at the expense of effective learning, then administrators and other stakeholders will be disappointed. Sometimes it is better to POSTPONE elearning until it can be done well.

Different levels of education

I read blogs that address a wide variety of education levels. My own Introduction to Distance Learning course had instructors from pre-school to community learning to universities and secondary schools. I have worked with them all at integrating elearning into their curriculum. However, there are differences between the different levels. Therefore, some of the questions each level of education needs to address includes:

• What skills do students have in learning, technology, and time management coming into the activity?
• What legal, moral, educational, and technology restrictions and regulations will students and instructors need to comply with at the level?
• How much autonomy can the student and instructor have for this elearning activity?
• What skills will students need to develop in order to accomplish elearning (i.e. level of literacy, foreign language skills, keyboarding skills, communication skills)? How (and who) will these skills be developed?
• What other stakeholders will need to be consulted in supporting the students' elearning? For pre-schoolers, for example, both the caregivers and support staff (if designated as disabled, this might have included physical and speech theorpists, social workers, and special education teachers). For employees, this might be supervisors or ITS to allow access to blocked sites or special software down loads.
  

Make it relevant to use elearning

Finally, many just integrate elearning into learning because that is what everyone else is doing. As the first set of questions indicate, it is not always relevant to use elearning.

In my experience, there are three main reasons for integrating elearning into a curriculum:

1. To reorganize time for instructors to create a better use of time (i.e. going to a conference or teaching at multiple locations at the same time) or to allow instructors to teach when they cannot physically be present with the students
2. To provide opportunities for students that might be limited by classroom space, schedules, or resources (including funding)
3. To develop technological skills and understanding of the use of technology in the 21st century society

It is always important that you choose a course, activity, or project that will be relevant for the student, the curriculum goals, and the organizational capacity to support elearning. I always recommend that my students begin with the question, "What can you NOT do now, that elearning might allow you to do?" This might be giving individualized attention, connecting students to the outside world, allow your students more time to reflect as a means of learning, provide access to information to a greater number of people, or help to develop specific skills such as communication, writing, or reading. It depends on the organization, the curriculum goals, and the level of education.

Integrating elearning into the classroom

This post is in part due to poor reading skills on my part. Ken Allen wrote a post "the loneliness of the elearner," which I read as, "the loneliness of the elevator." This got me to thinking about the metaphor of the elevator in elearning:

Interestingly enough, I thought your title read, "the loneliness of the ELEVATOR" (I guess I should get my glasses fixed). Ironically, being alone in a space like second life is probably by being alone in an elevator. Where do you look? Is someone watching you that you can't see? What if you get stuck? You only have the disembodied voice to tell you, "Help is on the way." And if you are on the elevator with someone, you feel too awkward to speak to them unless something goes wrong. What are the unspoken rules of engagement on an elevator?

At the same time, my daughter's school has decided to integrate some days of online learning into the curriculum, partly to give teachers the opportunity to meet without students for professional development, and partly to prepare students for online learning in college. I was asked to lend my experience in developing these online activities. With that in mind, I have been thinking of the components that needs to go into the design of these activities.

In my introduction to distance learning course, I break the course up into 4 components: technology, instructional design, social presence, and assessment. Over the next few posts I will look at each of these components and what I feel needs to be considered for an online activity as part of a face to face course.

School of the Future

As my daughter enters high school, she will be transitioning into a new way of learning. Especially important is the way that Math and Science will be taught.
Among the differences between her current school and new school:

• Projects as a source of learning
• Interdisciplinary curriculum and integrated learning (i.e. math and science are taught together and writing is taught in context across the curriculum)
• Integration of technology within the curriculum
• Technology is used as a tool for learning, not learned as a tool
• Group work
• Parental and community involvement
• Focus on learning, not on "tests"
• Student accountibility for their own learning (assessment is much more involved)
• School to work, high school to university transition

For the first time in a long time, my daughter is excited about science and math class. In addition, she will be learning Chinese. The only misgiving she has (which is the same for all those entering high school) is the social climate. As the year goes on, I will be blogging about her experience, especially in the context of my work at the two colleges/universities where I will be teaching business and communication courses (the transition into the workplace).

I just wish that all disciplines would begin to use these same principles in their teaching. I am hoping the Chinese instruction will make the real life connection like science and math. It would be nice if a push were made to improve teaching in all disciplines and new forms of assessment were created as this administration begins to take up the topic of educational reform. I have seen to progress science and math has made with the investment made during the last administration. Now lets improve creativity and innovation with the same investment in the arts and humanity.