VisualizationTechnology and Me

It's been a while since I've posted anything on this blog site, so apologies to the two or three of you that have actually read anything I've posted here (*sigh*) but I've recently committed to keeping this blog site more up-to-date. In future passages I hope to write more about some of the following:

1. Marzano Research Lab's ongoing independent study of the effect of Promethean's ActivClassroom on student achievement;

2. A recent EdWeek article in which highly esteemed educational research scholar Dr. Gene V. Glass offers an unsolicited (by Promethean) endorsement of the study, saying that "Under the circumstances of trying to run experiments in realistic conditions 'in the field,' it was very well done;

3. Analogies to better represent the findings of this research through analogies, impact models and reasonable extrapolations (like Dr. Glass's interpretation in the above article, "One way of phrasing their findings is that a class employing the technology would gain 12 months' achievement in a 9-month school year."

4. Brain research and recently published work by Dr. John Medina (check out his amazing book and website: Brain Rules); and,

5. General ruminations on the transformation of education from a behaviorist pedagogical model to a more constructivist model.

But first, I'd like to apply Richard Mayer's "Multiple Representation Principle" to a very personal context: an internal exploration of a knee injury I sustained in an "Old Dudes" Lacrosse Tournament, which is the subject of my latest blog entry (granted this over a year ago!).

Dr. Mayer's principle is this: "It is better to present an explanation in words and pictures than solely in words." Simple, yet profound. The implications of this principle in the context of teaching and learning could be of great help in unlocking the mysteries of improving student engagement and academic achievement.

But for me, I am applying this principle to better understand the extent to which I messed up my right knee in that 7-game lacrosse-a-palooza in Florida a few years ago. I'm going to need the "words" of my orthopedic surgeon to make sense of above "picture" that was taken yesterday by a very kind MRI technician at Evergreen MRI.

I have very general idea of what I'm looking at, but I suppose this is an image of a pain-inducing injury? I think I see bone, maybe marrow? It looks more like some type of sliced lunch meat.

Clearly Magnetic Resonance Imaging technology has transformed how physicians analyze the nature and extent of their patients' injuries. It is reasonable to infer that with this new technology-enhanced visual information, physicians are able to make more informed decisions and share their analysis in such a way that makes more sense to their patients.

MRI technology has been available since the 1980s, but I don't think it's too much of a stretch to apply this same multiple representation concept to today's classrooms which, thanks to interactive multimedia technologies, is now possible. Though we are just scratching the surface at the moment, I think the "value add" that these technologies bring to teachers and students is immediately obvious and backed by a growing body of research.

I have an appointment with my physician tomorrow to hear the words that go along with this picture.

Final Lacrosse Championship

Let me just say once and for all, "Ow!"

For thirty years I've been saying that every time I get hit with a wayward shot, a slah to my arms, knees or head, or I check some streaking midfielder or goal-hungry attackman. Thirty years is a long time to play lacrosse; my wife thinks it's too long and she's finally convinced me to hang it up and start hanging around on weekends.

This past weekend I had the bittersweet pleasure of playing in my final championship game with the men of Coopers Lacrosse Team, http://www.cooperslax.com/ beating our arch-rivals Huron Lacrosse team 10-9 in an nail bitter to win the "Everett Smith Cup" one more time.

I've played with Coopers Lacrosse Team for the last twenty seasons. No kidding: twenty seasons! Over those 20 seasons with Coopers I've sustained inestimable ankle blow-outs, knee surgeries, fractured ribs, broken collarbones, broken wrists, and assorted deep purple bruising. I've consumed mountains of Motrin, been encased in ice and have had so many holes repaired in my meniscuses (menisci?) that my surgeon and I have become buddies (of course, he's a lacrosse player as well).

For two decades the same core group of guys has played together through the Northwest Rain, on frozen fields, in hail and on occasional sunny days. We really know each other, and more importantly, we really like each other. We've won the championship finals 11 out of the 14 years we've had a championship finals. No team has ever beaten us more than once in the finals.

That's something we can all say with pride. As our ageless captain Tim "Mac" McGarity says, "Coopers is more than a team; we're a bunch of pirates that come together to realize a collective goal on the field of battle."

That is a great analogy, Mac.

Now pass the Motrin.

Action Research: Towards a New Paradigm for Education Technology Research

What impact does technology have on improving teaching and learning?

As any teacher who effectively wields technology will tell you, the answer is achingly obvious: teachers enjoy teaching in a technology-rich environment and are therefore more effective at meeting students’ learning needs; students enjoy learning in a technology rich environment and so they naturally learn more. The research literature is replete with qualitative data, anecdotal evidence, and “feel good” stories about our national investment in learning technologies.

However, for the past twenty years or more, this essential research question has yielded insufficient (or disappointing) quantitative evidence. We now know much about instructional strategies, assessment practices and curriculum design that work, but we still don’t have much data in the way of educational technology that works – until now.

Is the problem that technology has no effect on student learning, as a US Department of Education study recently found, or have we been erroneously framing education research through the lens of medical empiricism?

Perhaps this question is best explained through an analogy: Before a genetically engineered drug for diabetes makes it to the pharmaceutical market, independent, randomly assigned, “double blind” research trials would first be required.

The term “randomly assigned” refers to the process of selecting diabetic patients into the experimental group who would receive the actual drug, or the control group who would receive a “placebo.” The term “double blind” refers to the process whereby the patients selected for the trials, and their doctors, would not know if they were receiving or giving the experimental drug or the placebo. This, generally speaking, is a standard empirical process in medical trials for eliminating as many variables as possible and determining the effect of a single experimental variable – the drug itself

There are many problems associated with overlaying this standard of research into extant sociological contexts – like K12 classrooms.

It is absurd to consider that a teacher would be “blind” to the intervention he or she might, or might not, implement with experimental or control groups of students. It also stands to reason that students in the experimental or control groups could not possibly be “blind” to the technology intervention that they would be using or receiving

While it is not impossible, it is also very difficult for teachers to be randomly assigned in experimental trials. Rather, voluntary teacher participation in Action Research Studies is becoming the norm, if not the “gold standard” for education research

As a company developed by educators for educators, Promethean determined it was our obligation to meet this conundrum head-on.

Promethean commissioned internationally esteemed education researcher and author, Dr. Robert Marzano to conduct independent, third party research on the effect of Promethean’s ActivClassroom Suite of technologies on student learning. Over the past academic year, Dr. Robert Marzano conducted a much-anticipated meta-analysis of numerous action research studies on the direct effect of Promethean’s transformational technologies on academic achievement. His recently published study, “Evaluation Study of Promethean’s ActivClassroom on Student Achievement” represents a breakthrough for educational technology research in general, and Promethean’s ActivClassroom in particular.

Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr. Marzano at the Marzano Research Laboratory www.marzanoresearch.com in Denver where we discussed the nature of education technology research, the findings from his study of Promethean’s ActivClassroom, and the future direction of this multi-year research and development partnership

The video podcast of this interview has been published in Promethean’s Innovation in Education Thought Leadership Webcast Series. To view the video podcast, please go to www.prometheanworld.com. As always, I hope you find your Promethean experience enlightening.

A New Era

Well, it's been a while. For that I apologize. However, given the calamitous nature of this past year's political skullduggery, I should be afforded a modicum of lenience.

I've been doing a lot of hoping lately. In fact, I've been diligently practicing what Herb Kohl (one of my top three education heroes) describes as The Discipline of Hope. For hope is indeed a discipline - not in the conformist, rather negative sense of punishing bad behavior and rewarding good behavior, but rather in the sense that discipline yields liberation. The discipline of hope directs one's perspicacity towards the attainment of some desirable happenstance. For me, that happenstance has been freeing our nation's youth from the punitive, oppressive - and decided political - talons of NCLB.

A few years ago I was attending the Building Learning Communities conference on a sweltering July afternoon in Boston. Founded by my friend Alan November (another of my top three education heroes), BLC brings together some of the most progressive minds in education from across the globe to revel at the edge of educational possibilities. On this particular day, the keynote address was given by Professor Andy Hargreaves the "Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College." (Andy must have very long business card.)

Andy said that from his perspective (ostensibly from the Thomas More Brennan Chair) "America is the last English-speaking country to attempt to colonize the sinking sands of standardization." Every other nation which had previously wielded standardization as a political bludgeon had failed to achieve any lasting improvements in student learning. In a free society, he said, standardization was utterly unsustainable as a social, educational, or political tool. "A new era is coming," he said, "The era of post-standardization. And we had better get ready."

Last November 4th, on an usually balmy night, I witnessed the most sweeping political change in my lifetime standing among the ecstatic swells of other hopefuls in Chicago's Grant Park. Could the election of "Team Obama" be the harbinger of this new era? "We'll see," said the Zen Master.

We'll see indeed.

Bear of a Year

It's been one heck of a year. I've beared witness to many things - including this beautiful grizzly bear at Denali National Park in the early fall. She was, quite literally, crossing the road. Why? To get to the berries on the other side!

It was a most impressive visit. The bear paid very little attention to us in a reconstituted school bus lurching through the park. The

wildlife has become de-sensitized to the buses as they are neither a threat, nor a food source. While those inside the bus may constitute a food source, as long as we were on the bus all was well. Once we stepped out of the bus we made a lot of noise.

First Day of School

The first day of school has always had a special kind of hold on me. I can feel it in the first atumnal breeze that the deciduous trees shrug off like an unpleasant premonition, or perhaps a memory. Like the trees, I know the change is coming, but don't want to believe it until late-August when I sense the familiar yearning for falling leaves, new school books, rich discussions, warmer clothes and close-toed shoes.

The feeling was particularly strong this year as I found myself wandering around the Alaskan Interior in the middle of August. Although daylight lasted longer, the weather was colder and the shadows were longer, which hastened my longing for a new year of learning.

A short while ago, some dear friends asked if I would play "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" during the processional of their wedding. And so I spent a good part of my vacation in Alaska learning that song, as I did on the doorstep of this tiny cabin at Hatcher Pass north of Anchorage. It seemed an apt place to play, but "The Sound of Music," kept creeping it's way into the tune.

Still, I enjoyed the feeling of staying barefoot before school started, if at least for a little while longer.

The Fishin' Academicians

Fairbanks is sinking.

As with many places in Northern Alaska, the city of Fairbanks is built upon a massive bed of permafrost: a subterranean layer of permanently frozen earth. The permafrost is melting. As the earth gets warmer, the layer of permafrost under the foundations of many buildings in Fairbanks is thawing causing buildings to list unevenly. Several large sinkholes have opened around the city and so far little has been done to offset this trend.

I learned these facts while fishing for Silver salmon on the Little Susitna River near Wasilla, Alaska. I traveled to Alaska to work with the Instructional Technology Department in the Matanuska-Susitna, or Mat-Su Borough School District in Palmer, Alaska. They invited me for a return trip to the lovely Wasilla Valley to assist in their back-to-school technology integration program.

Mat-Su’s Instructional Technology Specialist Brett Hill introduced me to his friend Greg Gioaque, a Mat-Su teacher who offered to guide my first salmon fishing trip in Alaska. I arrive at the dock later than the 6:30 am meeting time and apologize to the group sitting in the aluminum flat bottom river boat. The moss colored water contrasts slightly with the dull grey sky. Greg cheerfully explains that while salmon are most active during first light, the cloud cover will prolong their activity into the late morning.

Along with us is Greg’s former English teacher Dave and his wife Judith, also a former teacher. Both are now retired and fish with Greg often. We strike up easy conversation about our mutual love of teaching, the unique challenges today’s educators, and, of course, fishing stories – though theirs are more numerous than mine.

We make our way up the shallow Little Su with Greg’s steady hand on the till. Greg has been fishing the river since the age of five and he describes each section as aging friend whose best days are now the stuff of memory.

Greg anchors the boat at a particular bend and we begin to drift cast using baited hooks. Greg expertly rigs each rod with a floater and neon pink salmon eggs on a two hook rig. He positions each of us so that our lines won’t cross. After several unsuccessful casts, he picks up the leaded anchor and takes us to a section he calls “The Promised Land.”

As we make our way upriver Greg shares that in years past the Little Su would be choked with salmon: forty pound Kings, silvers, pinks, chum and the elusive scarlet sockeye swimming towards their native spawning grounds by the tens of thousands.

It’s a sight I have trouble imagining and may never actually witness.

We finally case out the Promised Land. Greg points out numerous signs of what appear to be an abundance of fish. He says that spawning salmon aren’t eating and so we’re not baiting them with food as much as irritating them causing them to attack the lure by biting it.

We once again let our bait drift back with the current and almost immediately both Dave gets a fish on. I begin reeling my rig in so as not to interfere with Dave’s fish when my rod jerks downward and I feel the unmistakable pull of a big fish struggling.

Dave and I move to opposite sides of the boat to minimize the chance of crossing our lines and losing one or both fish. I keep my tip up and reel as quickly and smoothly as I can when I see my fish jump clear out of the water. It is an awesome sight. Greg reminds me to keep the pressure on because a fish that breaks the water could be a fish that breaks the line. I continue to reel in, maneuvering the fish close to the boat. He tries to swim underneath, but I somehow manage to steer him towards Greg’s outstretched net and just like that I’ve caught my first Alaskan Silver salmon.

After a valiant fight, Dave’s fish proves to be a huge chum salmon and so he is released and we continue fishing the Promised Land. Judith quickly pulls in two good sized silvers and I follow with my second silver caught on a spinner. Greg casts expertly into a hole and immediately reels in another. Not five minutes pass when he casts into the hole and we see another silver swim up and take the lure.

Dave has yet to catch his limit of two and we relax on the boat chairs while Dave plies the waters with expert casts.

Earlier we swung past a deep hole that Greg said once held four or five thousand fish. Now estimated it contained count of four or five hundred.

I ask him if the pressures on salmon in Puget Sound watersheds – development, commercial fishing, habitat loss, and over fishing – are also reducing the salmon runs in Alaska.

His answer surprised me. Greg opined that in addition to possible over-fishing, the run strength may be more compromised by uncharacteristic flooding during Fall spawning or Spring hatching cycles along with unseasonably warm waters delaying the run. He’s says he’s optimistic that the run is just late this year and that the salmon will come back.

So what, I asked, is causing the unseasonably warm waters?

That’s when Judith told me that due to global warming Fairbanks is sinking, Polar bears are drowning, and Native Alaskan Elders can no longer safely predict the weather as they watch their ancestral homes engulfed by a rising ocean.

“Global warming,” she said assuredly, adding, “And some people still think it’s a lie.”

I couldn’t help but think, “What hope is there for man if salmon are lost?”

Not long ago President George W. Bush said, “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.”

On this count, at least, I hope he is right.