Remixing Culture and 21st Century Skills

I’m always interested in helping teachers master that difficult balancing act between helping students learn today’s essential skills and teaching new skills required for future success. I found Lessig’s new book REMIX and Lessig’s TED talk pretty illuminating. It offered me a new way to think about the importance of ideas like the Read / Write WEB and why we should promote learning through student generated content – even for our most struggling students.

REMIX describes how participation in society and “culture creation” shifted from active (all of us doing it) to passive (big companies creating it and us watching and listening) many years ago. The original technologies of broadcast made us passive listeners rather than active creators. Now – it has shifted back to active, but our kids also have the tools of the broadcast media companies at their disposal.

Lessig offers John Phillip Souza’s prescient testimony against the dangers of the “talking machine” to explain the dangers of passive culture.

These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy…in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left.

-John Philip Sousa

Sousa believed that children could develop a deep understanding of artistic work because they were actively engaged in making their own. And as talking machines (and big media) removed the need to sing and share music, people would become less able to interpret what they were hearing.

Today, our kids are creating again, but not always from scratch. They are in fact, turning off the TV in large numbers, and getting online to create and remix swaths of video, music, and other media (their culture.) As they remix, they reinterpret, and perhaps they learn. They offer us a glimpse of where culture creation is going. They are also breaking the law in the process… copyright law.

Why does this matter to us as educators?

We are required to ensure that kids master specific content and skills. But if the underpinnings of the culture and content creation emerging in the 21^st century is one that is largely made by us (a difficult idea to really wrap your head around) and not just purchased and passively consumed from large media companies – what skills do our students need? Think about it.

We know that this generation is already forcing a change on many businesses, and creating whole new 21^st century jobs etc. Journalists are having to become bloggers, marketing executives are finding that they can’t just tell us what to buy, but are having to become online community facilitators, etc. (“No sage on the stage” doesn’t just apply to teachers anymore). These are signs of the new communication, collaboration, creativity, analysis and information literacy skills .. espoused by ISTE and other groups.

The saving grace here is that many of our kids are leading the way. They are learning some of these skills, essentially unmediated… in spite of schools that ban the practice, and in spite of copyright laws that render them criminals…

For a few other choice examples of remixed content (created by kids but not approved for your students) see lessig’s video talk TED talk.

And for those who are accountability advocates – we can’t ignore this because it feels impossible to measure. If anything, this offers a direction for assessment innovation – assessing performance, innovation, and creative thinking. Until that we can measure these new cultural participatory basic skills, …we will narrow instruction if we only teach to the test. So in the meantime, allow your kids to remix a little after the test is over. (See www.fanfiction.org)

Laptops just got affordable and purchasable for NYC schools.

The Dell 9 Inch Mini

Let’s face it. Budgets are tight. But New York City is now offering a Dell Mini laptops for $375 on the FAMIS purchasing system. That means for the price of a cart, you can now outfit 100 kids with a laptop. We are on our way to ubiquitous access in schools. If you can afford the cost of refreshing one grade level a year… you are a one to one school.

If you still can’t afford it, how can you get your parents involved?

Many parents are willing to pay for their students to get access to technology in school, especially if they can bring them home. It’s worth asking.

21st Century Skills and Struggling Students – The Urban Educator’s Challenge

When we are so focused on closing the achievement gap, where do 21^st century skills fit in?

I don’t believe in getting too strident over the merits of one teaching approach over another, especially when there are strong camps on either side. Whole language, phonics, New Math, back-to-basics, critical thinking skills vs content. The truth often lies somewhere in the middle. Students need a range of approaches. (The research proves it is the quality of the teacher that matters most in the long run anyway.)

I feel this very much applies to the balancing act between core content and skills (traditionally taught) and new 21^st century skills being espoused by groups like ISTE and the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills.

We have worked hard at Teaching Matters to find a balance between helping teachers address core content and new skills. We know you can teach the big key ideas of the Bill of Rights while teaching advanced skills like research, synthesis, and off and online collaborative learning.

But we should keep it real for those in the classroom.

The balance takes more time and it can cut into content coverage of required standards – that is standards that show up on tests.

In content areas like social studies the standards are chock full of information most of us arguably can survive without in the 21st century. Boy I would welcome a chance to take a red pen to these standards. The New York Social Studies Standards do a really great job of delineating critical thinking and new skills, such that the partnership for 21st century skills used them as a basis for their work around ICT skills in social studies. But they also include a kitchen sink full of content to cover. And again, I believe in content! It’s context! It is something to hang your hat on. But give us some power standards please!

But actually, this is not the old debate that I want to address. As an educator working with urban school teachers, we have a much bigger challenge.

It is not just a question of deep rather than wide. It’s a whole bunch of students that can’t comprehend what they read… Be that a test, a text book, or a web page.

These kids are playing catch up. They struggle with reading and score low on tests of academic vocabulary. But we expect them to become information literate, synthesize key ideas, learn to select among different sources for reliability, and construct their own complex, nuanced understandings of big ideas.

Students struggling with reading comprehension:

• require focused instruction on the unfamiliar vocabulary
• need to access text resources at their reading level  –(time consuming to find)
• deep, meaningful, relevant (but structured) learning experiences that ensure struggling readers can access key content ideas and information …

They also need  to participate in 21st century learning and have access to

• multiple and varied sources
• choice in their learning activities
• opportunities to collaborate, discuss, create and analyze  — off and online

For me, the incentive to figure this out is that it is the latter list  — that make teaching the basics palatable for students who have often given up after struggling with reading  well into adolescence.

In the creation of our own model curricula, we spend a lot of time worrying about these issues. Balancing student choice, self direction and critical thinking with the structures sometimes required to provide learning experience accessible to our most struggling learners.

Technology already offers a lot of ways to support students struggling with reading comprehension issues, but those tools are not supported on the tests.  Those tests are not digital.  You can’t click and have the question read to you if you can’t read it. You need to be able to read it anyway – let’s face it.

Worse yet, the technology is continuing to raise the bar and require new skills that go way beyond reading comprehension.

How do you balance traditional and core skills with 21^st century skills?

How do you address the needs of  students that struggle with skills as basic as reading comprehension in that context?

Low Cost Computing: It’s Here! Now What?

Laptops are getting cheaper by the minute. In setting the bar to deliver the world’s first $100 laptop, Nicholas Negroponte, Chairman of One Laptop Per Child, inspired the development of an entire class of low cost machines now available to schools. Low cost laptops from $200 to $350 are now hitting the market. Furthermore, one developer is now promising a $75 unit by 2009.

With one-to-one computing fast becoming an affordable reality for schools, it is essential that we carefully consider what has and has not worked in prior implementations so we do not repeat past mistakes. Teaching Matters is in the process of piloting low cost laptops. We are carefully monitoring and documenting (via an online blog) what is and is not working for classrooms.

One-to-One Computing: Does It Even Matter?

The jury is still out on the benefits of one-to-one computing. Many educators believe that until we seamlessly integrate technology into schools, we will not adequately prepare students for life and work in the 21st century. Others see technology as largely irrelevant to student achievement. It is in fact true that when new technologies are introduced into classrooms their use is often emphasized above learning. Goldman, Cole, and Syer (1999) note that “the technology learning curve tends to eclipse content learning temporarily; both kids and teachers seem to orient to technology until they become comfortable.” Furthermore, as reported by the New York Times, school districts often drop one-to-one computing because they end up spending too much time and money on repair and maintenance.

In a 2004 article, Lorrie Jackson, noted expert on one-to-one education, summarized research provided by The Center for Applied Research in Education Technology (CARET) that shows the positive effects of one-to-one computing on learning including: (1) increased quality and quantity in writing, (2) greater student collaboration, and (3) greater teacher awareness of student progress. She went on to offer several reasons why schools invest in one-to-one environments. They include improving student engagement, complementing project-based learning, and taking advantage of teachable moments among others.

At Teaching Matters we believe that creating effective one-to-one learning environments requires: (1) a redesign of the curricula to incorporate technology to address specific teaching and learning challenges, (2) professional development that focuses first and foremost on improving teaching practice in the core curriculum areas and (3) implementation of both traditional and performance based assessments to capture data on whether enriched learning has indeed taken place.

Teaching Matters Pilots the XO in Harlem

Teaching Matters recently announced an important and exciting experiment to test the implications and promise of the OLPC XO laptop for writing instruction. Working in collaboration with Kappa IV, a small middle school in Harlem, we have provided enough XO laptops to sixth grade students to explore three important questions:

1. Will middle school students accept low cost XO laptops as an alternative to the more costly high end devices?
2. Will the XO laptop reduce a school’s Total Cost of Ownership (e.g., cost of hardware, maintenance, and training)?
3. Will the XO implemented with curriculum designed for one-to-one classroom environments improve student learning?

The XO laptops have been introduced with our web-based middle school literacy curriculum and professional development program, Writing Matters. The program takes full advantage of the power of these computing devices to make learning relevant and engaging for students while supporting teachers’ focus on instruction. Online commentator Wayan Vota writes, “This is the first OLPC pilot that I know of where the implementing organization is looking at Total Cost of Ownership, teacher adoption, and learning outcomes…”

Lynette Guastaferro, Executive Director for Teaching Matters, shares, “It’s important to experiment with these new low cost options in combination with content that is designed to make best use of the technology. The learning environments that work will be those that support teacher effectiveness, not software that attempts to ‘teacher proof’ instruction. It is exciting to design learning environments with this perspective.”

In its March 2008 newsletter, The Fund for Public Schools acknowledged our test with the Department of Education (DOE) as an ambitious initiative worth watching. The article went on to say that such public-private partnerships allow the DOE to “pursue flexible and innovative solutions to provide an excellent education to all of New York City’s 1.1 million public school students.”

Teaching Matters will soon be supporting pilots of OLPC and other low cost computing options in schools across the City. If you are interested in seeing this technology in action, and want to stay up to date on these initiatives, visit the OLPC in NYC Blog. If you are a school leader who would like to visit a school piloting an OLPC laptop, please email: lowcostcomputing@teachingmatters.org.

BOY TROUBLES – A Closer Look at the Looming Literacy Debate

In the 1990s, an alarm began to sound from authors, critics and experts — young boys in America were in trouble. Across all economic and racial backgrounds, boys were lagging behind girls in areas like reading, outnumbering girls in special education classes and more often being prescribed mood-managing drugs. Even now, more than 10 years later, none of these trends have improved. A 2004 National Center for Educational Statistics study analyzed ten years of reading achievement data. At grades 4, 8 and 12, girls consistently performed better. Girls in these grades outperformed boys in writing achievement as well. (Freeman 2004) A fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Christina Hoff Sommers, states, “I don’t think that anyone will deny that girls are more academically superior as a group…They make the grades, they run the student activities, they are the valedictorians.”

Classrooms – Are They Geared Towards Girls?

Famed author and educational consultant Ralph Fletcher writes in Boy Writers: Reclaiming their Voices, that today’s more restrictive, test- and curriculum- driven classrooms have negatively affected all students, especially boys. In a recent Time Magazine article, David von Drehle elaborates, “Even in the youngest grades, test-oriented teachers focus energy on conventional exercises in reading, writing and other seatwork, areas in which girls tend to excel. At the same time, schools are cutting back science labs, physical education and recess, where the experimental learning styles of boys come into play.” He goes on to say that boys need “mentors and structure, but also some time to experiment.”

Girls vs. Boys – Is There Really a Problem?

Our impulse to compare boys to girls and to measure each gender by the success of the other is, perhaps, the wrong approach. Sarah Mead, former senior policy analyst at the Education Sector (a private think tank largely funded by the Gates Foundation) argues that boys are holding their own overall and, in some cases, even improving on standardized tests; they just are just not improving as quickly as girls. Mead believes that the ‘good news story about the achievements of girls’ has been sensationalized into a ‘bad news story about struggling boys.’ It is entirely possible that girls, as a group, are only now starting to realize their full potential.

The standardized National Assessment of Educational Progress test (also known as the nation’s report card) indicates that by the senior year of high school, however, boys have fallen nearly 20 percentage points behind female peers. Is there cause for concern because boys are so far behind girls or, because many boys are leaving school functionally illiterate?

The Teaching Matters Approach

Animated students like JT (shown here) relate to young urban boys’ sense of humor, interests, and communication style.

Teaching Matters is committed to improving literacy in the New York City public schools and recognizes the need for programs that capture the interest of boys and girls. Over the years we have made the most of what researchers have learned about engaging both genders.  In fact, some of the country’s foremost literacy and writing experts serve as our consulting curriculum authors.

Lynette Guastaferro, Executive Director, says, “Teaching Matters is focused on engaging boys and girls in literacy and writing by using technology to make writing relevant to students’ experiences outside of school.”    We have developed Writing Matters; a technology-enhanced middle school writing curriculum and professional development program.  The program uses story-based animations to help students grasp the critical thinking behind effective writing. Furthermore, it offers students a safe space for writing, collaboration and online publishing that is teacher tested and approved!”

Teachers report that even their struggling students are writing more and persevering through all stages of the writing process.  Boys, in particular, have been cited as extremely responsive to the technology-rich writing environment.

Writing Matters offers teachers free classroom publishing tools. Signup today.

THE MIDDLE SCHOOL CRISIS: The Challenge of Engaging Adolescents

Middle schools in America are struggling—there is no doubt about it.  Few schools are immune. Even the most expensive private middle schools in our wealthiest neighborhoods express alarm at declining student achievement.  You can imagine then the additional set of challenges faced by urban school districts like New York City serving large numbers of students in poverty. 

In fact, in January 2007 nearly half of all New York City schools failing under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) standards were middle schools. Even more shocking, over 70 percent of eighth graders failed to meet both reading and math state standards.

A New York City Department of Education (DOE) study suggests shortcomings at the middle school level directly correlate to the alarming high school dropout rate.  In fact, approximately 140,000 16 – 21 year olds are no longer enrolled in school.  

 Causes for the “Middle School Problem”

There are a number of reasons for the middle school plight; however, many educators recognize adolescence itself as a primary factor.  As middle school students develop cognitively and emotionally, they test boundaries and require more challenging, engaging and yet structured learning environments.  As the complexities of teaching middle school increase, not surprisingly, so does the teacher turnover rate. Thus, middle school teachers tend to be less experienced than their counterparts in elementary or high school.   

 A Call to Action – Teaching Matters Steps Up

Recently, community groups and parents formed the New York City Coalition for Educational Justice. In January, the Coalition called for: more rigorous curricula with advanced course offerings in all middle schools, classes of no more than 20 students each, more teacher mentoring programs, and “new incentives” to attract and retain qualified middle school teachers and principals.

In response, the DOE said it is investing in middle school instruction. David Cantor, spokesperson, stated that $40 million per year will go towards “academic interventions” and to “improve instruction.”

After twelve years of working in partnership with New York City schools, Teaching Matters has made the improvement of middle school teaching and learning a strategic priority. We address core instruction by designing 21st Century learning environments that challenge and engage adolescents.  While we recognize there is no one ingredient for success, there are critical factors that we can support. 

Strong leadership and teacher quality are fundamental.  Motivating students while setting high expectations for both learning and behavior are also critical factors.  Teaching Matters designs engaging, media-rich, task-based learning environments that tap directly into student interests while addressing core content and skills. 

For teachers, we offer professional development and online support that deepens their instructional knowledge and strengthens classroom organization and management. All learning materials are differentiated to meet the needs of learners, both teachers and students. 

Additionally, we offer tangible and exciting ways to further motivate students by celebrating and showcasing their work.  The below calendar offers numerous opportunities such as a Poetry Spoken Word, a Civil Rights Summit and a Student Film Festival, among others. Teaching Matters knows that even the best teachers can use a helping hand to keep middle schoolers engaged! 

Next Generation Learning Environments

Teaching Matters presents Next Generation Learning Environments at Largest Teacher Conference in NY.

On March 24-25, Thirteen/WNET and WLIW21 are hosting the largest teacher conference to be held in New York City this year. The first-ever event is loaded with top speakers, small hands-on sessions, and some wonderful celebrity talent — Tom Brokaw, Gwen Ifill, Frank McCourt, Richard Dreyfuss, along with the student stars from the hit movie “Mad Hot Ballroom” and the teacher and students from Los Angeles featured in the POV program “The Hobart Shakespeareans.”

Teaching Matters will be presenting a session at 9:00 Friday, March 24. The session is titled: Voices and Choices – Next Generation Learning Environments to Promote Civic Engagement. These multi-media instructional units support engaged classroom learning by combining inquiry-based study with new media, animation, and online discussion and collaboration tools. All session participants will be provided a classroom password for one full year to Election Connection (grade 7) and Democracy in Ancient Greece (Grade 6). Session is 90 minutes.

The Celebration is designed for K-12 educators in the Tri-State area, but there are already registrations from 33 different states. And if you check out the website at www.thirteencelebration.org, you’ll see why this is getting such national attention. Online registration ends March 17th!

Is Technology Helping or Hurting Democracy?

George Stephanopoulos, ABC Chief Political Analyst and Anchor of This Week spoke to this issue at Teaching Matters’ 10th Anniversary Celebration. Mr. Stephanopoulos shared his thoughts with 160 public leaders and educators on how the Internet is impacting traditional news media and the implications for 21st century democratic participation. Teaching Matters supports the idea that young people need new skills to interpret the abundant, unmediated messages they receive and that classrooms are the place to begin.

Chancellor Joel I. Klein was in attendance and took the opportunity to thank Teaching Matters for their outstanding service to New York City public schools. He also represented Mayor Bloomberg when he presented Elizabeth Rohatyn, Chairman of Teaching Matters’ board, with a proclamation declaring September 20th, 2005 as “Teaching Matters Day.”

The organization has worked for the last ten years in New York City public schools helping to integrate technology into teaching and learning. Election Connection, a Teaching Matters program, was featured at the celebration, showcasing how students took advantage of technology to inform their opinions and the opinions of others on important public issues.

Teaching Matters has grown dramatically over the last decade. Since 1995 they have expanded from a staff of 10 to a staff of 40, allowing them to prepare and mentor over 8,000 teachers and principals. Teaching Matters has helped launch two high-tech laboratory schools in the Bronx. Currently, the organization is working with the NYC Department of Education to develop curricular programs in Social Studies and Balanced Literacy.

Balanced Literacy in Action

If the computer is truly a tool for learning, then how can technology help students read and write? This was the basic question Teaching Matters asked when New York City ’s new Balanced Literacy curriculum was announced last year. Promising Practices is the program Teaching Matters created as an answer.

Thanks to the generosity of the Citigroup Foundation, ten elementary schools participated in Balanced Literacy and Technology: Promising Practices in 2003 – 2004. Schools worked with Teaching Matters to integrate technology with the key components of Balanced Literacy, and create general strategies and practical but effective lessons to be shared with other teachers. The result was a shift in how teachers teach and students learn, empowering them to master the building blocks of literacy.

Exemplary practices from these schools have been compiled in the form of a school-friendly guide now available online at www.teachingmatters.org/literacy for all teachers to use in their Balanced Literacy classrooms. Support from the Leon Lowenstein Foundation is contributing to this offering. 

Promising Practices met with such success that Citigroup has renewed its support for the next two years. In addition to building on strategies found to be most effective in elementary classrooms, Teaching Matters will use the project period to develop a program for middle schools.

Related Resources:

• Explore the Promising Practices Website
• Explore the Best Practices Internet Guide
• For more information, contact Naomi Cooperman at ncooperman@teachingmatters.org for information about bringing Promising Practices to your school.

Digital Documentaries

Eat your heart out Ken Burns, students in the Bronx are taking their curriculum to the silver screen through a program created by Teaching Matters called Digital Documentaries. The Bronx Borough President, Adolfo Carrión Jr., provided schools with laptops, camcorders and a challenge to create the best Public Service Announcement or local documentary about their community.

Students in grades 5 – 12 will research, direct, and produce their own video examining local issues or historical events while focusing on social studies and language arts requirements. Teaching Matters will be managing the training for the program as well as a culminating Bronx Film Festival to showcase student projects.

Mr. Carrión challenged students: “Video is a powerful tool and I know that wonderful things will happen when we put the camera in your hands…the Bronx is full of great stories waiting to be told and I am pleased to be able to offer your classroom a few tools to make this possible.”

Over the next two years 40 schools will participate in Digital Documentaries. Through filmmaking students will acquire an understanding of the power of good questions and high level thinking. The program will also be emphasizing skills students will need in all subject areas – literacy, content analysis, communication and perseverance. Research has shown that the use of digital technology in a multitude of content areas can enhance student achievement by addressing introductory and advanced skills, assessing student progress, and motivating students.*

Digital Documentaries is funded by the Helena Rubinstein Foundation and The Sparkplug Foundation.

If you would like more information about bringing Digital Documentaries to your school, please email jcondliffe@teachingmatters.org