This week I had the good fortune to have two glimpses of the classrooms that may one day be common in America’s schools. Both have the promise of sound logic, practicality, and scalability. They are definitely not pie-in-the-sky. Yet, they represent two very different directions—visions, really—of how technology might support teaching and learning.
Tuesday, I attended a presentation at the offices of Noodle Education, the company of NAIS board member John Katzman. Housed in converted warehouse space In Manhattan on Chelsea Piers along the Hudson River, Noodle exudes education innovation—wide-open space, collaborative work stations, bright twenty-somethings in t-shirts and sneakers. John’s team and several of us from the NAIS office filled a bare-bones conference room, writable walls covered with ideas from meetings past. We were there to hear from Joel Rose, founder of School of One. In 2009, School of One drew national attention, including an invention of the year award by The New York Times, for demonstrating how instruction could be completely personalized, down to the individual student, using different combinations of teachers and technology.
Rose was there to update the group on how the model has developed since its day as a pilot project in one New York City public school. Today, Rose oversees a not-for-profit called
New Classrooms that supports the development of the School of One model and its implementation in other schools, including new ones in Chicago and Washington, D.C. The model posits a large learning space—think four classrooms with ‘70s style accordion walls pulled back—supported by a team of teachers. Students from multiple classrooms—four in this example—use the space to learn in a wide range of settings and modalities. They might work one-on-one with computers, or be tutored in a small group by one teacher, or learn from one another in a cooperative group, or learn more traditionally, with a teacher in whole group instruction. Nothing particularly ground-breaking about this concept—it’s not unlike open classrooms or modern blended learning environments.
What is ground-breaking is how students come to learn as they do. The School of One is guided by a sophisticated computer algorithm that analyzes tens of thousands of math lessons (the system has only been built thus far for middle school math) and methods of instruction. The algorithm seeks to determine which lessons and modalities work best for each student. Schools employing the model have access to thousands of commercially produced math lessons (text- and computer-based, delivered online and by teachers), the efficacy of which has been evaluated against thousands of past students. Students are assessed regularly with machine- and teacher-scored problems, so the algorithm can judge what specific instructional path is optimal for each student. And if you have ever wondered whether Everyday Math or Singapore Math or some other curriculum has the most effective lessons for teaching, say, solutions for two equations in two unknowns, the program can tell you—and for which types of students. The overall promise of the system is that students will receive the lessons and the type of instruction that maximizes each student’s success. Achievement data suggest students have generally progressed more with the model than they had before.
Wednesday I saw quite a different vision. I joined thirty teachers from independent schools at the NAIS-sponsored Teachers of the Future program. We met on the historic campus of Episcopal High School, which has been serving boys and eventually girls on site for nearly 200 years—well before computers were imagined. I participated in a morning "un-conference," where topics were identified on the spot by the teachers themselves, and sessions—among which teachers floated freely—were filled with teacher-created content, likewise at the moment. I’ve run and joined in professional development for 20 years and have rarely witnessed the engagement, creativity, and productivity of these sessions.
I mention the method because it mirrored how these teachers saw classrooms of the future—at least in good measure—operating. Students can only benefit from so much didactic instruction. In the future, a good deal of direct instruction can be provided through online resources, used at home and in the classroom. If technology can handle more of the knowledge load, the classroom can engage students in the application of that knowledge. Many students today struggle to appreciate the relevance of academic knowledge; they often progress all the way through college without understanding how schooling connects to the world of work—because often schooling does not.
Teachers of the Future are out to change this. They incorporate real-world skills, especially involving applications of technology, into their core academic classes.
Teachers told of student filmmaking in every content area: music, math, science, English, journalism. They demonstrated the ever changing online tools to help budding videographers—
Animoto and
Castomatic. They warned of the apps that can make neophyte filmmakers look like virtuosos—so teachers keep on your toes. They also stressed the importance of disciplining student work with formal process—scripts, story boards, deadlines, and standards; “that’s a dazzling video, but I learned nothing from it!” one teacher had to inform a dejected student.
Teachers similarly enthused about design projects, opportunities for students to apply their academic knowledge to the development of tangible tools to solve problems of their own choosing. Students team in class to build windmills and other power sources, to create electric light from sunlight, to improve their school facilities, and more. Students are up and about, yet following the discipline of design used by professionals in the field. The Internet is a treasure trove of resources. Some sites teach the process, such as
D.School and
DEEP Design. Other sites offer countless project ideas, like
Instructables and
DIY. Internet resources are endless, and design thinking provides a structured way for students to access them.
Teachers also shared how technology had made their work easier and more effective. Some had moved their entire curriculum online. New learning management systems like Haiku make this so much more straightforward than earlier generation LMSs (Learning Management Systems). Teachers made their own videos, capturing their lectures for student consumption outside of class—the flipped classroom. Camtasia is a current free favorite for doing so. One teacher gave us a quick tour of his fully online history curriculum; I was dazzled by the array of Internet resources to which students were directed. Teachers also like building online objective assessments—talk about a time saver. And they emphasized the downstream benefits of building classes online, the ease of modifying curriculum as a class is taught in semesters to follow. Once the time is invested in building an online curriculum, it pays dividends for students as well, leaving more classroom time for the application of skills and engaging projects.
I’m heartened to see that the NAIS Connect community called Teachers of the Future is also humming with activity and good ideas, keeping these great discussions alive.
I have to say, I was more inspired by the vision of technology the teachers presented at Episcopal High School than at Chelsea Piers. The opportunities for students and teachers were far richer in the former than the latter. More fundamentally, one recognizes the boundless resources of the Internet and the importance of remaining open to its ever-changing possibilities. The other seeks to harness a finite set of resources (extant math lessons, for example) and use technology to optimize their application. I do not want to suggest that what the School of One is trying to do is not a significant improvement over the comprehensive instructional programs that have long dominated America’s classrooms—it may well be. I would nevertheless suggest that the vision of teachers and technology can and should the opposite. What do you think?