Re: [school-discuss] Our teachers work smarter not harder. Do you?

["Stephen Lyle" <stephenlyle_pwc@hotmail.com>]

(I apologize for the obscene length of this message...it sort of grew and 
grew.  So, I have broken it up into sections with headings.)

THE MAIN CHALLENGE
==================
This is a very timely e-mail as it seems to me to be at the heart of the 
challenge now facing IT specialists in education.  Especially considering 
the recent announcement from the state of Mississippi who achieved their 
goal of putting a computer in every single classroom by the end of 2002, the 
main challenge for technology in education is no longer one of computers or 
even Internet access, although the latter is still far from complete.  And 
for those who are still working to create or update their infrastructure for 
technology-enabled education, the e-Rate programs continues with nearly $2 
billion in Federal assistance for those kinds of purchases.

No, the real problem is what teachers and students are going to do with 
these computers and access to the Internet that is no longer restricted to 
going to the library or reserving a computer lab in the school.

THE MOTIVE FORCE BEHIND THE CHALLENGE
=====================================
Specifically, with the development of state standards for curriculum and 
instruction, and with the movement towards increased accountability in (and 
scrutiny of, some would say) our schools such as is evidenced by the No 
Child Left Behind legislation, there is a tremendous need for states and 
districts to make it easier to ensure any teacher in a given classroom is 
delivering the same quality and quantity of instruction and curriculum, 
whether the school is rural, suburban, or urban, and whether the teacher is 
new, seasoned, or even a substitute.

REINVENTING THE WHEEL
=====================
This kind of consistency of practice is commonplace in the business world 
(you can go into any Radio Shack, McDonalds, and Chevrolet dealership in New 
York--even across America--and they will all operate the same way).  No one 
is advocating we turn our schools into businesses, but there is the 
recognition that what any given teacher is doing in his or her particular 
classroom shouldn't be a huge question until the classroom is observed.  A 
subject department head at a school, a principal, a curriculum director at a 
district, or potentially even a superintendent should be able to give any 
questioner an idea of what is happening in Mr. Smith's 7th grade English 
class.  Not because all our teachers are drones with zero capacity to think 
creatively and professionally, but because TEACHERS SHOULD NOT HAVE TO 
RECREATE THE WHEEL TO FIGURE OUT WHAT TO TEACH THEIR STUDENTS.

Historically, however, this has been exactly the case.  New teachers (as I 
once was) have always been accustomed to the notion that the first two or 
three years were going to be very hard because they had to create all their 
lesson plans for the first time.  And many of these teachers based their 
curriculum and lesson plans around the available textbook, which could vary 
widely across a district and state.

IDENTIFYING THE SOLUTION
========================
To address this need to:
 1) provide teachers with ready-made curriculum frameworks, including 
lesson plans, using research-proven methods,
 2) provide teachers with pre- and post-tests for assessing student 
learning, and
 3) provide teachers with rubrics for grading these assessments in a 
uniform and research-supported way,
districts and states have started initiatives to purchase software solutions 
for the sharing and distribution of curriculum resources, often referred to 
as Instructional / Curriculum Management Systems (IMS or CMS, though some 
draw distinctions between the two).

PROVIDING THE SOLUTION (in the UK or elsewhere)
===============================================
The management system is only the framework, however, and is worthless 
without the actual curriculum content created by expert practitioners. The 
UK program appears to be designed to provide the content for teachers who 
are all striving to teach the curriculum with which they have been charged.  
For these teachers, it is a national curriculum.  For teachers in the US, 
that curriculum is usually defined by each individual school district, with 
higher-level guidelines created at the state level.

WHY IT'S TOUGH TO SOLVE
=======================
As you can see, the obstacle in the US is that "learning packs", worksheets, 
lesson plans, or whatever instructional materials you create, post on a 
website, or sell through a company, may be the PERFECT FIT for teachers in 
one district or state, but not meet the curriculum needs of teachers in 
another district or state.  So, we end up being in the situation of NEEDING 
TO CREATE A SIMILAR, BUT STILL UNIQUE SET OF INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIALS FOR 
EVERY STATE/DISTRICT IN THE NATION, FOR EACH CORE SUBJECT, AND FOR EACH 
GRADE K THROUGH 12.  This is a tremendous undertaking, and one that may be 
abandoned long before it is achieved.

WILL BUSINESSES MAKE THE SOLUTION WORKABLE?
===========================================
Businesses providing curriculum solutions (Riverdeep, K-12.com, Pearson, and 
many others) are hoping that they can create solutions that will be accepted 
by a wide variety of districts and states.  But this will only happen to the 
degree that districts and states realize they have more in common with each 
other than differences.  Currently, though, there is a great reluctance to 
leverage anything that was developed by or for another district or state.  
What we teach our children and how we teach it is something very close to 
the heart of school boards and educational professionals everywhere.  And we 
are surprisingly suspiscious of what is being done even by our next-door 
neighbors; choosing instead to create our own curriculum and instructional 
materials from scratch rather than implement what another state has already 
worked hard to produce.

Thus, we have moved the level at which we are recreating the wheel from the 
individual teacher, to the district and/or state level.  This is a 
tremendous improvement and could be a wonderful benefit for teachers if ever 
realized.  But the amount of work to be done and the dollars that will be 
required to achieve the lofty goal of a complete storehouse of curriculum 
and instructional resources, for every subject and every grade, may be 
beyond what we have.  Maybe, we'll realize that we might as well work 
together on an even larger scale, and develop our curriculum so that 
resources and best-practices can be shared across the nation.  To be sure, 
this is already being done at an atomic level.  If you want to teach a 
lesson on Gravity, for example, there are a tremendous number of lesson 
plans and other resources available on the Internet.  As a teacher, though, 
you aren't guaranteed that the cognitive and skill objectives that your 
district or state requires as part of teaching the concept of gravity will 
be addressed by any given resource on the web, unless it has already been 
reviewed and approved by your curriculum directors.  Even more, the 
collective objectives that are intended to be addressed over the course of 
the entire year in your particular class can't be achieved by grabbing 
resources off the Internet in an ad-hoc kind of way; at least not without a 
lot of analysis and comparison with the official curriculum on the part of 
the individual teacher--the very burden the standardized curriculum is 
trying to lift from the myriad of teachers' responsibilities.

CLOSING: WHAT CAN THE OPEN SOURCE COMMUNITY DO?
===============================================
The first thing that the open source community should do is continue to 
provide computer resources (hardware and software) so every teacher has 
quick and easy access to the tools needed to be an effective practitioner, 
utilizing the power of computer networking to leverage work already done by 
their colleagues and directors.  Without pervasive computing that is easy to 
use and easy to maintain, teachers simply won't get online and make use of 
the resources that are available to them.

The open source community can also contribute significantly in the area of 
content management and distribution.  Document management solutions that are 
easy to use and require only a browser and a word processor are being 
created, but are still very much evolving.  In my opinion, nothing has yet 
reached the level that even the majority of teachers will be able to learn 
and use quickly, much less the target 100% of teachers districts and states 
intend.  These solutions should include the ability to search, view, and 
navigate the curriculum framework (often a tree-type model, but with 
many-to-many relationships and other complexities), to download various 
documents (lesson plans, assessments, rubrics, etc.) attached to various 
nodes on that tree, to provide feedback on those documents, to manage 
discussion threads on parts of the curriculum, documents, or other topics, 
as well as other functions that I'm sure I'm omitting right now.  And 
remember, this tool has to be so simple that teachers can sit down, learn it 
themselves, and start being productive immediately.  There are lots of 
demands for professional development training, so a tool that counts on even 
60 minutes of training in order for it to be effective is an unrealistic 
assumption that will significantly inhibit its adoption.

The creation of the content, of course, is beyond the scope of open source 
technologies, but it is an open source project in and of itself.  That's why 
open source solutions for the other necessary components are so compelling.  
It's doable, but it's tough.  It won't be achieved quickly, and there will 
be many aborted attempts before the right solution is found.

In my opinion, it will be worth every ounce of effort it takes.


Thanks for letting me share my views.  Bless you, any who are still with me 
after 1500+ words!

-Stephen Lyle
Education Evangelist & former Physics Teacher
"Helping technology finds its role in K-12 education"


----Original Message Follows----
From: learningpacks@tiscali.co.uk
Reply-To: schoolforge-discuss@schoolforge.net
To: schoolforge-discuss@schoolforge.net
Subject: [school-discuss] Our teachers work smarter not harder.  Do you?
Date: Tue, 07 Jan 2003 06:37:45

[I'm forwarding this to the mailing list because it sounds like
these people are providing an open resource for education.  Could
some of our UK members take a look at what they offer, and invite
them to joine Schoolforge if it seems appropriate?--Doug]

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