I've been manually updating my classes' 1:1 parent funded MacBooks over the past week. As they are parent funded, the students have administrator access and can install whatever software they like and change any settings they like. This provided an interesting opportunity to see what they had done.

My first observation was that every single member of the class had changed their desktop background. This is not terribly surprising - I've noticed that if they get the opportunity they change the desktop background on the schools Windows workstations. This is automatically reset as they logout, so it never lasts longer than their session, but they still apparently feel the need for it.

The MacBooks come with a collection of gorgeous background photos, mostly of serene nature scenes, but of course you can download your own from the internet. It is also possible to set a timer to change the background. Perhaps you would like it changed randomly every month or week - no problem, the Mac can do that. 

My second observation is that there is a one to one correspondence between setting the desktop background change time to 5 seconds and the following traits:

Male and
easily distracted and
dislike writing and
interested in wide range of subjects and
interested in computers and
need structure for multi-step tasks
take pens apart in class
are surprised when due dates for assignments come up

Five seconds is the shortest update period one can choose to have the desktop background changed. I wonder what these boys would choose if lower settings were available. As I go through them, I have to set the update to 1 minute (the next option) as otherwise, the computers pause annoyingly every five seconds for about a second while they change the high resolution backgrounds.

I wonder if the pictures register at all with the students, a beautiful zen garden, the three dimensional patterns in an iceberg underneath the Arctic sea, or if it is just the flickering changes that they need.

I've noticed a similar feature of group music listening amongst these students, although this applies across the board and not just to my short attention span boys. I have an old iPod full of 'suitable for school' top 50 hits. In the mornings my classroom is busy with students using laptops, microscopes, physics apparatus etc as well as chatting and listening to music. The 'listening to music' comprises of students calling out the song they want to listen to, reaching some agreement on it, starting the song, then 30-40 seconds later - well before the song has finished, but usually after the first chorus - starting to call for their next choice. I'm pretty sure they haven't played an entire song this year.

Most of these students can direct their attention for a lesson if it interests them. Today I delivered an off topic, lecture style summary of nuclear reactors and the problems at Fukushima. Broken up with two youtube videos, requiring no notes, and containing no admonishment that they would have to learn this for a test, all of the students bar one managed to focus for the full forty five minutes.

I don't think the answer is that lessons just have to be more interesting. That is a worthwhile goal, but so is developing the character to be able to tackle extended pointless tasks with no immediate gratification, otherwise no teacher would ever get their 100 points together for their WACOT re-registration.

I've just watched this video (thanks @daylemajor) where James Lee discusses how video games tap into a deep seated human enjoyment of learning. In the video these two points are made clearly:

• Humans find learning enjoyable (although this might be lost in their school years)
• A key to tapping into this (and what video games do well) is a low cost of failure.

The low cost of failure means that the student can explore, try things out, test theories - there is no penalty for making a mistake, or at least the penalty is very low (usually returning to the last save point). Lee has written a paper that's available online "Good Video Games and Good Learning" and it is a theme he has expanded on frequently.

One thing I have conciously tried to do in my teaching is to foster an environment of enquiry. I express my interest in everything, and don't let curriculum get in the way of any question an interested student brings to the class. I'm thoughful in how I deal with answers to questions that are not what I was looking for. However, I'm not at all sure if I have achieved the goal of a class where thoughtful enquiry is celebrated and mistakes are regarded as Edisoninian steps towards success.

One of the biggest conceptual hurdles I had as a beginning teacher was the philosophy of constructivism. I couldn't see how the children would be able to teach themselves. Indeed, what was I there for if learning new content was as simple as asking the students to tell me about it? As I read more deeply and thought more carefully, especially about the learning that students do outside of school, I came around to the idea, and now it forms a major part of my teaching practice. The trick seems to be to leave little breadcrumbs of topic information about the place where the students can pick it up and use it to challenge their previous understanding.

Thinking about this topic today was triggered by Jonah Lehrer's post "Will I?" about some psychological research where one group of participants were coached to think about "Will I?" complete the set task and the others "I will" complete the task. Self coaching with the declarative "I will" is pretty much the conventional wisdom, but the more querulous group asking themselves "Will I? ended up doing better in the task. As if having a question in your mind creates a more active brain state.

It brought to mind one of the very simple and effective practices I use to focus students on a topic - the prediction. If I ask students to predict the outcome of pretty much anything, and write it down, and justify it, they are then locked into the activity. They need to know the outcome to see if they are correct.

Here's an example. Imagine we are travelling towards a rocky outcrop in the bus on an excursion. This time can be spent on chatting to friends or playing on Nintendos by the students, so any subversive teaching I want to attempt has to be high engagement. I ask the students "Do you think the lines on the rocks will be horizontal or vertical?"

This is a good question in a couple of ways which I'll get to, but first I should mention why it is "bad". I am not meant to be teaching these students geology or anything about rocks. This part of the excursion is not about geology, it's about going to look at something interesting because we are driving past. Am I wrong to try and teach some critical thinking, or transfer some geology content from my head to theirs? Of course not. It's a teachable moment and I'm there to have a swing at it. Another aspect where this question could be criticised is it's lack of open-endedness. Beginning teachers are taught to not ask "closed questions" where the answers are simple - yes or no, A or B. Asking opened ended questions encourage thinking, but they are harder. I'm looking for an easy question here for maximum effect. There will be plenty of thinking before we get to the end.

The question is a good one from these angles.

• Content: in this group of Year Sevens some will know exactly what horizontal and vertical are, most will know what they are, but not be 100% sure which is which and a couple will have no idea. This is content that Year Sevens should know. The geological ideas that students might need to grapple with while thinking about this are probably Year Eight level, so well within reach of some of the brighter and well read students.

• Skills: Thinking clearly based on known facts and speculation and being able to effectively articulate that hierarchy of ideas to another human is pretty much my single goal for every student in the education system.

• Stress level: This couldn't be a more low key question. It is tossed into the hubbub of the bus in a way that allows any student to simply ignore it if they are not interested. In addition it is a multiple choice! The answer has to be 'horizontal' or 'vertical' so even a child with no idea who wants to be involved can have a guess with a good chance of getting it right (so naturally two boys straight away start looking for ideas that might support diagonals). Also I have spent a lot of effort to create an enquiring mindset with this class - they should be comfortable getting an answer wrong in front of each other. The importance of this for learning is discussed weekly. The reason I am making a point about student stress levels is that stress seems to prevent learning. Yelling at a student and demanding an answer to a question they don't know in front of the entire class pretty much guarantees they can not think. You don't need the research to back this up - just imagine yourself as that student.

The social dynamics of what happens next is interesting. In the status conscious groups of boys, it only needs one student to say what his view is to generate a discussion. Once a low status boy (perhaps a teacher pleaser, but in this class more likely a genuinely interested student or even possibly just a kid who has been there before and therefore knows the answer) has made a prediction, the group leader needs to add his imprimatur or dispute it to maintain his position. Possibly he will do this based on his knowledge and thinking, but even if he just does it based on his assessment of how likely the first pundit is to be correct he get the result we desire. The previous conversation topic is put aside while each member of the group states their position and any justification for it.

A couple of years ago I would have wanted these conversations to be based on good content knowledge and the skilful application of scientific thinking. Now I really don't mind how they go. What I want is a tiny commitment to an answer, and really it can be tiny. Several students will change their position during these short discussions before they go back to discussing their holiday plans or whatever, and that's fine with me.

With no further action from me, this topic, including the definitions of horizontal and vertical, will be discussed by the groups of students (thus catching the ones that didn't get involved on the bus) as the class runs around and climbs the rock. The huge vertical stripes that are a major feature do the prompting for me. The large tourist signs explaining how they are caused by water leaching the minerals from the rock before running down its face are read by a couple of students as they mill around - planting the breadcrumb of content the class needs.

When we are back on the bus two hours later I can guarantee that at least one student in the class (who predicted vertical) will bring the subject up to show how smart they are. As I start to discuss their answer I am not surprised now to find that nearly everyone thinks they predicted vertical stripes and they have a justification for it that includes a bit of science. This answer swapping doesn't bother me. Being prepared to shift your view in the face of evidence is required for learning, and the revisionism that the students use to protect their egos is human. Many students do acknowledge their previous incorrect answer and either discuss how their answers were consistent with the new data, how this rock is a special case, or dispute the evidence (the stripes we saw were just the surface ones, the real horizontal layers are underneath). All of these answers give me a warm glow.

The main value of the prediction is in it's engagement. If you go to the race track and watch a horse race without having a bet it provides mild interest, if you have money on the race, even a nominal amount, the race is exciting - you are involved. For student involvement, ask them to make a prediction.

(image credit Tony Spencer)

While I should disapprove of this working by one of my students (they do not know their times tables) I take it as proof that they actually understand what division means. The converse situation - of knowing the multiplication facts, but not what they mean is possibly more common.

I have had this situation before:

Me: "What is six times seven?"

Class: "forty two"

Me: "There are six columns of posters and seven rows of them here in the back of the class. How many posters all together?"

Most of the class: "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine..."

Strength & Compassion by Michael Yon

Mike Nash, CEO of a computer security company gets approached on Skype by a Nigerian type scammer.

image bcostin

Last week, at my school’s end of year presentation night, I was awarded the Graduate Teacher of the Year for my education district. For the purpose of the award they regard graduates as being in their first two years of teaching.

I was quite surprised, although I knew I had been nominated, and did a very poor job of an acceptance speech – mumbling something about teaching being hard but important. The next morning (still in a slightly tear-y mood) I wrote the following and included it in the schools’ daily notices:

If I was a better public speaker I would have said something like this last night….

This is a very easy school to be a good teacher in. We have good administrators who keep the bureaucracy (and sometimes parents) at bay and provide genuine educational leadership, we are well resourced, we have a supportive community and exemplary teachers who are excited about sharing their knowledge with beginning teachers.

I have found ALL the staff in this school, the gardeners, cleaners, my wonderful EA’s, the fantastic teachers, registrar and office staff, deputies and principal unwaveringly supportive of the things I want to do for my students. Conversations with my line manager about these things usually end with him pausing for a second to think about it before saying “Yes – Do it”, and with my principal “I think we can find the money for that”. I know I could ask any of the staff in this school for help and their answer would be yes. On the many occasions I have needed unasked for guidance, it has been from all sorts of people and thoughtfully phrased as “Had you thought about….” or “Ian, I was wondering if….”.

I have met a number of graduate teachers who I think are better teachers than I am. They work in schools where they were not as welcomed, where some of the staff are at war with each other, where there are teachers who do not pull their weight, where administrators criticise their staff in the community and where the office staff care more about themselves than about students. Those teachers have to try to be good teachers despite their situation. I appreciate what a good school this is.

I need to acknowledge that this is just the start of my journey. I am not a good teacher, even if I am a promising one. In particular I know that if this award had been judged on my NAPLAN results I would not be receiving it. Building relationships with students is a good start, but these relationships exist for an educational purpose. This purpose is to make our students successful, thoughtful, capable and happy citizens of the world. I don’t believe I am doing enough of that yet. I will continue to need your support to do better.

Thank you to everyone who has helped me so far. It makes a difference.
 
It's hard for me to imagine a better environment for a begining teacher than my community and school. About the only thing that might forge better teachers would be more challenges. I'm expecting plenty of those next year as I move from my now comfortable lower secondary Math/S&E position to get in front of the Year Seven class. I'm looking forward to it.

And it's already effecting the quality of journalism students. Brisbane Times http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/staff-walk-out-of-queenlsnad-universities-20090916-fq16.html

image Mr. Jaigh

I’ve been listening to Barry Everitt on the Health report discussing studies into addiction, and particular on the link between poor impulse control and addiction. His colleague, Jeff Dalley determined what sub-population of rats had poor impulse control by delaying a signal that food was available. The poor impulse control rats started looking for the food before they had the signal to say where it was, therefore making mistakes. These rats made up about 20% of the population.

Having identified the poor impulse control rats, further experiments found these other connections:

1) When exposed to unlimited cocaine poor impulse control rats take larger doses than the general rat population
2) When exposed to adverse consequences for the drug taking, the general rat population stop, but the poor impulse control rats continue.

Impulse control has wider implications than just as a predictor for addictive behaviours. In a 1960’s experiment conducted at Standford University in the US, Walter Mischel tested four-year-old childrens' ability to defer gratification. He gave them a marshmallow and promised another if they could wait 20 minutes without eating the first one. As one can imagine, some children were able to wait it out, but other succumbed to temptation and took the instant, but smaller reward. When these children were followed up on in adolescence, the children with better impulse control were (according to surveys of teacher and parents)  “better adjusted” and “more dependable” as well as scoring higher in a scholastic test.

A similar investigation using a wrapped gift and four year olds was carried out in the 70’s by David  Funder and Jeanne and Jack Block. When they followed up on these children seven years later, the boys who had shown poor impulse control were “irritable, restless and fidgety, aggressive, and generally not self-controlled” while the girls “tended to go to pieces under stress, to be victimised by other children, and to be easily offended, sulky, and whiny”.  Amongst the children who could delay their gratification, the boys were found to be “deliberative, attentive, and able to concentrate” and the girls “intelligent, resourceful, and competent”.

My childhood was full of advice about deferring gratification. This has to do with the character of my parents (who had both lived through hard times) and the middle class values of the period. Margot Prior sees this changing as more children are spoilt by indulgent parents who think children need “treats” and rooms full of toys they don’t value. She says “who hasn’t noticed the hapless mother complying with the strident demands of her pre-schooler who must have what he wants from the supermarket shelf instantly.”

To stretch the evidence just a little, we seem to have:

spoilt children -> poor impulse control -> addictive, low concentration ability adolescents

The similarity between the descriptions of the children who could not delay gratification and control their impulses and the spectrum of ADHD behaviours is marked and is even more interesting in light of another of the findings Barry Everitt discusses. The impulsive rats (in a different investigation into aiding abstinence following an addiction) were able to medicate their impulsiveness by self-administering cocaine. The similarity between this and the use of low dose amphetamines to treat ADHD is unavoidable.

Where does this leave us as educators? Well, in some of the tests on gratification in children, the children who did well often used self-distracting behaviours. They did something else, walked around the room, sang a song or put the temptation out of sight to shift their attention away from the desired object. In essence, they controlled their own concentration. This seems exactly like the sort of thing that can be taught, and is, with techniques such as mindfulness meditation and cognitive behavioural therapies. I have some optimism that these self-control behaviours can be taught in schools, even if only with younger children.

Either way, I can’t see the cocaine-for-kids program getting off the ground.

links:

Barry Everitt interviewed by Norman Swan on the Radio National Health Report
Juliet Lapidos on peaking at the end of the book on Slate
Margot Prior speaking on gratification on Ockhams Razor, Radio National

I spent Wednesday at the Department’s ‘Vacation School’ in a session with Gavin Morris on the School Improvement and Accountability Framework. This could have been a pretty dry subject but Gavin put a lot of effort into connecting it with frontline teaching, and revealed his passion for government education in the process. My particular interest in this topic is that I’m reading the lay of the land for the new political future of public school teaching, and I’m pretty sure it is league tables and assessment of schools purely on standardised test results. This push is just too tempting for politicians.

My issue with it is that the test results to not encompass all of the things that schools do, or at least should do. There is no NAPLAN result for a school where the students and teachers treat each other with respect, no NAPLAN result for a school where a kid picks up a piece of rubbish that is not theirs and no NAPLAN result for a school where people look out for each other. If we use standardised test results to judge schools and teachers I have no doubt we will get better test scores, I’m just not sure if that will indicate more successful students or better scores.

I am happy that an increased emphasis on testing is showing that our standards have slipped because this matches my personal view. Maths books written for year seven in the 1970’s have suitable content for high school students now. Where the blame for this lies is an interesting question, and my first guess is Curriculum Framework, with it’s emphasis on developmental progress rather than achievement levels, is the major suspect. The lack of teacher support embodied in the Framework (whereby every teacher in the state have to write their own syllabus each year) is another likely factor.

I’m also happy that the tests are soundly written, at least in my mathematics area. The question of whether they are valid is a little more complex. They are written against someone’s idea of what maths should be taught rather than the WA curriculum, however there is a massive overlap so this is not a particular concern. Presumably as the National Curriculum and supporting documents are rolled out there will be a prefect match of curriculum and test content. One hopes that the WA DET exemplars, that are to be used for grading now levels are gone, are aligned with the National Curriculum so they don’t have to be re-re-invented.

The session looked at the high-level analysis tools embodied in Schools Online (part of the DET’s public web and intranet). These are the tools administrators can use to assess teaching if they don’t want to walk into classrooms. According to Gavin, teachers should be allowed to use these tools, but the access needs to be granted by line managers. We discussed several distributions of student results comparing a schools performance against the state results and against “like” schools. The like schools are chosen by the schools Socio-Economic index which takes into account single-parentness, parent occupation etc and is a good indicator of school performance. Some attendees seemed concerned that remoteness or school size were not taken into account, but according to Gavin these turn out to not be major factors in school performance.

I’m glad I did this course. Gavin was a persuasive presenter discussing a topic of considerable interest to me. It is always good the meet people from Central Office that are passionate about teaching and it’s importance and I’ve gained some insights into the forces outside my classroom that will affect my students and teaching over the next few years.