iPads, MakerEd and More in Education

An instructional coach shares how she and a fellow teacher embedded literacy lessons in his computer science class.

Large-scale testing, or what many know as standardized testing, often carries important consequences for students. The results of large-scale tests may be used by schools or policy-makers to make important decisions such as grouping students by ability or assessing how well schools are doing.

Yet when it comes to literacy testing, while the competencies of literacy have changed in our digital, globalized world, the methods that many educational systems use to assess literacy have not.

One recent analysis of standardized tests in the United States, for example, found tests haven’t changed much over the last 100 years: tests are mostly multiple choice, with questions geared toward assessing skills like vocabulary, recall and comprehension.

In Canada today, on such large-scale standardized tests, students are likely to read a passage and answer a series of multiple-choice questions. Students might have an opportunity to write a short answer or essay response. Provincial tests, for the most part, continue to prioritize measuring traditional literacy skills of reading and writing with answers primarily communicated via pencil-to-paper. Such a testing structure forms the basis for public accountability in many provinces.

Across Canada, researchers and educators have documented the need to transform how the provinces assess literacy and consider more innovative designs. Testing should accurately capture what children are learning without detracting from authentic teaching and learning.

"To adapt to changing student needs, some school libraries are reinventing themselves as makerspaces, but this Ohio library took a slightly different approach. Now they’re seeing incredible results."

I’m going to confess, I did not bring podcasts into my English classroom with any intention of improving my students’ literacy skills. The idea came from a more selfish place: My wife and I were enthralled by the first few episodes of Serial, and I wanted to share our excitement for the amazing story with my students. Like almost everybody, they were hooked by the pilot episode and begged me for more.

Using Serial turned out to be a huge academic success for a variety of reasons, most of them related to critical thinking, listening comprehension, and the art of storytelling. While I felt guilty that the students weren’t doing as much reading from a traditional text, they voluntarily studied maps, evaluated clues, argued with each other, and wrote twice as much in their journals as they previously had. Perhaps most satisfying to me, they were engaging in adult conversations with teachers, parents, and administrators who were listening to the same podcast.

When we talk about social skills and social and emotional learning (SEL), an important element is understanding the nuances of language, as well as the context, the situation, we are in with others. Communication in the English language is not simple, even for native speakers. 

So when it comes to deciphering tough language, asking groups of students to work together to analyze puns can be both challenging and an enjoyable way to build language and literacy skills.

Many elementary school teachers love to teach reading and writing, but are less comfortable with science and math. It’s not a hard and fast truth, of course, but learning to read is a big focus of the early school years, so it makes sense that teachers who gravitate toward elementary school like teaching literacy. But it’s also important to expose kids to science early and get them excited about the practices that define scientific inquiry. And literature may be the perfect starting point. Stories are full of tension, conflict and dilemmas that make wonderful departure points for engineering projects that weave subjects together.

I had some visitors in my library makerspace last week that were wanting to add an aspect of maker education into their own libraries.

As they walked around our space, visited with my collaborating English teacher, and witnessed students prototyping for our invention literacy project, they said something surprising.

“We noticed you have traditional wooden library chairs and tables, so it isn’t about the furniture, is it? Maker Education? It’s about the mindset?”

This week UNESCO launched a framework illustrating its Five Laws of Media and Information Literacy (MIL).
This global strategy marries the large, but often separated, disciplines of information literacy and media literacy and creates a common vocabulary for folks in multiple areas of knowledge to engage in conversation. It also positions these critical literacies as a combined set of competencies–knowledge, skills and attitudes–central for living and working in our world today.

NCTE’s Definition of Literacy in a Digital Age makes it clear that the continued evolution of curriculum, assessment, and teaching practice itself is necessary.

Literacy has always been a collection of communicative and sociocultural practices shared among communities. As society and technology change, so does literacy.

"With the rise of new trends such as a flipped classroom and whole brain teaching, there is an emphasis on getting students more actively involved in learning in the classroom. And whether or not you choose to fully embrace either of these methods, we can all agree that we want students participating as much as possible.

When students are actively participating, they are learning. In math classes, we typically involve students in the problem-solving side, but we don’t often expect them to provide explanations.

When students have to write an explanation or explain their problem to someone else, they develop a deeper understanding of the concept. Or, if there are any misconceptions, they are discovered and can be easily corrected.

As a middle school math teacher, I loved incorporating writing and speaking into my classroom. I found that requiring my students to provide verbal or written explanations not only helped their understanding but also made class a lot more interesting and fun.

Here are ten ways to use writing and speaking to help your students develop a deeper understanding of math:"

Math is at play in every sphere of our lives, from recipes to internet security to the electoral college. But that reality can be hard to convey through the drills, static numbers and strict rules that make up so much of K-12 math education. Educators have made strides to engage students through math. One way to bring the subject to life, according to a math research organization, is through literature.

“Mathematics is very creative and playful and joyful," says Kirsten Bohl, a spokeswoman for the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute. "Books connect with that sense of wonder and imagination and creativity.” 

To spotlight such books, MSRI created the Mathical Book Prize in 2015. Each year a panel of librarians, teachers, mathematicians and early childhood experts selects winners and honor books in five age categories. This year’s picks brings the full Mathical list to more than 50 titles that cross genres and formats, including picture books, graphic novels, biographies, and young adult novels.

What matters most, according to Jordan Ellenberg, co-chair of the selection committee, is that the books succeed in communicating mathematical ideas or problems and also succeed as great books.

Today’s students will enter a workforce that is powerfully shaped by computing. To be successful in a changing economy, students must learn to think algorithmically and computationally, to solve problems with varying levels of abstraction. These computational thinking skills have become so integrated into social function as to represent fundamental literacies. However, computer science has not been widely taught in K-12 schools. Efforts to create computer science standards and frameworks have yet to make their way into mandated course requirements. Despite a plethora of research on digital literacies, research on the role of computational thinking in the literature is sparse. This conceptual paper proposes a three dimensional framework for exploring the relationship between computational thinking and literacy through: 1) situating computational thinking in the literature as a literacy; 2) outlining mechanisms by which students’ existing literacy skills can be leveraged to foster computational thinking; and 3) elaborating ways in which computational thinking skills facilitate literacy development.

In this half-hour presentation at Education Week’s Leaders To Learn From event in Washington, Aileen Owens, director of technology and innovation for Pennsylvania’s South Fayette school district, describes her efforts around cultivating students’ “computational thinking.” At the event, Owens was recognized as an exceptional school district leader for her leadership in innovation in curriculum.

Since being hired at South Fayette in 2010, Owens’ passion has been on cultivating students’ “computational thinking.” That includes coding. But the real emphasis is on helping students learn to problem-solve; to think algorithmically, in step-by-step sequences; to debug and revise; and to work with abstract concepts.