Technology and Innovation

Coronavirus / COVID-19CustomizationEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedParent EmpowermentPodcastSchool ChoiceTechnology and Innovation

PodcastED: SUFS president Doug Tuthill interviews education innovator Tom Arnett

redefinED staff
redefinED staff

In this episode, Tuthill talks with a senior research fellow in education for the Christensen Institute whose work focuses on studying innovations that amplify educator capacity, documenting barriers to K-12 innovation, and identifying disruptive innovations in education.

Tuthill and Arnett discuss the future of public education and the various “blended learning” models available for students today that leverage technology to customize education based individual needs.

In the midst of a worldwide pandemic that has disrupted education in unprecedented ways, both believe new learning models such as blending online learning with traditional brick-and-mortar education will help alleviate pandemic-related health concerns while serving as a long-term option more families will choose. They also discuss inherent problems of equity surrounding access and varying levels of parental and family involvement.

“As a parent I often found myself wondering, “what are my kids really learning?… I can make this learning much better for them if we can talk about it (at) the dinner table … right now necessitates a greater interdependence between home and school.”

EPISODE DETAILS:

·       COVID-19 as an accelerant to changes in public education

·       How technology can be used more assertively to enhance education productivity and reduce inequity

·       Types of learning best delivered face to face versus delivery online and best practice for optimizing lesson plans

·       How to help parents meet their growing role in public education

·       How public education can begin to unbundle services to better serve communities

LINKS MENTIONED:

Blended learning models that can help schools reopen

The Modern Classrooms Project

Blended Learning Universe

The Learning Accelerator

 

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CustomizationEducation EquityFeaturedPodcastTechnology and Innovation

PodcastED: SUFS president Doug Tuthill interviews BloomBoard CEO Sanford Kenyon

redefinED staff
redefinED staff

In this episode, Tuthill talks with the head of the leading platform for enabling educator advancement via micro-credentials, a form of micro-certification that supports, scales and grows effective teachers. Sanford Kenyon joined BloomBoard as chief revenue officer in 2015 after 25 years in software and technology-based businesses and assumed the role of chief executive officer in February 2017.

Unlike a traditional course or workshop where the learning process is linear and time-based, the micro-credential learning process is a unique online experience whereby educators gain an understanding at the outset of their specific goals, and then personalize their learning to achieve the specific requirements for achieving competence. BloomBoard, based in Palo Alto, California, offers competency-based professional learning programs to state and district leaders.

 

Kenyon’s discusses with Tuthill his view that COVID-19 has made every student in America a “blended modality” learner because they’ve been freed from the confines of a brick-and-mortar classroom. They also discuss the concept of micro-credentialing and how it allows teachers to improve student outcomes and increase equity. Both agree that a student-centered approach is the way to move public education out of the factory, one-size-fits-all model and into the future.

“COVID-19 has kicked open that door and shoved us through … We have to have a set of practical skills and tools to help educators right now.”

EPISODE DETAILS:

·       The nuts and bolts of micro-credentialing

·       The exponential change COVID-19 has wrought on public education

·       How technology is critical for scaling a blended model for each individual student

·       BloomBoard’s turnkey program for school districts to deploy to teachers

·       The changing role of the teacher in a broader definition of public education

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CustomizationEducation and Public PolicyEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedPodcastSchool ChoiceTechnology and Innovation

PodcastED: SUFS president Doug Tuthill interviews ReSchool Colorado executive director Amy Anderson

redefinED staff
redefinED staff

In this episode, Tuthill talks with the leader of a nonprofit organization committed to modernizing public education, creating the conditions for more expansive learning in an evolving society. Put simply, ReSchool Colorado’s mission is to leverage and reorganize existing assets and resources in a purposeful way around the needs of children and families.

The two policy innovators go deep discussing out-of-school learning and the growing inequity between families who can access the “shadow education system” and those who cannot. They also discuss the importance of integrating local communities into a competency-based education system.

Anderson believes that while change in public education can be slow, organizations like ReSchool Colorado can avoid competing with traditional district models by focusing on education outside of traditional brick-and-mortar schools.

“Wealthier families are spending thousands of dollars more per year per kid than lower-income families to access learning that is happening (through) sports, arts, STEM, summer camps, travel. That is where kids develop their sense of self … Those things have long-term implications on a person’s future, well-being, and economic success.”

EPISODE DETAILS:

  • ReSchool Colorado’s work to co-design an education system and give shared ownership to the broader community focused especially on the most marginalized members
  • How to close a growing equity gap for out-of-school learning and to direct resources to lower-income families
  • Building new accountability systems for a broader definition of public education through credentialing
  • Virtual reality as a vehicle for narrowing inequities
  • The changing role of the teacher in a broader definition of public education and the professional development necessary to adapt

LINKS MENTIONED:

The 74: 5 ways to reinvent school vacation – Amy Anderson and Julia Freeland Fisher

The 74: Cleveland schools consider mastery-based education to stem coronavirus learning loss

CommunityShare

Outward Bound USA

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CustomizationFeaturedNewsSchool ChoiceTechnology and InnovationVirtual Education

The future of virtual education is here courtesy of Arizona State University

Lisa Buie
Lisa Buie

BioBeyond offers students a 3-dimensional, immersive experience where learning happens by doing and every action provides feedback.

Apparently, Bill and Ted were onto something.

The two teenage slackers facing academic failure in the 1989 sci-fi film “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” turned from apathetic to excited about their world history project when given the chance to meet the likes of Socrates, Napoleon and Abraham Lincoln by traveling back through time in a phone booth.

Fast forward three decades, and the concept of experiencing lessons firsthand not only is possible, but eventually will play a key role in the next generation of education.

While students connected with their teachers via videoconferencing and online collaboration tools from home during the coronavirus pandemic, they didn’t get the direct, continual instruction they were familiar with in a traditional classroom. Integrating immersive technology and virtual learning experiences offers teachers the potential of providing the best of both  worlds, sparking student curiosity and creativity even if teacher and student aren’t in the same physical space.

One example: BioBeyond, a course that allows high school students to have 3-dimensional, immersive experiences and master concepts while on an adventure that prompts them to answer the age old question, “Are we alone in the universe?”

“We know from research that we learn best by doing, by exploring, by engaging the material,” said Ariel Anbar, a professor at the School of Earth & Space Exploration at Arizona State University.

Anbar’s team developed the course, which originally was designed for college students. A geologist and chemist, Anbar narrates the course introduction.

The high school version of BioBeyond, which debuted at the start of the 2019-20 school year, is the flagship course at Arizona State University’s Prep Digital, an accredited online high school that allows students to take a single course or enroll in a full-time, diploma-granting program. Students also get the opportunity to earn concurrent college credit at ASU.

The $1 million course was funded through a grant from the Gates Foundation and NASA and is available for licensing by schools around the world.

“The university designed BioBeyond to capitalize on the natural curiosity that human beings have,” said Julie Young, vice president of education outreach at the university and managing director of ASU Prep Digital and ASU Prep Academy, a charter school network. “It’s beautifully done in terms of the look and feel of the course. We’re getting very good feedback. Students are excited about the content, and teachers are excited about teaching the content, and parents like how much they are learning from the content.”

(For more on Young and the future of education, listen to her podcast with Doug Tuthill, president of Step Up For Students, the nonprofit K-12 scholarship administration organization that hosts this blog.)

Instead of lectures and tests, BioBeyond brings lessons to life by taking students on a journey that feels like a video game. The adventure begins with virtual visits to five diverse locations around the world, including the ocean floor, to examine and classify species. Then students go on a virtual field trip to the Galapagos Islands to find out how species change over time. The course teaches cellular biology through a simulation that includes the inside of volleyball player’s nerve cell and asks students to make the cell fire so the player can hit the ball.  

The reason behind all the earthbound travel? In order to effectively contemplate the possibility of extraterrestrial life, the course creators reason, we must first gain a firm grasp of life on our own planet.

In addition to being interactive, BioBeyond is also adaptive, meaning it interacts with students to offer lessons based on particular interests and progress. If a student is struggling in an area, extra time is offered for problem solving or material mastery. If a student is making rapid progress in an area, he or she will have additional opportunities to dig deeper.

“The course acts like Google Maps,” said Amy McGrath, chief operations officer for ASU Digital Prep and an associate vice president for educational outreach and student services at the university.

For example, drivers, like students, are heading toward the same destination, but they may be starting their trip from different locations. Those who make a wrong turn or need to take a detour are simply rerouted to the same end point. The course also generates analytics that teachers can use to see each student’s strengths and interests and where extra help is needed.

“It’s high tech, but it’s also high touch,” McGrath said. “It allows for meaningful conversations.”

Grades are formative, meaning they reflect the student’s mastery at their own pace. Classroom teachers, however, are free to add summative assessments, evaluating student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark.

ASU offers other courses that employ scenario-based learning, though none are as sophisticated as BioBeyond. In an online course, for example, students help treat a patient named Hero who has been diagnosed with cancer.

“As Hero goes through the journey and works through the treatments, the students are learning chemistry through that relevance,” Young said, adding: “This is who we want to be and how we want to design learning.”

Besides making lessons more engaging, the experiential content also creates equity. Students who can’t afford to travel can now “see” the world and get exposed to concepts and careers they might never have been able to consider.

“They can be under water with the sea lions, see coral and understand what a marine scientist does for a living,” said Young, a former Florida third-grade teacher who noted that many of her students had never visited the beach, despite living minutes away.

Though BioBeyond is currently the only course of its kind at ASU, Young reports that a U.S. history course is on the horizon and will be a reality in the next six to 12 months.

“We would like to see the kids have the opportunity to interact with Abraham Lincoln or George Washington or be on the battlefield in the Civil War,” she said. “It takes the student into the moment by utilizing the technology we have available.”

Bill and Ted undoubtedly would rate such a course “excellent.”

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CustomizationFeaturedNewsSchool ChoiceTechnology and InnovationVirtual Education

How remembering the past could educate us in the future

Scott Kent
Scott Kent

USC Shoah Foundation’s Dimensions in Testimony enables people to ask questions that prompt real-time responses from pre-recorded video interviews with Holocaust survivors and other witnesses to genocide.

Never again.

It’s the vow from Holocaust survivors not to allow the world to forget their past, lest genocide be repeated in the future.

Today, an innovative, high-tech method of delivering that message to the current generation holds promise for distance education opportunities on the horizon.  

The USC Shoah Foundation, a Holocaust history organization founded in 1994 by director Steven Spielberg at the University of Southern California, is taking the practice of recording the oral histories of survivors to an entirely different level. It has created 3-D interactive holograms of survivors who not only recount their chilling experiences in Nazi concentration camps and ghettos during World War II; they can respond to a viewer’s questions in real time.

Forever.

Called Dimensions in Testimony, the program (which debuted in 2017) uses advanced filming techniques – green screen, dozens of cameras arranged in 360 degrees – to create a three-dimensional digital image of the subject. Over the course of several days, the survivor is interviewed about his or her story, and then answers more than 1,000 questions that would be anticipated from an audience (“What was life like before the war?” “Do you feel hope for the future?”).

Viewers receive more than a narrative. They can have a virtual conversation with a survivor who not only isn’t physically present but who is no longer alive.

Fewer than 100,000 Jews who were in camps, ghettos and in hiding under Nazi occupation are still alive today, according to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany. The youngest are in their mid-70s. Time is running out.

Aaron Elster, one of 20 interviewees listed on Shoah’s Dimensions in Testimony website, died in 2018 at age 85 after recording his testimony in 2015. Nevertheless, Elster has been immortalized in a medium that allows him to interact with individuals in ways that create personal connections that run deeper than what the printed word or traditional audiovisual presentations can provide.

The viewer can personalize the experience by taking the virtual discussion in almost any way he or she chooses. The only limitation is the inability to shake a survivor’s hand or give him or her a hug.

Shoah currently has made the Dimensions in Testimony available to seven other Holocaust museums in the United States, with more access on the way. Some of the interviews are conducted in languages other than English, such as German and Hebrew, opening them to wider audiences around the globe. And of course the technology can be expanded to any number of oral histories, such as survivors describing the nuclear bombings of Japan – and to other areas of education.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed scores of students to distance learning for the first time, and with wildly uneven results. Many school districts were forced to migrate lessons to rudimentary online platforms on impossibly short notice, causing endless frustration and dissatisfaction from students, teachers and parents. Most agree that group instruction on Zoom is insufficient. Florida Virtual School, which way back in 1997 became the nation’s first statewide K-12 virtual public school, has more experience – and a proven track record — in providing a more robust distance learning environment.

Dimensions in Testimony takes the concept to a different level. It’s like something from a Ray Bradbury story, only it’s science fact, not fiction.

It’s superior to videoconferencing because it’s not dependent on time. Holographic lessons can occur whenever they’re convenient while still remaining interactive. And they are customizable – they are as flexible as the artificial intelligence can take them. As the Shoah Foundation states, they enable students “to be agents in their own learning.”

Obviously, 3-D holograms aren’t an immediate solution to how to improve remote learning when (if?) schools re-open this fall. Still, the technology is beyond the concept stage and already in limited use. (For reference, the fictional communicators of “Star Trek” in the late 1960s were realized as actual flip phones a mere 30 years later.)

For Dimensions in Testimony, a project created to keep the past alive, the future is now, paving the way for other education innovators to follow.

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Charter SchoolsCommentary and OpinionCoronavirus / COVID-19CustomizationEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedPublic School ChoiceSchool ChoiceTechnology and InnovationVirtual Education

The uses of adversity: education innovator Eva Moskowitz on distance learning

Matthew Ladner
Matthew Ladner

Eva Moskowitz, founder and chief executive of Success Academy Charter Schools, has been a teacher, a college professor, an elected official and chair of the New York City Council’s Education Committee.

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

I would not change it.

— As You Like It, William Shakespeare

 Brian Greenburg, CEO of the Silicon Schools Fund, produced this graphic to categorize varying levels of proficiency achieved by schools that launched impromptu distance learning at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The graphic accompanied a post Greenburg wrote for EducationNext titled, “What we’ve learned from distance learning and what it means for the future.”

The graphic’s horizontal axis organizes schools by general effectiveness: culture, teamwork, flexibility, quality. The vertical axis organizes schools by expertise with technology, low to high. In the worst-case pandemic scenario, you are a child enrolled in a school system with an ineffective bureaucratic culture and a poor grasp of technology. In the best-case scenario – a highly effective, flexible and technically proficient organization – your school quickly reorganized efforts around distance learning to produce high-quality distance instruction.

New York’s Success Academy Charter Schools have been lauded for the high levels of academic proficiency achieved by high-poverty students. Stanford University’s Opportunity Explorer, for instance, shows Success Academy schools posting about three grade levels above average in academic proficiency, despite free and reduced-price lunch eligibility in the 74 to 90 percent range. Plotted against all available data in schools nationwide, this means Success Academy is not only breathing some very thin air in terms of performance, but also that it can lay claim to consistent excellent achievement.

The horizontal axis in the Greenburg chart was not an issue for Success Academy, and as it happens, neither was technological dexterity.

How did Success Academy tackle pandemic-induced distance learning? Well, the Philanthropy Roundtable was curious about that, so it interviewed founder and CEO Eva Moskowitz on how the schools rose to the pandemic challenge. You can watch the video here. What Success Academy pulled off seems potentially revolutionary, and Moskowitz is sharing learning resources free of charge.

I’ll give you my CliffsNotes version of the video.

The most effective lecturer in the entire network of schools on any given subject delivered live instructional lectures, while other teachers broke students into smaller groups online to facilitate group discussion and projects. Teachers monitored ongoing assignments to identify students who were falling behind and proactively required students to attend online remedial tutoring sessions.

In other words, Success Academy staff took great effort to keep students on track.

Why is this potentially revolutionary?

Because Success Academy and anyone else mastering these techniques may be able to offer it as an option to both admission lottery winners and losers in the future. It may be possible, for instance, to serve many students currently floundering in the bottom left quadrant in the Greenburg graphic through these techniques.

Exempt from public haunt, and more importantly, the need to provide very costly school space, a new path to quality and scale may beckon.

This crisis version of Success Academy distance learning should be viewed as a mere prototype. Success Academy and others doubtless will improve upon these techniques.

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Commentary and OpinionCommon GroundCoronavirus / COVID-19CustomizationEducation ChoiceEducation EquityFeaturedPodcastSchool ChoiceTechnology and InnovationVirtual Education

PodcastED: SUFS president Doug Tuthill interviews public education pioneer Julie Young

redefinED staff
redefinED staff

In this episode, Step Up For Students President Doug Tuthill talks with Julie Young, vice president of education outreach and student services at Arizona State University and managing director of Arizona State University’s Prep Academy and ASU Prep Digital. Young, who has been celebrated as an education disruptor for nearly three decades, was founding CEO and president of Florida Virtual School, the world’s first statewide virtual school and one of the nation’s largest K-12 online educator providers.

The longtime friends share a fascinating discussion about the future of public education in the wake of a global pandemic. Both believe the shifts that have occurred have accelerated change, making competency-based education the “new normal” by default. They also discuss the crucial role of virtual reality technology as it relates to the competency-based model. Both Young and Tuthill remember teaching in classrooms 15 minutes from the beach populated by students who had never been there and discuss how virtual reality can end such inequities.

Young: “We’re not going back to the old normal, and we’re creating our new normal. And our new normal will be to offer families choices.”

EPISODE DETAILS:

·       What we can learn from the sudden shift to digital learning and how parents took control in structuring their learning and working days

·       The empowerment that occurs when parents plan curriculum and how COVID-19 has allowed them to watch how their kids learn

·       How virtual reality can level the equity playing field, giving more children greater and personalized access to understanding what the world is like

·       How assessments will change and combine, creating an experience based on the needs of each learner

·       How the role of teachers will shift in this new environment

LINKS MENTIONED:

ASU Prep Digital – Two-minute Course Tours

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Coronavirus / COVID-19Education ChoiceEducation EquityFaith-based EducationFeaturedNewsPrivate School ScholarshipsPrivate SchoolsSchool ChoiceSchool spotlightTechnology and InnovationVirtual Education

For this Christian school, pandemic is opportunity to shine

Ron Matus
Ron Matus

Jim McKenzie, headmaster at The Rock School in North Central Florida, communicates with families in a virtual town hall meeting via Zoom.

Last week, the headmaster at The Rock School, a Christian school in Gainesville, Florida, led a Zoom town hall with hundreds of parents. All of them had re-enrolled their children for the fall back in February, before COVID-19 upended everything. But Jim McKenzie told them during the meeting that if they wanted out of their contracts, the school understood. Just let the school know by June 1, he said.

The result? The parents of 26 students, 6 percent of the total, reluctantly opted out, with most of them saying they wanted to homeschool a year.

The impact? With waiting lists for every grade, The Rock School should be at or near capacity in the fall, no matter what the pandemic has in store.

Even in these trying times, McKenzie and his PreK-12 school are holding their own. They’ve found creative ways to relentlessly emphasize all the things, beyond academics, that make The Rock distinctive and desired. Faith. Family. Identity. Community. To date, that has made the difference.

Transitioning to a virtual education reality “wasn’t necessarily easy for parents, but what they appreciated was they stayed connected,” McKenzie said. “Whether we’re on campus or we’re online, we are The Rock. That’s been our motto.”

“No matter the circumstance, you’re still our community,” McKenzie continued. “That community can still exist, even in the middle of COVID-19.”

The hopeful situation at The Rock School may appear to be at odds with dire concerns about private schools across America. It would be tragic to see it that way. Private schools face real challenges in the months ahead. Many are worried about bleeding enrollment. Dozens have already closed. Their plight, the prospect of equitable relief, the negative repercussions for public schools – none of that has received the attention it deserves.

But The Rock School still offers lessons, both to private schools struggling to maintain enrollment and to other audiences who may better see the value that private schools bring to families and communities – and by extension, to all of us.

“A lot of times Christian schools get caught up in what I call me-too branding,” McKenzie said. “Oh, you know, the big public school’s doing this. Oh, me too. Oh, you’re teaching Latin. Oh, me too. Oh, you’re starting a lacrosse program. Oh, me too. Oh, you’re giving every kid an iPad. Oh, me too. We copy in an effort to keep up.”

“The problem is, I don’t have the resources to copy what the large public school systems in our area can do. So instead I have to look for ways to differentiate myself. I have to look for things … that would be hard for my competitors to copy but are a meaningful difference for the people that we serve.”

“There’s a lot of people that can deliver reading and math academic content in an online format, as good or better than I did, right?” McKenzie continued. “So, the piece that differentiates my school … is this idea of community.”

About a third of the 435 K-12 student at The Rock School use state choice scholarships, including 108 who use the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for lower-income students and 15 who use Gardiner Scholarships for students with special needs. (Both programs are administered by Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.) Having a high percentage of non-scholarship parents makes the school more vulnerable to economic turbulence. Being in Gainesville, a college town that is more recession-resistant than many places, makes it less so.

An example of a daily schedule to keep students at The Rock School connected with community activities

The Rock School had a good academic reputation long before the pandemic, and in the wake of school closures it quickly built a quality distance learning program. Its “TRS Online” was geared to flexibility with a personal touch. Core academic content was delivered via videos, so students and parents could work them into schedules that were best for them. Teachers could be reached by Zoom daily. Staff checked in with families at least once a week.

But that was just the basics.

What The Rock did beyond the basics endeared it even more to its students and parents. It didn’t shrink its events calendar. It expanded it. It made sure there was something to keep everyone in the school community engaged – and to pique the interest of prospective parents and others who might be on the outside looking in.

McKenzie joked that he felt like “the cruise director of the SS Rock School.”

On a field outside town, the school hosted a dance party for its high school students, complete with DJs and glow sticks to help make the social distancing tolerable. The school broadcast the event on facebook live. Ditto for chapel, book readings, lessons in art class. Ditto for a talent show, where McKenzie sported a red-and-black tux. Ditto for gym, where Coach Jones and Coach Ken became celebrities, with some of their classes getting 1,000 views. The Rock’s pet show reached 7,000 people. Its last-day-of-school parade made news.

An end-of-year parade kept members of The Rock School community connected.

“We felt like there was still a way to provide students this meaningful experience,” McKenzie said. “Where most people’s default was, ‘Well, because of Covid, I guess we’ll have to cancel everything,’ you know, we said, ‘Well, how can we do it differently? How can we translate what we have done to a virtual context that works in the midst of a pandemic?’ ”

McKenzie won’t fit snugly in anybody’s box. He started college as an engineering major, fell in love with teaching, ended up earning a master’s in education from the University of Florida. He’s partial to bow ties. He’s as comfortable quoting marketing gurus as he is as citing Bible scripture. Over the past 10 years, he helped triple The Rock’s enrollment and made it even more racially and economically diverse. (The school is 42 percent non-white.)

In a TEDx talk last year, he pitched a revolution for public education, suggesting lost relevance in an era where millions of current students will work in jobs that don’t yet exist. “Critics will say our education system needs to be reformed. No,” he said. “Our current educational system needs to be re-imagined. We need to stop doing things better. And start doing better things.”

It’s not hard to find folks who predict the pandemic will springboard big change. But in the meantime, thousands of little private schools need to survive it. McKenzie thinks they can better their odds by better telling their own stories, and better highlighting what makes them special. (Get McKenzie’s in-depth take on that subject in this webinar here.)

In that virtual town hall, McKenzie didn’t shy from telling The Rock’s parents about the uncertainty ahead. But he also asked them to compare their pandemic experience with the parents at other schools.

“I think we have proven to be a proven and trusted guide in the midst of a crisis,” McKenzie told them. “And so if the COVID-19 crisis isn’t going away any time soon … isn’t it worth knowing that if things escalate again in our community, that you have a school that you know can manage the crisis again?”

In front of hundreds of screens in the school’s orbit, heads nodded.

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