Category: 5315 Assessing Digital Learning

In my teaching lab class at Michigan State University and my student teaching experience, I learned about how to create meaningful science experiments that incorporated thinking skills of the scientific method. Around the same time, No Child Left Behind was created. Along with it came mandated state testing. Over the course of my classroom teaching experience, I watched teaching change from a focus on skills to one on content. Throughout most of my career, I taught TAKS- or STAAR-tested subjects. That is, I taught 8th-grade science for seven years, 5th-grade math for one year, and 5th-grade for five years. 

Skills Over Content

While I worked my hardest to continue to focus on skills over content, the stress of teaching a tested subject wore on me. I finally felt a sense of freedom when I taught a STEM course that I got to design myself. My goal was to concentrate on skills by applying both the scientific method and the engineering design process. In spite of many false starts and mistakes, I created a course that allowed kids to analyze, innovate, and synthesize information they learned in all of their courses in an authentic environment with real-world problems. Of course, then COVID hit and the technology skills I learned as a teacher catapulted me to a new role in technology instruction.

Welcome to the 21st Century

While teaching the STEM course, I realized the importance of 21st-century skills for the future of unpredictable jobs. We “went from an economy of using hands to work to using brains to work in a short amount of time. The skills for a successful career, continuous learning, and active and informed citizenship have converged” (Wagner, 2009). In class, I showed the IDEO: Shopping Cart Design Process (ABC Nightly News, 2017) to my students to encourage design thinking. In the video, IDEO uses the engineering design process to redesign a shopping cart. During the video, I noticed how long the team at IDEO spent analyzing the problem of the shopping cart. In fact, they seemed to spend more of their time analyzing the problem than designing new carts!

In Seven Skills Students Need for Their Future, Dr. Wagner (2009) postulates that we need to spend more time reframing the education problem. It’s not about reform, testing, and professional development (Wagner, 2009). Rather, we need to “rethink, reimagine, and reconceptualize education for the 21st century” (Wagner, 2009).

Seven Essential Life Skills

While I have seen many iterations on 21st-century skills, both Wagner (2009) and Galinsky (2020) suggest that there are seven essential life skills that students need to see success in the future workforce. In the table below, I listed the skills in the order mentioned in each video. Next, I defined each based on the definitions used by the speakers in each video. Finally, I color-coded skills from Wagner’s (2009) interpretation to match skills from Galinsky’s (2020) video. While they weren’t a perfect match, you can see that the skills align pretty well in both videos.

No list is perfect. However, both lists provide a great framework to address the problem that is our educational system. A shift in attention to either list – or any combination of these traits – would be a step in the right direction for public schools. After all, these “executive life skills add up to helping us be ongoing learners. In a world where information changes so rapidly it is the ongoing learners that will survive” (Galinsky, 2020).

Just Teach

In the midst of my position as a 5th-grade science teacher, I attended Margaret Kilgo’s Data-Driven Decision Making Conference (Kilgo, 2014). We looked at TEKS, disaggregated data, analyzed STAAR test questions, and attended to verbs. However, in the end, Margaret Kilgo’s advice was to create real, experiential learning environments with an emphasis on the process skills in your TEKS snapshot. In other words, “just teach” (Kilgo, 2014).

How do you educate to innovate?

References

ABC Nightly News. (2017, September 29). IDEO: Shopping Cart Design Process. YouTube. Retrieved June 20, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izjhx17NuSE

Galinsky, E. (2020, April 17). The Seven Essential Life Skills. YouTube. Retrieved June 20, 2022, from http://youtu.be/SdIkQnTy6jA%20

Kilgo, M. (2014). Data-Driven Decision Making [Conference].

Wagner, T. (2009, October 1). Seven Skills Students Need for Their Future. YouTube. Retrieved June 20, 2022, from http://youtu.be/NS2PqTTxFFc

Humans’ work alongside machines is ever-changing. “While nearly 50% of all companies expect their full-time workforce to shrink by 2022 as a result of automation, almost 40% expect to extend their workforce generally, and more than a quarter expect automation to create new roles in their enterprise” (Cann, 2018). While humans will never be replaced by machines, their ability to adapt to a rapidly-changing work environment is imminent. Companies need workers who can learn and adjust quickly, both independently and collaboratively. That is, adult learners need to value problem-solving and learning over traditional methods of corporate training. Workers who can push innovation to the edges from the bottom up in every role (Ito, 2014).

“I would like to introduce new approaches to working with the existing technology that we may push toward a paperless working environment. This means changing the environment in which we work to provide reskilling opportunities” (Stateler, 2021). Furthermore, as a means to support reskilling of current employees, we must create environments for ongoing professional learning in face-to-face, blended, and virtual training opportunities. By doing so, we can is to provide and promote virtual collaborative learning spaces in face-to-face, blended, and completely virtual environments. I hope to determine the effectiveness of their implementation and use.

Asking Good Questions

For my action research, my question is:

To what extent will the integration of collaborative spaces within and outside of training environments change the number and type of help tickets that administrative assistants input into the system?

• I will use a mixed-methods explanatory research design approach.
• For the quantitative research, I will use a correlational study.

Parallel by Design

By using explanatory mixed methods, I will focus on quantitative data first, then qualitative data. While my question lends itself to quantitative data, I hope to use the qualitative data to “shed further light on or explain more deeply the results of the primary analysis” (Mertler, 2019, p. 197). By using a correlational study for the quantitative data, I can determine if a statistically significant relationship exists between the use of collaborative spaces and the number and kind of help tickets that collaborative space users input.

Look to the Literature

My literature review will focus on the benefits of collaborative learning and the use of professional learning networks to create collaborative learning environments for adult learners in blended, face-to-face, and virtual environments. Cooperative learning is characterized by “mutual help, open communication, and the exchange of resources” (Denton, 2012, p. 36). These are characteristics that are “widely valued by professional organizations” (Denton, 2012, p. 36). How might professional learning networks support cooperative learning? Chiefly, professional learning networks create “new learning partnerships between and among students and teachers” (Fullan & Langworthy, 2014, p. 10). Therefore, I seek to better understand the literature on these topics.

References

Cann, O. (2018, September 17). Machines Will Do More Tasks Than Humans by 2025 but Robot Revolution Will Still Create 58 Million Net New Jobs in Next Five Years. The World Economic Forum. Retrieved June 13, 2022, from https://www.weforum.org/press/2018/09/machines-will-do-more-tasks-than-humans-by-2025-but-robot-revolution-will-still-create-58-million-net-new-jobs-in-next-five-years/

Denton, D. W. (2012, July/August). Collaborative learning Enhancing Instruction through Constructivism, Cooperative Learning, and Cloud Computing. Tech Trends, 56(4), 34-41.

Fullan, M., & Langworthy, M. (2014, January). A Rich Seam How New Pedagogies Find Deep Learning. Pearson.

Ito, J. (2014, July 7). Joi Ito: Want to innovate? Become a “Now-ist”. TED. Retrieved June 13, 2022, from https://www.ted.com/talks/joi_ito_want_to_innovate_become_a_now_ist/up-next?language=en

Mertler, C. A. (2019). Action Research: Improving Schools and Empowering Educators. SAGE Publications.Stateler, K. (2021). My Proposal: Paperless Office, Paperless District. Cookies ‘N Cache. Retrieved June 13, 2022, from https://karinstateler.com/?page_id=95

Restructuring the Digital Learning Team

This spring, the curriculum and digital learning teams were faced with an unfortunate surprise. Due to financial issues, GCISD is moving away from the coaching model. While I’m not technically a coach – my title is Digital Learning Support Specialist – I will be affected by this change. That is, the resources, tools, and training that I create must be more efficient and reach a wider audience more effectively than it does right now. Next week, my team and I will meet to discuss what our future holds.

Brainstorming Problems

Right now, one of the services I provide is a Lunch & Learn for the administrative offices and a newsletter for all administrative assistants. My problem brainstorming started with these ideas:

• Efficient use of Google Workspace
• Google Storage
• eSignatures
• Differentiation

While I was watching the readings and videos for this discussion board, I thought about how my department – the Technology Department – uses Google Spaces efficiently to communicate. Each space has a specific purpose that acts as a professional learning network for various groups within our team.

Descriptions of the Google Spaces: 

• System Alerts – This is a bot that notifies users of changes to status changes in any system that we support.
• Support Questions – Put all questions here! This is a great resource for help. There are no stupid questions!
• Tech Services – All Staff – Anything that applies to everyone in the department (ex. EOY meetings, chili cookoff, scheduled outages, etc.).
• Tech Center Staff – A chat space for announcements that affect technology staff housed at the admin building.
• Tech Alerts Only – Critical and/or time-sensitive alerts.
• Sidebar – Hehehe you’ll just have to add it and find out.
• Encouraging Thoughts – Post encouragement for the technology department.

Solving the Problem with PLNs

Based on this, what if the admin/admin assistants could lean on each other for tech support? What if they had a professional learning network? How might we use Google Spaces to create self-sufficient communication and PLN for admin assistants? Why might I do this? For starters, we’re going to have to tighten up since we lost a few teammates. That is, I am a more limited resource. Admin assistants can learn to lean on each other for tech support. Thoughts I had: What if I create the first Google Space? I would rather have them lean on one another. However, if I’m in the space, I could quickly and easily answer questions that others didn’t know. This could also drive my Lunch and Learn curriculum.

How can action research help me?

According to Action Research Communities: Professional Learning, Empowerment, and Improvement Through Collaborative Action Research (Mertler, 2018) “The main goal is to address local-level problems of practice with the anticipation of finding immediate answers to questions or solutions to those problems.” The beauty of action research is in its intentionality. By working through the four phases – plan, act, develop, and reflect – I can address the local problem of a need to support admin and admin assistants with a smaller team (Mertler, 2019). Since this research method is cyclical, I can keep working on this problem by repeating the process until it is resolved. The data-driven nature applies research methodology to a problem that I can address and effect.

My goal during 5315 is to create a detailed, meaningful plan that, I can implement once the 2022-23 school year starts. I will act, develop, and reflect during 5320 and my capstone project.

What does your plan look like?

References

Mertler, C. A. (2018). Action Research Communities: Professional Learning, Empowerment, and Improvement Through Collaborative Action Research. Routledge.

Mertler, C. A. (2019). Action Research: Improving Schools and Empowering Educators. SAGE Publications.