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“Increasingly in the twenty-first century, what you know is far less important than what you can do with what you know. The interest in and ability to create new knowledge to solve new problems is the single most important skill that all students must master today. All successful innovators have mastered the ability to learn on their own “in the moment” and then apply that knowledge in new ways.” -Tony Wagner
I had the opportunity to read Creating Innovators by Tony Wagner as part of St. Mary’s Summer Reading Program for its employees and absolutely loved the book. It was a refreshingly optimistic view of today’s youth and the endless possibilities for being innovators that our global, connected world provides them. This book looks at approximately 10 innovators in a variety of fields and tracks them from their childhood experience through college and into their current fields of work. What I appreciated most was the diversity of fields and backgrounds that these innovators represented and that despite this diversity there were some common threads that put these stand outs on the track of innovation. Critical to this track were supportive parents. Parents who encouraged their children to tinker and pursue their passions without judgment about those passions from their parents. What surprised me most is that these parents limited the “scheduling” of their children’s time as well as the number of toys and gadgets the children had to play with. Instead, they focused on getting their children to use their imagination. Reading books was also a valued activity in these homes. The other critical factor in the lives of the innovators studied was a mentor who allowed them to pursue their passions in nontraditional ways that provided real world experiences for trying out their ideas. This mentor came in many different forms from outlier college professors who taught innovative classes to community members and activists. The innovators in this book followed a path of play, passion, and purpose. What started as play for these innovators turned into passion, and then a sense of purpose for using those passions to do meaningful work. Unfortunately, our traditional education system doesn’t generally nurture innovators and most in this book had to look outside traditional avenues to follow the innovation track. There are a number of high schools and colleges that are restructuring traditional models of education and a good chunk of this book looks at some of these spaces of innovative learning like High Tech High, MIT Media Lab and Olin College.  As I embark on the journey of becoming a Flat Classroom Certified Teacher, I feel that I first must contemplate my own flat existence. I recently moved to Raleigh, North Carolina from Las Vegas, Nevada, because my husband got a job in Raleigh. The irony is that he is working for a Swiss company and the engineering work he is doing is in California where he is designing substations for PG & E (the California utility company). For me the move meant making the tough decision to leave an amazing CTE Magnet school, West Career and Technical Academy, where I taught an innovative class called Computer-Based Projects that I had poured my heart and soul into developing. But it also represented a chance to reboot, recharge, and try something new. The online school that I have taught for part time for many years in Las Vegas has asked me to continue teaching online courses, so I will be teaching English from North Carolina to Las Vegas high schoolers. And now my husband’s company has just asked him to go to Germany for 6 months, so I will be teaching Las Vegas students from Germany. Yes, the flat world has arrived making it all the more apparent that the Flat Classroom movement of pushing global collaboration in education is becoming essential. The Flat Classroom Certified teacher program is run by Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay, two rock star educational innovators. It has been set up to promote global collaboration amongst educators and the creation of global collaboration projects. Over the next 14 weeks I will have the opportunity to work with like-minded educators from around the globe who feel passionate about global collaboration and connection and will develop my own global collaboration project. We have been asked this week to ponder what ‘flattening the classroom’ and ‘flat learning’ means. In the text for this class, Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds, Vicki and Julie state, “we believe effective use of technology can build bridges between classrooms, nations, and humankind, and that 21st Century skills harness not only the power of technology but the power of people.” (p. 2) For me, ‘flattening the classroom’ and ‘flat learning’ are about utilizing technology to expand the audience, the connections, the activities, the outcomes and the learning landscapes to make learning more meaningful, efficient, collaborative, and representative of the flattened work environment that students will enter in their future. The idea of the flat world is based on Thomas Friedman’s seminal work, The World Is Flat, and the 10 flatteners he describes that have shaped how we do business and everything else in our connected, global society. I have been fortunate to be involved in several Flat Classroom Projects with my students as well as other global projects that I have designed such as the Congo Design Challenge, so I am starting this certification program from a place of experience. As Julie and Vicki said it is the power of technology and people. I am most excited about making new connections with the people in this course that will hopefully lead to opportunities for future collaboration and partnerships. Yet, I wouldn’t be able to do this so easily without the technology. I am thrilled to see where this exploration of the Flat Classroom and global collaboration takes me and since my own flat existence is taking me to Germany, I may even get to have some face to face time with my flat classroom instructors and classmates at the Flat Classroom Conference 2012 being held in Dusseldorf, Germany in December.
It’s been about 6 years since I first discovered the Flat Classroom Project and Vicki Davis’ Cool Cat Teacher Blog. Back then Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis were two classroom teachers teaching halfway across the world (Julie in Bangladesh at the time and Vicki in Camille, Georgia) who tried a global experiment with their classrooms based on Thomas Friedman’s book, The World is Flat, that turned out to be a powerful collaboration that has developed into an educational movement dedicated to global collaboration and digital citizenship. I have had students involved in Flat Classroom Projects for the past 3-4 years and embedded their model deeply in my curriculum as I developed the course Computer-Based Projects at West Career and Technical Academy. Getting students to use digital technologies in academically appropriate ways that require collaboration with global partners is at the heart of the Flat Classroom Model.
The Congo Design Challenge was a very special project that unfolded in the last part of the school year at West Tech. In an age where teens spend hours using technology to entertain themselves through gaming, social media, and texting, it is important to teach students that they can also use technology to make a difference in the world. I developed this project by starting with the design principles and process from the Stanford Design School and Ideo. It was my first time using this process and I found it intriguing as students followed the steps to create a meaningful solution to a problem of their choosing. Students had the opportunity to videoconference with relief workers and former child soldiers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and were then challenged to create a social entrepreneurship that solved a problem related to their program field which ranged from Engineering and Environmental Science to Nursing and Biomedical Sciences. Students were required to develop a website that showcased their research and ideas as well as demonstrate how they would use technology as part of their solution. Students presented their social entrepreneurships and websites at the Path Forward Exhibition that brought in community members, staff, and parents to listen to their ideas. As part of the Path Forward Exhibition, students took part in the One Million Bones initiative where they created bones to raise awareness of ongoing genocide around the world. For each bone created, a dollar is donated to CARE, an organization that works to improve conditions in developing countries. The freshman class made over 2,500 bones. The bones will travel to Washington D.C. and be a part of a large scale art installation to be displayed on the national mall in June 2013. At the end of a year of teaching students how to use technology, my goal isn’t that students are the masters of any specific technology, but that they will learn how to use technology to be productive, professional individuals who make a difference in the world. The Congo Design Challenge was the culminating project in Computer-Based Projects course where students had to use technology to do just that. Here is what some of the students had to say about the project:
“The Congo Design challenge, was, well, challenging. However, it was a great experience, and I am so thankful that I was able to be a part of it. I learned so much and was greatly inspired by my peers. I enjoyed many parts of this project, like creating the website layout and making the bones out of Crayola clay, and I found it really cool how my six bones would be a part of something huge in Washington D.C. Ultimately, this project that took about a month to complete was time consuming, challenging, but most of all, enlightening. I hope that the ideas of a few 15-year-olds explode into something better, so we can give Congo the care it deserves.” -Blair B, 9th grade. “Mahatma Ghandi said, ‘You must be the change you wish to see in the world.’ As pretty as that sounds, it’s a bit overwhelming to a teenager. Of course, we all want to make a difference. However, not many teenagers, myself included, have the slightest clue how to go about changing the world. However, in the Congo Design Challenge, I got the chance to see how to break that down into a reality. We made a website, a video PSA, a Prezi, a tri-fold display, a banner, bracelets, water-bottle labels, invitations, and did tons of research in order to create a well-made presentation. All the hard work paid off when we set up our project at West Tech’s A Path Forward exhibition. I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to answer the visitors’ questions, but all my research was worth it when I could fully explain our project. All the students had their campaigns together in the exhibition and it was amazing to see the eagerness and excitement about helping others. We were all reminded just how blessed we are in America, and how we all have the power to make a difference in the lives of others; we simply have to decide whether we’re willing to put forth the effort to do so.” -Katrina M, 9th Grade “I feel that the entire Congo exhibition was an incredible experience, and a memory I won’t soon forget. Yes, it was a whole lot of work, but the end results were phenomenal. The feeling of being a part of something bigger than myself truly inspired me and my only hope is that those who came to see the presentations got as much out of them as I did.” -Devante G, 9th Grade To learn more about the Congo Design Challenge and see the Social Entrepreneurship sites created by the students, you can visit these links: Project Website Student Requirements: Sample Deliverables from Students: Student Website Student PSA  I recently finished reading From Blogs to Bombs: The Future of Digital Technologies in Education by Mark Pegram. A little over 100 pages, this powerhouse of a book takes a holistic approach to viewing digital technologies in education and society. Pegrum uses what he call the 5 lenses (discussed in detail in previous post) of digital technologies: technological, pedagogical, social, sociopolitical, and ecological to explore the issue of what it means to learn and live in a digital age. He uses countless anecdotes and research to explore a gamut of issues that impact how digital technologies are changing education, identity and society. One of the most powerful chapters of the book is where Pegrum lays out what he sees as important literacies students must grapple with to be successful in the 21st Century. These are the literacies he suggests are important:
Image Source: freepik.com  In my quest to inform the task of developing curriculum that addresses a variety of intelligences and learning styles, I read the book The Differentiated Classroom by Carol Ann Tomlinson. The key principles of differentiated instruction outlined in the book and listed on page 48 are:
Tomlinson notes that there are numerous ways to differentiate based on students’ readiness, interest, and learning profiles. She goes on to say that content (what students will learn and the material that will represent that), processes (activities through which students make sense of key ideas using essential skills), and product (how students demonstrate and extend what they understand and can do as a result of a span of learning) so that when you think about differentiating you should ask these 3 questions:
Image Source: freepik.com  The more I read about differentiated instruction, the more I realize that it involves first coming up with a quality curriculum, then getting to know your students and making adjustments based on the students you have. Key to this is getting to know your students from the beginning so you can begin to make those adjustments as early as possible. This, of course, is difficult in an online setting. As I prepare to teach online for the summer, I am beginning to brainstorm ways to get to know students better at the beginning of a class. Here are a few ideas I’ve come up with:
Interest Inventory- I am creating an interest inventory that I hope gets at some of the interests of my students. I think it’s important to have the interest inventory be content specific, so you get a sense of what is most interesting to the students about your content area. It should also include more general interest questions, so you get a sense of what is important to individual students. I think also you need to get a sense of what is going on in the students’ lives right now. When possible, get at what personal concerns students have and what their schedule is like. Pre-Assessment- This is critical to know where your students are starting at with your content area and their academic and readiness level. Regardless, of the course, I think it is important to include a writing sample, which is a lot more telling in many ways than a multiple-choice assessment. A combination of both is a good idea. Learning Style/Intelligences Inventory- This is valuable for the teacher and the students to know what their learning preferences are as well as strengths and weaknesses. Letting Students Get to Know You and Your Course: It is equally important that students get to know you as well. It is hard to develop a presence in an online setting. Some ideas are:
 When I first started teaching in this school district, the buzzword was BAM or Backward Assessment Model. I grew to detest this term, because how it manifested itself at my school at the time was that everyone teaching the same class was expected to have a common assessment and were expected to be teaching more or less the same thing. Several teachers got in trouble for not being on the same page at the same time. In my quest to figure out how to develop quality curriculum instruction, I finally understand the power of backward design through reading Understanding by Design by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. This book makes a strong argument for quality curriculum design through a focus on student understanding. The book spends a lot of time deconstructing what it means to understand and in the process what it means to teach and learn. Wiggins and McTighe capture what it means to understand in the following statement, “To have understood means that we show evidence of being able to transfer what we know. When we understand, we have a fluent and fluid grasp, not a rigid, formulaic grasp based only on recall and ‘plugging in’” (p. 7). Wiggins and McTighe argue that there are six facets to understanding: explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge.
One idea in the book that really hit home to me was what the book calls “the twin sins of traditional design”. These two sins are activity-oriented design and coverage design. Both are equally bad. The first is an emphasis on hands-on activities that students might find engaging and fun, but don’t require students to learn any major concepts. The second concept is coverage where teachers try to cover everything in a textbook our curriculum guide and end up covering nothing of substance. Neither help students to understand and learn. Understanding by Design lays out a clear format for curriculum design that can help anyone build rich curriculum. The three stages of backward design are:
Image Source: freepik.com
Although the presentation of this content is a 1-hour lecture, I think it really gets at how to be disruptive in the 21st Century. This presentation, “A Portal to Media Literacy”, by Professor Mike Wesch of Kansas State University really blew me away. Wesch argues that we are having a crisis of significance. He asked a lecture hall full of his students “how many of you don’t like school?” and about half of his students raised their hand (these are students who pay to go to school). When he then turned around and asked his students “how many of you don’t like to learn?” No one raised their hand. This lecture gets at the core of how we need to change our educational practices to make them relevant and meaningful to students. Wesch argues that” to learn is to create significance” and “we need to help students make meaningful connections because that’s where learning really happens.” He also argues that we need to answer the question “How can we create students who can create meaningful connections?” Wesch lays out two types of meaningful connections to make:
semantic meaning: how things relate, connect and contrast with other things. personal meaning: a person finds their own meaning and significance not just in “who they are”, but in how they relate, connect, and contrast with other people. I think this lecture gets at the core of why so many kids don’t care or are so alienated by the current educational system. He gets at the importance of connecting to students. He uses a quote from Barbara Harrell Carson, “Students learn what they care about from people who they care about and who they know care about them.” Online learning is challenging because it can be difficult to make those personal connections with students. How do you let students know you care and how do you get to know your students? I think these are key questions any online educator needs to answer. Wesch illustrates how he is able to create significance in his Intro to Cultural Anthropology class by doing the following three things:
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AuthorYvonne Caples is a Learning Experience Designer who is passionate about making learning meaningful and engaging for all. Posts
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