Gaining Support for Blended Learning

In November, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to visit several schools that are personalizing learning for students through blended learning models. The technology allows for a flexible environment where students can learn at their own pace and in their own way. Teachers have more time to work with individuals and small groups while other students are learning content online or working on projects. After several days of visits to schools at all levels, it become clear to our team that there isn't one formula for success. Each school had a story to tell about how they had launched initiatives and then iterated or pivoted after getting feedback and analyzing results. The one common theme at each school was that everyone was on board with the initiative and committed to meeting the needs of all students. 

In an age of customization where we've come to expect personalized music, search results, reading lists, and even coffee, it seems likely that we would want the same personalization for our students. Moving from an Industrial Age educational model, however, requires compelling arguments to win over a diverse group of stakeholders. By identifying some of the most common arguments against blended learning, we can begin to build our argument for personalization through a blended model.

I Don't Have Time
"I don't have time" is a common argument against many initiatives that schools attempt to implement. The failure of the initiative is inevitable unless you can identify what time is needed and for what purpose. Preparing for blended learning takes a lot of planning time, but implementing a blended model gives teachers extra time to work with students who need additional help. Counter this argument with "how can we not find the time to help all of our students succeed?" To be successful, leadership must work to provide up front planning time for teams of teachers. Teaming allows teachers to divide and conquer when developing online content and projects.

We Don't Teach Content That Way
Why not? Just because you learned it that way doesn't mean that all of your students will benefit from the same method. Let's look at multiplication as an example. The traditional method of rote memorization can be detrimental for students who have working memory deficits. Why not give students choice in how they become fluent with multiplication? A student with memory problems might benefit from a station rotation blended model that allows them to choose an activity like lattice multiplication to help with multiplying large numbers. Other students may benefit more from an online math activity. The "one size fits all" method has never worked in education and never will.

We've Got to Prepare for the Standardized Test
The best way to prepare students for a test is to make learning relevant for them. A blended model allows students to learn at their own pace and in their own way. In a blended environment, students learn how they learn best and are accountable for mastery. Blended models provide students with frequent feedback from the teacher to keep them on track for learning goals. The new Common Core tests require students to learn 21st century skills. Blended learning creates an environment where communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creation can happen.

Parents Won't Like It
Parents who take an interest in their child's education will be excited that the teacher now has time to work individually with their child. We can use this as an excuse or we can be proactive and have parent nights to explain the program and give students a chance to showcase their learning. Use social media to share the great things happening in your classrooms.

Classroom Management Will be More Difficult
The big change is that all students will be awake. They'll be actively engaged in their own learning and that could involve purposeful movement. Isn't that better than teaching to a sleeping student or a student who's off task?

Excuses are easy and will quickly derail a new initiative like blended learning. As you prepare for blended learning in your school, be aware of potential arguments against change and move forward by setting the conditions for success with a diverse group of stakeholders. Gaining support for your initiative is the key.

Extreme Makeover for Learning

What would it take to have an extreme makeover for learning in your school? Schools that are focused on project-based learning and personalized learning face the challenge of providing students with a flexible environment that facilitates collaboration and creation. Our traditional classrooms with desks facing the front of the room are a reminder of the industrial age and this traditional setting can be a hindrance to learning. Where do you go when you want to learn something new or focus on a project? Think about your ideal learning experience. Does it involve sitting in a desk facing the front of a room? We shouldn’t expect our students to do their best work in an environment that doesn’t facilitate collaboration or movement.

When thinking about redesigning classroom space for learning, teachers face many challenges. Classroom space is limited and funding isn’t always available to purchase new furniture. There is also fear that students will be off task if they’re not visible to the teacher at all times. These challenges can be overcome by thinking differently about your space. Do you need all the desks? Are there other spaces in the school where students could work? Letting go of some control is key to getting started with a makeover.

In a recent workshop with David Bill from Notosh, David reminded our group that the learning experience defines the environment. We need to think about our users and design space that will accommodate their learning needs. What is the learning experience that you want for your students? Interview and survey your students to find out more about their learning needs. How do they learn best? Would they sit at a desk by choice? Use this information to brainstorm ways to improve their learning experience and then have students help you design classroom space to meet those needs.

Rapid prototyping will help you to redesign classroom space to meet the needs of your students. Look at your user profiles and get to work with craft materials to create a miniature classroom. Pick something from your new design to implement immediately. If you know that students need to have space for independent learning, use bookshelves or crates to make a private area for students. After implementing your new idea, observe and interview students to find out how they feel about the new space. Don’t worry if your first prototype is a failure. You haven’t done anything on a large scale yet and can easily make adjustments with your next iteration.

When you feel confident about your first attempt at designing space, keep on going. Add a new feature to your classroom and continue to ask students for feedback about the change. Once you’re on the right track, go for an extreme makeover. What would it look like if you moved everything out of your room and re-imagined your room for the learning that you want to occur? Would there be a front of the room? Do you need that big desk? Empty out your room and bring back the items that fit into the learning experience that you’ve designed. You may find that you don’t need desks for every student which will open up more space for collaboration.

By looking at your classroom through a new lens, you can redesign your classroom into a space that transforms the learning experience for your students. What will you do tomorrow?

Getting to Results with a Startup Mindset

A recent blog post, “Looking at the Numbers in Education: What Scales, Anyway”by Alex Hernandez, intrigued me. In the post, Alex talks about the things that scale in education and wonders if those solutions actually help students learn. He notes that “scale” is not good or bad but that we should define what we mean when we talk about scale. NCLB, textbooks and homework have reached the largest scale in education but we know those things aren’t having the biggest impact on student learning in our schools.

It’s the schools and districts that are trying many solutions, using data, and then scaling those initiatives across the organization that are getting results. A 10x solution for a district may come from putting five 1% ideas together in a remix that has a big impact. So how do we scale the right solutions in our schools and use data wisely to inform next steps?

Here are a few suggestions to get started:

1. Ask the “why” about what you’re doing and focus on student learning while acknowledging from the beginning that no one solution will fix your challenges.
2. Build a culture of innovation in your district to encourage teams to explore solutions to existing problems. Provide substitutes so that teams of teachers can get away for an extended time to collaborate. If possible, provide seed funding so that teams can purchase supplies, books and classroom resources.
3. Use the design process to work with groups to explore multiple solutions for a problem. A great resource is Ewan McIntosh’s new book, “How To Come Up With Great Ideas And Actually Make Them Happen.” The Notosh design approach emphasizes finding the right problem to solve and using a variety of team activities to develop a solution that will bring the most value.
4. Use the business model canvas to plan how you’re going to implement. The business model template can assist you in identifying all the necessary components of your plan.
5. Try your solutions on a small scale with a first and second iteration. Rapid prototyping allows you to quickly deploy and receive feedback to inform your next steps.
6. Gather quantitative and qualitative data and create a case study of the results to share with all stakeholders including your local school board and community partners. People will invest in your idea if they see the value.
7. Use the “yes and” mindset to find ways to grow or pivot your initiative. We sometimes have too many “yes buts” in education. We use excuses like “we don’t have time,” “the administration won’t support it,” and “the students aren’t ready” to stall initiatives. When you discover a new challenge, brainstorm solutions that will allow your initiative to move forward and grow.

It’s very easy to continue the status quo in education by implementing programs on a large scale before discovering if your solution will have a positive impact on student learning.  By using the startup model, your organization can get to those results much more quickly. The rapid feedback process will help you to build a successful and lasting initiative that will scale across your organization.

Is WHY Enough? Getting to the HOW of Innovation

Simon Sinek's book Start with Why, has great points about beginning with WHY. I've been involved in several large scale technology initiatives and the why of what we're doing has always been front and center. Having a shared vision is essential to any new educational initiative or innovation.  For your initiative to be successful, however, you must also focus on WHAT you want to achieve and HOW you want to get to desired results. Follow the steps below to put your initiative on the path to success.

Define the problem:
The WHY has to solve a problem in your organization. It isn't enough to decide that you want to implement a 1:1 computing initiative without knowing what problem it will solve. All stakeholders should be involved in the decision making to take a big problem and make decisions about moving forward. Don't underestimate the power of a few individuals to undermine the group efforts. Get the word out to everyone in as many ways as possible and invite them to participate. Everyone in the organization - your WHO - much know the vision and be able to explain why you're doing what you're doing. Define the problem with as much detail as possible. Examples of problems you might want to tackle include declining literacy skills or low graduation rates.

Develop your outcomes:
You also need to look at the outcomes that you expect - the WHAT. What will it look like when your innovation goes viral throughout the organization? Paint a picture of the results that you expect. Rapid prototyping with small scale projects allows you to try out several strategies and will ultimately give you something tangible for everyone to see. For a 1:1 computing initiative, the WHAT isn't a device but an outcome for student learning. If your problem is literacy skills and you believe that 1:1 computing will provide students with a collaborative environment for research, writing and publishing, you might want to pilot your solution with a team of teachers at your school and develop a model that others can follow.

Create a road map and measure your progress:
The devil is in the details and HOW you're going to get to your desired outcomes. A recent news story talked about a school district that was ending their 1:1 computing initiative and looking for a way to recycle the computers. I'm sure that they talked about WHY but I wonder if their WHAT was about a device instead of an outcome? Was the problem in the implementation - the HOW? If certain steps aren't taken by everyone, will you end up with silos of innovation?  People must work within teams and across teams for you to see widescale adoption of your initiative. A pilot program will allow you to develop a detailed plan and help you to determine the essential elements for success.

Measuring your progress along the way is a big part of HOW you will get to the finish line and see the desired results. Project management is key and it's essential that everyone knows their role. Teams will be learning throughout the process and it's always good to take the temperature with discussions that will help determine the next steps. It's okay to fail on a small scale but fail quickly and use your experiences to iterate or even pivot if necessary.

As you continue to solve problems for your school or district, start with WHY, define WHAT your outcomes will be, and then decide HOW you're going to get there. Your innovation will be successful when you get those three things right.

Personalized Learning for a Collective Purpose

Personalized learning. You hear the term more and more these days but have you really wrestled with what it means? After a year of exploration and the last week in a deep dive at a consultancy with Summit Public Schools in Redwood City, CA, I feel ready to share some insights.

Just as a doctor knows the lifestyle and genetics of a patient to provide the best treatment plan, a teacher much know the learning styles, abilities and interests of a student in order to help them develop a personalized learning path. In a personalized learning environment, students help design and direct the learning to achieve mastery of the standards and other outcomes defined by the learning organization.

This model is both loose and tight. Years ago when my husband and I were making decisions about our daughter’s education, we visited a Montessori school and I was struck by the activity all around me. At first glance, it seemed very loose with students doing a variety of activities that interested them. Looking deeper at the curriculum, I realized that the system was very tight. Carefully selected manipulatives and lessons were designed to provide students with voice and choice but were scaffolded to ensure that students were mastering learning objectives. Students used a weekly checklist to decide their path for the week and had frequent check-ins with the teachers to ensure that there were no gaps in their learning. The power of personalized learning appealed to us and we enrolled her in the program. The personalized approach allowed her to follow her passions and influenced the person that she is today. She was able to move around the classroom and school freely, come together with other students for collaborative learning, and pursue her personal interests with monthly projects and extracurricular activities. She was a self-directed learner and mastered the content that she needed to be successful.

Isn’t this what we want for all students? Blending learning with technology tools and resources in addition to project-based learning and face-to-face instruction allows us to provide our students with choice in the resources that they use to achieve mastery in a subject. Personalization doesn’t mean that every teacher is letting students do whatever they want. It means that everyone in the school organization is focusing on the same vision for student outcomes which allows for student choice in the path that they choose to learn content and showcase their learning to others.

You can’t personalize learning in your organization by purchasing a packaged program. Successful implementations including the Summit model include teacher-designed assessments and a mix of teacher-created and curated resources. Developing an effective model means that organizations will need to embrace a new model of how they use time to allow teachers to work on assessments and content. Ideally, content and assessments for the subject are built for the entire year so that students who need more practice can continue to work on a topic while students who’ve mastered content can move ahead or focus on another area of interest.

As you begin to explore personalized learning, keep these key points in mind:

• Students should set goals and help in the process of designing their learning path to achieve mastery of the content
• Students should have an opportunity to connect the content with their interests and passions
• Students need to learn how they learn and monitor and reflect on their own progress
• Learning is blended with some personalization occurring through online learning and some learning occurring through project-based, collaborative learning
• Formative assessment provides students with feedback about their progress
• Teachers use data from a variety of assessment tools to monitor student learning and make adjustments as needed
• Students need adequate time and space to work on their learning path
• Students should be provided with a mix of tools and resources to best meet their learning needs
• Be loose in how and when students learn the content but have tight alignment to standards and desired outcomes

Creating a personalized learning environment in your school takes a collective effort with everyone in the school working together to create a successful model. To begin your journey, read Personalized Learning: A Guide for Engaging Students with Technology by Peggy Grant and Dale Basye. Explore Summit’s model here and by visiting their site.

Making Space for Active Learning

Learning can happen anywhere, but learning may happen better with the right classroom design. Research on learning shows that creativity and collaboration can be enhanced through the redesign of space. In Make Space: How to  Set the Stage for Creative Collaboration, Scott Doorley and Scott Witthoft of Stanford University’s d.school apply research-based design principles to show how an ordinary classroom space can be turned into a flexible, creative space. You can hear an interview with the authors on the Harvard Business Review blog.

Over the last year, I've learned about the design of learning space by visiting several schools and organizations that have redefined how space is used. At Summit Denali in Sunnyvale, CA, students work in an open space for personalized learning as well as collaborative projects. When you walk into the room, it’s hard to find the teachers because they’re acting as facilitators and aren't teaching from the front of the room. Students work comfortably in a variety of seating areas and have the freedom to move around as needed. This student-centered, flexible learning environment facilitates collaboration and maximizes the use of space.

Using some of what I learned on site visits, I was able to work with a team this year to create space for our new R2 Innovates innovation incubator. In the tradition of the Stanford d.school, we started with an old portable and transformed it into a space for innovation teams to collaborate and work. We purchased furniture that could easy be moved around to facilitate different types of group work and stocked the cabinets with lots of post-it notes. I worried that we purchased too many rolling whiteboards but realized quickly enough that our teams love to use the boards for brainstorming. The boards also act as movable dividers when several groups are working in the same space. Everyone who uses the space says that it inspires creativity and enables collaboration.

Some of the most exciting R2 Innovates projects that I've been involved with this year have involved the creation of space for active learning. Several of our innovation teams focused on redesigning and making new space for learners. The Summit Parkway Middle School Creative Commons team redesigned space in the media center as makerspace. Now that the students have 1:1 Chromebooks, she wanted to reclaim space that was previously used for desktop computers and turn it into an area where students can create and collaborate. Library Media Specialist Jennifer Lanier collaborated with a class at the school on the design and then the students pitched their idea to the principal.  Follow their blog to see the latest updates.

As you begin to design or redesign learning spaces, keep the following in mind:

• Observe how people currently work in the space and interview them to find out what type of environment works best for them.
• Work with others to brainstorm ideas for the space. Use a technique like 100 ideas in 10 minutes to get your initial list and then pick the most promising ideas.
• Use rapid prototyping to put your idea into action. The first prototype can be very rough but will give you lots of information about next steps.
• Refine your idea based on the reactions that you receive from the rapid prototype.
• Implement and continue to get feedback, iterate, and scale!

"20 Seconds of Insane Courage"

As the school year comes to an end, I've been reflecting back over the last few years and am reminded of the quote from “We Bought a Zoo” author, Benjamin Mee:

“You know, sometimes all you need is twenty seconds of insane courage. Just literally twenty seconds of just embarrassing bravery. And I promise you, something great will come of it.”

As an avid traveler, some of my best experiences have been those “heart in the throat” moments – scuba diving for the first time, swimming and climbing to see the ATM cave in Belize, jumping into the water with whale sharks, spending the night in a hammock in the Amazon jungle, chaperoning students to Russia and living in a Russian home, and sitting in a broken down ferry in the middle of the Red Sea.

As educators, we've got to have that same insane courage. Not every experience is going to turn out how we had planned, but we've got to be willing to take risks. I've invested a lot of time, thought, sleepless nights, hope, and insane courage in work that I believe is making a difference in the lives of children. Working with an outstanding team to plan and implement a 1:1 initiative and develop innovative practices has been the most professionally rewarding experience of my life. The big lessons from the last few years include:

1. The learner comes first.
2. Act. Nothing will ever change without those 20 seconds of insane courage. Keep your eyes on the challenge ahead and don’t stop.
3. Great things happen with visionary leaders.
4. Schools and districts must build their own capacity and should not rely on outside entities to direct their vision. In other words, don’t buy programs that promise the silver bullet effect. One size does not fit all.
5. Involve all stakeholders in planning and implementing new programs.
6. Make connections for learning and sharing. Be brave in asking for assistance. There are lots of wonderful people inside and outside of your organization who want to help (free of charge!).
7. Support innovation within your school and district and remove the road blocks that keep teachers from trying new things.
8. Open is better than closed. Hold your ideas lightly and listen to the advice of others.
9. Scale innovations.

Not easy. Leading, building capacity, innovating, and scaling initiatives are hard work with many potential road blocks to success. The change must come from within your organization to be sustainable. As summer approaches, take those first steps to pitch a new idea, develop yourself professionally, or launch a new initiative. Go!

Ready, Set, Launch!

I've learned a lot about innovation this year as we've launched our district innovation incubator. In upcoming blog posts, I'll be highlighting some of the R2 Innovates teams and how they're breaking down walls and developing innovations that bring a real value to our students and teachers. The iterative process begins with version 1.0 for customer 1.0. By trying ideas on a small scale, teams can learn from successes and failures and make improvements that can then be rolled out in new versions for additional customers.

We were fortunate to have Ewan McIntosh of Notosh as a virtual facilitator for a two day design workshop in December. Our teams worked hard, used hundreds of sticky notes, and came away with plans to bring their ideas to life. Success will be measured by the ability of teams to collaborate, iterate quickly, and scale their innovations. I look forward to sharing the progress of each team and encourage all educators to dream big and use the iterative process to scale innovations that can make a difference in the lives of our students. Follow R2 Innovates on our blog!

On the Road to Awesome!

Stepping into 2014, I feel a renewed energy and happiness that my district is traveling down the road to awesome!

There were a lot of awesome events in 2013 including:

• Completing the roll out of our 1TWO1 computing initiative for over 21,000 students
• Starting up the R2 Innovates incubator with an awesome two day workshop with Ewan McIntosh as a virtual facilitator
• Working with an awesome team!
• Celebrating being on the road to awesome with our new superintendent and the focus on learning, community, character and joy
• Implementation of CCSS and integration of digital resources into content areas
• Leveraging Google Apps and other web resources for student learning including WeVideo, VoiceThread, Discovery Streaming, LucidChart, and Hapara Teacher Dasboard
• Hosting site visits with over 150 visitors from around the US
• A successful technology leadership series
• Hosting the 2nd annual SC Midlands Summit
• Meeting many others who are on similar journeys through my PLN and conferences like the International 1:1 Computing Conference
• Oh, and I worked a LOT

As I enter into 2014, I’m excited about continuing on the journey. I look forward to lots of things:

• Helping our R2 Innovates teams get started with innovations
• Continuing to work with teachers to fully integrate our digital resources into 21st century learning environments
• Delving deeper with the new technology leadership series and a focus on 21st century skills and the CCSS
• Connecting some of our families with home Internet access through Kajeet
• Further developing my PLN with new global connections
• Hosting the third annual SC Midlands Summit
• Creating online courses with new tools like Versal
• Continuing to learn through participation in conferences, webinars, and reading

I look forward to sharing my experiences in 2014 as my district continues on the road to awesome!