Navigation North

Sometimes I am not even sure where to begin. Here are some examples of a subject directories from websites where educational resources are organized and provided for teachers to browse through to find things they are looking to use in class…or perhaps parents are wanting to help their kids with homework:

 

Depending on who you talk to in our discipline, they are referred to as Ontologies, Taxonomies, Controlled Vocabularies, Subject Directories, Topic Lists, or as one specialist emailed me, (in response to my question of, “Do you know of a widely accepted/adopted list of educational topic terms that span K-12 we might deploy as a start point to our work with Learning Registry?”)

I am not sure I understand your question about Topic…A more precise way to define the ’topic’ is with the AlignmentObject in LRMI / Learning Standard Item Association in CEDS, I.e. To show relationship to one or more competencies defined in a set of learning standards or other educational framework. With “Learning Standard Item Association Type” (LRMI: Alignment Type) specifying that the resource “teaches”, “assesses”, etc.

So….that’s awesome. Here’s the deal, a primary teacher wants to find something online that has to do with the role Bees play in the pollination process. And of course, in the Next Generation Science Standards (as in many standards that pre-dated them) there is a specific calling for students to know, “Plants depend on animals for pollination or to move their seeds around.” (Gr. 2).

And let’s say, somewhere else, a really cool project like Wonderopolis produces a great set of resources to help teachers cover just that topic with the following item: http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/how-many-flowers-can-a-bee-pollinate/

So then, we here at Navigation North, are asked to help the USDOE make an easy tool for agencies like Wonderopolis above, to categorize and share their great resources so that they appear in common areas where lots of teachers are looking for things. So you end up looking at two (2) things…

1. What would be the typical topic/term, that teachers would naturally select, to find that above resource on Bees?
2. Once you’ve decided on a good term or set of terms (Pollinators, Bees, Insects, etc), you then have to determine what Wonderopolis and other sites with educational materials use as terminology to categorize their materials.

So in order to support this connection, we determined that the tool we are designing needs its own list of subjects as a search framework to help find the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of educational resources that are published by the HUNDREDS of projects and agencies that create them. The list needs to be well-understood, clear, and fairly open so that groups submitting their materials can cross-connect their materials to it easily. As such, Learning Registry, becomes a centralized data-structure for information about all of these great resources out there on the web. But making that list is more difficult than it first seems. Not that the average person working in education can’t noodle through creating a typical topic director of subjects, but it becomes an issue of making sure your list is broad enough to accommodate everything out there, and then you have to contend with the question of how specific, or granular to make your list of subjects.

There is English stuff, Math stuff, Science stuff, and History stuff right? Sure, that’s a good start. Oh but, you must remember Foreign Language stuff, Physical Education stuff, Music stuff, and Arts stuff. Oh, don’t let us forget Career and Technical Education which then has sub-sets for items like Engineering, Hospitality and Tourism, Health Careers, Auto Technology, Culinary, Interior Design, Animation Design, etc, etc, etc. AND each of those areas, let’ say Math, can then be broken down into Algebra, Geometry, Statistics, Ratios, Shapes…which can be broken down into Circles, Spheres, Cubes, Triangles….which can be broken down into Right Triangles, Isosceles Triangles, or Equilateral Triangles, etc, etc, etc.

So, we can just try to make up our own most comprehensive list of educational topic terms that most teachers would be able to intelligently navigate to find what they need (Say a Bee resource for 2nd grade). And then consider how an agency or project might tag or identify that same resource and hope there is some congruence. Ya right! The topics list we found in existence on the tool handed off to us was like this as shown below (Yes, you are reading it correctly below with Countries and Continents then broke out as Africa / Arctic, Antarctica /Other Countries & Continents then Foreign Languages <no sub-sets included> and then World History differentiated by China / Russia, Soviet Union / Other, World History) It’s just random and odd in its designations.

In the end, nobody seems to be able to point us to a fairly clear, comprehensive, agreed upon, or just generally acceptable list of terms for education to define the types of activities, resources, lessons, worksheets, images, handouts, or whatever. It shouldn’t be that complex, let’s just categorize stuff in relation to whether its helping students learn osmosis, the American Revolution, exponents, or appropriate use of metaphors and similes. I mean, this process should be less of a mountain, and more like a mole-hill. (Get it?)

In the end, we created our own list researching and drawing heavily off of many known lists and related efforts, the CCSS, the NGSS, the C3 framework, some work from Australia, the Common Education Data Standards, the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative, and some other weird little fiefdoms. Expect what we publish to be categorized under “Education-related work that should have been concluded 30 years ago that took place between the Arctic and Antarctic in a language other than Chinese that did not lend to the tangling alliances that led to World War II or involve the Pythagorean Theorem”

Here is a prototype of our list as a google spreadsheet for comments and feedback.

Click here for Subjects List

How much student data should leave the campus in order to generate a clearer picture of performance and potentially help in calibrating resources and materials for learning more precisely? Well, that gets pretty tricky, pretty quickly…here at your humble little Navigation North Learning Solutions office (aka, NavNorth) tucked away in far Northern California we have been quietly working on a related, national project the last few months and have some thoughts.

Referred to in Washington DC as the Learning Registry project, and growing momentum now nationally and internationally across top education agencies, the aim is to make more DATA about the diverse, cool stuff on the Internet designed for learning… more available and searchable to schools. So while debates and rhetoric ramp up about the amount of student performance DATA that should be allowed to leave the school site and be made available to agencies that make educational resources for students, we have been focusing our efforts on making more and more DATA about the learning resources more available back to the school. But don’t take my word for it, listen to U.S. Education Department’s Director of Education Technology, Richard Culatta explain how that could happen at the national Datapalooza event this year.

So here is the deal…

• Did you know that each year hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars goes out to agencies, states, universities, groups, teams, designers, scientists, researchers, (like Smithsonian, NASA, Univ. of Colorado, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, etc)…all to build cool, interesting, engaging, learning resources for students in grades from pre-school through high school?
• Did you also know that they are absolutely free and most teachers and principals and parents don’t know anything about most of those things, or where they are, or what concepts or topics they support?
• Did you know that in California alone, we have dedicated over $2 billion dollars to making sure that we have Internet to all of our schools and almost all of our classrooms along with devices (computers, laptops, tablets) to access and use these materials, but we largely don’t?

We are working on this. So far, the Learning Registry has captured data on over 400,000 educational items for schools. So when a teacher or a parent or even a student wants to learn how to find the Area of a Circle (Which happens to be a grade 7 Common Core Math Standard), you can certainly get returns like these that are good and free:

• Discovering the Area Formula for Circles – Illuminations-NCTM
• Find the Area of a Circle – Learnzillion
• Area of a Circle – Khan Academy
• Area of a Circle – Better Lesson

And less returns like these that are dated, or require an expensive textbook:

• Measuring Circles – Prentice Hall Mathematics
• Finding the Area of a Circle Lesson – Study Zone

Well, we will get back to another cup of coffee and keep working at it until a bit more snow falls and beckons us to the slopes (or more realistically, one of our own kids needs some help finding an area of a triangle….hmmm, where to search for help on that one?).

This is a short one until I get a bit more time to write on some big items developing in the realm of education.

As most know, I have a fondness for companies that develop software, applications, etc for non-education markets…and have now grown excited enough about education as a consolidated vertical to re-design and re-brand their thinly veiled existing asset (resume builder, professional portfolio tool, event management software, document organization app, etc.) as a curriculum tool or online courseware engine. And it is especially delightful to see mis-informed venture capitalists and investors pour funding onto these half-baked amalgams without ever checking if anyone involved knows or has any experience whatsoever with education.

One of my favorite offenders who has received millions and millions of such funding for a very poorly considered “course tool” sent out a communication today across the ed.tech sphere that is just too delicious to not share. Like most companies of their ilk, this group regularly sends out “urgent news” of new, ambiguous features supported with obvious dictums like “We here at <insert clueless company name> believe students should be given an opportunity to learn.” However, while today’s sample graces us with that very aforementioned rhetorical simplicity, it also provides us a lead paragraph on their new “Submission Reflections” feature in which 3 of the 5 sentences would receive a failing grade from any middle school English teacher. Enjoy:

To truly deepen reflective learning, students need to provide more than the right answer. They should understand the process and why something the right answer. We have added an engaging way for students to reflect on every submission they make. This feature incorporates elements of gamification aimed at promoting student’s development of proactive reflection and critical thinking skills. Educators are also be given the choice of requiring their students to reflect on the quality of their work based on each criteria of an assignment’s rubric.

I’m thinking that they should run this very piece of writing through their own Submission Reflection tool a few more times. Nice work team; you get a “d’oh” badge.

 

Navigation North recently submitted a proposal and was selected to lead the next evolution of the federal Learning Registry project for the United States Department of Education. We are happy to build upon and join both SRI and ADL in continuing to make more digital resources readily accessible to the pursuit of life-long learning and education.

Concluding our first meeting with the USDOE Office of Educational Technology, we will be working directly with various national STEM and science education teams along with a number of agencies producing high-quality instructional resources across the nation. We look forward to the collective expertise the Office of Educational Technology and their partner content authoring agencies bring to the ongoing needs of our schools, teachers, and students moving forward.

Look for more information coming soon as we begin this journey with some of the nation’s most talented thought-leaders in the arena of digital resource identification and distribution in support of education. In addition to supporting the Learning Registry, Navigation North will be responsible for extending the web services and resource dissemination design and efforts of the national Science Education site as a directive from the White House in their ongoing commitment to increasing student access to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) curriculum as well as implementing new features for the Office of Ed. Tech’s site surrounding these initiatives.

I’ve been hesitant to weigh-in on the MOOC phenomena. Massive Open Online Courses for those that are not familiar with the acronym. I have read many exciting announcements from the post-secondary side of the tracks regarding its promise to “open” education. I have tried to take a balanced look at the feverish assertions that MOOCs are aiming to topple long-standing delivery modes of traditional education. I’ve listened to the likes of Anant Agarway (President of edX from MIT) and Sebastian Thrun (CEO of Udacity from Stanford) claim MOOCs as a model that will democratize education and transform learning. I’ve created accounts and tried sample courses in Udemy, edX, Coursera, and Udacity. I was interested in gauging how they collectively present information, structure learning, engage the learner, stimulate inquiry, personalize experiences, and monitor success.

The formula seems pretty common across these platforms and their coursework:

1. The Instructor (or instructors) authors and organizes instructional content as the principal learning material.
2. Content takes the form of video lecture of instructor talking or narrated media (typically white board with instructor writing and drawing as they talk) or print content similar to a text book, perhaps with some embedded media combining the above.
3. Informal Assessment tends to take place in the form of discussion items where you openly reflect on and write up responses to ideas, situations, or devise solutions, and then of course there is the full litany of simple quizzes (t/f, multiple choice, short response)
4. Formalized Assessment is primarily delivered in the form of test questions much the same way quizzes are. In some instances you are asked to submit code in a programming course for instance, or identify elements on an image or graphic such as locations on a map or parts of a cell, or submit a larger written piece addressing a topic, etc.
5. The learners experience is machine graded in most instances, and at times, receives human review for more summative, open-ended written response items. A certificate, or badge, or credit is offered based on completion, performance, or a combination therein.

Here’s what I DO find intriguing about these MOOC environments and instructional approaches…Some of them, like Udacity, do a nice job with their visual display in which the instructors draw out problems and concepts on a clear glass-like surface and then render those same handwritten items as quiz questions for the learner response by clicking and answering on the screen in which they were drawn.

Here’s what I DON’T find intriguing about MOOCs…everything else.

I did find them intriguing at one point, and that point ended about 2005. From 1995 through 2005 I was involved in developing online courses for educators in the use of technology to enrich classroom instruction. The team I was a part of developed about 25 stand-alone courses representing hundreds of credit hours. (see image, and note AOL icon for historical reference)

We ultimately supported upwards of 40,000 educators across the state of California in meeting their training needs through completely asynchronous, autonomous online courses. There was lots of content, too many threaded discussions, quizzes, and portfolios of “learning artifacts”. I’ll admit we did some janky stuff in the name of online learning for sure. But in those early years, we were excited about the prospects of creating more authentic, rich, personalized learning experiences for learners with each evolution of technology. We knew that every year the versatility of assessments, the amount of access to rich, non-centrally produced content, and the levels of integrated learner data would increase and aid in the evolution of online learning.

I am historically proud of much of that early work, but professionally embarrassed at our attempts back then to structure learning experiences in a truly independent online environment. We came up with some well-intended but lame approaches. However, I do recognize it as an awkward point in time that inevitably must occur. As with most new endeavors, the early floundering is a necessary step towards improved understanding and eventually towards improved models.

Here’s the problem; a decade later, MOOCs do not strike me as a substantially improved model. They do seem different in terms of the content transitioning from print to video…but fairly unaltered in relation to the important stuff like instructional design, instructional delivery, and authentic assessment. The learner is still largely cast as an uninspired, isolated, passive receiver of content who is intervened upon at times via simple quizzes. There is little cognitive sophistication, or talk of engaging learners in applied action within their communities or campuses as conditions of the courses. The tools developed try to poorly mimic interactions and engagements that occur in the traditional classroom, which in and of itself was already deemed isolated, possessing limited means for integrated learning. At one point a decade ago, our conversations all resonated around transcending the classroom through better models. Models that connected learners to one another, to unique local experiences as tethered to global movements. We targeted lecture as the dominant instructional method in a desire to supplant it with more inquiry-based structures that do more to engage the learner’s interest and unique applications of the knowledge. It was to recognize that the conventions of a classroom present a set of limited means by which to connect learning to the world of information at large and to our own experiences and relevance on a very personal level.

So what new things have MOOCs introduced to an ongoing revolution in education? Well, I guess per their title, they are Massive, their Openness seems to be questionable in most instances, they are obviously Online, and they do possess all the traditional rigidity of a Course…So maybe MOOCs are basically what they claim to be, a scalable machination of the traditional post-secondary education system. And maybe the ideals of radically transforming the educational experience, that many of us have long attributed as being most attainable in the digital environment, have been mistakenly placed upon MOOCs.

Sorry this didn’t work out the way we hoped it would MOOCs, it’s definitely not you, it’s us.

I have found that much of the rhetoric around Common Core State Standards are quite mythical. Based on some of the articles, you would have to believe the CCSS represent some dark, underworld’ish effort to bring human-kind under malevolent control.

One Ring <Common Core Standards> to rule them all,
One Ring <Common Core Standards> to find them,
One Ring <Common Core Standards> to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them.

Beyond that though, the mis-information should be a point of concern to those that value real discourse over regurgitated fallacies, authentic inspection and dialogue over artificial divisiveness and political manipulation. Last week, our own hometown weekly posted an opinion piece by a fellow citizen cautioning our town, and all of California for that matter, to beware the dreaded Common Core State Standards for the types of personal data they are designed to collect for each and every student across the country to create a national database for the government to use in tracking our children. I submitted a rebuttal that was published the following week. In it, I pointed out that Common Core identifies that 6th graders should be able to “Determine a central idea of a text and how it is conveyed through particular details; provide a summary of the text distinct from personal opinions or judgments.” I trust he understood what I was implying, but perhaps not.

It is important to see the standards for what they are, a set of clear skills that begin with foundational concepts in the areas of Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening, and Math at the early grade levels that then develop in complexity as they move up through grade 12. I think most of them represent reasonable, sound expectations for teachers and kids to be engaged in for a 4th of their school day. (They only represent two subject areas of the 7-8 subjects most schools support on any given day) I don’t agree with the level of rigor of some of the standards introduced at a given grade level, and question whether students who have no interest or inclination in becoming fictional writers should be expected to write creatively enough to utilize “narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, description, reflection, and multiple plot lines, to develop experiences, events, and/or characters.” as a condition of going to college or entering the work-place. Regardless, a real conversation about the standards proves to be elusive when a local political hack or a nationally recognized educational expert like Diane Ravitch who recently wrote an article (The Biggest Fallacy of the Common Core Standards) condemning the new standards on a number of fronts, devolves the conversation into meaningless polarizations tertiary to the standards themselves.

• They will cause our students to question their own abilities
• They are written in stone and can not be ammended by states
• They will marginalize the individuality of a given teacher’s instructional style
• They will be used to help the government track students’ personal information
• They will not bolster students’ access to college
• They will not increase students’ success in careers
• They will not aid in our country’s economic recovery
• They will not stimulate more students opting to take Math and Science-based courses
• They will not help strengthen the security of our nation

She goes on to imply that states like Massachusetts were made to abandon their existing, exemplary standards as a means of securing large amounts of federal money in a manipulative move made by the US Dept. of Education. No they were not. States (including Mass.) participated and led in the very development of these standards, and were even then allowed to autonomously:

1. review them against their existing standards and consider adopting them as is,
2. take the CCSS and further modify them by up to 15% and then adopt,
3. revise their own standards to make them at least as rigorous as the CCSS, or
4. independently determine that their own existing standards are as, or more rigorous than the CCSS and document that analysis as proof

In the end, the claims lambasting the Common Core State Standards are not synonymous with the central rationale forwarded by the politically pluralistic team that created them . The Core Standards authors have openly made their mission statement available for all to review from the beginning:

The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.

We have worked with many of the “CCSS insiders” in various capacities and do know that years of work went into reviewing a number of state’s existing standards considered to be the best in our nation. The teams reviewing those standards were made up of a cross-section of pre-K to post-secondary educators, educational leaders, business and industry leaders, and were all gathered at the request of state governors and states’ schools superintendents from both red and blue states equally. They were asked to take the best of the existing academic standards for schools, keep what was still relevant, remove what was archaic, revise and add skills necessary to both aid students interested in attending college and ultimately in participating in the types of 21st century careers needed to keep our country competitive economically. I will admit that, with the diversity of people serving on these teams, I quietly assumed that they would stale-mate on almost all levels due to long-standing political and philosophical differences. In retrospect, it is both quite amazing that did not happen and at the same time, quite believable they were able to accomplish a very rare unity of purpose in developing these standards.

What all seemed to recognize as one of the biggest detriments of our current education system was the severe disparity in academic expectations existing across schools from state to state. Some students were required to take at least 3 full years of math including Algebra and Geometry as a graduation requirement while others were allowed to exit our K-12 system with a rudimentary understanding of multiplication and basic fractions. While some districts required students to read and write with an eye for critical and factual analysis and at the same time include in their schedule at least two years of fine or technical arts ranging from graphic design to welding, other schools cut most of the liberal and industrial arts programs that spoke to students’ own interests and aptitudes. The bi-partisan work unified long-time political opponents and competing educational theorists in assuring that every student, including those attending Armite Elementary in rural Liberty Mississippi, or Sonora High School in the foothills of central California, or P.S. 179 in the heart of South Bronx have similar expectations and skills that their teachers and educational institutions are expected to provide them. These standards do not represent a set of subversive skills, as claimed by folks like Karen Bracken who heads up Tennessee Against Common Core, but largely resemble much of what any parent would want their student to encounter as part of a well-developed education:

• 1st Grade Reading: Describe characters, settings, and major events in a story, using key details.
• 3rd Grade Math: Represent and solve problems involving multiplication and division.
• 6th Grade Writing: Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.
• High School Math: Use volume formulas for cylinders, pyramids, cones, and spheres to solve problems.

As I stated earlier, I am not in love with all of these standards and feel like the measures in place to discuss and debate them should be exercised by concerned and informed citizens. I would merely ask that anyone interested in reading articles regarding the standards (pro or con) should spend at least the same amount of time reading the standards themselves. And those penning opinions should definitely consider keeping the ink in their instruments until their basis of understanding is more fact than fiction.

I do not see the standards as perfect yet, but I do see them as hope. Hope that each child’s school can be tailored to fit the aspirations of its community, framed to support the values of its families, and at the same time adhere to some “common” expectations that provide all students a pathway to the academic skills and competencies that are advantageous to gaining access to college and/or a respectable wage in a meaningful profession. And while they obviously don’t assure those things will happen in and of themselves, they do set a framework to assure that the opportunity exists regardless of where a given school is and how it is. They acknowledge that each student can and should be allowed access to dream without being inhibited at the outset by the thinking and the borders of the community in which they live. And that is worth examining and discussing with more legitimacy and less rhetoric.