Author Archives: lucaslongo

Teacher PD – Final Presentation

After a very long weekend of deep research and exploration into Online Teacher Professional Development, I finalized the presentation and delivered to the class. It was well received with a high point commentary from Janet (professor) that “it is a very challenging topic that was well explored and presented.”

Here it is:

Teacher PD – Final – Research Notes

oTPD (Online Teacher Professional Development

NGSX – Next Generation Science Exemplar System for Professional Development

History

June 2012 started partnering with
- School districts
- State departments of education
- Informal science education providers
- Math/science partnerships
- 9 states to pilot the beta version of the NGSX
  - “Argumentation, Explanation, and Modeling the Behavior of Matter.”
The Mosakowski Institute for Public Enterprise at Clark University
Sarah Michaels: Clark University and Tidemark Institute Associate
Jean Moon: Tidemark Institute
Brian J. Reiser: Northwestern University and Tidemark Institute Associate

Target

K-12 Science Education
Based on National Research Council’s (NRC) “A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas”

Description

“NGSX (Next Generation Science Exemplar System) is a face-to-face learning environment, in which the participants in a study group draw on an on-line system that poses tasks for each session and provides rich cases, supportive materials, and scaffolding tools to guide the work.”
“teachers support students in using science and engineering practices to develop, apply, and refine disciplinary and crosscutting ideas. Teachers engage in these practices and investigate classroom cases to explore how to bring these approaches into their own classrooms.”
3 hour units
Period of 10 weeks
Facilitator has his or her laptop connected to a projector for the group to view video and task prompts embedded in the site.
An introductory video
- a teacher, scientist, or researcher
- theme for the unit
  - Nature of modeling
  - Support for classroom discourse
  - Difficulties students face in reasoning about the nature of matter
Include classroom cases to analyze
- 5 min clips of teachers and students engaged in modeling practices
- Prompts for discussion
  - Modeling tasks
  - Student thinking
  - Teaching strategies
- Work to do between sessions
  - Readings about the science practices
  - Readings about students’ learning of the subject matter
  - Directions to try out aspects of what they have learned in the participants’ own classrooms

Professional learning system

Digital resources
Guided activities
Interactivity with colleagues

Encourages a mix of participants

K-12 teachers
Administrators
Science coaches
Higher education pre-service faculty

Major ideas

NRC Framework
Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)

Theoretical Underpinning

Community of inquiry framework

Research Tool

3D learning
Enactment in classroom

Learning pathway for facilitators

Create and support a knowledge-building culture
Teacher leaders, coaches, and PD providers
Model of peer-leadership in PD that scales

NGSX Design Approach

Instead of learning about NGSS, teachers are learning to teach with NGSS
- Organize PD around teacher sensemaking of classroom cases
- Focus on high leverage practices: engaging in argumentation to develop and use explanatory models.
- Organize teacher study groups working to apply reforms to their own practice
- Combine focus on science, student thinking, and pedagogy
- Develop capacity for peer-led facilitation

NGSX Pathways

Argumentation, Explanation, and Modeling the Behavior of Matter: Supports teacher learning about modeling, argumentation and explanation in the context of disciplinary core ideas about the nature of matter.
- Units 1-3: Modeling and three-dimensional learning. Teachers develop and use models to explain matter phenomena (science) and explore how this reflects the shifts in the Framework and NGSS (science pedagogy).
- Unit 4: Analyzing classroom cases to learn to build a discourse community to support modeling, argumentation, and explanation (student learning, science pedagogy).
- Unit 5: Teachers analyze a high school classroom case of student developing and refining models to explain air pressure phenomena (student learning, science pedagogy).
- Unit 6: Teachers analyze a middle school classroom case of students engaging in argumentation to develop particle model of matter (student learning, science pedagogy).
- Units 7-8: Taking it back to our own classrooms: Teachers work in teams to adapt existing instructional units to integrate science and engineering practices (science pedagogy). (Currently a face to face workshop, now being embedded in two NGSX units)
The Facilitator Pathway: Supports facilitation strategies to guide productive discussion in teacher study groups, and to help teachers grapple with the challenges of incorporating three dimensional learning into their own classrooms.
Additional pathways targeted for development include a pathway in life sciences in which teachers learn to support students in argumentation, explanation, and modeling population interactions and natural selection.

More Research

NGSX:

Penuel, W. R. (2015). Infrastructuring As a Practice for Promoting Transformation and Equity in Design-Based Implementation Research.

Some teachers took went through some of the NGSX sessions
Challenges of research
- High turnover in large districts
- Shifting assignments with disregard to teacher’s background or experience
- “These lead not just to high levels of attrition in research studies; they undercut investments by district and school leaders in subject-matter focused initiatives aimed at improving teaching and learning (Shear & Penuel, 2010).” (Penal, 2015)

Smart, S. T. E. M., & Schools, L. L. F. S. (2016). Teaching and Learning Under the Next Generation Science Standards.

Two initiatives combine technology-enabled case analysis within a study-group format
- Science Teachers Learning through Lesson Analysis (STeLLA)
- NGSX

TAPED IN:

Fusco, J., Gehlbach, H., & Schlager, M. (2000). Assessing the impact of a large-scale online teacher professional development community. InSociety for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference (Vol. 2000, No. 1, pp. 2178-2183).

TAPED IN
- closed in 2013
- Recommends EdModo
Full research on this – maybe use this as the focus?

Fusco, J., Haavind, S., Remold, J., & Schank, P. (2011). Exploring differences in online professional development seminars with the community of inquiry framework. Educational Media International, 48(3), 139-149.

4 sessions of 2 professional development seminars were offered to members of an organization.
The seminars were voluntary, free of charge, and participants did not receive credit for their attendance
Community of inquiry framework
- Essential elements of an educational experience:
  - Social presence
    - How members share and interact
  - Cognitive presence
    - Engaging with the content:
      - Brainstorming
      - Exploring topics
      - Integrating information
      - Constructing understanding
      - Reflection and dialogue about understandings.
  - Teaching presence
    - Sustains the learning experience
    - Encourages inquiry
    - Consists of:
      - Design
      - Facilitation
      - Direct instruction
Findings
- First year
  - Did not figure out how to motivate participants
- Second year
  - Corrected with more interventions
  - Demonstrated the importance of seminar leader or facilitator
  - Initial activities must provide easy success
  - Motivated participants help increase social and cognitive presence in inquiry discussions
  - Social presence = higher satisfaction ratings
- Supports CoI framework as a planning tool for the development of seminars

Farooq, U., Schank, P., Harris, A., Fusco, J. & Schlager, M. (2007). Sustaining a community computing infrastructure for online teacher professional development: A case study of designing Tapped In. Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 16(4-5), 397-429. Norwell, MA: Klewer Academic Publishers.

Design principles used to design 4 interventions on Tapped In
- Amy Jo Kim’s (2000) design principles that characterize successful, sustainable online communities:
  - Build flexible, extensible gathering places.
  - Design for a range of roles.
  - Develop a strong leadership program
  - Facilitate member-run subgroups
  - Create and maintain feedback loops
Conceptual components utilized:
- Multiple interaction formats and technologies.
  - Support work practices of large numbers of different groups
  - Enable users to know with whom they are interacting and what is going on around them
  - Allow users to create, store, and share discourse objects (e.g., notes, overhead slides)
  - Communicate in real time or asynchronously, as the need arises
  - Engage in group activities hosted by designers as well as their own circle of colleagues
- Identity and trust.
- Ownership and empowerment
- Heterogeneity
- Community management, leadership, and sustainability.
Research Method
- Participatory design (PD)
  - Socio-technical systems theory (Mumford 1983)
    - Importance of including the membership of a community in the design process

Online PD Offerings:

ASCD: http://www.ascd.org/

Positive
- Global and long standing
- Members – constituents, journals, videos, conferences, institutes, onsite and online PD programs
- Focused on PD
- Wide range of content offering & well organized
  - What we teach
  - How we teach
  - Who we teach
  - How we lead
- All modes
  - Online
  - On-Site
  - Blended
  - Literature
Negative
- Could not find research done on it

Edmodo: https://www.edmodo.com

Positive
- Many digital tools available
  - Classroom management
  - Calendar
  - Community creation tools
  - App marketplace
  - Integration to Cloud Services
Negative
- Now overarching teaching or learning framework
- More of a tool than an set of learning resources
- Poor quality of content materials

PBS TeacherLine: http://www.pbs.org/teacherline/

Positive
- Facilitated and self-paced
- Beginning and experienced teachers
- Research based
- Award winning
Negative
- Graduate & CEU credits upon verification of a higher-ed institute
- Only one research partner
- Free course had no videos – just basically formatted text
- Old fashioned navigation

ReadWriteThink http://www.readwritethink.org

Positive
- Marketplace for resources
  - Classroom resources
  - Parent & Afterschool resources
  - Links to Online PD programs
- Strong partnerships
  - NCTE
Negative
- Very little videos
- Little content
- No community building tool

The University of North Dakota: PD for Educators http://educators.und.edu

Positive
- Marketplace for several online PD programs

Intel Education: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/education/intel-education.html

Self-paced but old-school

Annenberg Learner http://learner.org

All free material
Tons of content
Well organized
All modes

Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/teachers/professionaldevelopment/

Free content
Limited online self-paced material
Mostly PDFs

TeacherFirst http://www.teachersfirst.com/

Free resources
Links to several other providers

University of the Pacific http://www.pacific.edu/Academics/Professional-and-Continuing-Education/Courses-for-Teachers.html

Several courses online self-paced

University of Phoenix http://www.phoenix.edu

All online

University of Wisconsin STOUT http://www.uwstout.edu/soe/profdev/courses.cfm

Online Graduate Course

Professional Development Institute https://www.webteaching.com

Online PD + tools to be used in the classroom

Sophia https://www.sophia.org/professional-development

Online PD

Harvard GSE Online Programs https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ppe/programs/online

The Teacher’s Academy http://www.theteachersacademy.com

The Heritage Institute http://www.hol.edu

CE Credits Online http://www.cecreditsonline.org/

International Baccalaureate Online PD http://www.ibo.org/professional-development/which-type-of-training-is-right-for-me/online-pd/

Adam State University Colorado https://www.adams.edu/extended_studies/professional-development/

TeachingChannel https://www.teachingchannel.org/

PepperPD https://www.pepperpd.com/ in association with WestEd https://www.wested.org/)

Professional Learning Board http://k12teacherstaffdevelopment.com/tlb/

TeachMe PD http://www.teachmeceus.com

San Francisco State University https://cel.sfsu.edu/education

Stanford Center for Professional Development http://scpd.stanford.edu/

New White Board

Was missing an analogue area to brainstorm on… finally took the plunge and got one 🙂

LDT Seminar – Week 10 – Class Notes

Due to the success of Graph Learner in the BBA Expo and my enthusiasm towards building and evolving the app, I voiced my temptation of switching my Master’s Project to it.

The LXD platform aims at creating virtual agents that help instructors along the process of creating online courses. It is a very interesting problem to tackle but has a limited scope in so far as scale and potential impact.

Graph Learner on the other hand could impact a much wider population, it’s scalable, has the potential for a real revenue stream, and teaches essential skills needed by all students and even adults.

“Pay attention to what you are enthusiastic about,” said one of my colleagues.

So this is what I will be reflecting upon over the Spring Break 🙂

LXS vs. Graph Learner.

Beyond Bits and Atoms – Graph Learner Final Project

Graph Learner is ready… we show cased it at the BBA Expo… se the presentation below

And so it the report!

Curriculum Construction – Final Presentation

After some planning:

We created and presented our work:

Final paper due next Wednesday, along with our Process Log and the individual Reading Reflection 3! Uff…

Teacher PD – Week 10 – Class Notes

Group Presentation

National Writing Project
Writing assignment
- Prompt
  - What do you think about prior to developing a writing assignment?
- Response (5 minutes to do it)
  - First thing I would do is create a learning objective for the assignment and a rubric for assessing it. I would share this with the students and ask if they understand the assessment and prompt for any suggestions or things they might want to change. I would then show some examples of quality work and have them assess them using the rubric. Lastly I will ask them to list 3 topics they might want to write about. Finally, I would show them some techniques of how to structure their writing in terms of content and flow of ideas.
- Share with peer
  - Interesting: teacher would do an initial draft then work with the students to polish it up

2nd half

National Academy of Sciences Expert Committee Reports (nap.edu)
The New Teacher Training Program (tntp.org)
National Education Policy Center (nepc.colorado.edu)

Hilda’s tips on oTPD

Christopher Dede
Teaching channel – https://www.teachingchannel.org/
Teach tube – https://www.teachertube.com/
Teachscape – https://www.teachscape.com
TERC – https://www.terc.edu

Teacher PD – Week 10 – Reading Notes

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2015). Science Teachers Learning: Enhancing Opportunities, Creating Supportive Contexts. Committee on Strengthening Science Education through a Teacher Learning Continuum. Board on Science Education and Teacher Advisory Council, Division of Behavioral and Social Science and Education. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. [Read Summary, Chapters 6 & 9; also recommended: Chapter 8]

“A Nation at Risk” – book
- Warned of the risks of neglecting improvements in the quality of teaching in public schools
- Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) was a response to the book
Teachers are the ones who will deliver these new standards
Conclusions
- Will require teachers to alter the way they teach
- Teachers do not have adequate CK
- Teacher PD is selected and opted-in by individual teachers
- Teachers need better preparation
  - Differentiation
  - CK
  - PCK
- PD programs features
  - Analysis of own practice and student work
  - Content focused
  - Alignment with district policies and practices
  - Duration
- Online PD is effective
- Learning occurs within and outside of school
  - PD
  - Learning communities
  - Coaching
  - etc…
- Schools need to be supportive of PD
- PD must be contextualized
- Administration’s support is central to advance learning
- Teacher leaders – support and train new
- Closing the gap – must attend to teacher’s different learning needs
- US lacks a coherent and well-articulated system for PD
Recommendations for Practice and Policy
- Understand what are the current teacher learning opportunities
- Support teacher PD within own context
- PD outside of school and embedded in the work day
- Use research-based PD
  - Clear learning goals for teachers
  - Content specific
  - Student specific
  - Link to classroom instruction analysis
  - Interact with peers
  - Analyze data on student’s learning
  - Opportunities for collaboration
- Develop internal capacity & partner with external expertise
- Revise policies to encourage teacher learning opportunities
- Explore new formats and media for teacher learning
Chapter 6 – Professional Development Programs
- Definition
  - Purposefully designed to support particular kinds of teacher change
  - Include a focused, multi day session for teachers that takes place outside of the teacher’s classroom or school
  - May include follow-up opportunities over the school year
  - Have a finite duration (although they can take place over a period of 2 to 3 years)
- Several PD opportunities in catalogue (over 1000 in 1 year)
  - Disjointed and incoherent
- Core features of research-based PD
  - Focus on content
    - Subject matter content
    - How students learn that content
  - Active learning
    - Observing expert teachers
    - Reviewing student work
    - Leading discussions
  - Coherence with learning activities
    - Aligned with other learning opportunities
    - Aligned with school, district, and state policies
- Structural features of research-based PD
  - Form of the activity
  - Collective participation of teachers from the same school, grade, or subject
  - Duration of the activity
    - Total number of hours
    - Span of time
- Summary
  - PD can lead to sustainable changes in teacher’s knowledge and beliefs and their instruction
  - Little research that links directly to student outcomes – but seems to work
  - More to add to the consensus model
    - Content learning is intertwined with pedagogical activities such as analysis of practice. (Heller et al., 2012; Roth et al., 2011).
    - Analysis of student learning – artifacts of practice: student work and lesson videos (Greenleaf et al., 2011; Heller et al., 2012; Roth et al., 2011)
    - Focus on teaching strategies (Greenleaf et al., 2011; Johnson and Fargo, 2010; Penuel et al., 2011; Roth et al., 2011).
    - Reflect on and grapple with challenges to their current practice (Greenleaf et al., 2011; Johnson and Fargo, 2010; Penuel et al., 2011; Roth et al., 2011).
    - Scaffolded by knowledgeable professional development leaders (Greenleaf et al., 2011; Heller et al., 2012; Penuel et al., 2011; Roth et al., 2011).
    - Analytical tools support collaborative, focused, and deep analysis of science teaching, student learning, and science content (Greenleaf et al., 2011; Roth et al., 2011).
  - Must have better designed PD research
    - Research Design
      - “Few studies used strong research designs incorporating pre-post measures of both sets of outcomes shown in Figure 6-1 (teachers’ knowledge and instruction and students’ learning) and a control or comparison group.”
    - Research Scope and missing data
      - No studies look at schools organization and context
      - No studies look at role and expertise of PD providers and facilitators
  - Online Programs
    - Explosion of PD programs offered in this media
    - Still little research on it – early stages
    - Most programs use social constructivist approach
      - Problem-based learning
      - Inquiry-based learning
      - Mentoring
      - Communities of Practice
    - Most research is Qualitative – need more Quantitative?
    - Still need expert guidance and facilitation – open discussion forum is not enough (same as face-to-face efforts)
    - Teachers are more reflective online than on face-to-face
    - Technocentricity – online is not enough – has to be well designed in the first place
- Conclusions
  - Evidence is still not very robust
  - Few studies employ control or comparison groups
  - Most studies look at 1 study, in 1 location, with few volunteer teachers

Chapter 9 – Conclusions, Recommendations, and Directions for Research
- Need better designed PD
- Need better policies and practices in schools
- Need support from Administrators
- Recommendations for Research
  - Create system to collect data on
    - Current workforce
      - Qualifications
      - Experience
      - Preparation
    - General trends and consensus of best-practices
    - PD opportunities
  - Improve research methods
    - Include more quantitative data
    - Use control or comparison groups
  - More research on
    - Professional learning communities
    - Mentoring
    - Coaching
    - Online Learning
    - Teacher Networks
    - Teacher evaluation
    - School Organization
    - School Context
    - Principal and Leaders influence in PD
  - Formal Recommendations
    - 1: Focus Research on Linking Professional Learning to Changes in Instructional Practice and Student Learning
    - 2: Invest in Improving Measures of Science Instruction and Science Learning
    - 3: Design and Implement Research That Examines a Variety of Approaches to Supporting Science Teachers’ Learning
    - 4: Commit to Focusing on Meeting the Needs of Diverse Science Learners Across All Research on Professional Development
    - 5: Focus Research on Exploring the Potential Role of Technology
    - 6: Design and Implement Research Focused on the Learning Needs of Teacher Leaders and Professional Development Providers

The New Teaching Project (2015). The Mirage: Confronting the hard truth about our quest for teacher development. New York: TNTP. [Read through the Recommendations; no need to read appendices.]

Findings (“In short, we bombard teachers with help, but most of it is not helpful—to teachers as professionals or to schools seeking better instruction.)
- Districts are making a massive investment in teacher improvement—far larger than most people realize.
- Despite these efforts, most teachers do not appear to improve substantially from year to year—even though many have not yet mastered critical skills
- Even when teachers do improve, we were unable to link their growth to any particular development strategy.
- School systems are not helping teachers understand how to improve—or even that they have room to improve at all.
Recommendations
- REDEFINE what it means to help teachers improve
  - Define “development” clearly, as observable, measurable progress toward an ambitious standard for teaching and student learning.
  - Give teachers a clear, deep understanding of their own performance and progress.
  - Encourage improvement with meaningful rewards and consequences.
- REEVALUATE existing professional learning supports and programs
  - Inventory current development efforts.
  - Start evaluating the effectiveness of all development activities against the new definition of “development.”
  - Explore and test alternative approaches to development.
  - Reallocate funding for particular activities based on their impact.
- REINVENT how we support effective teaching at scale
  - Balance investments in development with investments in recruitment, compensation and smart retention.
  - Reconstruct the teacher’s job.
  - Redesign schools to extend the reach of great teachers.
  - Reimagine how we train and certify teachers for the job.

Hill, H.C. (2015). Review of The Mirage: Confronting the hard truth about our quest for teacher development. Boulder, CO. National Education Policy Center.

“… public districts invest heavily in teacher professional development, what is offered is often a poor fit to teacher needs and ultimately ineffective as a means to improving teacher evaluation scores.”
“… mis-match between the behaviors rewarded by teacher evaluation and the professional development features…”

Story 2: Fired, Hired, and Inspired by Kathleen Aldred

The story of “Mr.Z”, a ‘late-hire’ who missed the PD and involvement with the the New Teacher Institute
Rowdy students would not respond to his instructions
Previously a chef – received no teacher training
“Do now” strategy to quiet students down – shook hands of all incoming students
Teacher evaluation went bad
Fired
Re-hired by a more ‘progressive’ school

LDT Seminar – Week 9 – Class Notes

Discussed our projects in our regular groups.

My report:

Got an internship next quarter at Stanford’s Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning (VPTL)!! Going to work on the course on creating a course using OpenEdX as the platform! Perfectly aligned with my Master’s Project!
Survey for teachers – fell behind on this one – have to update the questions based on Karin’s feedback and send it out.
Challenges ahead: technical implementation of solution

Then we went to the Cactus Garden to do some group activities… fun : )

Beyond Bits and Atoms – Final Project Notes

Our “Graph Learner” has been getting very positive results and the app development has been coming along nicely.

TO DO

Name sliders
Name axis
Bold x & y when slider is moving
Create levels changer
- y=m*x
  - Control X and Y
- y=m*x+c
  - Adjust c
  - Adjust m
  - Control X and Y
- y=x^2
  - Auto X
  - Control X and Y
- y=sin(x)
  - Auto X
  - Control X and Y
- y=a*sin(x)
  - Auto X
  - Control X and Y
- y=a*sin(b*x)
  - Auto X
  - Control X and Y
- y=a*sin(b*x+c)
  - Auto X
  - Control X and Y
- y=a*sin(b*x+c)+d
  - Auto X
  - Control X and Y

DONE

Axis markings
Labels for x & y values
Home screen with the mode
- y = x
- y = x + b
- y = m * x + b
Baseline turn on or off
Grid lines
Clear drawing button
Auto speed
Draw the trace
Auto x & y
m & b sliders (only in 3rd mode)
sin/cos wave
Table with values
Color code table
Create levels changer
- Demo y=x
  - Auto Y
  - Auto X
  - Control X and Y