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From: [email protected]
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:00:22 -0400
To: [email protected]
CC: [email protected]; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [IAEP] Data vs Critical Thinking - Can Sugar give schools
both?
On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 3:16 PM, Yamandu Ploskonka <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I highly respect you initiatives, Caroline, not just because they
start as a basically good idea, but then you do great
follow-through that I wish I will learn more from. And this is a
great initiative, your email waiting a long time in my inbox
because it was so good I wasn't figuring out how to contribute,
though I felt I needed to at least share a couple thoughts.
Thank you for your kind words :)
Something sort of along these lines I have been pursuing pretty
much since forever, but in my case it has not passed from being a
gedankenexperiment, alas.
My reflection goes along these ways
1) each child (and each teacher!) is unique in abilities,
giftings, potential and actual skills, learning styles...
from this we can infer that "one-size-fits-all" education is not
as good - for the child - as education that fits each child's way.
one-size-fits-all education is cheaper,
The interesting thing is that RTI is actually being implemented as a
cost savings measure in the US. In the US schools often identify up
to 15% of their students as needing "special education". They are then
generally segregated into separate classrooms or pulled out of class
into resource rooms where they receive instruction with highly
qualified teachers in small class sizes. Lots of money is spent on
this but the outcomes for the students are generally extremely poor.
In addition, many students with reading problems are not referred
until they start failing, often around 3rd or 4th grade. The referal
process itself is expensive, involves tests and lots of meetings.
With RTI policy makers are hoping to teach more students in their
normal classroom and remediate learning problems early, reducing
identification of special ed students and reducing costs. Although
the results of the studies show that improves performance for all
students, cost savings by reducing special ed is a major driver in
adoption.
seems to work, is the way it is done everywhere... arguments hard
to beat, though for generations it was SOP, for those who could
afford it, to have tutors to work with their kids one-on-one,
something obviously impractical and impossible to scale-up to the
needs and the rights we recognize now.
enter differentiated instruction, which sadly has meant often some
kind of apartheit, where the "A" tier gets attention, funding, the
best teachers...
Again an interesting cultural difference. In the
US differentiated instruction, when its being used to refer to a
single classroom, seems to usually mean more attention to the lower
performing students.
We do definitely also have tracking where students who test high
enough go to separate classes and receive more of everything. But that
is not what the people here in the US usually
call differentiated instruction.
It is now SOP that there are "better" schools parents fight to get
their kids in. Contrariwise, many classrooms are by design
mixed-things and some sort of forced integration has been a
fashion for a while, and for a while failing schools got more
funding, a trend that took a while to turn around since it was
discovered that it encouraged failure.
Your proposal indicates "more intensive instruction" for the
"students that are struggling", which is nice, no doubt for those,
but maybe unfair to the others. It appears many more "scholar
athletes" lately are getting diagnosed for disorders that allow
them to use chemicals that otherwise are banned... I am concerned
that if the way to get better schooling is to be lower tier, there
might be a rush for it.
Nod, I agree. I think there is a fundamental dilemma that society and
indeed every teacher faces around who gets instructional attention. My
hope working with technology is to raise the general level and the
amount of resources, I don't imagine that we will ever really
eliminate this dilemma.
Interestingly I worry about it on the other side in this case. In the
kindergarten class I observed the struggling students had an hour of
small group phonics lessons. The other students had shorter reading
groups and in the rest of the time they played with blocks, math
games, used computer software and read. I worry about the struggling
students having enough time for exploration and play.
To me our goal needs to create technology that provide the best
possible experiences for students receiving the intensive instruction
and those who are left with more time for individual activities and I
think Sugar can absolutely support both.
Personally I'm more impressed with the data collection and analysis
part of RTI. I the goal I'd like to see us work towards is to sue the
data used to give every student instruction right in their zone of
proximal development and to make it easy for teachers to find
alternative teaching approaches for students who don't respond to the
first way something is taught.
I do think there is power in learning from research
backed pedagogical methods like RTI, especially when
they emphasize something like Data which is a good match for
technology. However, this is a good conversation because part of RTI
is very based in the US public school culture of spending more
resources on special ed students. So we need to dissect it and take
the pieces that create better learning for all students.
Thanks!
Caroline
On 04/20/2010 09:29 AM, Caroline Meeks wrote:
Hi Subbu,
Not off topic in my opinion.
RTI consists of:
1. *Scientific, Research-Based Instruction- Delivered in
Tiers, with students who are struggling getting more intensive
instruction.*
*2. Screening of all students.*
*3. Progress monitoring (about every 2 weeks) for the students
getting the more intensive instruction (the 'intervention').*
*
*
*US based discussions of RTI focus on how it effects the
pipeline to special education. But in many OLPC contexts I
don't think there is a special education to be referred to. I
think if kids can't make it in the general classroom they drop
out. Thus a system that keeps more kids on track is valuable.*
*
*
*Discussions of how to improve instruction is very on topic
for RTI. In RTI terms you could think about it in two ways.
Are the materials part of a Tier I (all students) instruction
or are they for Tier II, for struggling students. The great
thing about technology, be it a laptop or a mp4 player, is
that it could be used in both ways. The whole class could use
it, and we could help teachers match up specific weakness in
students with specific learning objects for a Tier II like
intervention.*
*
*
*I'm focusing a lot on the screening and progress monitoring
pieces of RTI because, thanks to huge, long, high stakes tests
that teachers don't see results back from for months,
assessment has gotten a bad name. RTI assessment is quick
and results are immediate, specific and actionable. *
*
*
*Yes, on the cell phones/hand helds for doing the assessments.
In the US palm pilots are used. I do think setting it up on a
cell phone would be far more economical.*
*
*
*Thanks for responding. :)*
*
*
*Caroline*
On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 9:36 AM, K. K. Subramaniam
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On Tuesday 20 April 2010 06:01:33 am Caroline Meeks wrote:
> Why can't computers for children both give them the
means for creation,
> independent learning, collaboration etc etc. and give
their teacher
> detailed, nuanced, actionable data on what skills they
have mastered and
> what they are still struggling with?
Computer-centric vocabulary is becoming obsolete today.
Talking about
computers today is a bit-like talking about DC/Induction
motors in our homes.
We don't think of mixers, juicers, grinders, washing
machines etc as motor
machines, do we? Kids don't think of mobile phones as
computers. They think
of them as phones, cameras, voice recorders, mp3/mp4
players etc.
>Problem solvers, groundbreaking pioneers and visionary
leaders need to know
>their phonics and their basic math skills. We have the
capability to build
>tools that help teachers know and track which students
are struggling with
>what skills, and provide the collaborative framework for
them to collect
>data and share it to determine what works to teach those
skills to all
>students.
Just a few weeks back, I had a discussion with village
school teachers about
using smart machines to enliven language lessons. The
discussion veered around
using mini-speakers with mp3 player in classrooms. The
players, about 4" cube
take in 2GB USB flash, SD card or micro-SD cards and play
for 5 hours on a
single charge. They cost about $8-$10 here and 2GB card
can easily hold about
four-five years of language lessons. Neither teachers nor
6-9 year olds think
of them as computers.
We could also think of using portable mp4 players (for
visual lessons) or
smartphones (for data collection). These machines don't
exclude the use of
laptops for authoring lessons and give more options for
children to learn
languages, math and science.
[Apologies if this is OT on a RTI thread]
Subbu
--
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
_______________________________________________
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
--
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
[email protected]
617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
_______________________________________________
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
[email protected]
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
