Missing from Horn's Blended...

The book that  Michael B. Horn wrote with Heather Staker , "Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools."  ignores some important things about blended learning.  In his previous book, he ignored blended, and then I called him on it in a blog post, (see this blog for August 2010) and then he started a whole series of work on his brand of blended learning leading up to this book.  I've recently finished a quick first read of my Kindle copy of the new book.  The nice thing about a Kindle is that you can use the search feature to look for certain words.   A search for terms came back with nothing or very little for some of the concepts and practices that are very relevant to blended learning. 

Terms that aren't included in this book are:

1:1 or one to one,

BYOD (bring your own device)

Accessibility

TPACK

Universal Design

Terms mentioned only briefly:

OER Open Education Resouces (mentioned once in passing)

LMS or learning management system (again once in passing)  How can you even think about blended learning without considering a learning management system.

Also missing from Horn's book is an examination of the work of the many others who have studied blended learning.   Not even mentioning the seminal concept of blended learning as presented by Garrison and Vaughan in their 2008 book, is a major oversight, in my opinion. It's true that Garrison and Vaughan focus primarily on higher ed while Horn and Slaker are focused on K12, but in order for blended learning to be effective in K12, we'll need to learn from the experiences of those who've used the evolving practice in higher ed just as higher ed will need to learn from K12.   

TPACK, in the list above, is another important academic construct that deserves to be included in any serious discussion about blended learning.  Matthew Koehler and Punya Mishra's work which takes off from Lee Schulman's, is too valuable to not talk about with educators who are undertaking blended learning.  TPACK, like the Community of Inquiry approach of Garrison, Vaughan and Cleveland-Innes, keeps teaching integral and essential in the discussion.  Horn and Slaker's notion of blended learning is too much about the deployment of devices and substitution of devices for teachers and not enough about teaching and learning.  Horn and Slaker are not teachers; they're business people.  Their attempt to apply business school management principles to the complex art of teaching may be with the best of intentions, but it falls way short of what's needed in our classrooms today.

Measuring Student Learning

     Last week, the Education Department released a draft of its proposed college ratings framework.  One of the interesting things that the Ed Dept said in its announcement about the framework is that it is not going to consider student learning outcomes.  They say learning outcomes are central to understanding the value of an education "but vary widely across programs and institutions and are communicated in many different ways." OK, that's true, but it doesn't mean that student learning outcomes couldn't effectively be included in a college ratings framework.

       How about asking colleges to report whether or not the college is measuring student learning outcomes? I'd like to see the Education Department provide some leadership communicating about student learning. It might be useful to compare the colleges who are actually keeping track of student learning outcomes to the ones that aren't.   Of course, it would be important to define, at least, generally how the institution was tracking the student learning outcomes.  A few simple characteristics would be good for a start.  For instance, are student learning outcomes measured in all courses or just some? how often are student learning outcomes measured? what kinds of tools or systems is the college using to measure student learning outcomes?  Asking the colleges these simple questions would provide a great start to understanding that which is, in the departments words, "central to understanding the value of an education."

        The Ed Dept said that it planned to primarily rely on data sources to which it already had access.  That makes sense if you're trying to keep things easy, but it's not likely to produce much in the way of new and possibly game changing information.  If the Ed Dept really wants to expand the opportunity for more students to enroll and succeed in college, especially low-income and underrepresented students, it needs to require reports on measures of student learning sooner rather than later.

Blended / Hybrid Learning Exists - Now

Some folks at a thing/place called An Estuary are claiming that blended learning doesn't exist, yet.  The An Estuary is pretty good at getting press, so I'm guessing this posture might be just a way to get more attention for their new thing.  Fair enough, and maybe blended/hybrid learning doesn't exist yet down there in the coastal backwaters, but it does up here in the headwaters.

Consider This announcement about hybrid learning

And, This HLC Best Paper explains the nuance of hybrid and blended learning. More discussion will be needed before a consensus is reached about what to call what we're doing in classrooms these days.

This post points to the confusion.

Looking to the Christensen Institute for insights into blended learning is like asking the Baltimore Ravens players for insights into walleye fishing.  Professional football and walleye fishing are both in the category of 'sport,'  but they're very different.  The Christensen Institute is 'involved in' education, but there isn't anyone in the institute with any substantive experience in teaching.  Real insights into blended learning come when one has actually done it for a few years.  It helps if one has done it both as a teacher and student, and also at varying levels.

Some of us have been doing it for a few years, and I'm pretty sure someone at An Estuary has seen blended learning before, even if it wasn't labeled as such.  This guest post describes blended or hybrid learning, but labeling the learning isn't what's important.  As noted in this post where I,  again, took issue with the Christensen Institute, Anders Norberg has called blended learning A Boy Named Sue.  

 The point is, if you're paying attention to what's available for you to use as a teacher, you'll likely be doing what could be called blended or hybrid teaching, and your students will doing blended or hybrid learning. Good teaching and learning is the goal.

The Coming Clash in Blended Learning: Part II

This past weekend, Tom Vander Ark tweeted about Michael Horn from the Christensen Institute kicking off a small wonkish blended learning conference.  Horn was one of the authors along with Clayton Christensen and Curt Johnson of a book called Disrupting Class. That book was all about using technology to replace teachers and create new models for the U.S. K-12 education system.  As I pointed out in a post in 2010 that included an exchange with Horn, the first edition of their book didn't mention blended learning.  They've since added a section on their brand of blended learning in later editions.

I replied to Vander Ark's tweet with the following tweet: " http://ow.ly/sIgek  Not differentiating replacement / empowerment of teachers"

To which Vander Ark replied: "off base (like your blog); all about Improving Conditions & Careers for teachers, see #SmartSeries paper http://ow.ly/sIvPs"  I think he was referring to this post.

We then exchanged a series of tweets;  I'm @sabier on Twitter if you want to look them up.  The Disrupting folks are beginning to realize that disrupting class or disrupting the public school system which appears to be their ultimate goal is a big job, and their teacher replacement model is not likely to get much traction except in schools that are really desperate.   The schools that Vander Ark has worked with so far are all charter schools, or new schools of some type, or home school networks, or severely stressed school districts like Charlotte-Mecklenberg, Nashville, and Clark County. 'Working with them' seems to involve some kind of private foundation support and some kind of reorganizing how teachers are paid. They don't seem to know how to implement blended technology without disrupting the governance/financial structure of a school.

One of the tell-tale signs that they're really interested in teacher replacement is how Vander Ark's group explains how a teacher will earn more pay with their brand of blended learning  "teachers can extend their reach by teaching a larger number of students without increasing class size because, at a given time, some of their student are using digital instruction with paraprofessional supervision, while teachers use the face-to-face teaching time for higher-order learning and personalized follow-up" - see here for more details on this clever scheme.  They're replacing teacher time with digital instruction and paraprofessionals.

One of the later issues in the Smart Series that Vander Ark suggested that I look at is actually pretty good. It contains some sound advice about steps that districts should take when implementing blended learning, especially the section on using a learning management system.  But the paper doesn't get at the basic decision that a district needs to make about how teachers will be included in the implementation.  What are the district's core values about teachers and teaching?  Is the blended learning system going to be a top down directed system utilizing corporate created content, or will it be driven by teachers using teacher created content and  using assessments managed by teachers.  Will all teachers be empowered and supported, or will the system be used to sort teachers into the keepers and the expendables?

Blended learning doesn't mean the same thing to everybody. 

The Coming Clash in Blended Learning

Blended learning doesn't mean the same thing to everybody.  The model being touted by the Christensen Institute  is essentially a teacher replacement model.  The model described by Garrison and Vaughan focuses on the quality and quantity of the interaction between student and teacher and "the sense of engagement in a community of inquiry and learning, achieved through the effective integration of Internet communication technology."

That difference was highlighted in a webinar I listened to recently by two of the Christensen Institute's disciples, Arthur VanderVeen, VP of Business Strategies for Compass Learning, and Tom Vander Ark,  author of Getting Smart: How Digital Learning is Changing the World and CEO of Getting Smart, a learning advocacy firm. The different models might be attributable to the different arenas in which the two pairs work.  Vander Ark and Vander Veen are part of the corporate business world that is trying to take over the K-12 educational system; Vaughan and Garrsion are professors of education and researchers and have so far focused primarily on higher education.  Both  groups have intentions of impacting the other's realms. 
  
Their respective intent and purpose probably has more to do with the different models, though.  Garrison and Vaughan are interested in developing a stronger richer community of inquiry and learning; Vander Ark and Vander Veen want to blow things up and make money putting them back together again.  They follow the Christensen's Institute's disruptive model.  I've written about Christensen's disruptive model previously in a discussion of the book, Disrupting Class.   That book was all about using technology to replace teachers and create new models for the U.S. K-12 education system.  As I pointed out, the first edition of the book didn't mention blended learning.  They've added a section on their brand of blended learning in later editions.

 9 and 1/2 minutes into their webinar, Vander Ark and Vander Veen  brought up the notion that their blended learning model would reduce the need for teachers and change teacher work rules; that's code for fire teachers and bust unions.  Vander Ark and Vander Veen are selling to the corporate / charter school money making interests all too prevalent today.  The counterpart to that in the higher ed world is the MOOC phenomenon, which is also based on the notion that teachers are expendable and cost too much.  Vander Ark and Vander Veen are well connected to moneyed interests, so I'll give them the best odds for the early rounds in the coming clash between these two models of blended learning.  In the long run, though, I think "the quality and quantity of the interaction and the sense of engagement in a community of inquiry and learning" will carry the day.  I'll go with Garrison and Vaughan.

Jim Lenfestey's Phantom Quiz - An update of Walt Whitman’s 'By Blue Ontario’s Shore'

Jim Lenfestey recently gave me a copy of his outstanding new book of poems, Earth in Anger: Twenty-five Poems of Love and Despair for Planet Earth.   We were both reading at an Open Book event which had been arranged by our mutual friend, John Caddy.  The event was supposed to have happened on Earth Day, but it got snowed out and was re-scheduled for a week later.  Jim hadn't been scheduled for the original Earth Day event because the launch of his new book was happening that evening.   Earth arranged for Jim to read his poems two weeks in a row.  I guess some of the people who drove through the blizzard to get to the original reading were a little miffed that it was cancelled.  I hope they pick up Jim's book and divert that energy as he recommends with his poems.


Jim read By Azure Huron's Shore as his last offering that evening and it's the final entry in the book, but I think it should be read first.  This Phaantom's quiz places the poems in an context of urgency that allows the supple rhythms of the poems more space to undulate.

BY AZURE HURON’S SHORE

NOTE: In 1848 journalist Walt Whitman and his brother Jeff traveled to New Orleans to help establish the newspaper the Crescent.  After three months, according to his own hand-drawn map now in the Library of Congress, they returned up the Mississippi and through the Great Lakes, passing through the Straits of Mackinac into Lake Huron, then Erie, then Ontario.  In the 1867 edition of “Leaves of Grass” he included “As I Sat Alone By Blue Ontario’s Shores,” in which he encounters a “Phantom” who quizzes him on the qualities necessary to undertake the American project of creating and healing a nation.  Inspired by Whitman’s interrogation, I wondered what “many and stern” questions the Phantom would put to poets and citizens today to undertake our necessary project, healing and reclaiming our broken, reeling planet.  In the Invocation, I changed but one word of Whitman’s, substituting “earth” for “nation.”  The rest of the Phantom’s interrogation came fresh through me in one burst as I sat alone by azure Huron’s shore.  Originally published as a broadside, it may be reproduced free forever.

BY AZURE HURON’S SHORE

(An update of Walt Whitman’s By Blue Ontario’s Shore, section 12)

INVOCATION

Are you he who would assume a place to teach or be a poet here on this earth?

The place is august, the terms obdurate.

Who would assume to teach here may well prepare himself body and mind,

He may well survey, ponder, arm, fortify, harden, make lithe himself.

He shall surely be questioned beforehand by me with many and stern questions.

Who are you indeed who would talk and sing of the earth?

***

THE POET’S TEST

Do you know the depth of the waters, and the height of the sky, and their composition?

Have you befriended the trees where you live, know their roots, their crowns?

Have you studied the rocks beneath them, to the fifth epoch?

And the birds above, their songs and what they eat, and where they nest?

And the people who lived there before you, and your ancestors, to the second millennium?

And the rivers and lakes, their subtle watersheds and hidden springs?

And do you swim in the chill and warm waters of your seas and lakes indiscriminately? And with relish? And know the sources of pollutants threatening your waters? And fight against the dark rain with armies of petitions and voters’ guides and drives and meetings?

Are the glaciers and the jungles your friends, the serpents and beasts and birds your guides, the pigs of the sty your helpmates, the microbes and fungi your intimates?

Do you shun or reform all religions that deny the primacy of the earth and its processes? That believe mankind unable to destroy everything good? Or save everything good?

Do you accept with joy the findings of science?

Are your taxes paid to the federal, state and municipal authorities without complaint, as the recognized price of civil living?  Do you wish to pay more?

Do you believe in the Holy Trinity: the water, the grass, the air?  And do you worship them every day with acts of kindness and political clout?

Are you sickened unto death that the biodiversity of the earth is plummeting? The Arctic sea ice melting?  The oceans acidifying?

Have you read the 4th Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change?

Or at least the Executive Summary?

And know that its finding of warming for the most part due to the burning of fossil fuels has been everywhere affirmed, including by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Research Council, even the George W. Bush Administration?

And are you hot with anger at the lies about the cause of changing climate spouted by those with fingers black with oil, breath black from smoking mines?

And will you slay with dark thoughts the miscreants at Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Rush Windbag and others who perpetuate those lies?

Will you fight back with evidence and heat and love for the atmosphere which is the life blanket of our planet?

Do you firmly believe there is no such thing as evil, but only abundant ignorance, stupidity, shortsightedness, self-dealing, self-loathing and fundamentalist self-righteousness?

Do you “fear a lie as others fear fire,” as Chekhov said, and know that “inside you is an inexhaustible fountain of ideas,” as Brenda Ueland said?

Do you believe in families and communities green and cheerful with good schools and happy parents and joy shouted from the schoolyards?

Have your studied Emerson’s essays The Poet and Nature, foundation stones of the spiritual democracy of our nation and all nations, who saw the divine in every person and particular of nature, including these Great Lakes?  He who begat Thoreau and Whitman and Dickinson and Bogan?  Jim Bogan?

When you gaze at the person you love, and the multitudes you love, do tears of gratitude spring to your eyes?   Do your hands fall open in gratitude to the waters, the grass, the air?  And for people who fight for the waters, the grass, the air?

By azure Huron’s shore,

do you stand at the water’s edge, tasting the delicious energies of the grass, inhaling the delicious energies of the air, and fearlessly plunge into the dark waters, for the sake of your soul, and the soul of the earth?

If You're a Teacher You're a Leader: McGovern, Inouye, et al.

When the four of us had finally settled into the little golf cart like train car, George McGovern introduced me to Senators Daniel Inouye and Charles Percy.

 The 'train' car was on a set of tracks that ran underground from the Russell Office Building over to the Senate.  A few minutes earlier, Senator McGovern had walked hurriedly out of his inner office to greet me, saying without stopping, "I'm sorry, Dan, I've got to go over to the floor for a vote and I have another meeting in half an hour.  Walk along with me and maybe we can chat a bit after I vote."

  I was reminded of that day when I read Kevin Cashman's explanation in The Pause Principle of how the three types of questioning and listening need to merge in order for breakthroughs to occur and growth to be sustained - the kind of breakthroughs and growth that also make a classroom vibrant.  Cashman says,

 "For growth to have a lasting, transformative impact, three interrelated pauses that arise from questioning and listening need to merge: building awareness, building commitment, and building practice. If all three are present and informing one another, breakthroughs will occur and growth will be sustained. if we do not help others to sufficiently pause for each of these phases, the results will most likely dissipate over time."
 
  Senator Percy's traditional quick pump was accompanied with a "Well, what brings you to Washington, young man?" When Senator Inouye enveloped my outstretched right hand in his left, it felt gentle and kind, a friendly Buddha like acknowledgement. I didn't even notice that he didn't have a right hand with which to shake.   Senator Inouye's  listening eyes told me that he, too, was interested in my mission.  I was there representing South Dakota at the NATA convention (NATA is now part of TIA.)  The main focus of that convention was to stop the Bell System's attempt to make outlaws out of their competitors, competitors like me.

  It was indeed a heady day for me.  In addition to the appointment with Senator McGovern, I had met earlier with Rep. Larry Pressler,  Rep. Berkley Bedell, and Sen Jim Abourezk's chief of staff. The convention attendees from some of the big states were having trouble just getting an appointment with a staffer of one of their congressional reps.  When I stepped off the elevator and into the Senate lobby with George McGovern's hand on my elbow and Senators Inouye and Percy just behind me, I saw a few heads on very expensive pin-stripped suits turn to check me out.  These were lobbyists, and several of them had big cigars.

 I shuffled my polished cowboy boots and tried not to be too conspicuous in my faux suede sport coat until Senator McGovern appeared a few minutes later to usher me out into the bright afternoon sunlight to walk back to his office.  He confirmed that I was Jimmy's grandson and had once lived in Artesian, just north of his home in Mitchell (Grandpa had been a delegate to the national convention in 1960.) Having connected by family and place, McGovern said, "Now, how do you think we should be looking at this bill."  I was very glad that I'd been coached by the PR people hired by NATA on what to say.  McGovern didn't respond with a canned response like Pressler had earlier in the day.  He thought and asked some clarifying questions - I knew he wanted to understand.  And, he didn't make any promises, but when he said, "I think I'm with you on this one and I'll have my staff look into this a little more, and we'll let you know how it goes" I believed him.

I was walking tall to the debriefing back at the convention hotel.  The PR team that was keeping track of congressional visit results looked at me a little doubtfully when I ticked off the members of congress I'd talked to that day.  I told them McGovern, and Inouye, were with us and probably Abourezk and Bedell, too.  I told them Percy's comment about the CWA probably meant he was not to be counted on, and I told them I thought Pressler could be flipped because I didn't think he understood what he'd theoretically co-signed.  I found out later that Pressler had eventually held back his support of the Bell proposal.  McGovern wrote me a note about a month later saying he thought the bill would not be acted on that year, and he thanked me for participating in the work of government.  The 'Bell Bill' never became law.

Talking to and being listened to by that collection of leaders that day was an unforgettable lesson for me.  There were nuances in the levels of awareness, commitment, and practice in the way each of those men listened and questioned, but all were masters of each. Congressman Bedell reminded me of my best college profs; McGovern was, of course, a college prof before he became an international political leader.  Being a teacher, at any level, requires daily application of the listening and questioning skills that Cashman talks about as crucial for leadership.  Teachers, like politicians, are always campaigning; they need to get votes of awareness, commitment, and practice from their students every day, sometimes hourly. Teaching is leading.