Sitting in a desk facing a teacher, taking notes with pen and paper, and seeing assignments on a whiteboard could easily describe a typical classroom.
Soon, that will describe back in the day.
New educational technologies are changing the way teachers teach, students learn and classrooms look.
Irvine Unified School District’s decentralized philosophy has permitted teachers to experiment with new technologies in its classroom, allowing the launch of informal pilot programs that could soon spread throughout Irvine and beyond.
In the not too distant future, you might walk into a classroom without desks, without paper, without a ‘front of the classroom,’ where a teacher must stand, where teachers don’t lecture during school hours, where students frequently go on field trips without leaving the building and where the history of a child’s educational experience is a click away.
For now, this burgeoning educational renaissance is scattered, but bits and pieces are coming together at Irvine schools.
BRING YOUR OWN DEVICE (BYOD)
When entering Freddi Siegel's Brywood Elementary sixth-grade classroom mid-lesson, it can be difficult to answer basic questions such as: What subject is being taught? How is this classroom organized? Where is the teacher?
But this isn't a bad thing.
Siegel's head pops up. She has been talking with a group of students huddled around a collection of laptop and tablet computers – devices that the students have brought from home.
Siegel's classroom is one of only a few in the district to be experimenting with "bring your own device" (BYOD), a policy that not only encourages students to bring their personal portable computers to school, but also integrates these devices into daily classroom activities.
Today, Siegel's students are making promotional videos for TROT, a nonprofit organization that rescues retired racehorses. Using their personal devices, the students will write a script and storyboard the project. Eventually, they'll use their tablet computers to help shoot and edit the video.
Though students stream in and out of the portable classroom, Siegel keeps an eye on them through a video system on her computer, which uses the students' iPad cameras to help her monitor what they're doing.
This is the first year that Siegel and her students have fully integrated BYOD into the classroom, but the process already seems second nature to both her and the children.
Benefits: "What we've really been able to do," Siegel said, "is pull away from textbooks, pull away from segmented, isolated curriculum and really be able to move toward collaborative projects."
These collaborative projects often include elements that allow for differentiated education, Siegel said, by incorporating tactile, visual and auditory learning styles.
Students often feel more comfortable working with their own devices as well. This familiarity encourages students to explore in ways they might not otherwise. During Siegel's TROT project, one student downloaded a free storyboarding mobile application onto his device and began using it, no questions asked.
Challenges: The same freedom BYOD provides can make it difficult to control. Interest in the policy has spread, in part, because children around the country already are bringing their iPads and smartphones to school – but often to play games. Siegel spent a significant amount of time at the beginning of the year teaching "responsible digital citizenship," which lays out rules for proper and improper device usage.
A larger hurdle to districtwide implementation, though, is figuring out how to ensure that all students have access to portable computers and upgrading school wireless Internet capabilities to allow hundreds or thousands of students to access networks simultaneously.
Stonegate Elementary sixth-grade teacher Donnie Mai has an hourlong period every day to teach his students math. During that time, he has to review the previous day's homework, teach a new lesson, assign sample problems, fix student mistakes and attempt to get the whole classroom up to speed.
But some students inevitably fall behind, and without enough time to both lecture and correct errors, Mai sent students home to tackle homework that might reinforce their misunderstandings.
Seeking a way to extend his time spent helping students in the classroom, Mai discovered flipped teaching, an educational method that allows for more teacher-assisted work in class by requiring students to watch online video lectures after school as homework.
Benefits: Aside from affording educators more time to work closely with their students, flipped teaching effectively gives children more time with their teachers.
Students who don't quite understand a concept during the first go-round can pause, rewind and rewatch videos. Mai included practice problems within his video posts, requiring students to pause, complete a bit of work, then continue watching to see whether their solutions were correct.
As an added benefit, when children became sick, they no longer fell far behind.
Challenges: Flipped teaching can be time-consuming. To create a single 15- to 20-minute post, Mai would prepare a lesson, record himself teaching, edit the footage and then splice in extra scenes or audio where he felt necessary. The process could take more than two hours.
Mai has reeled back his use of flipped teaching, but he still sees the value in it. In the future, teachers collaborating to share posts between classrooms or schools could create a stockpile of videos, making the technique less burdensome and more feasible.
Canyon View Elementary sixth-grade teacher Jon Nakano can envision a day when a student's educational experience, from kindergarten through 12th grade, would be catalogued online and recallable at any moment.
Nakano is one of many district teachers who use online portfolio websites to assign, grade and track students' work.
Benefits: An online repository can put everything a student needs in one place. Students field and submit assignments digitally. Teachers post rubrics, give tests and grade submissions online. Electronic message boards encourage students to ask questions, help each other and receive teacher assistance outside of the classroom.
Because everything is in one place, students know exactly how they're performing, and when it comes time for parent-teacher conferences, there are no surprises. The digital snapshot the program provides also could help teachers understand the strengths and weaknesses of incoming students.
Challenges: Programs that allow teachers to keep a record of student work online are plentiful, but not all are secure.
VIRTUAL FIELD TRIPS
A year and a half ago, when Scott Bedley discovered that his class' art lessons were scaled back, he refused to take it in stride. But Bedley didn't know how to teach art, so he decided to invite a guest who did.
With this simple goal in mind, Bedley began using Skype and Google+ Hangout video chat sessions to connect his students with talented professional artists from across the country. In short time, he began bringing in guests in other professions, including a photographer, a journalist, a guest teacher and an engineer.
Benefits: "The day of the expert-in-all-fields teacher is an impossibility," said Bedley, who recently was named one of five Orange County Teachers of the Year. "The teacher should be a facilitator. What better way to inspire than to bring in experts in a field?"
Searching for increasingly interactive video chat experiences, Bedley connected his students with the Santa Clara University team competing in the Irvine-based U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon, a competition in which teams design and build solar-powered homes. The team took students on a virtual field trip of a home they built in 2009.
Challenges: Bedley encourages teachers to reach out to a multitude of guests, no matter how unlikely it is that the person will agree to a virtual visit. With fortitude and access to a webcam, any teacher easily could adopt this technique.
O.C. Teacher of the Year's tips for tech integration
All the cutting-edge educational technology in the world won't do a thing in the hands of a teacher lacking the knowledge to put it to good use. Plaza Vista School fifth-grade teacher Scott Bedley, who recently was named one of five Orange County Teachers of the Year, has more than a little experience and a handful of tips on how to make use of new teaching techniques and technology.
Technology doesn't really change the way students learn if teachers are simply replacing textbooks and pencils with websites and typing. Classroom technology should instead be used to extend and morph lessons into educational opportunities that otherwise would not be possible.
“It's so much more about creating opportunities for kids to collaborate instead of learning in isolation,” Bedley said.
If students are learning about a subject, Bedley said, have them make a script out of it, shoot a movie using that script, screen the video for other students, have those students critique and fact-check the film and then think of new ways to keep going, to make a once-static project become infinitely interactive.
Preview the technology
Not all “classroom technology” is truly educational. Bedley said he has seen aimless games, programs with mistakes and websites with inappropriate pop-up ads.
“Keeping kids protected online is the most important thing when using technology,” Bedley said.
Teachers can steer clear of bad tech by testing it extensively before handing it off to students.
Build in a purpose
When assessing a new piece of technology or tech-based teaching technique, educators should first identify the purpose of their classroom project and then determine whether the technology helps toward that goal.
“Is the goal just to use technology?” Bedley said. “Or is the goal to research, coordinate research in a usable presentation and provide a useful way for a student to learn?”
Learn from students
Today's students know technology. Many grew up surrounded by it. It's in their bones. So it's no surprise that students often know of new worthwhile programs and applications before teachers.
“I don't have enough time to be finding everything out there on the Internet,” Bedley said. “(Students) teach me so much all the time.”
Students also have a tendency to use well-known technology in ways adults can't foresee.
Recently, on their own initiative, students in Bedley's class have been using Minecraft (an online block-building video game) to build Washington, D.C.
Make it fun, motivating
Students are used to having fun with technology, and educational tech doesn't have to be different. The focus has to be on how it is going to impact the student, Bedley said, but the form does not have to be traditional. While educators need to preview the technology up front, they also have to be willing to trust that a program like Minecraft, which might look like a mindless video game to some, can, when used creatively, engage and educate children.
IUSD education technology coordinator Kris Linville
In Irvine Unified, not all district teachers know how to integrate new educational technology effectively into their classrooms. That's where Kris Linville comes in.
Q. Your title is educational technology coordinator. What does that mean?
A. My focus is educational technology. Before, there wasn't really much professional development for the teachers … This position was created because of the professional development we needed to support the hardware and to back the pedagogy of supporting technology in instruction.
Q. The Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) movement is spreading, in part, because children already use smartphones and tablet computers at school, yet often as distractions. Is that a concern for classrooms?
A. If I caught a kid making a paper airplane in my classroom, I wouldn't say, “You can't bring paper to the classroom.” I would discipline the child for doing something they shouldn't. That's the same thing with the devices. We need to become digital citizens. Incorporating technology into the curriculum teaches students how and when to use technology appropriately.
Q. How should classroom layouts change to cater to BYOD?
A. When the devices become student-centric and the students are able to work in groups and collaborate, the classroom environment needs to change from rows of desks facing the front of the classroom, where it's teacher-centric. I think (classrooms) are going to change by being structured more like communities. I was talking to (a) class about building our future classrooms, and they were saying, “We need beanbags. … Let's have seats on the floor where I can work on my laptop.” Modular furniture has a big role in the future of classroom technology.
Q. Currently, there are teachers in IUSD running pilot programs in their classes. How does the district hear about and spread successful programs?
A. Every school has a technology coach that meets with me monthly to discuss using technology in the classroom. After we meet, those teachers go back to their schools and start talking about what other sites are doing with technology. Another way we're trying to get the word out is through videos. We will videotape a teacher that's using flipped teaching or Google+ Hangout in the classroom, and then post the videos and send it out as a message to staff.
Q. Is there any difficulty convincing longtime teachers to incorporate new technologies into lessons?
A. You're going to get some hesitancy from teachers who are comfortable with how they've been teaching. … I remember a teacher telling me, “I didn't have to do this before and was able to teach. Why am I being told that I have to do it this way?” I said, “Well, we used to walk to the store before the car was invented … but when new tools exist, sometimes they can substitute what you're doing or even redefine it.” And that's what my job is, to show them the different levels of using that technology.
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