The Internet is NOT the Best Place for Kids to Learn After the Coronavirus Pandemic

May 9, 2020 stevenmsinger absenteeism, Accountability, Andrew Cuomo, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, Budget, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Compassion, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", discipline, edtech, Education, Facebook, home school, Homework, Labor, Learning, Parents, Politics, privatization, school closings, School Funding, school segregation, Schools, small class size, Social Justice, Standardized Testing, STEM, Student Mobility, student privacy, Students, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Technology, video games coronavirus, edtech, education, Internet, Learning, online, parents, policy, Politics, public schools, schools, Students, teachers, teaching, technology

If the Coronavirus quarantine has taught educators one thing, it’s this.

Online learning is not better than in-person schooling.

After all these years of corporations throwing apps at us and well-meaning administrators providing us with devices and philanthrocapitalists pumping billions of dollars into ed tech first academic schemes, we can all see now that the emperor has no clothes.

When schools nationwide are closed to stop the spread of a global pandemic and learning is restricted to whatever teachers can cobble together on sites like Google Classroom and ZOOM, we can all see the Imperial scepter blowing in the wind.

The problem is that this is only clear to parents, students and teachers.

The people who get to make ed policy decisions are as blind as ever – as witnessed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s tone deaf insistence that his state reimagine schools with the help of billionaire school saboteur Bill Gates.

But the rest of us – you know, those grounded in reality – can see the problems with remote learning staring us in the face.

Most importantly, the Internet is not a conducive environment for learning.

I don’t mean that learning can’t take place there.

You could learn in a fox hole while being shelled by enemy forces. But if your content extends to something more complex than “Duck” or other survival tactics, this may not be the best place to learn it. After all, environment plays a key role in knowledge acquisition.

Moreover, different people learn things better in different circumstances. And, contrary to our current education policies that view children as stakeholders or consumers, they are in fact people.

There are some children who learn better online than in a brick and mortar classroom. But these kids are few and far between.

In general, the younger the child (both physically and psychologically), the more important it is that he or she be given the opportunity to learn in an actual classroom.

Why?

It really comes down to who controls the environment.

In a classroom, the teacher decides most everything about the physical space and what possibilities there will be. She places the books, hangs the posters, sets the lighting, displays student work, etc.

In a virtual environment, the space is defined to a small degree by the teacher, but it is mostly determined by the ed tech provider and the open world of the Internet.

In short, teachers have much more control over physical classrooms and can remove distractions.

Online, educators have very little control over this.

LINE OF SIGHT

For instance, in my physical classroom, if I wanted to see what a student was doing, all I had to do is walk up to him and look.

I controlled what I see, and hiding things from me was difficult.

Online, if I want to see what a student is doing (let’s say on a video communications platform like ZOOM), I have little control over what I see. The student is in control of the camera. If it is pointing at the student or placed so as to hide certain behavior or even if the camera is currently on or not is not in my control. Students are empowered to hide anything they want, and there’s not much I can do about it.

When teaching online, I’ve had students texting on cell phones, playing video games on computers, having side conversations with friends in their bedrooms, playing with pets – and trying to hide this with the way they display themselves on camera.

I’ve had kids mysteriously turn off the camera or point it away from their faces until I ask them to switch it back on or swivel it back to themselves.

DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?

When I first started teaching online a few weeks ago, one of the most powerful tools at my disposal seemed to be the mute button.

If several kids weren’t hearing me because of side chatter, I could simply mute everyone and fill the blessed silence with instruction.

However, I soon discovered that this is deceptive.

Just because you don’t hear the students, doesn’t mean they aren’t talking. Some kids use the online chat stream to continue side chatter. Others forgo that entirely for text and Facebook messaging.

What’s worse, it’s often hard for the teacher to even know whether anything she said is actually being heard.

TOO MUCH CHOICE

One of the great strengths of online learning is that it gives students an incredible amount of choice. But that is also its greatest weakness.

I can give assignments through a file sharing site like Google Classroom and let students complete it at their own pace.

The problem is that kids (especially young kids) need their pace monitored.

You can’t give them too much time to get something done because many will procrastinate through the deadline.

In my physical classroom, I would often give an assignment and then provide at least some time for them to start it. The idea was that even if they don’t finish it with me, they are more likely to complete something they already began.

However, online it is completely up to them when to do an assignment. They are responsible for their own time management – and that’s a skill we, as educators, struggle to teach them.

As a result, most students don’t get these assignments done on time – if at all.

Even when they do the work, I’m bombarded by a slew of submissions around midnight or the early hours of the AM.

HOW TO ASK A QUESTION YOU DON’T KNOW YOU HAVE

Then there’s the question of… well… questions.

In my brick and mortar classroom, if a child was unsure of something, all she had to do was raise her hand and ask. Online, there are multiple ways to communicate with me – kids can send me an email, message me or verbally ask me something during a video chat.

The problem is that sometimes they don’t know they’re confused.

In my physical classroom, since all students are working on an assignment together in that same time and space, I can go from desk to desk and see how they’re progressing.

If they’re getting something wrong, I can correct it in real time. I can give suggestions and encouragement even before the work is done.

Online, I’m mostly limited to commenting on the final project. If a student didn’t understand the directions – and didn’t even understand that he didn’t understand the directions – I don’t know until the work is done.

This presents a problem. Do I explain the error and ask him to to do the work all over again? Or do I explain the error but accept the work for what it is?

I’ll admit, I usually do the later.

STUDENTS M.I.A.

Which brings me to mysterious absences.

I don’t mean kids who don’t show up to video conferences – though there are many of those.

I mean kids who for all intents and purposes appear to be there in ZOOM and then suddenly disappear never to return that day.

They could have a device or Internet issue. And if this happens every once in a while, it’s understandable. But what about kids who do this all the time?

If your iPad isn’t charged one day, I guess things happen. But if it isn’t charged everyday, that’s a problem. Your problem – one you need to solve.

I know every district is different in this regard, but my school provides every student with devices and even WiFi if necessary. Even in the physical classroom, using devices always came with a chorus of whines about them not being charged.

Once again, we’re putting this responsibility on students and families. In the days before distance learning, we could question whether that was fair. In the Coronavirus dystopia, we have little choice but to do it.

However, this brave new world even makes an issue out of bathroom breaks.

In the brick and mortar classroom, kids would ask to go to the restroom and then be sent one at a time. Online some kids just turn off their camera or leave it idling on an empty seat or the ceiling. It is next to impossible to tell whether these breaks are genuine or even to estimate their duration.

Some students are gone for the majority of the meeting. In a world where video conferences are few and far between, is it so much to ask that you use the restroom BEFORE going to ZOOM?

INVADERS

But let’s not forget unwanted guests.

These platforms require students to know a dedicated Web address and sometimes a password to get in.

Yet these are children. They sometimes share these security measures with people who were not invited.

Even in my physical classroom, sometimes students not on my roster would try to get in to talk with a friend or even just sit in on my amazing lessons. I could stop them at the door and send them on their way.

Online, some sites like ZOOM give me similar power, and others like Kahoot (a game based learning platform) do not. Even when every person entering has to be approved by me, all I see is the name they’ve given their device. If an enterprising stranger wanted to rename their device to that of one of my students, I probably wouldn’t catch it until they were in.

There have been several times when someone with one of my students’ names got into a ZOOM meeting, but either refused or couldn’t turn on their camera. I had no choice but to boot them out.

On some sites like Kahoot, there is no video. I had no idea who was signing in – I just saw the name they input.

So sometimes I had two students with the same name. Or I had let’s say 8 kids in the class but 9 kids were signing on to Kahoot.

It’s maddening!

ASSESSMENTS AND CHEATING

Now let’s talk tests.

I don’t like tests. I think they can too easily become cruel games of “guess what the testmaker was thinking.”

But they are a necessary evil to judge what information students have learned. Moreover, a creative teacher can design them to reduce the regurgitation of facts and increase critical analysis backed by facts.

In a physical classroom, teachers can monitor students during test taking. Online, they can’t. So there’s always a question of cheating.

Every scrap of information in human history is available somewhere online. If students try hard enough, they can find the answer to any question with a deft Google search.

However, to be honest I don’t think I’ve had too much trouble with this as yet. My students either don’t care enough to cheat, cannot figure out how to do so effectively or have too much self respect.

Or maybe I just haven’t caught them.

In the physical classroom, I had several students try to pass off others work – essays or poems – as their own. But I haven’t assigned anything so ambitious through distance learning yet.

CONCLUSIONS

Perhaps that’s why it drives me nuts when policymakers and media types make statements about what an overwhelming success this has all been.

Teachers and districts have tried their best. Students and families are giving their all. But this experiment does not demonstrate why we should all embrace distance learning once the Coronavirus pandemic is under control.

It shows why we MUST return to the brick and mortar classroom as soon as it is safe to do so.

Reimagining school will not require more ed tech.

It may require much less.

Kids need to be in the presence of physical human beings in a real environment with their peers to maximize their learning.

We need smaller classes, equitable funding, desegregation, social justice, wide curriculum, and an end to high stakes testing, school privatization, science denial and anti-intellectualism.

But more than anything, we need policymakers who are willing to listen to and include the people on the ground when making decisions that affect us all.

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Adventures in Online Teaching: Reinventing the Wheel for a Handful of Students

April 25, 2020 stevenmsinger absenteeism, Accountability, Betsy DeVos, bloggers, Close Reading, Compassion, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Data, edtech, Education, home school, Journals, Labor, Learning, literature, Local Control, Parents, Politics, Poverty, principals, school closings, Schools, Special Education, Student Mobility, Students, teacher autonomy, Teachers, Technology, video games attendanance, Computers, coronavirus, cyber, distance learning, ed-tech, edtech, education, educators, online, Politics, Students, teacher, teachers, technology, trauma, virtual learning

Today in our ZOOM meeting, one of my students tried to get one over on me.

I sat at the bureau in my guest bedroom, surveying a gallery of 7th grade faces lined up in little boxes on my laptop like the opening scene of the Brady Bunch.

Lilly was lying on her bed face up, almost definitely scrolling on her cell phone.

Pha’rrel was eating a cookie as he tried to fit his overgrown curls under a gray hoodie.

And Jimmy was smiling at me with the cheesiest close up you ever saw in your life.

The smile was so wide. The eyes were so glassy. The face was so still.

“Jimmy, did you put up a picture of yourself on your camera!?” I asked.

Somewhere miles away he laughed, apologized and took it down.

If we were back in the classroom, I probably would have come down on him.

He used to sit in the back of the room, face buried in his iPad, ear buds plugged into his brain and his work done in the most careless but high-speed fashion possible.

About once a week I had to take away some device just so his Internet-rattled mind could pay attention.

What am I to do now? Those apps and devices are the only thing connecting him to even the most rudimentary schooling.

He still wants to appear to be paying attention, appear to be done with whatever useless crap I am having him do so he can play Fortnite, watch YouTube videos or text – all behind a digital mask of innocent concentration.

So I moved on.

We read a passage together and I noticed Melanie had her eyes closed.

Not just that. She was in her comfy sweats, cuddled under the covers with a kitten curled under her elbow purring away.

“Melanie?” I say.

No response.

“Melanie, did you hear what we just read?”

Nothing.

She’d do that in class sometimes, too. She’d be zonked out, her head plastered to the desk in a puddle of quickly congealing drool. Sometimes it was pretty hard to wake her.

I remember conferencing with her and her mom trying to find out if there was anything wrong – but, no, she was simply misusing the privilege of picking her own bedtime.

How was I to keep her awake online? I couldn’t shake the desk, rattle her papers or even let my voice naturally get louder as it gained proximity.

I had to let her sleep.

Oh and what’s this? Was that Teddy finally joining the ZOOM Meeting 20 minutes in?

I clicked to let him join and immediately it was clear that he was missing something important.

“Teddy? Is that you?” I said.

“Yeah, hey, Mr. Singer.”

“Ted, you forget something?”

“Wha?”

“Ted, your shirt?”

He looks down at his naked torso.

“Oh, I haven’t gotten dressed yet.”

“Uh, we can see that, Buddy. Why don’t you turn your iPad around and put on a shirt and pants? Okay?”

These are just some of the hurdles you face as an online teacher.

Ever since the Coronavirus pandemic shuttered schools across the country, teachers like me have been asked to finish up the year with students via the Internet.

It’s not been exactly a smooth transition.

Getting kids attention is not an easy task under the best of circumstances. Online it’s nearly a Herculean labor.

Strangely the episodes related above aren’t even close to the worst of it.

More than students’ attempts to message each other through the lesson or the constant screaming in the background at some kids homes or the vacant stares of the child with ADHD whose IEP calls for teacher proximity and eye contact, but how do you do that from across town? – more than all of that is the silence.

The empty, deafening silence of the majority of kids who don’t even show up.

I’ve been doing this for three weeks now and I average about 40% participation.

Some days a class might be almost full. Another day there might be two kids.

I know it’s not necessarily the children or the parents’ fault.

We’re in the middle of a global catastrophe. Family members are sick, kids are scared, and many don’t have experience with Internet, the devices or certainly the learning platforms we’re using.

Districts can give out iPads and mobile hot spots, but not familiarity with technology, not a quiet place to work, not a safe and secure learning environment.

When a parent tells me her child is having trouble with something, I excuse him. I get it.

When a student tells me she doesn’t understand how to do something, I don’t penalize her. I try to fix the problem and ask her to give it another shot.

But when you’ve been tasked with creating almost entirely new curriculum on the fly for several different classes– and you do – it’s anticlimactic that so few kids show up to see it.

I almost don’t mind it when someone’s cat swaggers in front of the screen and flaunts its butthole for all to see.

That’s just life in the age of distance learning.

But when I design all these assignments and teach all these classes, I wish more students showed up.

My district doesn’t require me to do all this.

I could have just thrown a few worksheets up on Google Classroom and called it a day.

That’s kind of what administrators want, I think. Just review previously taught skills. Make it look like we’re doing something. And we’ll close the academic gaps next year.

But when the world shut down, my 8th graders were getting ready to read “The Diary of Anne Frank” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.” You don’t really expect me to skip over that, do you?

My 7th graders were getting ready to read a gripping mystery story, “Silent to the Bone” by E.L. Konigsburg. You don’t really think I’m going to substitute that with grammar and vocabulary worksheets? Huh?

So I narrowed it all down to essentials.

I could have assigned my students to read the texts on their own and then made them write reader response journals. But I don’t think any but my most self-motivated students would have done it and even they would have lost a lot without being able to discuss it.

So I put a few assignments on Google Classroom, but most are through live ZOOM Meetings where the students and I talk through the texts together.

The 8th graders read the play version of “Anne Frank” together with me, and it’s actually going pretty well.

I’m able to display the text on the screen and move the cursor under what they’re reading.

I’ve even seen some reluctant readers improve right before my eyes.

I’ve always suggested that students put their index fingers under the words as they read, but few do it. Using ZOOM like this forces them to follow my advice.

Of course, the class is a tiny fraction of what it would be in person.

If we were still in the school building, I’m positive they’d be learning more. We’d be able to discuss more. I’d have a better read of the room. They would be less capable of hiding behind the technology.

But there is real life-long learning taking place.

It’s my most successful group.

My 7th graders are a different story.

They are the kind of class you have to explode a stick of dynamite under to get them to notice what’s right before their eyes.

And more of them actually show up. Yet much of what we’re reading seems lost on them.

They are much more dedicated to being present in body if not in spirit – and barring an exorcism, I’m unsure how to reach many of them through fiber optic cables.

Then we have my Creative Writing class – basically a journaling course taught to a different group of students every few weeks.

It’s particularly challenging because I’ve met very few of them in person before the school closed.

However the course also lends itself best to this distance learning format.

Back in the school building, I used to give students a prompt every day, explain it and then have them write. I’d go from desk-to-desk as they worked and give feedback. Once they were all done, we’d share the writings aloud.

Now online, I just give the prompts via Google Classroom, provide instruction or attach video links and leave them to it. Then I comment on what they produce.

The problem is it’s my least attended class. I have a handful of students who do all the work, but most have done nothing. And this is a traditional work-at-your-own-pace cyber class.

I’ve had much more difficulty planning the other courses. Everything had to be reinvented. You want to read along with students, you need (1) a platform where you can all talk (2) an online text, (3) a way students can catch up, (4) a way to hand in written work, (5) a way to give tests without allowing students to cheat or do the work together.

It’s been challenging especially because sometimes one online solution will simply disappear.

For example, the e-text I was using for 7th grade was taken down overnight. One day it was available. The next it was gone. So I had to scramble to find a way to make it work.

That kind of thing happens all the time.

And speaking of time, when I’m not in a ZOOM Meeting with students or programming next week’s lessons, I have to wait for assignments to come in. Back in the classroom, they used to be handed in mostly all at the same time. I could grade them and move on.

In cyber-land, they trickle in piecemeal. I’m NEVER done teaching. It could be 1 am and my phone dings that an assignment, comment or question was turned in. I could wait until later, but usually I trudge over to the computer and see what needs my attention.

Which brings me to the final challenge – managing my home and teacher-life.

I’m not just an educator. I’m a parent.

I don’t teach my daughter. I don’t assign her lessons or work. But I have to oversee what her teacher wants her to do and make sure it gets done – and done correctly.

I’ll tell her to go in the dinning room and do three BrainPop assignments, or sign on to Edmentum and finish this diagnostic test, etc.

She’s generally pretty good about things, but if I don’t watch her, she’ll play Mario Party on her Nintendo all day long.

With the wife working from home, too, I usually give her the living room, my daughter is someplace else or her room, and I’m in the office.

On the one hand, it’s nice to be busy, and the good moments where I connect with students are just as magical as in person.

But most of the time, I feel lost at sea, depressed about the news and unable to concentrate or sleep the night through.

I’ve resigned myself to this life for the next six weeks when school will end for the academic year.

Perhaps the summer will be better. Maybe we’ll be able to go out and life will get somewhat back to normal.

However, I am not blind to the possibility that I’ll have to pick up again online in August and September.

School could start up with distance learning in 2020-21. Or we could have to quickly rush back to the Internet after a second wave of COVID-19 crashes upon us.

I keep thinking of the opening of Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities”:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

The fact that life and schooling will be different after this crisis ends is both encouraging and terrifying.

There’s so much we could fix and finally get right.

But from what I see us doing as the crisis unfolds, my hope dwindles with each passing day.

Stay safe and stay optimistic.

But let’s not stay cyber.

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Top 10 Things I Want My Students to do During the Coronavirus Quarantine

March 20, 2020March 22, 2020 stevenmsinger Art, Child Safety, Compassion, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", edtech, Education, Healthcare, history, home school, Homework, Journals, Learning, literature, Local Control, Media, Parents, Pennsylvania, Philosophy, Politics, Poverty, school closings, Schools, small class size, Standardized Testing, student action, Students, Teachers, video games Art, coronavirus, Cosmos, COVID-19, curriculum, education, educators, lessons, literature, poetry, Politics, public schools, quarentine, safe schools, schools, science, Students, teachers

Dear Students,

A schoolteacher without a classroom is kind of like a firefighter without a fire.

Or a police officer without crime.

But here we are – self-quarantined at home.

Our classroom sits empty, and everyday this week we sit here at home wondering what to do.

I want you to know that I’ve been thinking about all of you.

I hope you’re doing alright during this unprecedented moment in history. It probably seemed like a lot of fun when it first happened.

No school for the foreseeable future!

The whole thing came together so quickly that our district didn’t even have time to get together work to send home with you. And like most schools throughout the country, many of you don’t have home internet access so we can’t fairly give you on-line lessons, either.

So you’ve been at home with little guidance from us. Sure we have free breakfast and lunches available for pick up at the school, but you’re probably growing a bit stir crazy.

I know I am. (And I’m sure your folks are, too!)

I’m at home with my daughter trying to keep her busy.

We’ve been creating Mario Maker boards for each other on our Nintendo 3DS and Switch.

We keep trying to stump each other, and me, being a teacher, I keep trying to get her to think outside of the box.

“Why don’t you try making a board where you have to get a mushroom through a maze?”

“Why don’t you try making a board where the walls close in?”
Or

“I wonder if you could beat a Thwomp in a race down a pit?”

We were having a really good time until I tried to get her to watch a science video. I put on the original Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” from the early 1980s.

My daughter loves looking up at the stars and asking me questions about the constellations. I thought this would be a perfect fit – after all, Sagan was an astronomer and can answer her questions way better than I can.

However, the old school effects were simply no match for today’s aesthetic. She revolted after about 20 minutes.

Today I won her over though with the new Cosmos series featuring Neil deGrasse Tyson. She turned to me after about five minutes and said, “Much better.”

We’ve been drawing and reading and playing video games and having a good ol’ time.

I hope you have people at home who can help you get through all this, too.

I’ve been getting a lot of emails recently from your folks.

They want to know what they should be doing to help you academically.

Whenever this whole thing is over – and it will be over someday soon I hope – they want to make sure you won’t fall too far behind.

Let me start with a word of caution.

We don’t know how long this self-quarantine will last.

We’re trying to stay home to stop the spread of this virus – COVID-19. It can be deadly to some people – even some young people like you.

It’s in everybody’s best interest that we wait this thing out so that the hospitals can deal with the people who get sick.

Then when the disease has passed, we can continue our normal lives.

But no one knows how long that will take. It could be a few more weeks – but more likely months.

It is very possible that we will not go back to school again until after the summer.

So it’s hard to say exactly what you should do to keep yourself in the best academic shape because we don’t know what you’ll be coming back to.

We DO know that we won’t have to make up some or all of the days we missed.

And we know we won’t (here in Pennsylvania) have to take the PSSA or Keystone tests this year.

But when this is over, what grade will you be in? Will you just move on to the next grade or will there be a bit of mopping up to do first? And if you don’t finish the curriculum, will you be ready for the challenges ahead?

We don’t know any of that yet.

But here are a few guidelines and some things you might want to do while you’re at home.

You don’t have to do all of them, but they’re some things to think about.

So here’s my top 10 things for my students to do during quarantine:

1) Finish Whatever School Work You Can

You may have some outstanding school work with you in your book bag. I know I sent my seventh graders home with their poetry projects. My eighth graders should either be done or have taken their projects home to finish.

So if you have work that’s not done, finish it to the best of your ability. You certainly have enough time.

2) Read a Book

I ask all of may students to have a self-selected book handy for sustained silent reading in class. Hopefully you brought it home. If not, take a look around the house. Maybe you’ve got a dusty tome hanging out in some corner. Or – hey – if you have Internet access, you probably have the ability to get an ebook.

Read something – anything you want.

It will while away the hours, relax you and maybe get your mind to thinking about things above and beyond how much mac and cheese you’ve got stored in the cupboard.

3) Keep a Journal

Do you realize you’re living through a moment of history? People will look back on this and wonder how people got through it. You could fill in the blanks for some future researcher. Just a description of your everyday activities, what you’re thinking and feeling, your hopes and dreams – all of it has historical value. Plus, you’ll get some practice expressing yourself in writing. And just think – a simple story about how you survived the great toilet paper shortage of 2020 could end up being taught in the classrooms of the future!

Make it a good one!

4) Take a Break from Video Games

I know some of you have built a fort out of sofa cushions, covered it in blankets and are nestled in this hideaway doing nothing but playing Fortnite or Roblox or Minecraft with friends on-line. And you know what? There’s nothing wrong with that. You go ahead and do that.

Just remember to take breaks for more than just food and the bathroom. Getting lost in a fantasy world is great so long as you leave yourself a trail of breadcrumbs to get back out again.

Don’t forget the trail. Don’t forget there’s a world out there that needs you. Set definite limits for how long you spend in there and try really hard to adhere to them.

5) Watch Something Educational on TV or the Internet

Education isn’t limited to something a teacher told you to do. Find a video or TV show that explains something you never knew before. Youtube is great for this if you know what to look for.

I don’t mean to find some rant by your favorite Youtuber. I mean find something about science, history, art, literature, math, etc. Make it something you care about but might not watch just for fun.

You’ll be surprised at what you can find out there. The channel CrashCourse with author John Greene (“The Fault in Our Stars”) and his brother Hank is particularly informative, entertaining and far reaching. I also love John Michael Godier for all things astronomy and Composer David Bruce for discussions of music.

6) Watch/Read the News

There are extraordinary things happening every day. Knowing about them can help you prepare for what’s next and think about what we can and should be doing to make things better.

7) Listen to Music/ Draw/ Do Something Creative

I know you. You’re a bundle of creative energy bound together waiting to explode. Go do that. Whatever you enjoy doing, create something. Write a song, make a comic book, paste together a collage. Express yourself, and if you’re not in the mood for that – enjoy the expressions of others. Listen to music, read a poem, watch a movie.

8) Help Out Your Folks

We, adults, can seem like we’ve got it all under control. We don’t. We’re just as anxious, fearful and uncertain as you about this whole self-quarantine thing. None of us were around the last time something like this happened (the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic). Anything you can do – helping take out the trash, cleaning up messes, even just trying extra hard not to argue with your siblings – can be a big help.

9) Talk to Friends and Family about How You’re Feeling

No one expects you to be a robot. These are trying times. It’s okay to feel a certain way about that. Share those feelings with someone you trust. And be a sympathetic ear for them to do the same. The best way we can get through all this is with each other’s help.

10) Know That You Are Loved

My dear precious little students! There are people out there who love you so much. There are people who would move Heaven and Earth to keep you safe. I know you’re scared and bored and anxious. But remember we’re in this together. And no matter where you are or what you’re doing there’s at least your crazy English teacher who loves you very much and can’t wait to see you all again.

Stay safe!

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FBI Warns EdTech Puts Student Safety at Risk

September 20, 2018September 20, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, capitalism, Child Safety, Civil Rights, Competency Based Education, computers, Congress, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Data, Data Mining, edtech, Education, Learning, Local Control, Media, Parents, Politics, privatization, School Funding, Schools, Standardized Testing, STEM, Students, Teachers, Technology, video games corporate, Corporate Education Reform, corporate school reform, Danger, Data Mining, ed-tech, edtech, education, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigations, Pandora's Box, Profit, public schools, schools, student privacy, technology, warning

Pandora’s box may not be a heavy wooden chest.

It might just be a laptop or an iPad.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) issued a warning late last week about the proliferation of educational technologies (EdTech) in schools and the dangers they pose to student safety and privacy.

The devices and applications singled out by US domestic intelligence services all involve software that asks for and saves student input.

This includes classroom management tools like Class Dojo and eBackpack as well as student testing and remediation applications like Classroom Diagnostic Tools and StudyIsland.

The alert cautions schools and parents that the widespread collection of student data involved in these applications could cause safety concerns if the information is compromised or exploited.

It’s just such technologies that have proliferated at a breakneck pace in districts throughout the country while legislation, cybersecurity and even awareness of the danger has lagged behind.

The Bureau is concerned about EdTech services because many are “adaptive, personalized learning experiences” or “administrative platforms for tracking academics, disciplinary issues, student information systems, and classroom management programs.”

The Bureau clarified that use of EdTech applications was not, in itself, the problem. They are a tool, and like any tool, they can be used for good or ill.

Advocates say when used correctly, these systems offer the potential for student collaboration, and for teachers to collect and compare information about students to help design better lessons. On the other hand, critics warn that the problems with most EdTech is essential to the way it operates and that it is designed more for the purposes of student data mining and profitization by corporations than with academic success for children in mind.

In either case, the dangers posed by such devices are indisputable.

The amount and kinds of data being collected about students has not been well publicized or understood. Many school boards, administrators, teachers, parents and students may be using EdTech without a full appreciation of how it often surreptitiously collects data on children.

Analysts listed several types of student particulars being stockpiled:

“personally identifiable information (PII);

biometric data;

academic progress;

behavioral, disciplinary, and medical information;

Web browsing history;

students’ geolocation;

IP addresses used by students; and

classroom activities.”

This is highly sensitive information that could be extremely harmful to students if it fell into the wrong hands.

Pedophiles could use this data to find and abduct children. Criminals could use it to blackmail them. It could even be sold to unscrupulous corporations or exploited by other children to bully and harass classmates.

These concerns are not merely academic. Data breaches have already occurred.

According to the FBI:

“…in late 2017, cyber actors exploited school information technology (IT) systems by hacking into multiple school district servers across the United States. They accessed student contact information, education plans, homework assignments, medical records, and counselor reports, and then used that information to contact, extort, and threaten students with physical violence and release of their personal information. The actors sent text messages to parents and local law enforcement, publicized students’ private information, posted student PII on social media, and stated how the release of such information could help child predators identify new targets.”

Though the Bureau did not mention them by name, it cited two specific cybersecurity failures in 2017 at two large EdTech companies where millions of student’s private information became publicly available.

The FBI seems to be referring to Edmodo and Schoolzilla. Hackers stole 77 million user accounts from Edmodo last year and sold that data to a “dark web” marketplace. Likewise, Schoolzilla stored student information on a publicly accessible server, according to a security researcher, thereby exposing the private information of approximately 1.3 million children.

It was these data breaches that prompted the Department of Education to issue a Cyber Advisory alert in October of 2017 warning that cyber criminals were targeting schools that had inadequate data security. Criminals were trying to gain access to this sensitive material about students to “shame, bully, and threaten children.”

In February, another cybercrime was reported by the Internal Revenue Service. The agency released an “urgent alert” about scammers targeting school districts with W-2 phishing schemes.

Of particular concern to the FBI are school devices connected directly to the Internet. They offer hackers an immediate link to private student information. This is true even if a school device is in the student’s home.

Tablets, laptops or monitoring devices such as cameras or microphones could be exploitable by tech savvy criminals – especially since many EdTech programs allow remote-access capabilities without the user even being aware of what is happening.

Indeed, some EdTech companies collect information on students’ feelings; become student data brokers and use voice-activated speakers in the classroom.

The FBI listed several recommendations for parents and families:

“Research existing student and child privacy protections of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), and state laws as they apply to EdTech services.
Discuss with their local districts about what and how EdTech technologies and programs are used in their schools.

Conduct research on parent coalition and information-sharing organizations which are available online for those looking for support and additional resources.

Research school-related cyber breaches which can further inform families of student data vulnerabilities.

Consider credit or identity theft monitoring to check for any fraudulent use of their children’s identity.

Conduct regular Internet searches of children’s information to help identify the exposure and spread of their information on the Internet.”

The warning concluded by asking those who have information about cybercrimes or who have been victimized by data breaches to file a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov.

For some, the FBI’s warning highlights the need for greater education funding for cybersecurity.

“While other industries are investing in greater IT security to protect against cyber threats, many schools are facing budget constraints that result in declining resources for IT security programs,” staff members from the Future of Privacy Forum wrote on their blog. “Schools across the country lack funding to provide and maintain adequate security,” they wrote.

Others see the problem as one of antiquated legislation not keeping up with changing technologies.

The FBI memo highlights a need for Congress to update federal student privacy laws, said Rachael Stickland, co-founder and co-chair of the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy.

At present, these issues are covered haphazardly from state to state, a situation Strickland finds intolerably inadequate.

The main federal law safeguarding student data privacy, The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, should be updated, she said. It must address exactly which ways districts should be allowed to share data with EdTech companies.

“What we need is a comprehensive approach at the federal level to address these outdated federal laws,” she said. “We really need these modernized to address not only the cybersecurity threats but also the potential misuse of this data.”

However, some critics are skeptical of the very use of EdTech in the classroom, at all.

They see the potential dangers being so massive and difficult to guard against that any remedies to fix the problem would be counterproductive.

Instead of spending millions or billions more on cybersecurity measures, we should use any additional funding for more essential budget items like teachers, tutors, nurses and counselors.

The goal is to provide a quality education – not to provide a quality education with increasingly complex technologies. If the former can be done with the latter, that’s fine. But if we have to choose between the two, we should go with proven methods instead of the latest fads.

EdTech corporations are making staggering profits off public schools while almost every other area goes lacking. In the nexus of business and industry, we may be losing sight of what’s best for students.

The question is have we already opened Pandora’s box, and if we haven’t, can we stop ourselves from doing so?

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Five Things I Learned About Ed Tech While Playing ‘Zelda: Breath of the Wild’

July 16, 2018July 16, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, Budget, capitalism, Child Safety, Competency Based Education, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", edtech, Education, Learning, Parents, Philosophy, Politics, privatization, School Funding, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Technology, video games Competency Based Education, Depersonalized Learning, ed-tech, edtech, education, individualization, Learning, Nintendo Switch, personalized learning, schools, teachers, technology, video games, Zelda: Breath of the Wild

I don’t mean to brag, but I just beat “Zelda: Breath of the Wild.”

This summer I sat down with my 9-year-old daughter and together we played the most popular Nintendo Switch game for hours, days, weeks.

And at the end of all that time, I came away victorious – something I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do when I started.

There are so many buttons to learn, two joy sticks, various info screens and menus.

But when it was all over, I had cleared all four divine beasts. I got all 18 captured memories. I completed about 80 shrines. I mastered about 45 side quests. I shredded guardians, lynols and bokoblins. And, yes, I opened a major can of whoop ass on Calamity Gannon.

As the kids say, I’m jelly.

My video game skills are lit.

You can’t handle me, bro.

And so on.

But I’m not a kid. I’m a grown man.

Didn’t I have anything better to do?

Couldn’t I have found a more productive use for all that time?

Maybe. Maybe not. However, beyond the sheer fun, I did learn something from the whole experience.

As a public school teacher, I learned about my students by following in their footsteps.

That’s really why I started playing in the first place – my middle school kids this year loved that game.

I got more Zelda doodles, more Hyrule poetry, more Link fan fiction than you might at first believe.

The world of the game was really important to my children and having even a passing knowledge of that world helped me relate to them.

I even asked for a few tips after class.

One of my best students took her Switch out of her backpack and showed me a prime location to pick hot peppers so I could withstand the cold of Mount Hyrule (Don’t ask).

It was worth doing just for that – I showed my willingness to be the student and for them to be the teachers. I showed them we were all a community of learners.

At least, that’s my hope.

But now that the dog days of summer are here and my video game victory is complete, I keep thinking of the implications of my experience in Hyrule on the world of education.

Specifically, I’m thinking about education technology or Ed Tech.

I’m thinking about how we use various software packages to try to teach students and how they invariably fail at the task.

Well-meaning administrators hear about this program or that classroom management system or an assessment app and they spend beaucoup bucks on it.

We’re instructed to give up valuable instruction time so our kids can sit in front of a computer while a digital avatar attempts to do our job.

Kids listen to a cartoon person instruct them in the rudiments of grammar or literacy, play loose skills exercises and earn digital badges.

It may sound like fun to us, but they hate it.

The reason: nine times out of ten it’s little more than a standardized test given on a computer.

Sure, there are lots of bells and whistles, but the kids catch on mighty quickly. There is no student as bored as a student forced to play an educational video game.

I have real concerns with issues of student privacy and how the data being collected by these apps is used. I have real problems with how this technology facilitates dumbing down the curriculum – narrowing it to only that which can be measured on a multiple choice assessment. I take umbrage that these programs are used by some as “evidence” that human educators and brick and mortar schools are unnecessary. And I shed real tears at the massive amounts of funding being funneled to corporations that could be better spent in our own districts.

But playing this game has given me hope.

In seeing how “Zelda” succeeds with kids – because it succeeded with me – I think we can illuminate some ways ed tech goes awry.

I found five distinct lessons from the game, five areas where “Zelda” succeeds where ed tech fails.

Perhaps these could be used to improve the quality of ed tech devices to make them better at teaching students.

Or they could show why ed tech will never be as effective at teaching as flesh and blood instructors.

In any case, here is what I learned.

1) Focus on Fun

One of the biggest differences between ed tech and “Zelda” was the focus.

The games we make children play at school are designed to teach them something. That is their purpose. It is their raison d’être. The point behind the entire activity is to instruct, test and reward.

By contrast, the purpose of “Zelda” is fun.

Don’t get me wrong. “Zelda” can be very educational.

There are points where the game is actively trying to teach you how to do things usually associated with game play.

You have to learn how to make your character (Link) do what you want him to do. You have to learn how to manipulate him through the world. How to run, how to climb, how to heal, how to use weapons, how to cook and make elixirs, etc.

However, the point behind the entire game is not instructional. It’s fun – pure and simple.

If you have to learn something, it is all in service to that larger goal.

In the world of the game, learning is explicitly extrinsic. It helps you have more fun playing. Only the pursuit of winning is intrinsic or even conceptualized as being so.

In real life, this may not be the right approach to education, but it seems to be a rule of virtual experience. If it is superseded, the game becomes just another class assignment – lifeless, dead, boring.

If educational software is going to be effective in the classroom, it must find a way to bridge this divide. It must either put fun before pedagogy or trick the user into thinking it has done so.

I’m not sure this is possible or desirable. But there it is.

2) Logic and Problem Solving Work but not Curriculum

There are many aspects of “Zelda” one could consider educational.

However, when it comes to things that have importance outside of the game, the biggest would be problem solving and logic games.

A great deal of game play can be characterized under this umbrella.

The ostensible mission is to defeat the bad guy, Calamity Gannon. However, to do so you often have to solve various puzzles in order to have the strength and skills to take him down.

The most obvious of these puzzles are shrines. There are 120 special areas throughout Hyrule that Link needs to find and solve.

Each one involves a special skill and asks the gamer to decipher problems using that skill. For example, one asks you to manipulate fans so that the air flow makes windmills turn in a pattern. Another asks you to get a ball through an obstacle course.

In each case, the emphasis is on logic and critical thinking.

That has tremendous educational value. And it’s something I’ve seen done easily and well in many educational video games.

The problem is it doesn’t teach any particular curriculum. It doesn’t teach math, science, English or social studies – though it does help contribute to all of these pursuits.

Ed tech games are not nearly so coy. They often try to go right for the curriculum with disastrous results. Ed tech software, for instance, will have you find the grammatical error in a sentence or solve an equation in order to move on in the game.

That just doesn’t work. It feels false, extraneous and forced. It’s doesn’t seem like an organic part of the experience. It’s something contrived onto it from outside and reminds the gamer exactly why you’re playing – to learn.

3) Option to Seek Help

One of the most surprising things to me about playing “Zelda” on the Switch was how much of an on-line gaming community has formed around the whole experience.

If you get stuck in a particular area, you can find numerous sites on-line that will help you get passed it. You can even find gamer videos where YouTubers will show you exactly how they solved this or that problem. And they don’t all have the same solution. Some provide elegant, well-detailed advice, and others seem to stumble on it and offer you their videos as proof they could actually get the job done somehow.

It’s a lot different from when I was a kid playing video games. Back then (30 years ago) you had your friends but there were few other places to go for help. There were fan magazines and a few video game companies had tip hotlines. But other than that, you were on your own.

One of my favorite YouTubers this summer was Hyrule Dude. His videos were clear, informative and helpful. However, I didn’t always agree with his solutions. But they invariably helped me find things that would work for me.

It reminded me a bit of Khan Academy and other learning sites.

If kids really want to grasp something today, they have so many places they can go on-line. As educators, it’s hard to incorporate them into a classroom environment because there are certain things we want kids to find out for themselves.

For instance, as a language arts teacher, I want my students to do the assigned readings on their own. Yet I know some of them try to skip to the on-line summaries they can find and use that instead of reading the text. I have no problem if they access good summaries and analysis but I don’t want them to take the place of trying to comprehend the text on their own first.

I think there are ways to use this larger social media community to help support learning without spoiling the hard work kids need to put in on their own. But it’s something we need to think about more and find better ways to incorporate.

4) Open Ended

One of the most striking things about this new “Zelda” is how much choice the gamer has. In most games you have to complete the first board and then the second and so on until you win.

On the Switch, the world you’re thrust into is incredibly open ended. You can do pretty much what you want, when you want. Or at least you can try.

At first, your character is limited to one area of the world – a plateau. But once you complete a certain number of the challenges there, you get the paraglider which allows you to access most of the rest of the world.

It’s a huge area to explore – impossible to travel the entire length of it without spending hours of game play. And it’s entirely up to you where to go and what to do next.

The central mission of the game is to defeat Calamity Gannon in Hyrule Castle. However, that would be incredibly difficult early on. You’re advised to get the four Divine Beasts first. And you can do them in any order you want.

Moreover, I mentioned shrines earlier. When you complete four shrines, you can either increase your hearts (the amount you can be hurt without dying) or your stamina (how long your character can do something hard like climbing or swimming without having to rest). Technically, you don’t have to complete more than a few shrines, but doing so makes your character stronger and better able to get the Divine Beasts and defeat Gannon.

There are also side-quests (totally optional) that reward your character with money, items, etc.

I think this is the secret to the game’s success. It’s why game play is so immersive and addictive.

Ed tech software is exactly the opposite. You must do section A before section B before section C. It’s little more than a multiple choice test with only limited possible answers of which only one is correct.

In “Zelda” there are often multiple ways to achieve the same end. For instance, I would assume the programmers wanted me to fight my way through every room of Hyrule Castle to get to Calamity Gannon. However, I simply climbed over the walls and swan through the moats – a much quicker and efficient method.

If we could recreate this freedom of movement and multifarious solutions within educational software, we might really be onto something. But, frankly, it’s something that even traditional video games have difficulty being able to recreate.

5) Choice to Play or Not

And speaking of choice, there is the choice whether to play or not.

Video games are one of the things kids choose for leisure. When we force kids to play them in school, that choice is gone.

They become a task, a trial, an assignment.

Moreover, not every child enjoys video games.

We can’t mandate kids learn from games – even the best of ed tech games. At best, they should be an option. They could be one tool in the toolbox.

In summary, I think the goal of the ed tech industry is deeply flawed.

Ed tech will never adequately replace brick-and-mortar schools and flesh and blood teachers.

At best, it could provide a tool to help kids learn.

To do so, games would have to primarily be focused on fun – not learning. They would have to be organized around critical thinking and logic – not curriculum. They would need to utilize the on-line community for help but not cheating. They would need to be open ended worlds and not simply repackaged standardized testing. And finally, students would need the choice whether to play them or not.

Unfortunately, I am skeptical that the ed tech industry would even attempt to incorporate these ideas in its products.

They are market driven and not student driven. The corporate creatures behind these products don’t care how well they work. They only want to increase profitability and boost market share.

Cheaper commodities are better – especially when the consumer isn’t the student forced to play the game but the politician or administrator in charge of school policy.

Ed tech’s potential as a positive tool in a school’s toolbox has been smothered by the needs of business and industry. Until we recognize the harm corporations do in the school, we will be doomed to dehumanizing students, devaluing teachers and wasting our limited resources on already wealthy big business.

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School Vouchers and Runaway EdTech Pave the Way for the Destruction of the Very Concept of School

May 30, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, capitalism, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Civil Rights, Competency Based Education, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Data, Data Mining, edtech, Education, Labor, Learning, Local Control, Parents, Politics, privatization, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Unions, video games Competency Based Education, edtech, Education Savings Accounts, individualized education, learning ecosystems, PA Senate, personalized learning, Privatize, school vouchers, schools, Students, teachers, technology

School is where you learn to learn.

A teacher with an advanced degree and decades of experience devotes her time to figuring out what helps you comprehend the world around you.

And, if she’s good, she imparts that lesson to you as well.

Imagine if we took that away.

Imagine a world where there are no schools – just free range children plopped in front of a computer or an iPad and told to go learn something.

No schools, no teachers, just gangs of students walking the streets, stopping along the way to thumb messages to each other on social media, play a video game or take an on-line test.

That’s the world many EdTech entrepreneurs are trying to build.

And school vouchers are helping them do it.

Take Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) and other market based privatization schemes.

Normally, the federal, state and local government collect taxes to fund an individual child’s education, which is then spent at a public or charter school.

At a public school all that money must be spent on the student. At a charter school some of that money can be pocketed as profit by the private company who runs the school.

Public schools provide a better alternative because the funding must be dedicated to the student, living within a district’s coverage area guarantees enrollment, the school must be managed by an elected school board with open meetings and a plethora of other amenities you won’t find at a privatized institution. But at least the charter school is a school!

However, an ESA or other voucher would allow that money to go elsewhere. It could go to funding the tuition at a private or parochial school where organizers can use it however they like – pocketing some and using the rest to help the child as you’ll find in most charter schools.

But as bad as that is, vulture capitalists want to add another destination for that money – let it pile up in the bank where it can be used for discrete education services provided by the EdTech industry.

It’s almost like homeschooling – without the loving parent being in charge.

It goes by many names – a learning ecosystem, personalized learning, competency based or individualized education.

But it’s really a single person cyber school with little to no guiding principles, management or oversight.

Education is reduced to a series of badges students can earn by completing certain tasks.

Reading a book or an article gives you a badge. Answering a series of multiple-choice questions on a reading earns you more badges. And if you’ve completed a certain task satisfactorily, you can even earn a badge by teaching that same material to others.

It’s the low wage gig economy applied to education. We just transform a crappy job market where workers bounce from a few hours of minimum wage labor here to a few hours of minimum wage toil there – all without benefits or union protections – into learning. Children bouncing from a few hours of Khan Academy videos here to a software package there and Voila! “Modern” education!

In short, it’s school without the school or teachers.

And make no mistake, it’s not about improving the quality of education. It’s about providing the cheapest possible alternative and selling it to rubes as innovation.

The wealthy will still get institutions of learning. They will still be educated by the most qualified teachers in the world. They will still learn how to learn.

The best path to becoming a truly educated person involves human interaction and mentorship. You need experienced professional educators who use the empirical evidence they see in the classroom about your child to tailor lessons to their needs. The wealthy would never dream of making their children learn from the academic equivalent of an automated check out aisle or telemarketer robocall.

It is only the poor and middle class who will be released like chickens into the pasture of a learning ecosystem.

And as an added benefit, the badge structure creates a market where investors can bet and profit off of who gains badges and to what degree on the model of crypto-currencies like Bitcoin! So all the stability of the pre-crash housing market! What could possibly go wrong!?

Let me be clear – this is the ultimate goal of the school privatization movement.

Charter and voucher schools are only the tip of the iceberg. They still require real human beings to act as teachers (though they need not be as well educated or have as much experience as public school teachers). They still require buildings and grounds.

But this depersonalized learning approach allows them to do away with all of that. They can just provide students with an Internet accessible device and some dubious on-line tracking and management system.

Then they can pocket all the rest of the money taxpayers put aside to educate children and call it profit.

And they can use the programs students access to “learn” as a way to gather valuable marketing data about our kids. Everything students do on the device is free market research – every word they input, every keystroke, every site visited down to the slightest eye movement.

This is the logical conclusion of the monetization of education and an economy that only sees value in others as human capital that can be bought, sold and exploited.

This is where the privatization movement is going. And they’re laying the groundwork in legislation being proposed in our state capitals today.

In Pennsylvania, for instance, Senate Bill 2 proposes the creation of just such ESAs. If approved, the immediate result would be to boost private and parochial schools.

However, given a few years to strengthen the technologies and systems needed for a full learning ecosystem, the same law would allow taxpayer money to be used in this way.

And it’s something hardly anyone is talking about.

We’re fighting the privatization systems of today as the plutocrats set up the privatization systems of tomorrow.

Even if school vouchers never take off to the degree necessary to scaffold the most robust learning ecosystems, EdTech lobbyists are trying to install as much of this garbage as they can into our existing schools.

They are using one-to-one iPad initiatives and grants to fund up-to-date computers, Wi-Fi networks and software packages to pave the way for this brave new world of digital exploitation. They are selling our test score obsessed bureaucrats software like iStation and IXL that bridge the gap between test prep and learning ecosystems lite.

You can walk into many schools today where students spend hours on-line earning digital badges for watching videos and taking stealth assessments.

Few people are sounding the alarm because few people understand what’s going on.

This is not conjecture. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is the goal the edtech entrepreneurs will gladly tell you all about hoping you’ll invest.

There are hours of videos, pages of documents, mountains of graphs, charts and graphics about how this scheme will pay off for investment bankers and venture capitalists. (See below)

The only true way to win this battle is a cultural shift away from dehumanizing runaway capitalism.

We need to stop thinking that the private sector is always better than the public good. We need to stop allowing big business and corporations to get away without paying their fair share. We need to increase the voice of citizens and decrease the megaphone of money and privilege.

Otherwise, the science fiction dystopias of books like “Ready Player One” will no longer be fiction.

They will become the reality for every school child in this country.

A reality where school, itself, is a thing of the past.

And education is reduced to the mercenary collection of discrete skills that add up to nothing of value for the students except their own enslavement.

But don’t take my word for it. Here is the learning ecosystems model from the EdTech industry, itself, in corporate officers own words and graphics:

LEARNING IS EARNING – the scariest 6:58 video you’ll ever see.

KNOWLEDGEWORKS Vision for the Future of Education:

Graphic as a PDF

Listing for PARENTS AS CONSUMERS Symposium

Read all about it her e.

FIGHT BACK AGAINST SCHOOL PRIVATIZATION AND RUNAWAY EDTECH:

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When Students Stay Up All Night Playing Fortnite and You’ve got to Teach Them in the Morning

March 6, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Bill Gates, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Child Safety, Common Core, Competency Based Education, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", edtech, Education, Guns, Parents, Politics, Poverty, Prejudice, privatization, Schools, small class size, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, VAM, video games Accountability, edtech, education, Fortnite, gamification, schools, standardized testing, Teacher Evaluation, teachers, technology, Value Added Measures, VAM, video games

There is something monstrously unfair about our teacher evaluation systems.

If your students fail because they were up all night playing video games, it’s your fault.

Seriously.

When students fail at academic tasks, there is no responsibility attributed to the students, no responsibility attributed to the parents and certainly no responsibility given to society.

It’s all just thrown on the teacher because, hey, someone’s got to be responsible. And it might as well be them.

I’ve written scores of articles about how standardized tests forced on students by the federal government are unfair.

They are developmentally inappropriate, culturally biased, and subject to a deep conflict of interest because the people making the tests get more money if test takers fail.

The tests drive the curriculum instead of the other way around. The scores needed to pass change from year-to-year invalidating annual comparisons. And many lawmakers pushing for these assessments are funded by the school privatization industry that uses failing test scores to sell its own fly-by-night brand of education.

These are real problems our education system faces every day.

But we mustn’t forget an even more fundamental one: we’re all responsible for student success or failure.

Not just teachers. EVERYONE.

Society, lawmakers, business people, parents – but those most responsible are the students, themselves.

Case and Point—

Over the last few months a word has entered my students’ vocabulary that hadn’t been there before: Fortnite.

It’s not that they’re so interested in an antiquated term for a two-week period. It’s the name of a popular multiplayer on-line shoot-em-up video game for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Windows, and Mac. Players build forts with teammates to defend against other players or enemies.

Apparently, many of my students got it for Christmas. Or since there’s a free on-line version, they were turned on to it by others who had gotten the deluxe version as a present.

It started as an undercurrent of trash talk. “You suck at Fortnite.” “You can’t beat me on Fortnite.” “You just wish you could take me on Fortnite.”

And then it started to manifest physically.

Those same kids would come in to school with Fortnite Face – glassy red eyes, heads slumped on the table and the inability to stay awake for more than 10 minutes at a time.

It’s not all of my students, but it’s a significant percentage. Almost all boys. And almost all at a distinct learning disadvantage.

Teaching them is like teaching someone in a deep sea diver suit. They can’t really see or hear you very well. And any message you get back from them sounds like it’s coming from the bottom of the ocean.

When I noticed it, I cleared as much of my schedule as I could to call parents. It’s hard because administration decided not to fill positions in my department for teachers who retired last year – so all our classes are larger. And they gave me a new class I haven’t taught in years so the planning load is more cumbersome.

Plus I have as many special education students as legally allowed in every class, which requires mountains of extra paperwork and monitoring for each child.

And of course the phone in my room doesn’t call out and the cell reception is terrible, so I have to move to one of the few phones that will actually allow me to contact parents and try to communicate my concerns.

Most parents I talked to noticed the same things I had. Fortnite was taking over their children’s lives. Their kids were playing the game at every opportunity and ignoring most everything else.

However, most parents I couldn’t reach. Those cricket burner phones get disconnected quick. Others go straight to a voicemail box that’s so full it won’t accept new messages. Others allow me to leave a message that will never be returned.

But sometimes I did get through. And sometimes parents didn’t simply throw up their hands and say they don’t know what to do. Sometimes a parent actually laid down ground rules or took the game away.

However, if I’m being honest, contacting parents did not solve my problem.

I’m not blaming them. Most of my students live below the poverty line. That means their folks are working two or three jobs just to make ends meet. Or they’re grandparents raising their sons’ or daughters’ kids. Or they’re foster parents with a full house.

They’re doing the best they can. But it doesn’t end up stopping the addiction.

And – let’s be honest – it is an addiction.

For the first time in 2018, the World Health Organization recognized video game addiction as a real thing. Not every video game. Not every time someone sits down to play a video game. But video games can lead to addictive behavior.

That’s what I’m seeing in my students.

So after talking with as many parents as I could, I came to a mostly dead end.

My next step was to try to use student interests to influence instruction.

We were in the middle of a poetry writing unit. So I allowed students to write their poems about Fortnite.

That perked up a few heads.

Here’s a cinquain about Fortnite. Here’s an acrostic, a narrative, a concrete poem in the shape of a soldier or his gun.

To be honest, none of them were masterpieces.

They were just the normal trash talk and braggadocio written down in verse.

So I got an idea. Use the heightened competitive urge to push artistry.

We came to limericks – a difficult but fun type of poetry with five lines, a specific rhyme scheme and meter.

We read funny examples, we sang the rhythm together in chorus – da Dum da da Dum da da Dum – and then I set them the task of writing their own limericks.

With one twist. Whoever wrote the best limerick would get a homework pass.

That got them going like a shot.

All of my Fortniters perked up.

They wrote like I’d never seen.

Each wanted to one-up the others. And no one wrote about the game.

By the end of class, we had some pretty good poems. I wouldn’t say they are the best ever written, but they were miles better than where we were before.

So what does it all mean?

When we talk about video games these days, the conversation usually strays toward violence.

Pundits caution that video games will desensitize children and make them more prone to aggression and acting out. It might even contribute to the creation of school shooters.

Wrong.

In general, video games don’t make children more violent. Fortnite is a game where students shoot each other with guns all night long and it hasn’t made my students any more aggressive or violent than they already were.

Many cultures like the Japanese are much more into video games than ours and they have fewer violent incidents or school shootings.

However, video game addiction is a real thing and it impacts learning.

Some corporations want to try to harness this addiction to push learning. Hence the move to personalized or competency based education. That’s pure rubbish.

It’s a way to monetize education without paying attention to what’s best for kids. The same with gamification – using game theory to drive instruction.

And don’t think I’ve lost sight of my own use of competition in class. I haven’t.

Games and competition can be used to positive ends in moderation.

You can motivate reluctant kids to do things they wouldn’t normally do with competition. But it doesn’t work for everyone and it doesn’t work all the time.

It needs to be a novelty. Any tool can be overused.

Even video games aren’t bad in moderation. I used to be a gamer, myself.

The problem is when it becomes an addiction.

Our social structures can’t handle it.

Game corporations only care if it makes money. Parents are often stressed to the limit just to provide the basics.

The only group we require to be responsible is teachers.

And that’s just not going to work.

Video game addiction is another area where it becomes painfully clear how much work we all need to do to help our children succeed.

Gamification – The Hottest New Trend to Monetize Education

February 27, 2018 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, Child Safety, Common Core, Competency Based Education, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Education, Junk science, Politics, privatization, Schools, Scripted Lessons, Standardized Testing, Students, Teachers, Technology, video games Competency Based Education, Computers, Depersonalized Learning, economics, edtech, education, gamification, personalized learning, schools, Students, teachers, technology, video games

When I was a kid, Super Mario Bros. was my jam.

After school, I couldn’t wait to take on the role of plucky plumber Mario or his brother Luigi. I’d jump on a few turtle shells, bounce over a bottomless pit and smash just the right secret brick to get my flashing star power up and wipe the floor with endless levels of Koopa Troopas.

But through it all, I never really learned anything.

With the possible exception of a few Italian stereotypes, the only knowledge I gained was where the warp zones were, which blocks to hit and the muscle memory necessary to defeat the next bad guy.

However, now-a-days that’s all changed.

Someone in marketing and accounting has decided that the same techniques I used to save Princess Toadstool would make an exceptional method of pedagogy.

They call it gamification, the process of making academic lessons, courses and objectives look more like video games.

Sure, the process has applications in the business world and advertising, but its biggest market has been education.

In fact, the Gamification industry is worth $2 billion worldwide and some estimate it to jump to $22 billion by 2022.

Want to teach grammar? Welcome to the good ship Verb sailing on the seas of Nouns and Pronouns. Interjections, A-hoy!

Wish your students knew fractions? Let them blast away the wrong numbers so only the correct numerator matches with the correct denominator.

That kind of thing.

It’s incredibly popular in some circles.

Advocates claim it increases student engagement and enthusiasm, provides instant feedback and the opportunity for social interactions.

Critics say it reduces students’ attention spans, narrows the curriculum and replaces human interaction with canned interfaces.

But when something is bringing in this kind of cash for big business, it’s kind of beside the point whether it works or not.

It’s the latest form of snake oil out of the cobra factory, and your teacher may be forced to pour it into your children’s brains.

That’s just Education 2018. Under the old model, the hucksters would have to approach each teacher one-at-a-time and convince them to try the shinny new toy in the box. But when you remove teacher autonomy, that frees all the used car salesmen to go right to the one person in your district – often the technology coordinator or academic coach – who controls the purse strings and convince him or her to buy what they’re selling.

In short, I’m not a fan.

In fact, I think gamification is one of the dumbest fads to hit public schools since standardized testing.

Don’t get me wrong.

Games can have limited use in the classroom.

My students love reviewing already mastered material in teams or competing against each other individually.

But there’s a big difference between playing Jeopardy or Kahoot with soon-to-be-tested material and plopping kids on an app or software package that pretends to teach them the concept.

There’s a world of difference between a 10-minute detour and an entire curriculum structured around game theory.

The biggest problem seems to be this.

Games are not intrinsically valuable.

They are good or bad based on the amount of fun they provide the user.

Be honest. No one really cares if Link puts together the Tri-force. No one is losing any sleep over rampaging Metroids on the loose. No one is putting out an Amber Alert the next time Princess Peach is inevitably kidnapped by Bowser. The only thing that matters is if meeting these objectives and countering these fictional bad guys is fun and exciting.

However, the same is not true for the ends of education.

People care whether you can read and write. You may lose sleep over being unable to add, subtract, multiple and divide. Co-workers will be alerted if you don’t comprehend the basics of science and history.

And the higher the skill we’re aiming for, the greater the degree of importance.

Gamification divorces these two ends. It turns education from an intrinsic activity into an extrinsic one.

This is a big deal.

Students shouldn’t struggle through a reading passage so they’ll get a score or a badge. They should actually care about what they’re reading.

My students and I just finished reading Lois Lowry’s “The Giver,” and they loved it.

After the first few chapters, they weren’t reading for a grade or to please me, their teacher. They truly wanted to know what would happen next. And to fully understand that, they had to exercise and refine their reading skills.

Look at it like this.

When I was playing Super Mario Bros., I often took a few warp zones to the last board so I could beat Bowser quickly and win the game. But that means I skipped over most of the first seven boards.

This didn’t matter because the only reason to play was to win. But if those first boards had included something important to the experience, skipping them would have greatly diminished my experience.

Gamification reduces learning until its meaningless. Why would anyone want to know something unless it carried with it a video game like reward?

And that’s merely the worst part.

In practice, most of the applications and software being pushed on kids to increase enthusiasm and motivation aren’t really very much fun at all. After a few times through, there isn’t much reason to plow through exposition heavy content with little to do. This material doesn’t connect to students’ lives, it doesn’t foster authentic competition, it doesn’t stoke their sense of wonder – it’s just a boring set of hoops to jump through to satisfy the instructor.

Admittedly, it does provide instant feedback, but that doesn’t matter if students don’t care about the matter at hand.

Social interactions are possible here but rarely have I seen this opportunity explored. A good group project will get students more engaged socially than messaging back and forth about the software challenge du jour.

Education can be so much more than this.

Students are being robbed of authentic interactions, authentic instruction and authentic learning.

Not all things should be turned into a game.

Gamification is another example of trying too hard to market something to people who won’t actually be using it in the hopes that they won’t notice it doesn’t actually work that well.

The consumer isn’t the gamer – it’s the administrator who buys the program. And the people best suited to assess the program’s success – teachers and students – aren’t even part of the equation.

It’s about monetization, not education.

Mario may grab a bunch of coins on his way to save the princess, but it is the corporations who are getting rich off this sad fad.

All that glitters is not gold, just as all that is new and technological is not cutting edge.

Can we stop letting big business drive the field and let education be determined by educators?

Otherwise, it will be game over for an entire generation of kids duped into accepting crap for curriculum.

Betsy DeVos – Extreme Image Makeover as Champion of Special Needs Children

December 11, 2017December 11, 2017 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Child Predators, Child Safety, church and state, Civil Rights, Competency Based Education, computers, Corporate Education "Reform", Donald Trump, Education, Journalism, Junk science, Local Control, Media, Politics, Poverty, privatization, Propaganda, Republican, School Choice, School Funding, school vouchers, Schools, Social Justice, Special Education, Standardized Testing, Students, Supreme Court, Teachers, Uncategorized, video games Betsy DeVos, charter schools, Corporate Education Reform, corporate school reform, education, education secretary, Politics, Privatize, propaganda, school vouchers, Special Education

Meet Betsy DeVos, Champion of Students With Special Needs.

At least that’s who she’s pretending to be this week.

The wealthy Republican mega-donor who bought her position as Secretary of Education published an article in the current issue of Education Week called “Commentary: Tolerating Low Expectations for Students With Disabilities Must End.”

It was almost like she expected us all to forget who she actually is and her own sordid history with these kinds of children.

Up until now, the billionaire heiress and public school saboteur always put the needs of profitizers and privateers ahead of special needs children.

During her confirmation hearing, she refused to say whether she would hold private, parochial and charter schools receiving tax dollars to the same standard as public schools in regard to how they treat special education students. Once on the job, she rescinded 72 federal guidelines that had protected special education students.

But now she’s coming off like a special education advocate!

What a turnaround!

It’s almost like David Duke coming out in favor of civil rights! Or Roy Moore coming out in favor of protecting young girls from pedophiles! Or Donald Trump coming out in favor of protecting women from crotch grabbing!

It begs the question – who exactly is she trying to fool?

Does Education Week really expect us to buy

this crap? Or has the so-called corporate media enterprise simply caved to the Trump administration’s demand to publish a puff piece for rubes without any journalistic integrity?

Real journalists might have published this BS, but only after giving readers the proper context.

Not Education Week. The only nod toward objectivity was inserting the word “Commentary” in the title of DeVos’s article.

It’s almost like saying – DeVos ALLEGEDLY champions students with special needs.

Give me a break.

She’s championing a feel good decision from the US Supreme Court from March. Way to get on that, Betsy!

Moreover, the decision isn’t exactly substantive.

It basically says that public schools need to ensure their special education students make more than minimal academic progress.

Great! Who doesn’t want that?

Has Congress jumped on this decision to increase federal aide to help public schools meet this requirement?

Nope.

And neither is DeVos calling for any additional federal help. In fact, her administration is proposing CUTTING federal special education funding.

Yet when the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) was enacted in 1975 by the Gerald Ford administration, the federal government was supposed to fund 40% of the cost of all special education students. It has never met that promise.

Today, the federal government only shoulders 15.7% of the cost with the states and individual districts picking up the rest.

This is extremely unfair.

It costs roughly twice as much to educate a special education student as a non-special education student. Yet the numbers of special needs students are on the rise.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2015 statistics (the most recent available), students with special needs account for 8.8% of the population. That’s up an additional 100,000 students from the previous year.

And the areas with the largest increase of special needs students are the most impoverished.

So we’re expecting the poorest communities to take up the largest percentage of the tab.

There are several bills in Congress demanding the federal government increase funding to the 40% threshold, but DeVos didn’t see fit to mention them.

To her, money is a thing only worth being lavished on private, parochial or charter schools.

Instead, she mentioned “personalized” education as a remedy for special needs students in public schools.

She wrote:

“No two children are the same. Each has his or her own unique abilities and needs. Personalized, student-centered education can help all children thrive, especially children with disabilities.” (Emphasis mine)

Though few people really disagree with this statement, the use of the word “Personalized” sets off alarm bells.

The term has come to mean “personalized learning” or “competency based education” which is code for making students sit on a computer or a device for hours at a time completing stealth assessments. These are programs made to look like video games that really just assess the same standardized material on the typical fill-in-the-bubble high stakes test.

And the results of these assessments are likewise used against schools and students as an excuse to privatize and strip them of local control, legal protections and mandated transparency.

There are authentic ways to use technology to help kids learn, but the rush by corporations to cash in on this emerging market has been largely unregulated, unstudied and unchallenged.

DeVos has already noted her commitment to edtech solutions to academic problems.

At a conference for edtech investors earlier this year she said:

“We’ve just scratched the surface in the role technology can play. I only have to look at my young grandchildren to see how powerful tech is. It is a thousand flowers, and we haven’t planted the whole garden.”

Another place she can look is her investment portfolio.

Both she and her husband have a $5 million and $25 million investment in a shady “brain performance” company called Neurocore. DeVos even sat on the company’s board until she got her job as Secretary of Education and had to step down.

The company claims to be able to train young brains to think better by hooking kids up to hats with wires hanging out of them.

I’m not kidding. The whole things goes against just about every peer-reviewed study in the field of neuroscience, but DeVos claims her company can help cure attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, autism, anxiety, stress, depression, poor sleep, memory loss and migraines.

In other words, hooking kids up to machines of dubious scientific value is the cure for special education.

This is where we are people.

Our government is run by frauds and hucksters.

And the media calmly gives them an unchallenged platform to spout whatever nonsense they like with little to no skepticism.

So Betsy DeVos is a champion for students with disabilities, huh?

File that under B for Bullshit.

Creating a Charter or Voucher School is Like Designing a Utopia – Biases Prevail

December 1, 2017 stevenmsinger Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, capitalism, Charter Schools, church and state, Civil Rights, Competency Based Education, Corporate Education "Reform", Cyber Charter Schools, Education, Parents, Politics, privatization, Propaganda, School Choice, School Funding, school segregation, school vouchers, Schools, segregation, Social Justice, Special Education, Standardized Testing, Teachers, video games charter schools, dystopia, Lois Lowery, Margaret Atwood, Privatize, public schools, school vouchers, teachers, The Giver, utopia

Create your own Utopia!

Go ahead! Don’t be shy!

What kind of government would you like? Republic, Monarchy, Dictatorship, Anarchy? Some combination or original system?

It’s all up to you.

How would you structure the economy? Capitalistic, Socialistic, Communistic? Something else?

You decide.

What would a family look like in your perfect society? How would careers be prepared for and chosen? What level of technology would you choose?

All these and more must be answered when creating the ideal community for you and I to live in.

And that’s exactly what I had my 7^th grade students do this week in preparation for reading Lois Lowery’s science fiction novel, “The Giver.”

In small groups, my little ones clustered together at their tables and gave social planning a go.

It was stunning the variety of societies they created.

One group had a nominal anarchy with an inherited monarchy controlling the military. Another had an oligarchy of the smartest people who got the best grades to make all the decisions while everyone else played video games.

One of my favorites though was a group who decided to let women make all the rules except who could marry whom. That was decided only by the men, but women got to decide when to have kids and how many to have.

It was fascinating to see how their little minds worked.

But it was all a preview to Lowery’s novel of a futuristic society where utopia soon descends into dystopia.

As it often does.

So it made me wonder about the most utopian thinking we find in modern life – education policy.

The economists, think tank partisans and lobbyists love to denigrate the public school system and pine for an alternative where corporate interests and business people make all the rules.

Sure they have literally billions of dollars behind them and a gallery of famous faces to give them legitimacy.

But they’re really just engaged in a more high stakes version of the assignment my kids did this week.

After all, what is a charter school but some naïve person’s ideal of the perfect educational institution? What’s a voucher school but a theocracy elevated to the normative secular level?

In each case, these world builders do the same as my middle schoolers – they build a system that would be perfect – from their own individual point of view.

In his book, “Utopian Studies: A Guide,” Prof. Gregory Eck writes:

Because… utopia is rooted in theory, it will not always work. In fact, more is written about the failure and impossibility of utopia than of its success, probably because the ideal has never been reached.

And why is that ideal never reached? Margaret Atwood, the author of more than a few dystopian novels, has an answer.

“Every utopia,” she says, “…faces the same problem: What do you do with the people who don’t fit in?”

One person’s paradise is another person’s Hell.

So the idea of designing one system that fits all is essentially bound to fail.

But doesn’t that support the charter and voucher school ideal? They are marketed, after all, as “school choice.” They allegedly give parents and children a choice about which schools to attend.

Unfortunately, this is just a marketing term.

Charter and voucher schools don’t actually provide more choice. They provide less.

Think about it.

Who get to choose whether you attend one of these schools? Not you.

Certainly you have to apply, but it’s totally up to the charter or voucher school operators whether they want to accept you.

It is the public school system that gives you choice. You decide to live in a certain community, you get to go to that community’s schools. Period.

Certainly some communities are more accessible than others, and they are more accessible for some people than others – whether that be for economic, social, racial or religious reasons.

But you have much more choice here than you do from a bunch of nameless bureaucrats making decisions in secret that they never have to justify and for which they will never be held accountable.

What about curriculum? Don’t charter and voucher schools offer choice of curriculum?

No. They have one way of doing things. They have one curriculum. Either accept it or get out.

This is how we do things at KIPP. This is how we do things at Success Academy. You don’t like it, there’s the door.

By contrast, public schools tailor their curriculum to meet the needs of individual students. Each teacher does something different for every child in his or her charge whether those children are in special education, regular education, Emotional Support, the English as a Second Language Program, the academic or honors track.

Charter and voucher schools are naive utopias.

They propose one ideal way to teach all children and they expect parents to jump at their cultish schemes. All students will wear these sorts of uniforms and chant these sorts of phrases in response to these orders, etc. All children will be expected to provide marketing research to corporations on competency based learning programs and let their data be mined by these advertisers.

Because at these schools the emphasis is not on the curriculum. It’s on the system, itself.

These are privatized schools. They are schools run by private industry – not the public.

Decisions are not made by duly-elected representatives of the community in the light of day. They are made behind closed doors by corporate stooges.

THAT is the great innovation behind these schools. Everything else is mere window dressing.

If one of these schools found a better way to teach, public schools could pick it up and do it even better because the teachers and principals would be accountable for doing it correctly.

Funny how that’s never happened.

These so-called lab schools have never produced a single repeatable, verifiable innovation that works for all students without cherry picking the best and brightest.

Not once.

That’s because the utopia these policy wonks are interested in building isn’t for the students or parents. It’s for the investors.

They want to maximize return on investment. They want to decrease costs and increase profits. And whatever happens to the students is purely secondary.

It may be the ideal situation for the moneymen, but it’s often pure dystopia for the students. Charter schools are closed without notice, the money stolen under cloak of night. Voucher schools fool kids into thinking creationism is science and then are no where to be found when reputable colleges want nothing to do with their graduates.

Let me be the first to say that public school is no utopia.

We have real problems.

We need adequate, equitable and sustainable funding. We need integration. We need autonomy, respect and competitive pay for teachers. We need protection from corporate vultures in the standardized testing, publishing, edtech and school privatization industries.

But at heart, public schools are a much better choice because they don’t pretend to be perfect.

They are constantly changing. Teachers are constantly innovating.

A handful of years ago, I never had students design their own utopias before reading “The Giver.” But a colleague came up with the idea, I modified it for my students and we were off.

If I teach the same course next year, I’d modify it again based on what worked and what didn’t work this year.

I’m not expecting to be perfect.

I’m just doing the best I can.

Or as Jack Carroll puts it:

Perhaps the greatest utopia would be if we could all realize that no utopia is possible; no place to run, no place to hide, just take care of business here and now.

Like this post? I’ve written a book, “Gadfly on the Wall: A Public School Teacher Speaks Out on Racism and Reform,” now available from Garn Press. Check it out!

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video games

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Top 10 Things I Want My Students to do During the Coronavirus Quarantine

1) Finish Whatever School Work You Can

2) Read a Book

3) Keep a Journal

4) Take a Break from Video Games

5) Watch Something Educational on TV or the Internet

6) Watch/Read the News

7) Listen to Music/ Draw/ Do Something Creative

8) Help Out Your Folks

9) Talk to Friends and Family about How You’re Feeling

10) Know That You Are Loved

FBI Warns EdTech Puts Student Safety at Risk

Five Things I Learned About Ed Tech While Playing ‘Zelda: Breath of the Wild’

1) Focus on Fun

2) Logic and Problem Solving Work but not Curriculum

3) Option to Seek Help

4) Open Ended

5) Choice to Play or Not

School Vouchers and Runaway EdTech Pave the Way for the Destruction of the Very Concept of School

LEARNING IS EARNING – the scariest 6:58 video you’ll ever see.

KNOWLEDGEWORKS Vision for the Future of Education:

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When Students Stay Up All Night Playing Fortnite and You’ve got to Teach Them in the Morning

Gamification – The Hottest New Trend to Monetize Education