April 2014 Reader on Educational Games

Improving the World of Educational Gaming [Kotaku] - I agree wholeheartedly with the author here--the simplest improvement we can make is touting the educational aspects of everyday games while doing the opposite for educational games.

Trip Hawkins’s next act: If You Can, a startup for social emotional learning games. [Slate] - We have barely scratched the surface of the potential of these tools. Here's an example of a game taking a step in the right direction.

How a High School Teacher Is 'Gamifying' World News [Mashable] - Holy cow, I love this idea. If I was still in the social studies classroom, I would have loved this. It's important to note that educational gaming doesn't have to mean technology or video games; in this case, it's about gamifying the learning process of a While Side note: I experimented with fantasy sports in the math classroom years ago.

Immersive Video Games: The Future of Education? [Mental Floss] - Echoes a lot of what I wrote years ago for the Educational Games Research blog.

All the World's a Game: Interactive Map Gives Kids the Travel Bug [Mashable] - I always wanted to get that giant Hammacher Schlemmer world map, the one that would cover most if not all of one wall in your classroom, but this is way, way better.

Spring Break 2014 Reader on Coding in Education

With 11K Pre-Orders, Play-i Lands $8M To Teach Kids To Code With Interactive Toy Robots [TechCrunch] - Coming soon! This is an exciting development. I heard a recent TED talk adapted for NPR about how robots change the way we react to technology, including how we end up personifying and thus engaging at a more meaningful level with them than other tech. What Play-i is aiming for rings true with that in mind.

3-Year-Olds Can Learn to Code — One Robot Turtle at a Time [Mashable] - The Logo programming (with its ubiquitous turtle) that I used to do on my Apple IIc had to have been part of the inspiration for this real world board game.

Why We Need Coding Clubs for Girls [GOOD]

Getting Girls Into Programming, One Children’s Book At A Time [TechCrunch]

Proof the Next Great App Could Come From a Kid [Mashable]

Weekend Reader on Coding in Education: January 2013

CPS to make computer science a core subject [Chicago Tribune] - This is revolutionary, far more so than putting tablets or laptops in the hands of every child, and it's only the beginning.

Finland Eyes Programming Classes for Elementary School Students [Mashable] - I find this shift both wonderful and hilarious: in high school, Algebra 2 Honors students were required to take a computer science class as well (we were ahead of the curve) where we did programming in Pascal. At that time, most of my classmates wanted nothing to do with it. Nowadays, I think most students growing up in this digital generation would embrace coding courses.

Primo Is An Arduino Robot That Teaches Kids Programming Logic Through Play [TechCrunch]

For Low-Income Youth, Learning to Code's About More Than Jobs [GOOD]

Code Literacy Doesn’t Need To Come At The Expense Of Other Skills [TechCrunch]

Weekend Reader on Bullying

5th Grade Football Team Rallys Around Their 1st Grade Waterboy Who Was Being Bullied [Laughing Squid]

Bruno: Bullying Is Bad, But Do We Know How To Stop It? [This Week In Education]

Want to Squash Bullying? C'mon, Let Kids Play [GOOD]

Is Anonymous Social Media the Answer to Cyberbullying? [Mashable] - The headline of this article is both misleading and preposterous. It's actually a feature/review of a new app called Whisper, which sounds exactly like the scrapped PostSecret app (yet somehow this is never mentioned) in that people anonymously post secrets. In any case, let's think about that headline: social media is getting more personal and less private by the day. If anything, recent trends point to near transparency and the end of privacy as we once defined it. Facebook, Twitter, and other major networks are not going to make a huge left turn towards anonymity. Instead of posing pointless questions like this, let's ask questions that get us closer to real solutions.

Yes, Your School is Watching You - The Takeaway [via The Quick and the Ed] - A debate on monitoring social media as a way to prevent cyberbullying and other online harassment by students.

Weekend Reader on Large Scale Tablet Rollouts

L.A. school iPad program: Students should hack their tablets. [Slate] - A response to the news that L.A. Schools Now Taking Back iPads From Students Who Dare To Use Them For Purposes Of Fun (Consumerist).

EdTech: Chicago's Slow But Steady Tablet Rollout [This Week In Education]

How a Radical New Teaching Method Could Unleash a Generation of Geniuses [Wired] - This is the November 2013 cover story, and it's about a border town not too far from me (Matamoros, across the Rio Grande River from Brownsville, TX).

Valley becomes proving ground for innovation in educational programming [The Monitor (McAllen, TX)] - A local article on tech initiatives in my home of the Rio Grande Valley, including McAllen's iPad rollout (I was a part of the pilot group two years ago) and how our region is being looked at across the nation.

The iPad Goes to School: The Rise of Educational Tablets [Businessweek] - Across all of these articles, most educators will notice a central ongoing issue with schools and technology: schools and districts rush to buy the latest and greatest technology with the promise of better results, but rarely think about how to use it effectively until later.

I watched this happen over the past ten years with calculators, "clickers", laptops, software, the Internet, smartboards, and on and on and on. I'm not saying these devices aren't useful or important, but unless schools figure out ways to use them productively (and that doesn't mean using them as glorified textbooks), they'll just end up on the school tech garbage pile.

Review & Giveaway: The Smartest Kids in the World

Americans don't seem to agree on much these days. Perhaps one thing we're in agreement about is that our education system is not what we want it to be. By common measures like the PISA test, our students are way behind their counterparts in other countries.  Thus it's not that surprising that we look to the countries ahead of us on the PISA and other such measures for answers.

In The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way, Amanda Ripley dives into Poland, Finland and South Korea for answers, using exchange students as her embedded reporters.  Their perspectives reveal a lot about both the differences and similarities between our systems.

This is a difficult, nuanced issue and Ripley thankfully does not try to provide a magic bullet to fix our education system. Most problems in our country, and really in our everyday lives, have no simple answers.  If we're ever to fundamentally change our education system for the better, it will take a multifaceted, long term approach.  It will take a lot of patience and ganas to make it happen.

Ripley notices a few key issues worth exploring. First, the way we teach mathematics is the U.S. is not the way it's taught in the top scoring countries. As I have written about myself, we teach the broadest amount of topics possible every year, without diving deep and asking more challenging questions. Problem solving and logical thinking, skills that would help our kids across the board, barely make it into our curricula.

Ripley's exchange students reveal that many of the top countries seem to have a greater buy-in to the importance of education both as system but especially among parents. Of course, parents have a reason to push their students harder: their are serious, life-changing consequences when students fail. Most teachers in America will tell you that it's hard to fail a class, grade level or standardized test to begin with, but if you do, you either can retake it until you pass or find some other way to not be held accountable.  In other words, when you hear that kids are "lazy" or "don't care" it's because they know they'll probably get passed along no matter what.

Another serious, systemic issue that Ripley points out is that teacher training appears to be much more rigorous in these case study countries. Education schools are held to high standards overall and each one is highly selective. In Poland, it took amazing political will over the course of decades to pull this off, to the point where I wonder how possible it is for us to do it here. That being said, I feel like this is something we can fix, even though it will not solve all of our problems.

Of course, there were times I thought the author was oversimplifying the problem, or defending criticisms of our system with anecdotes. For example, America's obsession with sports in schools is brought up a couple of times as a problem because it simply doesn't exist in these countries. I found very little evidence to back up the assertion that we're harming our kids through our system that actively promoting athletics. Yet I did not feel Ripley was trying to blame this issue for all of our systemic ills by any stretch of the imagination.

Overall, I really enjoyed The Smartest Kids and the author clearly did her best to deal with this complicated issue with an even hand. Anyone interested in improving education in the U.S. will come away with a lot to think about.

Luckily, I have not one, but two copies of The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way thanks to the good folks at Simon & Schuster to give away!  Email teachforever@gmail.com with the subject "The Smartest Kids Giveaway" by 11:59pm CST Friday, October 4th to be entered in a random drawing. Thank you and good luck!

Get The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way now on Amazon.

We Need To Teach Our Kids That Technology Is Great, But It's Not Everything

As a kid growing up in rural New Jersey, I got to play outside a lot. I used to spend hours and hours walking or riding on trails, catching frogs at the pond around the corner, or just having elaborate sword (stick) fights with invisible bad guys. I had computers (yes, plural) at home before most people in my community had even warmed up to the idea of a personal computer.  They were occasional playthings for the majority of my childhood, no more or less interesting than my Legos, playing soccer or the vast natural playground that surrounded my home.

Once those computers became connected to something outside of my house--at first to local bulletin board systems (BBS) and later to to dial-up networks and broadband internet--my traditional idea of play quickly disintegrated.  This shift happened when I was in middle school, exacerbating an already awkward and difficult process by introducing me to people and an entire world I would not have known otherwise.

I have been struggling to regain my sense of play and my connection to the outside world ever since. For the most part, I have been losing: the Internet and more recently smartphone and tablet apps have consumed my time and attention. These days, I work full time online running a couple of my own websites and managing social media for several clients: I'm always connected, always tapping away on some device.

This is why, despite being a steadfast advocate for using technology for learning in and out of the classroom, I am equally steadfast in advocating that sometimes you have to turn the damn things off.  Kids need to be given as many opportunities to engage in open play, to go outside, to read and write and be creative without any technological aide.

They need to grow up with the concept that their technology is not their life.  Anyone who has sat around a table at a restaurant or party and realized that everyone at your table is on their smartphone and not talking to one another will understand this.  These devices should be seen as a means to an end, not an end in and of themselves.

Kids also need to understand the limits and dangers of this always-connected world.  Online predators, viruses, hackers stealing data, social engineering, government surveillance, "educational" apps that don't teach anything, content they create living online forever... this is just the tip of the iceberg.

We need to teach them these things, both as parents and as teachers.  It is just as important, perhaps moreso, than anything other way we can use these devices to help children learn.  There's no time to lose, either: we are becoming more and more connected, more and more dependent every day.

Book Review & Giveaway: The Energy Bus for Kids by Jon Gordon

The Energy Bus for Kids: A Story about Staying Positive and Overcoming Challenges by Jon Gordon is a children's book about using positive thinking, dealing with bullies and encouraging others to do the same. Big, colorful and easy to read, I think kids would feel the same feeling of adventure that they do on The Magic School Bus (no relation).

The book follows a young man named George as he navigates the daily challenges of elementary school. With the guidance of new bus driver Joy, he learns lessons to apply to his day. There's no silver bullet or instant gratification: George tries to follow Joy's advice and still has bad days. Over time, George learns five interconnected lessons that conquer all, and he's inspired to spread the lessons to his fellow students.

The idea of perseverance and hope in the face of negativity of all kinds is the theme that ties the book together. It sounds a lot like advice that adults might read in books, magazines and blogs, which is no surprise: Gordon adapted this from his bestselling The Energy Bus: 10 Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work, and Team with Positive Energy, a fable aimed at hardworking adults.

This book is written at a fairly high reading level, and might be a bit long for younger readers with short attention spans. For younger or struggling readers, it might be something you need to read together. That being said, I think both parents and teachers of early elementary students will find this book valuable in combating bullying and negativity in all its forms.

As usual, I'm giving the copy provided by the good people at Wiley away to a lucky reader. To enter, email teachforever@gmail.com with the subject "Energy Bus Giveaway" until 11:59pm CST this Wednesday 8/14. I'll pick a winner at random and send the book their way. Good luck!

Get The Energy Bus for Kids on Amazon.com

Weekend Reader on Community Service in Education

Let Students Design Their Own Social Change Projects [GOOD]

Blake Kernen: The Case for Community Service [HuffPo]

3 Ways to Use Microcredit to Invest Your Students [This blog]

The Complete Guide to Service Learning: Proven, Practical Ways to Engage Students in Civic Responsibility, Academic Curriculum, & Social Action [Amazon] - A practical guidebook on how to incorporate service learning into your classroom.

What the Designated Drivers Campaign Can Teach Those in the Youth Service Movement [GOOD] - Finally, a reminder that we need to sell our students (and likely our schools and districts) on service learning to get them involved. It won't always happen organically.

Weekend Reader on Schools and Communities

I've been looking at recent articles with a broad lens recently, trying to tie together threads on community schools, Promise Neighborhoods and how every type of school can affect the whole community.

D.C. Non-Profit Program Develops "Cradle to Career" Pipeline [Ebony]

Linking home and classroom, Oakland bets on community schools [Hechinger Report]

A Philadelphia School's Big Bet on Nonviolence [The Atlantic] - This example follows part of the community school model, where the school broadening the support system in place to help students with problems that exist because of/within the community as a whole. Their amazingly positive results, especially in the face of such initial criticism, are an inspiration.

Luis Torres almost didn’t make it off the streets — and now he helps kids like him [NY Daily News] - A similar story to the turnaround discussed above.

Beyond the Bake Sale: The Essential Guide to Family/school Partnerships [Amazon] - Finally, a book recommendation on forging better school and community relations, which I believe is just as beneficial for the community as a whole as it is for the school.

Weekend Reader on Entrepreneurship in Schools

Fishtree Blog — The Skills of Tomorrow Public speaking. [Fishtree blog via GOOD] - The author discusses whether entrepreneurship should be taught in schools.

3 Ways Schools Can Encourage Student Entrepreneurship [Edudemic]

Teach Your Kids the Value of Money with a Job Board [Lifehacker] - Teaching kids the value of work (and money) is a great way to set them on an entrepreneurial path.

How to Educate Next Generation of Entrepreneurs? Start by Reviving Financial Literacy [GOOD]

KidLead - A leadership training curriculum for kids ages 6-9. Leadership and entrepreneurship go hand in hand.

What We Really Mean When We Talk About Gamification in Education

For every article I read pointing to gamification as a key part of the future of education, there seems to always be a counterpoint about it being some kind of fad. It is admittedly a buzzword, and it will likely fade out of our vocabulary at some point (as all buzzwords eventually do). What it really means will remain a critical part of successful classrooms.

Gamification is not about making everything into a game, engaging players through fun and competition. At it's heart, when we're talking about gamification, we're really talking about positive feedback and reinforcement. Badges, levels, progress meters--these are all simply ways to say you are on the right track. Keep going. You're almost there.

Done right, there's usually no need for material rewards, just the external psychological motivation we all need sometimes. Finding ways to encourage your students to succeed is at the heart of good teaching.  Gold stars, a "Student of the Week" board, positive phone calls home, showing up at a student's athletic or academic competition... these are the most effective badges we can award our students.

Whether or not you explicitly try to gamify your classroom, the game is being played there every day. It's up to you to find out how to help your students win. 

Building Internet Savvy Kids

Online 'Driver's Ed' Course Preps Kids for the Social Web [Mashable]

Common Sense Media - This well-established site is a one-stop-shop for parents and teachers looking for help teaching kids to be savvy about all media, including social media.

Teaching Students Better Online Research Skills [Education Week]

You're Being Monitored All the Time — Deal With It [Mashable] - The best way to use the current debate about the government tracking us is to engage your students in a discussion about how easily the government, corporations and anyone else you know can track your whereabouts based on what you do online. Between the data you agree to share or don't own when you sign Privacy Policy agreements and what students decide to freely post, it will be hard for them to be frustrated with anybody but themselves. This particular article should serve as a great discussion piece.

Creatively Designed Posters Educate People About The Perils of Cyberspace [DesignTAXI.com]

Weekend Reader on Bullying in Schools

Click to enlarge

A Must-See Anti-Bullying Poster Perfect For Classrooms [Edudemic] - More info about the poster below.

School Bullying Prevention Task Force Wants Less Talk, More Action [The Educated Reporter] - I think we all do.

The Next Step to Stop Bullying [Blackboard] - This is a step in the right direction. I think this can be done without a dedicated app, though, if we think the problem through.

Bully: An Action Plan for Teachers, Parents, and Communities to Combat the Bullying Crisis - This acclaimed book is a companion to the documentary of the same name.

At Work: Cyberbullies graduate to workplace [USA Today] - Finally, to hammer home the importance of tackling this problem before kids turn into adults, let's realize that bullying doesn't stop when students are done with school.

Weekend Reader on School Lunches & Student Health

How a $50 School Lunchroom Makeover Could Help Fight Childhood Obesity [Parade.com]

How the Food Industry Exploits Students’ Cravings for Sugar, Salt, and Fat [Edvoices] - Mr. Nast makes great points about the need to teach our kids media literacy, especially the power of advertising, as well as the science behind junk food.

What NOT to do: Lunch Ladies Teach Middle Schoolers About Debt, Trash Their Lunches If They Owe Money [Consumerist]

Action for Healthy Kids - This advocacy group has a lot of information on model school lunch and health programs.

USDA Rolls Out New School Brunch Program For Wealthier School Districts [The Onion] - A little satire that makes real life calls for better lunches for everyone seem much more reasonable.

A Brief Collection of Critical Topics Missing From Most Curricula, Part 2

Entrepreneurship: Rise of the Mini-Preneurs: A Kid-Run Virtual Lemonade Stand To Teach Entrepreneurship [GOOD]

Independence: Hacking the Classroom to Encourage Student Independence [THE Journal]

Financial literacy: Moneythink: Giving a Handup (Not a Handout) With Financial Literacy Skills [GOOD]

Basic electronics: How to Get Started with DIY Electronics Projects [Lifehacker]

Coding: A Videogame That Teaches Kids To Code [Fast Company Co:Design] - See the game's trailer below.


See the original post, A Brief Collection of Critical Topics Missing From Most Curricula.

What Will It Take For "Zero Tolerance" Policies To End?

It's not too surprising that as a nation, we're all out of outrage for stories like Boy Suspended From School For Making “Gun” Out Of A Pop-Tart and Florida high school hero gets suspended AFTER preventing school bus shooting.  It seems that in recent years, stories like this have become as much of a media cliche as "local boy makes good."  They still illicit some sort of reaction, but it's not sustained or strong enough for us to make a serious change to the now standard "zero tolerance" policies in school districts across the country.

An artifact from my earliest teaching experience

"Zero tolerance" sounds great when the most common school story seems to be about mass shootings.  Of course, that's why we have these policies to begin with.  The reality is that "zero tolerance" runs counter to anti-bullying efforts as well as common sense that every good teacher uses within their classroom.

Bullying is nothing new.  I was bullied in middle school (this was years before Columbine), and when I stood up for myself and it inevitably led to a "fight", we were both punished equally.  This was wrong then, and it's wrong now--if a student is bullied and stands up for themselves, or someone defends themselves after someone else starts a fight, it should not result in both students being suspended or otherwise punished.  Obviously, a student intervening to prevent a Columbine-like tragedy should be honored, not punished.

In short, "zero tolerance" discourages anyone from intervening and preventing bullying or other violence--including bystanders--because the consequences are doled out so thoughtlessly. 

This brings us to the second problem: great teachers follow the main theme of Teaching with Love & Logic, the best book ever written about teaching. Great teachers know that the ladder of consequences or any other rigid system simply doesn't work. Every incident should be considered on a case-by-case basis, like it is in exemplary classrooms.  This idea hasn't spread to the school or district level, like many common sense ideas that come from the classroom, but that's because it's easier to follow mindless, blanket policies.

The solution to this problem is very simple: districts and ultimately principals consider each case on it's merits and hand out appropriate consequences accordingly. This would end the practice that led to the Florida teen and any kid that makes a mere gesture of a gun getting suspended.  Keeping "zero tolerance" in place not only fails to protect innocent kids, but also adds to the list of reasons why students are so increasingly disengaged with the entire school system.

Our students deserve a system grounded in reality, like the rest of the world around them.

What Leaders Can Learn From Spike TV's Bar Rescue

Jon Taffer would make a pretty good principal. In the Spike TV reality series Bar Rescue, the bar expert takes failing bars and turns them around. How that might qualify him for a principal role requires looking closely at this great show and finding the very practical lessons that apply to any successful organization.

The problems facing each bar vary, of course, but the overarching problem in nearly all of the businesses is a failure of leadership.  At first, the owner usually refuses to take responsibility for bad practices, poorly trained managers and employees, or failing to meet the needs and wants of their clientele.  Of course, when no one takes responsibility, nothing ever gets better--especially if the lack of accountability starts at the top.

Does that sound much different than a school or classroom that's being run poorly? You can only fix problems when you agree to own them.

The show follows a procedure of collecting information, history and observations and then using that data to make improvements.  Taffer brings in experts to retrain staff, fix menus and improve the entire concept behind the bar.  He uses tons of research and science to get the owner and staff on board with changes and to show us, the viewer, why it works. 

The process of reflecting on relevant data is something every successful teacher and school leader does. Poor leaders can sometimes put on a good enough show to convince you they're seriously, objectively looking at what's right and wrong in their schools.


There's also some great examples of what not to do on the show.  Owners, managers and employees display the whole gamut of poor decisions, from laziness to ignorance.  Taffer himself does a lot of yelling and insulting that should never fly in any school or classroom.

Most importantly, there is always resistance to change--it doesn't matter that these places are failing and what they are doing is clearly not working, there's always someone fighting Taffer on making improvements.

We see all of these things in schools, and we must continually strive to do better.

There are many other shows like this on television, and they follow the same formula--Restaurant Impossible, Tattoo Rescue, and many other makeover shows.  If you watch a lot of them, like me, you see these same lessons come up almost without fail.  That's how you know it's something you can learn from as an educator.

Weekend Reader on Tech in the Classroom: February 2013

Hands-On Learning in School Just Got Very Real [Mashable!] - Microsoft Surface + giant Promethean-built touchscreen = an interesting new development in technology for schools.

How Portal 2 Developers Became The Best 6th Grade Physics Teachers Ever [Fast Company]


Handing Out Laptops in School Isn't Enough—Teachers Need Training, Too [GOOD]

5 Ways Schools or Districts Can Immediately Use Technology to Engage in Authentic Learning [The 21st Century Principal]

SimCityEDU Teaches Students STEM Subjects in a Virtual Environment [Mashable!]

"No Excuses" Is a Powerful Idea in Education

Student rendition of my classroom, circa 06-07

Today on This Week in Education, Paul Bruno declared "No Excuses," the mantra made popular by KIPP and others in the charter school movement, a meaningless education phrase.  He was responding in part to reports of Washington, D.C. charter schools having high expulsion rates, implying that "No Excuses" is mainly used as a reason to kick out kids who cause problems.

Many charter schools and organizations have adopted the "No Excuses" idea from KIPP and used it for a number of reasons.  It is translated into very high expectations for teachers, staff, students and parents on all fronts.  It is sometimes (and in my admittedly narrow experience, very rarely) used as a reason to expel students.

Bruno is missing the most important meaning behind "No Excuses," the one that drives teachers and leaders at every one of these schools.

"No Excuses" means that poverty, race, the neighborhood you live in, and the innumerable issues challenging low-income students and their families should not be accepted by society as excuses for why they can't succeed. Those factors should not stand in the way of a great education and a path towards a better life. We've come a long way towards getting past the idea that certain students "can't learn," but we're not there yet. Indeed, those of us that have worked in low-income communities will tell you how much we have to fight this idea among our own students, parents and teachers.

"No Excuses" stands in defiance of that lingering fallacy.

To paraphrase my friend JoAnn Gama, Co-Founder of IDEA Public Schools and member of President Obama's White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics, being born into a low-income community should not be a guarantee that every successive generation will live in poverty.  Education is a gateway out of poverty, and we should be making "No Excuses" as we push our students and ourselves on that path.