Educator, Thinker, Consultant

Category: Education (Page 1 of 3)

Pedagogy of the Depressed

Quite the interesting article: Pedagogy of the Depressed.

Hello! Are you an educator who’s interested in using AI but unsure of which online “AI for educators” course to take? Not to worry, Cognitive Resonance has you covered! We’ve completed the offerings from OpenAI (in partnership with Common Sense Media), Google, and AI for Education, all of which take an eerily similar approach to explaining what AI is and why you need to be using it in your classroom.

We are now pleased to share with you this illustrated guide to what these courses cover—consider this an early holiday present!

The article makes some interesting points. There are several notes about AI “learning” (it doesn’t learn), “making decisions” (again, AI is not sentient), and “figuring out“. They also note that the trainings point out individualizing instruction without doing any individualization.

AI can do some really interesting things for the classroom teacher. However, there are tons of caution that need to go along with what AI can do.

Pedagogy of the Depressed](https://buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com/p/pedagogy-of-the-depressed) was an interesting read.

What I Miss

I was sitting in a meeting the other day waiting for a meeting to start. A middle School principal asked me what I missed about being a principal. I didn’t have to think long.

The messiness. I miss the messiness of working with staff and students in the learning and growing process.

I miss how I messed up working with an autistic student (really could’ve helped more if I knew then what I know now). The funny thing is that the student’s mom was the sister of a friend of mine (I didn’t know the connection until toward the end of the student’s time with us). By the way, it’s not that I or we did anything really wrong, we just could’ve done a lot of things much, much better.

I miss helping a family navigate dealing with a seizure disorder. The family was going through some other trials and tribulations at the same time.

I miss working with students who were phenomenally smart but needed confidence that they could do great things. Many of our kids ended up going to college. Several went to Ivy League schools. Many went to the University of Michigan (Go Blue!), which in many cases were as far away as they were allowed to go.

I miss two parents learning from each other. In one case, we had a parent (Parent One) who also happened to be a FedEx driver with my school on his route. He was passionate about how African Americans were treated. There was an incident with another parent who was, well, let’s say a bit biased. Parent One happened to be delivering something when his child and the child of Parent Two were in a room in the office due to an issue. Parent Two arrived in the office. Generally, we wouldn’t have parents talk at this point (too many unknowns and we definitely didn’t want kids to see parents behaving badly). However, both parents wanted to chat. Parent One was extremely thoughtful, kind, and effective in clearing up many issues for Parent Two. It was a beautiful thing to watch.

Most of all, I miss the excitement and unpredictable nature of middle school. Our staff did amazing work with kids. I miss being a part of that.

Moderator Mayhem

Moderator Mayhem is a great exercise/experience in what moderation is like.

We hope Moderator Mayhem helps players understand these realities of content moderation and demonstrates what’s really at stake when policymakers propose legislation that would govern how Internet companies can host and moderate user content.

I would love to use this experience for middle school students, alas, the content is not middle school friendly. They are very upfront about this, there is a warning that the content is designed for 18 and up.

However, I believe a similar experience would be wonderful for middle school students. Naturally, it would be challenging to write those scenarios, but the concept of making judgments is important for kids.

I’m thinking of using Moderator Mayhem is an inspiration for creating a game of decision making in H5P. It probably wouldn’t end up being anything like Moderator Mayhem, but the inspiration would be there.

I would need to identify a similar set of decision-making options for kids. I could use the Branching Scenario or maybe Game Map.

AI for Teachers

AI continues to be the HOT topic in education. More and more sites are incorporating AI into their services.

Recently I came across a site that provides AI services for teachers – Teacher Server. There are several really good things about this site:

  1. Data Privacy– “Your data is not saved or stored on our server. We prioritize your privacy and ensure that any data processed through our service is handled with utmost confidentiality. Except for the account information: email and password, the website does not store any user data including AI input outputs. We absolutely do not keep, store, or sell any data.”
  2. Cookies and Tracking– “TeacherServer does not use cookies to track user activity or store any personal data. Additionally, we do not follow or monitor your location, online activity, or any other personal behavior while using our services.”

Let’s take a quick look at their Mission:

TeacherServer is a cutting-edge educational platform designed to support teachers in their daily tasks. Our mission is to provide high-quality, easy-to-use tools that enhance teaching and learning experiences.

So what kind of tools do they have for teachers? Let’s take a look at just a few of the options:

  • Lesson Plan Generator – Generate daily, weekly, and unit lesson plans aligned with curriculum goals.
  • Lexile Score Adjuster – Generate a similar text at a higher or lower Lexile score.
  • Cultural Awareness Activity Planner –Develop cultural awareness activities to promote understanding.
  • Group Work Idea Generator – Create group work activities based on grade level and subject.
  • Classroom Case Solver – Users contribute classroom dilemmas while the AI provides solutions.
  • Behavior Intervention Plan Generator – Detailed plan to help a student who is struggling to behave in class.
  • ESE Lesson Modifications – Tailors lesson content and delivery methods to accommodate students with exceptionalities and special needs.

This is an interesting project. You do need to create an account to use the site (i.e. an email address), but that’s it.

You may want to take a look around and play with this site. The privacy seems to be good.

AI continues to be the **HOT** topic in education.

* Image Courtesy of:

Education AI Announcement Hero Image

Credit: U.S. National Science Foundation

Assessment Reporting

I was asked to provide a data sheet for the NWEA assessment.

Interestingly, NWEA provides two spreadsheets with the necessary information. The first sheet (NWEAWinter20) is quite a lengthy sheet with all the testing information. This sheet includes testing dates, time on task, school, and the breakdown of all the testing. The second sheet contains the student information. So the first task is to copy the Student information onto a new tab in the Assessment sheet. Now we have all of the information on one spreadsheet (although two tabs).

Next, combine the student information with the assessment data. Good news is that since StateIDNumber is on both, this means a “simple” VLOOKUP.

I added five blank columns in order to merge the five data columns that I needed (StudentLastName,StudentFirstName, StudentMI, Grade, and StudentDateOfBirth). I left the first two columns (StateStudentID, and StudentID) in place. This allows me to use the first column for the LOOKUP. In cell C2, I added the following formula:

=VLOOKUP(A2,Students!$A$2:$G, 3,0)

The data that we want to copy over lives in columns C, D, E, F, and G. The data that we are matching (StateStudentNumber) is in column A. VLOOKUP’s must run off the first column. (* You can do similar things with different commands if you can’t use the first column.)

Let’s take a quick look the formula. We always start with an “=” to indicate a formula. “VLOOKUP” is our magic formula. This is a vertical lookup; meaning that the spreadsheet will vertically (thus the V).

Next, the A2 says to look at cell A2 to find a match. Thus, the StateIDNumber in A2 will be used to find the student on Student tab. Next, we have “Students!$A$2:$G”. Let’s break this one down. Since we are pulling the data from a different tab, we need to say which tab that is. Thus the Students!. Next, we add the range on that tab that we pulling from: A2:G. But, what about the $? We want to use absolute rows, thus the $. This means that the spreadsheet will always look through the whole column (note that we don’t close the G column so that we don’t risk “cutting data off”).

The next number maps to the column that we need. In this case, we are looking for the information in Column C (which is the third column, thus 3). Basically, wherever the information in cell A2 on our current sheet, matches the information in Column A on Student tab, the information in Column C (last name) will be inserted in this cell.

Finally, the last argument is a “0” meaning that we don’t have a header row. * We do have a header row, but we have skipped this in both spots for ease of use.

As we copy this formula down the column, the next row will change from:

=VLOOKUP(A2,Students!$A$2:$G, 3,0)
to
=VLOOKUP(A3,Students!$A$2:$G, 3,0)

The only thing that is changing is the first argument (A2 becomes A3) which is referencing the StateStudentNumber for the next row.

For our First Name column (Column D), we use the same process, but change the Column imported to 4. Thus, the formula for cell D2 becomes:

=VLOOKUP(A2,Students!$A$2:$G, 4,0)

Next, comes StudentMI (Column E). The formula for cell E2 becomes:

=VLOOKUP(A2,Students!$A$2:$G, 5,0)

Grade is our next column (Column F). You guessed it:

=VLOOKUP(A2,Students!$A$2:$G, 6,0)

Finally, Birthdate (Column G).

=VLOOKUP(A2,Students!$A$2:$G, 7,0)

Now we have all the students combined with all the assessment data. Cool! However, there is tons and tons of data here. There is a mix of Mathematics and Language Arts.

The request was to create a tab with selected information:

  • State ID
  • Student ID
  • LastName
  • FirstName
  • MI
  • Grade
  • DOB
  • RIT
  • Percentile
  • Quartile
  • Lexile
  • Goal 1
  • Goal 1- RIT
  • Goal 2
  • Goal 2 – RIT
  • Goal 3
  • Goal 3 – RIT
  • Goal 4
  • Goal 4 – RIT
  • Goal 5
  • Goal 5 – RIT

Still lots of information, but much more focused.

So, we create a new tab. We name the tab “Math”. We now have three tabs: NWEAWinter20, Students, and Math.

Now we need a formula to pull just the Math information onto the “Math” tab.

Here’s our formula:

=QUERY(FILTER(NWEAWinter20!A2:ET,NWEAWinter20!M2:M=”Mathematics”),”SELECT Col1,Col2,Col3,Col4,Col5,Col6,Col7,Col29,Col31,Col32,Col77,Col83,Col84,Col88,Col89,Col93,Col94,Col98,Col99,Col103,Col104 WHERE Col6>3 and Col6<9″)

Again, let’s break this down. We need a QUERY to pull the information from another sheet. We need a FILTER to, well, filter the information. The FILTER allows us to pick the tab (NWEAWinter20) and use the Column M (which is Subject: either “Mathematics” or “Language Arts”) to limit the results to that subject. This will only pull the test results that are Mathematics.

The SELECT says to just bring over the columns that we need. The first seven columns are demographic information, so we pull all of those. Next, we have to convert Columns to Numbers. Better Solutions had a terrific conversion chart. This tells me that Column AC is 29. The list of Columns pulls those columns listed above.

The last part is WHERE. The request was limited to grades 5-8. Column F(Col6) listed the grade of the student. Since I wanted grades 4-8, I used “L>3 AND L<9”.

Now that we have this set, we can do the same thing for Language Arts. Since we have the hard work done, we simply duplicate the “Math” tab, rename that tab “Language Arts”. Then we change the formula in cell A2 from:

=QUERY(FILTER(NWEA_Spring_2024!A2:ET,NWEA_Spring_2024!M2:M=”Mathematics”),”SELECT Col1,Col2,Col3,Col4,Col5,Col6,Col7,Col29,Col31,Col32,Col77,Col83,Col84,Col88,Col89,Col93,Col94,Col98,Col99,Col103,Col104 WHERE Col6>3 and Col6<9″) to =QUERY(FILTER(NWEA_Spring_2024!A2:ET,NWEA_Spring_2024!M2:M=”Language Arts”),”SELECT Col1,Col2,Col3,Col4,Col5,Col6,Col7,Col29,Col31,Col32,Col77,Col83,Col84,Col88,Col89,Col93,Col94,Col98,Col99,Col103,Col104 WHERE Col6>3 and Col6<9″)

Simply changing the Filter criteria after the M2:M from “Mathematics” to “Language Arts” means that we are done.

Now we are ready to slice and dice the information even more. We can now utilize Pivot Tables, Filtering and more.

Running Your Own

Ben Werdmuller, who is brilliant, has a great write up, Running your own site painful. Hosting Nazis is worse. Seriously, this is a GREAT article. Please go read it (and then come back here).

He makes important points about social media, where your stuff is hosted, options for discoverability and more. He focuses on writers, but so much is equivalent to educators.

I’d say his wonderful article is relevant in two ways for educators:

  1. Parent/Community Communication
  2. Educational Resources.

Parent/Community Communication

Parent/Community communication is a challenge in education. All schools have a website and post to the website. However, people don’t generally know when or if to check the website. As social media took off, schools transitioned to posting on social media, mostly Twitter (now called X) and Facebook. Schools also posted to Instagram. Lots of schools also send out emails and texts.

As Ben Werdmuller points out, schools don’t have control over Twitter (X), or Instagram. So, while schools benefit from the audience of those social media sites, schools are also at the mercy of their decisions and plans. So, if a platform were to allow Nazis to post (and promote those posts) the school may be appearing to support those kinds of activities. However, this gets complicated as lots of parents/community members may use the site and maybe they do not see the Nazi posts. or maybe the site gets sold and goes out of business. Now schools have to redirect parent/community members to a new site(s).

A website based upon a domain that you own means that you have control over that. By owning a domain, schools have control over who gets to post and what things look like. However, that means that schools have to develop and promote the site.

Parents/Community members usually find other social sites “easier to use”. They really don’t have to do much. This is a big strength, and a big weakness. They may or may not see specific things. Facebook has gone through many periods where they were/are tightly controlling what people see, what gets promoted (thus seen).

Ideally, parents/community members would set up their own RSS feeds to follow. However, realistically, they aren’t going to do this. (Even though RSS is actually very easy to use. I personally use NetNewsWire). It is a mindset that needs to be developed.

So, schools post to websites, X, Facebook, and Instagram. They may be re-evaluating that as sites change, though given the amount of issues that have come up with Facebook and haven’t resulted in people moving away says that it would take a lot for people to actually move to another platform.

Educational Resources

I see similar issues with Educational Resources. Quizlet is a pretty popular flashcard creator. Recently, I’ve heard that they refuse to sign a DPA (Data Privacy Agreement). Thus, some schools are moving away from allowing access to the site. Some teachers are upset. They have spent years creating resources.

This is really part of a common issue though. Most educational resources need to collect money in order to continue to provide services. Thus, educational resources are constantly adjusting things to make sure that they can stay in business.

Long ago, I was talking to someone and used the phrase “you are always investing in someone – either yourself or someone else”. (I know this because that person repeated it back to me in a future meeting.) Lots of educators have bought into (via their time, and work) an educational resource or ten.

Schools also purchased a variety of resources through the ESSR funds (COVID relief). That money has come to an end. School budgets will be getting tight again. There is the possibility that schools won’t be able to fund all of the educational resources that they have over the last few years.

The alternative though is open-source. Open-source has the advantage of being controlled by the district. It is not free, there are some costs involved in hosting, configuring, and updating. However, it is much, much more affordable. Open-source software tends to not be as pretty as commercial resources. Plus, open-source software tends to be more powerful, but less focused. So, there is some learning involved by the teacher (you are always investing in someone – either yourself or someone else“). If educators would come together and create and share things, the effect could be extremely powerful.

So, what are some examples?

Both of these are open-source and powerful. H5P allows users to create Flashcards and much more. Both have platforms available to share work. Even more powerful for me is that both can allow students to create resources.

So, what’s going to happen is that some educators will switch from one commercial product to another. Teachers may be upset and frustrated that they have lost a bunch of work. They will then switch to another commercial product. That will work for a while until a business model changes, free accounts become too limited to be useful, or something else. They will get frustrated. They will move to the next product.

What a powerful world it would be if the students were doing the creating. What a powerful world it would be if educators took control of educational resources. What a powerful world it would be if educators were sharing, and adapting resources.

Snowplow Parents

The New York Times recently posted an article (apparently a subscription is now required) about online grades and “Snow Plow Parents”.

What is a “Snow Plow” parent? According to Parent:

…a snowplow parent removes any obstacles in their child’s way. This type of parent does not want their child to experience any discomfort or problems, so the parent intervenes and fixes it for their child.

I remember “Helicopter Parents”, those parents who hover over their children. I remember that when my own kids went off to college, there were a few parents who actually moved to the college town that their kid was attending.

Snow Plow and Helicopter parents are related. Both take on way too much of their child’s life.

I found the article interesting and insightful. There is a definite bias early on in the article about the “dangers” of online grades being available for parents, which is balanced out later in the article. (Thus, it is important to read the whole article.)

Really, the article ends up focusing on the importance of students developing agency and responsibility. Oh, and how some parents are taking that away from kids.

Part of the advice is about making sure that parent’s connection with kids goes beyond grades:

…parents shouldn’t want conversations about grades “bleeding into every conversation you have with your kids. That does a disservice to your relationship, and it does a disservice to your child.”

A big focus of the article is about kids developing executive functioning.

“Part of executive functioning and personal management is understanding what’s the right time and place to have a conversation versus not. And so students do need to develop that,” she said.

The article even addresses a couple of interesting issues:

At its heart, the issue is that too many parents see their children’s grades as the ultimate reflection on themselves and their parenting.

and

There were kids, he said, who were “incredibly skilled at gaming the system” — grade grubbing rather than achieving anything intellectually.

In the end, the author admits that it’s not all negative.

… not every teacher I spoke to had a negative experience with online grade books. Some said that the technology made their lives easier and improved communication with some parents. Even the teachers who pointed out the unseemly behavior of some parents and students stressed that it wasn’t a majority who abused the system.

I find this an interesting time to be a parent (just like all the other ones in history). Parents today deal with social media, connectedness, information overload, pressure to be successful, and on and on.

I don’t think any of this is really new, but it is new for each parent. Also, the number of parents who are truly “Snow Plow” is pretty minimal (still makes it rough for those particular kids).

So, what about online gradebooks? These can be beneficial. However, it is also important to establish how grades work in the classroom early on in the year (or now). Set out expectations of when work will be graded. Communicate how grades are calculated. Take advantage of the power of the gradebook. I have found online gradebooks to have much more good than negative. The article even points this out. Remember, no matter what system that you use, you could have a lot of these same issues. Many of these are “people” issues, not technology issues.

If you are a parent of a child under 18, do your best. Help them grow. They’ll make mistakes. They’re human. Don’t be a Snow Plow.

Reader’s Theater

The wonderful Shawn McGirr sent along the Reader’s Theater activity he created. The activity has students picking a short story and presenting that story to the class.

Students select their script. All students get a question/discussion page after the performances are done. During rehearsals, students in each skit group design questions in the StudentQuiz activity that restricted to their group until the end and students answer student created questions.
Final exam is a pool of all the questions with a random number from each StudentQuiz activity pulled for the final test.

This is a phenomenal activity. The students get to lead the way. They are creating the questions.

Shawn sent along an example of the activity. However, when I imported the activity and tried to use it, I hit an error screen. Shawn utilized StudentQuiz in Moodle. StudentQuiz is a great plug-in that I’ve used before.

Hm. I thought maybe it was due to the original being created from an older version. So, I tried to create a brand-spanking new activity. Drats, same error message. Or maybe not drats. The issue probably isn’t related to the imported activity. So, off to the forums. It is there that I discovered that there is a known issue with StudentQuiz and Moodle version 4.3. The fix is in the pipeline. Hopefully, by mid-January, it will be available.

I do have another Moodle installation though. That one is running Moodle version 4.1 currently. I was able to import the activity there without issue.

The activity is awesome. Shawn has done a great job. The students take the lead. They get to select a piece to be the expert on. The students get to create the questions. The students get to answer the questions created by their peers. The teacher then gets to utilize those student-created questions to create a unique “final exam” for each student. (The teacher can approve the student-created questions. Then, the teacher essentially says, “give each student 20 questions from this bank of 100”.)

MoodleNet Thoughts

I posted on Mastodon about the lack of feedback on Moodle Net. Martin replied asking for feedback. I’ve responded, but I thought that I would flesh out my thoughts a bit here.

I love Moodle and what you can do with it. I love that there isn’t a big money-making, data-sucking, privacy-invasive company running it.

A little background. I’m in the US. Specifically, I’m in K-12 education teaching and learning. Moodle is not super popular. There are certainly a few places, but Moodle is much bigger at the University level than K-12. There is much angst over Moodle. Quite simply, teachers find it “too hard”.

There are reasons that Google Classroom has taken over. It really doesn’t do much (thus, much less to learn for teachers). Google Classroom is essentially handing out worksheets and getting them back (another bonus, teachers understand the worksheet process).

When COVID hit, there was a rush for two things, video conferencing and an LMS. Zoom quickly captured the video conferencing mindshare. So much so, that even now it is pretty much the only game in town. Google Classroom captured the LMS market (note that it not an LMS but that doesn’t matter). It doesn’t even matter that it is not an LMS. The District that I was in at the time evaluated Canvas, Schoology, and Moodle (we had Moodle installed and were known internationally for our work in Moodle – due to Chris Kenniburg). The District chose to go with Schoology. It was “easier”.

MoodleNet

So this is one reason I was (still am) hopeful for MoodleNet. MoodleNet should be a great way to share resources, activities, etc. This means teachers wouldn’t have to create all their own material. This alone would make Moodle “easier”. Teachers could get started.

However, I do not find MoodleNet engaging. I’ve posted some things there, but I don’t get any feedback. There is currently no way to provide feedback. I can’t tell someone that I liked their materials or that I used it with changes. Hence. I reached out to Martin.

I don’t think that this needs to be overly complicated. I thought about ratings, 1-5 stars, adding how it was used, tags, and more. Really though, I think a simple comment box would be the way to go. Let users decide how to use it. Let users make comments. Provide a link back to the profile of the user, what date the comment was made, but otherwise, just free-form comments.

I am hopeful that that would provide a bit of social connections. It would provide the opportunity to provide feedback. It may encourage more people to submit resources.

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