In Tribute to Grant Wiggins

I was shocked to see this tweet this morning.

Grant Wiggins, of brilliant mind and dearest heart, died yesterday. The world has lost a true champion of learning. @grantwiggins

— Alexis Wiggins (@alexiswiggins) May 27, 2015

It stopped me in my tracks, and it made me remember a time that one of his blog posts stopped me in my tracks on a March morning in 2012.  I am copying & pasting this post I wrote on my former blog. I would change a few words today from what I wrote 3 years ago, but for today, let us pause in tribute to a genius who could articulate the real reasons for education so beautifully.  Thank you, Grant Wiggins.
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March 24, 2012 - originally posted on TambourinesAndTechnology

I give myself 30 minutes every weekday morning for newspaper headlines and computer time.  About a week ago, an article by Grant Wiggins, the guru of educational curriculum, stopped me in my tracks.  When the leading voice in American education curriculum writes an article entitled "Everything you know about curriculum may be wrong," you know you better buckle up.

For those of us in music, the arts, physical education, tech ed, and the many other subjects that apply the core curriculum, we struggle whenever a new curriculum initiative is introduced.  For too long, the question we have asked ourselves has been, "How do we fit music/PE/art/etc. into this model?" when the question always should have been "How do our performances exemplify all that is right about curriculum?"  In reference to athletics, Wiggins says, "the game is the curriculum; the game is the teacher ... Knowledge about the game is secondary."  

The article opens with some transformational events in history - Copernicus's idea that the Earth revolves around the Sun and Einstein's idea that the speed of light, not time, is the constant.  Likewise revolutionary, Wiggins proposes "action, not knowledge, as the essence of an education".  Knowledge, Understanding, Transfer ... all serve a greater master - to move a student and humanity to action.  

The etymology of the word "curriculum" means a running course, like a race track for a chariot race.  We want students to be well-rounded and well-founded so they can run the course of life (curriculum vitae) successfully.  But this is scary for us as educators - we do not know what kind of action a student may take or what kind of action may be needed in the future.  Did anyone know what kind of action Michelangelo, Beethoven, or Einstein would take?  It is hard enough to equip students with knowledge to take them into the future - how do we prepare them for action?  By bringing the future into our classrooms now - by taking action now - by teaching them to act now on the knowledge they construct.

We live in a second renaissance.  Instead of a printing press, we have the internet.  How will we use knowledge of the past to spur students into future action?  For those of us who are music educators, we teach students to take action through music, since every piece of music is a problem to be solved and every performance is an action to be taken.  Taking action and performing is about creating something new - something never heard or seen before.  Performance is the curriculum; performance is the teacher.

Mind the Gap

Why does feedback work?

Ask a musician, a woodworker, an artist, a welder - anyone who produces something - and they can tell you.  These people were raised on feedback.  Every time you create something, you are inviting feedback.  But why does feedback work?

Because feedback calls attention to a gap. Feedback draws attention to something that is a distance ahead or a distance behind what we usually expect.  Feedback directs attention to close the gap; to motivate. Feedback calls attention to where you could go next, towards your process, towards your (mis)understandings (Hattie, adapted from p. 115).  Once you see a gap, it's almost impossible to ignore.

I'm sure you've seen this image before of "Information" versus "Knowledge".
But this time, don't look at the dots.  Look at the gaps between the dots.

I suggest that the gaps between "Information" and "Knowledge" is feedback.

Feedback is what fills in the gaps - makes the connections - and creates knowledge.  If a teacher or coach does not provide feedback, a student will fill in the gaps with his/her own feedback, and that is when students can create misunderstandings.

Why do we encourage students to create "connections" and "self-talk" in early school years?  Because these are early forms of feedback.  Thinking about thinking.  Being self-critical and connecting the gaps from an early age.

Teachers need to be creators of feedback opportunities.  And more importantly, students need to become creators of feedback opportunities so they continue to learn and grow.

In the last 30 minutes - Choice Boards

In a previous post, I mentioned I am using a choice board with a 5th grade project.
In the last 30 minutes I did the following:

• conferenced with 2 students after they each read a book about a composer,
• coached 5 students composing original songs on Noteflight,
• coached 2 students who preferred to compose with real instruments rather than Noteflight,
• worked with students creating Google Slide presentations about a composer,
• had separate conversations with students about Gregorian chant, the ballets of Tchaikovsky, Duke Ellington's music, and why Mozart died so young,
• worked with a student who wanted to understand my anthology of Brahms lieder (songs) so he could play it on his piano,
• had student after student come to me proudly displaying something they had created to show their learning,
• and that's just the things I can recall right now.

Set up opportunities for student voice and choice to demonstrate learning in all sorts of ways, and then step back and enjoy.  This 30-second clip is actually from a few days ago, but it gives the idea.

Feedback isn't a Strategy

At a recent presentation at WEMTA, I spoke on using technology to increase feedback.  As I was preparing the presentation, I spent some time looking at the Hattie study - actually a metastudy of 138 educational strategies and influences ranked by effect size.  For the purposes of the study, Hattie classifies "feedback" as one of the top strategies, but very few of the top strategies would be possible without extensive feedback from a teacher.

Feedback cannot be a just another strategy in a classroom.
Feedback is the "oil" in the engine of learning.

Oil makes everything happen better - smoother - more efficiently - faster.
Oil makes the engine last longer and go farther.
Oil allows power to be transferred from one place to another.

Feedback is the oil that makes learning happen.  It makes learning happen deeper, more efficiently, and allows that transfer to happen.  Teachers and leaders need to focus on increasing feedback in meaningful ways.  In the landscape of standards based learning and formative assessment, feedback is more important than ever.  And with all our assessment, it should be easier than ever.

Here are four few feedback rules I have learned:
• Feedback that isn't used isn't feedback - it's just noise.
    (Feedback should never be the last thing a students sees or hears from a teacher.)
• Feedback on a task that wasn't a challenge to begin with isn't feedback.
    (Think about your above level students and every task you assign!)
• When a teacher gives feedback, it needs to be practiced immediately by the student.
    (Music teachers know that if you say it, you need to immediately rehearse it.)
• Use the "masterclass model" of teaching to provide feedback if you are short on time.   
     (Give quality feedback to one person while everyone else watches and learns.  Yes, this
     takes a trusting classroom community, but it is very effective.)

Effective feedback occurs during the learning, while there is still time to act on it... #edchat pic.twitter.com/qVmvGgRbEB

— Dr. Justin Tarte (@justintarte) March 10, 2015

What inspired leaders at both Apple AND Google?

What inspired leaders at both Apple and Google to make their companies what they are today?
The existence of these two companies might not have happened if not for one thing that influenced their early leadership.  And what was that common thread of inspiration?  Music.

Without the impact music made on the thinking of the early leaders of these two companies, we might all have to imagine some alternate reality where Google and Apple don't exist [insert shudder]. And these leaders are not alone.

Many leaders connect their musical training to professional success.  The article "Is Music the Key to Success?" lists Condoleezza Rice, Alan Greenspan, Paul Allen, Steven Spielberg, and several more leaders who didn't just rehearse music - they rehearsed leadership.  Add to that list Albert Einstein and Nobel laureate Thomas Sudhof, who says his most influential teacher was his bassoon teacher.

But what about Google and Apple, specifically?

Larry Page, the CEO of Google, said "I feel like music training lead to the high-speed legacy of Google for me."  Page wanted computers and programs to operate in real time, responding the way music works when you play it live.  This need for speed was a major design factor when Page co-founded Google and a search engine that changed the world (click here for article).

Jef Raskin, one of the early employees at Apple, was a musician and wanted to be able to write music on a computer screen.  His work developed software that could type and print music fonts.  When he invented the Macintosh computer for Apple, Raskin made sure it could play sounds and produce various fonts.  Nobody before Raskin saw a need for users to be able to change fonts.  The graphic user interfaces we have today are thanks to Raskin's music training.

STEM in schools?
Thank a musician.

No tech? No problem!

Raise your hand if this happened to you (or in your school) this Spring:
Because of testing, we can't do the unit I planned to do.

Over the past several years, I have developed some pretty tech-heavy units in Springtime that would fall at the "modification" or "redefinition" levels of the SAMR model.  My 5th grade students researched composers, created websites, and interacted on Edmodo.  My 3rd & 4th grade students learned to play recorders while composing on Noteflight.  They composed for each other and learned twice the content.

But this year, we had Badger testing followed immediately by MAP testing in my district.  And although the possibility of devices existed during those 4-6 weeks, I couldn't build a unit around inconsistent schedules.  What to do?

I had recently heard Kasey Bell (shakeuplearning.com) speak at WEMTA about choice boards. So my music colleagues and I set off to redesign an entire 5th grade composer unit with minimum tech, maximum connections, and student voice & choice. Here is our choice board, with an explanation below.

Composer Project Choice Board

 
Take-away for leaders?  We talk about teachers redefining instruction in the presence of technology.  We talk about deliberate, purposeful integration.  But what is the real test of a teacher's changed mindset?  When you take technology away from those same teachers, they may not like it, but they will not go back to the "old" way of teaching the same content.  Once that line has been crossed - once a teacher has chosen to increase engagement, innovation, feedback, and relationships - there is no going back.  They will redesign rather than regress.  It is truly about quality instruction - not the tool.

I would never seriously suggest this, because it would hurt students in the end, but it would be interesting to have a research study that looks at a good 1:1 environment and analyzes what happens when the tech is taken away, or at least returned to intermittent availability.  I will admit that any time I could grab devices in the last few weeks, I did.  But, because of the choice board, it became the student's choice to use the device - not mine.

Choice board explanation:
The core of the project is research skills; thus students needed to do the four boxes on top before moving to the choice board itself.  This got students through the rough draft phase of the project. Once students got to the 4x4 choice board, they needed to pick four choices to make a "bingo".  The rows and columns have been balanced to ensure even variety and effort.  Resist the urge to allow students to pick four random choices - choosing a "bingo" keeps them focused on a goal.  They will gravitate to a favorite and then work outwards from that square.  Each square takes 1-2 music classes. I can tell you that students have been very excited and motivated to work on these projects - at least as motivated as they were in the presence of 1:1 technology.