TeachLab Presents The Homework Machine

This week on TeachLab, our host Justin Reich joins a panel of education leaders with Superintendent Dr. Baron Davis from Richland School District Two in Columbia, SC, Superintendent Dr. Rhoda Mhiripiri-Reed of  Hopkins Public Schools in Minneapolis, MN, and Dr. Beth Rabbitt, CEO of The Learning Accelerator, hosted by the US Department of Education's Office of EdTech. In the conversation, panelists share recent experiences in districts, schools and classrooms throughout the pandemic. In the face of challenges, new strategies and innovations have emerged. Panelists reflect on how educators can take these insights and move towards more equitable learning experiences for all students. The conversation was moderated by Chris Rush, Sr. Advisor for Innovation & Director of Educational Technology, Office of the Secretary at U.S. Department of Education, and Kristina Ishmael, Deputy Director, U.S. Department of Education, as a part of the Office of Education Technology’s “Planning for Changing Scenarios: Navigating the Road Ahead”, a webinar and blog series to help districts and schools share challenges and strategies.“It's really important for us to take some time and reflect on what we have learned in the past 20 months, recognizing the uniqueness of everyone's journeys… then also look ahead and strip away the things that we don't necessarily need, and continue with things that have worked for our learners.”  - Kristina Ishmael, Deputy Director, Office of Educational Technology, U.S. Department of Education In this episode we hear about:The future of learning in the context of a post-pandemic worldThe importance of listening to the needs of teachers, students, and familiesStaying mission focused to make hard decisionsStrategies for creating more meaningful learning experiences for students, and letting go of the things that aren’t contributing to that missionThe importance of centering health and wellnessCulturally responsive organizational values, culturally affirming curriculum, and culturally respectful instructional practicesStories of new learning models that unlocked brand new opportunities, including new technologies, learning spaces, community connections and partnerships.How the practice of including students, teachers, and families in a co-design process will be critical to creating the most meaningful, relevant, and beneficial experiences for students.Centering equity across discussions, decision-making, and codesign processes. Resources and LinksVisit The Office of Ed Tech’s Webinar Replay — Planning for Changing Scenarios: Emerging Stronger Post-Pandemic to reflect more on this episode’s conversationDon’t miss our online course Becoming a More Equitable Educator: Mindsets and PracticesLearn more about MIT Teaching Systems Lab’s Imagining September and The Teachers Have Something to Say ReportsCheck out Justin Reich’s book Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can't Transform Education Transcripthttps://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/emerging-stronger/transcriptProduced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett Beazley. Recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley Follow TeachLab:Host Justin ReichTwitterYouTube

This week on TeachLab, host Justin Reich is joined by research scientist Joshua Littenberg-Tobias PhD. and Elizabeth Borneman M.Sc. to discuss a recently published Teaching Systems Lab efficacy study around the online course Becoming a More Equitable Educator and how well participants engaged with simulations about equity. They discuss the findings within the paper and the implications for simulation-based research.“There's very little research into what do people actually do in these simulations. To what extent are they actually applying their learning in simulation behavior?... people might say, ‘Oh, I believe this thing, or I'm really supportive of equity,’ but when actually presented with a scenario, how do they respond to that in real time?" -  Joshua Littenberg-Tobias  In this episode we’ll talk about:The Educator MindsetsThe research and Topic ModelingMeasuring changes in behavior over timeSimulations for professional developmentDifferences in teacher responses Resources and LinksCheck out Becoming a More Equitable Educator: Mindsets and PracticesWatch the full webinar Digital Clinical Simulations in Online Learning Environments to Promote Equity Mindsets: A Randomized Controlled TrialCheck out the TSL research paper Measuring Equity-Promoting Behaviors in Digital Teaching Simulations: A Topic Modeling ApproachCheck out Justin Reich’s book Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can't Transform Education Transcripthttps://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/equity-simulations/transcript Produced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett Beazley. Recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley Follow TeachLab:FacebookTwitterYouTube

This week on TeachLab, host Justin Reich is joined by Dr. David Joyner, Executive Director of Online Education at the Georgia Tech College of Computing. Together they discuss the challenges and advantages of online learning, the hard shift to remote learning under COVID, and David’s new book The Distributed Classroom.“The distributed classroom is really about asking the question, ‘Can we take one classroom experience and distribute it across students who can commit to different levels of attendance, different levels of in-person attendance, different levels of synchronous attendance, things like that, such that you get to have as much of the experience as possible within your individual constraints?’" - David JoynerIn this episode we’ll talk about:The role of Executive Director of Online Education at the Georgia Tech College of ComputingDistributed ClassroomsThe inherent advantage of learning CS onlineMinimum Necessary CompromiseAssessing distributed classroomsThe importance of teaching assistantsCOVID online learning and the Hosted Model Resources and LinksCheck out David Joyner’s book The Distributed ClassroomCheck out David Joyner’s paper Components of Assessments and Grading At ScaleLearn more about Dr. David JoynerCheck out Justin Reich’s book Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can't Transform Education Transcripthttps://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/david-joyner/transcript Produced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett Beazley. Recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley Follow TeachLab:FacebookTwitterYouTube

This week on TeachLab, host Justin Reich is joined by a panel of teachers from across the country to bring their personal experiences of teaching during the pandemic and to discuss a recent report that was led by Natasha Esteves, a former teacher, and now a student at the Harvard graduate school of education called The Teachers Have Something to Say: Lessons Learned from U.S. PK-12 Teachers During the COVID-impacted 2020-21 School Year.“I had one interviewee say, ‘Everybody wants to tell teachers what to do, but nobody knows what teaching is like, and nobody knows what teaching is like during a pandemic.’ It's a very odd place to be in when you have other people telling you what to do while they are working from home and asking you to return to the classroom, or while they are working from home and asking you to teach remotely without sufficient professional development and how to do so.”     -Natasha Esteves In this episode we’ll talk about:The experience of interviewing teachers for the reportAdvocacy for teachers concernsThe toll of widening inequities in pandemic learningEver-changing school COVID policiesPublic support for schools and teachersHuman interactions with students Resources and LinksCheck out the full live event Teachers Have Something to SayCheck out the report The Teachers Have Something to Say: Lessons Learned from U.S. PK-12 Teachers During the COVID-impacted 2020-21 School YearCheck out all of Teaching Systems Lab COVID-19 resources Transcripthttps://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/teachers-say/transcriptProduced by Aimee Corrigan. Recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley Follow TeachLab:FacebookTwitterYouTube

This week on TeachLab, host Justin Reich is joined by Neema Avashia to discuss the recently released Teaching Systems Lab report Healing, Community, and Humanity: How Students and Teachers Want to Reinvent School Post-COVID. Together they reflect on what educators have seen in their classrooms since the pandemic, and how we can learn and grow from these experiences.“I'm a pretty firm believer that the old normal didn't work already for too many young people. And that a lot of our young people, even if they're going through the paces of education or complying, that didn't mean that education was meeting their needs, or providing them with the educational experience that they deserve.”  - Neema AvashiaIn this episode we’ll talk about:How Neema adapted her class in the face of the pandemicThe research and methodology from Healing, Community, and Humanity: How Students and Teachers Want to Reinvent School Post-COVID The pressures of “learning loss”What the students missed most about being in schoolHow the pandemic served as a window into longstanding school inequities and how we are adapting school based on what we’ve learnedWWays that Neema is incorporating these new insights  into her classroom teachingHow Neema incorporates these new ideas into her classroom Resources and LinksCheck out the full webinar Healing, Community, and HumanityCheck out the report Healing, Community, and Humanity: How Students and Teachers Want to Reinvent School Post-COVIDCheck out all of Teaching Systems Lab COVID-19 resources Transcripthttps://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/healing-community-humanity/transcript Produced by Aimee Corrigan. Recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley Follow TeachLab:FacebookTwitterYouTube

TeachLab returns! Our host Justin Reich is back in the studio and excited to bring you a new season of episodes, starting December, 9th, 2021. Stay tuned!

Justin Reich is joined by Joel Breakstone, director of the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG), and co-lead on Beyond the Bubble and Civic Online Reasoning projects. Together they discuss assessing online information, the research of SHEG, and the methods used by fact checkers to determine the validity of information.“For one thing, when they did a search, they didn't immediately click on the first search result, which is what many of the Stanford students, and even some of the historians did. Instead, the fact-checkers engaged in what we refer to as click restraint. They paused, and they looked at the snippets about the search results. And they took a moment to check out the URLs, and then made a decision about where they should begin their search. Because that initial click often greatly influences the kind of search that you end up conducting.”  - Joel Breakstone In this episode we’ll talk about:The challenges of evaluating online informationThe Stanford History Group researchCognitive Task AnalysisThe fact checker approachLateral Reading, Click Restraint, and Strategic IgnoringNew study published as a follow-upDigital literacy in educationWikipedia Resources and LinksLearn more about Stanford’s Civic Online Reasoning!Check out their most recent article: Student's Civic Online Reasoning: A National PortraitLearn more about Beyond the Bubble!Check out Justin Reich’s book, Failure To Disrupt!Join our self-paced online edX course: Sorting Truth from Fiction: Civic Online ReasoningJoin our self-paced online edX course: Becoming a More Equitable Educator: Mindsets and Practices Transcripthttps://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/joel-breakstone/transcript Produced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett Beazley. Recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley Follow TeachLab:FacebookTwitterYouTube

Justin Reich is joined by Mike Caulfield, a digital information literacy expert working at Washington State University who has worked with a wide variety of organizations on digital literacy initiatives to combat misinformation. Together they discuss critical thinking, issues with traditional forms of evaluating sources, and the SIFT method.“SIFT. S-I-F-T. First is just “Stop”. If you find yourself emotional, if you find something that you've just got to share... Whatever is the trigger, the emotion, your excitement about sharing it, your rage, seeing something that just strikes you as a little bit odd... Whatever is the trigger, stop and ask yourself, do I really know what I'm looking at here? And you might… You might look at the source, and you might be like, oh yeah. I know this person. Most of the time, a lot of the time, you don't. A lot of the time, it just landed on your doorstep.”  - Mike Caulfield In this episode we’ll talk about:Mike’s introduction to this field - Critical consumption and CRAAPStudents are “shockingly bad” at verifying sourcesThe issues with CRAAPEvaluating online sources with SIFTCritical thinkingCUNY Staten Island intervention Resources and LinksLearn more about SIFTCheck out Mike Caulfield’s Sifting Through the Coronavirus Pandemic!Check out Mike’s book Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers!Check out Mike Caulfield's blog: Hapgood!Check out Justin Reich’s book, Failure To Disrupt!Join our self-paced online edX course: Sorting Truth from Fiction: Civic Online ReasoningJoin our self-paced online edX course: Becoming a More Equitable Educator: Mindsets and Practices Transcripthttps://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/mike-caulfield/transcript Produced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett Beazley. Recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley Follow TeachLab:FacebookTwitterYouTube

Justin Reich is joined by Barry Fishman, professor of education and information at the University of Michigan where he studies the use of technology to support teacher learning,  video games as models for learning environments, and the role of education leaders in fostering classroom-level reform involving technology. Together they discuss the 50th Anniversary edition of Wad-Ja-Get? The Grading Game in American Education with Barry Fishman’s new introduction, as well as grading systems during the pandemic, “Gameful Learning”, and issues with grading in general.“Grades remove information from the system. Rather than me knowing what a learner has learned, I know that they have an A or a B or a C. What does that mean? It doesn't mean really anything at all, especially if it's a B or a C... And maybe you throw a curve in. That's even worse. Curves really remove information from the system, and they ration success. This is one of the worst problems with grading, I think, is that they were really designed for ranking and sorting. They were never designed to encourage learning.”  - Barry Fishman In this episode we’ll talk about:50th Anniversary edition of Wad-Ja-Get?What are the problems with grading?Pandemic grading systemsStudent autonomy and dealing with ambiguityCommon objections over Pass/FailAlternative forms of evaluationGameful Learning Resources and LinksLearn more about Barry Fishman and his work!Check out Wad-Ja-Get?: The Grading Game in American Education with a new introduction by Professor Barry Fishman!Check out Justin Reich’s book, Failure To Disrupt!Join our self-paced online edX course: Sorting Truth from Fiction: Civic Online ReasoningJoin our self-paced online edX course: Becoming a More Equitable Educator: Mindsets and Practices Transcripthttps://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/barry-fishman/transcript Produced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett Beazley. Recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley Follow TeachLab:FacebookTwitterYouTube

Justin Reich is joined by John Palfrey, president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, former director of the Berkman Klein Center of Internet and Society, as well as an educator, author, and legal scholar. Together they discuss philanthropy in education, the work of the MacArthur Foundation, and the challenges of making large changes in institutions.“And particularly when we look at a society where I think most of us, anyway, those of us on the left, broadly global left, would say, ‘We're not where we ought to be, right, from an equity perspective, from all sorts of dimensions we want to improve. And certainly the quality of K-12 education in the United States, that's not something we're that good at overall. Therefore, we need to disrupt it. We need to do it better. - John Palfrey In this episode we’ll talk about:What role does philanthropy play in addressing inequality?Thinking about “who is being served?”The natural inclination to give locallySupporting individual leaders to influence the worldLever for Change organizationSmall financial help can facilitate larger financial helpPalfrey’s new book The Connected ParentParenting with technologyBringing equity into educational technology Resources and LinksCheck out The Connected Parent by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser!Learn more about the MacArthur FoundationCheck the MacArthur Foundation’s demographic report!Learn more about Lever for ChangeLearn more about the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and SocietyCheck out Justin Reich’s book, Failure To Disrupt!Join our self-paced online edX course: Sorting Truth from Fiction: Civic Online ReasoningJoin our self-paced online edX course: Becoming a More Equitable Educator: Mindsets and Practices Transcripthttps://teachlabpodcast.simplecast.com/episodes/john-palfrey/transcript Produced by Aimee Corrigan and Garrett Beazley. Recorded and mixed by Garrett Beazley Follow TeachLab:FacebookTwitterYouTube