Obvious Facts About School Board Members

#obviousfact1: effective School Board members want to learn more about great teaching & learning

#obviousfact2: effective School Board members’ knowledge of great teaching & learning affects decision-making

Given these #obviousfacts, how should district-level leaders cultivate School Board members’ instructional understanding and vision?

Hold an off-camera, business-casual workshop for your School Board regarding the instructional vision of you district. Don’t serve your Board members a death-by-powerpoint lecture regarding instruction. Instead, provide opportunities to share their perspectives, collaboratively articulate important concepts, and make connections among big instructional ideas.

Our School Board members endorse the importance of engaging students in rigorous work, work that is challenging in the sense advocated by Ken Kay, Tony Wagner, Bill Daggett and others. They believe that learning must prepare students to make productive contributions in the world. Our Board members also know that we promote Transformative Learning as a means to engaging students in rigorous work that prepares them to make productive contributions.

And after last Monday’s workshop, our School Board members have constructed a better understanding of Transformative Learning as an instructional vision. It helps that instructional matters greatly interest our Board members and that they were willing to give up another evening as part of their Board commitment!

Here is an overview of our workshop, which was designed primarily by Ashley Ellis (@afellis) and Mike Lombardo (@mlombardo99) with input from Stephanie Guy (@Guy726) and me (@ewilliams65). Ashley Ellis and Mike Lombardo facilitated the workshop. Participants included the five School Board members, Stephanie Guy, and me.

• We read a definition of Transformative Learning and shared phrases with a partner that they found particularly compelling.

• We reviewed two examples of Transformative Learning in our district, and identified and discussed the defining characteristics in the examples. One example involved elementary students blogging. The other example involved middle school students creating and publishing safety videos regarding severe weather.

      

• We reviewed two more examples of Transformative Learning in our district and articulated how we would respond to a teacher or a principal sharing the example in a Board meeting. (We have monthly presentations at Board meetings of exemplary lessons.) One example involved students creating a humorous, informative physics tutorial. The other example involved high school students and elementary students within our district Skyping with one another in order to teach each other about habitats.

• We watched a humorous video illustrating the importance of problem-solving skills and discussed how transformative learning better prepares our students to handle the situation.

• We watched a video regarding project-based learning and identified how the eight essential elements of project-based learning were reflected in the profiled lesson.

• We watched a second video profiling another PBL lesson and made connections between project-based learning and transformative learning.

• Each participant then shared a few final reflections regarding their insights from the workshop.

School Board members greatly appreciated the workshop. They have fuller understanding of and greater commitment to our instructional vision. Although it may be #obvious that effective Board members want to learn more about great teaching and learning, last week’s workshop reinforced the importance of further cultivating their instructional knowledge and vision.

 

Kindergarteners Do Work That Matters

Colorful candy constitutes beautiful roofing.  Pieces of chocolate serve as an inviting walkway to the front door.  As gorgeous as the house is, the learning and joy associated with kindergarten students’ work on the gingerbread house is even more impressive.

Students in Mrs. Murawski’s kindergarten class at Magruder Elementary School knew that their work mattered.  One reason they fully committed themselves to carefully designing and constructing the gingerbread house was because they are donating the house to a local senior citizen’s home to bring joy during this holiday season.

At the start of the construction project, Mrs. Murawski convened her students for a design team meeting.  Each student chose to serve on a committee which planned one aspect of the job.  For example, the landscaping committee planned the layout and creation of the yard while the roof committee developed ideas for the top of the house.  These five year old children learned a lot about team work.  Mrs. Murawski commented that one of the biggest challenge for students was "working with a committee of students, making decisions together and realizing that you have to compromise.  As they came together with their research information and began to share the ideas with each other they realized that they may indeed like what they saw in their classmate's research booklet."

Each committee created a blueprint for their aspect of the job and then the class created a master plan linking the work of the separate project teams.  The father of one of the students, who works in the construction business, visited the class to explain blueprints, provide advice, and talk about his career in construction. 

This student stands below the Master Plans.

Although the gingerbread house was prominently displayed near the entrance of the classroom when I visited, signs of the complexity of the project were clear.  Several students showed me the project timeline and explained that listing the steps of the project helped them complete it.  One student proudly held up the blueprint for the front of the house that he helped create.  Another student showed off the master plans.  Click on the icon below to listen to a third student explain how he felt after completing the construction project.

I am incredibly impressed with the strong work ethic displayed by Mrs. Murawski’s students.  Their effort and the quality of their work, however, stems largely from the fact that Mrs. Murawski gave them work that mattered.  Students made choices regarding what work they would do and how they would do it.  They had the opportunity to be creative and to be problem solvers.   They knew they were making a product that others would value.  Hats off to Mrs. Murawski for providing her students work that matters because this project also made a difference for students in terms of the development of important skills and knowledge.  The construction of the gingerbread house was a sweet experience for all involved!

It’s Not About the Angry Birds—Or is it?

How are our students using technology?  As you are no doubt aware, Angry Birds is an incredibly popular game.  However, if our students’ use of technology were limited to playing Angry Birds, we would not be effectively leveraging technology for learning.

Superintendents, principals, teacher-leaders and other leaders should promote a shared vision of how technology supports teaching and learning.  The essential conditions for leveraging technology identified by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) include the existence of a shared vision.  The Consortium for School Networking Initiative emphasizes that leaders need to “develop a vision of web 2.0 for achieving your district’s goals.”  Without a shared vision relating to technology, the educators in your school community who use technology may just be techno-cheerleaders, the term Mark Bauerlein uses to describe people who assume that technology automatically yields benefits.

Your vision for technology should be linked to your overall vision for teaching and learning.  Because they are at the heart of our district’s vision for teaching and learning, the concepts of student engagement and 21^st century rigor drive our efforts to leverage technology for learning.  Another blog post provides examples of student use of technology which reflects engagement and rigor.  ISTE, in fact, encourages leaders to promote a culture “that provides a rigorous, relevant and engaging education.

The point isn’t that you must use the concepts of engagement and rigor to leverage technology.  Your district’s vision for teaching and learning may revolve around other hooks, such as project-based learning, problem-based learning or differentiated instruction.  Embed your technology initiatives in your district’s vision.

I recently was preparing for a presentation (slideshare link) at the #BLC11 Conference hosted by Alan November.  When I shared the concepts with a colleague (@ccrudy), she gently suggested that I reconsider my statement that it (integrating technology) is not about the Angry Birds.  She shared a link to a blog post entitled Angry Birds in the Physics Classroom.  The author shared multiple investigations that students could carry out relating to Angry Birds and physics.  For example, one video clip of an angry bird is accompanied by the question, “Does the blue angry bird conserve momentum during its split into three?”  This blog post led me to recognize that perhaps leveraging technology is about Angry Birds in the sense that we can use this game to tap student interest in digital tools to engage them in rigorous learning experiences.  So, before you dismiss Angry Birds, ask how this game, or any technology, can help your school community realize its vision of teaching and learning.

For a podcast discussion I had with Alan November regarding fostering change through leadership, visit this link.

Passion & Strategic Plans: An Oxymoron?

Who knew?  An international community of latte artists create artistic coffee.  They blog, tweet, and use Facebook to connect with one another regarding their shared passion of latte art.  They share photos of their latte art online for others to enjoy, comment on, and judge in competitions.  Others throughout the world use social media to connect regarding their shared passion of yarn bombing.  They knit covers and place them on lamp posts, benches and other items in public spaces during the night so others discover them the next day.  They participate in International Yarn Bombing Day.

I was not aware of these unique communities of passion until @torres21 described them last week at the Building Learning Communities 2011 (#BLC11)conference.  And in workshops following the keynote by @torres21, @AngelaMaiers emphasized that when people have a passion, they commit themselves to that passion.  They are willing to persist in the face of difficulty to pursue their passion.  They are willing to sacrifice in the pursuit of passion.  The penguin below was a sacrifice that allowed his peers to swim, although I'm not sure this was a self-sacrifice . . .  

The latte artist- and yarn bombing-communities of passion were on my mind as I prepared to speak to leaders in our district yesterday regarding our strategic plan and our upcoming Quality Assurance Review for district-wide accreditation.  Strategic plans often are dead documents which generate yawns, not passion.  Strategic plans should instead be a representation of the collective passions of our school community. 

The big ideas in our strategic plan are worthy of our passion, our commitment.  These big ideas relate to student engagement, 21st century notions of rigor, excellence, the key role of staff, relationships & school climate, and efficient, effective, service-oriented operations.  Staff members will vary in terms of which of these big ideas are most worthy of their passion.  However, what binds our school community together is our collective belief in these big ideas.

Our principals, teachers, and others are building professional learning communities that will spur action in pursuit of our collective vision. Today, principals, assistant principals, teacher-leaders, and district-level leaders gather for the second day of our Leadership Academy to focus on student engagement and rigor.  We will be talking with one another, tweeting with one another, connecting.

So, if you think that latte artists and yarn bombers are passionate, you have not seen anything yet.  As we continue to strengthen our professional learning community, as we build the back porches for shared learning, our passion for the big ideas of our strategic plan will allow us to sustain and build on the excellence of our district.

Blended Learning Varies in Effectiveness

Even when teachers skillfully tap into students' interest in digital tools to engage them in rigorous learning, their efforts may not include blended learning.  In a blog post today, Tom Vander Ark, a former Superintendent and the first Executive Director for Education at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, responded to my recent blog post entitled Using Technology to Transform Teaching and Learning.  Tom suggests that we should not be satisfied with students' effective use of digital tools in traditional brick and mortar settings. Following up on his post on HuffPost Education, Tom advocates the use of a blended model, in which students spend at least a portion of the day in an online environment. 

Blended learning should be encouraged in the context of a larger vision for teaching and learning.  In my last post, I described how students' use of digital tools in York County, Virginia is promoted within the context of our vision for engaging students in rigorous work.  Just as one should not assume that the use of technology in traditional brick and mortar settings will automatically yield benefits, one should not make the same assumption with blended learning.  Not all blended learning opportunities are equal or equally valuable.  So, as we expand blended learning options, let's be clear regarding how they fit in a larger vision for teaching and learning.

Tom Vander Ark recognizes variations among blended learning options.  He notes that many of the big state and national online learning providers are a "first gen" version of blended learning, featuring mostly flat and sequential content.  They do not realize the potential for a student-centered, customized approach, as described by Tom. 

Tom praises blended models not only for improved learning, but also for improved productivity.  While blended models offer tremendous learning potential, effective blended models may not be any less expensive than traditional brick and mortar models.  Tom envisions an important role for teachers.  For example, they might  custom-craft a " tech-rich project-based environment  .  .  .  (and) teach small groups ready for a specific lesson."  Less effective blended models minimize the role of the teacher and student-teacher interaction.   Last week I facilitated a panel discussion regarding virtual learning options at the Virtual Learning Virginia Conference.  It was clear from panel discussions and informal conversations that some blended learning experiences are cheap, but lack much student-teacher interaction.

We (the York County School Division) offer more than fifty virtual courses to our students.  We have applied to the Virginia Department of Education for approval as a multi-division provider in order to work with other school districts in Virginia to serve their students.  However, I am even more enthusiastic about our initial steps with integrating virtual learning with the courses in our brick and mortar schools.  Several of our teachers of virtual courses are experimenting with using our digital learning platform as part of their more traditional courses.  Their students access web sites, videos, problems, and other content through our digital learning platform.  All of our middle school teachers of Spanish, Algebra, and Geometry include a virtual component in their courses.  For example, one middle school Algebra teacher held a videoconference with students via Elluminate in order to review for a mid-term exam.  Student posed questions orally and through the chat feature.  The teacher watched students attempt to solve problems, while also demonstrating solutions herself.  This videoconference and our other initial steps with blended learning reinforce our sense that blended models offer significant potential.

Where will our journey with blended models take us?  Tom writes, "The old elementary job of one teacher and 25 kids of  the same age but varying learning levels in the same room for 180 is too hard.  The old high school job of teaching five sections of 30 kids doesn’t work very well for students or teachers." He also calls for dynamic scheduling, team-based staffing, case-managed services, and competency-based assessments embedded in learning experiences.

I'm not sure what blended models will look like in a few years, but, as we move forward let's proceed within the context of a broader student-centered vision for teaching and learning.  Also, let's not overpromise in terms of the cost of effective blended models.  While blended models are not a cheap panacea, they offer substantial potential for engaging students in rigorous learning. 

Using Technology to Transform Teaching & Learning

Students’ use of digital tools should be promoted in the context of a broader vision of teaching and learning.  Without a broader vision, technology may merely automate what has always been done.  Using PowerPoint as part of a lecture is an example of automation, regardless of how interesting and informative the lecture is.  Similarly, students in a computer lab may complete the same problems that previous students solved on a worksheet.  With automation, nothing has really changed.   Techno-cheerleaders, as explained in the previous blog post, may assume that technology automatically yields benefits, but that is not the case.  

Focusing on a broader vision for teaching and learning increases the likelihood that technology will transform teaching and learning, rather than just automating old practices.  In York County, Virginia, our efforts to tap into students’ interest in digital tools are occurring in the context of our efforts to engage students in rigorous work.

Designing students’ work with digital tools so that it reflects the Schletchy Center’s design qualities helps us realize the potential of technology integration. 

Design Qualities That Promote Student Engagement

Product Focus:  Are digital tasks and activities structured so that what students learn is linked to a product, performance, or exhibition to which the student attaches personal value?  Tabb Middle School Algebra students recently created tutorials in Animoto to teach solving two-step equations, converting fractions to decimals, and other skills. They then posted the instructional videos on the class web site. 

Similarly, students in an Algebra class at York High School recently used cell phones, flip cameras, and video cameras to record the answers to an exam review on topics such as algebraic properties and solving inequalities.  They posted the videotaped answers on the class web site and on SchoolTube. 

The teachers report that their students took this work seriously because they wanted their explanations to be accurate and easy for their peers and others to understand.  As Alan November explains, publishing student work on the web gives students a compelling sense of leaving a legacy.  November states in Empowering Students with Technology,

As children grow up, they have a developmental need to know that they can make a difference and be productive in society.  Using communications technology to add value to the world is one way to teach students that they can make a difference and that their work is important.”  (p.43)

Affirmation of Performance:  Are we designing digital tasks and activities so that the work of students is visible to persons who are important to students?  Is it clear to students that the quality of their performance matters to peers and others whose opinions matter to students?  Students at the Waller Mill Elementary Fine Arts Magnet School are preparing for a film festival during which each class will screen one or more videos for popcorn-eating visitors, such as “Math Wars” and “Rock Cycle Video.”  Although Oscars will be awarded, the public display of work will be even more affirming. 

A fourth grade teacher at Bethel Manor Elementary School arranged a videoconference with one of her student’s parents who was deployed in the Middle East.  The student treasured reading a story that he had written to his deployed father.  She certainly felt affirmed by this school-to-family connection.

Affiliation:  Are we designing digital tasks so that students have the opportunity to work with peers, parents, outside experts, and other adults, including, but not limited to the teacher?  A Yorktown Middle School student loved connecting with survey respondents from throughout the world.  She created a health survey as part of the study on global obesity that she was doing for a culminating IB Middle Years Programme project.  She enlisted friends and staff members in seeking responses via e-mails and Twitter.  By the end of the first week, she received more than 200 responses from the United States, Canada, Korea, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.  Energized by the global affiliation through the survey, she is analyzing her results using Excel.

Novelty and Variety:  Are we giving students the opportunity to use a wide range of tools in a variety of ways?  Seventh grade English students at Grafton Middle School worked collaboratively with one another using a variety of tools (GoogleDocs, MovieMaker, PowerPoint and Audacity) to create and publish  presentations regarding the Holocaust. 

Choice:  Do our students have the opportunity to choose either what they are to learn or how they learn?  Students will be more engaged if they frame questions to answer and identify problems to solve  even with significant guidance and structure from the teacher. 

Authenticity:  Are we linking the work of students to topics of interest to students?  In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami, and the start of the nuclear crisis in Japan, York High School students videoconferenced with a teacher eighty miles from the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant.  Student interest in the crisis in Japan drew them into this lesson.

Rigor

Designing student work with digital tools that reflects rigor also helps realize the potential of technology integration.  In creating student work, we should focus on rigor as envisioned by Tony Wagner, rather than traditional notions of rigor which emphasize covering content.  Wagner emphasizes that in a rigorous school, student work involves the following skills:

·         Critical thinking and problem solving;

·         Collaboration across networks and leading by influence;

·         Agility and adaptability;

·         Initiative and entrepreneurialism;

·         Effective oral and written communication;

·         Accessing and analyzing information; and

·         Curiosity and imagination.

Skills:  Are we designing work with digital tools that requires problem solving, collaboration, adaptability, initiative, communication and other skills, often referred to as 21^st century skills?  Students at Yorktown Middle School create a weekly, school-wide broadcast with news and feature stories.  The students choose story topics, write the scripts, film each segment, edit footage, and assess their broadcasts.  They overcome technical difficulties, cancelled interviews, and other challenges as they work to meet their deadlines.

These students have a sense of ownership of their work, rather than just seeing it as an assignment from their teacher.  Their teacher plays a key role, helping students choose story topics and suggesting approaches to stories for their consideration, but the students have a strong sense of responsibility for their learning and work.  This teacher’s approach reflects the philosophy that Alan November articulates as he advocates shifting control to students so that they own the learning.  As November observes, “the process of shifting control of who owns the problems can result in some of the most motivated and focused student work possible.”  (p.55)

The Rigor/Relevance Framework, developed by the International Center for Leadership in Education (http://www.leadered.com/), integrates the knowledge taxonomy and an application continuum.  The framework shows the connection between levels of rigor, as reflected by the knowledge taxonomy, and relevance, involving the application of knowledge and skills to solve real-world problems.  Applying knowledge to unpredictable situations is the highest level of application.



Rigor/Relevance:  Does student work with digital tools develop cognitive skills throughout the knowledge taxonomy and involve adaptation and application of knowledge and skills?  Fourth grade students at the Yorktown Elementary School Math, Science, and Technology Magnet participate in the Stock Market game (http://www.stockmarketgame.org/). Students manage a virtual portfolio, starting with a $100,000 balance, analyzing investment opportunities via the internet to assess which stocks to buy and sell to try to increase the value of their portfolio.  They work in teams, taking turns serving as captain, researcher, trader, and checker.  Cleary, they are applying knowledge and skills as they invest in the volatile, unpredictable stock market. 



These examples illustrate the power of promoting the use of digital tools in the context of a broader vision of teaching and learning.   They reflect an assumption that the use of digital tools is not the ultimate goal, but rather a means to an end.  As Alan November emphasizes in Empowering Students with Technology, “The real problem is not teaching technology skills.  Many of our students can learn about technology as fast as-if not faster than-adults.  What our students cannot learn on their own, and what makes teachers more important than ever, is the urgent need to teach critical thinking and global communication skills.” (p.32)  Clearly, using digital tools to engage students in rigorous work can help transform teaching and learning, rather than just automating old practices!

The Power of a Mousetrap Vehicle

The judges and audience members watched as my daughter and her teammates guided their mouse-trap powered vehicle through six tasks and performed a skit related to the vehicle.  They watched as the vehicle moved across the floor, striking a lever and raising a flag.  The students adlibbed when they needed multiple attempts for the vehicle to strike a target.  The judges and audience members listened to the sock puppets, the ventriloquist/rapper, and other characters.  Eventually, my daughter and her Odyssey of the Mind teammates concluded their performance, twenty seconds before reaching the eight-minute time limit.

We can learn a lot from Odyssey of the Mind (OotM) regarding how to engage students in rigorous work.  The mousetrap vehicle challenge has important characteristics, or design qualities, that contribute to student engagement and ultimately student achievement.  The OotM mousetrap vehicle is very powerful in terms of student engagement and achievement.

Let's examine how the mousetrap vehicle challenge exhibits several of the design qualities identified by John Antonetti and Phillip Schlechty in separate works.

Design Qualities

Choice:   Each OotM team chooses one of five problems.  My daughter and her teammates are each taking Physics so they were attracted to the problem which involved designing, building, and operating a vehicle that uses a mousetrap as its only source of energy.  The other problems, including one which involved a classical character acting as a tour guide and one which required constructing a weight-bearing balsa wood structure, were not as appealing to my daughter's team.  They were, however, attracted to the challenge of the mousetrap vehicle problem.  They were much more engaged in their work because they could choose a project of personal interest.   

The challenge was to build a vehicle and guide it through six tasks.  As required, my daughter’s team chose four tasks from among six options, such as driving through a tunnel, hitting a target, changing direction, and making a delivery.  Their vehicle also had to perform two team-created challenges.   (Because the team is still competing, my daughter and her teammates have stressed that I cannot reveal the challenges they created.)  This opportunity to choose which tasks to complete and to design two tasks helped capture and maintain the commitment of the students. 

Clear Expectations/Product Standards: My daughter and her teammates knew what they needed to accomplish.  They knew the scoring standards that would be used to assess their performance.  They knew the different maximum point values of the various tasks.  They also knew that they would be judged for the overall creativity of the performance.  The students enjoyed developing the characters of their performance, including a demanding coach, a gamer who thinks he is a dragon, and a ventriloquist/rapper.  Clarity of expectations facilitated the engagement of my daughter and her teammates. 

Learning with Others/Affiliation:  One of my daughter's favorite parts of OotM was being part of a group that wanted to complete at a high level of excellence.  As she explained, the members of her team connected with one another through their OotM work.  It reminds me of Ken Robinson's reflections on the sense of belonging to a tribe with a shared passion.  In The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything, he writes that "what connects a tribe is a common commitment."  This connection provides OotM participants with important benefits.  As Robinson writes, "Connecting with people who share the same passions affirms that you're not alone; that there are others like you . . .It doesn't matter whether you like the people as individuals, or even the work they do . . .What matters first is having validation for the passion you have in common."  Not all members of the team socialize with one another outside of OotM, but they enjoyed the many hours spent together preparing for the competition because they shared a passion for their OotM work.

The affiliation among OotM team members encourages each individual to perform at their highest level.  As Robinson observes, "members of a passionate community tend to drive each other to explore the real extent of their talents . . . the opportunities for mutual inspiration can become intense."

Sense of Audience/Affirmation of Performance/Product Focus

The students worked hard creating their product, their performance.  They knew their parents, their friends, and other OotM participants would be watching.  The mother of one of the team members marveled that the students were willing to work so hard preparing for an eight-minute performance, but the students sensed that the performance would be affirming.  The product focus and sense of audience also contributed to the students' willingness to commit to months of preparation for an eight-minute performance.

Levels of Engagement

It is easy to contrast the OotM students' high level of engagement with the other levels of engagement in the Schlechty Center's framework.    Obviously, the students were not in rebellion or in retreat, the two lowest levels of engagement.  They also were not just ritually compliant, going through the motions of doing the work without connecting to the work.  They were not asking the question which typifies the ritual compliance mindset: what is the minimum I have to do?

Some of the students may be strategically compliant at times in school, rather than being authentically engaged.   Perhaps they view some of their work in school as a means to other goals, such as a grade, class rank, or college acceptance.  Schlechty makes three key observations about the implications of strategic compliance:

·        students learn at high levels, but they have a superficial grasp of what they learn;

·        students do not retain as much in comparison with situations in which they are authentically engaged; and

·        students do not transfer what they learn from one context to another as readily as if they are authentically engaged.

The members of my daughter's team clearly were not just strategically compliant.  They were not participating in OotM to be able to list it as an activity on their college application.  Even if resume-building were a part of their initial motivation for participation, the engaging design qualities of the OotM work cultivated authentic engagement.   My daughter's team viewed the mousetrap vehicle challenge as compelling.  Schlechty points out that authentic engagement leads to learning at higher levels, having a deeper grasp of what is learned, retaining learning, and being able to transfer what is learned to new contexts.  One reason for the deeper learning is that authentic engagement is associated with a willingness to persist in the face of difficulty. For example, two nights before the competition, the mouse trap vehicle my daughter's team built still was not consistently travelling far enough. They didn't just give up and say, "We followed the directions and completed the task.  Let's just hope it works."  Instead, they brainstormed a variety of potential solutions.  (I'd like to share how they solved the distance issue to illustrate their problem-solving ability, but they have strictly forbidden me from specifying their solution because they advanced to the state competition!) Though they identified the solution two nights before the competition, they gathered again on the Friday night before the event.  They even negotiated later curfews with their parents to extend their preparations.  This clearly reflects authentic engagement. 

Rigor

Traditional notions of rigor often reflect a content-coverage mentality.  Content knowledge certainly matters in OotM.  One of my daughter's teammates articulately described how he applied knowledge from his Physics class relating to the radius of a circle in deciding the size of the wheels of the mousetrap vehicle.  They applied this content knowledge and evaluated various options for designing and constructing their mousetrap vehicles.  Clearly, OotM work requires thinking that is at the highest levels of knowledge taxonomies.

OotM work also has several other features that constitute rigor, according to the rigor/relevance framework developed by Phil Daggett's International Center for Leadership in Education.  The learning is interdisciplinary, involving the application of knowledge across disciplines.  Applying knowledge in unpredictable situations is another hallmark of rigor, according to the Center's rigor/relevance framework, and the efforts to guide the vehicle through the various tasks certainly involved a lot of unpredictability.

Another aspect of the rigor of OotM work is the extent to which it requires the skills commonly referred to as 21st century skills.  Students think critically and creatively, solve problems, collaborate, show initiative, and communicate orally.

Implications for Teaching and Learning in Schools

The OotM mousetrap vehicle is very powerful in terms of student engagement and achievement. OotM illustrates that the quality of work given to students matters.  The work of OotM features several important design qualities: choice; clear expectations/product standards; learning with others/affiliation; and sense of audience/affirmation of performance/product focus.  Every state requires teachers to teach the state’s standards for content and skills.  Educators do not need to ignore state standards in order to design engaging work.  However, we need to avoid adopting a content coverage mentality that will lead at best to strategic compliance , which is associated with a superficial grasp of what is learned.  By providing engaging work, we capture the joy of teaching and learning.  Student work does not need to reflect all the design qualities to engage students, but incorporating design qualities will contribute to student engagement and achievement.  Promoting the authentic engagement of students will lead to deeper learning, as well as firmer, longer-lasting mastery of content and skills.

Elizabeth R. Bowen, Student Engagement and Its Relation to Quality Work Design,

http://s3.amazonaws.com/www.schlechtycenter.org/tools/prod/4048/original/bowen_pdf_litreview.pdf?1272417199

John Antonetti:

http://www.colleaguesoncall.com/docs/our-associates.html

http://www.odysseyofthemind.com/learn_more.php

Phil Daggett, International Center for Leadership in Education:

http://www.leadered.com/

Rigor/Relevance Framework from International Center for Leadership in Education: http://www.leadered.com/rrr.html

http://www.schlechtycenter.org/

Schlechty Center of Engagement, levels of engagement document:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/www.schlechtycenter.org/tools/prod/4046/original/sc_pdf_engagement.pdf?1272415798

http://sirkenrobinson.com/skr/

http://sirkenrobinson.com/skr/the-element