Learning to Learn

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We always talk about wanting our students to be lifelong learners. The Common Core asks students to integrate multiple sources of information as they construct their own knowledge. Even though I teach other adults how to access resources and use them to make meaning, I still find that it's easier said than done when it comes to my own learning! I guess this is where the last vestiges of my digital immigrant background hides - in the way I interact with online courses as a learner.

I would suggest that statistics may be one of the more difficult classes to take (and probably teach) online. The content is complicated - there are multiple ways of doing most analyses, with your optimum choice dependent on on the type and source(s) of data. There are steps that must be followed, in the correct order, in order to get the appropriate defensible results. In addition, the way in which you report the data - the choice of words, the phrasing, the level of detail on all the different statistical tests - must follow a fairly prescribed format. Our textbook has good detail about the formulas and how to manually calculate levels of significance or variance, but since SPSS does that work for me I typically only about 10% of the textbook to be helpful. Our instructor provides an overview video, but it's hard to predict the questions that will arise. The videos in the course sometimes provide sufficient guidance, but often show only the how of SPSS use, but not the why. 

I have found that I better understand the material when I do some additional research about the concepts. There are face to face Intro to Statistics teachers who have posted their lecture notes online, which really helps me to build my background knowledge. It turns out that YouTube is great not only for learning how to make turkey gravy, but for detailed explanations of statistics. I can find examples of how, as well as explanations of why. But this is where being a lifelong learner is harder than it seems - I have to asks Google the right questions in order to get answers that do me the most good. I have to start by synthesizing the info provided in the class, and then craft a query that fills in the gaps. THAT has been challenging for me!

Just in case anyone else is struggling with statistics, here are some of my favorite resources:

• MIT OpenCourseware Intro to Statistics and Probability - Lecture Notes. This site helped me backfill some knowledge gaps I had in basic statistical concepts.
• TheRMUoHP Biostatistics Resource Channel by tacappaert. Don't let the channel name throw you - there are some excellent descriptive videos for using SPSS, each between 5 and 10 minutes long.
• ProfKelley's Analysis of Variance playlist on YouTube. These 2 videos really helped me understand ANOVA.
• Brandon Foltz on YouTube. I don't know why, but this guy has recorded a huge number of 30 minute lectures that do a really good job explaining the concepts. The playlists aren't all that well organized, but if you search for Brandon Foltz and Statistics 101, you'll find some great resources for building background knowledge.
• SPSS for Newbies playlist by Statisticsmentor.com on YouTube. By far the most detailed SPSS videos I found during the course, these videos range from the basic (importing data from Excel) to the more advanced (bivariate linear regression model). At about 20 minutes, these videos are a bit long, but it's tough to find a more comprehensive explanation. 

Doing Common Core

I was fortunate enough to be invited to sit on my district Common Core Steering Committee. It's an interesting process to wrestle with the big ideas of what Common Core should look like, how we should get there, and what our benchmarks should be. One of the key messages has been that Common Core planning documents need to be flexible - as we learn more about what needs to be done and what implementation looks like in terms of assessment, the plan may need to be adjusted. Right now many planning documents are skeletons, with a lack of detail or specifics that actually allow decisions to be made or consistent implementation to happen.

For me, now working at a district rather than a county office, I am realizing how difficult it is to make decisions that "turn the ship" when a large district is involved. As a presenter and consultant, I suggested to districts that they convene a team, bring in stakeholders, identify priorities, etc., etc., etc. I acknowledged that it was going to be a multi-year process. But because I was outside the process looking in, I didn't have that gut-level FEELING of the push, pull, and frustrations that happen within the actual implementation. "Adapt to your reality" is a phrase I've used many times in terms of monitoring a plan, reflecting on what works, and making revisions. But reality is extremely hard to adapt to when money is scarce and time is even more so. Yes, I've said during presentation that time is the most difficult commodity to create, and offered a range of suggestions. But at the school site, between the constraints of the contract and the many demands we place on teachers, creating time is far more complicated than I ever internalized. Now, I need to provide CCSS implementation support for my staff in 40 minute chunks, delivered once a month. I need to provide support for my staff in single-page bulletins that are easily digestible and easily implemented. I need to bring parents up to speed in understandable 15-minute chunks, in English and in Spanish, embedded in ELAC, SSC and PTA meetings. The "how" of all that is incredibly difficult. And it requires a depth of knowledge and understanding that I am lucky to have, but many administrators do not. Sitting in presentations does not make for deep understanding.

More than ever, I think district leadership is key to building the scaffold for Common Core implementation, and site leadership is key to actual classroom implementation. The district needs to ensure equitable access to the resources (including time, money and materials) that is needed to implement. They must build the infrastructure, including a minimum amount of training, materials, and technology that all sites have in place. In terms of materials such as technology, hey must take the hard line that equitable is not equal, and that schools that already have the minimum may not get more paid from district funds. The district needs to coordinate professional development that includes cross-school collaboration and product development, so teachers leave the training with materials that are ready to use. At the site, administration needs to provide an ongoing focus on examining the implementation and refining practice. Administrators need to hold teachers accountable for moving forward with the standards, with individualized support plans and benchmarks if needed, providing ongoing opportunities for reflection, growth, and collaboration.

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MOOCs and Global Education

Below is the presentation by Dennis and I for EdTech 603. Feel free to comment within the VoiceThread!

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How vs. Why

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I am a big believer in "why". My parents could have told you that from the time I was very small. I never accepted an order to follow an algorithm, and because my father was a math professor, I never had to. He was always able to explain to me the "why" of mathematical formulas and algorithms, often using manipulatives, arrays, or diagrams to make it make sense.

Fast forward to today, taking a statistics class. My dad is no longer available to explain the "why" to me, and everything in the textbook, the lecture notes, on Wikipedia and on YouTube is about the how. This week I learned how to calculate an expected frequency from a cross-tabulation of data. But why is that the expected frequency? It seems logical to me that any calculation that relies only on the data collected is inherently skewed by that data, and could be fairly easily manipulated by adjusting the sampling.

I also learned this week that in order to construct a confidence interval of a proportion, I use z=1.96 or z=2.58, depending on whether I'm looking for a 95% or 99% confidence interval. Why? Where did these magic Z's come from? What do they represent? I understand the whole idea of confidence intervals, I am just frustrated that there is an element in my algorithm that I can't personally account for! Maybe I just need to see it like pi, and know that it just IS. But even pi I got to experiment with using string to prove to myself that it just is...

I can certainly get by running algorithms and using software to construct analyses and tests, and maybe I need to resign myself to that. Maybe it takes a degree in statistics to get to the "why". The sad thing is that if I understood the why, I would always be able to self-check the results of the algorithm to see if they make sense. Without the why, I have to just check my math, and assume that the results are logical.