Role-Playing Games in a Southern Indiana Elementary School

Today's blog entry is a combination of things related to role-playing games.   Firstly, if you're a Dungeons & Dragons fan, we need to celebrate the new movie that premieres today (I plan on seeing D&D: Honor Among Thieves with my youngest daughter this weekend)!  There's also some upcoming adventures on the KyEdRPG front:

• Tonight (3/31) at 630 pm EST on KET's Kentucky Edition, I was interviewed for a segment discussing how role-playing games positively impact education.  Justin Gadd and his D&D club students will also be featured.  
• Next week, Next Generation Learning Challenges will publish an original article I wrote on the same topic!

I'll do an Edtech Elixirs entry next week with links to the episode and the article once they go live online. 

Meanwhile, in today's entry, I'm happy to share an interview with teacher David Bennett.  As you'll see, he brings several perspectives that I haven't yet discussed here or over at KyEdRPG: he's a Kentuckiana elementary teacher integrating role-playing games with his students, he's using a game other than D&D, and he's doing so in a short time frame during the instructional day.  Without further ado, let's get to the interview (slightly edited for clarity)!

David, welcome to Edtech Elixirs!  Tell us about yourself.

I started at Borden Elementary School in southern Indiana last November as a 5th grade teacher. I’m new to teaching after just leaving a career in marketing that I had for the last 5 years, with a company I’d been at for 10 years. I made the switch because I had always felt teaching was a calling, and during Covid I had begun to wonder about my future. I truly loved the job I had but felt it wasn’t really what I should be doing, so I started in the "Transition to Teaching" program at IUS.

You shared with me that you play a fantasy role-playing game called Pathfinder with your students during recess, which is definitely unique!  However, before we get more into that story -- can you tell us about Pathfinder and how it is different than D&D?

When I first decided to run a game with my students during recess, my original plan was to run Dungeons and Dragons. Character creation was easy with D&D Beyond, and there are plenty of ready made materials to use. However, our first session of combat was taking too long, and it was a lot to keep track of during a 30 minute recess. So I thought about other systems I’d played in the past and remembered Savage Worlds, which is a system that is slightly less detailed than D&D, with the idea being that you tailor make the system to fit your needs. However, I still wanted to do fantasy, so I looked at the fantasy options for Savage Worlds. It turns out that just around a year ago, Pathfinder and Savage Worlds got together and there was a port of Pathfinder for Savage Worlds made. Going just a bit deeper into the weeds here, Pathfinder was made as a continuation of the 3.5 system of D&D, using the old 3.5 rules, but creating their own world for the lore. The benefits to Savage Worlds is there are less skills and weapons, as well as less feats. Combat is simplified in that most monsters the players fight only have 1 hit point, while major villains have 3. Heroes also only have 3 hit points as well, before they fall unconscious. This keeps combat flowing because most of the time if the characters hit an opponent a simple roll will say if the opponent is still in the game or not. That means less time keeping track of hit points for monsters, When it comes to skill checks all skills start at needing a 4 or better on a roll, but unlike D&D skills are based on die types. So a starting skill is d4, while the highest you can get in a skill is d12. 

The shorter answer is, I chose Pathfinder for Savage Worlds due to the streamlining of skills and combat. Due to the short amount of time I have to play with the students, and the number of students who usually play, I need a system where I don’t have to keep track of 4-8 different monsters' hit points, or worry about what an appropriate skill check needs to be. The setting has enough lore that I have a good jumping off point, and there are premade characters that I can let my students look through to decide what they want to play. This makes character creation a breeze as well, as almost all needed information can fit on a half sheet of paper. Also, if you are just starting to roleplay with students and want a cheaper alternative to D&D with less rules, there are plenty of other options as well. The truth is, the system you choose isn’t nearly as important as how you play the game. Give your students the chance to make their own decisions and feel like they are impacting the world you created, and the game will be enjoyable to everyone, no matter what rules you are using.

What inspired you to start playing Pathfinder with your elementary students? 

To be honest, when I first started teaching, I didn’t really have any intention of starting a fantasy RPG group. I assumed that students today would be much like the elementary students from when I was a kid, and games like D&D wouldn’t really be on their radar. However, Stranger Things has really changed that, and when I started teaching I kept over hearing students talking about D&D. So I talked to Ms. Hurst, the principal at Borden Elementary, and asked if I would be able to run a group during recess. I wasn’t sure what the rules were for things like that. She recommended I make up a permission slip and students who wanted to try just had to get the okay. At first I had about 10 students sign up.  So really my students showed their interest and I just went about seeing what I needed to do to make it happen. 

When it comes to how many students play my numbers can fluctuate, especially when the weather has been too cold or rainy, and our session might be one of the nicest days in a week. I always let students know that I completely understand when they choose to go outside and play versus staying in and playing Pathfinder. I do this for two main reasons. The first is that unlike regular sports where being on a team is a commitment and the team will suffer if you aren’t there, tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) are collaborative storytelling and I can alter the events of the story to make up for a student not being able to make it so that the students who are there aren’t going up against a challenge they have no hope of overcoming. The other reason is, playing with someone who doesn’t want to be there isn’t fun for that person, or the other players. With only 30 minutes of playtime, students want to feel like they got to spend their time on something worthwhile.

What are the challenges of playing a TTRPG with elementary students, or playing for only 30 minutes?

My biggest challenge is giving each student a chance to shine in a 30 minute session. With some sessions getting up to 7 players, that’s less than 5 minutes of real action per player. Luckily for me, I have a bit of time I can spare right before the students have recess, so I usually have everything set up before they get up to play. The only other challenge is helping students to understand that their in-game actions can have in-game consequences. I had a student get bored in one of our sessions and grab a civilian and jump into a pit holding the civilian. I explained that now the town guards were going to be looking into this to figure out why he did that. Other than that, most sessions go as smooth as any other TTRPG I’ve run before.

Students learning natural consequences from bad actions in a safe game environment sounds like an awesome reason for using a TTRPG in a classroom! What other positive effects on your classroom culture and learning have you noticed? 

I honestly believe that for me the best effect is it helps me get to know some of my students who aren’t very outgoing during class normally. I’ve gotten to see sides of some of my students that I doubt I would have ever seen in the classroom setting alone. I also feel like the game promotes problem solving, and team work in a way that you can’t feasibly do in real life. I also think it's nice the types of students who play. At least for my grade level I’ve got kids in band, kids in sports, kids who are high achievers, and some who struggle. The mix creates an interesting dynamic in our sessions.

What advice would you have for an educator wanting to incorporate a role-playing game into an elementary classroom?

That’s tough.  While I certainly see positives in my game sessions, I also know that it’s successful because the students want to do it. I would never try to use role-playing games with students who didn’t show an interest. However, like any thing we do in life, you get out of it what you put into it. If you want to use it as just a fun activity where students roll dice and fight monsters, that’s fine. If you want to help them work on social skills like empathy, you have to put those situations in the game. You want them to learn to solve problems together as a team, you have to create a problem that they can’t solve with one person doing all the work. I’m not saying I’m a pro at this. I just think that TTRPGs can be a tool to help work on these issues, but only if you create those opportunities.

Reflecting on what you've done and looking ahead, what's next?

If I’m being totally honest, I don’t know that I’d recommend a recess session for everyone. I started it because I wasn’t sure how popular it would be, and I had no idea at the time of how to start an afternoon type organization. 30 minutes goes by so fast, and if you don’t have time to set up beforehand, and take down as well, you’re going to lose a lot of your time. That being said, I’m going to be working on an afterschool program for next year due to how much interest there has been.

Thanks again to David for sharing his wisdom!

EduCon 2023

Last weekend, my teammate Rachel Albright and I went to Philadelphia for a three day event called EduCon.  This annual conference mainly took place at Science Leadership Academy (SLA) High School at Center City. SLA opened around 2006, with EduCon starting a few years later.  SLA has become well known for its focus on PBL and internships, and has led to other Philadelphia schools following its model; most recently they have opened a new middle school (SLAMS).

I've been feeling like attending EduCon specifically, and visiting SLA in general, was being nudged to me by Fate.  I first heard about SLA/EduCon when reading Reinventing Project-Based Learning last fall, and then read about SLA again a few months later as one of four schools highlighted in Running with Robots.  

On the first day of the conference, we were led by a senior student through a tour of the flagship high school.  Besides being impressed with her obvious enthusiasm and knowledge for what SLA has to offer, I was also appreciative that such innovative instructional practice happened in an older facility with few shiny frills, minus some new machinery and equipment.  SLA proves the point that while PBL, passion-based projects, and deeper learning may benefit from a school renovation or a new build, it certainly doesn't require it!

For the rest of the entry, I will highlight three EduCon breakout sessions I attended that personally stood out for me.

"The Case for Dreaming in Public"

This session easily won for best titled, and was facilitated by Timothy Boyle (founding principal of SLAMS) and David Jakes (veteran school designer and author of The Design Thinking Classroom). 

The session mainly consisted of "dreaming big" on what a new school might be and sharing those ideas with tablemates, which was intellectually stimulating.  But Jakes also shared anecdotes from previous school renovation/new build projects.  For example, he recommended having all stakeholders (educators and community members) meet for a "Salon Dinner."  At the dinner, he would pose two provocative questions: What would it take to get it right?  What would it mean if we did?  Jakes also shared an example when the answers to those questions led not to a school that could double as a community center, but instead to a community center that just so happened to be a school during the weekdays.  Such a realization factored heavily into its design choices, and of course the kind of instruction and student interaction such a building would have. 

"Challenging Traditional School Leader Pathways and PD"

This session was facilitated by three leaders of the School District of Philadelphia (SDP), one of the top 10 largest in the nation: Katie Culver, Brandon Cummings, and Rosie Tarnowski.  

A few years ago, SDP did a re-org that included changes in PD development.  Among other changes, they decided to prioritize support for principals -- not only because of the need for hiring, internally growing, and retaining such important personnel, but because philosophically, SDP believes principals are the most powerful change agent of their school building as well as their surrounding community.   This led to creating a new Leadership Pathway Framework (LPF) which articulates criteria for the assistant superintendents, principals, assistant principals, teacher leaders, and central office leaders.   In the session, they concentrated on one strand of LPF, Equity Centered Leadership.   These leadership competencies are nothing if not ambitious.  Consider this example, from the substrand "Trusting Relationships" in the Principal competency "Facilitates and Builds Trusting Relationships":

The SPD presenters noted that similar frameworks for teachers and students were in the works, and acknowledged that while such leadership competencies were meant to drive growth, raise expectations and determine PD needs of principals and others, they were not yet used evaluatively -- and there was internal debate whether they ever should be.

Additionally, SDP had recently launched leadership affinity groups.   To take one group example, black male educational leaders now have meetings and a safe space to share and speak about their unique experiences.  These affinity groups (as well as the leadership PD in general) have been highly successful -- see photo below for data --- but this has led to areas for future consideration.  For example, for educators that identified as another gender, or gay, should they form new and separate affinity groups? Participate in the larger one? Both?

Overall, it was exciting and inspiring to see such a large school district acknowledge the complex needs of its educational leadership and find ambitious ways to serve and grow them, particularly in the area of equity.

Let's Design a School!

While somewhat similar in tone to "The Case for Dreaming in Public," the major difference was the inclusion of a student panel facilitated by Mary Beth Hertz.  Four students from SLA's middle and high schools had some great insights about education.  Here are some paraphrased quotes.

• Answering the question "I go to school and enjoy..."
  • spending time with my friends and teachers I like.
  • extracurriculars (to allow students to think about what they want to do with their future).
  • classes with connections, teamwork, community.
  • how each class is unique, and teachers that try to make things fun.
• Answering the question "What is school?" For what I want to do, some of my classes are beneficial, but some classes are hard to take seriously because it feels like kinda the same thing over and over since I was 4.  It doesn't meet everyone's needs.
• Answering the question "What do you think the purpose of education is? How is 'school' and 'education' different?"
• Being educated is different for different people.  Some people like to educate themselves. Education is about learning about your own identity, and being mindful.
• School feels like a competition.  School turns education into a hierarchy.  Awards ceremony can make us feel bad, because who wins feels more subjective than objective.  But sometimes competition can be motivating too.  More than an award, I appreciate a teacher checking in with me with "Are you ok?" Or give me a compliment.
• I don't want scores and grades to define me.
• Sometimes you need to be a teacher, and sometimes you need to be a person.  (This quote hit me hard!)

After the Q & A panel, we joined like-minded participants in groups to brainstorm what "our" new school might look like.  The students from the panel even walked around to give feedback and advice!  Although we had limited time, it got some great conversation going and had us questioning aspects of school we always take for granted.

Intriguingly, Hertz also shared that SDP is potentially piloting Walkabout Philly for high school students, hopefully in the 2024-2025 school year.  This would be the first Walkabout school outside of their original location in New York.  Walkabout Education centers around five "Challenge Areas": Wilderness Experience (a leadership building exercise for students before the start of school that involves actual camping), Service Learning, Applied Academics, Career Internship, and Presentation (similar to a Defense of Learning).  A ten minute video that explains each of these Areas is here and embedded below.  I'm definitely interested in following Philadelphia's journey in launching this school!

Walkabout School Model Overview from Walkabout Education on Vimeo.

Rachel and I definitely got some nuggets of gold from the three day conference, and were grateful to the EduCon educators and students who took the time to share their wisdom.

Guest Blogging on Deeper Learning at Aurora Institute's CompetencyWorks

Another short Edtech Elixirs entry with a publishing announcement!

I have written a two part series for Aurora Institute's CompetencyWorks blog.  I discuss the deeper learning work currently going on in Kentucky, from my perspective as a member of OVEC's newly launched Deeper Learning Team (one of eight such teams throughout the state).

While CompetencyWorks has highlighted me in past entries, or republished something I previously wrote in Edtech Elixirs, this is the first time I've actually guest blogged for them. I'm proud to discuss the work of our team, and it's a great one -- working with Carmen Coleman, Lacey Eckels and Rachel Albright is fantastic.

Please give the series a read, and special thanks to Aurora Institute for the opportunity!

Part One (1/19/23)

Part Two (1/25/23)

KyEdRPG in Kentucky Teacher

 

Back in September 2022, I wrote a series of three blog entries for the launch of my new site, Kentucky Educators for Role Playing Games.  I also interviewed Justin Gadd (Shelby County Public Schools) about his afterschool D & D club, and shared how Patrick La Mar (Oldham County Public Schools) integrated an Oregon Trail-style roleplaying game into a social studies lesson. 

Last week, Kentucky Teacher published an article highlighting all of the above: "The power of role-playing games for deeper learning experiences."  It's a great title and one that I whole-heartedly agree; game-based learning in general, and RPGs in particular, certainly have a lot of potential for deepening learning!

Special thanks to Audrie Lamb for writing the article, Justin and Patrick for taking the time to get interviewed, and Kentucky Teacher for featuring the #KyEdRPG site.

The Year of 2022 in (Blog) Review

 Happy holidays!  Before 2022 ends, I was feeling reflective and wanted to briefly share some personal highlights of the year through the lens of Edtech Elixirs.  

• Back in November 2021, I attended and led a session at EDspaces in Pittsburgh, PA.  It's a great conference and support resource for those looking to renovate or build new school settings. Adapting that session into an article eventually became a published piece for EDspaces Essentials online magazine this year ("Article in EDspaces Essentials magazine!" April 20).
• I had a pretty big professional change in 2022.  After over eight years at Shelby County Public Schools as a Digital Learning Coordinator, I took a new job as Deeper Learning Design Specialist at the Ohio Valley Educational Cooperative in August ("A New Chapter," August 16).  I'm happy with the opportunities to expand who I can help and how I can help others, as well as learn from them.  I'm also very grateful to be a part of my new team and employer.
• This year, I launched two websites: my personal site ("Launch of my new website!" July 17) as well as Kentucky Educators for Role Playing Games ("KyEdRPG, Part One: Site Launch Announcement!" September 10).
• The most popular entry of the year in terms of views? That would be "KyEdRPG, Part Three: Westward Expansion, d20 Style" (September 20), with 726 views as of today.  
• In terms of free edtech tools that I profiled this year, I think Verso is probably the one with the most positive potential for day to day instruction ("Verso," April 2).  However, the edtech story of the year is easily ChatGPT, one of the first clear examples of how artificial intelligence will make a huge difference in education in our near future ("How AI Will Save Education," December 21).
• Last but not least, I'm proud to be closing in on two milestones for my blog.  This entry is my 185th since starting Edtech Elixirs in August 2014, which means it's highly likely I will reach 200 next year.  Additionally, I'm just shy of 200,000 views overall for the blog, and at the current rate I'll easily top that number by February 2023.

As always, I appreciate your readership and your shares of my blog over the years.  May all your New Year's resolutions for 2023 come true!

How AI Will Save Education

A decade ago, I was a high school English teacher blissfully naive to what radical changes were coming thanks to edtech.  How innocent the days of 2012 seem now, when a teacher only had to worry about the ways Google Search posed a threat to cheating on multiple choice assessments (which began my questioning of the value of assessing regurgitated facts in the first place), or how I had to participate in the ever escalating "arms race" of combating students stealing online essays and quoting other people's words without citation by deploying the latest upgraded anti-plagiarism programs. 

Recently I wrote "What If Your Co-Teacher is a Computer?"  While I mainly addressed taking classic co-teaching strategies and applying them to scenarios that integrated in-person teaching with an online course or adaptive learning platform, I intentionally titled the blog entry with my tongue firmly in cheek, implying a day when a human would seriously have to wrangle with how best to work with an artificial intelligence (AI) educational partner.   I imagined such a day was far, far into the future.  

That was back in October.  But like a Christmas miracle a few months later, ChatGPT exploded into our zeitgeist seemingly out of nowhere, and it feels like something foundational has rapidly and irreversibly shifted in education...indeed, the world.

It should be noted, however, that ChatGPT did not arrive on the scene in one fell swoop, and is merely the steady evolution of AI over the last several years.  Consider the following developments in artificial intelligence:

• In 2016, the Associated Press began outsourcing its minor-league baseball dispatches to a company called Automated Insights.  By merely taking boxscore data, the company's AI can write simple stories about the key facts of the game, which are then published in newspapers and websites nationally.  AP has expanded its use of Automated Insights into other sport dispatches, quarterly business financial reports, and more.*
• In February 2019, an IBM AI supercomputer named "Project Debater" was pitted in a competition against a human national debate champion Harish Natarajan.  A journalist was impressed not just at Debater's ability to speak, but to listen: "It sort of took [the audience's] breath away to see that the computer, in its rebuttal, had actually listened to some of what Hari had said, digested it, and was formatting a response in real time to it...I think there was a sense from the audience that there was almost really a personality there."  While officials ultimately judged Harish the winner, the audience voted that Debater was more informative.**
• While rough "deepfake" videos have been around for several years, the proliferation of video manipulation that appear real enough to fool viewers really shifted into high gear in 2019 with the launch of multiple AI open-source software and mobile apps.  (On a side note: I highly recommend sharing with students The Washington Post's website "The Fact-Checker's Guide to Manipulated Video"; this may require a free account to access.)
• In 2021, as part of a project called "The Lost Tapes of the 27 Club," AI was used to create new music and lyrics in the stylings of several artists that died tragically young, such as Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, and Amy Winehouse.  Human soundalike vocalists were then utilized to actually record the compositions.  The organization behind these "new" songs, Over the Bridge, did the project to raise awareness of mental illness among musicians. 
• In the last year, AI such as Midjourney and DALL-E that creates art based on user suggestions have soared in popularity while also raising the question of the ethics of such programs; for example, it has been discovered that some AI will find art already on the Internet to potentially blend into a new piece without proper attribution or compensation for the artists, or the more basic fear that artificial intelligence apps will do for free what you used to pay and commission artists to create.  

In this context, ChatGPT -- a free online program that, in essence, takes your prompts and questions in order to produce original writing -- can be seen as the natural next step for AI.  In some ways it's like a sophisticated search engine giving you a highly specialized, curated text (without, it should be noted, any citation of the primary sources or facts that led to such an answer).  It relies on the huge database of the Internet, and like much of AI, is learning how to be more effective every time we use it.  What fascinates and disturbs many people is not only the human-like style of ChatGPT's writing, but its ability to generate original and even artistic pieces. 

I thought I could easily stump ChatGPT.  But I was wrong.

My wife wrote an essay back in high school where she compared Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" to Shakespeare's Hamlet.  A quick Google search resulted in no immediate hits of others writing such an essay.  Yet, when I gave the prompt to ChatGPT, I got the following within a few seconds:

An excerpt (about two-thirds) of ChatGPT's original essay.

Next, I asked it to write a 12 line poem about dachshunds and Jedi Knights.  While it ignored my directions and wrote four extra lines, I was shocked to get a poem that dutifully blended both subjects in non-rhyming, narratively consistent verse:

Not Shakespearean, and certainly missing some compelling imagery, but I would have considered it okay if one of my freshmen had submitted it.  Still, I'm nitpicking about something game-changing here: ChatGPT wrote an original poem in seconds.  Even more amazing, ChatGPT made some independent artistic choices.  I didn't tell it to make the doxie a Jedi Knight, but by deciding to do so, it created a sense of whimsy.  Can a robot be whimsical?

The last example I will share goes to the heart of instruction.   I had heard of teachers using ChatGPT to write a lesson plan.  This will be kludgy and awful, I thought.  Especially if I load up my prompt with detailed specifics.  The generation of the text took longer than the other two examples -- maybe an entire ten seconds -- but once again, I could not stump the bot.

Again, far from perfect, and ignoring some of what I asked for in my prompt, but I was pretty much astounded that AI could earn its keep as my instructional collaborator. (For the entire text of this example lesson plan, click here to view as a Google Doc.). 

The implications of all of this seems clear if not outright ominous: if an AI tool today can now write essays and poems, how must that change how we teach and assess student writing?  If a bot today can write a lesson plan, how does that change or even threaten the teacher's job in the future (in both the metaphysical and literal sense of the word "job")?

It should be no surprise that much of the reaction to ChatGPT is somewhere between existential dread and anxiety.  This has already resulted in some traditional "arms race" approaches, such as fighting potential student (mis)use of ChatGPT with a tool to determine the potential that a submitted text was created by AI.  But is this sidestepping a bigger question? Recently in The Atlantic, Isabel Fattal and Derek Thompson discussed our potentially "wild future."  If an AI can write a college essay, maybe we should re-evaluate the purpose of a formulaic college essay in the first place. As Thompson posits, "Some people argue that ChatGPT could replace the college essay, and Ian [Bogust, another staff writer] is saying: That’s only because the college essay is dumb to begin with. It’s possible that lots of things in the economy are dumb in the way that the college essay is dumb. If that’s true, then GPT can still be revolutionary. What it does might be dumb, but it’s also incredibly useful." An AI that can write a lesson plan might be better seen not as a threat to what an educator can create, but instead be an "inspiration stimulant" (Thompson's phrase) that serves to improve what a final lesson plan might be.  

Earlier this fall, Corey Mohn, President and Executive Director of CAPS Network, had recommended to our Deeper Learning Team a book that was just published in 2021 --- Running with Robots: The American High School's Third Century by Greg Toppo and Jim Tracy.  (Corey had me at "Greg Toppo," as I've been a fan of his since 2018 when I first read one of his earlier books.)  When ChatGPT hit the headlines, I binge read the book, as it seemed eerily prescient to the current hot topic question of AI's impact on education.  At this highly charged inflection moment, where the need for transforming school is critical, I could not more highly recommend this book.  It's a fascinating and engaging blend of four narrative strands: an American public education history from the 1800's to the present; the impact and ramifications of recent AI developments with predictions on what is to come; a spotlight on four high schools operating today which serve as models on how school can and should be; and last but not least, a novelistic Rip Van Winkle utopian story where a principal falls asleep in 2020 and wakes up twenty years later visiting his radically changed school. 

For Toppo and Tracy, future AI should not be seen as the bleak robotic replacement of teachers and humanity itself, but instead a challenge we must acknowledge and address: "As a society, we need a 'pre-AI moment' -- that is, a systemic anticipatory response on a scale commensurate with a previous generation's 'post-Sputnik moment.' And, like the response after the fact of Sputnik in the 1950s, this should transpire as much in the realm of educational as in policy initiatives" (190).  But our "systemic anticipatory response" must recognize why prior educational initiatives have failed in the past:

[D]ecades of failed revolutions, of the "next big thing," of teaching machines and expensive technical marvels, have failed to transform a hidebound, nearly intractable system.  Revolutionizing education is neither wise nor feasible.  Rather, we must evolutionize education, seeking to forge the optimal synthesis of the best and most germane from the received tradition with the most promising of emergent pedagogical practice.  After all, the received traditions have been honed over millennia and have much that is fine and still relevant, while new educational paradigms are often faddish and ill-considered.  The careful sifting and selection is essential. (37, authors' italics)

We don't have to throw the traditional pedagogical baby out completely with the "hidebound" bathwater, but we certainly have to evolve our educational practices in light of our near-future technology and needs.

Toppo and Tracy point out an illustrative example that involves math instruction. By the 1970's, pocket calculators became cheap and commonplace enough that an average student could easily own one.   Technology offered us a chance to be a partner. This should have been a watershed moment for instruction, when math teachers began focusing at least as much (if not more!) time on mathematical practices -- on authentic practical application, on conceptional knowledge, on experiencing the aesthetic beauty of mathematical thinking -- rather than having students spend their time mindlessly plugging and chugging through memorized but ill-understood formulas.  However, even a half century later with the latest smartphones and laptops and AI apps, we still spend a disproportionate amount of time asking students to compute like, and compete with, a computer instead of thinking math like a human and collaborating math solutions with humans.   As the authors' fictional future principal puts it, "We humans are still pretty unique in our ability to make creative connections across apparently disparate knowledge areas....That's the value of omnidisciplinary literacy. The time that is freed up by not bringing every student to content fluency can be devoted instead to imbuing them with process fluency" (16, my italics).   In other words, have students spend less time regurgitating facts that you can Google and on skills rapidly being augmented or replaced by AI, and instead spend more time learning the critical human applications that truly matter that can't be easily supplanted by a robot.***

The idea that AI can actually be the savior of educators, education, learners, and learning and not its destroyer really goes to the heart of our current Deeper Learning work.  We pose questions such as "How might we reimagine the student experience to become more meaningful, relevant, and inspiring so that every learner is equipped for a successful future?" We know the answer is not more regurgitation of facts, more formulaic writing, more solving of inauthentic scenarios of two trains running toward each other on the same track.   We cannot have students spend years learning the "hidebound" traditions of the so-called fundamentals before they get a chance to "play the whole game," to use Jal Mehta's excellent Little League analogy.  We need more lessons that emphasize Profile of a Graduate competencies that lead to application of durable skills, which will likely be the last bastion of uniquely human cognition left in the decades to come.  If we hesitate to transform teaching now, AI may truly become humanity's rival instead of our partner in the future.

To take us back to our present ChatGPT dilemma for student writing, I offer three possibilities for teachers.

• Lean into ChatGPT as an opportunity for a student to generate a first draft, provided the understanding is that the student revises that draft to further enrich and enlarge her/his thinking with additional detail and complexity.  The student should also do "reverse engineering research" to find, validate, and cite any facts or quotes given in ChatGPT's text. As a student requires feedback and shows examples of their subsequent drafts,  the student is responsible for being transparent about their writing process and is asked to reflect on how the paper evolved from ChatGPT's initial text to their own final product.
• Create "mini-dissertation defense" opportunities where students must orally explain their writing to the teacher and/or peers.  A student that can metacognitively talk through their thinking is a person who can demonstrate how they, and not a computer, have demonstrated mastery.  Pose questions and inquiries like, "Where are you personally connected in the work?" or "Explain your use of metaphor here."  Of course, such oral opportunities also provide practice and proof of those Profile of a Graduate competencies such as effective communication. 
• "Where's the epiphany?" If the expectation of the writing is to simply synthesize known facts into a narrative, tools like ChatGPT will continue to put the human 3.5 essay out of business.  Let's instead make the expectation of the writing be the creation of a new insight or invention, instead of a regurgitation of bullet points.  Consider ways to refine what your writing is asking for, such as the performance assessment criteria tool in my blog entry "From Good to Great, Initial to Ideal: A Way to Improve Exhibitions and Other Performance Assessments."

I'll end with a rallying cry from Toppo and Tracy:

So, if we want to help our young people thrive in a world of miraculous technology, we must forget the nouns -- the AI and robots and intelligence systems -- for these will always be changing.  We must focus instead on the verbs: What it is we trust our young people to do that we don't trust technology to do?  And how can we prepare them for this future?   

For starters, let's not give them robots' work.  Let's trust them to do better, harder, more rigorous, more interdisciplinary, high-stakes work -- and not just for the 10 percent, but for everyone.  We must expect more of young people, not only because the world will expect it of them but because they are begging us to do so. (70)

Let's teach our students to run with the robots, and not against them.

Some footnotes:
  

* Toppo and Tracy, pages 82-83.

** Toppo and Tracy, pages 201-203.

*** "For so many students, school is simply not demanding enough - and the dilemma, of course, doesn't begin in high school. When the Education Trust, a civil rights group that advocates for low-income and minority students, examined more than 1,800 math assignments given to middle school students in six urban, suburban, and rural school districts in 2018, it found that most of the assignments featured 'low cognitive demand,' overemphasized procedural skills and fluency, and provided little opportunity for students to communicate their mathematical thinking.  The problem was often worse in high-poverty schools" (Toppo and Tracy, page 70).  

Book Spotlight: Reinventing Project-Based Learning

I mentioned back in the summer that I had purchased Reinventing Project-Based Learning: Your Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age by Suzie Boss and Jane Krauss (ISTE, 2018, 3rd Edition), a book I recently finished reading.   The edtech angle implied in the title definitely was my initial hook for buying it (and it is useful providing tools and strategy in this area throughout), but I was quickly thankful for a much bigger picture on PBL; Reinventing Project-Based Learning helps me achieve ways to do just that.  While spending the last few months settling into my role as a Deeper Learning Design Specialist, I was glad to have the text as a companion.  Effective PBL is certainly not the only pathway to deeper learning outcomes, but it is undoubtedly a popular one, so Boss and Krauss's insights are invaluable in how to make project-based learning more impactful and manageable.  While Reinventing Project-Based Learning is highly recommended from stem to stern, I wanted to share some of my personal highlights from the book in this Edtech Elixirs blog entry.

High Quality Project-Based Learning (HQPBL)

While I knew PBLWorks's "Gold Standard" design elements for PBL, I had either not heard of or don't remember the HQPBL Framework until reading this book (pages 18-20).  (I should point out that PBLWorks was one of many partners that helped shape the HQPBL Framework.)

The six criteria for HQPBL are:

• Intellectual Change and Accomplishment.  "Projects should not just be 'fun activities' or 'hands-on experiences' requiring minimal intellectual effort. ... To complete a project successfully, students need to learn important academic content, concepts, and skills." I appreciate the emphasis on complexity, while also pointing out that PBL should not be just fluffy and devoid of academic rigor.
• Authenticity.  "[D]o students engage in work that makes an impact on or otherwise connects to the world beyond school, and to their personal interests and concerns?"  The key word here is and:  a good PBL should both impact others outside of the four walls of the classroom while also connecting to student passions.  When asked, a student should be able to answer the question Why does this PBL matter to you?
• Public Product.  A culminating event where the product is published or presented is an oft-cited hallmark of PBL.  However, the importance of sharing the project not just at the end but throughout is also key: "In a high quality project, students make their work public by sharing it not only with the teacher but also with each other, experts, and other people beyond the classroom. This occurs both during a project, as part of the product development and formative assessment process and at its conclusion, when the product is shared and discussed with an audience." I also discuss the shift in thinking about "experts" as well as the need for continuous formative assessment later in this blog entry.
• Collaboration.   As the Framework reminds us, collaboration "does not mean simply dividing up project tasks, completing them individually, then putting it all together at the end with no synthesis or discussion." In my early teaching, I often mistook and misassessed the equivalent of "parallel play" as effective student groupwork. Students merely working side by side is not enough to prove evidence of effective collaboration!  Model and scaffold collaboration for students, and help teach the skill if necessary. 
• Project Management.  While a teacher may initially need to model for, guide and facilitate the students in "manag[ing their] time, tasks and resources efficiently," the goal is that students are eventually doing this for themselves.
• Reflection.  Again, this is not just something for students to do after the project is published. They should "pause regularly—not just at the end of the project, but throughout the process—to think about what they are doing and learning."

The Framework PDF may only be six pages, but it repeatedly provokes thought on how to improve PBL (as some of the above quotes hopefully attest to), and is well worth the read.   To be honest, I like this Framework more than the Gold Standard of PBLWorks; as it states in the Framework's introduction, while many "models and guidelines have been created" for PBL, they are "typically written from the perspective of the teacher." In contrast, the HQPBL Framework "describes PBL in terms of the student experience."  As a person who is trying to help others envision a better, richer student classroom experience, I appreciate this focus.

Transforming Questions

Another route to deeper learning is Inquiry-Based Learning.  It is not surprising that the idea of asking good questions and a student-centered approach to seeking out content is also a part of transformative PBL.   Boss and Krauss remind us to keep the PBL's outcome in mind, and that asking questions can be part of a great hook to start the PBL.  In the chapter section of the book titled "Promote Inquiry and Deep Learning" (175-178), they use an example of an instructional unit on money to show how to transform closed questions that have a narrow or single answer ("What is money made of?") to more open, driving questions "transformed for deeper inquiry" (such as "How would you analyze coins to learn what they are made of?" or "Is the process of making coins and paper money the same everywhere?").

The Need for Formative Assessments All Along the Way

In my opinion, the biggest difficulty for teachers is how to properly facilitate the long middle portion of the PBL journey.  They may have a great driving question or event to kick it off, and have a solid idea for how to publish and present the end product, but it's the plan to check in on student progress (both in progressing to meet deadlines as well as progress toward mastering the academics) where teachers often get stuck.  Boss and Krauss really shine in this area of support. Table 5.2 "Assessment Options" (131-136), which details formative assessment options during PBL, is alone worth the price of the book.  The table has columns for "Teacher Activities," "Questions," "Assessment Options (means of finding out)," and "Teacher Response"; the rows give examples when to do this, from "During Planning and Preparation" through "Presentation of Project Work." 

Fieldwork versus Field Trips

I've written before about the impact of place-based learning.  Boss and Krauss remind us how place-based learning can be a powerful component of successful PBL as well (212-213).  Firstly, it's a matter of inverting the notion of a class field trip as the "dessert" that may happen at the end of a unit or school year (if there's time, and if everyone pays the fee).  Instead, why not make such a field trip a crucial component at the start or middle of a PBL?  This allows students to do authentic field work, gathering data and ideas.  For example, a visit to a museum may elicit inquiry beyond content and fact collection (149).  How does the docent talk? How are exhibits constructed? How can an unplanned event or discovery trigger a new inquiry?  If you can let go and have the students be the ones to drive learning, you can create a great start to personally driven PBL: "[S]ome of the best learning experiences unfold when teachers are comfortable asking, 'Where will the environment take us on this particular day?' "  (149)

Be Creative in Finding "Experts"

Teachers may consider experts as panel members to make up the audience that students will present their final project to, but Boss and Krauss remind us that it is equally important to consider experts during the PBL as well, in order to provide formative assessment feedback as well as content resources.  But we also must make the idea of "experts" more elastic.  The potential expertise of parents also has to be considered and included (146-148).   How might a teacher, at the start of the year, survey parents to determine their professions, hobbies, availability, willingness to help? (Of course, this should be done with the utmost respect and dignity, with a clear asset mindset that any parent can bring value to the classroom.)  We should also utilize school or district work-based coaches, internship coordinators, and CTE pathway directors who have connections to the community workforce to help create not only partnership for PBL expertise, but potential place-based learning opportunities, or panelists for Defenses of Learning.  

One final humorous note.  As I neared the end of the book, I almost fell off of my couch when I read Carmen Coleman's name (page 246)!  Boss and Krauss quote her from a PBS NewsHour story in 2013, when she was the Superintendent of Danville Independent Schools and an early proponent of PBL.  (It turns out that Carmen was equally surprised and unaware of the mention!) There's nothing like seeing your OVEC Deeper Learning Team leader show up in a best seller to make you proud of your opportunity to work alongside such educational innovators.    

What other PBL books have you found helpful in your educational journey?  Share in the Comments below!