EdTech Fact or Fiction

Separating EdTech Fact
from Fiction
Adaptive Math Learning Community Launch
Tim Hudson, PhD
Senior Director of Curriculum Design
DreamBox Learning
@DocHudsonMath
May 28, 2014

Introduction
• Senior Director of Curriculum Design for
DreamBox Learning
• Over 10 years in public education
o High School math teacher
o K-12 Math Curriculum Coordinator
o Strategic Planning Facilitator
• Degrees in Math, Math Education, and
Educational Leadership
• Consult and work with Authentic Education
& Grant Wiggins
• Co-authored a chapter with Cathy Fosnot
Classrooms Where Children Learn in an
NCTM book Math Intervention Models:
Reweaving the Tapestry (I get no royalties)

Overview
Learning
Principles &
Learning
Mathematics
Mental Models
of “Adaptive”
& Learning
Perspectives
for Separating
EdTech Fact
from Fiction

Tech & Learning Survey Definition
“Adaptive learning systems are software-
based technologies that automatically
customize curriculum to the knowledge level
of the learner. The algorithms actively track
and access student performance to provide
feedback to the teacher and student about
the student’s progress on an ongoing basis.”
2013 survey conducted by Tech & Learning (www.techlearning.com) and commissioned by DreamBox Learning

Why Adaptive?
Why Differentiated?
Why Individualized?
Why Personalized?

Plan Curriculum Backwards
1. Identify desired
results
2. Determine
acceptable
evidence
3. Plan learning
experiences
and instruction
Understanding by Design, Wiggins & McTighe, ©2005

WHAT should
this student be
learning,
doing, and
thinking about
tomorrow?

Learning Requires Adaptivity
“…pay close attention to
the individual progress of
each student and devise
tasks that are
appropriate…” (p. 24)
Bransford, J.D., Brown, A.L., & Cocking, R.R. (Eds.). (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school (2nd ed.). Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

Differentiation Defined
• Educators’ Purpose…
• All students must master important content.
• Make specific and continually evolving plans to
connect each learner with key content.
• Expect differences in the nature of scaffolding.
• Therefore we Ask…
• What does this student need at this moment in
order to be able to progress with this key
content, and what do I need to do to make that
happen?”
Leading and Managing a Differentiated Classroom by C.A. Tomlinson & M.B. Imbeau, ASCD, © 2010, pp. 13-14

Logistical Classroom Reality
March 1:
Long
Division
March 1:
Long
Division
March 1:
Long
Division
March 1:
Long
Division
March 1:
Long
Division
March 1:
Long
Division
March 1:
Long
Division
March 1:
Long
Division
March 1:
Long
Division
March 1:
Long
Division
March 1:
Long
Division
March 1:
Long
Division
March 1:
Long
Division
March 1:
Long
Division
March 1:
Long
Division
March 1:
Long
Division
March 1:
Long
Division
March 1:
Long
Division

If teachers could work 1-1 with ALL…
Decimal
Long
Division
Long
Division with
Significant
Scaffolding
Partial
Quotients
Fraction
Division
Requires More:
• Assessments
• Time for Testing
• Time for Scoring
• Data
• Content Knowledge
• Resources
Basic
Multiplication

Rethinking Differentiation
Typical mental models of learning often
cause educators to differentiate in two wrong
ways:
1. around knowledge, skills, and procedures
rather than around ideas, understanding, and
complex performance
2. in response to student knowledge AFTER
being shown a skill instead of in response to
student thinking when solving an unfamiliar
problem or when forming initial conceptions.

Common Core Standards for
Mathematical Practice
Opportunity:
What can only be
done when we
have a diverse
range of learners in
a single
classroom?

WHAT could
this student be
learning,
doing, and
thinking about
tomorrow?

Collaborative
Projects,
Group Inquiry,
Community
Building
Independent
Projects,
Mentoring,
Interactive
Software or
Apps
Whole Class
or Small
Group
Lecture,
Online or In
Person
Explanation,
Tutoring,
Online Videos
from the
Teacher or
Other Source
IndividualGroup
Learning Experience
Instruction

Menu of Great Learning Options
Student
Observation,
Input
Classroom
Assessment
Other
Assessment
Data

Embedded Formative Assessment
Three key elements:
1. elicit evidence about learning to close the gap
between current and desired performance,
2. adjust the learning experience to close the
performance gap with useful feedback
3. involve students in the assessment and
learning process
Adapted from Margaret Heritage, 2008

Personalized
Schooling
Personalized
Learning
Industrial
Schooling
Industrial
Learning
Personalized
(Relational)
Impersonal
(Industrial)
Learning
Pedagogy with
Students
Schoolin
g
Structures
from
Adults

WHAT is
her
birthdate?
Impersonal
Industrial
Schooling First
Asks:

First Grade: Week 1
© DreamBox Learning

WHAT is she
interested
in?WHAT does
she know?
WHERE could
she be learning?
Personalized
Relational
Schooling First
Asks:

School Policies &
Structures are
Designed for
Students as Unique
Individuals.
Strategic & Varied
Schedule, Location,
Path, Pace
Empowering
Learning
Experiences, Critical
Thinking, Creativity,
Exploration.
Students “Think &
Do” using Their Own
Intuitive Ideas
School Policies &
Structures are
Designed for
Efficiency, Economy
& Scale.
Fixed Schedule,
Location, Path, Pace
Traditional Lesson
Paradigm of Mass
Instruction
Teach, Practice, Test
Students “Sit & Get”
the Teacher’s Ideas
Personalized
(Relational)
Impersonal
(Industrial)
Learning
Pedagogy with
Students
Schoolin
g
Structures
from
Adults

School Policies &
Structures are
Designed for
Students as Unique
Individuals.
Strategic & Varied
Schedule, Location,
Path, Pace
Empowering
Learning
Experiences, Critical
Thinking, Creativity,
Exploration.
Students “Think &
Do” using Their Own
Intuitive Ideas
School Policies &
Structures are
Designed for
Efficiency, Economy
& Scale.
Fixed Schedule,
Location, Path, Pace
Traditional Lesson
Paradigm of Mass
Instruction
Teach, Practice, Test
Students “Sit & Get”
the Teacher’s Ideas
Personalized
(Relational)
Impersonal
(Industrial)
Learning
Pedagogy with
Students
Schoolin
g
Structures
from
Adults
Blended Blended
Is there
an app
for this?
Is there
an app
for this?
Is there
an app
for this?
Is there
an app
for this?

Plan Schooling Backwards
“Contemporary school reform efforts…
typically focus too much on various
means: structures, schedules,
programs, PD, curriculum, and
instructional practices (like cooperative
learning)”
[or personalized learning]
[or blended learning]
[or flipped classrooms]
[or iPads®, hardware]
[or adaptive learning]
p. 234-235, Wiggins & McTighe, © 2007

Plan Schooling Backwards
“Certainly such reforms serve
as the fuel for the school
improvement engine, but
they must not be mistaken as
the destination…[which is]
improved learning.”
p. 234-235, Wiggins & McTighe, © 2007

Adaptive
Learning
Platform or Program

From a 5th grade teacher in NY:
“I had a lot of good people teaching me math when I was a
student – earnest and funny and caring. But the math they
taught me wasn’t good math. Every class was the same for
eight years:
‘Get out your homework, go over the
homework, here’s the new set of exercises,
here’s how to do them. Now get started. I’ll
be around.’
p. 55, Teaching What Matters Most, Strong, Silver, & Perini, ©2001
Experience or Instruction?

Design Limitation
“They were so concerned with making
sure we knew how to do every single
procedure we never learned how to think
mathematically. I did well in math but I
never understood what I was doing. I
remember hundreds of procedures but
not one single mathematical idea.”
p. 55, Teaching What Matters Most, Strong, Silver, & Perini, ©2001

Common Teaching Cycle
Whole
Class or
Small
Group
Instruction
Independent
Practice
Whole
Class
Assessment
Use Data
Formatively
to Plan
Use Data
Summatively

Content Delivery
Whole
Class or
Small
Group
Instruction
Independent
Practice
Whole
Class
Assessment
Use Data
Formatively
to Plan
Use Data
Summatively

Let Me
Show You
How To Do
X
Now You
Go Do
X
Can You
Independently
Do
X?
Maybe You
Need to Be
Shown X
Again
You Know
X
Instruction

Let Me
Show You
How To Do
X
Now You
Go Do
X
Can You
Independently
Do
X?
Maybe You
Need to Be
Shown X
Again
You Know
X
Who is doing the thinking?
Ineffective
adaptivity

Impersonal Learning
“Presentation of an explanation, no
matter how brilliantly worded, will not
connect ideas unless students have
had ample opportunities to wrestle
with examples.”
Best Practices, 3rd Ed., by Zemelman, Daniels, and Hyde, ©2005 Understanding by Design, Wiggins & McTighe, ©2005
“If I cover it clearly, they
will ‘get it.’”

Let Me
Show You
How To Do
X
Now You
Go Do
X
Can You
Independently
Do
X?
Maybe You
Need to Be
Shown X
Again
You Know
X
Who is doing the thinking?
aka “Neil
Diamond”

School & Home Work
At School:
Here’s how
to do
X
At Home:
Practice
X
Whole
Class
Assessment
Maybe you
need to be
shown X
again
Use Data
Summatively

Flipped Classroom?
At Home:
Watch a video
about how to do
X
At School:
Practice
X
Whole
Class
Assessment
Maybe You
Need to
Watch the
Video Again
Use Data
Summatively

Learning Principle
“Understandings cannot
be given; they have to be
engineered so that learners
see for themselves the
power of an idea for making
sense of things.”
p. 113, Schooling by Design, Wiggins & McTighe, ©2007

Don’t Start by Telling
“Providing students with opportunities to
first grapple with specific information
relevant to a topic has been shown to create
a ‘time for telling’ that enables them to
learn much more from an organizing
lecture.”
How People Learn, p. 58

This student
doesn’t know
anything about
fractions.
How could she
start
grappling?

Learning Experience: Field Trip Problem
Field Trips and Fund-Raisers: Introducing Fractions, C.T. Fosnot, Heinemann © 2007, used with permission
3
4
4
5
7
8
3
5

Dewey, 1916
Democracy & Education
Chapter 12: Thinking in Education
“…thinking is the method of an
educative experience. The essentials of
method are therefore identical with the
essentials of reflection.”
Democracy and Education: an Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, J. Dewey, 1916

Dewey, 1916
“First that the pupil have a genuine situation of
experience—that there be a continuous activity in which
he is interested for its own sake.”
Field trip + Lunch = Interest

Dewey, 1916
“Secondly, that a genuine problem develop within this
situation as a stimulus to thought.”
Is it fair?

Dewey, 1916
“Third, that he possess the information and make the
observations needed to deal with it.”
Time for sense-making, modeling,
manipulatives, conversation, and
argumentation

Dewey, 1916
“Fourth, that suggested solutions occur to him which he
shall be responsible for developing in an orderly way.”
How do we know when something
“occurs” to a student?
5th grader in intervention: “So it
looks like a half of a fifth is a tenth.
That’s easy!”

Dewey, 1916
“Fifth, that he have opportunity and occasion to test his
ideas by application, to make their meaning clear and to
discover for himself their validity.”
Convince yourself through inquiry,
exploration, feedback

Learning is not accomplished
by putting thoughts into a
mind, but rather by
empowering a mind to
generate thoughts.

This student
doesn’t know
anything about
angles or
measuring
angles.
How should
she start
grappling?

Angle Measurement – Common Core
4.MD.6
Measure angles in whole-number degrees using a
protractor. Sketch angles of specified measure.
4.MD.7
Recognize angle measure as additive. When an angle
is decomposed into non-overlapping parts, the angle
measure of the whole is the sum of the angle measures
of the parts. Solve addition and subtraction problems
to find unknown angles on a diagram in real world and
mathematical problems, e.g., by using an equation with
a symbol for the unknown angle measure.

Digital Instruction?
When an angle is decomposed
into non-overlapping parts, the
angle measure of the whole is
the sum of the angle measures
of the parts.

Angle Measurement – Common Core
4.MD.5a
An angle is measured with reference to a circle with its
center at the common endpoint of the rays, by
considering the fraction of the circular arc between the
points where the two rays intersect the circle. An angle
that turns through 1/360 of a circle is called a “one-
degree angle,” and can be used to measure angles.
4.MD.5b
An angle that turns through n one-degree angles is
said to have an angle measure of n degrees.

Dewey, 1916
1. Genuine Interesting Situation & Experience
Democracy and Education: an Introduction to the Philosophy of Education, J. Dewey, 1916 Screen image ©DreamBox Learning
Help the spider build a web.

Dewey, 1916
2. Genuine Problem Stimulates Thought

Dewey, 1916
3. Have Information & Make Observations

Dewey, 1916
4. Solutions Occur to Her, She Develops Them
“The child doesn’t have to be told
by a teacher whether he’s right or
wrong. He can see for himself
whether it works. That’s what
science and knowledge is about.”
– Seymour Papert

Dewey, 1916
5. Test Her Own Ideas, Make Meaning, Discover Validity

DreamBox Approach to Adaptive
Engage with
& Make
Sense of a
Situation or
Context
Student’s
Own
Ideas &
Intuition
Specific,
Instant,
Custom
Feedback
Engine
Adapts &
Differentiates
Student
Independently
Transfers
“Offline,” Too
Student
Independently
Transfers
“Offline,” Too

Engineered for Realizations
Engage with
& Make
Sense of a
Situation or
Context
Student’s
Own
Ideas &
Intuition
Specific,
Instant,
Custom
Feedback
Engine
Adapts &
Differentiates
Student
Independently
Transfers
“Offline,” Too

Truly Adaptive Learning
Technology requires
dynamic content be built
from the ground up to
invite, analyze and respond
to initial conceptions.

Thank you!
timh@dreambox.com
@DocHudsonMath
www.dreambox.com

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