Cool Tool | Kidzmet Like a Web-based Guidance Counselor

Like a web-based guidance counselor, this cool tool helps K-6 classroom teachers leverage the power of learning preferences with their students. After students take an age-appropriate (K-2 or 3-6) preference profile in the computer lab, teachers can use:

1) Kidzmet’s breakout group app to segment compatible student teams on the fly based on personality type compatibilities, multiple intelligence preferences, and preferred learning styles;

2) individual Student Snapshots to develop IEPs or share with the parents of students so that they can become more engaged and effective members of students’ learning team; and

3) Class Roll-Ups that show the learning preferences of this year’s class mix and which are also clickable to lesson planning strategies, tactics, and approaches that will be most engaging for each type of learner.

Unlike many other inventories, the tools’ student profiles and research-backed recommendations are accurate because they’ve calibrated their profile with thousands of elementary-aged students against generally accepted personality type and VAK profile population percentages. Kidzmet continues to gain in popularity among educators and parents for good reason. It’s $24 per year for a Classroom Account, but get it for just $20 through 6/30/2012 by using the coupon code edtechdigest.

The Best Presentations in the World: Your Money-Back Guarantee

GUEST COLUMN | by Lynell Burmark

You have them for less than an hour. You want to make it an experience they’ll always remember. You need to connect with them right away and break down any resistance to your message so your content can flow straight into their long-term memory.

Want a sure-fire plan with a “money-back” guarantee? Ready? Two words: Monet. Bach. (No extra charge for bad puns.) Really. It’s that simple: (1) Images (2) Music.

IMAGES

Of everything in the human sensory toolbox, “Vision is probably the single best tool we have for learning anything…. The more visual the input becomes, the more likely it is to be recognized – and recalled. The phenomenon is so pervasive, it has been given its own name: the pictorial superiority effect, or PSE.” (Read John Medina’s Brain Rules)

Human PSE is truly Olympian. Want to speed up your presentation? Humans process images 60,000 times faster than text (see Polishing Your Presentation). Trying to increase motivation and participation by up to 80 percent? Display those pictures in color (refer to The Power of Color). Like to boost recall and retention by 46 percent and transfer (application of learning) 89 percent? Use full-screen photographic images with voice-over narration. (Read Richard Mayer’s Multimedia Learning)

One of my favorite ways to open a presentation (or introduce a new topic) is to project an image and – before I add any commentary – ask the members of the audience to get into groups of three and discuss what they see. It’s a sure-fire way to get people involved and a quick-and-easy way to check on prior knowledge.

After a few minutes of discussion, ask the groups to share out. What did you see? Color? Texture? Composition? Who’s the artist? What’s the name of the painting? Where was it painted?

To go deeper, you can also ask: What’s the story behind it? If no one knows, encourage powering up the smart phones to research it. In no time, someone will discover that Vincent VanGogh hung four variations of this Sunflowers still life in the guest room of his home in the South of France in order to welcome his friend, Paul Gauguin, who was coming to visit from Paris. Dig a little deeper and learn that VanGogh referred to these as his “gratitude paintings,” so grateful was he for the friendship with Gauguin. And (yes, there’s more!) because of the emotion VanGogh held in his heart when creating the paintings, scientists have measured that just looking at this image will boost your immune system for up to six hours! (Refer to this) (Go ahead. Look at it again.)

Whatever subject you want to present, find that compelling image and let your audience discover its richness, peeling back the layers like an onion. The image (as images do) will go to long-term memory (more about this here) and all the information will be “velcro’d” to that image and easily retrievable any time your audience members recall the image in their mind’s eye or see it displayed, even in a totally different context.

MUSIC

To lure us into their fantasy worlds, to complement their world-class images, successful media productions all use music. Think of classic television programs like Cheers. Can you hear that theme song in your mind’s ear? What about blockbuster movies like Titanic? Who can forget “My Heart Will Go On”? Like the laugh-track overlays for most television sit-coms, music tracks dictate our emotional state and then confirm the emotions we are feeling.

A few years back, at the annual ASCD conference, I was scheduled to speak on stress reduction. Even though it was the last session on the last day of the conference, the room was packed. As I was about to begin, one visibly stressed attendee challenged me: “This better be good. I stayed for this.”

How could I respond to that attitude-laden comment? As ASCD’s queen of Visual Literacy (Electronic version available, summer 2012), I practice what I preach and always start my presentations by projecting a full-screen photographic image. But even a gorgeous photo of an inviting, palm-tree dotted beach in Maui couldn’t have calmed that crowd! So, I popped in a music video with dulcimer tones at 60 beats per minute (the rate of the resting human heartbeat). Was I manipulating their emotions with music? Yes. Had they given me permission to do so? Definitely.

Since that time, I have taken to playing music videos as people enter the room for every presentation. (You can always count on most of your audience arriving stressed out.) I highly recommend “Zen: The Art of Relaxation.” Within seconds, all tension and hostility melts into calm attentiveness and we can have a stress-free, focused time of learning together. It doesn’t matter if you can’t carry a tune in a bucket. You can learn to download music from YouTube and get it to play in your PowerPoint. (Questions? E-mail me for step-by-step instructions.)

As a dedicated professional, you must be as masterful with music as you are with images. Sometimes you only have an hour. No time to waste.

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Lynell Burmark, Ph.D., is the CEO of educatebetter.org.  For a plethora of fascinating research, real-world examples, and replicable activities and presentation strategies (all included on the DVD), see her latest book, They Snooze, You Lose: The Educator’s Guide to Successful Presentations (Jossey-Bass/Wiley 2011), or invite Dr. Burmark to present at your next conference or professional development event. Call (408) 497-6113.

Cool Tool | Mentor Mob is a VIP version of the Internet

More and more people consume information and learn online. Problem is, a Google search returns millions of disorganized results leaving it up ot the user to sift through the chaos. MentorMob helps solve this by allowing anyone to create a “playlist” of information from any digital format and source, online or offline, to share with others.  The design of the Playlists make it simple for the creator to create them and also provides an intuitive and seamless experience for the learner. The goal is to crowd-source the world’s knowledge so anyone can learn from it. Got a minute? Watch this short video.

Trends | Take the Vision K20 Survey Now

Last minute chance—SIIA seeks your participation in their Vision K-20 Survey. An important national study, the report will assist policy-makers on the local, state and national levels. It takes about 15 minutes to complete online—and guess what? All responders will get a free final report (that’s $1,500 if you don’t want to help but just want the goods) and a chance—1 in 50 or better—at an iTunes or Starbucks gift card. Sounds good to me, and a free grande latte? Even better. Your chance is gone on May 24, 2012, so take it now!

50 Fascinating Edupreneurs

There’s something about an edupreneur (you know, an entrepreneur in the education sector). It’s one thing to have all that extraordinary drive, innovation and passion for creating a business—this moves our economy forward. But combine that with an area of existence so vital it’s nearly synonymous with changing lives—education—and now you’re talking real power. So, what kind of person does it take to deliver the goods? In no particular order, assembled here are 5o fascinating ‘edupreneurs’—people as passionate about their businesses as they are about their purpose in helping future generations thrive.

Editor’s Note: In assembling this feature, we are inviting you to meet us half way. We’ve selected 25—now, who are your picks? Send us a reason and a link, that is, a one-sentence reason to include them and a link to something relevant about them. Heck, even suggest yourself to our list. Check back often as we continue our tally and eventually close it out—at least for now. Write to: victor@edtechdigest.com

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Ji Shen | for stimulating curiosity

Ellen Siminoff | for helping us fall in love with literature

Melissa Pickering | for allowing participation

Elizabeth Schmidt | because she makes wishes come true

Sarah White | for keeping things rolling

Andrew Grauer | because he listens to his customers

Robert Romano | for inspiring higher levels of thinking

Andrew Sutherland | for making studying easier

Alex Rappaport | because he’s motivating students

Nikki Navta | for preparing students to become enlightened world citizens

Jonathan Mann | for meeting teachers where they’re at and helping them forward

Shantanu Bala | for providing an easy solution to a common problem

Jim Fruchterman | because he likes to share with everyone

Mark Gross | for becoming a teacher and letting everyone in on a great class project

Sandy Khaund | for wanting to help others change their station in life

Sharon Lowe | for being a caring mom to more than just her own kids

Nic Borg | for listening to teachers

Paul Edelman | for paying teachers millions of dollars

Josh Salcman | for opening up and being a helpful nerd

Farb Nivi | because he wants others to really get it

Felipe Sommer | because he saw a possibility and made a new reality

Becky Splitt | for liking smoothies and having fun

Shawn Bay | for making sense of all that data

Berj Akian | because four women keep him in check as a great leader

Murugan Pal | for engineering a better way

Driving Miss Daisy and Her Data

CLASSROOM 21 | by Greg Limperis

These days more than ever, data is driving our instruction. In this day of standardized testing, formative and summative assessment, MAP testing, and so much more—there’s a ton of data that follows our students everywhere. All of it has to make sense in order to be worthwhile, to not waste students’ time and educators’ efforts. However, not all student data that we collect is needed by every person at every moment—and here’s exactly where a well-developed data dashboard comes into play.

For many in education, ‘data dashboards’ are something new—but just think about a car for a minute. Driving along, you glance down. Just the right amount of data is always within easy view. While driving you can take a quick glimpse to find out how fast you’re going, how much gas is in the tank, what the engine temperature is at, if the lights are on, is the air low in your tires, and if any doors are still open. Sure, there’s much to know about how the car and the engine works, but we aren’t told everything—just what we need to get us safely from point A to point B. The dashboard doesn’t assume we’re a mechanic, it simply alerts us—in just a couple seconds—to what might stop us or slow us down.

As a vehicle for success, education might benefit from not just the analogy, but actual development of a good, solid data dashboard for educators and other professionals working with our students. Just the right amount of information within their view when they need it will help educators help our students reach academic proficiency in an effective and efficient manner. Teachers need access to all formative assessment, summative assessment, standardize tests, and much more.

Problem is, today’s teacher might see over 600 students in any given year; getting to know a single student may well be difficult. Some teachers have one-on-one time with the same individual student less than once a week. Now, let’s not forget to inundate them with Individual Education Plans (IEPs), content objectives, language objectives, rubrics, lesson plans, differentiated instruction and a wide variety of other must-be-dones and a teacher isn’t just out of time—they’re beginning to sleep less just to get half of it done.

Let’s break it down even further: during that 60-minute class that week, the teacher has to pay attention to about 25 students at any one given time. Assuming that there aren’t any students in the classroom demanding more of a teacher’s time than others, then a teacher can spend about 2.4 minutes with each student. Take away time for attendance, introduction to the lesson’s agenda and more—and it’s possible for students to go days without ever interacting with a teacher.

In The Secret Teacher Writes an Honest Letter Home one teacher hits the problem on the head. Our educational system is broken and we know it. Our educators know they are not able to reach the needs of our students but as the teacher states, “I am part of the System, and I had to confess.”

Collecting data, giving it to a teacher and asking them to dissect it, understand it, put it into action all on their planning period or after school is simply unrealistic. If you are an educator, you know: a planning period is often not for planning. It is for IEP meetings, parent meetings, phone calls, school activities and just about everything but planning. If teachers are expected to dive deeply into data and to understand it, then they should at least be able to take away what’s important and discard what’s irrelevant. What’s left is knowledge they can use to drive their instruction. That’s what “data driven instruction” is ideally all about.

In reality, all the data they collect or that is collected is usually input after the fact. It’s not real-time, so parts and pieces are forgotten, lost or simply made up. And in reality, teachers are mobile. It might not look that way in pictures, but teachers don’t stand in front of a chalkboard all day long, nor do they sit with clasped hands at a desk with a shiny red apple on the corner from 8:15 am to 2:30 pm. Often a teacher walks around the room trying to remember a student’s name, let alone useful data about that student.

When school lets out for students, they might begin to take a seat, jotting down what they can recall, and move on from there. They correct tests, record scores, gather additional information—all before they often leave for a second job in order to make ends meet.

Then, after getting off their second job, they get their own kids, or finish afterschool activities and finally have dinner. After getting their children off to bath and bed, they sit down to correct papers, provide comments, contact parents and more, but delving deep into data right before bed never ends well. Before they know it, they’re waking up to an unforgiving alarm clock to do it all over again.

It’s not a gift Ferrari, it’s no superhero, but the right technology can help make a teacher’s day a lot easier. By providing teachers with a solid data dashboard, we can help our teachers so much. Out of old habits already set forth, out of resistance to change, out of the same everyday pressures so many teachers feel, or out of whatever unhealthy place they are coming from—very few leaders are willing to make such an investment.

Nonetheless, imagine with me a day when a teacher can walk around the classroom connected to the intranet or Internet and speak a question that’s automatically transcribed, assigned to a student, responded to, and relayed back to the teacher to help a student.

With instant data collection, a teacher can pinpoint and diagnose student trouble points, know who lacks understanding in precisely what area, and offer up precise, on-the-spot, real-time remediation. With a teacher-held device, student data could pop up on their screen about the student in their immediate proximity. An RF tag in a student ID would assist in obtaining the most vital data for a teacher to help reach that child’s need at any given moment on any given day.

Funny thing is, all of this technology is already available, yet it doesn’t exist in the hands of our teachers. The best data dashboard for our teachers is one that they know they need, that we know we can provide for them, and that technologists know we can produce. The problem is, we’ve got to be willing to fund it. We have to be willing to invest in the technology that will give teachers the tools they really need. Without it, we’re spinning our wheels in the pit of data with nothing but remorse to show for it. We have a real chance to put our teachers in the driver’s seat. Why don’t we?

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Greg Limperis, now Supervisor of Instructional Technology for his district, was recently the Middle School Technology Facilitator in Lawrence, Mass., and founded the very popular Technology Integration in Education professional learning network, reaching thousands of educators worldwide. He has shared with others what he knows and they have joined him in sharing their insights as well. Join them in bringing about change using your 21st-century skills.

Trends | Teachers Mobile Guide from EDC

It’s a small world after all, and Education Development Center has published a helpful free guide on distance education for teacher training—including discussion on mobile devices—Distance Education for Teacher Training: Modes, Models and Methods. The guide details modes of distance education (from television and online learning to Web 2.0 mobile technologies), models of effective programs and best practices from distance education projects and programs in over 100 countries, with an emphasis on the U.S., Australia, Asia, Africa and Latin America. Check it out here.

Interview | Course Hero Rescuing Education with Curated, Crowd-sourced Courses

It’s already been a busy 2012 for Andrew Grauer (pictured, right). His company, Course Hero, kicked off the year with a relaunch of their Flashcards app, featuring a bold new redesign and the addition of Optimal Learn  proprietary technology to help a student master any flashcard set by a given deadline. Just last month, they announced the launch of 22 free full-length courses, the latest addition to the Course Hero suite of educational resources. Have a look at a previous interview we did with Andrew if you haven’t already, and catch up with him here on how his company is moving out of a one-dimensional moving-courses-to-the-web approach and on to a greater mission of disrupting traditional learning to offer dynamic new ways to understand the world around us.

Victor: There are already a lot of institutions, companies and even individuals providing online courses: MIT OpenCourseware, Udacity, Coursera, Khan Academy to name a few. Why did Course Hero see an opportunity to make Courses now?

Andrew: There is a tremendous amount of quality educational resources out there and everyday companies, individuals and institutions are making amazing strides in developing better, more dynamic content. MIT and Khan Academy are doing great work, but we saw an opportunity to develop a more scalable solution to meet the growing demand for quality, open education.

Because many of these companies create their own unique content, one of the biggest challenges that they will face is scalability. Course Hero set out to find a more efficient way to deliver high quality courseware, and we saw a tremendous opportunity in curation, gamification and crowdsourcing.

Victor: What exactly are Course Hero Courses? How are they different from other online courses?

Andrew: For the initial launch, the Course Hero team created 22 full-length courses in Entrepreneurship, Business and Web Programming. Unlike traditional online courses which typically take the classroom experience and put it online, Course Hero recognized that there is a wealth of high quality educational content already available online, but the Internet’s lack of structure makes it difficult for a self-motivated individual to learn that material efficiently. Course Hero basically built an infrastructure that allowed us to take the best pieces of free content and arrange them into a format that allowed users to not only review the content, but assess their understanding and then be rewarded for their accomplishments.

Victor: How did Course Hero build its courses?

Andrew: To build our first round of Courses, each Course Hero team member was charged with creating a course. Each curator began by immersing themselves in the subject, really looking at the content from the perspective of a do-it-yourself learner. They reviewed hours of free content from a range of experts and moved from concept to concept determining the best learning path to construct. They then selected the best pieces of free content—the most inspiring lectures, clearest articles, or expert papers, whittled them down into manageable concepts, assembled the concepts into chapters, and chapters into full-length courses. To keep users engaged, we integrated assessments at every concept and chapter level to test how well learners understood the material, and each course culminates in a final exam. We also layered in our social badging framework to reward students at key milestones and encourage them to continue progressing through the course.

To ensure that its Courses feature the best, most relevant content, we also invite users to suggest improvements to current Courses at the concept, chapter and assessment level or request new Courses for future development. This crowdsourced approach allows us to easily uphold the quality of our Courses while always building courses that match exactly what our users want to learn.

Victor: How did Course Hero select which subjects to focus on? Why are these particular three paths significant?

Andrew: For our first round of Courses, we wanted to focus on subjects that would help our current students give themselves an edge. With Entrepreneurship, Business and Web Programming courses, we’re providing opportunities for students to attain tangible skills that they can add to their resume or directly apply in a job setting.

We also wanted to take it a step further and offer our top students real world rewards for completing each learning path. Course Hero will be offering these top students the opportunity to enter a business plan competition for a pitch meeting with SV Angel and a $5,000 prize or the chance to land a job at Course Hero.

Getting an education is about more than just getting a piece of paper that says you completed a bunch of requirements. At Course Hero, we want to provide interested learners with not only the chance to gain the valuable skills they need to succeed beyond the classroom, but also the chance to apply them and prove their mastery. We believe that this model affords significant opportunities for success in the long run.

Victor: What does adding Courses mean for Course Hero as a company?

Andrew: Courses are an awesome milestone for Course Hero. Initially, we focused on providing tools that helped make the current learning system more efficient: whether by providing access to study documents, expert tutors or a digital flashcards app, Course Hero’s resources improved the current study process for students who were already enrolled at an institution. Courses, however, are Course Hero’s first foray into providing a new kind of learning experience, opening up the opportunity to learn to anyone who wants to participate, regardless of whether they’re a current student or just a passionate life long learner.

We now see Course Hero as a place where people go to learn something from A to Z—not just get supplemental help with what they are currently learning in school. As we add more Courses and continue to expand our product offering, I think we’ll see Course Hero evolve into a really dynamic learning ecosystem, and we’re really excited about that.

Victor: Why are Course Hero Courses disruptive? What are the implications for education technology and online courseware moving forward?

Andrew: Traditional courses were amazingly disruptive, opening up the classroom to anyone with an Internet connection. But they were still just the classroom experience via your computer—one professor giving a lecture to a group of students. With Courses, however, we’ve taken the next step and instead of improving the current learning process that is centered around the classroom model, we have created a new way to learn.

With curated, crowd-sourced courses, we’ve acknowledged two key points: 1) that great educational content is already freely available and 2) that subject matter experts take all forms (not just professors). The classroom is great and there is no substitute for 1:1 interaction, but the classroom model isn’t necessarily right—or available—to everyone. Course Hero is opening up another way to learn that is dynamic, scalable and engaging, making quality education accessible to anyone who wants it.

Victor: Got any interesting anecdotes?

Andrew: I think one of the greatest things about Courses has been the feedback we’re received. We initially integrated the option for users to give feedback as a way for us to get a sense of what wasn’t working and what we could improve. One of the most surprising things, for me at least, is that people have used this feedback channel to tell us how excited they are about taking our courses. One user wrote in to clarify a few points about how he could include his course accomplishments on his CV as he was considering “leaving his current time-killing job” and starting to intensively go through the courses. We knew we had delivered a great product, but we just never anticipated how enthusiastic the community would be about it.

Victor: Why are you optimistic about the future of education?

Andrew: Like we’ve talked about before, technology will be a driving force in transforming the future of education for the better. Not only is technology enabling more people to be students by making great educational content readily accessible online, we’re seeing customized learning experiences that enable any kind of learner succeed at mastering material.

I’m also excited about how technology is providing alternative, more affordable ways to learn and demonstrate your knowledge instead of getting a degree or certificate. College is wildly expensive, and while it is an incredibly valuable educational experience, it is not the answer for everyone nor does it prepare you with everything you need to know in life.

Education technology—especially the online courses—can be molded to fit the needs of any kind of learner, from supplementing the college students’ current course load to providing an entire digital curriculum for the DIY learner. Digital assessments embedded within online courses can track how the student interacts with the material and give the student real-time feedback on their progress. This is incredibly powerful. As more courseware providers integrate these assessment tools and we see increased enrollment, inevitably we’ll see certificates from these providers becoming more widely accepted as education credentials. That’s really exciting.

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Victor Rivero tells the story of 21st-century education transformation. He is the editor-in-chief of EdTech Digest, a magazine about education transformed through technology. He has written white papers, articles and features for schools, nonprofits and companies in the education marketplace. Write to: victor@edtechdigest.com

Cool Tool | Mendeley: Changing the Way We Do Research

A free reference manager, academic social network and crowdsourced research catalog, Mendeley helps researchers organize their documents, collaborate and share with others online and discover the latest research. Through both a desktop application and website, this tool lets researchers build personal research libraries. Users can index and categorize their documents, generate citations and bibliographies, discover people with similar research interests and form online groups to help stay up to date on what their colleagues are reading. More than 225 million documents have been uploaded to Mendeley. Through crowdsourcing of the metadata from this rapidly growing dataset, Mendeley uses ‘collaborative filtering’ to learn about what researchers’ interests and preferences are. The more documents added to Mendeley, the more it learns what topics and papers connect researchers together. This allows research to be automatically recommended to users based on who they are as individuals, as well as generating real-time data which provides insight in to how academics collect, read, share and annotate their research. Through the combination of document and reference management, online networking and crowdsourcing, this saves researchers’ time whilst also ensuring the widest possible understanding and access to academic literature.

Interview | The Smart Thing About Pocket Literacy Coach

It pays to have super smart sisters and a good idea. Chris Drew has both. Chris has taught English reading and writing skills at universities and colleges across the country. He has published and lectured about his research on pedagogy and literacy education at numerous conferences. With the innovative nature of Pocket Literacy Coach, Chris has demonstrated himself to be a groundbreaking scholar and teacher. He earned his Ph.D. from Temple University and currently lives and teaches in Chicago. In this interview, Chris answers some basic questions about Pocket Literacy Coach. He also speaks up on what he thinks are some important considerations when it comes to education reform, parental involvement and offering more than just lip service to improve conditions in our communities.

Victor: What’s the name mean?

Chris: We wanted to try to convey the convenience of the activities: “They’re right in your pocket!” And, since the three of us are experts on literacy, development and curriculum design providing folks with instruction and tips, we thought “coach” communicated that.

 Victor: What is it and who created it?

Chris: Pocket Literacy Coach is a parent support and parent empowerment service. We provide parents with fun, creative learning activities to do with their child. We do this by sending daily text messages to parents’ mobile phones (it is not an app). The concept was developed by me, Kelley Henry and Kassie Redmond. They are my sisters. And they both happen to be super smart. Kelley is a speech language pathologist and Kassie is a special education teacher and curriculum and instruction design expert.

Victor: What does it do, and what are the benefits?

Chris: Part of what Pocket Literacy Coach does is helps parents save time. With PLC parents don’t have to constantly be checking education blogs online or reading lengthy books to find out what they should be doing to help make their child smarter. Instead, they receive a daily activity that is based on research and is designed for the age-level of their child.

Another part of what PLC does is empowers parents and gives them confidence to know that the fun activities they are doing with their child are helping to build specific skills, such as alphabet knowledge, language building, phonics awareness, early math skills, socio-emotional skills and more! As I mentioned, the way it works is through text messaging. It’s elegant in it’s simplicity. Once families sign up they don’t have to do anything except have fun learning with their child!

Victor: How is it unique? Any competitors? 

Chris: Text4Baby is in a similar market as Pocket Literacy Coach. Text4Baby uses text messaging to send prenatal health tips to pregnant women. It’s a very successful program. What differentiates PLC from T4B is the content focus: they’re a health service; we’re an education service.

Victor: When was it developed? Anything interesting about its development?

Chris: We started working on PLC in 2010. I had the idea for it a year or so earlier. And it went through some iterations. But I’d say 2010 was the official year.

Victor: Where did it originate and where can you get it now?

Chris: You can get Pocket Literacy Coach online at www.PocketLiteracy.com. As well, we have partnered with some of the leading schools and organizations across the country, and if your school has PLC you can get it from them!

Victor: How much does it cost? What are the options?

Chris: A subscription costs $5.99 per month. Or you can get a yearly subscription for $36.

Victor: What are some examples of it in action?

Chris: 2 year old activity: While reading a story together ask your child to point to the pic on the page & then the words on the page. Help them run their finger from left to right over the words.

3 year old activity: Find a nature trail, park or other interesting outdoor location your child has never been to. Identify & discuss in detail things you see, hear, touch or smell.

5 year old activity: Play I SPY with shapes in your house. Say “I spy a rectangle that’s on the wall”. Give more clues until your child can guess “outlet”. Repeat with other shapes.

7 year old activity: While waiting in line or on the bus find an object. Challenge your family to name as many rhyming words as possible in 30 sec. Examples: plate-wait-mate-rate-late-Kate-bait-gate.

9 year old activity: Tonight review fact & opinion while you watch tv. After watching commercials, help your child brainstorm 1 fact & 1 opinion about each commercial.

Victor: Who is it particularly tailored for? Who is it not for?

Chris: Pocket Literacy Coach is designed for families and parents with children between the ages of birth – 12. It’s tailored for families who are looking for unique, creative and fun activities to do with their kids to help keep the learning fresh and active at home.

Victor: What are your thoughts on education these days?

Chris: As a result of the education reform movement and because of the impact of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, there is a lot of pressure on schools and teachers. One of the most neglected elements of the reform movement is the parent component. A lot of lip service is given to the concept of parent involvement and family engagement, but for the most part schools, organizations, and education departments have not figured out the best way to support parents to be involved. Most people assume that attending parent-teacher conferences or volunteering at school or helping with field trips is a great equivalent to parent involvement. And for those parents who are able to take time off work to participate in those ways that is amazing! But many parents cannot participate in this way. And, furthermore, research on effective parent involvement has demonstrated that the most impactful forms of parent and family engagement is within the home in the form of supportive parenting styles, proper disciplining, appropriate goal and expectation setting, asking about school and homework and the like. These are things that happen within the home. And most schools and organizations have not figured out how to support this type of parent involvement in cost-effective, scalable ways. To a certain degree, it is unfair to put all the pressure on schools and teachers for the success and failure of our students. For those students who are succeeding, it isn’t always because of the schools. Same for those who are failing. Education transformation is a messy initiative because to truly make an impact we have to be having conversations that address the learning that is happening—or not happening—at home and in the community. The community should be involved at a certain level, too. Why? Because it is in the community that our youngsters are seeing good and bad examples. Learning doesn’t happen only within school buildings. And most of the conversations about education reform focuses only on this limited amount of time children spend inside school walls. So, my thought on education these days is that there needs to be a more holistic approach to helping our children experience and learn. There needs to be more of an ecological transformation of our attitudes about who is responsible for challenging and stimulating students.

Victor: How does Pocket Literacy Coach address some of your concerns about education?

Chris: Parents are the first and most important teacher a child will ever have. Yet our education systems almost entirely neglect the parents’ role. There are very few systems of supporting or empowering parents. In fact, in many ways there what parents experience are mostly obstacles to being involved. By providing parents with easily accessible resources to help them help their child develop concrete literacy, math, critical thinking and other skills at home, the parents can become a powerful part of the reform movement. Pocket Literacy Coach plays this role of empowering parents.

Victor: What is your outlook on the future of education?

Chris: In the US we have been using an antiquated approach to teaching our children how to learn. There are long-standing education traditions that have served previous generations of learning just fine. Breaking with those traditions is a hard, long and sometimes painful process. But there are amazing teachers in our classrooms and we have parents who are itching to play a more substantive role. As we move farther into the second decade of the 21st century I believe that we are going to see some amazing transformations in the way we do education. And I believe that the results of those transformations will propel us towards cultural, economic, health, technological and learning innovations that will blow our minds! My outlook on the future of education is super optimistic!

Victor: What else can you tell educators and other leaders in and around education about the value of Pocket Literacy Coach? 

Chris: Pocket Literacy Coach is the most cost-effective, scalable and efficient way of engaging families and supporting them to be more involved at home.

Victor: What makes you say that?

Chris: What makes me say this? The data that supports it. We have several case studies and more forthcoming. To fully appreciate the value of Pocket Literacy Coach you should talk to the parents who have been using it for over a year now. You should hear them talk about how each day around the time the text arrives their child is sitting at the table excitedly waiting for their PLC activity. You should hear parents talk about how much time it saves them or how they can’t believe that THEY were able to teach their child a new skill. The value is, in part, the skills the parents can help develop. And in part the value is in the confidence it gives parents.

Victor: Alright—thank you very much, Chris!

Chris: Thanks, Victor!

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Victor Rivero tells the story of 21st-century education transformation. He is the editor-in-chief of EdTech Digest, a magazine about education transformed through technology. He has written white papers, articles and features for schools, nonprofits and companies in the education marketplace. Write to: victor@edtechdigest.com