Director's Blog

Next year we will be implementing a pilot program of 10 teachers having iPads and classroom sets of iPads for the students. In this blog post, I will be collecting ideas on how to use iPads in the classroom.

Edutopia Blogger Dean DeSutter suggests

I haven’t had the chance to check this app out, but I would recommend implementing an app like eClicker (http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/eclicker/id329200145?mt=8).

Today I participated in an Apple training workshop. We invited an “Apple Distinguished Educator” who is contracted by Apple to work with schools implementing Apple technology. Mr. Oscar Stringer is based in the UK and he is here training the teachers who will be piloting the iPads next year.

We met in the morning to talk about the administration of the program. Below are my salient “take-aways”

• The big difference between iPads and lap tops is speed.
• Can iPads replace laptop computers? I am beginning to be convinced. Oscar suggested I use “Drop Box” which is an online storage service which is basically the folders on a computer, but it is stored on line. I think eventually they replace laptop computers, but I am not sure when. It is difficult question because it needs to coincide with our budget cycle, which is determined in November and December each year for the following year. Will be know by November 2012, after a 3-month pilot program, how exactly iPads can be used at ISB, for the 2013-2014 school year?
• I am doing this blog post with my portable keyboard and iPad. Unfortunately I don’t have the latest iPad that has a camera, otherwise it would have been easy to include a photo or short video with this blog post. I’ll have to do it later. (As you can see, I did.)
• The best school model for ISB would be for us to buy the iPads and have the parents rent the iPads from us for 25$ per month. They do get insurance with it. We would have to buy them ourselves instead of working through Apple because of the transiency of our student population. The students may not be here for the 3 years required by Apple for this service.
• You need to get a case with the iPad.. Oscar demonstrated “balls” that fit on the corners of the iPad. You can drop it without damage. I need to get a picture of that.
• Secondary use is much different than Elementary. Students use Apps to create content while younger students practice skills on the apps.
• With the secondary students, teachers don’t have to teach students how to use apps, they can figure it out. The iPad is the ultimate “Swiss Army Knife” and it is not a tool, but a tool box. There are 200,000 apps available.
• It is important to have many workshops with students, parents, Board Members using iPads and enthusiastic teachers drive the program.

Drop Box Notes -One gets 5GB free with a signup and all info stored on Amazon.com servers. The idea is to save documents, like .pdf ,, and then yoiu don’t have to worry about the storage limit. Photos and videeos would quickly exceed the limit. I am not impressed with the service, it is not much different than Google.docs.

We are gearing up this week for graduation and this is a big week for our seniors and their parents. There are always a few seniors on the border regarding graduation credits. I’ve dealt with this issue many times in my career, and here at ISB, we are developing a credit recovery program. We use the University of Missouri (Mizzou Online) distance learning program. Most courses are 1 semester and consist of 12 lessons that are uploaded and graded. 

I found it works best if a period in the day is scheduled for the students to work on the course, with an instructor present to help if needed. We scheduled several students in the enrichment block to a “study skills” course to have this done. Without this support, struggling students will not complete the course. We also instituted this as policy: Any class failed needs to have a credit recovery component, even if it is not necessary for graduation, unless of course if it is in the final semester of the grade 12 year. 

Below are the results of the Association of International School Heads (AISH) survey in May of 2012 about seniors in this position that my director shared with me.  

Dear Heads:
Thanks for the many prompt replies. Within about 20 hours I have received 40 responses from around the globe, from the biggest of our schools to the smallest and from all regions of the world.
Question #1 – Does your school allow credit deficient seniors to “walk” in the graduation ceremony?
• Yes – 27 = 67.5%
• No – 13 = 32.5%
The most common comments associates with those schools that allowed the students to “walk” were… If they were within 1 credit of completion or if they had signed up for a summer course or near completion showing the effort to recover the credit, or if they had no other complicating issues, ie….discipline, outstanding fees. All schools mentioned that no diploma was given to these students until actual completion of credits, of course.
A few schools said it did not matter how credit deficient they were or not, simply “all seniors walk.”
For those that state no, they do not walk, the main comments surrounded the issue of what the credits mean for graduating and the feeling that those on the stage who have met the requirements and those that have not seemed inconsistent. They stated that the ceremony is for those that have met the requirements.
Question #2 – Has your Board ever overturned the policy?
100% No and most emphatically stated it was not their role and most reported their Boards had not dipped their toes in this water. Good news indeed.

Thanks for your responses once again and I hope you as well have a wonderful graduation ceremony with your seniors!!

National Public Radio yesterday did a story on new study questioning the classic “bell curve” of the human performance. The study was published in the Journal of Personnel Psychology and it was conducted by several business school professors in Indiana. They came to the conclusion in certain fields of human performance, most people are not average, but below average, and most of the output of any organization comes from a few “superstars.” The Bell Curve and the “new” curve are shown below is a figure taken from the study.

The research subjects were not in education however, but in professional sports, politics, entertainment, and research. Are there any applications to education?

In my opinion, I see this when we compete in the Central and Eastern European Schools Association tournaments. It really helps a basketball team or knowledge bowl team to have the single best performer in the event. It usually means victory, or a very high finish. It is the job of the sponsor or coach to identify that “superstar” or best performer and nurture him or her.

One professor-blogger really criticizes the study. I don’t believe the results of the study apply directly to the classroom and daily student achievement, but it does make me look at the “bell curve” from a different perspective.

This has been a hot topic in US schools for year. I really noticed this when I took a summer course through Independent School Management about 5 years ago. All of the administrators were talking about the implications of offering algebra in 8th grade. This article from Education Week   discusses two studies in California and North Carolina. In the US, the percentage of students taking algebra in grade 8 rose from 16 percent in 1990 to 31 percent in 2007. The studies are questioning the value of offering algebra at such a young age. An excerpt from the California study:

They found that, for the nearly 2,400 students who performed in the lowest 10 percent on state math tests at the end of 7th grade, taking algebra in 8th grade had no significant effect on their state math-test performance at the end of 8th grade. And it caused their average GPAs to drop 7 percent, about the difference between a C and a C-minus.

“What we can see is there’s a potential harm to a low-performing student on the GPA,” said Mr. Taylor, the lead author of the study. “It’s pretty important. The grade point average [is what] parents pay attention to, teachers pay attention to—it’s actually more salient to the kids than math [state tests]. So there’s clearly academic harm in the short term.”

An an excerpt from the North Carolina study:

the Duke researchers found that even moderately math-proficient students in Charlotte-Mecklenburg who were put into early-algebra classes performed significantly worse on state end-of-year math tests. Moreover, initially low-performing students who took Algebra 1 in 8th grade were significantly less likely to take more-advanced math courses, such as Algebra 2 or geometry, later.

My take-away from the articles is that students can succeed in algebra in grade 8 if they have the proper preparation leading up to the class. A policy of everyone takes algebra in grade 8 is not good for those students who are not ready. It is important for school districts to integrate algebra concepts earlier than grade 8 for their students. At ISB, we don’t use the US-based “pancake stack” approach of mathematics, where a student will study in sequence, a year of algebra, then geometry, then algebra II/trigonometry, and finally if they are ready, calculus. The IB math curriculum integrates all the disciplines every year in a spiral approach, each year introducing the concepts from all math areas in increasing depth.

In grade 8 we differentiate in mathematics by offering a standard and extended program. I think this approach agrees with the studies in the article. For the students that are ready and able, the algebra is presented and for those students that are not ready, then the skills and knowledge gaps are covered in the standard.

In my classroom observations, I like to highlight good teaching techniques and ideas. In my observation this morning of a grade 9 Humanities class, Ms. Shannon Moore demonstrated excellent organization. This is a good model for all teachers and the purpose of this post is to demonstrate this.

I would like to have this be a standard practice in the classroom. Perhaps I can work for next year to have this be put in the 2012-2013 in the expectations section. Here is what I liked about her structure.

1) Daily Agenda – A plan for the class period was on the screen. I copied it from her Moodle page.

Apr 16, 2012 10:52 PM 

2) I liked that she had a homework/reminder section on her white board. She also put up the date and day number in our cycle.

And finally, she also posted the Unit Title, the Area of Interaction address, the main unit objective, and other objectives for the unit as well. She had these for all three units she is currently working on.

Last night I had the honor of introducing the artists at our annual Diploma Programme Visual Arts Exhibition. Eight seniors exhibited their work at the Center of Cultural Decontamination Exhibition Hall in anticipation of the IBO Examiners’ visit this weekend. They need to explain and defend each piece of art.

My big take-away from the event was the personality of each student clearly shows through their artwork. Below were my impressions from each student-artist that I used in my speech.

• Siir – impressive notebook, scientist/artist
• Marina – loud, daring, sports
• Nevena – introspective, quiet but surprising
• Anđela – feminine, flowers
• Aleksandra – well-researched, strong identity
• Rakel – empathetic, social justice issues
• Petar – fun and engaging
• Kristina – opinionated

Another point I would like to make is the fact that an expert comes from outside the community to assess each student’s work, is so important. The students put much more energy and time into their artwork knowing they will not only be assessed by the IBO, but also they will display their work in a downtown gallery.

A few points to improve next time are as follows:

• Make and enforce a dress code for the student-artists.
• Get more people to the exhibition, whether with an ISB bus or have a mini-exhibition on school grounds. Perhaps some of the work can be displayed at the graduation Commencement in May.

Labyrinth

I just finished Dave Cullen’s book on the shooting at Columbine High School in his book, Columbine. I saw it in the discount bin in Barnes and Noble and bought it for the plane. Cullen is a reporter for the New York Times and put years in researching the investigation and interviewing people involved. If you recall, in April of 1999, two students murdered 13 of their classmates at Columbine High School in Colorado, USA.

A few take-aways from the book.

• It is very easy to buy guns, bullets, and other weapons in the USA. The two boys bought guns at these trade shows in Denver and found 18 year old friends to get weapons.
• I also of course, sympathized with the principals of the school. The lasting impact of something like that happening at a school are devastating. Not only in the immediate afterwards, but in years following.
• There were so many missed opportunities to intervene and stop the boys from doing this. From the gun shop calling the parents’ home with “your bullets are in” to a violent, creative writing piece one of them turned in for an assignment. That is the way it always is in these tragedies, but it takes someone going the extra step.
• The media coverage and myths arising from the event were grossly wrong and misleading. Cullen really did his homework to give a true portrayal of what happened and why.
• The police SWAT teams changed their strategy after this event, moving from a wait-and-see secure the perimeter, to actively search for the perpetrators and subdue them.

Overall an interesting read with relevance to every administrator. I recommend the book, especially for Cullen’s writing on the family background of the two boys and their rationale.

It was a wonderful three days of basketball and our team took back the title this year. The kids came up big when they needed it most, defeating the American School of Vilnius, Lithuania, 60-55 in the finals.

I am blogging from Riga, Latvia at the CEESA (Central and Eastern Europe Schools Association) Basketball Championships hosted by the International School of Latvia. I am coaching our team. I like to “keep it real” by working with the students as the teachers do, “down in the trenches.” I think administrators sometimes get out of touch with the daily concerns of teaching and learning. It makes me a better principal. I also strongly feel the benefits of extra curricular activities. All of them, not just sports, are so good for kids. At our school, with its transient population, the teams and clubs get kids to buy in to the school and feel closer to the community. It is especially important for teenagers, as it is difficult to move schools and make friends. A student that loves acting or is a good athlete, can really cement their positive feelings about a school, which will result in more engagement in the classroom. It also sets us apart from other international schools in Belgrade.

Below are the scores from the week so far. I’ll post more when the tourney is over.

Belgrade 36 – Vilnius 42

Pechersk 21 – Belgrade 45

Helsinki 40 – Belgrade 41

Belgrade 39 – Latvia 34

Records after Day 2 – Vilnius 3-1 / Belgrade 3-1 / Latvia 3-1 / Pechersk 2-2 / Helsinki 1-3 / Sofia 0-4