Disrupting Class - the future is online and networked

The conclusion of Clayton Christensen's book Disrupting Class summarizes the main messages of the book:

• Educational reforms have not addressed the cause of student's inability to learn
• Confronting problems head-on is not effective - disruptive innovation goes around and underneath the system
• All children learn differently, but the current system won't allow us to educate children in cuxtomized ways
• Online networks have the highest potential for change since they create a new modular system of education that facilitates customization.
• The traditional decision making process in schools is centralized and not effective - in this system change and customization are nearly impossible.

Christensen's suggestions:

• Each school should have one person - and eventually an organization - whose sole job it is to implement online courses.  This person needs autonomy and the freedom to bring in online courses and help students access the classes they need.  
• Invest in platforms that allow students, parents and teachers to create tutorials for each other.  We learn most deeply when we teach others.
• Teacher training should include instruction in building tools for different types of learners and distributing them through user networks as these will be the key to making learning student-centric.
• Struggling students can be helped through user networks to locate a tutor or find suitable content online.

The key to all these can be summed up in 2 main words:  online and networks.  I'm interested to see more international schools investigating online education.  Over 10 years ago when I was visiting a school in Peru I noticed some of the older students doing online courses.  I was told these were courses that the school did not offer, yet it provided the access, time and structure for students who wanted to do them.  My new school has an active online academy for students, parents, teachers and in fact anyone in the world who wishes to participate, and offers courses as diverse as yoga, photography and foresic science as well as many digital literacy courses.  In fact I'm participating in 3 of these courses before I actually arrive there.  I think the potential for transforming education through online networks is huge, and I'm really excited that I'll soon be involved in this trend and will be pushing my learning in new directions.

Photo Credit:  Model for Online Courses by Guilia Forsythe, 2011

Teams for Change

In the final chapter of Disrupting Class, Clayton Christensen discusses the most effective teams and structures for innovation.  He argues that while most schools are built around functional and lightweight teams, such as teams of teachers who teach the same subject or grade, or perhaps teams of team-leaders, these are merely functional teams which do not really need to coordinate their activities across departments, divisions or campuses.  Some teams that plan activities that are school wide (for example writing in all subject areas) are also lightweight teams.

The problem with the first two teams is that they are unable to tackle what Christensen refers to as "architectural change".  Examples of this sort of change include new roles for computers, project-based learning, changing the schedule and so on.  He maintains that new initiatives often fail because school administrators do not allow the setting up of heavyweight teams that completely redesign the school to take account of these new trends in education.  Often the existing lightweight and functional teams in schools don't really fit with children's different needs, however in general elementary schools are more likely to accommodate these because of the more flexible nature within the classrooms, than secondary schools where everything is more rigid.

Christensen's real argument is that in order to customize learning for each child, new autonomous teams will need to form in order to institute the student-centric technologies that are so vital for this customization.  He also warns that these autonomous teams need to be flexible enough to recognize that while project -based learning, for example, might be ideal for a student in one domain, that it might not be suitable for the same student in a different one.  The idea of autonomy is interesting because it extends beyond the school. Christensen writes:

A student-centric curriculum achieved through the implementation of computers can transcend the school boundary.  As schools implement this disruption, the way schools are organized and the roles and training of teachers may very well have to be rethought as well.

Above all, Christensen argues, school principles can "organize schools within schools to create space where heavyweight teams can have the power and authority to rethink the architecture of the curriculum" and cautions "we are not engaged in an effort to find a single best architecture that fits all students."

I got really excited when I read that because what I noticed when I visited my new school in February was that it seems to have set up heavyweight R&D teams to investigate various aspects of cutting-edge 21st century education and how they can work for different groups of students.  In addition I get the impression that the parents are really on board with this as a result of the parent education through the ASB Online Academy.  All too often parents have a "conservative" idea of what a school should be based on their own successes in coming through a traditional school system.  The ASB Online Academy appears to be opening doors to these parents to show them a different vision of education and is giving them new ideas about the ways that can best meet the needs of all learners.

Tools for Change

Towards the end of Clayton Christensen's book Disrupting Class, is an explanation of why change in schools often fails to make a lasting impact on student achievement.  Christensen suggests this is because the tools that are used do not fit the circumstances schools find themselves in.  Below I have drawn up a diagram based on the tools he writes about in Chapter 8 of the book, showing that there are many different sorts of tools that administrators can use to bring about change.  However which tool they should use will depend on the degree to which teachers and administrators agree on both the cause and effect of change, and the degree to which they all want the same outcomes.

Christensen writes that it's the job of school leaders to convince teachers to work together for change. There are many tools that they can use that range from visionary speeches (carrots) to threats (sticks) but that most of these don't work most of the time.  Christensen believes that this is because school leaders are using the wrong tools to try to manage change.  He writes that there are two main mechanisms that can bring about lasting change - one is success, which leads to more consensus and ultimately a stronger culture, the other one is giving people a common language - he writes that all too often people can't agree on a solution because they can't agree on what the problem is.

Power Tools - force, coercion and threats - are often used in situations where there is no consensus, and where there could even be antagonistic disagreement.  These tools don't rely on negotiation or strategic planning, simply on imposing an external plan or perhaps a new curriculum on teachers who may not be convinced of its benefit.  Hiring and promotion are also power tools.  

Management Tools - training, measuring, coming up with new procedures - are often used when there is some agreement about what can lead to better outcomes.  The tools deal only with the processes, however, and because teachers may have different priorities or may want to achieve different things, training and other management tools may not have much impact on student learning.

Leadership Tools - these focus on results and the leaders who bring about these improved results are those who are respected.  Christensen writes:  "Charismatic leaders who command respect ... often do not address how to get things done;  instead they motivate people to just do what needs doing."  In these schools the leaders are visionary and the teachers are in agreement about what they want to achieve, though they may have divergent views of how best to achieve these results.

Culture Tools - these work best in schools where teachers have consensus on the priorities as well as the actions they need to take to achieve these priorities.  In these schools little debate is necessary - though paradoxically these schools may actually be resistant to change as the tools work to preserve the status quo rather than to bring about change.

Where are most schools in this matrix?  Most schools, with the divergent priorities of teachers, administrators, students and parents (and often politicians too), fall into the lower left section of the matrix and therefore are often places where power tools could be used.  Often the different groups strongly disagree about what needs to improve and how best to improve.  

I was interested to read what Christensen writes about democracy as he says it's only really effective in organizations where there is consensus on what is wanted and how best to get it;  he argues that democracy is not an effective tool for radical change but instead school leaders need to work on developing a common language about what problems schools are facing, what changes are needed to be made and how best to achieve these changes, as well as developing a culture of cooperation so that strategic planning can be effective.

What I'm interested in, however, is whether the use of power tools to bring about change goes against our role as educators - shouldn't we be modeling tools that encourage democratic thinking among our students?  If we are trying to develop citizenship skills in our students, should we not be modeling citizenship ourselves?  For example John Dewey wrote: 

The method of democracy is to bring conflicts out into the open where their special claims can be seen and apprised, where they can be discussed and judged.

If we don't do this, if we simply say that schools are full of individuals with divergent priorities and therefore we should use power tools to bring about changes that are needed, then how will we cope with the response when teachers, students and parents feel their voices are not being heard and therefore stop participating in the debate?

In some ways, though,  Christensen is right.  Democracy and difference can work together to bring about change, I think, if schools work together to develop a common language where these differences are discussed and debated and respected.  Power tools can be used to bring about change, but for me it's more about hearts and minds - of getting schools from a situation where there is no consensus to one where all parties agree on the priorities and methods for bringing about change.  

The PYP Attitude of Curiosity: The importance of Pre-School

Chapter 6 of Clayton Christensen’s Disrupting Class, focuses on the “education” that children receive before they even enter school and leads him to conclude:

By some estimates, 98 percent of education spending occurs after the basic intellectual capacities of children have been mostly determined.

Christensen outlines 3 important contributions of pre-school education:

•     Creating intellectual capacity
•      Cultivating a positive self-esteem
•     Stimulating intellectual curiosity – which will in turn motivate learning

Recent research by Risley and Hart has shown that the first 36 months of life  are crucial in determining a person’s intellectual capacity.  Based on the number of words spoken to infants (an average of 2100 words per hour by college-educated parents compared with only 600 words per hour by those on welfare), by the age of 3 children of college parents had heard 48 million words in contrast to 13 million words heard by children whose parents were on welfare.  In addition parents who were talkative to their children during the first year of life (before the children could speak back) gave their children a definite advantage in terms of vocabulary, which later led to better performance on reading comprehension.

Risley and Hart also observed the type of language – some parents spoke in an adult way to very young children, asking them questions and prompting them to think about what is happening.  These parents modeled thinking aloud, commenting and planning and this led to curiosity in their children.  These children also showed better auditory processing skills and this led to an improved capacity for learning as their brains became better at sophisticated thinking.  When these children then entered school, they were more confident and more able to succeed when faced with difficult intellectual challenges.  Children who are not so well prepared for school are more likely to struggle and suffer from poor self-esteem and therefore switch off from demanding academic work.

Christensen quotes from an article Hart wrote for the New York Times where he stated “80 percent of the variation in public school performance results from family effects … not school effects”.  He argues that “if we persist in believing that the problems of schools can be solved by only improving schools, we will never succeed.”

Reflection:  Given the research about the importance of early learning within the family, I'm wondering what teachers can do to best help students who don’t grow up in a language-rich home environment before they come to school.  It seems a very bleak prospect to think that all teachers are doing is stopping them slipping even further behind those students who come from more educated families.  How can this cycle be broken?  How can schools really make a difference?

Photo Credit:  Jeans by Pulihora, 2006  

Disrupting schools - through the content and networks we create

Chapter 5 of Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen is all about using technology to make learning more student-centric.  Christensen writes about the two-stage process with any disruptive innovation:
Stage 1 - the product becomes cheaper and simpler to use (but not necessarily cheaper to produce)
Stage 2 - technological change makes the product simple and easy to build and upgrade.
How can these 2 stages be applied to the way technology will disrupt education?

Christensen believes that platforms are now emerging that will make it simpler to build computer learning products that cater for individual needs of students.  For example it's now easy to use apps such as the iBook Author to create content, it's also easy to create apps themselves.  It's easy to make screencasts and to publish movies on YouTube.  Christensen predicts that these products will be made and adopted by teachers, parents and students in a very decentralized way first of all but that very quickly this will disrupt the traditional system of creating educational materials.  Once teachers can create their own textbooks and apps or find those that have been created and shared by others, they are more in control of the decisions about what to teach and how to teach it.

Christensen discusses 3 business models and shows how education traditionally fits into them:
Solution shops:  these businesses employ experts to diagnose problems and recommend solutions.  They are very dependent on the people who work there, and because each problem needs an individual solution it's hard for these to be standardized.  He gives the example of physicians as a solution shop.  An example in education could be special education teachers who diagnose and support individual students with learning difficulties.  Most students, however, don't experience this individualized approach.
Value-chain businesses:  this is more like the factory model, bringing in different inputs and transforming them into products of greater value.  Generally these involve standardized processes.  Many schools operate in this way, with students joining a class at the start of a year, learning the content and skills for that grade and then moving onto the next grade at the end of the year.  In this system experts create the textbooks which lay out the concepts to be taught and often how to teach them, curriculum experts decide which textbooks to buy, teachers deliver the content to the students and students are assessed on how well they have learned it.  Teacher training institutions reinforce this model as they prepare teachers for this monolithic system. (It amazes me how the young teachers I meet who have come straight from the USA or UK have no experience of actually writing curriculum themselves - they are used to a system that mandates what the curriculum will be and what resources will be used to teach it - as such they often struggle initially with the PYP framework where they have to develop units of inquiry collaboratively.)
Facilitated user networks:  these are services that people exchange with each other, for example telecommunications and insurance.  It is the  network that brings buyers and sellers together.

Although international schools where I've worked don't follow Christensen's 6 step process for developing, adopting and using instructional materials, I do appreciate that in many national systems state schools fit this model exactly.  Starting with textbooks, which represent the content of a subject that students need to know, the books define the key concepts and the sequence in which they are taught.  As mentioned before, the instructional materials are mostly developed by those and taught by those with a dominant intelligence type that is suitable to the subject.  Students learn differently, but up to now it has not really been possible for textbook publishers to develop different books for each different type of intelligence.

The model continues with curriculum experts at schools who make decisions about which programs/books to adopt - again these are often materials that teach to one dominant intelligence in each subject.  These curriculum experts also take into consideration standardized tests - materials that don't prepare students for these often don't get adopted.  Throughout this process students are treated as if they are all the same.  Teachers have only a very limited amount of time to offer individual help to students in this model or to customize what and how they learn.

Bring in technology - the disruptive force in all this.  Unlike textbooks, software can easily have different pathways for different learners and can adapt to the different pace at which students learn.  Christensen sees the possibility of this type of software, but notes that it has often been added into the current system, and is therefore limited by it.  It's becoming more and more common for schools to offer online education, for example if students want to take a course that is not offered at the school - however these courses will probably look very similar to the face-to-face courses already taught.  The real disruption, he argues, will not be from commercially produced software or courses but from user-generated content distributed through the user network.  The tools for this learning are simple and both teachers and students will be able to build products or tutorials that help other students - one example of resources that teachers could use could be the Khan Academy that states on its website:

We're a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere.

Using similar sorts of resources, teachers will be able to draw together whole courses based on small modules that others have created and that are basically offered for free.  Different modules can be appropriate for different learners - leading to a truly student-centric approach with each student having access to a virtual tutor.  Students who develop these tools and create content benefit too - studies show that teaching someone to do something is often the best way of learning how to do it - and these students are using their dominant intelligence type to do this, and therefore reaching other students with the same type of intelligence.

Disrupting education will come from the bottom up and I believe, like Christensen, that this will completely transform learning.

Photo Credit:  Face flower by Alice Hardman, 2007   

Disruptive technology: online and blended learning

Chapter 2 of Clayton Christensen's book "Disrupting Class" outlines what disruptive technologies do to an established market.  The interesting thing to me is that Christensen states that almost all disruptions take root among non-consumers.  He gives several examples of this:  for example before the PC people didn't have computers in their home, before the transistor radio, teenagers didn't have music that they could carry around with them - these things were not replacing anything - they were starting completely new markets.  He writes that in education there has traditionally not been a "non-consumer":

Public education is set up as a public utility, and state laws mandate attendance for virtually everyone.  There was no large, untapped pool of non consumers that new school models could target.

He goes on to look at what has happened in education since computers have been put into schools and how this has led to little change in the way students learn because:

Most products that the ... educational software industry has produced attempt to teach students in the same ways that subjects have traditionally been taught in the classroom.  As a result, they have catered to the intelligence type that has been historically privileged in each subject.

The following chapter goes further to say that the investment in computers has "had little effect on how teachers teach and how students learn" because it had not developed students' intrinsic motivation through student-centric learning.  As I read on I came to see the difference between what Christensen refers to as a sustaining innovation (something that enhances what is already there - on the SAMR model this would be the S and the A) and a disruptive innovation (something which transforms the learning - the M and the R on the SAMR model).  Up to now computers have often simply been sustaining innovations that fit into the existing model of education being delivered in schools - they are seen as a tool to do what has always been done, but not as a way of customizing education to the different intelligences of the students.

Today as I was thinking about the implications of personalized learning, I came across this chart on Twitter by following a link from Edna Sackson to Barbara Bray's Rethinking Learning website (click here if you would like to download a copy of this chart)

Research by Larry Cuban has shown that classroom computers simply "sustain the traditional early childhood school model.  Computers have become just another activity center for children that they can opt to use in the course of the day ... teachers use them to supplement and reinforce the existing teaching model.  As such, computers add cost while failing to revolutionize the classroom experience."  In middle and high schools "teachers still deliver the instruction.  Students use computers primarily for word process, to search the internet for research papers."  He concludes:

In the end ... powerful software and hardware often get used in limited ways to simply maintain rather than transform prevailing instructional practices.

Christensen draws on these studies to write:

Computers have made almost no dent in the most important challenge that they have the potential to crack:  allowing student to learn in ways that correspond with how their brains are wired to learn, thereby migrating to a student-centric classroom ... Schools have crammed the computers into the existing teaching and classroom models.  Teachers have implemented computers ... to sustain their existing practices and pedagogies rather than to displace them.

However things are changing.  Over 10 years ago when I attended the AASSA Conference in Lima, Peru, I attended my first presentation about online learning called "Teach from the Beach" about courses that were being set up.  At the time these were simple computer-based learning classes that allowed students to learn at their own pace and maybe even to choose different ways of covering the material.  Around the same time I also enrolled in a couple of online professional development courses being run by Fieldwork Education in the UK to see for myself what it was like to learn online.   Today more than a million students in the USA are taking online classes and often these courses use software that can help students learn in ways that are consistent with their type of intelligence and learning styles.  Projections are that by 2019 about half of all high school courses will be delivered online.

Last month at ASB Un-Plugged, Brian Chanen presented the R&D Task Force findings about blended and online learning - as it is becoming clear that this is growing fast, the Task Force was asking how ASB could take advantage of it to combine face-to-face teaching with learning online, to extend education beyond the physical walls of the school.  Schools often do offer a limited number of online courses for example in subjects that are less popular, in a student's mother tongue if that language is not taught at the school, or to support a new student who is mid-way through a course that is not offered by the school.  Brian Chanen talked about wanting to extend this opportunity. 

The advantages of online learning, according to Christensen, are accessibility, convenience, simplicity and cost.  Often these courses are more enjoyable because they are more interactive, and therefore students are more motivated and engaged.  He writes that teachers will spend more time helping individual students and that their role will become more of a learning coach or tutor.  Teachers will need different skills in a customized classroom than in the one-size-fits-all one:  they "will have to understand differences in students and be able to provide individual assistance that is complementary to the learning model each student is using."  He estimates that currently in a "monolithic" class, 80% of a teacher's time is spent on preparation, teaching and testing the entire class, with only 20% of the time available for helping students individually.  Online learning will be a disruptive force in education, and many teachers will not be happy with this shift.  However:

This shift in the learning platform, if managed correctly - which means disruptively - is not a threat.  it is an opportunity.  Students will be able to work in the way that comes naturally for them.  Teachers can be learning leaders with time to pay attention to each student. 

Photo Credit:  Hagalund Church, Stockholm by Kah Wai Lin     

Learning differently - standardized teaching -v- customized learning

Our new professional reading group book is Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen and the first chapter is about how we all learn differently.  Howard Gardner has defined 8 different intelligences - linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, interpersonal and naturalist - however he has a simple definition of what intelligence is:

• The ability to solve problems that one encounters in real life
• The ability to generate new problems to solve
• The ability to make something or offer a service that is valued within one's culture.

We are all blessed with each of the 8 intelligences, though we tend to be strong in only 2 or 3 of them.  As teachers we may be able to recognize some of the stronger intelligences in our students but it's also important to try to encourage the development of all of them.

As well as differences in intelligences, there are also differences in learning styles and in the pace of learning - some people learn things quickly, for others it takes longer.  It was interesting to me to discover at a recent parent conference, that my daughter's way of learning and revising is to write everything down - I was the same when I was her age and studying for my exams and even today I have to write in order to learn.  I'm always in awe of those who can comprehend simply through listening or through visuals.  I was really interested to read in Chapter 1 of Disrupting Class:

A person who learns best with a visual learning style for one type of intelligence - by seeing images or reading text - may not necessarily do well using that same learning style when using another type of intelligence.

He goes on to ask the question:  "If we agree that we learn differently and that students need customized pathways and paces to learn, why do schools standardize the way they teach and the way the test?"  In part, Christensen argues, this is because of the economic pressure on schools to standardize teaching and assessment despite the fact that all students have different needs.  He goes on to write that:

The students who succeed in schools do so largely because their intelligence happens to match the dominant paradigm in use in a particular classroom - or somehow they have found ways to adapt to it.

Partly it is also to do with the sheer size of schools today.  At one time schools were much smaller and local and multi-age classes were full of students with different abilities so teachers had to differentiate and personalize instruction.

Another factor that comes into the equation is that as well as students all having different learning styles, teachers also have different teaching styles and so teach in ways that are compatible with their strengths.  Christensen refers to what happens in classrooms as "reverse magnetic attraction" where similar types of intelligences attract.  This means that students who enjoy the teaching style of a particular teacher tend to excel in those classes, those with different sorts of intelligences may feel excluded.  He goes on to write:

The current educational system - the way it trains teachers, the way it groups students, the way curriculum is designed and the way the school buildings are laid out - is designed for standardization.

In such a situation, how can learning be customized?  Christensen writes that:

Computer based learning is emerging as a disruptive force and a promising opportunity.  The proper use of technology as a platform for learning offers a chance to modularize the system and thereby customize learning ... Student-centric learning opens the door for students to learn in ways that match their intelligence types in the places and at the paces they prefer by combining content in customized sequences ... Teachers can serve as professional learning coaches and content architects to help individual students progress.

One of the joys of working in good international schools is that they are constantly questioning what they do and how they can improve the learning for all students - and because these schools are not tied down by national curriculums or standards so have the flexibility to try new things.  They are providing various forms of PD for teachers so that they are supported in embracing change, they are reflecting on whether multi-age classrooms might provide a more supportive social structure for the students, they are looking at different curricula and are rethinking school design.  I've been lucky to have this experience in the excellent schools where I have worked.  ISA was one of the schools that pioneered both the PYP and the MYP.  While I was there a new campus was built and teachers got involved in the school design.  We were all given amazing PD opportunities.  At NIST my learning continued.  Again the school was going through a building programme and there was a lot of discussion about different designs.  Again, PD was supported and encouraged.  Again my knowledge of best practice in teaching and learning deepened.  My new school, ASB, I believe is going even further.  The R&D task forces are studying and developing new  teaching and learning environments for the 21st century.  In my short visit there, it was clear to see that they absolutely believe that all students learn differently and that they believe in using technology to customize learning.  I'm looking forward to teaching and learning differently myself when I'm there.  I'm counting the weeks (just another 11 now!)

Photo Credit:  colors that reflect joy by Riling Hoxha, 2011 

Motivation

Motivation is something I think about a lot.  It's one of the 3 words in our school's mission statement and last week as our librarian and I were preparing our presentation on the responsible use of digital media, we talked about this word.  To be successful, students and teachers have to be motivated.  They have to be motivated to learn of course, but also motivated to "do the right thing" at a time when it is often easier, cheaper and faster to do the wrong thing.

I've written a lot about motivation in the past - reflecting on a workshop I did with Dan Pink two years ago, as well as books such as Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn which we are reading for the staff book group.  All the evidence points to the fact that we all do better when we are intrinsically motivated, however that may not be the case with school work.  Clayton Christensen writes:

When there is high extrinsic motivation for someone to learn something, schools' jobs are easier.  They do not have to teach material in an intrinsically motivating way because simply offering the material is enough.  Students will choose to master it because of the extrinsic pressure.  When there is no extrinsic motivation, however, things become trickier.  Schools need to create intrinsically engaging methods for learning.

In support of this argument, he points out that post-war in Japan 4 times as many university students were studying STEM subjects as in the USA, despite the fact that the USA has more than twice the population of Japan - these scientists and engineers were responsible for the fantastic economic gains made by Japan. However as Japan recovered and become even more prosperous than the USA, less students chose to study STEM subjects at university.  Once the extrinsic motivation to become more prosperous had been removed, students wanted to study subjects that were more "fun", or more intrinsically motivating.  This same shift in subject choices has been noticed in other Asian Tiger economies too, such as Singapore and South Korea.

Christensen, in his book Disrupting Class, argues that one way of making schools more intrinsically motivating is to individualize or customize learning.  Technology, of course, can help with this as it can "tailor itself to a student's specific type of intelligence or learning style" however what happens all too often is that new technologies are simply bolted onto the existing curriculum and so have not changed learning very much.  Even in my own school, where I believe in the primary school in any case technology has completely transformed what students are doing and how they are learning, the official line is still that technology is "enhancing" what is happening in the classroom - which to my mind totally misses the point of what actually is going on.

In our ICTL meeting where we were discussing responsible use of digital media, we talked about how "accidental" plagiarism can be avoided.  In the past, after students had read a book in their literature circles, they might have had to write a report about it.  However this year we have introduced them to WeVideo where students can collaboratively edit video in the cloud.  Each group has therefore made their own trailer about the book they have read as a way of persuading the other groups to choose to read it.  We have discussed the "language" of images, the importance of sound and music, as well as the words that students are using.  We have had students work in groups to look at and critique existing book trailers, with each student in the group being responsible for paying attention to either the sound or the images or the words - how well each of these individually support the message. They then worked in these groups to create their own, again with students dividing up the tasks.  All of the resulting book trailers are completely unique and as the task has been redesigned, copying or plagiarism is simply not possible.  This is certainly a good example of how technology has done more than simply "enhance" the curriculum - in the SAMR model we could have had students wordprocess their reports, instead we have first modified the task and then completely redesigned the way the students did it so that they could work together in collaborative groups.  These book trailers will be published on the students' own blogs and will be set up to loop on a TV in the library area - thus amplifying the message and perhaps persuading even more students to read these books.

And getting back to the original subject of this post:  are the students motivated?  You bet they are!

Photo Credit:  Should. Could. Would. Did.  by Jennifer, 2010