Is it "online learning" or "online schooling?"

I work part time for an online k-12 school. I also often teach graduate school courses in online or blended format. I have no problem with online schools, I think they are a great option to have but the phrase "online learning" has never really set well with me even though I have often used it.

What bothers me about "online learning" is strictly a nit picky issue. Is learning really different online than off? How does the cognitive act of learning differ for the self online as opposed face-to-face or self-guided with non-connected stimuli? I doubt it's difference is very significant yet we use the term "online learning" to describe something supposedly very different than what happens in other learning environments.

Pay emphasis to the content (online content), environment (online learning environment), the institution (online school), or anything else that really is different but I really do not think we have sufficient ground to claim that the act of learning is significantly different enough when online to use the phrase if we are refering to the learning of an individual.

However, if we take this term and consider how it might be more accurately used we end up with it describing some form of artificial intelligence. If this is what we mean by "online learning" that by connecting people, content, and sensory input devices together in a way where some kind of collective intelligence is emerging (as in the theory of Connectivism) or by some miracle a new life emerges out of these connections then the term "online learning" has a sufficient meaning. However, this is not how it is usually used. In fact I rarely hear people use the phrase to describe what I have just proposed. Instead, "online learning" is usually used as a misplaced synonym for "online schooling." I suspect the common use of the term stems from a general misconception that schooling and education are the same thing and that schooling is necessarily about learning. That is the ideal and it is what we should strive for but the reality is that they are different. Therefore, I have to add "online learning" to my list of words I am beginning to have a real problem with.




This post is tenth in my "war on words" series. Other terms in this series are: "best practices," "child-centered," "value added," accountability, "data-driven decisions," "learning objectives," "21st Century," "personalized learning," and "accomplishment/achievement."

Mission Accomplished: Declaring the end of major operations of "Student Achievement"

Steve Johnson left a comment a few days ago on Doug Johnson's blog post about this "War on Words" series I am doing that addresses a term I have been meaning to get to on this list but wasn't quite sure how to frame it. Steve writes:

I'll offer another that I think has been twisted beyond recognition lately: achievement. Used to be that achievement meant you actually....achieved something.

Steve's comment got me reflecting on just what has become of the term "Achievement" and how it might have come to change meaning. When I was growing up an achievement was something that was real special. The term was reserved for attaining high levels of something. Becoming an Eagle Scout was a real achievement, getting into your first choice college was a real achievement, winning the spelling bee was a real achievement (ok, this one is questionable), building your own house or rebuilding an engine for a classic car was a real achievement, performing a challenging piece of music in front of a large audience was a real achievement, etc. But today in education the term is most commonly used to describe scores on basic skills tests. "Student achievement" has become synonymous with mastering basic proficiencies.

Unlike the other terms I've addressed in this series so far whose meanings were changed through repetitive misuse over time I think I might be able to pinpoint precisely where this one's meaning was degraded. Now, this is just a hypothesis and I really have not researched this so please do not take this as fact but just an idea to consider. To pinpoint just where this term lost it's value we have to understand it's conceptual relationship to another term that has become equally problematic: "Accomplishment."

The verb forms of these two words are what have always separated them conceptually. To accomplish something is to finish it and to achieve something is to reach a certain rank in doing so. But, the noun forms have always been nearly identical. "Achievement" and "Accomplishment" are extremely closely related ideas. They both describe what a person has done. Therefore, to do something that defaces the meaning of one term could easily have a residual effect on the other.

When I was in high school, college, and the first few years of my teaching career I don't remember "Student Achievement" as having the same association with basic skills tests as it does today. It really has only been sometime within this past decade that this has happened. And, what I propose is that this deflation occurred single-handedly in an event not at all related to educational discourse and by a prominent U.S. figure who was famous for his butchering of the English language. When George W. Bush landed on that air craft carrier flying the banner "Mission Accomplished" declaring the end of major operations in a war that was waged arguably for reasons stemming from a poor "data-driven decision," and leaving U.S. troops to fight for many years afterwords the same battle that was implied was "Accomplished" it degraded the term forever. Now anything could be legitimately called an accomplishment, even things that didn't end well.

It was around that same time that I started hearing the term "Student Achievement" to refer to the accomplishment of the mastery of basic skills. Interesting, W. was also the president who made famous the phrase, "soft bigotry of low expectations." Draw your own conclusions.



This post is ninth in my "war on words" series. Other terms in this series are: "best practices," "child-centered," "value added," accountability, "data-driven decisions," "learning objectives," "21st Century," and "personalized learning."

Who is learning personalized for?

This is a hard term for me to included in my ongoing list of problematic terms simply because I have been such a supporter of the concept it represents. Nonetheless, I fear that "personalized learning" is a flawed term. It is flawed not because the idea of crafting a plan with the educational and motivational needs of an individual in mind is a bad idea, it is the idea that what is being personalized is learning. Let me explain.

Aside from the popular theory that learning is social (which I a little more than partially buy into), isn't for the individual and their acquisition of new understandings really always a personal endeavor? Can one person really personalize the learning of someone else? Or can this only be done by the individual? And, how can such an act be done consciously without foreknowledge of the content of said learning? Don't I personalize my learning when I choose what books to read, which videos to watch, what classes to take, or what places to go for myself? If these things are done for me is what the person putting together my agenda doing really personalizing my learning or are they personalizing my agenda? Isn't it up to me as a learner to decide whether or not to accept that agenda?

Don't get me wrong, I know there are times when a person really needs, and sometimes will willingly submit to, a plan laid out for them. But, as far as education goes, that custom-made plan is not personalized learning, it is really a customized agenda. For there to really be personalized learning the learner has to have the agency to decide what it is that they are doing, what it is they are paying attention to, what it is that they are busying their mental faculties with. In fact, no matter what kind of path we lay down for the learner, be it customized, individualized, standardized, or scripted they will always personalize their own learning because no teacher, curriculum developer, lecturer, or programmer can dictate the course of the integral organ involved in the process of learning. No one can grab the attention of a learner without their choice to pay attention, no one can make a learner think without the learner choosing to do so, no one can make someone reflect on something without the learner choosing to reflect on their own, and unless you employ the kind of inhumane contraption used in the film A Clockwork Orange no one can force another to open their eyes and see something they do not choose to.

Regardless of posters hung in some schools stating that "failure is not an option," failure is always an option. It is always a choice. So is learning. We choose what we pay attention to and in so doing we personalize our own learning. We also personalize our own learning through differing experiences. Every student comes to a classroom with different experiences, memories, and backgrounds. These things are what makeup a person's prior knowledge and that prior knowledge will further act to personalize the learning of students in any classroom. We often learn different things from the same stimuli because we all approach it with different background knowledge and therefore our learning is always personalized.

We really need a new term to describe what we mean when we say "personalized learning."


This post is eight in my "war on words" series. Other terms in this series are: "best practices," "child-centered," "value added," accountability, "data-driven decisions," "learning objectives," and "21st Century."

A 21st Century Post

Ok, this one is low-hanging fruit on my "War on Words" but a series of posts on words and phrases in education that have lost their meaning today would be incomplete without it. I am talking about "21st Century __________" (fill in the blank with whichever you like: classroom, pedagogy, learning, etc.).

I have written before about how troublesome this term is so I won't go to the trouble of repeating myself. The troublesomeness of the term has been enough to spawn an exhaustive list of articles, speeches, talks, and blog posts on the subject by others. Here are just a few of them:

• Diane Ravitch - The Partnership for 19th Century Skills
• Alfie Kohn - When “21st-Century Schooling” Just Isn’t Good Enough: A Modest Proposal
• Collection of Posts on Scott McLeod's blog, Dangerously Irrelevant: Reconciling standards- and data-driven accountability with 21st century skills – Wrap-up
• Evan Abbey - 21st Century Skills = fluff?

I am especially fond of Alfie Kohn's faux proposal to start an initiative called the "Partnership for 22nd Century Skills."

Problem with this term primarily, for those of you who wish not to follow any of these links, is at least two-fold. First, it no longer is used as a term to describe our present, recent past, and near future but for those who use and understand the buzz-word connotation, the term is used to describe a learning environment that values hands-on activities, authentic assessment, critical thinking, and problem solving. I have no problem with any of these connotations, in fact I openly promote all of them. The problem is, what the "Partnership for 21st Century Skills" has done to the phrase "21st Century" has shifted it's meaning and in that shift many people have not been briefed about the change. So, the result is that you have educators (especially grant writers, administrators, and board members) using the term in an attempt to sound progressive and applying it to things that are anything but progressive. Interactive whiteboard initiatives are just one example but there are countless others.

So, I have to include "21st Century" as a term to avoid and one that has lost it's meaning. It is probably best to just use the language you would use to explain what you mean by "21st Century" instead of using the term itself because at this point no one will know what you really mean.




This post is seventh in my "war on words" series. Other terms in this series are: "best practices," "child-centered," "value added," accountability, "data-driven decisions," and "learning objectives."

Whose learning objectives are they?

I can think of very few education models, schools of education, or teaching guides that don't stress the importance of having clear learning objectives. They have for a long time been one of the first things that is looked for when an administrator, mentor, or teaching coach assesses a teacher's performance. It has for as long as I have been in this profession an expectation that lesson objectives be stated clearly and in many cases it is expected that the teacher have them clearly posted. If I am teaching and I want my students to understand something in a lesson it makes perfect sense that I state my objective clearly.

Problem is, whose objective is it that is being stated? Whose objective will drive the learning? The student's or the teacher's? Whose objective should drive the learning? What if the learning objectives of the student conflict with the teaching objectives of the teacher? Ultimately, when the rubber meets the road the only one who can control learning is the learner. This is where the old cliche, "You can guide a horse to water but you can't make them drink," is relevant.

In most institutions of education that deal with k-12 students the objectives of the learner are not often thought about by those crafting teaching objectives for them. "What should a learner know and be able to do?" is a question that is usually answered by adults thinking about k-12 students in a manner similar to that of E. D. Hirsch Jr., drafting extensive lists of "Thou Shalt Learn and Know ____________." It is largely where content standards come from and how scope and sequence are derived. The answer most schools, teachers, school boards, and policy makers dealing with k-12 students give to the question, "What should a learner know and be able to do?" is "The learner should learn and be able to do what we tell them they should learn and be able to do." How often are our students asked, "What is it you want to learn and be able to do?"

For four years I have taught an online course for middle school students where the first assignment is for them to write two short-term an two long-term goals. Sometimes I get students answer this call honestly stating goals that sound age appropriate and authentic, but more often than not I get responses like, "I want to get an A in all of my classes." This has bothered me to no end. I usually write back and ask if they could write a goal about something they want to learn or be able to do. The response is usually pretty good and I use their responses to help shape what I do with them in their curriculum. I do my best to emphasize that their own learning objectives are just as important as the ones their teachers might have for them. The response has always been good and liberating.

So, I have to include "Learning Objective" in my list of education terms that have become problematic. I will continue to use the term but when I use it I will use it primarily to refer to the objective of the learner. Externally imposed objectives should be termed something different.



This post is sixth in my "war on words" series. Other terms in this series are: "best practices," "child-centered," "value added," accountability, and "data-driven decisions."

Making the wrong "Data-Driven Decisions"

Almost six years ago I heard the question asked for the first time in a job interview, "How do you use data to inform your decisions in the classroom?" I was a little taken back by the question and didn't really know what to make of it. I was interviewing for an art teacher position and considering the nature of the job and considering the questions I was accustomed to hearing in interviews for similar jobs, the question didn't seem like it was developed with the intent of finding the qualities they normally would look for in an art teacher. In fact, the question seemed a bit absurd.

I remember answering the question something like this:

"It depends on what you mean by data. Data could mean many things and can be acquired in many ways. If I have a field drawing lesson planned where I would take the kids outside to draw and it is raining, that data would tell me I probably ought to keep them indoors. Likewise, if I give an assignment for students to draw something in linear perspective and a kid draws nothing using the technique I use that data as an indicator that they probably didn't understand how linear perspective works and that further guidance would be necessary. If you are wondering how test scores affect how I make decisions in the classroom I don't have much to tell you other than the art teacher typically isn't one who is pulled into focus groups to study and analyze that kind of data."

I ended up getting the job. Turns out this question was one of those standard questions written by the district administration for use with all their teacher candidates for all positions. Also turns out that the school in this district that was hiring for this position was filled with teachers with an equal disdain and skepticism regarding what has come to be called "data-driven decision making."

Most administrators and bureaucrats love to hear that you are using data. I am thoroughly convinced that it doesn't matter what your conclusion is or how narrow your focus is, if you can use any set of statistical data to defend any practice it is good in their eyes. After all, if you have numbers you can prove something right? Problem is, in the classroom no amount of data can give a full picture. There are just too many factors and so many of them do not translate well into statistics. Decision making in the classroom requires the ability to manage a much broader and more complicate set of data than that of the statistician.

Data can often lead to poor decisions. Tonight I left the house briefly to make an emergency run to the store to buy a kit to fix my eyeglasses. The thermometer said -8 degrees Fahrenheit. At the store there was a guy in line in front of me wearing shorts. I asked him if he considered how cold it was outside before making his wardrobe choice. He said, "I put on what was clean." Obviously this guy made a data-informed decision. He examined his clothes and determined that shorts met the criteria of being clean so obviously they would be a good choice. He could defend his choice with data regardless of other data sets that would otherwise make someone else choose differently. I probably would have made a data-driven decision to put on a dirty pair of pants to run to the store if my choice was between clean shorts and dirty pants given the temperature outside. If this guy were an administrator and in charge of assessing other people's data-driven wardrobe decisions, would he give me a poor evaluation? Probably.

The same scenario is played out in education everywhere the misleading phrase "data-driven" rears its ugly head. Its not whether you use data to inform your decisions or not, everyone does this. Unless you are making a blind choice or using a coin to determine the outcome of a decision you always use some kind of data to inform that choice. Heck, even the outcome of a coin toss is a form of data. What matters more is what qualifies as data and in an organization today that emphasizes this phrase usually that data set is intentionally narrow. Narrow sets of data lead to foolish decisions, decisions that are still data-driven. In practical terms, this phrase is meaningless.

So, what are some bad decisions you have seen schools make that were "data-driven?"



This post is fifth in my "war on words" series. Other terms in this series are: "best practices," "child-centered," "value added," and accountability.

Who is Accountable?

Three days ago I set a goal for myself. Every day for two weeks I am going to write about an education term or buzz word that I feel has become problematic. Call it my own war on words. So far I have addressed "best practices," "child-centered," and "value added." Today lets talk about accountability.

There is probably no other term we hear more today in conversations about education and school reform than the term accountability. To be clear, there is nothing inherently wrong with being accountable for something. In fact, it is a necessary part of being responsible for something and it is nothing we should shy away from. The problem, as with so many other terms in education, is that the term is ill defined. It is ill defined because that which we are to be accountable for has been ill defined. So, you would think that to solve this problem all we need to do is make clear what it is we need to be accountable for. Right? But I don't think it is that simple, schools have many different masters.

Today, when you hear about teacher or school accountability it is generally used to mean accountable for student test scores. This seems like it should makes sense, but in trying to be more clear with what schools and teachers are to be accountable for the focus has become too narrow. By focusing on data, after all accountable is derived from the word account and closely related to the word accounting. Therefore, to be accountable today means being able to own up to data or be responsible for the abstract measurements derived from the students in our care. Under this concept that which can be easily measured and that which does get measured are things that we can be held accountable for. So, this term accountability has now come to be associated with data and data primarily.

But, is data the only thing we should be held accountable for? This whole notion of accountability and data is derived from a mindset that views the purpose of school as serving the god of economic utility. This mindset leaves little room for valuing the child as they are today but insists in seeing them as "adults in the making." It looks not upon children as the product of the school, which would be bad enough, but rather the data they produce. Are we accountable for data or are we accountable for children? Are we accountable to data or are we accountable to children? What we are accountable for is determined by who we are accountable to. Who is asking us to be accountable for test score data? Is it our children? Parents? Politicians? Business people? If you asked each of those groups what they would hold schools accountable for I think they would each have a slightly different answer.

This era of accountability is, oddly enough, also the era of school choice. Families today have a lot of options for how to send their children through school. If you don't like your local public community school you can send your kid to a magnet school, or a charter school, or an online school, or if you have money you can send them to a private school, or you can unschool them. This element of choice complicates this matter and ought to define who schools are accountable to. Under a climate of school choice it becomes the families of children who decide where to send them that schools are accountable to and the reasons for their choice ought to define what schools are accountable for.

So, if choice makes the students' families the entity that schools are accountable to then the reasons for their choice will communicate what they are holding schools accountable for. If your students attend your school because their parents want their kids to have a year-round school calendar then you are accountable for providing a year-round education. If your students' families choose your school because of the exemplary fine arts offerings then your school is accountable for offering a quality fine arts program. If your students' families choose your school because of the exceptional athletic program then school athletics are what your school is accountable for. So, if the reasons our families choose to send their kids to our schools define what we are accountable for, and parents continue to choose to send their kids to schools with low or poor test scores in math and reading then are those schools making a good decision when they sacrifice programs their families have, through their choice, indicated they are holding the school accountable for in order to devote more resources to improving test scores?

When families choose a school for the fine arts offerings, who is accountable when the arts are cut to divert more attention to raising test scores?

When families choose a school because of the athletic program, who is accountable when school sports are cut to divert more attention to raising test scores?

When families choose a school because of the loving and caring atmosphere the school provides, who is accountable when a focus on test scores makes that place cold and unwelcoming?

When families choose a school because of the low class sizes, who is responsible when class sizes are increased in order to hire a data specialist to help them try to figure out how to raise test scores?

I could go on but what is the purpose? Accountability no longer means what it used to, at least not when you use it to talk about education. It's definition has been narrowed. Instead of allowing school choice to determine what it is we are accountable for it now simply means test scores, test scores, test scores. Test scores at the expense of all else. Test scores even when the focus on them degrades the qualities of our schools that families value.

"Child-Centered" Killed by Repetition

Before becoming a technology integration specialist and edtech consultant I was a classroom art teacher. In many ways I still am. I do miss the studio classroom, the materials, immersion in hands-on learning and creative expression. I also miss teaching about art history, theory, and philosophy. Every time I walk into an art room to assist an art teacher with a tech need I feel a strong longing for my old line of work and a deep sense of envy for those who have managed to keep their art programs going.

Andy Warhol (1975) Electric Chair (BW)

One of my favorite topics to teach was on Pop Art and Postmodernism and not at all for it's aesthetic attributes. Pop Art and Postmodernism are largely about concept. The concept is more important than the actual work. In fact, one of the defining features of Pop Art is repetition and repetition for the purpose of rendering it's subject meaningless. The image that most art textbooks use to illustrate this concept is that of Andy Warhol's screen prints of the electric chair. Taken by itself the image of the chair, an instrument of the ultimate capital punishment, is enough to evoke an emotional response in the viewer. But Pop Artists discovered, when you repeat the image over and over the viewer loses the emotional response and instead is left with nothing. The repetition becomes the art, not the image, not the meaning that the image carries, only the meaninglessness carried by repetition.


This effect is true in other areas of our lives and society, not just the visual arts. Perhaps the most dangerous place for the effect of repetition on meaning is with language. Words loose meaning with repetition just as Warhol's images do. This happens every time a term shifts from an authentic and meaningful usage to the status of "catch phrase" or "buzz word." We see it in the political discourse displayed by politicians and pundits but we also see it in education. So many meaningful ideas are lost through the creation of buzz words out of the language used to describe them. As a result, we often hear terms thrown about hap-hazardously and used to describe things that they don't really mean.

One of the most unfortunate terms in education recently to undergo this effect is the phrase "child-centered." "Child-centered" is a term whose concept it represents is beautiful. It represents an environment, an activity, or thing designed around the needs of the child rather than the needs of the adults and in schools the term refers to an idea of putting the needs of the student ahead of the needs of the teacher, administrator, policymaker, taxpayer, etc. In many ways the concept the term "Child-centered" is anti-Taylorism. It is an unequivocal declaration that the ones we server are actual human beings, organisms and individuals as opposed to products in a factory model of education.


But, the term has been used and reused to the point where it has lost it's meaning. Through over use and repetition the term became open for redefinition and today, I fear, the term is used by people to describe whatever it is they want it to describe. When I hear an educator or administrator use the phrase "Child-centered" today I really cannot tell what they mean and what they mean can just as well take adult needs and objectives as primary focus and "centering" them around the child. Are we putting the child in the center to serve that child or putting the child in the center of all the crap we are going to do to them? The term being up for grabs I fear it has now been hijacked, assimilated by the Taylorist Cult of Efficiency.