Explosions Didn’t Stop Bill Iffrig from Finishing the Boston Marathon

Here is the text of my remarks at the 2013 graduation ceremonies of Bruton High, Grafton High, Tabb High, York High, and York River Academy.

Welcome graduating students; family, friends, and teachers of graduating students; and School Board members.

In deciding what to share with you today, I thought about contemporary heroes, people who inspire us. I wanted to identify someone heroic, not merely famous, to be the topic of my comments. Sometimes, chance events, weird talents, and public curiosity thrust people into the spotlight for 15 minutes or more of fame: Kim Cardashian; Abbie the crazy dance instructor from Dance Moms; and even Clint Eastwood’s chair. Famous, however, does not mean heroic.

Bill Iffrig is a good focus for my comments because he is an inspirational hero. On the morning of April 15, 78-year old Bill Iffrig set off to run the Boston Marathon. After running for almost four hours, Bill was close to the finish line when two bombs exploded. In watching videotape of the bombings, we see that Bill wobbled after the first explosion. To use his words, his legs felt like spaghetti. Then his left leg gave away, and he crumpled to the ground. Three police officers ran towards him. You’ve probably seen the photograph that was taken at that moment with the three police officers and Bill Iffrig. What you may not know is that Bill Iffrig did not stay down. This 78-year old man took the hand of a race official, stood up, and completed the remaining yards of the 26.2 mile race, his overall pace faster than nine minutes per mile.

Later, President Obama commented, “Like Bill Iffrig . . . we may be momentarily knocked off our feet, but we’ll pick ourselves up.”  Journalist John

Brant recently wrote in the article I used as the primary reference for these comments, “You might recognize that Iffrig had been training for nearly 80 years for this moment, accruing courage and endurance in workaday deposits. It never occurred to the three cops in the photo not to rush toward the fallen runner, and it never occurred to Iffrig not to finish what he had started.”

          What was involved with his 80 years of preparation? Bill lives in Lake Stevens, Washington in a house he built 49 years ago. He worked forty years in the paper mills. As a young man, he would leave the paper mill at the end of his shift to work on building his home. He framed, plumbed and wired the house himself, working late into the night and then getting up at 5 a.m. to go back to work.

          Later, Bill enjoyed guiding backpacking trips for his son’s scout troop and eventually took up mountain climbing, summiting 65 of the highest peaks in Washington. At age 42, Bill began running in order to stay in shape for mountain climbing. Since then, Bill has run more than 46,000 miles, finished 45 marathons, and earned medals in three events at the World Masters Athletics Championships.

          While flying back from Boston after the bombings, Bill received a complimentary copy of Sports Illustrated with his photo on the cover, a free

meal and a glass of wine. His running buddy jokingly complained saying, “Bill, all you did was fall down.” Bill did a lot more than just fall down. He is now a symbol of persistence—of grit—in the face of tough challenges.

          Graduates, each of you will face challenges in your life, perhaps not as dramatic as the explosions in Boston, but significant challenges nonetheless. After all, we can minimize risks, but it is not within our control to avoid challenges. We do control, however, how we respond to challenges. How will we respond?  Our responses, like Bill’s response, will be affected by how we live our lives on a day-to-day basis. To guide us, I want to boil down the story of this man to two phrases, four words, from which we can all take inspiration. Work hard. Show grit.

Congratulations, Class of 2013. I commend you for your accomplishments and wish you well in your future endeavors.

The primary source of information for these remarks was an article in the July 2013 edition of Runner’s World entitled “Back on His Feet,” by John Brant.

4 Steps to Leaders Modeling Effective Use of Technology

You are a superintendent or principal who wants to promote students leveraging technology to improve the quality and amplify the impact of their work. As a superintendent, you want principals to model using technology to improve their work. As a principal, you want assistant principals, department chairs, grade level chairs, and other teacher-leaders effectively modeling how to leverage technology as well.  How can superintendents and principals achieve this?

Step 1: Model and celebrate the behavior.

·         Meet with principals using videoconferencing technology, such as Blackboard Collaborate, to demonstrate using technology as a productivity tool.

·         During a workshop with leaders you supervise, model learning with outside experts by connecting with other educators via Skype.

·         Visit a classroom to watch students and teachers for using technology successfully. By spending time observing lessons that leverage technology, you communicate that those lessons are important.

·         Take digital photos and videos of students effectively using technology and share them at faculty meetings, principal meetings, and School Board meetings to celebrate and inspire.

·         Send kudos to teachers for successfully leveraging technology via Twitter. E-mail the tweet to the teacher if she doesn't use Twitter herself.

·         Share shout-outs regarding great lessons via blog posts.

·         Seek out examples of student and teacher blogs in your school or district and take just two minutes to publish a comment on their blog.

Don't have the time or expertise for all these actions? No problem, start with a few.

Often superintendents and principals who want to promote the effective use of technology stop after step one. They mistakenly think that by modeling and celebrating the behavior, that other leaders in their organization will adopt the same strategy. Our strategic thinking about growing leaders who model the effective use of technology needs to extend beyond our own modeling.

Step 2: Communicate your core expectations to leaders relating to modeling the behavior.

If you want your principals, assistant principals, department chairs, grade level chairs and other teacher-leaders modeling technology usage, tell them that. Don't stop at modeling and celebrating the behavior yourself. After you have taken steps in walking the walk yourself, share your expectations regarding modeling.

In York County, Virginia, Chief Academic Officer Stephanie Guy and I worked with Instructional team members to articulate core expectations relating to several instructional areas. We shared these expectations at our Leadership Academy in August. The document included expectations relating to modeling technology usage.

All administrators will model the use of video-conferencing and video conferencing roles with staff at least once and will encourage teacher use of videoconferencing to enhance instruction.

All administrators will model the use of Social Media/Web 2.0 Tools for professional learning with staff.

In November, Stephanie Guy and I described our core expectations to Ginger Blackmon, a principal in Alaska who serves as an instructional leadership coach through the Microsoft Partners in Learning program. Ginger asked a disruptive question: "Are you dictating the core expectations or are your leaders articulating them as shared expectations that they hold as a group for themselves?" This question led us to step 3. To take a more collaborative approach, skip step 2 or integrate steps 2 and 3.

Step 3: Ask leaders to articulate shared expectations relating to modeling the behavior.

Chief Academic Officer Stephanie Guy then asked principals to reflect on the core expectations relating to modeling and other instructional topics prior to a principals meeting. Is each expectation reasonable, appropriate, and attainable?

Prior to a principals meeting, Ashley Ellis, Coordinator of Professional Development, e-mailed a survey to our nineteen principals and six central office participants asking them to rate each core expectation via Survey Monkey, an online survey tool. During the meeting, the group results were displayed. When consensus was not obvious, the group discussed the expectation, making adjustments as necessary. For example, the group decided to delete the list of examples of Social Media/Web 2.0 Tools. Also, the group revised one of the other core expectations relating to technology which initially stated, "All secondary administrators will promote the appropriate usage of Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) to support student learning." Given our plans to expand our BYOT initiative to the elementary level, elementary principals stated that the word secondary should be deleted from this expectation so that it applies to them as well. After discussion and revision of each expectation, Stephanie Guy asking each principal to indicate their level of support for the shared expectation by holding up from one to five fingers, with the quantity of fingers raised indicating the level of support for the expectation. When this "fist of five" activity indicated broad support, an expectation became part of the shared expectations.

Step 4: Facilitate learning relating to the expectations.

If they are going to model using technology, leaders need time to play with it in a low risk setting. Recognizing the importance of play time, Kipp Rogers, our Director of Secondary Instruction, created Principals Digital Playground with the support of other members of his department. It eventually was renamed Digital Playground once other leaders began to attend as well. The Digital Playground is an optional event, held monthly, at which leaders focus on a specific topic, such as learning via Twitter, creating and editing movies using iMovie, or using Edmodo.

Promote a culture of reflective practice. We loosely structure some of our reflective conversations regarding using protocols adapted from free resources available from the National School Reform Faculty. Even when we are not officially using a protocol, our conversations benefit from skills learned by using the protocols, such as asking questions that effectively clarify a dilemma and articulating probing questions that prompt new insight.

Taking these four steps can increase the extent to which leaders in your organization effectively model how to leverage technology. Please join the conversation. What advice do you have relating to taking these steps? What other steps can be taken to encourage others to effectively model how to leverage technology?

5 Steps to Avoid Legacy Thinking regarding Virtual Learning

You are a member of the state legislature or state Board of Education. You believe in the anywhere, anytime, any pace learning potential of virtual courses and schools. Do your legislation and regulations fully support the transformative power of virtual learning or cling to legacy thinking?  

The rise of virtual learning reflects global trends described by futurist David Houle: the flow to global, the flow to the individual, and accelerated electronic connectivity.  He warns that

legacy thinking undercuts our ability to understand these trends. Legacy thinking, observes Houle in his latest book Entering the Shift Age, “is viewing the present and future through thoughts from the past.”

Avoid confining your view of virtual learning with a legacy perspective that clings to seat-time requirements, start-date regulations, and other input controls relating to topics such as library media resources and the timing of state assessments.

Last week, I shared five recommendations with the Virginia Board of Education as it reviews proposed regulations relating to public virtual schools.

1.       Replace seat time requirements with a focus on student mastery of content and skills. Virginia’s requirement for 140-clock hours of instruction for a one-credit course violates the notion of any pace learning. Tell school divisions that they can replace a seat-time approach to virtual learning with a competency-based learning approach without going through a waiver process.

2.       Use your bully pulpit to explicitly call on the state legislature to provide for local control of the start date of the school year.  The local control at a minimum should extend to school divisions with a virtual school or significant number of virtual courses. Current statutes restricting the ability of school divisions to start the school year before Labor Day violates the notion of anywhere, anytime, any pace learning.

3.       Don’t show favoritism to school divisions that use private providers of virtual courses. The Board’s proposed guidelines for pre-Labor day openings state that school divisions may warrant a waiver in the case of a full-time virtual school with courses from external providers that begin instruction prior to Labor Day. You have authorized our school division to provide virtual courses to students throughout the Commonwealth.  Don’t penalize us by refusing to consider our waiver requests while reviewing the request of divisions that rely on outside providers.

4.       Ask the state legislature to extend flexibility to school divisions in the timing of administering state assessments. With online learning greater flexibility exists in terms of pacing and the timing of completing a course. Students would benefit if they could take an end of course state exam immediately after completing a course rather than months later.

5.       Acknowledge that access to library resources can be provided in a variety of ways, including through digital resources and online resources.  Proposed regulations include a reference to student access in a public virtual school to appropriate library resources so an explicit statement relating to digital/online resources would avoid misinterpretation of this input regulation.

These five steps would help Virginia harness the anytime, anywhere, any pace learning potential of virtual schools and courses.

How can policy- and regulation-makers where you live help realize the potential of virtual learning? In what ways does legacy thinking confine the view of advocates of virtual learning?

Thanks to Reggie Fox (@rfox1210) for his assistance in developing these recommendations.

What Educators Should Learn from the Harlem Shake

Kroc Preschool Harlem Shake Video

The Harlem Shake meme removes any last shred of doubt.  Many people, including young people, want to create, not just consume, video.  The Harlem Shake videos, each approximately thirty seconds long, feature an excerpt from the song of the same name.  A typical Harlem Shake video starts with one person, usually helmeted or masked, dancing alone in the middle of other people who are not focused on the dancer. Suddenly, the video cuts to the whole group doing a wild dance for the last half of the video.

High School Harlem Shake Video

Knowing that people love to consume YouTube videos, it is no surprise that there were 175 million views of the videos within weeks of the videos going viral. (Source: Wikipedia)

YouTube, however, is about creation, not just consumption. Recently, unique Harlem Shake videos were being uploaded at a rate of 4,000 per day!  Approximately 40,000 Harlem Shake videos were uploaded in the first two weeks of February.

Three- and four-year old children at Kroc preschool uploaded a Harlem Shake video. Lawton-Bronson High School filmed one at an assembly. Young at heart seniors at Golden West Senior Living created a version as well. Steve Dembo (@Teach42), one of the most well-known proponents of digital storytelling in education, posted a version featuring workshop participants at the recent IntegratED 2013 conference in Portland.

Senior Citizens Harlem Shake Video

What led these four groups and 40,000 other groups of people to create a Harlem Shake video?

1.      Connectivity and widespread access to simple digital tools: It is incredibly easy for people to use their smart phone, iPad, laptop or other digital device to film, edit, and upload a video. The technical expertise involved with the Harlem Shake videos is minimal. As Wikipedia observes, “The Harlem Shake is technically very easy for fans to reproduce, as it consists of a single locked camera shot and one jump cut.”

2.      Opportunity for Creative Expression: Although the Harlem Shake videos have core elements, creators of the videos thrived on making unique versions.

3.      Opportunity to publish for a global audience: Harlem Shake videos have been uploaded and viewed around the world, including Western Europe, Eastern Europe, China, India, the Middle East and elsewhere. The Kroc preschool video, the Lawton-Bronson High School video, and the Golden West Senior Living video have received approximately 2000 hits, 33,000 hits, and 12,000 hits, respectively!

As reported by the New York Times, the viral popularity of Harlem Shake led Billboard magazine to change its ways. The last two years Billboard has considered including the number of YouTube plays as one of three factors that determine the ranking of the 100 hottest songs. The viral popularity of Harlem Shake ended this two-year discussion, with the 55-year old list now reflecting YouTube plays. Under the old system, the Harlem Shake song would have debuted in the top 15 of the list. With the new system, Harlem Shake debuted at the top spot.

What is the implication for educators?

IntegratED Harlem Shake Video

Let’s co-opt the power of creating digital stories for a global audience. As educators, let’s give students opportunities to create, not just consume, digital stories. Their engagement with digital storytelling will yield to deeper, longer-lasting learning.

Clearly the creation of a Harlem Shake video does not constitute a substantive intellectual exercise. But when students, turn their digital storytelling inclinations to other content, the learning potential is significant. For example, depending on the nature of digital storytelling, students will

·         write, revise, edit scripts;

·         research and analyze content related to the theme;

·         construct a persuasive argument; and

·         develop a unique voice based on a perspective that emerges after evaluation of content.

Some cynics may underestimate students in asserting that the enthusiasm they show for creating Harlem Shake videos will never be matched in more serious endeavors. These cynics are dead wrong. In the York County School Division in Virginia, we are partnering with Discovery Education to test a beta version of a platform that supports students as creators of digital content. To learn more, check out this post.

As much as the Harlem Shake videos have entertained millions, I know that our students’ videos will inform, persuade, inspire, and entertain us!

Related post:

Moving from Students as Consumers to Creators of Digital Content

Moving from Students as Consumers to Creators of Digital Content

Storytellers can transform the world. They inform, persuade, entertain, and inspire us to take action. Digital storytellers use technology to improve the quality of their work and amplify its impact.

Digital storytellers include youth, although often they create digital stories independent of school. In school, most youth only consume digital stories and resources. We need to transition from consumption to creation of digital content, from students as consumers to students as creators of digital content. When students create digital content that they value, they are much more likely to be engaged. With greater engagement, they commit themselves more fully to learning so their learning is deeper and more enduring.

Over a year ago, my colleagues and I in the York County School Division in Virginia began looking for tools and platforms to help support students as creators of digital content.  Although our teachers and students extensively use Discovery Education resources, when we started our search we did not know that Discovery Education already planned additional steps to support students as creators of digital content.

Our participation in the Digital Promise League of Innovative Schools led to a partnership between our school division and Discovery Education focused on students as creators of digital content. The League of Innovative Schools is a national coalition of 32 school districts committed to collaborating with top researchers, providers of breakthrough technologies (including Discovery Education), and one another in demonstrating, evaluating, and scaling up innovations that deliver better results for students.

After exchanging ideas with Discovery Education Vice President Andy Schaeffer (@AndySchaefferDE) at a Digital Promise League of Innovative Schools event, we submitted a request for collaboration to Discovery Education. Here is an excerpt from the request for collaboration:

We invite Discovery Education to collaborate with the York County School Division in the transformation of learning.  By supporting students as they create new content using the vast digital resources of Discovery Education, we can engage our students in rigorous work that allows them to transform the world.

We want to emphasize student use of digital resources, rather than teacher use.  We will move from students being consumers of digital resources to students being creators of digital resources.   

By relying on our bring-your-own technology initiative, our private cloud infrastructure, and our virtual learning opportunities, our students will take the use of DE resources to a whole new level.  Students will use their own smart phones, tablets, netbooks, and other devices at school and outside of school to create digital resources . . .  Students will access the resources of our private cloud anytime, anywhere, and from any device with internet connectivity in order to create and use videos.  Whether they are working in traditional brick-and-mortar settings, virtual courses, or blended environments, students will use digital resources to transform the world. 

 Our dream is that DE will be a digital hangout for our young people—a place where they play, learn, create, problem-solve, and inspire.  We wonder about the possibilities.

·                     Would it be possible for students to create video mashups and post them within DE?  The mashups could combine editable videos from the DE digital library as well as student-created videos.  The mashups could incorporate green screen technology. 

·                     Would it be possible to create channels within DE?  Perhaps students, schools, and school divisions could create their own DE channels through which they could publish videos for the global DE community.  The videos posted on a channel could address a variety of topics or they could be special-interest channels.  For example, our students might create a channel that features videos regarding local historical sites such as the Yorktown battlefields, the Jamestown settlement, or Colonial Williamsburg.

·                     Would it be possible to further attract students to DE as a digital hangout by allowing students to earn recognition from their peers in the DE community based on the quality of their postings?  For example, users could “like” postings by students and the number of likes could be prominently displayed next to the video link.  Students might also earn social media points within the community based on the number of their postings, the number of views of their work, and the number of times their work is liked.

Within weeks of receiving our request for collaboration, a team from Discovery Education, including Vice-President Alex Morrison (@AlexMorrisonDE), visited York County to discuss potential collaboration. We learned that Discovery Education developers had already outlined the conceptual parameters of a space within Discovery Education for students to post original digital content mashed up with editable Discovery Education resources.

Last June, our division won a grant from the Department of Defense Education Agency to support leveraging technology for student achievement. Using grant funds, we entered into a three-year contract with Discovery Education. Discovery Education committed to providing professional development relating to students as creators of digital content while also enhancing opportunities for students to post original content, including editable content, within the Discovery Education community. We committed to provide feedback to Discovery Education on its new platform while it was in Beta phase.

The Discovery Education development team moved quickly. Within months they created the core of the Beta version of the emerging platform. They assigned a temporary name (Board Builder) for the Beta version, noting that the official name would be announced later. Last month, they conducted a focus group with our teachers regarding the Beta version.

David Futch (@futchd), a Discovery Education professional development coach, rolled out the emerging Beta version earlier this month to forty of our teachers engaged in year-long professional learning with Discovery Education. David explained a three-step process.

1.      Students create and download video. They collect original video using flipcams, smart phones, tablets and other devices, including devices they bring to school through our BYOT initiative. Students select editable video or audio clips from the Discovery Education library. They download their content and the editable Discovery Education content.

2.      Students use software to construct a video mashup.

3.      Students create a board within Discovery Education and upload digital resources, including the video mashup, to the Board. Teachers then approve the board for viewing by a broader audience.

The Discovery Education-York County School Division partnership is yielding valuable information to Discovery Education during the beta phase of Board Builder. Shelley Santora-Jones, the manager of the Board Builder development team, explained, “We want to know whether the teachers are running into any challenges. We also want to know what features they find particularly valuable and what additional features they would find useful.”  For example, we told Discovery Education staff that because of our BYOT initiative, we particularly valued Board Builder’s ability to accept files in different video formats, such as .mov, .avi, .swf and .mp4.

The questions our teachers asked also provided insight to Santora-Jones regarding the perspective of users. For example, teachers asked “Can you embed a link to one Board to another Board?” and “Can you import a photo as a background for a Board?”

Teachers can engage students in creating and sharing original digital content without Discovery Education. However, by using Board Builder within Discovery Education, students will have access to thousands of editable video and audio clips within DE while creating video mashups. Students will also have access to a global audience of more than two million subscribers in the DE learning community.

In the proactive spirit of the Digital Promise League of Innovative Schools, we are proud to play a small part in Discovery Education’s ongoing work to support the concept of students as creators of digital content. As we collaborate with Discovery Education, we continue to create our story of the power of collaboration afforded by the Digital Promise League of Innovative Schools. Given students’ passion for creating digital content, the story is likely to have a happy ending involving students’ deep, enduring mastery of the content and skills of our curriculum.

Choice is a waypoint on one route to engagement

Could a classroom be transformed into a place where "on task" and "off task no longer had any meaning, where all student activity that led to learning was honored and promoted?

@GeraldAungst poses this disruptive question in his recent post entitled On-Task is not a waypoint on the route to engagement. He describes a four-quadrant grid with On-Task as the horizontal axis and Engaged as the vertical axis.

He correctly observes that "While we'd like to have all students in the upper-left quadrant (on task and engaged), we seem to think that the lower-left quadrant is the next-best place to be." And he asks, "What if instead of forcing kids to the left, we looked for ways to raise them up into the quadrant of off task but engaged? What kinds of teacher action would encourage a student to engage on his terms without necessarily participating in our activity?"

The distinction that @GeraldAungst articulates between on-task and engaged relates to Phil Schlechty's distinction between ritualistic engagement and authentic engagement. With ritualistic engagement, students go through the motions of a task, complying with the instructions of teachers, but not fully committing themselves to a task because they do not intrinsically value it.

I commented on Gerald Aungst's blog about practical considerations relating to his proposal for a classroom where ALL student activity that leads to learning is honored and promoted. Gerald appropriately responded, "If practical things are getting in the way of learning, maybe we have to change what we consider practical . . .Change the system, and what is practical may change."

Honoring ALL student activity that leads to learning is an incredibly high standard. Accepting Aungst's challenge to "change the system" with this high standard in mind leads to many disruptive questions. How should the student day be organized? What type of classes, if any, would be held? To what extent, if at all, should we rely on direct instruction? How should we assess and recognize student progress in learning? Is there still a role for course credits/Carnegie units?

And this brings me to the key role of student choice. Even within the confines of the current system (standardized tests, bell schedules, Carnegie units, etc), educators can increase the likelihood of student engagement by providing more student choice. This leads to greater variety of student activity within a classroom, even if it does not achieve the proposal of honoring and promoting ALL student activity that leads to learning.

Imagine a continuum that runs from teacher control to honoring ALL student activity that leads to learning. Providing students more choices moves us along the continuum.

We can provide students different types of choices. Broad or narrow. Relating to means or outcomes. In any case, as we provide students more choices, we will open our minds to the possibilities and avenues towards honoring ALL student activity that leads to learning.

To use the language of @GeraldAungst, choice is a waypoint on one of the routes to student engagement. 

You might also be interested in reading, 

Fretting about Authentic Projects

Students & Transformative Work

Using Technology to Transform Teaching and Learning

Kindergartners Do Work That Matters

Gallup's Five Questions Regarding Student Engagement

If you were to ask students just five questions in an effort to gauge their engagement, what would you ask?

@punyamishra blogged recently regarding a five-item Gallup survey that concludes that student engagement drops precipitously as students progress through school. @punyamishra did not disagree with the Gallup conclusion, but he questions whether the five items Gallup used were the best measure of student engagement.

Gallup asked students to respond to these five statements:

I have a best friend at school

I feel safe in this school

My teachers make me feel my schoolwork is important

At this school, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day

In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good schoolwork

Should Gallup have omitted the statements relating to best friends and feeling safe? It makes sense that these items would correlate positively with student engagement: students are more likely to fully commit themselves to their schoolwork in a positive, safe school climate. However, even if positive, safe school climates are a necessary condition for high levels of student engagement, one should not conclude that high levels of student engagement exist in this situation. Educators need to take advantage of this climate by giving students high quality work.

Asking students whether they believe their schoolwork is important comes the closest to measuring the heart of student engagement. When students value schoolwork, they are more likely to fully commit themselves and to persist when they face difficulties. However, should Gallup have omitted the reference to teachers in the third item? Teachers greatly influence student engagement with the quality of work they provide, but this item could just ask students to respond to "my schoolwork is important."

The statement relating to students' sense of efficacy is also on the right track. Although we need to stretch students to work in areas in which they are not comfortable, we can build engagement with opportunities for students to experience a sense of mastery, a sense of being in the zone.

The item relating to recognition or praise is certainly on the right track to the extent that it is asking about students' opportunities for affirmation. Teachers can promote student engagement by designing tasks and activities so that the work of students is visible to persons who are important to students. Students are more likely to be engaged when they know that they quality of their performance matters to peers and others whose opinions matter to them. We need to be careful with this particular item. When students sole motivation for working hard is the pursuit of a good grade or other external recognition then the engagement, using Phil Schlechty's terminology, is ritualistic, rather than authentic. Authentic engagement leads to deeper, longer-lasting learning.

Even if we would create different items or approaches to measure student engagement, kudos to Brandon Busteed and Gallup for their focus on student engagement. Asking students about their level of engagement can provide rich information to guide our efforts to engage students in meaningful work.

Check out these other blog posts regarding student engagement:

Design Qualities that Promote Student Engagement

Discussion of #Edchat regarding Student Engagement

Designing a Mousetrap Vehicle and Student Engagement

Building Engagement by Giving Students Opportunities to do Transformative Work