A Curriculum Architect Takes on K-2 Technology: Week 12

David Ng
Vertical Learning
Published in
16 min readDec 10, 2018

This week, most of my first-grade classes (and one of my kindergarten classes) started making animated flip books in Easy Studio. I showed them how to use the “chain” tool to link shapes together last week, and I showed them how to use the camera tool to add pages to their flip books this week. Just as I did with my second-graders, I had the students check with me before using the camera tool. Having them to check with me encouraged them to slow down a bit—and enabled me to catch a few common errors before they occurred. Over all, the process went very smoothly (even in the kindergarten class) and students had a blast.

In my kindergarten classes, I’m backing up a bit and introducing them to the concept of a flip book by having them examine and flip through physical flip books. I ordered a pack of five flip books on Amazon. Ideally, I wish the kindergarteners (and older students) could have made their own flip books by drawing manually on paper before making animated flip books by drawing on the iPad, but I thought this was a decent workaround. One special needs student was so enamored with the physical flip books that it was very difficult to pry them from his hands.

As the second-graders begin working on their second or third animated flip books, I’m noticing that some of them are going back and revising/improving earlier movies. This happened sometimes when students were drawing in Art Set 4 or Sketches, but it’s happening much more frequently now. I’m not quite sure what’s causing this behavior. Students may be deciding to redo flip books more often because they feel it’s easier to make improvements in Easy Studio than in Art Set 4 or Sketches because drawings in Easy Studio are fully editable—making it easier to experiment and correct mistakes. We also spent the beginning of one lesson sharing movies. I did that because I’m constantly taking finished flip books out of Easy Studio (to keep the library manageable) and posting them online as mp4 videos. This sharing could be inspiring some students to improve their work.

I also tried out two experimental lessons on a few of my classes this week. Both lessons were an attempt to encourage students to be more thoughtful about their behavior. The first lesson was something I’d been thinking about doing for a while. The substance of the lesson wasn’t influenced by the intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation discussion happening among staff, but the timing may have been. The second lesson bubbled up after a particularly bad day, when I struggled to get through my kindergarten and second-grade classes. But more on that later.

Guiding a mountain ascent

I coined the term “vertical learning” in the late 1990s when I was trying to describe, in writing, my goals as a curriculum architect for the first time. As I thought about it more and more, I zeroed in on a central metaphor for my work: helping a group of people learn how to climb a mountain as we climbed a mountain. Imagine leading a team of novice climbers up Mount Everest. At the start of the ascent, none of them have the climbing skills needed to reach the summit. So, as their guide, my job is to plan a path up the mountain so we acquire the skills we need before we need them. If the path is too aggressive, we’ll make good progress—until we reach a section of the mountain we don’t have the skills to climb. Then, we’ll be stuck; and if we’re stuck for too long, it will feel as if we hit a wall and lack the “aptitude” to go further. On the other hand, if we take a long and meandering path so we have plenty of time to gain and practice new skills, members of the group will lose interest and check out. The key is finding that middle path: where we’re climbing fast enough we feel as though we’re making good progress, but not so fast that we’re stuck for too long at any point and give up.

In my last post, I described the summit we’re trying to reach—and the path we’ve been following to get there. Initially, the summit is so distant, I can’t tell the team that it’s our target. It’d be like telling someone that we’re hiking to Shangri-La. Even if they don’t lock you up in a rubber room, they’re not likely to follow you very far. So, each stage of the ascent has to stand on its own as a worthy reward/achievement. It’s only when we get closer to the summit, and the team feels like it’s almost within our capabilities to reach, that we can talk about the summit openly.

Stage 1: Art Set 4
Reward: The joy and power of creating something on the iPad
Enabling Behavior: Using the iPad safely

Stage 2: Personal folders in Sketches
Reward: Saving and storing your work in your own personal folder to look at and continue working on later.
Enabling Behaviors: Keeping your own work organized; respecting the work of others; cleaning up after yourself

Stage 3: Advanced tools in Sketches
Reward: Learning new skills and creating better work by using the fill, shape, text, ruler, cutting, and layers tools
Enabling Behavior: Listening and following directions during lessons

Stage 4: Movie-making in Easy Studio
Reward: The joy and power of creating animated movies on the iPad; using tools to instantiate your own vision in tangible form (students are more likely to have a fully fleshed out plan in mind when creating a movie in Easy Studio versus creating a drawing in Sketches)
Enabling Behavior: Listening and following directions during lessons

Stage 5: Saving and sharing movies made in Easy Studio
Reward: Sharing their creations (animated movies) with friends and family
Enabling Behaviors: Working together to keep the library organized and manageable; following file-naming conventions to communicate with me and other iPad users

Stage 6: Curating drawings in Sketches
Reward: Fully manage their own personal folders in Sketches, including deleting and exporting drawings (this is a big deal because, until now, both the trash can and the camera roll have been off-limits for them in all apps)
Enabling Behavior: Respecting and following rules

Stage 7: Co-designing clean up procedures with the teacher
Reward: Moving from rule-follower (student) to rule-designer (partner) in the classroom; increased agency
Enabling Behavior: Understanding the value of setting up procedures in the best interest of everyone, not just ourselves—seeing and appreciating the big picture

Stage 8: Creating a personal portfolio in Book Creator
Reward: Deciding what to work on each day; using Art Set 4, Sketches, Easy Studio, and Book Creator (and eventually GarageBand and iMovie) together in a long-term multimedia project
Enabling Behaviors: Managing oneself (especially during clean up); making smart choices

Stage 9: Creating a personal independent project in Book Creator
Reward: Work on a long-term independent project of your own design using all apps together; increased agency
Enabling Behaviors: Managing oneself (especially during clean up); making smart choices; goal-setting conferences with the teacher; possibly peer editing

Stage 10: Using the camera and microphone
Reward: Increased sense of responsibility (using the camera means picking up the iPad and moving it around in two hands—as opposed to using it on a flat surface; using the microphone means using the iPad in a quiet area, away from other students and the teacher)
Enabling Behaviors: Managing oneself; handling the iPad responsibly while alone and completely unsupervised

Stage 11: Small group lessons instead of whole class lessons
Reward: Targeted and personalized instruction, leading to faster learning
Enabling Behaviors: Managing oneself; triaging/troubleshooting problems; helping each other and accessing other sources of helps (besides the teacher)

Stage 12: Co-designing all classroom procedures/systems
Reward: Moving from rule-follower (student) to rule-designer (partner) in the classroom; increased agency
Enabling Behaviors: Design thinking (identifying a problem, iterating, and testing); systems thinking (understanding how parts contribute to the whole, emergent behavior)

The infinite mountain

Most of my classes are currently in stages 5–7; by the end of January, I expect to be in stage 8 or higher; and I’m hoping that all of my classes will reach stage 11 by the end of the school year.

Think about what that means for next year. If my first-graders end the year in stage 11, they’ll probably be ready for stage 12 in the beginning of the year as second-graders. So, where to next? This is where most curriculum developers fall down. I’ve described stage 12 as the summit of the mountain—the goal we are trying to reach together this year. But in reality, the mountain doesn’t have a summit. By the time we’re close to reaching stage 12, we’ll have a stage 15 in our sights. Do I know what stage 15 looks like right now? No idea. But I’m not worried. As we get closer to stage 12, my brain will start extrapolating and dreaming up new possibilities. And it won’t be alone. The brains of more than a hundred students will be working on the same problem, dreaming up better futures with me—because, by stage 12, we’ll be full partners and co-designers in the classroom.

A curriculum developer with a more limited view of growth and learning will often drive hard for the summit, putting the students on the teacher’s back. If I’d chosen to, we could have reached stage 9 much earlier in the year. But, as a curriculum architect, I know that the summit isn’t the end of the learning progression; paraphrasing John Dewey, the ends of one lesson simply become the means for the next. My goal is for students to keep climbing, to reach stage 12 fully capable of taking on stage 13, even if I have no idea what stage 13 will look like because I’ve never been there myself. If a student reaches stage 12, but then gets stuck there, unable to climb further—I’ve failed to nurture his or her growth as a learner/climber.

If students are full partners and co-designers in the classroom in stage 12, then I imagine they’ll dream of growing into full partners and co-designers in the school (and then the greater community) in later stages. While I don’t yet have a clear vision of what this might look like, I’m already sowing seeds. Last week, I sent my principal the following email (lightly edited):

Hi [redacted],

Now that Book Creator is on the way, I’m interested in offering a technology session at a future professional day for interested teachers. The session would have two goals: (1) helping teachers learn about and learn how to use the apps their students are using; and (2) helping teachers integrate those tools into their own classroom instruction.

For example, if I was still teaching middle school science, I’d love to have my students use Easy Studio to make science animations. They could show how plate tectonics creates volcanoes or how plants grow and reproduce. I’m not familiar with the science or social studies curriculum in the primary school, but if I was, I bet I could find lots of applications for Easy Studio.

Book Creator is even more flexible. Using Book Creator, you can create books which include text, images, videos, etc. In the spring, I’m planning on having my classes do an online research project. I’m compiling kid-safe websites where students can enter search terms and find articles and copyright-free images. For example, Noah could do a research project on the solar system. He’d learn more about the solar system by searching these websites and gathering facts (while attributing all of his sources), use Sketches and Easy Studio to create his own images and animations, and write everything up in Book Creator. Book Creator exports books as standard epub files, so Noah would even be able to bring his book home and share with his family on any device. And one of the nice things about writing on the iPad is that it facilitates editing and revising your text.

While I’m going to assign an online research project to all of my 1st- and 2nd-grade classes (not sure about kindergarten) regardless, it would make sense if these projects aligned with the curriculum in their other classes — and I’d love to actually collaborate on this online research project with one or more teachers (students would work on this project for 1–2 months in both of our classes).

I’d also love to do some kind of event where children have the opportunity to show/teach their parents/siblings what they’re learning in technology class. I see students saying to their families: (1) here’s what I made; (2) here’s how I made it; and (3) now let’s make something together. The issue I’m running into is that, because we have the one iPad cart which all classes share, I can only host one class at a time. Trying to hold 16 separate event for each of the 16 classes would be a bit much to organize. However, maybe if we put our heads together, we might come up with an idea. (After [redacted] put out his email about scheduling parent-teacher conferences, I started wondering if we could do something similar. Instead of signing up to see a teacher, families could sign up for 20–30 minute slots to use iPad #5. If this was held over three separate evenings with 5–6 slots per evening, everyone could come.)

Happy to discuss further. I didn’t want to bring any of this up until I knew I’d have Book Creator in hand. It’s the app which makes the electronic portfolio and online research project possible.

David

How does this fit into my learning progression? In order for students to begin shaping the school and greater community, stakeholders need to see students in a new light—to recognize that they are far more capable than most of us realize. Well, what better way to do that than to put teachers, administrators, and parents in a position to see students in action? If other adults could see students as I see them, then we’d all start dreaming of better futures and new possibilities.

Avoiding transactional relationships

In the learning progression (stages 1–12) I outline above, I want to emphasize that I’m not trading the rewards for the enabling behaviors. I don’t want to say to my students: “If you manage yourselves, I will allow you to design and work on your own independent projects.” No. I need them to know that enabling them to design and work on their own independent projects is my goal—and I will do whatever I can to make that happen. There’s no quid pro quo here. I’m not holding anything back until they give me what I really want (good behavior). We’re all working toward a shared goal, and there are things we all need to do to make that goal a reality.

It’s been a little while since I’ve discussed my challenging second-grade class. I’ve been struggling to find a feasible path up the mountain for our team. Due to a number of factors, this class balked at stage 1—and we were stalled there for well over a month.

So, what did I do? I charted an even more aggressive path for them. I decided to bypass Sketches all together (keeping their own work organized, respecting the work of others, and cleaning up after themselves were non-starters for this class) and jump from Art Set 4 straight into Easy Studio. This class was making animated flip books weeks before my other second-grade classes—we just weren’t saving anything in the library. Only after the students recognized that they loved making animated movies and really wanted to save their work did we talk about saving and cleaning up procedures. Also, since October, this class has had the ability to choose which app to use: Art Set 4, Easy Studio, or Teach Me 2nd-Grade. Because students were using different apps, cleaning up at the end of class was chaotic. Rather than following a clean up procedure for each app, most students just turned their iPads off and passed them back in. The only reason why their failure to clean up properly didn’t impact any other classes is because they were my last class of the day, and I could clean up after them. Did I want to do that? No, but I wanted to get them moving, and I could demonstrate my commitment to reaching stage 12. If they could see that I was doing everything in my power, but they weren’t able to reach stage 12 because of their inability to manage themselves, more students might come on board.

Now that students are making and saving animated flip books in Easy Studio, I’ll introduce Book Creator and the long-term portfolio project next. At this stage, for this class, I’m actually thinking about revoking their ability to decide which app to use on a given day. They’ve had a taste of how the classroom could run, if we all worked together, but students who disrupt the class will no longer have the same opportunities as those students who are following rules and expectations. The students who can manage themselves will get to choose what they work on; the students who are unable to manage themselves will be asked to work in Teach Me 2nd-Grade.

I’m not sure if this path is going to work. There have been more than a few times when I looked up and thought we were stuck for good, but so far, I’ve always been able to find a way forward. I’ve also felt guilty that I’ve allowed my challenging class to climb ahead of my well-behaved classes. But I think that the somewhat slower path I’ve charted for most of my classes is the better and more reliable one. However, it’s always good to keep questioning whether the pacing is what’s best for the students or what’s best for my comfort level.

Constructive versus destructive behavior

I mentioned earlier that I tried two experiments with some of my classes this week. The first experiment was a discussion about constructive or destructive behavior. I’ve been searching for a framework I could use with my students that would help them see what I’m seeing, and I felt that this framing could be helpful here. We engage in destructive behavior when we’re not actually trying to build anything: we’re simply trying to tear things down for the fun of it. This contrasts with constructive behavior where we are trying to build something. Sometimes construction requires destruction, but the distinction is the intent. There’s a big difference between taking apart some legos to build something new and taking apart some legos just to be mean.

I drew an axis on the whiteboard labeled “constructive” on one end and labeled “destructive” on the other. After discussing the terms, I explained that, as people got older, we were less and less amused by destructive people. While being destructive may be cool in school, no one wants to work with a destructive person in the workplace. We then discussed what I was trying to build with them in the classroom (stage 12) and how some of their peers were making that difficult, without trying to build anything else in its place. Finally, I asked students to examine their own personal behavior and then place themselves on the constructive-destructive axis. I didn’t want to know where they had placed themselves, but I did want them to think about where they wanted to be.

While this was a fairly abstract conversation, I felt it had an impact on many students. I could see students processing this discussion, not just letting it in one ear and out the other. I think the constructive-destructive framework is a useful one at this age group.

On the path to self-management

I pivoted to a second experiment later in the week for two reasons: (1) the school’s focus on extrinsic motivators intruded on me; and (2) the behavior in a couple of my classes was unacceptable and I decided it was time to bring the hammer down on them.

It’s hard to have an introspective discussion about constructive-destructive behavior when the classroom teacher is asking you to implement a rewards system for good behavior. So, after my rough day, I came up with a behavior management system which better fit my own educational philosophy. The rewards in the system are the same ones I outlined above in stages 1–12. All I did was set up a system so individual students could still reach a stage before their classmates if they were demonstrating enabling behaviors, but others in the class weren’t. In other words, constructive students would be able to keep climbing without their destructive classmates holding them back.

A few students were curious to learn what would happen if the destructive students just continued to be destructive. I said the outcome would likely be a meeting with the principal and the student’s parents. Most students clearly saw a parent conference or a sit down with the principal as a big deal. So, I jumped in with an important clarification. First, I asked students if they knew what it meant to manage yourself. I defined it as knowing what expectations are and meeting those expectations on your own, without supervision. Using myself as an example, I explained that my parents don’t check on me to see if I took a shower or brushed my teeth. No one tells me to clean my room, and I could go a whole month eating candy for dinner, if I wanted to. But I don’t eat candy for dinner because I know it’s not healthy for me, and I’ve learned how to manage myself. Well, one of the primary goals of school is to help students learn how to manage themselves. I’m implementing a behavior management system only because some students aren’t able to manage themselves, so they need me to manage them for them. In the same light, scheduling a conference with parents isn’t so we can punish you. It’s a strategy meeting because we’re worried that you’re not learning to manage yourself—so we need to come up with a better plan to help you.

I felt the introduction of a behavior management system had impact because the system has real teeth in it. Students also recognized that it was necessary because small groups of destructive students were derailing things, making it difficult for constructive students to learn. If anything, I should have brought the hammer down earlier, but it was a challenge for me to devise an effective system when I didn’t have my own classroom. However, the discussion we had around self-management was even more impactful. Students want to show us that they are ready to manage themselves; they want more independence and autonomy. Understanding how the behavior management system will actually help them reach that goal was eye-opening to them.

I don’t feel that a conversation about self-management works in isolation. It works for me because we are nearing stages 8 and 9, where students will have a real opportunity to manage themselves, and this isn’t just a lot of empty talk. I shared Book Creator with one of my classes this week, but we are probably a couple of weeks away from using it. But that summit is really starting to come into view.

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David Ng
Vertical Learning

Founder and Chief Learning Officer of Vertical Learning Labs