An early session highlight from the 2009 CUE Conference was the final bonus session that I attended today. Joe Wood suggested that I attend Debra Pickering’s session “Using Technology to Enhance Instruction and Learning.” Since Debra is an associate of Robert Marzano, the opening keynote speaker for the conference, this sounded like a good idea. Although Debra began her session by indicating that her research about using technology to impact instruction and learning was based upon interactive whiteboards, that particular topic was rarely mentioned during the session. Her overall theme was for teachers to carefully consider how they set learning objectives and how they proceed with integrating technology into their lessons.
Among my personal highlights from the session was the following point. For teachers and administrators who follow studies published in each edition of Ed Week, something to keep in mind “regarding instructional strategies; there are no ‘high yield’ strategies; only ‘high probability’ strategies.” To clarify Debra pointed out that for every instructional strategy, some research can be found to indicate that it improves student learning and some research can be found to indicate that it negatively impacts student learning. An important factor when looking at instructional strategies is to find those that have been shown to increase success in many situations, not focus on strategies that show a huge impact in particular situations. Related to this point, Debra cautioned that “No instructional strategy works equally well in all situations.” She also specifically mentioned about instructional strategies concerning technology that the second year of the strategy often does not show the same results as the first year. This can be due to the focus of the students upon the technology and not the learning goal.
Probably the most amusing part of the session was Debra’s discussion about learning goals. While discussing instructional strategies, an important aspect is to look at the learning goals to which the instructional strategies are applied. As an illustration, she walked the audience through several classroom activities and asked them to identify the learning goals. The greatest laughs were heard when she mentioned California Missions Projects and showed several great student projects for sale on eBay and the variety of images available on the Internet focusing on Mole Day. The point was made about questioning what students learn from the structure of these activities.
Antwone Fisher ipod Debra did share some interesting research about feedback as a tool for instruction and learning. “Interactive teaching has been demonstrated to lead to learning gains.” I have always thought of this to mean that students need and benefit from copious amounts of feedback from teachers. In fact, it has always bugged me that students don’t received specific feedback from standardized tests. However, Debra pointed out research from John Hattie that “feedback is most powerful when it is student-to-teacher.” In an apparent example of true 21st century learning skills, students display larger growths in learning when they explain to teachers what they feel they need to work on. For more information, Debra pointed us to John’s book, Visible Learning.
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The Mission rip I now need to revaluate my learning goals for the workshop I will be presenting on Saturday 
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