A mid-year look at Accelerated Reader

I thought it might be useful to post links to two on-line articles about implementing Accelerated Reader in the classroom in an effort to better inform our practice, and insure that we are best serving our students.
Both articles are sponsored by the International Reading Association, and take two different points of view.
The first is by Keith Topping- " Formative Assessment of Reading Comprehension by Computer: Advantages and Disadvantages of The Accelerated Reader Software " Professor Topping concentrates on best practices:

The characteristics of good implementation suggested by the Sanders and Topping (1999) report described under Research on The Accelerated Reader imply that teachers should do the following:

* Have students read as much as possible -- but guide those above fifth grade away from reading a large number of very easy books
* Monitor student progress carefully
* Check that students' percentage of correct answers is at 85 percent or higher
* Generate and study at-risk reports
* Intervene when the above goals are not being met -- especially with low ability students, and probably also with high ability students
* Increase the challenge level slowly and gradually
* Monitor carefully to ensure that challenge does not become so great as to begin to depress percentage of correct answers

Experience suggests that to these might be added the following general guidelines to good implementation:

* Teachers should be trained in implementation
* Participation must be voluntary for students
* There should be a large number of AR books available for students to choose from
* Books should be coded for readability to enable students to manage challenge on their own
* Extra opportunities for reading practice should be provided at school (in and out of class) and encouraged at home and in the community
* Student access to computers for the purposes of AR test taking should be easy, frequent, and immediate
* Students should be encouraged to reflect on the implications for action provided by the feedback they receive, with self-management encouraged
* Less able readers should be permitted to test on books read to and with them, as should their peer helpers
* Parents should be aware of the program, regularly receive AR reports from the school and respond to them, and be encouraged to ensure that their children have opportunities to read at home
* Peer tutoring should be incorporated, in support of reading, testing, or both
* Extrinsic rewards should be used only if necessary, effective, and culturally appropriate, and then the rewards offered should be books or reading-related items
* Retesting should be allowed only in exceptional circumstances
* Criteria for “Model Classroom” status should be met (even if certification is not applied for)

Practitioners might want to create a checklist for self-assessment of AR implementation quality in their own school by printing these points or copying and pasting them into a word-processing

The second is by Linda Labbo- "Questions Worth Asking about The Accelerated Reader: A Response to Topping". From her introduction:

I agreed to write this response primarily because, after reading Topping's commentary, I agreed with his observation: “Like any other educational tool, how it [AR] is used might be more important than if it is used.” It is interesting to note that much of the research Topping cites as evidence of the effectiveness of the AR program is based more on studies that look at if it is used rather than how. It is clear that statistical analyses of large-scale standardized-test scores from schools where AR is used provide interesting data; however, such studies do not shed light on the myriad, uncontrolled-for variables within the cultural context of a classroom or school.

In schools across the United States, educators are involved in multiple initiatives intended to do everything from integrate computers into the curriculum to decrease the potential for school violence. The Accelerated Reader may be perceived by some as an easy way simultaneously to meet goals related to computer use, to support students' development of reading comprehension, and to improve scores on standardized reading tests. The purpose of this article is to raise some questions worth asking about the AR program and to highlight the importance of studying how it is used.

Linda takes a more critical view of the effectiveness of A/R:

Educators, parents, business partners, and administrators wonder if the AR program is consistently effective in helping meet goals in these areas. For a program whose design is intended to free teachers from spending time and effort reading children's book reports, from keeping logs of books children have read, and from scoring comprehension questions about those books (How AR Works, 1995), it appears to cause many teachers to spend a great deal of time and effort on figuring out how to achieve “good” program implementation.

Between the two articles, every issue that any staff member has raised about Accelerated Reader is touched upon.

Fads in Education-here's an example

The New York Times has an article describing a new fad among Japanese parents: Indian Education. This makes me laugh, because I remember all the discussions(still going on Today, I might add)various pundits have had about the faults of our educational system versus the virtues of Japanese teaching techniques.

January 2, 2008
Losing an Edge, Japanese Envy India’s Schools
By MARTIN FACKLER

MITAKA, Japan — Japan is suffering a crisis of confidence these days about its ability to compete with its emerging Asian rivals, China and India. But even in this fad-obsessed nation, one result was never expected: a growing craze for Indian education.

Despite an improved economy, many Japanese are feeling a sense of insecurity about the nation’s schools, which once turned out students who consistently ranked at the top of international tests. That is no longer true, which is why many people here are looking for lessons from India, the country the Japanese see as the world’s ascendant education superpower.

Bookstores are filled with titles like “Extreme Indian Arithmetic Drills” and “The Unknown Secrets of the Indians.” Newspapers carry reports of Indian children memorizing multiplication tables far beyond nine times nine, the standard for young elementary students in Japan.

And Japan’s few Indian international schools are reporting a surge in applications from Japanese families.

At the Little Angels English Academy & International Kindergarten, the textbooks are from India, most of the teachers are South Asian, and classroom posters depict animals out of Indian tales. The kindergarten students even color maps of India in the green and saffron of its flag.

Little Angels is located in this Tokyo suburb, where only one of its 45 students is Indian. Most are Japanese.

Viewing another Asian country as a model in education, or almost anything else, would have been unheard-of just a few years ago, say education experts and historians.

Much of Japan has long looked down on the rest of Asia, priding itself on being the region’s most advanced nation. Indeed, Japan has dominated the continent for more than a century, first as an imperial power and more recently as the first Asian economy to achieve Western levels of economic development.

But in the last few years, Japan has grown increasingly insecure, gripped by fear that it is being overshadowed by India and China, which are rapidly gaining in economic weight and sophistication. The government here has tried to preserve Japan’s technological lead and strengthen its military. But the Japanese have been forced to shed their traditional indifference to the region.

Grudgingly, Japan is starting to respect its neighbors.

“Until now, Japanese saw China and India as backwards and poor,” said Yoshinori Murai, a professor of Asian cultures at Sophia University in Tokyo. “As Japan loses confidence in itself, its attitudes toward Asia are changing. It has started seeing India and China as nations with something to offer.”

Last month, a national cry of alarm greeted the announcement by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that in a survey of math skills, Japan had fallen from first place in 2000 to 10th place, behind Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea. From second in science in 2000, Japan dropped to sixth place.

While China has stirred more concern here as a political and economic challenger, India has emerged as the country to beat in a more benign rivalry over education. In part, this reflects China’s image in Japan as a cheap manufacturer and technological imitator. But India’s success in software development, Internet businesses and knowledge-intensive industries in which Japan has failed to make inroads has set off more than a tinge of envy.

Most annoying for many Japanese is that the aspects of Indian education they now praise are similar to those that once made Japan famous for its work ethic and discipline: learning more at an earlier age, an emphasis on memorization and cramming, and a focus on the basics, particularly in math and science.

India’s more demanding education standards are apparent at the Little Angels Kindergarten, and are its main selling point. Its 2-year-old pupils are taught to count to 20, 3-year-olds are introduced to computers, and 5-year-olds learn to multiply, solve math word problems and write one-page essays in English, tasks most Japanese schools do not teach until at least second grade.

Indeed, Japan’s anxieties about its declining competitiveness echo the angst of another nation two decades ago, when Japan was the economic upstart.

“Japan’s interest in learning from Indian education is a lot like America’s interest in learning from Japanese education,” said Kaoru Okamoto, a professor specializing in education policy at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.

As with many new things here, the interest in Indian-style education quickly became a fad.

Indian education is a frequent topic in forums like talk shows. Popular books claim to reveal the Indian secrets for multiplying and dividing multiple-digit numbers. Even Japan’s conservative education ministry has begun discussing Indian methods, said Jun Takai of the ministry’s international affairs division.

Eager parents try to send their children to Japan’s roughly half dozen Indian schools, hoping for an edge on the competitive college entrance exams.

In Tokyo, the two largest Indian schools, which teach kindergarten through junior high, mainly to Indian expatriates, received a sudden increase in inquiries from Japanese parents starting last year.

The Global Indian International School says that 20 of its some 200 students are now Japanese, with demand so high from Indian and Japanese parents that it is building a second campus in the neighboring city of Yokohama.

The other, the India International School in Japan, just expanded to 170 students last year, including 10 Japanese. It already has plans to expand again.

Japanese parents have expressed “very, very high interest” in Indian schools, said Nirmal Jain, principal of the India International School.

The boom has had the side effect of making many Japanese a little more tolerant toward other Asians.

The founder of the Little Angels school, Jeevarani Angelina — a former oil company executive from Chennai, India, who accompanied her husband, Saraph Chandar Rao Sanku, to Japan in 1990 — said she initially had difficulty persuading landlords to rent space to an Indian woman to start a school. But now, the fact that she and three of her four full-time teachers are non-Japanese Asians is a selling point.

“When I started, it was a first to have an English-language school taught by Asians, not Caucasians,” she said, referring to the long presence here of American and European international schools.

Unlike other Indian schools, Ms. Angelina said, Little Angels was intended primarily for Japanese children, to meet the need she had found when she sent her sons to Japanese kindergarten.

“I was lucky because I started when the Indian-education boom started,” said Ms. Angelina, 50, who goes by the name Rani Sanku here because it is easier for Japanese to pronounce. (Sanku is her husband’s family name.)

Ms. Angelina has adapted the curriculum to Japan with more group activities, less memorization and no Indian history. Encouraged by the kindergarten’s success, she said, she plans to open an Indian-style elementary school this year.

Parents are enthusiastic about the school’s rigorous standards.

“My son’s level is higher than those of other Japanese children the same age,” said Eiko Kikutake, whose son Hayato, 5, attends Little Angels. “Indian education is really amazing! This wouldn’t have been possible at a Japanese kindergarten.”

One of the things school computer labs compete against

One of the things we compete against is commercial online ventures that target kids. Parents tend to manage their kids "screen time"-by which they mean the time they spend on computer games, video games, television shows, and the internet. When a kid spends four hours a day on screens, what's it do to his development? Some parents worry about this, as well they might, and try to limit the amount of time their kid spends on screens. Kids fight back. Compromises are made. Kids wind up spending a more limited period of time on the computer doing things that they and their parents can agree on. I'd like them to be doing something constructive-writing in their blog, looking at cool educational sites, or sharing what they did in school with their parents. This article (NY Times; registration may be required) reminded me of why it's so hard to compete for screen time:

Web Playgrounds of the Very Young
By BROOKS BARNES

LOS ANGELES — Forget Second Life. The real virtual world gold rush centers on the grammar-school set.

Trying to duplicate the success of blockbuster Web sites like Club Penguin and Webkinz, children’s entertainment companies are greatly accelerating efforts to build virtual worlds for children. Media conglomerates in particular think these sites — part online role-playing game and part social scene — can deliver quick growth, help keep movie franchises alive and instill brand loyalty in a generation of new customers.

Second Life and other virtual worlds for grown-ups have enjoyed intense media attention in the last year but fallen far short of breathless expectations. The children’s versions are proving much more popular, to the dismay of some parents and child advocacy groups. Now the likes of the Walt Disney Company, which owns Club Penguin, are working at warp speed to pump out sister sites.

“Get ready for total inundation,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst at the research firm eMarketer, who estimates that 20 million children will be members of a virtual world by 2011, up from 8.2 million today.

Worlds like Webkinz, where children care for stuffed animals that come to life, have become some of the Web’s fastest-growing businesses. More than six million unique visitors logged on to Webkinz in November, up 342 percent from November 2006, according to ComScore Media Metrix, a research firm.

Club Penguin, where members pay $5.95 a month to dress and groom penguin characters and play games with them, attracts seven times more traffic than Second Life. In one sign of the times, Electric Sheep, a software developer that helps companies market their brands in virtual worlds like Second Life and There.com, last week laid off 22 people, about a third of its staff.

By contrast, Disney last month introduced a “Pirates of the Caribbean” world aimed at children 10 and older, and it has worlds on the way for “Cars” and Tinker Bell, among others. Nickelodeon, already home to Neopets, is spending $100 million to develop a string of worlds. Coming soon from Warner Brothers Entertainment, part of Time Warner: a cluster of worlds based on its Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera and D. C. comics properties.

Add to the mix similar offerings from toy manufacturers like Lego and Mattel. Upstart technology companies, particularly from overseas, are also elbowing for market share. Mind Candy, a British company that last month introduced a world called Moshi Monsters, and Stardoll, a site from Sweden, sign up thousands of members in the United States each day.

“There is a massive opportunity here,” said Steve Wadsworth, president of the Walt Disney Internet Group, in an interview last week.

Behind the virtual world gravy train are fraying traditional business models. As growth engines like television syndication and movie DVD sales sputter or plateau — and the Internet disrupts entertainment distribution in general — Disney, Warner Brothers and Viacom see online games and social networking as a way to keep profits growing.

But more is at stake than cultivating new revenue streams. For nearly 50 years, since the start of Saturday morning cartoons, the television set has served as the front door to the children’s entertainment business. A child encounters Mickey Mouse on the Disney Channel or Buzz Lightyear on a DVD and before long seeks out related merchandise and yearns to visit Walt Disney World.

Now the proliferation of broadband Internet access is forcing players to rethink the ways they reach young people. “Kids are starting to go to the Internet first,” Mr. Wadsworth said.

Disney’s biggest online world is Club Penguin, which it bought in August from three Canadians in a deal worth $700 million. At the time, more than 700,000 members paid fees of $5.95 a month, delivering annual revenue of almost $50 million.

Still, one world, even a very successful one, does not alter the financial landscape at a $35.5 billion company like Disney. So Disney is pursuing a portfolio approach, investing $5 million to $10 million per world to develop a string of as many as 10 virtual properties, people familiar with Disney’s plans said.

Tinker Bell’s world, called Pixie Hollow, illustrates the company’s game plan. Disney is developing the site internally — creative executives who help design new theme park attractions are working on it — and will introduce it this summer to help build buzz for “Tinker Bell,” a big-budget feature film set for a fall 2008 release.

Visitors to a rudimentary version of Pixie Hollow, reachable through Disney.com, have already created four million fairy avatars, or online alter egos, according to Disney. The site will ultimately allow users to play games (“help create the seasons”) and interact with other “fairies.” When avatars move across the screen, they leave a sparkling trail of pixie dust, a carefully designed part of the experience.

“We wanted to come up with a way to make flying around the site feel really good,” said Paul Yanover, executive vice president and managing director of Disney Online.

Disney’s goal is to develop a network of worlds that appeal to various age groups, much like the company’s model. Preschool children might start with Pixie Hollow or Toon Town, another of Disney’s worlds, grow into Club Penguin and the one for “Cars” and graduate to “Pirates of the Caribbean” and beyond, perhaps to fantasy football at ESPN.com.

“All the stars are aligning for virtual worlds to become a mass-market form of entertainment, especially for kids and families,” Mr. Yanover said.

If virtual worlds for adults are about escaping from run-of-the-mill lives, sites for children tap into the desire to escape from the confines of reality as run by mom and dad. “I get to decide everything on Club Penguin,” said Nathaniel Wartzman, age 9, of Los Angeles, who also has a membership to a world called RuneScape.

But shopping is a powerful draw, too; most sites let children accumulate virtual points or spend their allowance money to buy digital loot. “It’s really fun to buy whatever you want inside the game,” Nathaniel said in a telephone interview. For his penguin, “like for Christmas I bought a fireplace, a flat-screen TV and a Christmas tree,” he said.

Online worlds, which typically have low overhead and fat profit margins once they are up and running, charge a monthly fee of $5 to $15 and require the adoption of an avatar. Some sites are free and rely on advertising to make money; others are advertising and subscription hybrids. Webkinz relies on the sale of stuffed animals, which come with tags that unlock digital content.

The power of the virtual worlds business was shown recently when Vivendi announced a plan to buy Activision, a publisher of video games for consoles like the Sony PlayStation 3. Vivendi owns World of Warcraft, a virtual world for adults with more than nine million members and revenue of more than $1 billion.

Still, the long-term appetite for the youth-oriented sites is unclear. Fads have always whipsawed the children’s toy market, and Web sites are no different, analysts warn. Parents could tire of paying the fees, while intense competition threatens to undercut the novelty. There are now at least 10 virtual worlds that involve caring for virtual pets.

Privacy and safety are a growing concern, particularly as companies aim at younger children. Some virtual worlds are now meant to appeal to preschoolers, using pictures to control actions so that reading is not required.

And critics are sharpening their knives. “We cannot allow the media and marketing industries to construct a childhood that is all screens, all the time,” said Susan Linn, a Boston psychologist and the director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a nonprofit group that has complained of ads for movies on Webkinz.com.

Operators shrug off worries about fads and competition. “Are features like creating an avatar a long-term advantage for anyone? Probably not,” Mr. Yanover said. “The viability and sustainability of this business comes from the shifting behavior of kids and how they spend their leisure time.”

As for privacy and safety, companies point to a grid of controls. For instance, Neopets restricts children under 13 from certain areas unless their parents give permission in a fax. Several Neopets employees patrol the site around the clock, and messaging features are limited to approved words and phrases.

“Parents know they can trust our brand to protect kids,” said Steve Youngwood, executive vice president for digital media at Nickelodeon. “We see that as a competitive advantage.”

PAY ATTENTION: to the kids

Here's another good video to remind us to consider how we engage 21st century students in what are mostly antiquated classroom settings. You'll notice many of the statistics are old - yet still shocking. (When the clip starts to play you can click on the little box to the right of the loading bar and play it full screen.)

Low Tech Telephone to the Rescue

When we're thinking about ways to use technology to enhance the excitement of content we shouldn't forget the telephone. In one 8th grade class I was in recently the students were working on year long research projects including interviews of experts in their area of study. One student is doing his research on the Tuskegee Airmen from WWII. To help students share what they're learning as well as help them develop interviewing skills we hooked up a speaker phone and the student interviewed an 85 year old Tuskegee Airman veteran during the class. After the initial interview, members of the class asked additional questions. It turned into a high interest lesson.

Getting a speaker phone hooked up wasn't trivial. The wall phone was wired into the wall with no speaker, but we took the jack from the handset and plugged it into an old speaker phone and "lo and behold" we pushed the speaker button and there was a dial tone. We also videotaped the conversation so we'd have an audio record. It's easy to forget that just using the telephone to bring experts into the classroom can create a memorable experience for the students.

What we do in the lab

A parent tour came through the lab yesterday. One of the parents asked me if I taught lessons. Just what did I do?
My answer was that what I do is support the teachers. I don't think she believed me, but its true. Every year, in every grade, there's a sprint to teach all the standards before testing begins in the spring. There's a lot to cover, there are a lot of different learning styles, and different levels of motivation. It's a huge job.
Over the years, the teachers here have found the software that they feel helps their students the most in advancing them through all the different subjects they have to learn. One of the reasons I like working here is that I agree with all of their choices. Here are some of the main pieces of software we work with:

1) Math Arena by Daren Carstens-, transformational geometry, circle graphs, Venn diagrams, symmetry, percents, money and percent of change, number sequences, and probability. One of Margo's favorite math programs because it teaches concepts that are difficult to teach without the manipulation of figures that this program allows.


2) Math Blaster: the original ultimate drill and practice math software. Mathblaster has math facts drills that the kids actually think are fun. Days that they do either of these programs in the lab, we have to pry them out of their seats when class is over.



3) Type to Learn: We start teaching the kids some keyboarding skills in 2nd grade It's difficult for them, because their hands are too small for the keys. By 5th grade, the more skilled ones are already touch typing.




4) Kid Pix-it's a great tool to get kids enthusiastic about experimenting with what a computer can do. Book covers are a favorite project.






Colonial Williamsburg-This is actually a website, but it's a crucial part of the fifth grade curriculum. Electronic field trips, slide shows, interactive flash games-it's an amazing place to visit.




We have more software (Graph club, Inspiration, Google Earth, etc.) that I'll cover another day.

Shift happens updated

A few months ago, our friend Anne Bubnic told us about a great video piece on Youtube called Shift happens. Today, I saw the new version on the Dangerously Irrelevant Blog. It's worth watching and thinking about it(Even though it came out June 22,more than three months ago. What can I say? I don't have the time to blog as consistently as I'd like.)