Tessera Program for Gifted Young Students

The Tessera Program at Libby Center, Spokane, WA is a one day per week program for highly capable students in grades 3 - 6. These students represent the top 3% of their norm group. Students are selected on the basis of academic, intellectual, and creative ability. Information from parents and teachers combined with objective test data determines eligibility. All students who meet the set criteria

For over 30 years, teaming has been an integral part of the Tessera Program for highly capable elementary students in Spokane, Washington. Tessera Program teachers work together to provide a differentiated curriculum and enriched learning environments to help highly gifted students reach their highest potential.

The Microsoft Innovative Teacher Network offers a Virtual Classroom Tour of Tessera program.

Most teachers, including mobile PC users, can gain at least one new insight by reviewing this program description.

Call for Education Entrepreneur Fellowship Cohort Two Applications

David Harris announces that The Mind Trust is now accepting applications for the second cohort of its Education Entrepreneur Fellowship (the first cohort will be announced in May 2008).

The Fellowship, a nationally unique incubator for transformative education ventures, offers promising education entrepreneurs the opportunity to develop and launch their break-the-mold education ventures and the support necessary for success.

This looks like a reasonable program for teachers using Tablet PCs, UMPCs, MIDs, and other mobile PC in classrooms and for school lessons. These devices speak to teacher quality, instructional effeciency, and providing learning anywhere, anytime, and for any reason to any learning.

Step up, you entrepreneurial mobile PC educators.

Fellows receive a full-time annual salary of $90,000 for two years, benefits, and customized training. Fellows who opt to live in Indianapolis will also get office space at The Mind Trust.

Interested candidates: Apply online.

Deadline for Statements of Intent: September 5, 2008.

Fellowships Awarded: By December 1, 2008.

Additional Information: Visit their website or contact them at info@themindtrust.org or 317-822-8102.

About The Mind Trust: The Mind Trust’s mission is to improve dramatically public education for underserved students by empowering education entrepreneurs to develop or expand transformative education initiatives. The Mind Trust is currently in the process of selecting its first cohort of Education Entrepreneur Fellows. The Mind Trust received 146 Statements of Intent from applicants with a rich array of experience and backgrounds from all over the country. In addition to the Fellowship, The Mind Trust also has a Venture Fund which has invested $2,885,000 to bring Teach For America , The New Teacher Project and College Summit to Indianapolis , where The Mind Trust is based.


---------------------------------------------------------
David Harris
President and CEO
The Mind Trust
407 North Fulton Street, Suite 102
Indianapolis, IN 46202
Phone: 317-822-8102 ext. 100
Cellular: 317-450-8226
Fax: 317-822-8149
Email: http://us.f819.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=dharris@themindtrust.org
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Transforming Class Lectures to Interactive Online Demos

Tableteers and other venture educators may gain insight into transforming class lessons into interactive online demonstrations by participating in an upcoming Webcast for sales people.

Topic: Transforming Your Sales Calls into Interactive Online Demos.

Live Event: Wednesday, April 16, 2008.

Teachers and sales people try to affect behavior change, but use different words to describe their successes. For purposes of viewing this webcast, consider teacher's word "learning" to have similar functions of sales people "closing" a sale.

Sales people are finding that it's more effective and efficient to demonstrate online a product or service to prospects anytime and anywhere without using a bottomless budget line. It seems reasonable that some of these sales techniques could increase PK20 school student learning rates as well as sales closing rates.

I wonder how many educators and homeschoolers will find this webcast thought provoking, if not useful?

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Receive $1.4M from Gates Foundation

The Charlotte Business Journal announced that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated $1.4M to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS).

In partnership with the Data Wise Institute at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education, CMS will train teachers and administrators to use test scores and grades to develop effective approaches that ensure all students graduate on time and prepared for the challenges of college, work, and life.

Kudos, CMS educators for preparing your programs so that students can gain from this grant.

Mr. Winkle Goes to School: Movies for Professional Development

Mathew Needleman, at Creating Lifelong Learners, offers an intriguing original three minute movie he made about the need to modernize schools, include technology, use project based learning, and offer culturally relevant teaching. It's a creative representation of Rip Van Wiinkle waking up and finding that not much has changed in schools during his sleep.

He said you may use it with others; I prefer to suggest you view it on his site, thus giving him credit for his effort and insights. Please let him know what you think of his Rip.

Kudos, Mathew, and thanks for sharing your movie with us.

Innovative Learning Conference 2008: Call for Papers

This is a friendly reminder to submit a proposal to present at INNOVATIVE LEARNING CONFERENCE (ILC). ILC is devoted to advancing student achievement through an interactive event that includes hands-on workshops, concurrent sessions, meetings and exhibitions.

Submission Deadline: APRIL 1, 2008.

Event: Innovative Learning Conference 2008 "Achievement Through Innovation"

Event Date: October 14 – 16, 2008 San Jose Convention Center, San Jose, CA

Who should present: Educators of all levels and curricular areas. ILC is designed for teachers, principals, district administrators, curriculum designers, media specialists, technology directors and other educators.

As an ILC presenter, you can share successes with colleagues and showcase your school, region, or county's successful implementations of innovative technology solutions.

Topics of papers:
Successful classroom practices
Creative teaching and learning solutions
Research
Policies
Innovative tools and strategies that have been successful in improving student achievement across all K-12 curricula.

ILC welcomes applications to present from education professionals representing all levels, content areas, and specialties, as well as business and industry experts. If accepted, your presentation will be scheduled as one of the 55-minute sessions planned during the three-day conference.

Application to present

Tableteers and other mobile PC venture educators, here's a venue to share what you know and have learned about using mobile PCs to increase student learning.

Let us know what you propose, so we can look for you on the program!

Learning Efficiency Scale

From a view of a learner, learning efficiency means spending less time, effort, and other personal resources acquiring a given set of information or skills. It also means gaining something of personal value in exchange for those resources. In this sense, teachers choose the level of learning efficiency that their students may earn. Teachers know that one way of presenting a lesson can take a few seconds, another way may take a few hours. They decide the timeframe, degree of difficulty a student will encounter, evaluation standards, etc. for each lesson. Mobile PCs offer ways for teachers to provide more efficient learning options for students.

After drafting a series of principles and checklists related to learning efficiency, I decided to see if I had enough material to draft a proof of concept learning efficiency scale. Here's parts of that draft. I think enough exists at least for teachers to conduct mental experiments and informal evaluations of learning efficiency by learners and observers of lessons.

Learning Efficiency Scale

This Learning Efficiencies Scale (LES) yields a measure of instructional competence, e.g., power or proficiency. It provides a framework for students and school observers to rank the relative capacity of school lessons and instructional material to yield intended student behavior. Learning efficiencies describe which instruction assists a student to reach a learning criterion quicker, easier, or with less effort when compared with other possible ways of reaching the same criterion (Heiny, 2007).

Assumptions
LES uses the assumption that learning efficiencies reside with the instructor. That is, teachers or teaching material simplify presentations to the bare minimum number of steps and content necessary for a student to demonstrate learning each lesson. Instructional simplicity contrasts with other rating scales that use an assumption that learning efficiencies reside with the learner.

Scientific Principles
LES uses several enduring scientific principles that indicate state-of-the-art (SOTA) of instructional presentations that yield efficient learning. These principles have legacies that extend from millennia old instruction practices and 19th century studies of learning. Many instruction programs and materials use eclectic informal and unidentified mixtures of these principles. Names of SOTA principles derive from several theories:

Trial-and-error learning – as adapted for use with mobile PCs (Heiny, L., 2005) as Direct Learning in beginning academic subjects.

Stimulus-Response learning – as adapted to instruction-learning equations by numerous behavioral specialists in a wide range of academic subjects, and by educators mostly in rhetoric.

Two Choice Visual Discrimination Analysis – as adapted and elaborated beyond the Try Another Way technology.

Direct Instruction – based on ancient instruction practices used in many cultures to sustain social institutions, such as families, economies, polities, and religions; adapted into one of the most sophisticated and largest empirically tested, technically based instruction practices and curricula available from preschool through high school.

Each principle has a body of peer reviewed experimental study reports that offer technical definitions and procedures in order to replicate results and to apply these principles in other settings, such as schools and mobile PC learning venues.

So What?
Teachers already know these four principles, but have few guides for using them quickly and concisely to plan and conduct instruction.

LES brings into one instrument assessments of how use of these instructional principles influences academic behavior, specifically learning from a given lesson.

LES assesses how variations in use of technical details in the instruction-learning equation affect the likelihood of a student reaching a technical criterion for learning each lesson. These assessments allow instructors to make technical refinements to instruction and content in order to increase student learning rates.

Counterpoints
Some teachers hold that they must first consider the circumstances of a learner before they can select an instructional process or material for a lesson. They contend that they teach humans, not other animals, and therefore, must respect learners differently from applying scientific principles and predetermined procedures through lessons.

They also say that each learner must come to class ready to learn as defined by each teacher’s idea of readiness.

Some people hold that instruction is an art, an indefinable process with nuances acquired only through professional training and practice. Teaching is not a mechanical process. Many teachers consider it an insult to suggest that anyone can reduce instruction to several objectively observable and repeatable principles that affect student learning rates.

Also, teachers blog daily and comment frequently in professional association and union meetings about heavy workloads that detract from their best instruction. They say they know what’s best to do, but cannot do so, because they lack sufficient resources. They assert that non-educators cannot accurately assess their competence.

Hypothesis
The more efficient a lesson, the more time and resources the instructor has for another lesson, thus the higher the likelihood those students will learn more than students with less efficient lessons.

Who Cares?
Those seeking to increase student learning rates can use this scale or just its ideas to refine instruction and content without changing tangible, material resources available to either the instructor or learners.

The Scale
The Learning Efficiencies Scale measures and compares the relative amount of instructional resources used until a student fulfills the learning criterion for a lesson. Instructional resource use may occur through face-to-face, one-on-one, group, mobile PC or some assemblage of these instructional modes. In its most simple form, the fewer learner resources used to meet a learning criterion, the more efficient the learning.

The referent for judging the level of efficiency is what-is-possible according to scientific data. References do not account for state-of-practice and other reasons for lower than maximum assessments defined by the four scientific data principles.

LES reports instruction as Highly Efficient, Efficient, Normally Efficient, Less Efficient, or Inert (Laissez-faire) Efficiency.

The Highly Efficient learning assessment uses five stars to symbolize it, Efficient uses four stars, Normally Efficient uses three stars, Less Efficient uses two stars, and the Inert (Laissez-faire) Efficiencies learning assessment uses one star as its symbol.

Dimensions of instructional resources measured to categorize efficiency levels include: use of task sequencing; of forward and of backward chaining; of redundant cues; of behavioral reinforcers; of shape, color, size, and position; of clock time; and of number of instruction-trial blocks. Other resources may be added or substituted when data indicate their contributions to efficiencies.

Each resource has technical definitions and observable, countable indices that accumulate to rank an instructional lesson or material according to its learning efficiencies.

Star Ratings
The number of stars assigned to an efficiency level symbolizes the instructional capacity to yield efficient learning.

***** Highly Efficient instruction receives a Five Star Rating,
**** Efficient instruction receives Four Stars,
*** Normally Efficient receives Three Stars,
** Less Efficient receives Two Stars, and
* Inert / Laissez-faire receives One Star.

Scale Based Assessments
Several procedures exist for assessing learning efficiencies. They allow using this tool as a nominal level scale.

The easiest index of learning efficiency is to count the number of minutes (or seconds) that elapses from the beginning of instruction until all students meet criterion for learning that lesson. A lesson that takes five minutes to meet criterion is more efficient than one that takes 50 minutes to reach the same result.

A second index ...

Please let me know, what value you find in this incomplete draft. What makes sense, what seems a stretch beyond available data, etc.

(I'll edit this post and add more later.)

Tablet PC and Pen-based Technology in Education Research

The two best collections to date of peer reviewed papers describe existing research and program evaluations of impacts Tablet PCs and pen-based technologies have in schools and on students. Educators, researchers and other scholars presented these papers during the 2006 and 2007 Workshop on the Impact of Pen-based Technology on Education at Purdue University.

WIPTE 2007 Monograph

Berque, D.A., Prey, J.C., and Reed, R.H. (eds.), (2007). The Impact of Tablet PCs and Pen-based Technology on Education, 2007: Beyond the Tipping Point, West Lafayette, IN. Purdue University Press. (Available for purchase through amazon.com for $16.47, ISBN: 1-55753-461-6.)

WIPTE 2006 Monograph

Berque, D.A., Prey, J.C., and Reed, R.H. (eds.) (2006). The Impact of Tablet PCs and Pen-based Technology on Education: Vignettes, Evaluations, and Future Directions, West Layfayette, IN: Purdue University Press. (available for $15.61 on amazon.com. Orders may also be placed through Purdue University Press by calling Bookmasters at 1-800-247-6553. ISBN 1-55753-434-9.)

If you haven't done so already, be sure to attend the upcoming wipte conference for the latest research information.

Web2.0 and Special Education

Pat, an experienced special education teachers, blogs about topics related to teaching procedures. Check out this post that lists steps to take for using Web2.0 with special education students.

Before working with the student, write out a list of steps they will need to follow (task analysis). Some students can even check off each step as they finish it. Having written steps to follow is a safety net for some special education students and they can refer to it whenever they forget what to do next.

Thanks, Pat, for sharing your procedures with others. I expect that you have helped at least one additional student beyond your classroom by sharing. You set a brisk pace for others of us special ed teachers to emulate.

Perhaps we'll meet at CEC shortly. Do any of your students use a Tablet PC, UMPC, MID, or other mobile PC?

Elmer's Ultimate Science Fair Sweepstakes

Elmer's Ultimate Science Fair Sweepstakes invites you to join their program to send 3 teachers, 3 students, and 3 parents to Washington, D.C.

... to the Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge in October 2008!

Five runner up schools will receive $1,000 in products from Elmer's and Discovery Education.

Check out the rules. NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER, ... .

Start voting today and put your school on the leader board!

Investing in Their Future at Ariel Community School

John Rogers has made a commitment as a partner to students at the Ariel Community Academy (ACA), a one-of-a-ckind public elementary school on the South Side of Chicago. He encourages experimenting with financial literacy in elementary schools. He wants to add an "I" for investment to the 3 Rs. Reshma Kapadea drew out these descriptions during an interview with John.

My dad had a lot of rules he had set up for me before I was born. He had a set time when I should have a checking account and a savings account. He wanted me in the stock market at 12 and a summer job at 16. It was all set in stone. At first it really wasn’t fun getting stocks. It took a while until the dividend checks became meaningful. Then that really started to get your attention.

At ACA, teachers weave financial literacy throughout PreK-8th grade curricula. Imagine having a conversation with a second grader about scarcity and analyzing income statements and annual reports with middle schoolers. Starting at age 12, students begin managing investments funds with $20,000.

Students take basics—from biology to Spanish—plus classes on entrepreneurship and international investing. Teachers reinforce financial and economic concepts in every class, for example tying globalization into social studies.

Most impressive, is the $20,000 each incoming first-grade class gets from Ariel Mutual Funds and Chicago based Nuveen Investments, another school contributor. The two firms manage the portfolio until the students reach seventh grade, then the kids start making their own investment decisions. When they graduate, they return the initial $20,000. Half the gains go toward a school gift; the rest is split evenly among the students.

The eighth-grade portfolio stands at $30,771—a 12 percent return since the kids took it over, trailing the S&P by three points.



It's intriguing to read quotes of middle schoolers receiving stock ticker updates by text messages during the school day. Aren't mobile PCs a valuable tool for school!

Thanks, Dave Carpenter, for your AP article "A test of fiscal fitness." It reminded me of ACA and its worthy curriculum addition.

I wonder how many other schools emphasize financial investments and entrepreneurship with or without Tablet PCs, UMPC, MIDS, and other mobiles? Has anyone taken an inventory?

Blabberize, An Attractive Distraction or Necessary Tool?

Blabberize allows adding motion and voice to photos and other images. This tool can make a lesson more attractive for some learners and an attractive distraction from the content of the voice for others.

See the talking aplaca demo! Cute.

Thanks, Nancy Flanagan, for reminding me of this tool, and thanks, Chris Pirillo for introducing Blabberize to me earlier.

Prepare for the Future of Work in 2011

Here's another webcast for Tableteers and other teachers to help students update their understanding of a future of work and how businesses may adapt to it. This webcast might be of special interest to young entrepreneurs and to students enrolled in entrepreneurial studies and programs.
BNET offers a webcast to help business owners prepare for what some see as the future of work.

According to a recent study by IDC, nearly 75 percent of the U.S. workforce will be mobile by the end of 2011 - but research shows that businesses are not aligned with this trend due to a slow adoption rate of technologies that can make this transition simple for both employee and employer. (Bold added.)

Topics will include:

Trends and shifts in the workplace
The business case for implementing a flexible work plan
Factors that contribute to organizational resistance
Tips for getting your business up to speed


DATE: Wednesday, March 19, 2008

TIME: 2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT / 6:00 PM GMT

REGISTRATION: required.

Perhaps at least one student and one educator will discover hints about adaptations they may make in their learning and instruction, especially about use of mobile PCs for teaching and learning.

Mobile PCs, College Preparation and Intellectual Disabilities Teaching Lessons

This third installment of preparing a student with intellectual disabilities for college illustrates ways of implementing assumptions as lessons. A growing number of exercises that give priority to one or more of these assumptions exist for use with mobile PCs as well as uncounted many bound workbooks appear in commercial venues on and off of the Internet.

If you have a Tablet PC, UMPC, MID, or another mobile PC, consider using it with your college bound young learner. Ink appears to provide openings for more fun and rapid learning than most paper and pencil exercises. And, please let mobile PC software and hardware developers know what works for your learner and what changes you would like to see in developers' products. By offering your feedback so developers may make adjustments in their products, you will assist other learners to achieve more than without your evaluations.

Implement Assumption 1: Count. When teaching, count something related to the lesson. For example, if you want your student to color inside the lines, count the number of objects colored without going outside of lines.

Write down these frequencies, so you can compare the process as well as the results of lessons, sessions, days, etc. Teachers count number of pieces of paper used, problems solved, words repeated correctly, etc. Use these terms to search online for other artifacts of lessons to count, and how others record them: trial blocks, precision teaching logs, direct learning, direct instruction, contingency management.

Implement Assumption 2: Behavior patterns. Use this assumption by considering each action of your student as consisting of three parts: something happening immediately before what you see or hear, the activity you observe, and something that happens immediately after the activity. She will tell you what prompts before, during, and after that she will use to complete the task.

For example, if she draws what you think are too many marks beyond circle lines, make bigger circles or different shaped or size crayons or different texture paper until she has enough physical control to make smaller lines. Consider every task to consist of these same generic three parts of a behavior pattern.

Lessons to learn to identify and use patterns (use these basic lessons as prompts/reminders whenever her learning rate slows in a more complex task):

Hear-say patterns: sing songs together; play keyboard, kazoo, or some other in unison; repeat TV commercials together; tap patterns with fingers, sticks; ...

See-do patterns: dance together; complete connect the dots, find the hidden pictures, and other such visual puzzles together; ...

Implement Assumption 3: Learn anything. Instruct as though everyone can learn anything, given enough time. Instructors can manage the content of time by breaking an activity into smaller parts that the learner can do successfully. Use smallest steps needed to increase performing as you want for her.

For example, use a Dr. Seuss story book Green Eggs and Ham consisting of one syllable words before introducing multiple syllable words. Use sight-say approach to reading this story. Read it to her at first underlining each word with your finger. Then, hold her finger under each word as you say it; ask her to say it with you after you say it through. Copy a word a day from the book on another piece of paper; tell her what the word is, have her repeat the word, find the word in the book, return to the word on the paper; add words to form a word list; after enough words exist, have her arrange the words to match the book page, etc.

That's a start, pedantic, but open to editing and use. I'll address other assumptions later, then on to lessons.

13 Month Old Reads

Mike Celizic describes what occurred during the Today Show interview with parents of the 17 month old girl who started reading at age 13 months. I referred to it yesterday in the Ethan Bortnick post, but without as much detail as Mike offers in a good quick read.

His description reminds me of a comment Winifred Kirk made after returning from Brittan in middle 1960s: "Their students all seem to read. What do we do that keeps our students from reading like theirs?" I still wonder about he question.

Has anyone tried working with a mobile PC with an infant?

WIPTE Calls for Proposals

Ed Evans of wipte asks Tableteers and other Ink users in education to please mark your calendars for 2 important WIPTE dates!

June 16, 2008 - Proposals due

October 15-16, 2008 - WIPTE 2008 held at Purdue University

As in the past, they have calls for papers and posters.

This year, they're adding a new genre for demonstrating the impact of pen based education through a Call for Videos.

You can find details for all 3 Calls for Proposals on the WIPTE website - http://www.purdue.edu/wipte.

WIPTE is a great opportunity to share in a scholarly way the impact (value) of pen-based technology on education. It's also a great place to talk to colleagues and see how others are leveraging this technology.

Plan to attend in October. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact the WIPTE committee via email at wipte@lists.purdue.edu.

Google for Educators

Google thinks (I know, people, not organiztions, think) your class will be eager to take part in Doodle 4 Google.

(This is) a competition where we invite schoolkids to play around with the Google logo and see what new designs they can come up with. The theme of this year's competition is "What if...?", a deliberately open-ended idea that we hope will get those youthful imaginations working overtime. There are great gifts for the finalists, and the winner's doodle will actually replace the Google logo for an entire day. So register your school and get those students doodling!

Students attending Tablet PC schools have an advantage here over others, because you already know how to use Ink and other mobile PC features for artwork.

Registration closes: March 28, 2008.

Entries due: By April 12, 2008.

Go for it! Tableteers.

Instructional Errors and Pleasure Areas of the Brain

Here's a research question that seems important with results unavailable in literature about teaching-learning processes: What relationships exist between teachers using less than the most effective instructional procedures and activation of the pleasure areas of their brains? In other words, which teachers use less effective instruction because they receive some satisfaction, whether because they consider they're doing their best, or for some other reason(s).

Richard Conniff, MSN Money, recently published an article about influences pleasure areas of the brain (the nucleus accumbens) have on making mistakes, and why smart people may take excessive risks. He cites experimental studies of how pleasure affects decisions people make about financial choices. Apparently, casinos have figured out how inexpensive food, unexpected gifts, etc. increase gambling.

I haven't looked, and don't know answers, but I wonder if such studies would address in part why some teachers persist with relatively ineffective instructional procedures in spite of data they know indicating such risks. Do teachers take such (extraordinary?) risks because they receive some brain pleasure area stimulation that influences their decision making process?

What do others think of studying systematically such questions of influences that personal pleasure has on instructional choices?

I can imagine political, religious, and teachers' union objections, but, in the spirit of comity and wisdom, I wonder what gains such studies might yield for learners?

Hmm. This is beyond likelihood of happening, but I wonder if preservice teachers who know what activates their brain pleasure center would halp students more in earning with higher learning rates than those who do not know?

Ethan Bortnick Plays Leno

Maybe you saw Ethan Bortnick, the 6 year old pianist, on Jay Leno last night. It was Ethan's second appearance. If you missed him, check out his website and enjoy his performance of Bach, Mozart, Joplin, and a wide range of other artists. Many of us appreciate such talent for its own sake, irrespective of its entertainment utility.

Learning of Ethan brings back memories of stories from and about other young talents. One that immediately came to mind was of a 5 year old who could read four languages, handle advanced math calculations, find unknowns, handle basic science constructs, etc. His kindergarten teacher wanted him to wait another year "to mature" for school. "He just sits in circle." When asked why, he said, "I'm waiting for school to start!" The principal put him promptly into 1st grade. Second probably would have been more appropriate for his academic skill development rate.

When I mentioned Ethan to someone, that person mentioned seeing a 13 month old that reads featured recently on a TV magazine. Isn't it great, Teachers, to learn of these talented youth?

I wonder how they will respond to schools, and if anyone has worked with him with a Tablet PC. It seems like mobile PCs would allow him access to more music and other skills of interest to him.

Keep up the good work, Ethan! I hope this post helps expand your fan base.

Mobile PCs, College Preparation and Intellectual Disabilities Assumptions

(Edited March 11, 2008)

Several assumptions permit thinking it possible to prepare a student with intellectual disabilities for college. Learners use them implicitly when trying to complete lessons. Most teachers and parents know these assumptions and use them when instructing learners.

I and many others have used them when evaluating teacher lessons and performance. They're generic assumptions, based on experimental empirical research conducted over the past four decades, including by Gold, Patterson and other Skinnerians, Zeaman and House and hundreds (if not thousands) of other behavioral scientists in the 1960s and 1970s. Observers can analyze most teaching and learning as well as lessons using these generic assumptions about how learners change behavior patterns.

Teachers and evaluators and others use a technical language to distinguish aspects of behavior patterns to manage and observe. This language offers shortcut ways of describing what teachers do. Technical word developers have tried to create descriptors with one definition that has a limited number of ways operationalize each.

Assumptions

1. If it exists, we can see, hear, touch, or in other ways identify it and count it. This is a fundamental assumption used to understand learning as behavior, the principal occupation of public school teachers. Students with intellectual disabilities instructed by people who use this assumption to arrange instruction have demonstrated notable academic and employment related accomplishments beyond conventional classroom outcomes.

2. Life exists as patterns of behavior. Whatever we see, etc. exists as identifiable parts that can manage in sequence. Such management exists in various technical forms that instructors may use.

3. Anyone can learn any pattern given enough time. Schools' primary duty is to introduce learners to patterns other people use to survive in likely settings where they may live (including in colleges).

4. Teachers and parents can only observe behavior, and must infer learning, cognition, and motivation from behavior.

5. Learners see lessons as one or more of three types:

Type I: Tell me so I know (direct instruction, tell them what you will tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them);

Type II: Show me so I can do it too (direct learning; imitation and generalization; I see you do it, I do it); and

Type III: Teacher's playing hide-and-seek, and I must figure out what I am to know or do (discovery learning, etc.).

6. Learning consists of two parts: content and processes. Learners must figure out what these parts are in a lesson and how they go together to resolve each problem.

7. Learners go from known to unknown, easy to hard, simple to complex facts and processes to resolve problems efficiently.

8. Reinforcers in the learner's environment, by definition, increase the likelihood that behavior pattern will occur again.

9. An increasing number of mobile PC software programs exist that use one or more of these assumptions. Teachers, parents, and other software evaluators may use these assumptions to consider the relative learning effectiveness and efficiency of these programs.


Taechers and parents may use these assumptions to organize lessons that prepare someone with intellectual disabilities for college.

Let me know if you have questions. I'll describe a few lessons in another post.