• Pop Songs and Pedagogy: Research and Current Practices
• Using Technology in the Classroom Raises Student Achievement
• Ignite! Math is a Distinguished Achievement Award Finalist
• Benefits of Graduating to the Brick or ION Delivery Platform

Pop Songs and Pedagogy: Research and Current Practices

By: Jeff Knight, Head Writer

It was before Howard Gardner had written about multiple intelligences, and before neurologists like Daniel Levitin had mapped how the brain processes music, but the frustrated dad knew something was up. It was 1973, and David McCall was trying to make sense of his son's inability to master his multiplication tables, despite the apparent ease with which the young man memorized every Rolling Stones lyric on the radio. McCall put together a creative team that included musical director Bob Dorough, and Schoolhouse Rock was born.1 Thirty-six years later, most of us in our 30s and 40s will never forget "Conjunction Junction" and the many other Dorough compositions that broke new ground in using music as pedagogy.

Researchers, teachers, and educational media companies continue to explore and test the proposition that music can be used to boost engagement, motivation, and achievement. Rap to Roots, an after-school program that has been used in Cleveland and Chicago, leverages students' interest in rap music to boost academics.2 Flocabulary is a New York-based program that uses rap music to help students improve vocabulary in preparation for the SAT.3 For us at Ignite! Learning, music as pedagogy is one of our highest values. Sure, we like our animated characters, game interfaces, and interactive maps and timelines, and we crack ourselves up with our middle-school humor (some of us never got past an 8th-grade level of comedic sophistication), but what we hear from teachers and students is that the pieces that stick with kids the most are the songs.

In his 2008 dissertation, Dr. Lodge McCammon described his work using music-based teaching to enhance middle-school instruction. In the research project, 8th grade students learned curriculum-based songs, and their teacher used the lyrics to cover the content. McCammon notes that the project boosted both motivation and engagement while enhancing the learning environment for students, teachers and even parents. In fact, one parent sent an email to the teacher saying that his daughter and five other students, who were all part of the research project, had all started singing and dancing along with the science songs for fun during a birthday sleep over!4 Dr. McCammon is continuing to use music to engage students, as part of his ongoing work at The Friday Institute for Educational Innovation. (The Friday Institute is an extension and outreach program that is part of North Carolina State University's College of Education. You can learn more about them here: http://www.fi.ncsu.edu/ )

In the Winter 2008-2009 issue of the Journal of Research on Technology in Education a study found that using Ignite! Learning's Early American History course led to statistically significant gains in achievement for middle-school students.5 I can't assign a number to definitively say how much of that effect was caused by our punk-rock song about Benjamin Franklin, but-all kidding aside-music engages the brain in a way that not much else does.

That's especially true of the adolescent brain. A recent study asked 4,000 middle school students what most engaged them. One answer-more than video games, even more than cell phones-was music. In fact, 83% of the surveyed students said they often or very often used computers or mp3 players to acquire and listen to music. These same students said they were most engaged in school when they had the chance to learn using technology.6

It seems very clear that music has a powerful impact on the brain, can increase motivation and engagement, and can improve our ability to learn. More research is called for to quantify and specify this effect, but the dots are waiting to be connected.

1. McCord, Jeff, "My Hero, Dorough." Texas Monthly December 1998
2. O'Connor, Colleen. "Rap boosting kids' academics," The Denver Post 5/11/2009
3. Bans, Laura. "How Flocabulary, a Study-Guide Publisher, Reinvented Itself," Inc. Magazine, May, 2009.
4. McCammon, William Lodge. Chemistry to Music: Discovering how Music-Based Teaching Affects Academic Achievement and Student Motivation in an 8th Grade Science Class. Unpublished dissertation, N.C. State University, 2008.
5. Kingsley, Karla, and Boone, Randall. "Effects of Multimedia Software on Achievement of Middle School Students in an American History Class," Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 41 (2).
6. Spires, H.A., Lee, J., Turner, K., and Johnson, J. (2008), "Having Our Say: Middle Grade Student Perspectives on School, Technologies, and Academic Engagement." Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 40 (4).

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Technology in the Classroom Raises Student Achievement

By: Michael Whalen, Principal Instructional Designer

Does educational technology actually improve achievement? If so, how so? How much? Under what conditions? These were some of the questions Dr. Robert Marzano set out to answer this year at the March 2009 Computer-Using Educators (CUE) conference. In his keynote address, Dr. Marzano presented his "Preliminary Report: Evaluation Study of the Effects of Promethean ActivClassroom on Student Achievement." (The report, as well a video of the address is available at http://www.prometheanworld.com/.)

Marzano focused on three areas (not including the internet):

• Interactive Whiteboards and Voting (Promethean Technology)
• Formative Assessment and Record Keeping
• Teacher Feedback and Teacher Interaction

Using 85 control classrooms with 85 experimental classrooms, Dr. Marzano found that there was an overall 17 percentile point gain for teachers using Promethean technology in their classrooms compared to demographically similar control classrooms without the technology. While this data seems very significant in and of itself, the most interesting part of the research involves digging into the particulars, which suggest best practices for incorporating technology in the classroom.

IWB Use
Focusing on the outcome of interactive whiteboard (IWB) use, specifically Promethean ActivBoards, Dr. Robert Marzano's breakdown on high-yield use was quite revealing. Depending on the user's familiarity with the Promethean technology, teachers can experience up to a 20 percentile point gain. Obviously, a teacher well-versed in the technology will be more adept at fluidly using it to its best advantage: utilizing it to seamlessly teach content while not getting caught up in the flashiness of new equipment. Just as an iPod Nano can be more than just small, a teacher who is able to see past the bells and whistles of new technology can get to the heart of the hardware's design: engaging all learners in a classroom with clear sounds and visuals, creating interactive lesson plans, and having students actively participate with their own learning. Depending on the amount of time the technology is used in a classroom, teachers can experience up to a 29 percentile point gain. Remarkably, there is a sweet spot of usage at 75-80% of classroom time and the user starts to see declining results beyond that, at 85-95% of classroom time. As with any classroom resource, an IWB is a tool available to a versatile teacher and it is not, in and of itself, the be-all and end-all for classroom success. There is an adroit balance of use where teachers need to be comfortable enough to move beyond the obvious technological frills of the device while still keeping aware of when students get bored with overuse of the device. Dr. Marzano describes an ideal classroom usage situation where an experienced teacher, who has had enough training to be confident in his or her use of the IWB technology and has been using it for 2 years, uses the technology about 75% of the time in class. That teacher could predict more than a 30 percentile gain in average student achievement. He cautions that teachers need proper training on the technology. You can not just give the equipment to teachers and expect a gain. In cases like that, the technology will not be used properly, if at all. He offers a very tentative conclusion that weaker teachers require professional development in effective teaching and proper use of interactive whiteboard technology. He also offers a very tentative suggestion that successful teachers employing IWB technology should keep a clear focus on the curricular content and not the bells and whistles of the technology, while keeping track of which students are understanding the content and which are not understanding the content.

Formative Assessment
This final suggestion leads to his second area of focus, Formative Assessment and Record Keeping. Dr. Robert Marzano emphasized the importance of student engagement through student response, stating "when a student is responding to a question, they are engaged in the content. ... Questions automatically engage people." This is the value in formative assessment: teachers can keep students engaged while also monitoring their progress during a lesson. If students are not getting a concept, then the teacher can adjust the lesson. By tracking response rates, teachers can keep current on their students' level of content attainment. Dr. Marzano described the pros and cons of several tiers of formative assessment, from wait time (a teacher asks a question and then gives students time to think about it, rather than automatically offering an answer), think-pair-share (where pairs of students describe a concept to other another, which has the possible adverse effect of pairing disengaged students who, together, will remain contentedly disengaged), hand voting (which provides immediate, albeit binarily simple feedback), to individual dry-erase boards. Though the research has not been completed, he thinks learner response systems (LRS) will be a breakthrough area in increasing student response rates, if the technology is coupled with thoughtful pedagogy. Response rates will increase when teachers discuss the results from the learner response system (i.e., "Why did you select this answer? What was your thought process behind it? What would have made you select a different answer?"). Used in such a way, the formative assessment of the LRS is an instructional tool that provides ongoing feedback and evaluation. Dr. Marzano is optimist about the future of learner response systems and pedagogy, stating "In the next five years we're going to marry these two fields [technology and instructional strategy] in a way that really produces some potential gangbusters results for classroom teachers..."

Feedback and Interaction
This final point leads into his third area of discussion on Teacher Feedback and Teacher Interaction. Beneficial assessment can be an enlightening process of interaction between teacher and student. Dr. Robert Marzano recommends that students chart their own progress over time so they can see what is expected of them and the distance of the gap between where they are and where they are expected to be, which informs both the teacher and the student of the intellectual distance they need to travel in order to breach the gap between accomplishment and expectation. By charting it themselves, students kinesthetically create their own clear, visual expectations, self-awareness, and meta-understanding of their learning. Similarly, a learning management system (LMS) can provide an automatic, systematic record for teachers. The data provided in these reports can be flexible to import into other programs and hone in on the specific needs of individual students.

Relevance to Ignite! Learning
As a merger-by-design of pedagogy, technology, and engagement, the Ignite! Learning curriculum has clear applicability to Dr. Robert Marzano's research. Ignite! Learning provides comprehensive, engaging, easy-to-use content which makes the most of an interactive whiteboard, allowing it to move beyond the waning newness of fresh equipment into the tapped potential of an interactive, effective, and motivating technology. A recent redesign of Ignite! Learning's multimedia curriculum's graphical user interface specifically for interactive whiteboard use brings an added ease of use and convenience to teachers, with multiple paths of content navigation, note-taking space, and masuggests for teachers to generate new ideas on how to reach multitasking, technologically savvy students who seek creativity and stimulation, with courses such as "Appealing to 21st Century Learners" and "Introduction to Ignite! Curriculum". With Ignite! Learning's new Ignition Questions, the level of formative assessment and discussion that Dr. Marzano suggests is provided, with a range of question types, from simple "yes or no" questions to more open-ended text-entry questions. Designed specifically for Promethean's ActivExpression, these approximately 18,000 questions correlated to the media and unit tests provide formative assessment and discussion opportunities even for schools without ActivExpression or LRS of any kind. The Ignition Questions also have a learning management system which captures student data into a spreadsheet which can then be exported and sorted into a report at the teacher's convenience.

While Dr. Robert Marzano's research on the Promethean ActivClassroom's effects on student achievement is not yet completed and the final report will be eagerly awaited, the initial data is very positive and encouraging, as is his interpretation of that data, providing both new insight and common sense. When coupled with responsive, effective pedagogy, educational technology increases student learning, but, at the end of the day, the technology serves to aid the teacher's understanding of his or her classes' needs. Educational technology needs to have solid, curricular content at its core; teachers need to be skillfully comfortable on that technology; and students need to be able to regularly communicate their understanding of the content to teachers. As a by-design high-engagement content provider flexible and adapting to the changing needs in the classroom, Ignite! Learning meets the human urgencies of new technology usage that Dr. Marzano describes.

Ignite! Math is a Distinguished Achievement Award Finalist

Every year, the Association of Educational Publishers recognizes the top educational products with Distinguished Achievement Awards in four categories: Curriculum, Periodicals, Professional Development, and Technology Innovations. This year, Ignite! Math has been selected as a Distinguished Achievement Award finalist in the Curriculum category for Mathematics, grades 6-8.

The 2009 Distinguished Achievement Award winners will be announced at the AEP Annual Awards Banquet and Gala on June 12th in Washington, DC.

Graduating to the Brick or ION Delivery Platform

Did you know that our two newest product features, Ignition Questions and the Connected Interface, are only available on the Brick or ION delivery platforms? Did you also know about the special pricing available to COW customers who want to graduate to the Brick or the ION?

Benefits of Graduating:

Access to Ignition Questions - Over 18,000 preloaded questions across math, science, and social studies built directly into each media piece that focus student engagement on specific curricular objectives for each lesson!

Access to the Connected Interface - Enhancements include increased resolution options, toolbar resources including timer, stopwatch, and currency counter, and full- and split-screen playback options.

Maximize Technology Investments - Both the Brick and the ION integrate with existing classroom technology such as projectors, learner response systems, and interactive whiteboards.

Watch this video to learn more.

Special pricing is available for COW customers wanting to graduate!

Call 866-464-4648 today for more information!

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