Learning & Leading Through Technology

Fed up with worksheets, multiple-choice tests, and dusty old texts?

The results-only learning environment offers a way for students to choose the digital tools they will use to create their own assignments and learning.

On a Monday morning at a junior high school just out- side of Cleveland, Ohio, USA, a student teacher enters Room 120 for the first time. Looking to his left, he sees students discussing how to write an appropriate description of a picture they’ve just embedded in the online poster they’ve created for a project.

To the right sit two students engrossed in reading novels on handheld devices—one a Kindle, the other an iPod. Behind him sit three students huddled around laptops, whispering and pointing at one another’s work.

After a few moments of peering over their shoulders, he asks what they are doing.

“We’re looking for articles related
to our novels,” one of them says.
“We find something of interest re-
lated to a book we’re reading. Then
we bookmark it on Diigo and explain
how the nonfiction article connects
The student explains that Diigo is a
tool that allows you to keep track of
websites you like and annotate them
for others to see.

Another student explains that he is using Goodreads, a social network for readers. He says he uses it to keep a record of the books he’s read, rate them, and share ratings with peers.

Noticing the student teacher’s
amazement, I explain that this class
will likely be different from the high
school classroom he visited previously.
This bustling, even chaotic, results-
only learning environment (ROLE),
where students worked both indepen-
dently and collaboratively on a variety
of activities and projects, is unlike
most classrooms just about anywhere.
In contrast to classrooms where cell
phones and iPods are banned, students
in Room 120 are encouraged to use
mobile devices and social media sites.

After a couple weeks of working with students in our technology-rich workshop setting, the student teacher headed back to his high school assignment, assuring me he had much to consider. I had high hopes for this energetic newbie, because for two weeks, he’d experienced the elimination of outdated teaching methods in favor of a student-centered, technology-rich results-only learning environment, and he was ready to share it with the world.

Replace Tradition with Digital Learning

For much of my 20-year teaching
career, I used the traditional teaching
strategies that far too many teach-
ers still employ today. Most are do-
ing what they learned to do in their
preservice days. Many are using only
the tools that their school or district
administrators provide—test practice
workbooks, dusty texts, and basal
readers. The ROLE discards these
resources and other practices that
extract the fun from school. Gone are
lectures, worksheets, rote-memory
homework, and multiple-choice tests.
These are replaced with engaging,
interactive mini-lessons and sophisti-
cated digital learning tools.
Recent studies by the Pew Research
Center indicate that 9 out of 10 teens
use social networks, and most have a
smartphone, iPod, or e-reader. While
many school administrators and teach-
ers continue to ban the use of these
remarkable digital learning tools, the
results-only classroom embraces them.

Recall the anecdote shared earlier about the student teacher. Students worked independently and collaboratively using devices and social media to apply concepts and skills to ongoing projects to demonstrate mastery learning. Most exciting is how the students are able to teach the teacher about the tools. This is because they learned how to use a wide array of websites and devices throughout the year, and together we built a technology toolkit. By midyear, students in a ROLE are able to take guidelines for virtually any activity or project, go to their technology toolkit, and create engaging, interactive projects and presentations that show both their creativity and complex problem-solving skills.

Gone are lectures, worksheets, rote-memory homework, and multiple-choice tests. These are replaced with engaging, interactive mini-lessons and sophisticated digital learning tools.