Mantz's Mission

It was a quiet evening when the winds of change arrived with the approaching storm.  As we all know too well, storms can provided desperately needed moisture and enjoyable temperatures.  Well in our case, the winds lowered the temperatures outside to a much more bearable degree.  It was this setting that inspired and aided in getting my mind wrapped around this blog entry.    This post focuses on the winds of change or renaissance (rebirth) of an education  framework I strongly believe in – Levels of Teaching Innovation (LoTi).

Education has experienced a variety of trends in pedagogy ranging from a one room school house to multiple classroom structures to the virtual schools of today.  These changes are driven by the need to further develop one’s own skills to think, research, solve problems, and collaborate with others.  These same changes have been viewed in the revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy.  Thus, LoTi too has adjusted to meet the “Winds of Change” in education.  Dr. Chris Moersch developed an educational framework in 1994 known as Levels fo Technology Implementation.  This framework was designed to assist educators in enhancing classroom instruction while integrating technology.  Levels ranged from classrooms having no or little technology for student use to levels where teachers begin to permit students to take ownership in their own curriculum with the teacher taking on the role of facilitator.  Then 2007 arrived.  The International Society of Technology in Education (ISTE) established newly refreshed National Education Standards for Students (NETS-S) along with standards for teachers (NETS-T) and administrators (NETS-A) over the next two years.  These new NETS ignited the spark to turn up the “HEAT” in LoTi.  Dr. Chris Moersch and his staff met the challenge by revamping the LoTi framework.  Changes included updates to the online survey, classroom observations, and the emphasis of “HEAT” as the core to their name being re-defined as Levels of Teaching Innovation.  ”HEAT” stands for higher order thinking, engaged learning, authentic learning, and technology use.  The key to successfully measuring the “HEAT” in classroom is to cut out technology then evaluate the “HEA…”  To learn more about the further development of HEAT and explaination about the re-defined name please watch the following video provided by Miguel Guhlin via Edublogs.tv

As mentioned earlier, in emphasizing classroom instruction through the integration of “HEAT”, LoTi revised their “DETAILS” educator assessment survey from focusing just on current instruction practices (CIP), Personal Computer Use (PCU) and LoTi.

The areas of focus (CIP, PCU, LoTi)along with a bar graph respresenting the DETAILS for the 21st Century of this educator ranging from Low Priority to High Priority as viewed in this screen shot has been changed to truly reflect the new enhancements of the revised LoTi framework.

In this screen image you will notice the new enhancements to LoTi’s Digital Age survey, of which, LoTi has mapped the survey questions to the NETS-T Standards.  You will notice that both “DETAILS” and “Digital Age” surveys display professional developments needs.  The visual difference comes in what is identified on this survey results page below the five bar graphs.  Yep, you read it correctly.  LoTi, Partnership for 21st Century Learning, Marzano’s Instructional practices, Daggett’s Rigor and Relevance, as well as Webb’s Depth of Knowledge all have been included to determine where you are on those scales in educational methodology.  For those of you not familiar with or want a refresher on the educational methodologies integrated into LoTi’s Digital Age survey, I have listed links for you to visit:

• Partnership for 21st Century Learning
• Marzano’s Instructional Practices
• Daggett’s Rigor and Relevance (Miguel Guhlin explains how LoTi maps to Daggett’s material)
• Webb’s Depth of Knowledge

I hope that this post has enlightened your understanding to the “Winds of  Change” that LoTi has went through to further develop “Teaching Innovations” that assists in turning up the “HEAT” in schools.  As Dr. Moersch always says “May the LoTi be with you!”