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!”

Now that I have hopefully caught your attention, or at least made you hungry, I am going to explain my passion and what fuels it in regards to education.

As a youngster growing up, I attended four different K-12 school districts stretching from Kansas to Oklahoma. Throughout those school years I experienced a wide range of teachers and instructional methods. Both of my parents were former educators and would always look for the best school systems before identifying a home to purchase. Thus, my education has been influenced not just by teachers and administrators but also by my loving parents. It is this parental interest that partially fuels my passion in education. I so believe that parents need to be involved in their child/children’s education as much, if not more, than teachers and administrators. Parents that participate and interact in a positive manner with their child/children forms and shapes a great deal of the child’s character. Those parents that neglect or abuse their child/children cause so much damage in so many aspects of the youth’s life. Unfortunately, many of those issue affects the student at school. Thus, this area of concern is another passion point for me as an educator, I raise this point as a result of reading a discussion started on Plurk by Paul Bogush. In all honesty, I do not know of any good educator that has not seen the good, bad, or ugly as a student or instructor and chose to interact with students through those times in hope of making a positive difference and showing he/she people do care. What does bother me in those and a variety of other situations are those teachers that do not want to become involved whether it is working with students.

In building off of this point of being positive with students I want to point out a video that has been running ramped on social networks of Twitterand Plurk. This video truly expresses my feeling for believing in students regardless of race, sex, or home lifestyle. This video comes from Dallas, Texas.

Now did that video make you think? Did you ask your self if you “Believe”? Honestly, if this video did not send the same message as I am trying to put forth when explaining my passion for education, those fellow educators that have shared it too would not be “believing” in their students today.

Another source that fuels my passion for education centers around the engagement of students. I ask you now to reflect upon your own education experience and ask yourself Which teacher(s) influenced you and why? Let me guess, those educators have a common characteristic regardless of who is answering this question. I would say that our influences were direct results of educators that engaged us with higher order thought provoking questions, provided real world applicable scenarios, and interacted with us on a personal level.

One evening while reflecting upon the same question that I previously stated, I read through a variety of blogs looking for resources to be used in with my college students. I came across a digital story created by Wesley Fryer. The digital story fit my need quite well. It is titled: Strive to Engage not Enthrall. The emphasis was for students to be engaged and not enthralled. Wesley was trying to make the point that students need opportunities to be inspired, challenged, motivated as well as time for reflection along with collaboration. Over the next few months while providing professional development workshops I stressed that communication between educators and their students was a major key for success. Two additional videos that I would like to bring to your attention about the need to permit students buy-in or take ownership in their own education are 1. A Vision of Students Today 2. A Vision of K-12 Students Today.

To emphasize that need to improve communication and student engagement, I participated in the national mentor certification training developed by Dr. Chris Moersch. Dr. Moersch first developed the program in 1994 and it was known as the Levels of Technology Integration. As the needs of our students and educational systems changed, so did the name is now recognized as Levels of Teaching Innovation(LoTi). LoTi combines the emphasis combines higher order thinking/questioning (Bloom’s Taxonomy), student engagement through the use of authentic real world forms of assessment and the integration of technology as a transparent resource.

It is the vision of Dr. Moersch along with my own experiences and passion that drives me to continue discovering tools and pedagogies that nourish the motivation of 21st Century students. I feel that students of today and tomorrow will need to be self-motivated, anytime anywhere learners. For those reasons, I find it my “mission” to pass along the positives of education and the tools that can be used to motivate and engage students of the 21st Century. I will end this post with a phrase I use a lot: To teach is to educate and to educate is to teach.