All right, everybody. Well, look, I appreciate you coming to our webinar. I'm very excited about the webinar working with Jay today, as we are always very excited about working with Jay. I'm Jeff Colaseimo. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Eduplanet21. Again, I would like to personally welcome everybody for attending this webinar today. Just a few slides of housekeeping stuff before we get started here. As we go through the session, everybody is going to be muted just to make sure that we can maintain control on everything. There's not any issues with audio or sound or anything. But basically, when we're done, everybody will get the recording sent to them. All registrants will have the recording from the session sent to them. As you go through the session, we are monitoring the chat. If you have any questions, anything that you would like us to talk about, feel free to throw it out in the chat, and we will get to that at the end of the session. So Again, you can see below on the slide, any social media stuff, all the stuff that we'll be doing, references and so forth, will be put out on our typical social media channels.
That being said, it's a little bit after one o'clock, so we're going to get started here. Wow, look, as far as introductions go, Jay, your reputation precedes you. As far as introductions go, all I can really say is my friend and colleague Jay McTie, so proud and excited to have you part of the Edge of Planet team for a number of years and really appreciate what you're doing today for us. We're basically going to go through the majority of the session. It's going to be Jay presenting his information, which is very valuable around making the most of UBDⓇ. Then towards the very end, as you do know, Edge of Planet has been working with Jay and has some great tools around facilitating and utilizing UBDⓇ with regards to unit design and professional learning. I'm going to touch on a couple of those things at the very end here. Then we'll wrap up with Q&A and questions. Without further ado, I'm going to stop sharing and turn it over to you, Jay.
Great. Thanks, Jeff. Hello to everyone who's joined this webinar. That would be good afternoon, good morning, or good evening since we have some international folks on the call. This is what you signed up for, and I want to share ideas with you around this topic, making the most of UBDⓇ. One of the things I would invite you to do using the chat feature is just to put a symbol in the chat box for your primary role. For example, if you're an elementary teacher and you teach Grade 3, you could put E3. If you're a middle or high school teacher, you might use HSS. If you're an administrator, you could put A in a symbol for your role, et cetera. That helps us see who's here and gives me a sense of what I want to emphasize, given the audience. Just Let's drop that into the chat, if you will. I'm going to skip this and go right into my agenda for our time. I want to begin by looking at the quote, Big ideas of Understanding by DesignⓇ, but then focus on the topic that you signed up for, making the most of UBDⓇ.
For those of you who are currently teaching, I want to highlight some ideas, particularly to support your work in the classroom. For those of you who are school or district leaders, and that includes teacher leaders, coaches, department chairs, grade-level leaders, et cetera, some particular ideas for you as well. Then I'll conclude with some resources that I've compiled that can support your work and the work in your school or district. And then Jeff will be talking about the Eduplanet resources in particular. So that's a look at our time available. Just to reiterate what Jeff invited, you are welcome to enter questions that you may have into the chat box, and we'll be monitoring those and addressing them at the end of the session. And even if it goes beyond the hour, any of you that have a question or want to stay, I'm happy to hang on, and I know Jeff and his team will as well. So let's start.
Jay, I apologize. We are having an issue with the chat, so we will get it resolved here quickly. Just wanted to let you know that.
Okay, I didn't see anyone appearing, so I figured something was going on. No worries. So the big ideas of Understanding by DesignⓇ. Let me start on the opposite side by highlighting what Understanding by DesignⓇ is not. Understanding by DesignⓇ is not a program curriculum. It's not a lockstep thing that you must do. Alternatively, it's a framework. It's a way of thinking, a way of planning, a way of ensuring that we have a well-aligned curriculum, that we're teaching in a way that's going to develop and deepen student understanding, and that we have evidence of student learning from appropriate assessments. UBDⓇ is not an instructional model, per se. It doesn't tell teachers how they must teach, although we have some very distinct ideas about what it means to teach for understanding. But it's not a lockstep, teacher-proof approach by any means. Occasionally, I'll meet teachers that say when they've learned about UBDⓇ, they'll say, This doesn't really work for me or my subject area. Well, with all due respect to anyone who says that, I would frame the position this way. If there are things that you want your students to really understand, if you want your students to be able to apply their learning effectively to new things, not just to give back what was told to them, then Understanding by DesignⓇ is a framework that will support those goals.
Having said that, UBDⓇ can be a little more challenging. For example, if you're working with primary grade children, pre-K, kindergarten, certainly a lot of what we do with very young kids is very basic. Not everything is going to be a big idea worth deep conceptual understanding. But I hope you would agree that even very young kids, there are things we want them to understand. Same thing goes for, let's say, a beginning world language course. Obviously, in a beginning course in Spanish, French, Mandarin, kids have to learn vocabulary and basic rules of grammar and grammar structures. Those are foundational. But there's certainly things that students can come to understand, even in the beginning language. That's a long way of saying, these things don't apply to UBDⓇ. What is Understanding by DesignⓇ? Its key ideas are in its title. Since its inception more than 25 years ago, a focus of Understanding by DesignⓇ has been to develop curriculum, to teach, and to assess for the purpose of developing and deepening student understandings, ultimately, so students are able to transfer their learning. For me, a modern education should ultimately be preparing students to transfer. And transfer means that you understand the material you're learning sufficiently, that you can, in fact, apply it to something new.
And that's different than just simply giving back information in the way it was told to you. That's rote learning, and that doesn't prepare students for a world that continues to evolve, continues to change, for which we encounter new opportunities and challenges. The ability to flexibly apply your learning is what we should all be working toward. And that's been a foundational goal of Understanding by DesignⓇ since its inception. The second big idea in Understanding by DesignⓇ is by design. And many of you are familiar with what we refer to as backward design. Grant Wiggins and I propose a three-stage process for planning curriculum. This is really oriented toward unit-level development, not individual lessons. But backward design can also be applied not only to an individual unit, but to an entire year when we map out the curriculum. And at the macro level, it can be used to plan a 12 to pre-k curriculum that cuts across the grades. Those are the two big ideas of UBDⓇ, teach and assess for understanding and transfer, plan backward from those goals. Now, one quick final point on this slide. To say we want to focus on understanding and transfer in no way is meant to suggest that we no longer care about facts.
I've heard some educational experts, so-called, say things like, Well, kids can Google anything they want, so we don't have to spend time learning all that factual stuff. Oh, I disagree. Every discipline has foundational knowledge, and you can't do anything without that knowledge. Moreover, every discipline has basic skills that are key to the discipline. Not only basic skills, but more fundamental processes. But those should be taught for understanding. As a long way of saying, we build on a base of foundational knowledge and skills to develop and deepen understanding. Think of the foundational elements as the floor, but not the ceiling of a modern education.
We're working upward toward understanding and transfer. Some of you, no doubt, are familiar with this phrase from my longtime friend, Bob Marzano. In a major study of a meta-analysis, in fact, of research, Marzano concluded that the most significant factor at the school, and I'll add district levels, impacting learning and achievement is a guaranteed and viable curriculum delivered to all learners. Number one factor. Now, at the classroom level, we know that the teacher is the main factor. We make a difference in the classroom. But Marzano's finding is going beyond that of individual teachers, and he's looking at the overall curriculum of a school, of a district, of a discipline or program. And this is where Understanding by DesignⓇ really fits. Understanding by DesignⓇ, arguably, is the world leading framework for building a guaranteed and viable curriculum, whether it's as an individual teacher planning units, but even more so when we work together to map out our courses and plan an overall 12 to Pre-K curriculum. For most of you, this will be a quick review, but the three stages of backward design that Grant Wiggins and I propose are straightforward. We start by identifying desired results.
Well, of course, anyone planning anything should have goals or outcomes in mind. But there are a few nuances that many of you are aware of when we think about stage one. I'll comment on this in a moment. Stage two of backward design is where we ask people to think like assessors. And this, to me, is really at the heart of backward design. It asks us, given the goals that we're working toward, to ask this question, what evidence will show that students are learning the facts, developing proficiency in the basic skills, but also are developing understanding and can apply their learning effectively, i. E. Transfer. That's what stage 2 asks us to do. Think like assessors. Before we get into thinking like teachers, which is what we do in stage 3, stage 3 is where day-to-day teacher planning occurs. This is where we plan our lessons, choose our resources, decide how much time we're going to spend on various learning activities, and so on. That's the essence of backward design. The key point to me is clarity about our goals in stage one, identifying appropriate evidence that will let us know if kids are achieving those goals in stage two, and then a teaching and learning plan that's going to help us get there.
That's the essence of backward design. Now, this is not a new idea. In fact, take a moment to look at the three questions proposed by Dr. Ralph Tyler many, many years ago in a classic book on curriculum. Tyler's three questions and their order, their sequence is backward design. So Neither Grant Wiggins nor I have ever claimed that backward design is new, but we have found it to be a powerful and effective planning process, and it is at the heart of UBDⓇ. Now, as many of you know, we have a planning template that we use in Understanding by DesignⓇ. It basically is a graphic organizer, and it organizes the elements of this framework. So teachers think about these elements as their planning units. And by the way, just to reiterate, this is a unit planning template, not a lesson planner. Lessons are planned out in stage three of backward design. Occasionally, I'll meet teachers that say to me, Jay, I don't like these template things. I don't like to put my ideas in boxes. And my reply is, Don't put your ideas in boxes then. It's not about filling in boxes. If that's one's conception of UBDⓇ, then there's a misunderstanding at work.
For me, the template is simply a tool. But one of the benefits of using a good graphic organizer is that it rubs off the user. I can't tell you how many teachers over the years have said to me, When I first learned UBDⓇ, it wasn't easy. I had to struggle. But as I planned a couple of units and I used the template as a guide, it got easier, it got more comfortable. It became my way of thinking. I had a teacher say, It's my mental template. I don't have to fill in the boxes, but I think about these elements, and that's the spirit of this. Now, I am an unapologetic advocate for a good planning template for curriculum, and I think UBDⓇ is the best, by the way. But there's another reason for that. I think there is virtue and value in having consistency in a school or in a district in terms of how we actually represent our curriculum. Moreover, having a common template facilitates sharing. As you may know, there are tens, if not hundreds of thousands of teachers, literally around the world, that use UBDⓇ. So Having a common template lets me know I can find a unit online or in the education planet database, and I'll know right where to look for the essential questions or the big ideas or performance tasks that give evidence of transfer.
Again, I'm a fan of the template, and this is one of the virtues of Eduplanet 21. They have a wonderful template that follows the UBDⓇ form, and because It's electronic. It facilitates sharing, review, edits, and updates. When you teach a unit, almost always you'll find something you want to tweak a little bit. You could easily make that change in the electronic version on nature planet. Those are some of the big ideas of UBDⓇ. In my experience, teachers that understand UBDⓇ and schools and districts that plan their curriculum around BEST framework, can help to avert three potential problems that we sometimes see in planning and teaching. See if any of these are familiar. One potential problem is more widespread in the elementary, in some cases the middle school grades. We refer to this as an activity-oriented curriculum. Now, this is often very well intentioned. Teachers want to engage the students in active learning, and so they plan activities. But Backward design reminds us that we want to make sure that whatever activities kids are doing, which is in stage three, are working toward worthy goals in stage one. Moreover, we want to have evidence of what the activities produced in terms of learning, which is a stage two matter, beyond just that they were involved or engaged.
What we have found is that teachers that understand UBDⓇ and plan for it are much more likely to make sure that their activities are purposeful and we have evidence of their effectiveness. A second potential problem is more prominent at the secondary and collegiate levels, something we lovingly call coverage. Transparency translated as the curriculum is covering, whether it's the pages of a textbook or marching through a whole set of state standards before the year ends. With all due respect to the challenge of secondary and collegiate teaching, because in many subject areas, as you well know, the subject area is growing daily. History, science, technology, whereas our time with students is essentially fixed. Regardless of the challenge, I don't believe our job is to cover lots of content. If that's your goal, you can talk faster in class and you can cover more. But our goal should be engaging students in deep, lasting learning that enables them to apply and transfer that learning. Therefore, our job is not to cover, but to uncover the big ideas and the core processes of what we teach. If and when we use textbooks, they should be used as suggested on the screen.
A textbook can be a useful resource. It's not the curriculum, in my view. The third potential problem is not surprising given the high stakes standardized accountability testing that virtually all public school teachers and schools encounter, and many independent schools have standardized tests that they use as well. These are high stakes. Results are often in the paper. Schools are rewarded or penalized for results. It affects real estate values. I get it. But my long-standing contention is we should avoid being lulled into the false belief that the only way of getting scores up or keeping them up or raising them in that case, is to do a lot of test prep. I've actually seen a few schools where there's a dictate to teachers that if it's not on the state test, Don't spend time teaching it. I think this is a horribly flawed admonition. I'm going to argue against a test prep curriculum. Look, I'm not naive. I know these tests matter. If I'm teaching today, of course, I'm going to give kids some familiarity with a multiple-choice selected response format, the form of most standardized tests. But I'm not going to do a test prep curriculum.
I'm not going to do multiple-choice teaching. I haven't. One of the many resources I'm going to recommend to you is an article that encourages you to avoid the test prep trap, and I think it is. But enough of that. Let's get into making the most of UBDⓇ, and I want to highlight a couple of ideas in stage one of backward design. This is the UBDⓇ template for stage one, and you can see the categories here. Working from established goals that include standards and any mission-related goals for your school, like a profile or portrait of a graduate. We would identify what we want students to be able to do with their learning. What understandings will they need in order to achieve a transfer? Through what essential questions can we engage students and develop and deepen those understandings? And what are the foundational elements, the knowledge and skill that really need to be developed toward this subject? These are the categories we ask people to think about in stage one. Now, let me reflect for a minute on these goal types using a slightly different graphic. We propose that there are three, categorically speaking, three different types of learning goals in UBDⓇ.
None of these are new. They're interrelated, but they're not identical. The first of these we call acquisition goals, and they reside at the bottom of stage one. Namely, what knowledge, basic facts and concepts, skills, including basic skills, should students acquire when they're learning the material? And of course, every teacher should be mindful of such goals and objectives. But we have a second goal type that's in the middle of the template in stage one, and that is the understanding goals. What are the larger transferable ideas, the form of concepts, themes, and also processes that we want students to really understand? And that's what we identify in that section. And we think about companion essential questions for those. And finally, we ask the question, what do we want our students to be able to do with their learning in the long run? Minimally, at the end of this unit, or at the end of the year, or even at the end of 13 or 14 years, if we're thinking about a profile of a graduate. Those are the elements that we ask people to consider. They are interrelated but not identical. And goal clarity matters. It matters in terms of how we teach because kids develop these things, learn these things in not identical ways.
So it has impact implications for pedagogy. And I hope you would agree these goal types also impact what and how we assess. If I want to see if a student knows something, as in factual knowledge, an objective test or quiz will tell me that. They know it or they don't. But if I want to see if a student really understands it can apply their learning, we need a measure that involves more performance-based assessment to see if they can apply their learning to a new situation, and they're able to explain it that will show they really understand. So these distinctions matter. How many of you are familiar with the name Dr. John Hattie? Most of you, I can't see, so I don't know if you're putting your thumbs up or not, but it doesn't matter. John Hattie, as some of you know, is a researcher from New Zealand, who spent his entire career, now more than 45 years, studying, teaching, teaching and learning at the university level. And he sent me an article recently that relates very, very closely to UBDⓇ. Here are John Hattie's words, but my graphic. John Hattie says, In all my years studying, teaching, and learning, I've concluded that we can think about three levels of learning for the student.
John said there's surface-level learning, typified when teachers are presenting new information to students, or they might read it in a book or view it online. Irrespective of how the student acquires new information, if they don't do anything with the new information or the new skill, it's likely to remain on the surface and will eventually fade from memory. Then John Hattie says there's deep learning, which he defines as I do, learning with and for understanding. But as you know, deep learning is below the surface. It takes time to develop and deepen a student's understanding. But the good news is once they understand something, it will last. It won't fade away. Grant Wiggins and I have sometimes used the phrase enduring understandings to make this point. And finally, Certainly, Hattie agrees with Grant and I when he says the deepest learning is evident when students can transfer, when they can take what they've learned and apply it to something new. That's at the heart of UBDⓇ and reinforced by one of the leading researchers in our profession. So these are among the big ideas of UBDⓇ. Let me move into some ways for teachers to make the most of this framework.
So here's my long-standing aphorism. As a teacher, particularly if you're newer to UBDⓇ, I encourage you to think big. Think about in two, three, four years, Everything you teach will be in a UBDⓇ format. But if you're new to UBDⓇ, start small. I'll be the first to admit that this is not an easy planning framework. And trying to plan everything you teach in this form right in the beginning It could just be overwhelming. Thirdly, work smart. I'm going to show you in a few minutes some resources that can enable you to work smart. And finally, go for an early win. If you're first getting started with UBDⓇ, an early win can mean pick the unit that you know well, that you really love. It already lends itself to this thinking. Don't start with your least favorite unit or the one that kids struggle with the most, or if you're a new teacher with a brand new topic, get the content under your belt first. Those are some general tips. And again, for the newbies among you, and by the way, this applies for those of you who work with teachers, especially new teachers. Think about Understanding by DesignⓇ as the equivalent to a gourmet meal.
And those of you who like to cook will predictively or presumably You plan gourmet meals from time to time, whether it's for a special family event or just you're in a food club, whatever. But a gourmet meal takes a lot of time. Planning, getting all the ingredients in preparation. I don't know any teacher or working educator, administrator, for that matter, that plans gourmet meals every night during the school year. That would be overwhelming, but occasionally you do. So at the start, think about UBDⓇ as a gourmet unit. It's going to be too demanding at the beginning for everyday units. But again, think big, start small, plan one or two a semester, and go for early wins. In so doing, you're going to understand and get comfortable with UBDⓇ elements. The process will be easier, and over time, you'll be able to assemble an entire curriculum map of UBDⓇ units. That's an analogy I like to offer. Recommendation. Again, if you're new to UBDⓇ or your school is new to UBDⓇ, if at all possible, find a partner or a team, grade level or department team, and work on the units together. Even if you teach separate topics or courses from other colleagues, you can agree that each will be working on your own unit, but then you'll share back and forth with each other for feedback.
That's really helpful. Once you start collecting UBDⓇ units, that's where it's really smart to put them in a database like Edge of Planet 21. That way you can share and see the work of others, and you will get ideas from others, even from different grades and subjects. When you look at their essential questions, when you look at their big ideas, understandings, when you get ideas for their performance tasks. So that's a way of working smarter. Jeff is going to talk a little bit more about the features of the UBDⓇ software that Eduplanet offers, but it's a great resource where you can learn from each other. Now, I also wanted you to know But on my website, which is justmyname.com (jaymctighe.com), and maybe Jess or one of you could just drop that in the chat box, justmyname.com (jaymctighe.com), I have, and I'll show you in a moment in a little more detail, many resources resources that you can access that I've been collecting for more than 15 years now. And that's a way of working smarter. In fact, I can show you what the resources page on my website looks like. If you go to the top link called View All Websites and click on that, you're going to see a 43-page list of hot-linked resources for UBDⓇ.
There are some general websites, and then they're organized by subject specific. I'm telling you, there are so many good examples there that you can learn from and you don't have to reinvent. Also on that website is a 23-page list of hot-linked sites for performance assessment tasks, and that really falls into stage 2 of Accred Design. There's another link for those interested in project-based learning. Trust me, there are some great resources out there, free of charge, a click away. One element of Understanding by DesignⓇ involves formulating essential questions. On my website is a large compilation of essential questions for different discipline areas. I'll note that the essential questions that are posted here are overarching in scope. That is, you can use the same questions, not in one unit only, but you can use it again and again across the grades. So just be mindful of that. There are resources for assessment beyond the ones that I mentioned previously. And I'll highlight a few more resources from my website shortly. Now, another way of working smarter, as I suspect some, if not many of you have done, is to use AI tools to help us in curriculum and assessment design.
Here are things that I've observed in ways in which AI can support Understanding by DesignⓇ. This is not an inclusive list of all possibilities, but some of the main ones. If you're teaching a new topic and want to identify, well, what are the big ideas that are most important for students to understand? You can ask ChatGPT or Gemini for that. Specify the topic specifically as you can, and the age or grade level you teach to get the most germane response. You can ask it to help you get essential questions for a topic. It can help you create tests and quizzes, more traditional assessments, but it can also help you create more authentic performance tasks. It can help identify evaluative criteria and actually generate rubrics, both holistic and analytic. It can give you ideas for lessons to teach various topics or skills, and it can give you ideas for differentiation when you need to address a variety of learners in your classes. I think of AI as an extraordinary resource. Permit me to give you a few examples more specifically. Let me start with big ideas for a topic. This was a general search that I did.
I said, If I'm teaching a course in geography, or even a unit for that matter, what are some of the key concepts that could be explored? And in less than 20 seconds, this is what it gave me. We can explore geography in terms of location, place, region. Pretty familiar. We can explore human-environment interaction. Keep going. We could explore cartography and mapmaking as an aspect of geography. We could take a deeper look at cultural, economic, or political geography. We could study urban geography, environmental geography, biogeography, and geopolitics. Now, unless I was teaching a college course in geography, I wouldn't be exploring all these ideas, but it did give me interesting thoughts that I could tailor given the grade or course that I might be teaching. It can help us get ideas for essential questions. To give you a quick example. I was working with an independent school. It was a religious school, Episcopalian, I believe. I was sharing essential questions that I've compiled on my website that you can check out. The chairman of the Religion and Theology Department put in the chat, I don't see any for Religion and Theology because most of the questions I have are for traditional disciplines.
Quite frankly, I didn't have any that I had compiled for Religion or Theology. I took a risk and I said, Well, let's see what ChatGPT can offer. And so I literally, on the webinar, I typed it in and it came out with 14 questions, seven of which are on the screen. And I'll never forget the guy looked at them and then he went, damn. Which I thought was funny coming from the Religion Department chair. But anyway, it was interesting. And not that you would do all of these, but it gives you ideas. A few more. Performance tasks. Designing good, rich, authentic performance tasks that are well aligned to our goals is a challenge. And many of you that have done this know that. For example, I asked ChatGPT to give me an authentic task or ideas for an authentic task that I could use as an algebra teacher to assess student understanding of linear equations. It gave me what I thought was a very promising idea that needs a little work. Essentially, the way I would frame this is, imagine you're a financial advisor and you want to advise a client as to which of two local companies they should invest in.
These are companies that are competing for the same service or product, and you have their profit loss sheets for the last five years. I would modify the idea that gave me to say, Create a linear equation for each of the companies to use in justifying your recommendation for their investment. But the idea itself, I thought, was really good. It also gave what it called the requirements for this task and grading criteria. But if you can notice the small print highlighted in the box? ChatGPT's idea was that the math students in algebra should contribute a five-page professional report in APA style. And I thought to myself, I don't know a single algebra teacher anywhere in the country, if not the world, that would want that, unless they were working with the English teacher who might take over the review of the five-page research paper. In other words, I would cut that out as I would criteria three and six, because I'm not evaluating writing. I'm looking at their understanding of linear equations. The point is straightforward here, and I use the example to make the point. Use ChatGPT as a helpful ally, but use your professional judgment to filter what it gives you.
Again, Again, I could show you many other ideas, but here's a quick illustration of differentiation. I asked ChatGPT to give me ideas for a performance task or it could be an assignment if I'm teaching ratios, but give me ideas for a student who likes race cars. I was astounded that it gave me 12 ideas in just a matter of seconds, five of which are on the screen. Now, I'm not a race car enthusiast, per se, but all these things seem right in line with how the ratio could apply to that topic of interest. But check out the next one. I asked ChatGPT to give me the same set of ideas for a ratio for a student who likes fashion. In this case, it gave me 14 ideas in a matter of seconds. Point being, if and when you want to differentiate, whether it's by skill level or interest, in this case, you can ask for ideas, and you may get some good ones. Coming up with differentiation ideas, to me, is always a challenge or often a challenge. So let's get some help. Finally, we can get ideas for evaluation criteria. I actually asked ChatGPT to help me structure a debate around the issue, should ChatGPT be banned in schools?
I did this about a year and a half ago when ChatGPT was newly out, and some school districts had banned its use. I was curious to see what a debate around that topic would be. It gave me very good ideas to structure such a debate. Here were five criteria that could be used to evaluate students' responses and their research into the issue. I thought these were great. A separate request. I asked it to give me ideas for an analytic rubric to evaluate an oral presentation such as a TED Talk. Again, the rubric that it gave me, I thought was very sound. I do just minor tweaks. I wouldn't have to create this from scratch. To summarize, this is another way of working smart in today's use of AI. I'll give you a quick thought that a friend of mine gave me, which I liked. When asked about the appropriateness of using ChatGPT for this work, he said, I think of ChatGPT as a really smart friend. When I have a problem or something I'm thinking through or some writing I'm doing, I ask my friends for feedback, and often I'll get good ideas from them.
So he said, I treat AI like that. But he said, Sometimes my friends drink too much and say silly things. So he said, I have to keep that in mind with AI, too. All right, let me wrap up this segment for teachers. And this actually is a nice bridge into my ideas for school and district leaders. How do we know we have a good UBDⓇ Whether you find some online, you create your own, or you help get ChatGPT and other tools to help you, we have in UBDⓇ a set of design standards. They are the criteria by which we evaluate the quality of UBDⓇ units. So the design standards for stage one are on the screen. We want to see that the understandings people have identified are not just a fact, that they are conceptually big ideas that are transferable. We want to see that any essential questions that are posed are open-ended, intellectually rich, going to engage students in thinking, not just recall, et cetera. Here are the design standards for stages two and three. For example, in stage two, any performance task that we're asking students to do should, in fact, provide evidence of students' understanding and transferability, not just a fun activity where they're making something.
Stage three, we want to see that the teaching learning plan is not only just presenting information to kids and they're taking notes, but we're actively engaging them in what we call meaning making, because that's how you come to understand something. This is for any and all of you. If you're using UBDⓇ, look at your curriculum work against design standards. This is how we get quality. This is how we drive improvements. Okay, let me shift now with some ideas for leaders. Not surprisingly, my previous aphorism applies for you as well. Whether you're a school or district leader or a department chair, if you want to promote and extend UBDⓇ in your setting, Think big. Have a vision of what you'd like to see if it's not already there in 2, 3, 4 years. But start small. I don't recommend mandating things. It's one thing to be clear that this is a long-term goal. It's another to mandate everybody has to do UBDⓇ from the ground up right away. Work smart, and I'll show you some ways of doing that. Again, especially for leaders, go for early wins. If you are new to UBDⓇ and want to promote it in your school or district, an early win would be finding a department or a grade-level team where people are open to this and where you have good leaders who can support it.
Don't start with the department that's going to fight you all along the way or the teachers that will give you all the reasons why it doesn't work for them. You know who those are. Go for the people that are open and willing. Make it a voluntary beginning if that works. Get an early win that you can build on as opposed to trying to do too much, too fast with everybody and then having to back up, and it's hard to recover from a misstep. Now, one of the resources that are available to you is something I highly recommend if you are a leader that's new to UBDⓇ and want to promote it. It's a two-page sheet called How to Kill UBDⓇ by Design and How to Avoid It. This will be on the set of articles I'll show you in a moment how to get. But I'll just highlight a few of the tips. How to Kill UBDⓇ mandate that every teacher must use UBDⓇ for all their planning immediately. That will kill it. And I've already said what I think is the alternative. Think big, start small, go for volunteers, ask for one or two units a semester as a start.
Another way of killing UBDⓇ is to say, UBDⓇ is T-Y-N-T. You know that one? T-y-n-t? This year's new thing. Contrasted with L-Y-N-T, last year's new thing, or N-Y-N-T, next year's new thing. If you really want to build UBDⓇ as a framework for your school or district, it's a long-term proposition, and people need to know that. It's not a one or two session workshop and then we're on to something else. To me, the schools and district that made the most of UBDⓇ are in it for the long haul. And that relates to professional development. Doing a one time workshop on UBDⓇ is not sufficient to really embed it in people's understanding or engender a commitment to it. So you really need to think big about the professional development and support you'll need, and think about your long-term goal and plan backward to build out a systematic approach to Understanding by DesignⓇ. I've shared with you a couple, and there are other suggestions that are in this two-page handout, so I will get those, or I'll show you how to get to those. Now, I've already made the pitch, and Jeff is going to give you a little more information, but clearly, if you are committed at the school or district level to using UBDⓇ as a framework, your teacher should be working on curriculum software that's based on UBDⓇ.
It's not smart, and it's not a good curriculum management system to have Google Docs floating around and trying to figure out what's the most current and who has those, and what about the work we did last summer where that uses a good unified curriculum planning system like Edge of Planet 21. You may know this, but Edge of Planet 21 is the country's only authorized software for UBDⓇ. Jeff will say more about that shortly. A couple of other thoughts for school leaders, whether you're a coach, administrator, mentor, et cetera. What should you see when you're visiting classrooms? Classes, whether it's for a walkthrough, informal, or even a formal evaluation visit? One of the resources that you have lists what Grant Wiggins and I have put forth as the observable indicators of Understanding by DesignⓇ. You can look at the list in your own time in a little more detail, but I'll give you one example. A simple but recommended one is number two. You should see in classrooms where teachers are using UBDⓇ or claim to be, that they've posted the essential questions for their unit, or in some cases for their entire year. And those are prominent in the classroom and Ideally, you would see teachers referring to them, maybe not in a drop-in visit.
But if you spend some time in the classroom, they would actually be referencing those questions. There are other observable indicators that are noted here. But just for the good of the order, here are a few examples of essential questions that I've seen in classrooms. Hosting the essential questions signals to students and a reminder to teachers that we're not just covering a bunch of stuff and hope it sticks. We're uncovering important ideas and processes, and we're thinking about these because that's the route to understanding. By the way, I'm going to do Proud Papa for a minute. This one on the screen now is from my daughter Julia. As an elementary art teacher, she had essential questions for every one of her units, and she taught kindergarten through fifth grade, including a special needs class. There was a lot of prep, but to her credit, she did what Daddy suggested. Another resource that is available to you is a summary of how As an observer of classrooms, you can use backward design in a cognitive coaching or engaging teacher reflection on their practice. There's a little protocol on the left side. And then an article that I wrote that's a cautionary article for those of you that observe, especially if you're doing evaluative observations where you're evaluating teachers.
My cautionary note is a drop in visit is a blip. It's a sample. It's a snapshot, but you got to be careful not to make unwarranted generalizations from a snapshot. This article describes more about that, but it's recommendation for you. A couple of final notes for leaders. I have come to think of Understanding by DesignⓇ on two tracks at the school and district levels. One track I'll call the micro. This is where we help teachers plan better units, enhance their ability to teach and assess for understanding and transfer. And that's a good thing. That's at the heart of UBDⓇ. But There's a second track that's more systemic in nature. And that asks the question, how might we use the UBDⓇ framework to plan an overall curriculum? Because Marzano said, we need a guaranteed curriculum, one that is coherent and well-aligned across the grades. We can use UBDⓇ and backward design to craft that. That is particularly the domain for those of you who work in roles like curriculum director or program director for world languages, visual performing arts, mathematics, et cetera. There's more to say about this, and I'm happy to talk with you further if you're interested.
But I just wanted to point out that we have these two tracks operating. Micro is fine and valuable and really the starting place, but a more systemic and impactful curriculum will become when you map out the entire curriculum using UBDⓇ. Okay, a few minor, not a minor, but a few parting points for me. As leaders, especially if you're new to UBDⓇ or promoting it newly, you are likely or potentially going to hear some objections. I call these yes buts. And one I already referenced in the beginning, well, UBDⓇ doesn't work because I teach world language or I teach kindergarten. Again, with all due respect, not everything we teach is for a big idea or an authentic performance task, but Clearly, there are things even beginners need to understand. So I don't buy this one, even though you might hear it. Here's one you're more likely to hear, especially from secondary teachers and especially in AP classes. Yeah, this is all well and good, but we got too much content to teach. Again, my response is, if your goal is to cover more content, talk faster in class. But I don't think that's our goal. If anything, U helps us to focus and prioritize the content to focus on the most important, the enduring understandings, and the long-term transfer goals.
There are several articles that I've compiled that address this concern head-on, and you need to address it if you get that from staff. A third, very common one, particularly in public schools, yes, it's all well and good, but we're being held accountable for scores on standardized state tests, and they don't ask essential questions. They don't present authentic tests. The implication is if we do more UBDⓇ things, our test scores are probably going to drop because the measures aren't compatible. There's a lot more to say about this, but I'll give you an analogy that's explicated in an article called Beware the Test Prep Trap. To suggest that the only way of getting the test scores up is practicing the test in the test format, which is mostly multiple choice, and not worry about big ideas, essential questions, or authentic tasks, is the equivalent of saying, Oh, I have a physical exam coming next week, so I think I'm going to practice it for it. I'm going to cut out sugar and sweets, and I might do a little exercise the week before. That get me ready for my physical exam. That's as flawed as saying, I'm going to do test prep, and now it'll make the scores go up.
But there's more to say about that in the article. Finally, and especially I've seen this, those of you in independent and international schools where teachers often value their independence, you might have some people that object to UBDⓇ as taking away their academic freedom. I'll give you an answer to that one before I conclude. I think that UBDⓇ provides an excellent structure that supports freedom, but it's within structure. Here's how I think about it. Stage one of backward design is where we ought to agree to agree. If we're adopting or developing appropriately following standards, our school mission, our portrait of a graduate, our program goals, once we agree to those, teachers shouldn't say, I don't like that. I'm not going to teach it. We ought to agree on stage one. The logic of backward design says if we agree on the goals, we ought to agree at least on some important assessment evidence. I'm not one that says we should standardize every and all assessment by teachers. I am an advocate for agreeing on some common core, particularly performance-based assessments that honor our most important goals. When we get to stage three, which is how people teach, that's where academic freedom and teacher autonomy can flourish as long as we're using sound teaching methods appropriate to our goals.
In the words of an old country song, A river needs banks to flow. And in UBDⓇ, the Banks of the Curriculum River are clarity about our long term goals in stage one, agreement on at least some evidence of those goals in stage two, and within that, there's freedom and flow. But without the Banks of the River, we have a flood plain. UBDⓇ, and that's not good for students. I'm going to wrap up very quickly. Resources to support UBDⓇ. On my website, and you have the web link there, You can scroll over to Resources, and you'll see a collection of resources. It's an interactive PDF file. You can click on it and see the most current list the books, articles, blog posts, et cetera. Secondly, if you look at the green row called articles, I have very recently, in fact, last night, I've finished a really significant update of all the articles that are available free of charge. When you get to that, it looks like this. They're articles that provide general information on UBDⓇ, and then they're articles associated with stages one, two, and three, as well as a set of articles for administrators, many of which I've referenced.
This is free, a click of charge. One of the ways you make the most of UBDⓇ is to keep it in your school or district by periodically sending out an article and having people read it and discuss it at a faculty or team meeting. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I'm going to turn this over to Jeff, but with an invitation that if you are so inclined, just drop in the chat box, what for you was the most interesting or useful idea or resource that you gained from this quick session? Otherwise, thank you for attending. I'm going to turn over to Jeff.
Yeah, thanks, Jay. So great job. A couple of things I'm thinking about here. So we are running short on time, and there are a couple questions out there I thought maybe you might want to hear and elaborate on. But first of all, I noticed our old friend Art Costa is out there as a participant, so I thought maybe we might want to say hi to Art. I haven't seen him in a while.
One of my mentors and favorite people.
Yeah. Hello, Art there. Hopefully, you're hearing us on that. Two questions you may want to ask: The first one, how can we help students understand the relation and alignment of competence and essential questions so they can achieve the transfer goal? That's the first question. Then the other one is around any updates to version 3 of the template.
The answer to the second question is no. The UBE 2.0 template is the one that will go to my grave.
Okay, and that's the one- Because it's been well considered over more than 25 years.
It features what I think are the essential elements. And by the way, any goal that someone has fits into that template, and I can help them see how you don't have to add things, which some people want to do. To the first question, I would answer it this way. Think about athletics or extracurriculars, and I'll just take athletics. As a coach, what is the coach working toward with his or her players in team sports? They're working toward the game. The game is authentic. It's a synthetic performance that involves transfer. Every game is different, and the players have to adjust on the field, on the court, on the ice. With the game as our focus, when we plan backward from the game, as a coach does, we determine, given the players we have, what knowledge they're going to need, what skills, both individual and group skills we have to practice, but also what understandings are important to the game, otherwise known as game strategy. In other words, the particular competencies or content that we teach is not... You don't hear coaches say, I don't have time for the game. I have to cover my playbook, and there's a lot in it.
The coach doesn't say that. The coach says, I'm coaching for the game, and I'm working on the competencies that my players are going to need with that end in mind. There's a lot more to say about that, but that, to me, is the right analogy for that good question.
Okay, great. A couple of housekeeping things, again, as we wrap up here. I am going to try to do... I promise I think I can do it in less than four minutes because that's the whole idea. Unit plan is very simple to use. I think I can touch on it in three to four minutes here and give it to everybody. But you will be getting links and follow up on both Jay's resources, a recording of the session as well as an opportunity to schedule if you want a more in-depth demonstration from our sales team. There'll be a link to schedule that as well. So that being said, the three to four minute demo here. Let me share my screen. Thumbs up that we're seeing the screen. Right now, I am into the core of the platform that we call Uniplanner. Again, it is a modular platform with some different components to accomplish different goals. But the core of the platform has been UBDⓇ Planner, Unit Planner for a number of years. We're all about guided process, so you can see that it basically will step you through stage Stage 2, Stage 3 of UBDⓇ, as Jay mentioned.
A couple of table stakes, very collaborative. When I click on the Team button, you're going to see all the people that are working within the unit itself with you. All that collaboration can be facilitated. Goals and standards to align to are in the system. We have every state standard in there. We don't have specific goals or district standards or goals in there that you're looking for. They would be put in there for you. Alignment is very simple. We could just click on the goal and the grade and the subject and bam, those standards are going to appear for you to align the unit to. Moving on to stage 2 and stage 3, all the alignment you do at the unit level would pull through. As far as entering information around both your learning activities or assessment. A very powerful template with the WYSIWYG. This is where AI, there was a question around AI in the future being built in. We're looking for some AI enhancements and features in Q1 of next year, hoping to get some of that stuff out. So that would be in here as well. But you can see I can put anywhere from documents to links to references to text to anything to best describe the lesson activities or the assessments related to the unit.
As you're working, If you're not sure where you are, bam, automatic alignment to tell you what's been aligned to what has not on this dashboard. So again, very smart as you move through the system. And when you're done, basically, as far as getting out to the UBDⓇ template itself, I just clicked a quick PDF button, and you're going to see in a matter of seconds here, I'm going to have it out into that framework. So that is the Unit Planning, Unit Planner product, the core of the platform. It's been around for a number of years in a quick five-minute demo. The only other thing I'll mention, Jay, is you and I, we've worked on professional learning embedded into the platform as well. We have what we call the professional learning institutes. If I just jump out to one of those very quickly, we did one with Jay a number of years ago, based on the three-day, the two or three day workshops used to go down in, well, I guess a lot of places, but in Columbia, Maryland is where we attended it. But the nice thing about what we would call an institute, they're safe and secure for your school.
Basically, it's your staff put in there and you manage that content as it goes. A number of what we call learning paths, which are essentially just our version of online asynchronous courses to automatically be walked through. You can see if I would click through them, it tracks everything as we move along. Very interactive, a lot of videos, video work that we've done directly with Jay. Again, part of the option of the platform of the solution of the whole curriculum management tool, I wanted to touch on the professional learning aspect of it as well very quickly. Again, we'd love to show you more. In order to show you more, feel free to schedule a demo. You can either go to the Edge of Planet 21 site, and there's a button right on there to schedule some time with us, but you will be getting follow-up emails from us as well. At this point, Jay, any final words for closing, and then we'll drop off here?
No. I'm happy to stick around if people have questions. I did see one question in the Q&A box from Selkuk Dogen, who I know virtually. He asked, is there a sample unit plan on the planner that you could show to us? Maybe if you or Jess, or Brittany, wanted anybody that wanted to stay could stick around and actually see it. I know you have hundreds, not thousands, but that was one question that I saw.
Yeah, absolutely.
Finally, if anyone else has a question before you sign off, I'm happy to stick around.
There you go.
Here's a nutrition unit. Just one we have in is a sample. Jay, I'm sure you're familiar with this unit. Essentially, It's the same thing we saw on the example that Jeff had shown, just a little bit more built out than what he showed. Here we have our unit focus, an area down below for prior learnings and connection. Stage one, we move into our standards. We have those listed out here. Any transfer goals, we have all of those built out as well as our understandings, essential questions, knowledge, and skills. Here you're the same thing that Jeff showed, just a little bit more built out.
Brittany, can I make one quick comment? If you go back to scroll down a little bit into stage one.
Sure.
For those of you who are still on the call, if you notice there's a code next to the transfer goals, to the understanding, to the essential questions, et cetera, knowledge and skills. It's an interesting way of ensuring that when we get into stage 2 and stage 3, that the assessments in stage 2 and the learning experiences and the instruction in stage 3 are, in fact, aligned to our goals. You can actually code an assessment in terms of what it's assessing from your goals. When you're in the teaching mode of stage 3, similarly, I'm doing this activity for the purpose of building this skill or working to develop this understanding. It's a little tedious at first, but it's a very powerful way of ensuring good alignment across all three stages. That's a great feature that Eduplanet offers.
Yeah. Just to play off of that, here we can see we have our performance task. Then over on the left, you can see the standards that we've aligned to long term transfer goals, understandings, etc. So if I click into that alignment, I can now see, Okay, what were those standards and different goals that I had aligned to? That's a really powerful part of a platform that you might not get in something like a Google Doc. Then the same thing in stage three, we have our different lessons and learning activities, and we're intentionally coming in here and aligning to those goals. Now, here in Jeff's final unit alignment check, we saw a good bit of red. This one's a little bit more built out in that we have done some more alignment here. I just wanted to confirm that as far as seeing a more complete unit, that this was what you were looking for. Let's see if it's still in the chat.
He made note of that at 2:11 PM. Okay. Any follow-up questions for me before I take leave? You can either unmute or put them in the chat box. Always use wait time, right? Yeah.
Not seeing just a bunch of thank yous and great comments. So I'll reiterate that as well, Jay. Thank you. And I'll follow up with you when we're done. I'll send you an email. Maybe you and I can Zoom quickly to catch up.
Sounds good. Okay. Bye, everyone. Thanks for watching. Thanks to Eduplanet21 for hosting us.
Bye, everybody. Thanks. Have a great day.