Archive | July, 2010

Help Define "21st Century Education"

Posted on July 31, 2010 by in Leadership, Policy

One of the things that has drawn me to the par­tic­u­lar col­lec­tion of edu­ca­tors whom I fol­low on Twit­ter is that they have a pas­sion for help­ing stu­dents learn bet­ter. Over the last cou­ple of years, I have heard and par­tic­i­pated in a lot of con­ver­sa­tions about so-​​called “21st cen­tury” learn­ing, edu­ca­tion, teach­ing, etc. There seem to be a lot of assump­tions about what this means.

We have the Partern­ship for 21st Cen­tury Skills, of course, but this seems to be only one dimen­sion of what many talk about when they men­tion 21st cen­tury education.

I’ve been hav­ing a hard time wrap­ping my head around it, so to get some help from my col­leagues and com­pile all of the var­i­ous thoughts and ideas about the con­cept into one place, I’ve put together a Google doc­u­ment called “Com­pare & Con­trast 20th/​21st Cen­tury Edu­ca­tion”. OK, not a spec­tac­u­lar title, I admit. But I thought that if we could gen­er­ate a list of how mod­ern edu­ca­tion can, should, or does dif­fer from the “old way” of doing things, maybe that would help me get a bet­ter han­dle on it. And if it helps some other peo­ple in the process, so much the better.

To take it to another level, Kim Printz (@paperwerksart on Twit­ter) asked me this tonight:

@geraldaungst i’m lov­ing the con­ver­sa­tion. but where does this go? who would this doc­u­ment go to, for exam­ple? our sys­tem is STUCK!Sun Aug 01 02:04:49 via webkim printz
paperwerksart

So I’ve added a sec­tion at the bot­tom of the doc­u­ment to share ideas about what to do with this list. Where should it go? How can we use it to impact schools and stu­dents? Come join both parts of the con­ver­sa­tion, and add your thoughts to the list. Then take the list and share it with some­one: a col­league, a par­ent, a prin­ci­pal. In the end, what mat­ters most is not how we define 21st cen­tury edu­ca­tion, but how we apply it to help stu­dents learn.

Why Blog? It's About History

Posted on July 19, 2010 by in Learning

I got think­ing about his­tory the other day.

How do we know what we know about the peo­ple around us? Our lives over­lap in var­i­ous ways. We expe­ri­ence things together, we talk, we share, we col­lab­o­rate. If I want to know more about some­one, I can give them a call or get together with them for a cup of cof­fee, and we can talk. We ask ques­tions, we share thoughts and dreams, and a con­nec­tion is made. His­tory is about the rela­tion­ships between our sto­ries. It is a grow­ing, chang­ing thing. My story is dif­fer­ent today than it was yes­ter­day, and I’ve added a small bit to the web of his­tory by the things I did today.

The day some­one dies, their story, and what­ever his­tory they were con­nected to, is com­plete. The cement has set. Any­thing new we may have to find out about them is already there in the things they’ve left behind. This is the real job of the his­to­rian: to assem­ble the clues and frag­ments left behind by the peo­ple who can’t tell us their own sto­ries any more.

So the ones who really write the his­tory are the ones who leave things behind. And this is pre­cisely why I think it is impor­tant for teach­ers and admin­is­tra­tors to blog. What will future his­to­ri­ans have to work with when they are try­ing to piece together the story of teach­ing in the twenty-​​first cen­tury? Do we want our story to be told by politi­cians and the press? Do we want to be defined by the view from outside?

Teach­ers have always been in a posi­tion to cre­ate his­tory and define a legacy through the stu­dents whose lives we change, and that is still true today. But we have a unique oppor­tu­nity to tell our own story daily. If oth­ers lis­ten to that story and cre­ate a con­ver­sa­tion with us, the his­tory is that much richer. Only while we are liv­ing that story can we add to the con­ver­sa­tion and build an intri­cate, inti­mate pic­ture of our lives and the lives around us.

Everyone’s story is inter­est­ing to some­one, and everyone’s story is impor­tant to his­tory. What his­tory will you cre­ate today?

What Does it Mean to be Gifted Now?

Posted on July 16, 2010 by in Gifted, Learning

For the sec­ond in our sum­mer series, Tony Bal­dasaro (@baldy7 on Twit­ter) brings us this reflec­tion on his views about gifted edu­ca­tion. Tony is the Chief Human Resources Offi­cer and the Per­son­al­ized Path­ways Admin­is­tra­tor for the Vir­tual Learn­ing Acad­emy Char­ter School. This arti­cle was also cross-​​posted at Tony’s blog, TransLead­er­ship.

What excites me about the shift in edu­ca­tion away from the classroom-​​centric model we have all been a part of over the last cen­tury, is the fact that stu­dents are less depen­dent upon the teacher and/​or the sys­tem for all knowl­edge.  Stu­dents no longer have to attend school to attain their knowl­edge, they are as Nagel describes, “free agent learn­ers”.

Because of that, stu­dents have the oppor­tu­nity to break from the long-​​standing cat­e­gories we so often use in edu­ca­tion.  Terms such as “slow learner”, “hands on learner”, “trou­bled stu­dent”, “active stu­dent”, “solid stu­dent”, “middle-​​of-​​the-​​road stu­dent”, “tal­ented stu­dent”, “straight A stu­dent” and yes “gifted stu­dent” are sim­ply con­structs of our edu­ca­tional sys­tem and they most often only pro­vide clues as to how the stu­dent learns within the nar­row con­fines of that sys­tem. The “straight A” stu­dent may be intel­li­gent, but I’ll bet they are also also very com­pli­ant and dili­gent in get­ting their home­work done and being atten­tive in class.  They are very good at play­ing the part of the indus­trial model school stu­dent that the “con­spir­acy” of school was intended to cre­ate but are they good at solv­ing prob­lems, being cre­ative, unlearn­ing that which they have pre­vi­ously learned so they can be rel­e­vant?  Do we really chal­lenge these stu­dents to use their gifts to their fullest poten­tial or do we sim­ply moved them along the con­veyor belt, send­ing them off to col­lege with the tools to con­tinue to be “good” students?

The “active” stu­dent is one that doesn’t fit our sys­tem well, yet fits in the world’s chaotic and unpre­dictable sys­tem very nicely.   To make that stu­dent fit within our edu­ca­tional model, we drug, pun­ish, and belit­tle the stu­dent until they either com­ply to a degree in which they can be tol­er­ated, or are pushed out of our sys­tem all together.  The real shame here is that many times there is an assump­tion that these stu­dents are not gifted, when in fact they are, they sim­ply don’t play the game by the indus­trial model rules that were estab­lished a cen­tury ago.  Our choice has been to change the stu­dent to fit the model instead of chang­ing the model to fit the stu­dent and by doing so, we have missed an oppor­tu­nity with a whole bunch of gifted students.

How often do we work to con­trol our stu­dents?  Think of that stu­dent who chal­lenges our sys­tems.  Think about your reac­tion to that stu­dent.  Now think about your reac­tion to that stu­dent when you know they are right and our sys­tem in wrong.  Unfor­tu­nately, most of us squelch that stu­dent and often with­out a true expla­na­tion as to why.  We say that it is, “com­pli­cated” or “for their own good” or “they will under­stand when they are older”, instead of embrac­ing those stu­dents, their ideas and their input.  Instead of acknowl­edg­ing that they are right­fully chal­leng­ing the way we edu­cat­ing them because our sys­tem is not work­ing for them and they want it to.  Their “chal­lenges” are pleas for help, not the acts of betrayal we so often por­tray them to be.

My point here is that we have so nar­rowly defined what it means to be “gifted” in our sys­tem of edu­ca­tion, that we fail to either see the gifts within each stu­dent, or we fail to push stu­dents beyond the model we have been a part of for so long.  I fear that as long as we define “school” and “learn­ing” so nar­rowly, we will con­tinue to miss the the oppor­tu­nity to cul­ti­vate the gifted stu­dent found in all stu­dents.  As long as we con­tinue to define what it means to be “gifted” by the sys­tem which so nar­rowly defines how we learn, we will not truly find each of our stu­dents’ gifts.  It is why this shift toward free agent learn­ing, with the cat­e­gor­i­cal free­doms and the power to self-​​define our gifts, is so intriguing.

Consumer-Driven Education

Posted on July 15, 2010 by in Policy

The Cabs of Times Square, by joiseyshowaa

I had a wide-​​ranging con­ver­sa­tion over cof­fee the other day with David Tim­ony (@drtimony on Twit­ter). One of the things that came up was the idea of stu­dents as con­sumers. David is doing research about what con­sti­tutes an expert teacher, focus­ing on teacher behav­iors that influ­ence stu­dent per­cep­tions of exper­tise. It got me think­ing about how we treat teach­ers and stu­dents in the big pic­ture and the busi­ness of edu­ca­tion today.

For a long time, edu­ca­tors have been told we need to run schools more like busi­nesses, that the stu­dents are the con­sumers, and we need to let the mar­ket drive our meth­ods. We should mea­sure stu­dent per­for­mance and stu­dent reac­tion like cor­po­ra­tions mea­sure con­sumer pref­er­ence and adjust our meth­ods to pro­duce the out­comes (increased sales) that we are look­ing for.

I have a prob­lem with this approach, though. It pre­sumes that the stu­dents are pas­sive recip­i­ents of the edu­ca­tion we are pro­duc­ing. It also leads to a mar­ket where many of the pro­duc­ers (schools) resort to manip­u­la­tive and decep­tive tac­tics to increase the num­bers. We only need to look at recent news on Wall Street to see that reliance on one met­ric to judge per­for­mance can not only cause prob­lems but it can affect the entire econ­omy. Is this really what we want for education?

What if we turn the model upside down? What if we think of the stu­dents not as con­sumers but as the producers?

In the mar­ket­place, cor­po­ra­tions have a lot of con­trol over their prod­uct, their meth­ods, their adver­tis­ing, but they are ulti­mately depen­dent on the con­sumer to judge their prod­ucts and make them suc­cess­ful. The con­sumers also pro­vide a great deal of feed­back to the com­pa­nies about what works, what doesn’t, and how they can improve their prod­ucts to make them more suc­cess­ful. In addi­tion, cor­po­ra­tions have to work within an exist­ing envi­ron­ment that dic­tates much of what they must do to suc­ceed: laws, tax struc­tures, sup­pli­ers, com­pe­ti­tion, investors, and so on.

If stu­dents become the pro­duc­ers, they will have to work in the envi­ron­ment cre­ated by the schools and teach­ers, includ­ing cur­ricu­lum, stan­dards, and so on. The teach­ers become the con­sumers, pro­vid­ing feed­back and guid­ing the learn­ing process (roughly par­al­lel to R&D in the cor­po­rate world).

This model is far from per­fect, of course. There is a great deal about learn­ing and about school that doesn’t fit into the busi­ness approach. But if we’re going to be asked, or even required, to do busi­ness like a busi­ness, then let’s really exam­ine that model and think hard about what it means for kids.

Empowering the Future

Posted on July 13, 2010 by in Gifted, Thinking Skills

This is the first in a sum­mer series of guest posts by mem­bers of my personal/​professional learn­ing net­work. Mary Beth Hertz is the tech­nol­ogy teacher and tech­nol­ogy inte­gra­tor at Alliance for Progress Char­ter School in North Philadel­phia. She can be found on Twit­ter at @mbteach and blogs at Philly Teacher.

What I want to express in this blog post is not any­thing new or inno­v­a­tive. It is noth­ing that hasn’t been said before.  How­ever, it is some­thing that’s been mulling about in my brain while I was drink­ing my morn­ing cof­fee and watch­ing the Twit­ter stream from the Dis­cov­ery Edu­ca­tors Net­work Lead­er­ship Coun­cil Symposium.

A video kept get­ting re-​​tweeted in the stream so I fig­ured I’d bet­ter check it out.

You can watch the 2 minute video, Microsoft Labs 2019 Vision:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQdGvfV4WnU

As soon as it started I felt like I was watch­ing a car com­mer­cial. It was flashy, well-​​produced and fast-​​paced. I hon­estly was not that impressed. I guess what peo­ple felt was that it was a win­dow into what the future holds for tech­nol­ogy and dig­i­tal devices.

That I won’t deny.

The name on the video is “Microsoft Office Labs 2019 Vision Mon­tage.” This is the vision that Microsoft has for our future.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Many things.

For one, why are we let­ting Microsoft dic­tate what the future of dig­i­tal life will look like? We could make the same state­ment about Apple or Sony or any other com­pa­nies who man­u­fac­ture dig­i­tal prod­ucts.  Many of these com­pa­nies do use cus­tomer input and feed­back to improve their prod­ucts, but in real­ity we are all con­sumers of what these com­pa­nies feed us.

What does this mean for edu­ca­tion? It means that we need to be putting our stu­dents to the task of decid­ing what THEY want their future to look like. We live in a time unlike any other in his­tory. Our nat­ural resources are dis­ap­pear­ing, we have devices that are more pow­er­ful than ever before and we have tools that allow us to con­nect with peo­ple thou­sands of miles away in a mat­ter of seconds.

Com­pa­nies like Microsoft are not in the busi­ness of plan­ning for the future of our chil­dren as mem­bers of soci­ety or for the future of our global com­mu­nity. We must empower our stu­dents with that charge. It is they who will inhabit the future. We must also ensure that we empower ALL stu­dents to take part in the build­ing of future soci­ety, not just the ones who are priv­i­leged and can afford it.

There are many obsta­cles to over­come when we begin to ask our stu­dents to solve real world prob­lems. Solu­tions to real world prob­lems don’t fit on a stan­dard­ized test. Solu­tions to real world prob­lems take time to under­stand and even more time to solve. Solu­tions to real world prob­lems require a restruc­tur­ing of school as we know it.

I have been hav­ing var­i­ous con­ver­sa­tions (and some­times debates) about what it means to be a teacher and a learner in the 21st Cen­tury. Some of the con­ver­sa­tion has been focused around guid­ing stu­dents to under­stand­ing rather than deliv­er­ing con­tent, cre­at­ing learn­ing envi­ron­ments where learn­ing is a con­nected and social expe­ri­ence, and infus­ing tech­nol­ogy into learn­ing when it can trans­form the learn­ing expe­ri­ence.  The world our stu­dents will inhabit will require them to col­lab­o­rate with peers, under­stand social media tools and be prob­lem solvers within their own com­mu­ni­ties and the larger world.  We need to pre­pare them for that world.

Schools need to allow for tin­ker­ing. Tin­ker­ing with ideas, tin­ker­ing with mate­ri­als, tin­ker­ing with stu­dents’ per­ceived lim­i­ta­tions. Tin­ker­ing teaches chil­dren how to learn from fail­ure. Tin­ker­ing teaches chil­dren how to think about a prob­lem or a project from many per­spec­tives. Tin­ker­ing allows chil­dren to build self esteem and feel pride in what they do. Stu­dents who tin­ker are the stu­dents who build our future.

Some exam­ples of what I’m talk­ing about:

There are those who will look at these words as a ‘pipe dream,’ ‘utopia’ or ‘fairy­tale.’  To them I would argue that we must have a Vision. If Microsoft can con­struct a vision of what it thinks the world will look like in 2019 then we as edu­ca­tors, par­ents, com­mu­nity mem­bers, law­mak­ers and gen­eral stake­hold­ers in the world need to have a vision, too. Even more impor­tantly, we need to let our chil­dren begin to build their own vision for their own future and give them skills to make it real.

Don't Be Creative

Posted on July 13, 2010 by in Thinking Skills

Spilling the Beans

How would you sort these?

Take a look at this pic­ture. If I asked you to sort them into piles, how would you do it? OK, now do it again a dif­fer­ent way. No prob­lem, right? Again. Took a lit­tle longer for you to think of a way to sort them this time, didn’t it?

I’ve done this with kids and adults of var­i­ous ages. The first few times we sort, it’s sim­ple and straight­for­ward. The next few times it starts to get more chal­leng­ing. Even­tu­ally there are peo­ple sit­ting there think­ing, “There is no other way to sort these!”

When peo­ple have got­ten to this point, I’ve said some­thing along the lines of, “You have to stretch your think­ing. Be cre­ative!” This would often just result in frus­tra­tion for both of us.

Now I know why. Accord­ing to this arti­cle in Newsweek, telling some­one to “be cre­ative” can actu­ally have the oppo­site effect, clos­ing off their think­ing and mak­ing it more rigid.

So how can we help our stu­dents become more cre­ative? Try some of these strategies:

  • Plant the seed. Instead of a vague “be cre­ative,” tell some­one, “give me an idea that only you could come up with.” Accord­ing to Marc Runco of the Uni­ver­sity of Geor­gia, this sim­ple switch in direc­tions can dou­ble the student’s cre­ative output.
  • Make it messy. Cre­ativ­ity is squashed when stu­dents feel like they are look­ing for one right answer. Give stu­dents prob­lems that have mul­ti­ple solu­tions. Even bet­ter, give them prob­lems with no clear solu­tion. Muck­ing around in the prob­lem solv­ing process can free up cre­ative thinking.
  • Never accept the first answer. Even if a stu­dent gives you the response you were expect­ing, say “Can any­one think of another answer?” or “Is there another way to do that?” It sets an expec­ta­tion that one answer, even if it works, isn’t the end of the process but just the beginning.
  • Teach cre­ativ­ity tech­niques. We often think of cre­ativ­ity as some sort of ethe­real aura that some peo­ple have and some peo­ple don’t. In fact cre­ativ­ity is a skill and a process. It takes work and it can be taught. Tech­niques like SCAMPER can give kids a con­crete han­dle on some­thing that can seem abstract and complicated.
  • Reverse the roles. Instead of giv­ing an assign­ment to stu­dents, ask them to tell you what they would do if they were the teacher. “What would you ask the class to do to show they under­stood this unit?” Share the best ideas with the class and let them pick their assignment.
  • Get out. Chang­ing the per­spec­tive can change stu­dents’ think­ing. Hold a class in the cafe­te­ria, or the audi­to­rium, or the foot­ball sta­dium. Or in a liv­ing room, on the side­walk, or in an amuse­ment park. Rearrange your class­room or your schedule.

And before you think, “That’s not pos­si­ble in my school,” take a minute and come up with a way to make it hap­pen that only you could think of. Or ask your stu­dents to fig­ure it out. You might be sur­prised at what they think of.

So what did I miss? What are your sure­fire meth­ods for get­ting your stu­dents to think and work creatively?

The Three I's of Curriculum

Posted on July 5, 2010 by in Content and Methods, Design, Policy

Last week I wrote about how design prin­ci­ples should apply to cur­ricu­lum. I’ve been think­ing about one of those ele­ments in par­tic­u­lar: the idea of white space. This isn’t really a new con­cept, but I think it bears some examination.

Cur­ricu­lum today is very full. We do our best to stuff every lit­tle thing that may have some impor­tance or rel­e­vance to a sub­ject into the 180 day school year, and since it won’t all fit, we assign the rest as home­work. Any teacher who has been teach­ing for more than a year knows that there is no prac­ti­cal way to com­plete the entire pre­scribed cur­ricu­lum in one year, even if you take the tour bus approach and just point out the high­lights to the stu­dents as you cruise by at sev­enty miles and hour.

I’m no longer con­vinced that the pur­pose of cur­ricu­lum is to assem­ble in one place all the impor­tant “stuff” that a kid should know by the end of the school year. There’s too much that’s impor­tant any­way, we won’t all agree on which things are truly impor­tant, and the vol­ume increases almost daily.

So what if cur­ricu­lum instead were designed with holes, with a cer­tain amount of white space? In visual design, the white space does a few things: it brings atten­tion to the other ele­ments of the design, it allows them to breathe, and it helps make them dynamic. Tak­ing out some stuff and leav­ing more space in the cur­ricu­lum can do sim­i­lar things for the student.

Invite. Cur­ricu­lum should first be built so that the stu­dent wants to engage with the con­tent. It should be active, it should be inter­est­ing, it should be per­sonal. Make it real and rel­e­vant. Start with where the stu­dents are. Con­nect to their inter­ests and their worlds.

Inspire. Next the cur­ricu­lum should moti­vate stu­dents to want to learn about the sub­ject. The word inspire orig­i­nally meant “to breathe into” or “to infuse life by breath­ing”. There is very lit­tle breath­ing room in today’s cur­ricu­lum. Kids have no time to breathe in and reflect on their learn­ing. They just have to cram it in and move on.

Ignite. Finally, the cur­ricu­lum must light the fire. Leave stu­dents at the end of the unit or school year feel­ing like there is so much more to explore and so much deeper to go. If we ignite their pas­sions and their nat­ural curios­ity, they will con­tinue to pur­sue it on their own.

I remem­ber so many times “dis­cov­er­ing” a sub­ject as a teacher that I thought I had no inter­est in learn­ing about, but when I really engaged it (because I had to teach it), I found it fas­ci­nat­ing and went on to study it on my own. I think a well-​​designed cur­ricu­lum can do that for students.

Under­stand that I don’t believe cur­ricu­lum can do this alone. None of these things can or will hap­pen with­out an excel­lent teacher. Cur­ricu­lum doesn’t live until stu­dents and teach­ers inter­act and engage it. But a strong cur­ricu­lum will give the teacher the tools and resources to accom­plish these things more easily.

Accom­plish­ing this is the real chal­lenge, of course. How do we cre­ate a cur­ricu­lum that does these things? How do we antic­i­pate where kids are when there are so many dif­fer­ent var­ied expe­ri­ences around the world? Per­haps this is an argu­ment for purely locally designed cur­ric­ula, but I’m not sure that’s prac­ti­cal. What do you think? How can we make this hap­pen? Or is it just a fan­tasy that will never become reality?

Warning: May Be Hazardous to Your Assumptions

Posted on July 2, 2010 by in Design

Due to the nature of this post, the Depart­ment of Blog­ging requires that I begin with this state­ment:

Notice: The con­sump­tion of raw or under­cooked blog posts may increase your risk of thought-​​borne illness.


Be aware that the ideas I’m going to share here (a) are under­cooked and need some addi­tional pro­cess­ing before they are com­plete, and (b) likely come from a vari­ety of other sources, so if I’ve not given the proper credit for every­thing here, please let me know in the comments.

On my flight back from ISTE 2010 in Den­ver yes­ter­day, I fin­ished read­ing Pre­sen­ta­tion Zen. In it, Garr Reynolds presents, among other things, a con­cise expla­na­tion of the prin­ci­ples of visual design that one should use when cre­at­ing slides for a presentation.

Being an edu­ca­tor, I began to think about how those prin­ci­ples would look if we applied them to cur­ricu­lum design. Here is where my brain has gone with it so far. (And this is the under­cooked part. I’m sure some of these won’t or can’t work, and I’m sure there are ele­ments I’m miss­ing. Chime in on the com­ments to help me sort it all out.) My goal is to elab­o­rate on at least a few of these in future posts.

Sig­nal vs. Noise Ratio. This is about stick­ing to the mes­sage. What is the point or the goal of the cur­ricu­lum plan? If there is any­thing in the plan that gets in the way of that goal, elim­i­nate it.

Pic­ture Supe­ri­or­ity Effect. Peo­ple remem­ber pic­tures bet­ter than words, so in essence, this prin­ci­ple means show, don’t tell. Pre­sen­ters use visu­als to acti­vate emo­tion and con­nec­tion between the audi­ence and the con­tent. In terms of cur­ricu­lum design, I think we need to take it fur­ther. Not only should visu­als be an inte­gral part of every cur­ricu­lum design, but we need to ensure that learn­ers inter­act with and manip­u­late what they are learning.

Empty Space. A key to mak­ing visu­als cleaner and more effec­tive is to incor­po­rate white space. Reynolds says, “empty space in a design is not ‘noth­ing,’ it is indeed a pow­er­ful ‘some­thing,’ which gives the few ele­ments on your slide their power.” We tend to treat cur­ricu­lum as if we are pack­ing for a vaca­tion: get as much as we pos­si­bly can into the fewest num­ber of bags. Bring extra clothes in case of unfore­seen mishaps, and bring a big vari­ety in case the weather takes an unex­pected turn. Empty space in our cur­ricu­lum design might give stu­dents a chance to breathe and reflect.

Con­trast. Visu­ally we use con­trast to make some­thing stand out. When was the last time you saw a cur­ricu­lum where cer­tain ele­ments were delib­er­ately arranged to stand out against the rest? We notice and remem­ber what is different.

Rep­e­ti­tion. Visual pat­terns help a pre­sen­ta­tion audi­ence fol­low what is going on. Cur­ricu­lum should be designed the same way: in pre­dictable pat­terns that enhance the mes­sage with­out becom­ing trite and simplistic.

Align­ment. Again quot­ing Reynolds, “The whole point of the align­ment prin­ci­ple is that noth­ing in your slide design should look as if it were placed there ran­domly.” So often I have seen things dropped into the mid­dle of a unit that seem like it’s there just because. Align­ment means that every­thing in a cur­ricu­lum design is there on pur­pose and with a con­scious con­nec­tion to other ele­ments and other parts of the curriculum.

Prox­im­ity. Finally, clus­ter­ing related items together helps cement the con­nec­tion to the viewer. If the stu­dent has to expend energy try­ing to fig­ure out why a unit is struc­tured the way it is, then the struc­ture isn’t work­ing for the curriculum.

Okay, so help me avoid mak­ing all my read­ers ill by help­ing me cook this. What have I missed? Is this overly obvi­ous, or is there some­thing worth dig­ging out more?