I have learned a great deal from my monthly meetings with the English department: how to lead, how not to lead, how to completely miss the mark on what teachers need, and how to recover beautifully from missing said mark. However, one of the simplest things, I have found, you can do for teachers to aid them in their professional development, is to listen carefully and then deliver on what you hear.
On Wednesday, all of the above situations played out. We have often discussed having an expert voice come speak to us to help us drill deeper into an element of our craft. A while back, I came across an article by a Duke University professor, Dr. Bradley Hammer (who is how at UNC), that dealt with the shifts that were taking place in student writing in the “academy.” The title of the article spoke volumes: “A New Type of University Writing.” Now, my English department already thinks I have a massive case of technophilia, and inviting this professor who believed that college writing, long believed to be the epitome of thesis driven argumentative writing, was now transforming into another piece of the digital landscape, was a risky move. But, after talking to him on the phone in September, I knew he would make some waves of the good kind. And did he ever.
The teachers were very interested in hearing about trends he saw in student writing, in essence asking for feedback on what he thought of Freshman entering the program. Dr. Hammer didn’t disappoint in his response. Most of his work, he stated, is deconstructing what the students come in with. For example, he stated that 15 years ago, it was common for students to arrive at the college campus with very poor argumentative skills: weak ability to write strong theses, very little support for arguments in their writing. Now, they all arrive knowing how to “do the essay.” Formulaic, straightforward positions, support at all the appropriate turns, and of course, an adherence to the five-paragraph format. His work is to get them away from “doing the essay,” to caring about the essay.
His work is about teaching students to deconstruct their own biases in their writing so that when confronted with a traditional topic (he used abortion in our our conversation as an example) the students would begin to generate questions about the factors that define the topic rather than automatically deciding which side of the argument to sit on. For the students in his writing class, it’s not about whether or not you can convince someone of something, but rather that you get an understanding of yourself through an issue presented to you. His greatest line, by far for me, was this:
High schools train students how to argue–they need to learn how to ask questions and interrogate ideas first.
As soon as he said it, I immediately began running thumbing through my mental Rolodex to try to remember how many times I have heard that in my reading over the last two years. It just rings. Whether it’s been caused by federal mandates or by our poorly thought out responses to them, we’ve underestimated our students ability to be meta-cognitive about the writing process. It’s more about the process rather than the product, when we truly break it down to it’s smaller parts. Is it really imperative that little Suzy write her essay in five standard paragraphs with a neat little thesis hook at the end of her first paragraph? Or would we rather see her wrestle something down to it’s bits in the pre-writing and research stages and produce something in three paragraphs? I’ll take the scrapping any day.
What was great for me, aside from the fact that it was a meeting where I did very little direct talking, was the dialog that sprung up after our call ended. Some of those in the room were in agreement with Hammer; we should be focusing more on the meta-cognitive processes of writing. Others asked if the reasons Hammer and his colleagues are able to do the deconstruction with students and push them in the direction they do is because of the argumentative underpinnings that high school English teachers provided them with? Can they get to B without having gone through A? Others asked if there was a way we could see products of the freshman Hammer worked with; we wanted to see what inquiry-driven writing looked like in the end.
The most challenging element about working with the four departments I do is trying to find something for each of them to sink their teeth into, and this did it for the English teachers. My own personal belief about what compositional writing should like look at any level is very simple: writing should demonstrate your ability to think, and your ability to convey those thoughts succinctly. My answer to the departmental question about whether or not we should be doing the things that Dr. Hammer does in our classrooms is undeniably yes. But, like anything, let’s allow the students to determine the level to which they can successfully do it. Just because they are 16 doesn’t necessary preclude them from inquiry, and the same can be said in reverse for some students. Push where needed, pull back when necessary.
I am banking on one very important thing this year: that the use of publicity will continue to raise the tide of change and lift more boats.
For the last two years, I have managed a district technology blog called Tech Dossier. This year, I have reconstituted it thanks to a few posts by Miguel, but changed it slightly. First, the name: from Tech Dossier, to The Dossier. I truly want to move away from the inclusion of the word technology in any of the titles I use. Through several conversations with people like Barry Bachenheimer and Patrick Chodkiewicz, I’ve come to realize that semantics matter, especially to teachers. It’s not about how to use technology when you teach, but rather it’s about how you can teach, period. Second, to match the semantic shift in the title, the focus of the articles has now broadened to include topics that are not solely technologically based, but rather a highlight of some of the innovative practices our teachers are using. We have teachers in all of our buildings who constantly push their thinking and their students thinking. I’d like to get there and find them; the rest of the district, and the world at large should be seeing what they are doing.
I’ve enlisted several people to write over the two years, and this year we’ve added a second-grade teacher from one of the elementary schools to the list of authors. We’ve got three administrators, two high school teachers, a middle school teacher, a tech coordinator, and now an elementary teacher writing and looking out in their buildings for ingenious ideas. Also, being no stranger to shameless promotion, I send out a bi-weekly email highlighting all of the posts that have appeared. I am trying to get a feed service to send it to our global address book, but somehow I think that may either get flagged as spam, or individual teachers would not recognize it as an important message and just delete it.
The idea of doing some reporting, let’s even call it micro-reporting due to the short nature of the posts, on what is going on instructionally within you building is a gold mine. While our commenting has been limited so far, our stats are through the roof, so I know people are going to the page. At this point that’s all I want: people to know that others are out there looking for them, trying to catch them being competent and taking risks.
Head on over to The Dossier, and check out what our teachers have been up to.
“Now that we’re aware ChaCha exists, I can assure you that we will begin
discussion of a formal policy to prohibit cell phone use in classes,”
said Gerard O’Sullivan, vice president for academic affairs at Neumann
College in Delaware County, Pa. He said most professors already
prohibited cell phone use in class.
Let’s rule out something before it is examined. Sounds highly anti-academic to me.
My wife and I went to his back to school night last week anxious to see his school and meet his teachers. For us, it was like reconnaissance: my wife is also a teacher and her back to school night was coming up and we needed ideas. Plus, our son is close-lipped about school, always answering our questions with “I don’t know.” As we sat there, cross-legged at “circle time,” I took some mental notes, and I also started recalling the back-to-school nights I had lived through in the classroom. What I remember, and what became apparent to us as the blood rushed from our feet under the weight of our adult bodies, was that the more time I spent on rules and regulations, the less everyone was engaged, including me.
What do we want to know when we enter our child’s classroom? Do we need to know that the penalty for chewing gum is a wearing it on his nose? I think we have to take a page from good presentation skills here: if they need to know my rules, I can provide them on a handout. What we wanted to know as we entered his classroom was what he did when he wasn’t with us.
His teacher did a masterful job of this. We sat like preschoolers and followed their mini-schedule. She moved as if we were the kids, showing us the actions she makes as she instructs; every action is mirrored by the words used to describe it. We got to know her and who she is. We spent time imagining our son working and interacting with the same things we were.
We are in the midst of back to school night time for most of us here in New Jersey. Our district is going through them this week. When you plan for our back to school nights, I hope you all think about what you would want as a parent. For my wife and I, we wanted to be able to see how he would interact in that environment, and we wanted to know that he was in a supportive environment.
These are the things I would want to see as a parent in my child’s classroom:
Be Genuine. Be who you are with the parents of your students. They want to know that there child is learning, is challenged, and is supported. By showing them your true self, it helps them see those things.
Don’t give us your resume. If you are standing there in front of the room, we’ll assume you are qualified. If parents ask about your credentials, you might have bigger problems on the horizon.
Show samples. Student work on the walls, of course, but also show us examples of lessons they are doing currently or will do in the future. What I liked most about our preschool visit the other night was that I now know what is on the horizon and what I can expect him to be doing in a class period on a given day.
Be Gracious. You have big class sizes. You have 130 students over the course of the day. They have one child in one room at one time. Understand that they are singular in focus, as you would be too.
Before I left for vacation, I posted a link to Motoko Rich’s article from the New York Times titled Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading? to the high school’s English Department Google Group. I’ll do this occasionally with interesting articles that I’d like to share with my colleagues in the various departments I work with. This one really struck a chord with the teachers, and several of them responded passionately. Here is my response to some of their comments.
What a great dialogue. I was away for a while and came back to read
all of your responses. Many of the thoughts you all expressed echoed
my own, and I pulled some of the quotes that resonated with me from
your responses to comment on.
Brooke wrote:
“It takes time to immerse oneself in a novel and once done
effectively, the reader isn’t even reading anymore. They are seeing
and interacting with the novel on a completely different level of
consciousness. That, one of the most compelling reasons readers read,
is lost on the Internet reader who doesn’t have the opportunity to go
through whatever cognitive process allows it to happen. The novel has
the opportunity to move students through vicarious experience and
changes who they actually are the way experience does.”
Brooke’sdescription shows the nearly spiritual side of reading that we hope our
students can learn to go through. We introduce them to great works of
literature, often types they would never encounter through their own
volition, and then teach, discuss, analyze, oppose, share, empathize
and hope that they emerge on the other side of that novel changed in
some way. The very nature of reading on the internet, as it appears to
me (as someone who does the majority of their reading on the internet)
is cursory. I read much more than ever before, but my choice of to
read longer articles or books is more rare than in the past. Reading
newspapers from around the world, reading magazine articles from
hundreds of magazines a day, or reading blogs written by people in the
education and design field, can be done with much more ease than if I
had to go out to a newsstand and buy them, not to mention the cost
associated with all of my daily reading is zero.
I don’t think our students read online for the reasons they would read a
good book; as Brooke stated in her post, it’s a different animal.
Carol’s respons to Brooke took my thinking in another direction
entirely, however.
“grazing on the Internet is a very different set of skills that our students are now automatically
acquiring on their own. Although we do need to help them hone those
skills, it still remains our primary job as English teachers to expose
them to the rigors, the complexity, the challenge, and, yes, the
beauty of literature–to the “best that has been thought or said in
the world” (to quote Matthew Arnold)– where they will develop and
exercise their powers of analysis, critical thinking, and empathy.”
The ideas she brings out here, those of analysis, critical thinking and
empathy are crucial to the success of our students in their college
years and beyond. One of the books on my summer reading list was “A
Whole New Mind,” by Daniel Pink, which I recommend to all of you (I
have a copy if you would like to borrow it). The premise of the book
is that the abilities that dominated the Information Age, which were
primarily those of left-brained thinkers, will not be enough for our
children. They need to become able to recognize patterns, find deeper
meaning, see complexity and manage it, have a sense of design and
flow–all skills that we strive to foster in the study of literature.
With those skills, we often find it necessary to push students “To rise to the challenge, to work for something, to feel achievement in
the accomplishment, and to work that brain to figure it out,” as
Carol said. To which I say there may not be a more important set of
things we show our students than these three. And I love how she ended
the paragraph:
“If we aren’t going to guide them through this in the English class room, where will
they encounter it? Internet Age or not, these are not skills that we
can allow to leach out of our common psyche!”
We are not “teachers of technology,” but rather can use tools that
transform the ways in which we allow our students to meet challenges,
think critically, empathize, and connect with ideas larger than
themselves. Our desire to lead them through the processes of critical
thinking and analysis of literature need to be connected to something
within themselves. What is their connection to it? What motivates
them to access these skills?
Andrew expressed a sentiment in his reply about students and the technologies they use:
“Technology, with all its pros and cons, has emerged alright, so why do we have to go out of our way to expose our students to it. They get it just fine, especially for
them.”
This raises the question of literacy in general, the definition of which has
expanded greatly over the last twenty years. Our students, and
ourselves, for that matter, are inundated with information whenever
they open their computers. The ability to sift credible information
from sources they read, view, or listen to is essential. While they
may “get” technology in the sense that they understand how to entertain
themselves, they often struggle with its ability to make their academic
life richer and more simplified. That is where we come in. Just as we
helped them navigate the world of the Dewey Decimal System,
peer-reviewed journals, and the like, we must now do the same for the
systems that are making information accessible from everywhere they
are. We need to teach them how to ask the right questions, find
things, evaluate them, and synthesize them into a credible whole. That
part hasn’t changed. The tools that get the job done most efficiently
have.
Before I begin this brief description of the fledgling process I have cobbled together from various sources and methods, I wanted to send out a few thank yous to all of those that have contributed to my resource collection: Carolyn Foote, Tom Haskins, Barry Bachenheimer, Lisa Huff, Dana Huff, Nick Senger and the rest of the folks at Literacy Lighthouse, Diane Cordell, and Karen Janowski. Aside from feeling like I just won an Oscar after listing all of those names, I can’t think of a better research team than the network that exists around me. When I need things, they appear from everywhere.
The idea that our research process needed looking at came about during the middle of this past school year when the construction schedule for our new high school was released and it became clear to us that the Media Center as we knew it (read: one that contained books) would cease to exist. Our research process relied heavily on the use of database and print resources, as well as some internet sources depending on their validity. However, our ability to bring a class of students to the Media Center would not be there this year, so a lot of the processes we had used over the years would no longer be applicable. This led me to dig a little deeper: what was it that we wanted to teach the students about research? What are the essential skills that students should leave our high school with? Do processes like note cards have a place in an increasingly digital world? What about how we determine validity? Looking at these questions tore the roof off of the process, because now I was getting what really mattered about doing research. Tying this into what we’ve been throwing around with the 4 R’s of Rigor, Relevance, Relationship, and Results, I put some questions out to the network: And, in a moment of frustration: By the end of last week I was ready to start assembling the various parts I had gleaned from my own research and the links, as evidenced in tweets like this one in response to Carolyn Foote’s suggestion to check out Carol Kuhlthau’s research on how students engage in research processes and the emotional range they go through in doing it. That led me to the work of Jamie McKenzie. His Research Cycle uses a lot of the elements I had taken and co-opted for my own purposes here. I realized that we needed a framework in which to teach the essential skills of research in this day and age, and we needed one that relied heavily on inquiry and student-driven research. Within that framework, we could create all sorts of projects and learning outcomes. Here is the diagram for the final outcome, which takes into account McKenzie’s work, coupled with some other modes to work within:
This chart shows how the process centers on six essential skills, which in their final form, will represent the essential questions of the research process for students: Use of Inquiry and Questioning (throughout the process as idea generator, and as idea refiner), Information Retrieval Skills, Evaluation of Sources for Reliability and Validity, Synthesis of Information from Multiple Sources and Multiple Media, Attribution of Sources, Publishing for a Larger Audience. Throughout the course of their four years of high school, four modes with which to instruct students in McKenzie’s Research Cycle will be offered: Controlled, Guided, Modeled, and Free. It is very easy to lump those categories into grade levels where Freshman conduct controlled research, Sophomores do guided, etc. However, I designed this with the idea that the mode that a student does his or her research in can be differentiated by readiness level. If a Freshman demonstrates the requisite skill necessary to carry out higher-level research, let them do a modeled or free research project, and it works conversely so as well.
It’s early in the process, and our teachers haven’t convened to review this, and I desperately need them to see where I believe we should be moving. In my haste to eschew the old methods, I asked questions of the network, as I stated earlier. One of the most eye-opening responses I got was from Lisa Huff. I had asked whether or not we needed to be teaching the use of note cards in student research:
make them aware that there are multiple ways to attribute sources: the most appropriate may depend on the genre and context. For example, are there times when hyperlinked sources (throughout a published piece or at the end) are more appropriate than a formal MLA or APA works cited page? As for bib cards and note cards, I think, again, our focus should be on helping our students understand the process and available strategies for identifying important information from sources and selecting an organizational strategy to synthesize that information. If we show them multiple strategies and tools–underlining, highlighting, note cards, Furl, Digg, del.icio.us, online bib makers–I think we come closer to preparing them for the real information literacy demands they’ll face in their futures.
Although the highlight is my own, when I read this, that immediately stood out to me as an important thing we do for students: prepare them for the demands their futures will present them with. Additionally, just as we focus so intently on the tech tools that we like to use, what is truly meaningful behind them is the utility that they bring to our lives. If a tool doesn’t suit the job, discard it. That comment, coupled with a response from Tom Haskins on a previous post regarding research:
The issue of “how to do research” has come up every time I’ve taught college seniors. I have a low tolerance for the voice in academic research papers. They read as “dry and boring” to me, just as they do to the students who write them. I tell them that a small minority of the “knowledge workers in the world” ever use their school experience of writing research papers again. The few that do are either college professors, research scientists or members of think tanks. Most everyone else is doing write-ups of field research. That includes journalists, authors, screenwriters, management consultants, counselors, social workers, law enforcement officers, anthropologists, an every kind of manager (product, HR, team, market, team, etc). The data is gathered from informal conversations, casual observations, formal interviews, photographic records, background reading, and comparisons with colleagues’ similar research.
When we ask students to do research, are we concerned with voice? Tom spoke of that as being of paramount importance, and lacking from the majority of research work that high school and college students do, yet such a small percentage of people actually ever do that type of research when they leave college. There is a point there; let’s prepare them for their futures by equipping them with the research skills, including both digital and traditional (if they are still relevant), that will make their lives in college and beyond much more rewarding.
And, above all, let’s make it mean something to them.
I realize it might be poor etiquette to clip and post nearly the whole text of the recent Google Blog entry titled “Our Googley Advice: Major in Learning,” but in light of what I am charged with helping to create lately, these skills and the messages that define them really hit home. The highlights are my own.
At the highest level, we are looking for non-routine problem-solving
skills. We expect applicants to be able to solve routine problems as a
matter of course. After all, that’s what most education is concerned
with. But the non-routine problems offer the opportunity to create
competitive advantage, and solving those problems requires creative
thought and tenacity.
… analytical reasoning.
Google is a data-driven, analytic company. When an issue arises or a
decision needs to be made, we start with data. That means we can talk
about what we know, instead of what we think we know.
… communication skills. Marshaling and understanding the available evidence isn’t useful unless you can effectively communicate your conclusions.
… a willingness to experiment. Non-routine problems call for non-routine solutions and there is no
formula for success. A well-designed experiment calls for a range of
treatments, explicit control groups, and careful post-treatment
analysis. Sometimes an experiment kills off a pet theory, so you need a
willingness to accept the evidence even if you don’t like it.
… team players.
Virtually every project at Google is run by a small team. People need
to work well together and perform up to the team’s expectations.
… passion and leadership.
This could be professional or in other life experiences: learning
languages or saving forests, for example. The main thing, to paraphrase
Mr. Drucker, is to be motivated by a sense of importance about what you
do.
These characteristics are not just important in our
business, but in every business, as well as in government,
philanthropy, and academia. The challenge for the up-and-coming
generation is how to acquire them. It’s easy to educate for the
routine, and hard to educate for the novel. Keep in mind that many
required skills will change: developers today code in something called
Python, but when I was in school C was all the rage. The need for
reasoning, though, remains constant, so we believe in taking the most
challenging courses in core disciplines: math, sciences, humanities.
in the real world, while the answers to the odd-numbered problems are
not in the back of the textbook, the tests are all open book, and your
success is inexorably determined by the lessons you glean from the free
market. Learning, it turns out, is a lifelong major.
I read that and thought of the possibilities that lay ahead for us, and the ideas we have yet to have. I get excited at the prospect of a whole life filled with change and refinement of thought–how can we do this better? What about what we are already doing works well and can be translated to new situations? What should we leave behind?
Nevertheless, as we returned from BLC and came back to our realities of working within a strict system, we began to have some doubts about the differences we can make. Looking through our notes I pulled this one from Ewan’s keynote:
All mankind is divided into three groups: those that are immovable,
those that are movable and those that move. — Benjamin
Franklin
And the coup de grace:
We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing
new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down
new paths.–Walt Disney
I started thinking about this Disney quote (we watched Meet the Robinsons last night) and thinking about an opening day with staff speech. Can you weave this into the message that you give to you staff on opening day? Would it not move them to higher action. Unfortunately (I should watch what I say) I don’t have that responsibility this year, but if I did, these messages would be interwoven into what I would deliver. We always need to be moving forward, and we need to remember how to learn.
“We should see ourselves as all being in research and development.”
That line, or something strikingly close to it came from Ewan McIntosh’s keynote address last Wednesday at BLC. It’s not the first time I had heard a speaker ask that we all focus on our own development, or transforming our classrooms into teacher-researcher laboratories, but it was the first time where I heard it as an administrator. Oddly enough, just the semantic shift in title changes the meaning behind McIntosh’s statement for me. In our notes, a few of us remarked about the statement, and later on in the day I took it upon myself to synthesize some of the bigger ideas we had all been having in our debriefings at dinner. Here is what I came up with for the R and D idea:
Teachers as researchers: one of the things we all see the need for is to create a culture in our buildings where our teachers see themselves, to quote McIntosh, as “in research and development.”
What makes that happen in your school?
one of the things I keep thinking about personally is the use of pilot programs that last only a few months.
Screencasting: ask teachers to incorporate Eric Marcos “kids teaching kids” methods for 3 months and then have the selected teachers share their experience with other teachers in their building.
Promote open collaboration between classrooms within the building and around the nation/world through getting the teachers into other rooms to observe, and through connecting our teachers with others outside the U.S. Have them pitch their idea to the building principals, execute the plan, and have them present their product to the staff.
Showing teacher work and student work off
there is a theme running through a lot of the workshops here that incorporates the idea that we should promote the teachers that “get it.”
Which teachers get it, and I don’t mean technologically only, but which teachers will look at something new and attack it, refine it and make it their own? Find them and ask them to show how they do it. Do this often.
Let students show teachers how things work. Have you heard Alan’s quote: “always bring a student to a technology conference?” Let students show their teachers what they are actually capable of (from Eric Marcos’ presentation, and Ewan’s keynote: “-Give a button to a teacher and they ask what to do with it, give a button to a kid and they play with it and discover“
District-wide PD conference
We have been sitting in workshops for a day now and at some point or another we have all remarked that we have teachers doing this or doing that. Can we pull them together and run our own “in-house” conference?
The willing and able can present what they do to the rest of the staff and we go from there.
School-wide or grade-wide Custom search engines
we can use Google Custom Search to enable teachers to create their own search engines based on the links they already provide to the students for research. They can still limit content to the sites they want, but it is an incredible time saver if all of the staff combines their resources into one search engine.
It gives them exposure to the collaborative nature of the web.
Everyone is in R and D.
I’ll be brutally honest here: I went to BLC not wanting another tool to add to my belt (although I did get a few); I wanted answers to questions from teachers who don’t see value in change. I wanted to be able to return and say, “look, here is my magic bullet, and it’s wireless.” Truthfully, I set myself up for some disappointment, but I did walk away with several fantastic ideas worth taking action on immediately.
Among other things, I realized, thanks to a few pushes, that it’s time to get out there and share what we’re doing here. Not that it’s earth-shattering, but we have inertia, and I think that might be valuable to some people. We have been pushing and pulling on what we know and understand about teaching and learning there, getting a lot of feedback from our staff, and it’s time that we also looked at ourselves as researchers and developers. What better lesson in humility than to fail in public and try again? I think we are ready for what’s next.
So, there I was, watching this great advertisement from Nokia:
during Darren and Clarence’s presentation at BLC (third link to both of them in three days–I promise I am not link-stalking), when things began to unfold.
I needed data for this.
We are opening the school year with our Connections class, a second language arts class focused on problem-solving and writing as a thinking tool. What we are really having difficulty with is the fact that the students may struggle with the format of the class; getting an “A” will require strong habits of mind and a focus on proving that your answer has merit. We’ve stripped out grading for grammar and spelling, we’ve focused our assessment on process thinking, cooperative group discussion, portfolio defense, and for lack of a better word, “out of the box” thinking. Getting the students on board immediately is imperative for any class, but for this one, which they are already viewing as “2nd English,” is crucial not only for the success of this year, but also for the success of the program.
There is a part in the video, which I hope you took the time to watch, where the narrator talks about how the 3rd screen privatized our lives and learning, but the 4th screen freed us to venture outside and do the things we love. My gears were cranking. I’ve admired the work Darren has done with the use of imagery in math, but what really struck me about him was his outsourcing of the legwork of the photography to his students. Two of my favorite things right there: atypical assignments and student-created content.
What could we do with this information? Well, here was my hook: How many of your students have cellular phones? How often do you text per day? Does your phone have a camera? Video? Does your phone have the ability to access the internet? What do you use more often in the course of a normal day: cell phone or computer? How could you use your cell phone to help you learn?
The idea would be to have the students compile data using a survey tool like surveymonkey, surveygizmo, or our in-house survey software. Once the data is collected, a whole slew of possibilities open up:
Use the texting data to demonstrate how we communicate most and discuss reasoning behind this. Compare this to a survey of the teaching staff.
What does the data comparing the computer v. cell phone usage say?
What ideas do students have for the use of cell phones in class?
The ability to have students create the data, analyze the data and then let it “incubate” as Ewan McIntosh stated, make this one a go for me. Very beta right now and as I look at the questions there, they are in sore need of some higher level revision. The power of what is in their pockets is, as I remarked to my colleagues in our notes, game-changing. Again, as I sit here and write this, I can’t help but think of the almost Draconian rules that exist in some parts of our buildings regarding the use of mobile devices. This idea, aside from the student inclusion in the creation of the lesson, may serve to break down some barriers for us. One can only hope….
I love writing and sharing, and while I don’t profess to have a “great process” for getting it out there, I willingly share my practices, both success and failure, with anyone who cares to listen. That being said, and after listening to Clarence and Darren on Friday morning as they laid out the real possibilities that our teachers and students have before them, I know I live in perpetual beta. What that means for me is that, yes, I will continue to write about my personal struggles and successes with motivating today’s student and helping teachers understand changes that can help their instruction and effectiveness, but I will keep things close to my vest too.
Before I get up there and share like mad and give it away, I want to run it through the ringer here. I went to BLC with our administrative team, and my focus was on finding ways to make the goals we had set work well. That meant that we worked together almost exclusively. I missed sharing with some of the people there, but I felt the conversation pieces were lacking (or not built into the conference like at EduCon). My first priority in all of this is to the people I work with and for, the students, teachers, and parents in my district. Until I feel a sense of accomplishment within the audience of that crowd, I am finding it difficult to begin to share our practices. In other words, I don’t want to just get in front of people and talk about the cool things we do with this tool or that tool. I want to give the people I am fortunate enough to share with solid methods and practices they can go back and share with their students, teachers and parents. That hasn’t arrived for me yet.
Don’t get me wrong, we’ve accomplished some wonderful things, and we are really trying to up the ante this year with our staff at every building; however, where’s the proof that what we are doing is better? or at least creating fascination and wonder on the part of both teacher and student? I need that before I jump out of beta and into limited release.
Of the many things I pulled out of EduCon this past year, the most useful has been a tool that Chris Lehmann asked a few of us to use as we led reflections sessions at the end of the day. This discussion protocol has come in handy after working with teachers showing them new tools or methodology, especially those that are particularly complex and paradigm-shifting. It’s simple:
What?: What did I see today that caused me to think, wonder, dream, plan, or question?
So What?: What are the consequences, ramifications of what I saw?
Now What?: What are the next steps for me? my school? my district?
When we are confronted with new knowledge or ideas, it’s easy for us to become overwhelmed, either by the potential positive effect of the that change, or the magnitude of changing our own or our district’s practices. This protocol slims it down for you, paring your thoughts into three linear categories that intersect nicely in various places.
After being here for the last few days, there has been a mix of things I know about already, things I needed to see to believe, and a budding sense of practicality that was wholly necessary for me to see–it’s the reason I wanted to come in here in the first place. Several of my conversations lately have centered on the very fact that I am ready to move away from the theoretical and land firmly in the practical and the applicable. Sitting and listening to Darren yesterday explain in a calm, measured, and often hilarious way, how he began his journey with his students, gave me some real perspective in regards to how a classroom can be structured not around, but infused with, the tools we have all come to use in our professional practice. I can take that back.
For now, as I sit here with about 40 minutes to go before heading to see Darren and Clarence present together, I focus on the first question:
What?: What did I see today that caused me to think, wonder, dream, plan, or question?
One of the first things I pulled from Ewan’s keynote was that we should view all of our teachers as researchers. I see the need to create a culture in our schools that pushes thinking and learning at all levels: teacher, student, administrator, etc. As Ewan stated, “Everyone should be in R and D.” I began to think what that would look like in the buildings I work in, and luckily, the principals or assistant principals are here with me to bounce those ideas off of. What we’ve decided is that it has to begin with our own practice. Run our faculty meetings as we want them to run their classrooms: worksessions and discussions rather than announcements. If we want to spread information, send an email or post to the wiki, but if it’s about pedagogy and teaching and student issues, make it face-to-face, and make it worthwhile.
There is a theme running through a lot of the workshops here that incorporates the idea that we should promote the teachers that “get it.” Which teachers get it, and I don’t mean technologically only, but which teachers will look at something new and attack it, refine it and make it their own? Find them and ask them to show how they do it. Let students show teachers how things work. Have you heard Alan’s quote: “always bring a student to a technology conference.” Let students show their teachers what they are actually capable of (from Eric Marcos‘ presentation today)
I imagine there is a post or several brewing from all of this, but here some quotes I pulled from our admin team’s notes (via Google Docs) today:
Some great quotes from our notes from the conference:
” what simple tools can make learning become remarkable -” “you only need a handful of staff on board to move things forward”
“do teachers enjoy learning?”
“schools don’t encourage divergent thinking. Social networks – no deadlines, no stress, to a big crowd.”
“We need to teach kids to escape. Kids aren’t afraid to experiment with technology – they understand that they can’t “break” it.”
“To be successful in school, you have to be convergent. To be successful in the world you have to be DIVERGENT.”
“If we want our students to learn it deeply, they need to be able to teach it.”
“Unscripted – talk, write, have the students do critical thinking on the spot, showcasing the student, choosing the right vocabulary words, authentic assessment, gives the student an active role in their OWN learning.”
“what do we push to next?- creating the need for more people to embrace this and try the things that are out there and more importantly keep technology as the vehicle to get to the places we want students to go-technology should never replace best practices and good teaching”
“We should teach children to drill through content to find audience and purpose.”
“Filtering: we are not protecting our students in the way we think. We may actually be handicapping them.”
“Good idea for creating our own faculty search engines. We do this now but its done by teachers linking sites from their own websites.”
Our summer administrators book group is rounding into shape, aside from Barnes and Noble’s policy of claiming something is “in-stock” and if there is one copy, yet letting you order 12 without telling you that you’ll only get one. Our first choice was Moral Leadership, but B&N decided to only send us one copy. That’s OK, we’ll share.
For learning to take place with any kind of efficiency students
must be motivated. To be motivated, they must become interested. And
they become interested when they are actively working on projects which
they can relate to their values and goals in life.
How do you find what it is that motivates and interests your students? What are some methods that work to find out what makes students tick?
When I look at the situations in which I have interacted critically with both students and teachers, I often find it difficult for both parties to tell me what interests them, and further, how it relates to what they teach. Index cards as they walk into the room at the beginning of the year? Is that feasible for 120-150 students? If so, how do you manage that?
Some of the other questions I came up with regarding the first section of the book:
Can we train people to think using both hemispheres of the brain? Is R-Directed thinking something that can be learned?
If we ask that our teachers come into this system (the education system, classroom, school environment, etc.) with right-brained skills in addition to the traditional left-brained skills, are we setting them up for failure?
this was in the context of looking at how schools haven’t physically changed in over a hundred years. Those of us in education tend to be successful products of the system, meaning that we did well in the system that we went through, thus we tend to re-create the system we are used to.
If that is the case, does it make sense that we hire teachers expecting them to think “outside the box” only to put them back into an environment that is exclusively “in the box?”
How do we respond to this statement: “We don’t have time to include R-directed thinking; we are trying to prepare our students for taking these standardized tests (NJASK, SAT, HSPA, etc.)”
Does this statement have merit: “The changing world is leaving the SAT behind?”
Should these three statements (from page 51) drive the decision making in our building regarding what we are creating with our students?
Can someone overseas do it cheaper?
Can a computer do it faster?
Is what I am offering in demand in an age of abundance?
Are we wasting our students’ time by teaching them skills that are irrelevant anymore? If so, what are they?
I was just trying to respond to Bill’s comment on a previous post and then this happened:
Bill,
As always, a great question. I have to tell you, that very same question came to us very soon after we introduced this class to the department that would be teaching it. The Language Arts department asked whether or not this class was a permanent class, or one that would be phased out after a few years (other changes had been made within the last two years to this department, and they were/are skeptical). Your question goes at the very heart of the debate about state testing: if classes are designed around state standards, and state assessments are designed to reflect mastery of state standards, what happens when your students don’t perform well.
From reading your writing, I know you often struggle with this issue of having your students learn a great deal, but not perform where they are “supposed” to on the state assessment. What we did when we designed this class was to remove that pressure from the design. We still have standards, but we are using standards from every core discipline (and some others) that the state of New Jersey standardizes. Only, we took the standards that we might call “Power Standards,” and used them. For example, one of the science standards we chose to write our curriculum around is:
” Habits of Mind
1. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of data, claims, and arguments.
2. Communicate experimental findings to others.
3. Recognize that the results of scientific investigations are seldom exactly the same and that replication is often necessary.
4. Recognize that curiosity, skepticism, open-mindedness, and honesty are attributes of scientists.”
We left these teachers with the ability to create a standards-based class, but give them a little leeway in their ability to cover broad topics and insert seemingly insurmountable problems into their students’ course of study.
So, to answer your question with a question, should low performance on state tests eliminate a class that is based on standards from every core discipline? My opinion is that it should not. In a perfect world, this class, aside from the obvious benefits of metacognition and critical thinking, would provide the students with an edge in the open-ended section of the tests–the section of the test that allows students to express their answers in a few ways, other than just filling in bubbles on a scantron.
This is what happens when you let really smart people see your thinking. I am glad I do this.
When I sit down to create lessons for teachers, or help them create lessons for students, one of my most frequent points is how they are creating “good stress,” within their students. Without pressing, most know what I mean inherently: there is an amount or type of mental strain that permits the mind to flex around a new issue or concept in order to overcome it and create new knowledge.
Stealing this from George Siemens (whom I have been robbing a lot from lately)
A
bit of stress, a bit of ambiguity, and a bit of confusion are healthy
contributors to learning. As long as we have a feedback loop where
learners can contribute and faculty can respond and adapt, we have the
basics in place.
Connections are the starting point of all learning. It’s so
obvious…and therefore so often overlooked. We really need to think
about types of connections learners have with each other and
content…and ways that we can extend the learning experience by
critically analyzing and forming those initial connections.
In two places in the above quote, Siemens mentions the word “connections,” and when we sat down to begin designing the additional language arts course for next year that was focused on critical thinking and writing across the curriculum, I thought back to my days at Eric Smith School in Ramsey. They had a school-wide standards system called “The Quality Standards.” It was partially a gaff among the staff at the triteness of the name, but in actuality, it was sound. The standards were:
Following Directions
Presentation
Supporting Details
Connections
Higher Level Thinking
Evaluation and Revision
Designing this class forced me to think back to the most effective of those standards, and by far it was connections, and the name for the class was born. In light of reading Siemens post, and in conversations with the teachers of the class, I can see that the term fits. We need students to create links, both mentally and digitally, from what they know already, to what they are trying to know. We are stressing “cognitive leaps” and learning by doing as often as we can, but there are inherent problems with that.
The last time I had the group of teachers together who will be teaching the class this fall, I stressed the first two weeks of instruction. Sure, what a shocker; however, we are asking these students in grades 6-8 to do some things that there are not going to be used to. For example, by the time they reach middle school, a good percentage of students have already perfected the question “will this be on the test?” and have figured out that there is a formula to getting good grades: find the answer the teacher wants, and give it–case closed. Now, we are going to have them walk into a classroom this fall and tell them that there is no right answer, only the answer you can defend in writing and in your ability to argue it. Talk about cognitive dissonance.
One of our group had shared with me a document (which I am trying to get a copy of at the moment) that was a letter to parents informing them of what to expect from this class. When we are trying to move students away from “schooliness” and do some in-country “unschooling” we are going to hit some rough spots, from both students who are not used to being confused or stressed about school, and their parents who haven’t seen their child struggle with school before. As always, we will deal with those situations as they arise.
I’ll admit that my inner geek drives the direction of my reading lately; I tend to read Techmeme as often as I read Edutopia. However, one of my all time favorite reading topics has always been the direction and drama associated with mainstream media and its delivery to consumers. Odd, I know. Most people would say they love to read trashy novels, or scan baseball scores (which I often do), but not this guy. Give me an opinion piece about the future of participatory media, the changing of the guard in the newsroom, or something like this one from the New York Times:
For newspapers, the news has swiftly gone from bad to worse. This year
is taking shape as their worst on record, with a double-digit drop in
advertising revenue, raising serious questions about the survival of
some papers and the solvency of their parent companies.
and I am like the proverbial pig in…well, understood.
I don’t know if this story piques my interest for the usual reasons, but I know that it makes me begin thinking about the world that I am helping teachers prepare students for. It’s topics conjure up all kinds of reminiscences from last summer when we were all struggling to shrug off Andrew Keen’s attacks on connective writing and citizen publishing, and it calls to light the profound changes in literacy many of us have been discussing for several years.
Connection to Teaching and Learning
Often, I’ll find myself looking out at the vast expanse of my RSS reader and see similar topics being bandied about, and articles debated back and forth between individuals much smarter than me, and I’ll wonder where my connection back to the classroom teacher is–where is the correlation between George Siemens and the work he does, and the elementary teacher I work with who wants to differentiate instruction? Many times I find myself at a crossroads wondering how to find common ground for the theoretical applications I see, and the practical situations that teachers live through.
This article in the Times, amazingly, though obscurely, shows me a connection. When we look at the trends, just in the last two years (ad revenue dropped 8% last year, and is already down 12% from that number), that tells me that the sellers/advertisers are following their buyers/consumers eyes. With that, come so many negative consequences:
assimilation of major newspapers or ownership groups perhaps taking away a decidedly local flavor
massive job losses in the printing industry
ink-stained elbows on Sunday mornings
The last bullet above, while in jest, does reflect some sentiment that, if you dig on Nicholas Carr, you might agree with. We aren’t interacting with print media as often as we used to, and what effect will this have on our ability to read deeply? Moreover, the real impetus behind my writing this tonight was to truly ask myself what are we preparing our students to consume? Is literacy solely the manipulation of a texted page, or does it involve, as the article hinted at, the ability to decipher and decode the “vastly more choices” that online advertising offers to sellers?
So, I look at the classrooms I’ve been in this year and wonder, are we doing all that we can to prepare our students for a world with decidedly less printed paper than our own?
Positive Consequences:
Here’s another discerning thought that rises from this: how can we pull positives out of this development? As with any technology, it’s social ramifications are natural offspring. In this case, I see a lot of good coming out of the move to online news consumption:
greater opportunity for dialogue between writer/publisher and reader through comments and forums
Erica had just reminded me of Pink’s book yesterday as she wrote about being able to finish it on her way out to San Jose for the Google Teacher Academy. What this exemplifies is the shift away from one mode of production, to another that will involve some creative thought processes and a distinct need to train people in how to produce this new product. It’s examples like this one that really make me analyze what we are asking our students to do in our classrooms; are we preparing them for the classified ads of the future?
Having one of those lack of focus days where I cannot even begin to plan what I need to do with myself. This video doesn’t help matters as its got me thinking about bigger questions. I am trying to form a response to Ryan Bretag’s meme, and I think this will have something to do with it. I need to take some notes while watching it, however. Enjoy.
OK. I’ll admit it. I came to find all of these fabulous social media and international collaborative project opportunities at a point which I had limited access to classes, only via other teachers. That being said, I often feel like I would like to sink my teeth into some hugely collaborative project, or even just be associated with one. There’s been a lot of talk, or maybe I should say, I am reading a lot of writing about:
Rigor: How do we allow students to achieve flow-the right balance of challenge and stress to optimize learning in our classrooms?
Relevance: Are we teaching with the values, thoughts, feelings, and experiences of our students in mind?
Relationships: Are we respecting students’ lives and cultures?
Results: Do we have measurable, tangible results that represent our ideas and goals?
as they relate to individual student motivation. A truly collaborative, either locally or globally, project stands a great chance of really getting at those four elements if done well.
So, in an effort to further my selfish aims to be associated with a collaborative project, I offer this: one of the teachers with whom I am working on designing curriculum for our new writing and critical thinking class sent me the following email:
I am interested in incorporating the idea of a global classroom into several of my units. I know there are sites that are dedicated to hooking up educators so that they can participate in these kinds of exchanges with their classes. I just don’t remember what they are or how to get them. I kind of remember someone, it might have been you, providing us with some links that let classrooms from various corners of the world work together on a common project. I am very interested in reaching out to several teachers across the globe and linking up. At minimum, I would like to give our students access to the differing perspectives that naturally arise out of geographical differences.
Question Authority: Media Literacy: How can I identify the underlying messages in mainstream media?
Disconnected: I Text, Therefore I am: • How have humans communicated throughout history?
• How and why is communication different throughout the world?
• What is the impact of human communication on a given society?
• What are the benefits and drawbacks to different forms of communication?
• What might human communication be like in the future and what factors will influence these trends?
First off, you can’t imagine how jealous I am of this group of teachers to be able to teach a class that lets them answer these types of questions, but also how jealous I am of these students that they get to wrestle with such cool content. If you are interested, or know of someone who might be interested in some form of collaborative project under these unit topics or others like them, please drop me a line in the comments below. This is a 7th grade class (12-13 year old students).
A few weeks back, I pitched the idea of a summer professional book club to the administrators in our district. Knowing that schedules are hectic and people like to travel in the summer, myself included, I didn’t expect too much of a response. All of the building leadership is headed to BLC this summer, and we thought it might be a great idea to begin getting ourselves on the same page. Surprisingly, and thankfully, most did and we solicited some advice for some summer reading material from the twitterverse at large.
I put out a survey to the group with a list of titles and asked them to rate them according to preference. Here is the original list:
When the dust settled after the survey, the group chose one clearly above the rest, and two others tied for second. Moral Leadership will be our summer reading choice for the group, with A Whole New Mind and Failure is not an Option as stand-ins. I’d like to thank the twitterverse, and especially Bill Ferriter and Chris Lehman for their suggestions, as the ones you recommended were all high on the choice list.
Now, for the really serious question: format? How do you successfully run a book discussion with administrators? If anyone has done something like this, please chime in with some suggestions. I would like to make it loose, but still have some group accountability.
This class sounds like a jewel in the making. I’d love to know nitty-gritty (length? scheduling? vertical alignment?) if you’re willing.
I wonder this too: it was recently at a meeting of the minds educational panel (2004 NYS Teacher of the Year, 2008 NYS Teacher of the Year, and a former National Science Teacher of the Year) that I heard this put forth as a pedagogical touchstone: “Who owns the question?”
I thought of this as I read the list of questions your colleagues have drawn up– truly exciting and challenging stuff. Will these ideas exist with the leeway for students to determine their own critical inquiries?
In other words– in your proposed class, who do you think will own the questions? I’d love to know.
Dina’s question has been sitting on me for a few days, possibly weeks, now, and it’s not that I’ve been ignoring it, but rather gathering some resources to include in my response. One of the things I found was a recent post by Dr. Tim Tyson called Value Chain 2.0. Dina had asked who was going to own the questions that these teachers were proposing as essential to the unit of study, the students or the teachers? Tyson’s article asks a much similar question, but he refers it to “who owns the learning in the classroom: the teachers or the students? It also raises questions for me in the area of responsibilities shared by students and teachers. A while back I wrote about being impressed with Alan November’s idea that teachers should “outsource” a lot of what they do to the students. Tyson’s point about who is doing the thinking work in the class goes to that–are you doing all of the thinking, or are the students?
What I am struggling with, and I think it’s a struggle that all teachers and administrators will face in the coming years, is convincing and working with teachers to learn alongside their students, to model their practice for them, to fail in front of them, and to resurrect themselves in front of them. The key point I have been trying to drive home with the teachers I am working with is that this class should be designed around topics that both you and the students want to learn about, and that this class has unbelievable potential for personal learning. That being said, I like the idea that the ownership of both the learning and the questions be distributed evenly between the teachers and students. Student-centered? Teacher-centered? How about learning-centered? or inquiry-centered?
As with anything we do in education, there needs to be some structural framework to all of this, and we are ramming up against that pretty hard as we write the curriculum. Questions of assessment strategies keep arising being that we are stripping out all of the focus on conventions (spelling, grammar, mechanics) and focusing solely on thinking process and ability to express ideas. We are also running into the issue of how to structure this class on a daily basis, how do we set this up technologically (please, any classroom bloggers out there, we need your methods and practices that have been successful!), and what do we do to convince students that writing and thinking are not drudgery?
OK, this is difficult to do. It’s like re-introducing yourself to someone you’ve already met several times, or speaking to a family member whose birthday/engagement/anniversary you’ve forgotten. But, in a fashion that characterizes much of my life lately, I am just going to start and rip the band-aid off rather than toying with it.
I am writing again.
Between several of the projects that are all coming due now, some graduate classes I have undertaken, and the mud puddle plodding I do with my kids, it’s been difficult to find not only the time, but also the mental acuity to dedicate to writing. And as I think back over the course of the last few years, there have been only two or three of these type hiatuses (shouldn’t that be hiati?) since I began taking my professional development into my own hands. I was due for a sabbatical from writing.
But, so much has occurred in my own little section of the world and I am feeling the need to reconnect to my network. The writing class that I hatched in my mind is now a reality. We are creating a class that is mandatory, taken by all students from 6th through 8th grade, that is solely focused on writing to learn and the practicing of critical thinking through the use of writing. My scope is limited, but I don’t see too many schools having the faith in their staff to do this, and trust me, when you see the topics that the teachers want to explore it truly brings the need for trust to the forefront:
From “Food Wars:”
What is the impact of food availability, production and consumption on an individual, a locality, and a society?
Why are there chemicals and packaging in my food? What are the effects of these on my body and the environment?
How are foods marketed?
From “Mental Fitness”
What is mental fitness?
How do I learn?
Am I mentally fit?
From “America and Beyond”
Is increased life expectancy a blessing or a curse?
What are your thoughts on physician-assisted suicide?
How has technology affected your generation compared to previous generations?
All questions that I have broached or attempted to broach with students in various ways throughout the last few years, except that was in the confines of a social studies classroom with a predetermined curriculum that I had to follow. This class is devoted to using these questions as framework to help our students critically write and read. I can’t tell you how jealous I am that our students have this opportunity. I thought I’d never say this, but I want to be in middle school again.
A while back, I quoted Wes Fryer’s post about the needs for our curriculum to reflect the following three things rather than what we deem important for success on high-stakes testing:
Remix: Students need to regularly remix their learning to own the ideas.
Deregulation:
Learners need to be freed to take the TIME required for in-depth rather
than shallow studies in problem-based, project-based constructionist
and constructivist learning activities.
Differentiation:
Learning opportunities, challenges, and assessments must be
differentiated to meet the needs as well as interests of a diverse
array of learners.
I am feeling like the work I have talked about doing over the last few years is very close to showing some life. This class is a stab at what our students might benefit most from. As you can probably tell, a majority of my energy has been spent trying to convince and cajole the stakeholders into making this class become a reality. To their credit, the teachers involved have taken a huge leap of faith and risked splintering their department, as we are using English/Language Arts teachers to teach this class. They have created the ideas for the units and are truly beginning to grasp how this class can be successful.
How can you tell if your students, and in my case, teachers, understood not only the content you asked them to study and apply, but also your assessment itself? Our job is really simple when we get responses like the one below. We asked our new teachers to blog about their use of cooperative learning in the classroom in response to last month’s session on that topic. But we asked them to do it using the RAFT method where we gave them choices as to their Role, Audience, Format and Topic. The choices ranged from the traditional to the non traditional, as you will see here. Without further adieu:
Blackboard Rafting
Cooperative Learning R.A.F.T. – The blackboard speaks
Dear Resistant Teacher,
I know I’m kind of breaking the rules a bit here.
Most of the time you guys write to me. Or to be more accurate, you actually write ON me.
But I just wanted to shoot you a quick letter, and let you know what’s been going on in that idiot Jones’ class lately.
Some of this stuff has to be seen to be believed.
I know that you don’t really like Coop Learning, so I just thought I’d pass on this story to encourage you to keep a closed mind about it and keep all that mumbo jumbo out of your classroom. Believe me, it’s a complete waste of time.
You’re my last best hope. I know you’ve got the hard-headed sense to resist. Not like that damn hippie-wanna-be Mr. Jones. He actually buys into all that crap that Higgins and Sutherland keep pushing on him. What a loser!
So check this out.
Last week Jones is giving a test, right. Normal everyday kind of stuff.
But instead of cracking the whip and getting the kids to sit down, shut up, and work on their own – he’s got this whole touchy feely Cooperative Learning thing going on.
He has the kids playing some kind of review game. There all broken up into groups and coming up with questions to try to stump each other.
Of course, these little brats get all excited and start raising the volume. “Oh, I’ve got a great question!” and “Oooh, they’ll never get this one!” It’s like a 3-ring circus in here. Everyone talking over eachother, raising their voices, learning on their own! What the hell?
First of all, isn’t it the teacher’s job to come up with questions? And aren’t the students supposed to keep their voices down in a classroom? I mean - really!
What is Jones thinking? That slacker’s working the room, stirring the kids up, letting THEM do all the work, while he sits back and does nothing. And they actually pay him for this.
And here’s the best part of the whole thing: Not a word is written on ME. Not a word!
I mean, hey, I don’t want to sound like a prima donna or something, but everybody knows I’M the star of the show, here. Am I wrong? Did I miss something?
The information is supposed to get written on ME! All eyes are supposed to be on ME, waiting for what I have to offer. But no. Not in Jones’ class. Kids are coming up with their own questions, writing on their own sheets of paper, challenging each other – with Jones sitting off to the side like some high school drop out in need of some direction.
Sure, the kids are excited and engaged – but that’s not what school is supposed to be about. Has everyone forgotten what school is for?
Teachers teach and kids shut up, listen, and take notes. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
And the Blackboard should be filled with notes, not sitting up here empty and out of the loop.
Kids these days! They’ve got no respect. And teachers are the worst of all. Because they should know better.
Anyway, I’m glad to know that you’re not going in for all this crap. It’s good to see that some of you guys still know how to treat a black board.
Times are tougher than ever. The pressure is on from every angle – especially those young rebels Higgins and Sutherland. But I’m here to tell you…don’t give in. Stay strong, man. You’re our last hope.
I’ve been going through the comments left by the New Teachers the other day in their exit cards and I thought I would take the time to post them for review here. Regardless if they are read by a large audience or not, they are already proving useful to me. To continue along the “be the change you want to see in others” vein, the information we are getting from these comments is already shaping the format for next month’s meeting. What amazes me is how easy it was to elicit feedback that is useful to my planning. I remember being in the classroom searching for meaningful information to help me plan my lessons, and the last thing I thought of was asking the students what they thought and what they needed. But when I did, the results were exactly what I needed. I hope these are of some value to anyone who has been reading the last few posts.
“What I Learned:”
To have students come up with their own goals and feedback–triggers brain to work and students assess themselves
The information of timely feedback was very interesting. It makes sense, but it’s good to see the research to back it up.
I learned a lot of interesting ways to have students self-evaluate–mostly from talking to colleagues who are doing great things.
Students can effectively monitor their own progress and this form of feedback is strongly affective
Feedback should be corrective and provide discussion of why the response was correct or incorrect and what makes a response correct or incorrect.
There are some very creative and productive ways to modify my objectives and goals
Feedback should be immediate after a test
How important it is to have student input
How to incorporate several structures in a seamless way.
It is important to set flexible goals; kinesthetic learning is more fun
Student self-assessment is important and should be included in lesson planning.
Setting goals and objectives can be negative. Students sometimes miss the big picture.
There are many ways to set goals with students.
Feedback should be provided rapidly in various forms
Learned the RAFT technique
I learned that other subject areas have students self-assess in a similar manner. This is truly a universal method.
Goals are more effective when they are student driven.
I learned that there are many ways to get information across. I like incorporating the different styles of learning–kinesthetic, intrapersonal, verbal, doing group activities.
I have the students set goals and give feedback, but not consistently. In my class it could work to do it everyday. I could structure my class all around this if I remember.
Have students involved in setting the learning objectives.
The real importance of feedback and the timeliness of it.
Goals should not be too specific; allow students to personalize them.
To focus on making my goals attainable and not to forget that students should be involved in goal setting.
Give feedback in a timely manner
That goal setting in the kindergarten level is not much different than the High School level.
I learned that it is really important to provide students with goals for each lesson. I sometimes am not consistent when I do this and when I do remember, I know they get more out of the lesson. I also learned that timely feedback is important.
When given the opportunity, students can assess themselves and provide feedback to themselves directly. This is an example of becoming a mature person who is capable of self-reliance and growth. We should, as teachers, provide this often and encourage it in other situations.
I learned it was important to be more specific when providing feedback–target particular areas.
That goals need to be more personal.
Today I realized how important quick feedback is to students.
I learned how amazing it is that different grade levels and subject areas can use the same “modified” ideas to attain goals in student achievement.
The fluidity of groups to increase learning.
Importance of setting goals. Impact of immediate feedback.
I learned that it is really important to set specific goals in planning. I also learned that feedback is more influential in learning than I previously thought.
I found the idea of students creating their own learning objectives interesting. My curiosity is piqued about incorporating this into the novels I teach.
Corrective feedback has a “shelf-life” and if I wait too long, the lesson is lost.
Goals need to be more general and not too specific otherwise students get so focused on the specific goal that they miss out on the other learning.
New ways to include students in their learning and assessment.
The description of goal-setting is similar to backward design in the sense of general direction and fundamental understandings.
“What I would change:”
I think the structure of the lessons have improved already since September.
Wow, I liked actually trying the strategies rather than talking about them. I wonder if we could have some concrete examples of how teachers use goals and feedback.
Wow! I liked the flexibility of today’s lesson.
I liked the session–It would be helpful to debrief the reading so we understand your perspective on the readings.
The “Wow,” exercise was easy to do, but the “wonder,” part was hard to do about the same statement.
Walk and talk was difficult because you had to write, too!
I wonder if you could have let us in on your lesson plan. I had no idea what we were learning about until it was all over.
I wonder if my students feel the same way about doing group work?
Thought it was very well done. More geared toward the elementary level?
At first it was difficult to understand your goal for the lesson.
At this point–no questions. I really enjoyed going through each of the structures.
The activities were useful, but I think there were a bit too many. I wonder how this would have worked if we cut one or two out?
Very organized; I enjoyed it very much.
How can you get the students to strive for their goals and feedback when it is lacking choices and options. Loved being able to talk with other teachers–more personal info and helpful to grow.
So far this has been one of my favorite professional developments. I liked actively testing out the different strategies and giving and getting feedback to different groups. The activities made the learning more fun. Thanks!
We touched on it, but perhaps one or two more lessons and even some demos of differentiated instruction
I wonder if we could have new teacher meetings everyday. I learned a lot about goals and differentiated instruction.
I enjoyed moving around. I wonder if we could have established an overall goal at the beginning of the session.
I enjoyed today’s time. Although at times the activity seemed confusing or the guidelines for completing the activity seemed vague it all came together nice and clear in the end.
Spend more time outside.
Provide every teacher with a MacBook!
Practicing group activities was beneficial.
More time to develop lessons and activities using some of the concepts presented.
I feel a lot of the topics discussed would be more beneficial with some veteran teachers instead of all 1st year teachers–they know what works better.
I thought the first chart we had to fill out was confusing.
It’s good to talk to peers in different grade levels and subject areas to learn new ideas.
The first part of the meeting was confusing, but then it was really clear and helpful.
I enjoyed moving and talking/collaborating with other teachers. More of the same would be fantastic.
I did not feel that the instructional goals section had much value. The readings were widely interpreted and more guidance was needed.
Liked the way the lesson was guided and not completely structured. This allowed for more creativity and interaction between colleagues.
Make sure reading was done ahead of time and then we could recap.
I really liked this meeting because I am a big fan of cooperative learning. I learned a lot of different structures today that I will definitely implement in my classroom.
Enjoyed the co-op groups and actually met new people!
Being active is important to me. I learn so much more when i play a role in the lesson.
I liked the different activities we did today. It was interesting to meet with other teachers at different levels and subjects.
There were too many activities today. Hard to take it all in.
Each month, we meet with our first year teachers in the district to help them adjust to the expectations and the rigors of being in the classroom everyday. I have spoken about this before, but the program uses Marzano, et al’s, book Classroom Instruction That Works as a framework for teaching strategies that are research-based and effective. More than anything we do instructionally, the workshops always help the teachers come together to discuss success and failure in their classrooms; it provides them with a support structure in which they can reflect on their practice and share their uncertainties about what they are doing.
Last month we spent some time with cooperative learning structures and how to use them to help students take responsibility for their own learning through collaboration. The feedback we got from that meeting was really positive, so this month we decided to use the structures as a means to teach the next theme in the book: Goal-Setting and Feedback.
One of the most significant parts of my own learning this year has been to make every attempt I can to be a practitioner of what I teach. You have read it here before: “Be the change you want to see in others.” So when we were planning this month, Dan and I created the sessions entirely around learning structures and reaching as many intelligences as we could. Here is a list of what we did and the accompanying structures:
Clock Buddies: as soon as they walked in we handed them appointment clocks on paper and asked them to make appointments at 12 (with someone not in your building), 3 (with someone in your building), 6 (someone in your subject area), and 9 (random). We used these throughout the session to organize ourselves.
this got them moving and engaging and really set the tone for their activity level for the day.
RAFT: Sternberg created this concept based on his three intelligences. What we did is ask the teachers to write an entry on their blog using the idea of choosing a Role (object in their classroom, a student in their classroom, an observing administrator), an Audience (a parent, an administrator, a reluctant c colleague, etc.) a Format (classified ad, instruction manual, letter to the editor, observation narrative, etc.) and write about a Topic (why should we use cooperative learning structures in the classroom?).
immediately it got them thinking differently because we asked them to reflect via a different modality then they were used to. A little cognitive dissonance is a good thing!
Walk and Talk: They read a section of the book on their own, then we used our 12 o’clock buddies and asked each group to do some guided reflection using a graphic organizer. However, we asked them to do it while on a Walk and Talk. Since yesterday was a gorgeous day here in New Jersey, we allowed them to walk anywhere on the school grounds, inside or out, and asked them to discuss the reading and fill in the graphic organizer as they strolled.
“Wows and Wonders:” More reading was done independently and then we used our 3 o’clock buddies and paired the groups up to form larger groups. Since we were talking about goal setting, we asked each teacher to write a brief statement about how they use goal setting in their classroom. We then used a Round Robin format where they passed their statement to the left. Each person was responsible for writing a “Wow,” on the page and then passed it along to the next person in the circle until eventually they all received their own page back. We did the same again, only this time we asked each person to write a “Wonder,” statement on each other’s page.
This allowed everyone to get positive feedback, but also framed the constructive feedback in the form of a suggestive question, which works a lot better than a “you should have done this” statement.
Four Corners: After reading the feedback section in the book, we asked the teachers to pick one of the four research points made in the reading as the one that they would like to have a discussion about. Each corner of the room represented a different point. They moved to that corner and were asked to use a graphic organize to lead their discussion about that point.
Numbered Heads: as they discussed, we walked around and gave numbers to each group member. When it came time to wrap up, we picked numbers randomly and asked that that person tell us what their group discussed about a certain point within their topic.
this gave everyone time to add additional information to their organizer and hear points that pushed their own thinking.
Parking Lot: also as they were discussing feedback, Dan and I circled the room and distributed a blue and a yellow post-it not to everyone. We asked that on the yellow they tell us something about their own learning from the day’s session–what did you learn today? On the blue, we asked that they help us with our learning–what could we have done differently today? As they left the room for the day, they put the yellows on one wall and the blues on another.
We are in the process of sorting our notes out and going over the feedback (it was just yesterday), but I could already see that the teachers were engaged with one another at a level that we’d seen glimpses of before but couldn’t sustain. Also, on a selfish note, I did so much less talking, used so much less tech, and spent so much more time listening than I had in any of the the previous meetings.
If we are truly about changing the way our schools work, about reforming our practices to meet the needs of students, modeling said practices and methods should be the first order of business. Think of your next factulty meeting. How much will you move about the room to discuss an issue or concern or theory (trips to the food area don’t count)? Will the dialog be one-way, two-way, or circular and constant?
I realize that all meetings and sessions vary, and that decisions about presentation and lesson design are germane to the material itself, but when we can we should use what we know to produce lessons, meetings, professional development courses that we would want to sit through. Ask yourself, would you want to be in your class?
Technology is in a constant state of evolution and change. Access speeds,hardware, software, and computer capabilities all evolve and improve ona monthly basis….Is it not time that we create a curriculum model that understands this fact and works with it rather than tries to control it?
When I hear thoughts like that one, and like this one here:
Instead of asking the question “What technology skills must a student have to face in the 21st century?” should we not be asking “What thinking and literacy skills must a student have to face the 21st century?” These skills are not tied to any particular software or technology-type, but rather aim to provide students with the thinking skills and thus the opportunities to succeed no matter what their futures hold.”
I get excited that minds like these are helping to shape policy for schools somewhere in the world; the fact that it is halfway around the world is a bit unfortunate for my immediate needs, but in this ever-shrinking world, one of the graduates from that school may turn out to play a major role in my life at some point, so I am warmed by their progressive ideas.
They go further and define some essential questions, a la McTighe and Wiggins to really spell out their purpose:
From this, which would have wholly consumed me, I found myself searching for some more research on teaching thinking the thought process. Now, a few months ago, Harter and Medved would have been enough for me, but things have changed, and the world of technology has shrunken for me, so to speak. In dealing with larger numbers of teachers, I have come to realize more than ever that there use of technology has less to do with good teaching than I thought or had experienced before. If you are not convinced of this, go read the T.C. Williams debacle and its various off-shoots.
In my search for more information, I came across Marion Brady’s article in Educational Leadership “Cover the Material–Or Teach Students to Think?” in which he argues that our obsession with standardized testing is more than just irrelevant, it’s downright criminal to the upcoming generations. One of my favorite discussions in the article deals with the passing along of information from one generation to the next, which Brady describes as language of allusion, the information that allows societies to share complicated information in only a few words for the purpose of sending
students on their way with meaning attached to thousands of ideas like
those, efficient, society-sustaining dialogue is possible.
In most cases we often argue for the need for schools to socialize our children, and, while this need is apparent and real, it may be less necessary for our students to learn the language of allusion of a world whose solution sets don’t serve the future.
Now before I get all future-drunk here, the thinking and the teaching of thinking is what is critical in our schools today. Time is always an issue, as is adherence to state standards when teaching material, but I like what Brady points out near the end of the article: that teaching these skills is not as difficult as we make it out to be. Look locally. As near as your own school environment, opportunities for teaching thinking skills that draw upon the need to transfer the “” skills they have memorized and assimilated from textbooks, abound and present themselves as legitimate modes of inquiry. Some examples:
For example, at the middle or high school level, teachers can pose
myriad school-focused questions related to every field of study: What
kinds of energy power the school? How are these energy sources created
and measured? At what cost to taxpayers? At what cost to the
environment? What kind of waste does the school produce? Where does it
go and how is it processed? What could be done to decrease the school’s
carbon footprint?
Getting back to the ideas of Harter/Medved/Wiggins/McTighe, huge questions that cause learners, whether they be teacher or student, to draw upon their knowledge or ability to acquire necessary knowledge, are key. However, as Brady points out, their location geographically is irrelevant.
What a whirlwind month and a half it’s been in my little world. The shift from technology coordinator to curriculum director has brought about tremendous changes, ones that were predictable and ones that took a while to surface. Add to that the fact that I agreed to give some presentations lately (Turning On Learning, Franklin Lakes School District, TechSpo), and my time to reflect and write has been hampered considerably. And where I used to use late hours or early morning hours to write and reflect, those times have been taken up, rather gladly, by falling asleep with my son at his bedtime (if you have children, going to sleep with your child at their bedtime is such a guilty pleasure). So now on most nights, I am crashing at close to 8:00pm. Say goodbye to any late night reflection.
One of the most immediate changes I noticed was the natural progression from focusing solely on technology and its integration to focusing on issues of teaching methodology and long-term planning of instruction. In a perfect world, one that we are trying to create in our district, the two, technology and teaching methodology, curriculum planning, and long-term planning for success are all seen as one job. However, I am thinking more about aggregating that whole now than I ever did before, and the solutions to the problems will take much longer to sort out than those that I ran into as tech coordinator.
I must say thanks to several of you out there, like Kim Cofino, Barry Bachenheimer, Robin Ellis, Kelly Christopherson, Darren Draper, and Scott McLeod for pushing my thinking on the topics of school change, idea management, and coalition building. It took me a while to see just where my thinking was taking me as I was reading their writing over the last few months, but as I look at the different challenges that are put before me, I see more clearly that a good deal of my “quality ideas” have come through conversations on their blogs or with them directly.
Konrad Glogowski posted recently about his relief that he is able to approach the upcoming EduCon 2.0 Conference in Philadelphia with a focus on reflection. I couldn’t agree more, and while my reflective space has change, as has my ability to commit time to it, this conference is something I’ve been looking forward to for some time. I remember hearing and reading from people throughout the summer (post-NECC and BLC) that there was a need for more conversations about what really needed to happen in our schools. EduCon 2.0 is a step in that direction.
As the days get closer, I am sure I will be linking out to some of the venues for virtual participation.
Here is the Ustream for today’s presentation at Montclair State University’s Center of Pedagogy. The Turning On Learning Conference looked to be a huge success, and I had a blast with my group. Here is a link to the Google Notebook I created for the group, which some of you might find useful as well.
We couldn’t wait for out IT guys, who are swamped at the moment, so we went ahead and installed the gOS on an old ThinkPad we had laying around the office. Here are the benefits, as I see them initially:
low cost leveraged against high performance: Whether it’s me or the machine, there is very little I need in terms of offline apps to handle my everyday activities, so this OS works well for someone who has an understanding of where to go to find the solutions they need.
it looks like Mac OS X: and who wouldn’t love that!
Salvage: the machine we installed it on was a mess, capable of frustrating a student and teacher with slow startup time, limited battery life while running CPU-hogging software and the fan was always kicking on. Nothing like that with this install. Silent as it runs, fast enough, and at least 2 hours of battery life (although I can’t find where to check that out yet).
What does this mean for us? In our district, we are short on actual machines, so the fact that we can recommission older machines using this OS is huge, but we still run short on machines per student. This type of OS, which is made up of almost entirely Google Apps, forces the hand of the user to have Google accounts, which I also like. Several teachers in our buildings are planning on make that as compulsory as having pens and notebooks next year; this machine would be perfect for that.
I am taking it home this weekend to see if I can poke some holes in it as a student would. We’ll see how that goes. Any suggestions for possible experimental scenarios?
Cindy Barnsley passed this meme on to me on 8/22/07. Despite showing a lack of technorati use, I figured I would honor the meme and continue it along even though it is quite belated.
I am a good teacher because…I think about how my students will be changed when they leave our classrooms, and do everything I know to do to affect that change.
If I weren’t a teacher I would be a…struggling writer, professional trailrunner (I wish), professional student.
My teaching style is…entirely based on my passion for the subject matter. If I don’t feel it, I find it hard to believe that the students will either. Think about it, people have so much on their minds anyway that if we don’t make it matter to them, we are just noise.
My classroom is…wherever my laptop and LCD projector can be plugged in, or even further, wherever I can find wifi.
My lesson plans are…more and more being influenced by UbD; I start with the end in mind more than I ever have before.
One of my teaching goals is…get rid of the term “integrate” in regards to technology.
The toughest part of teaching is…creating authentic assessments to examine whether or not our students have reached the level of understanding we need.
The thing I love about teaching is…the satisfaction of hearing your students talk about your class material serendipitously outside of the classroom.
A common misconception about teaching is…it ends at the end of the last period of the day.
The most important thing I’ve learning since I started teaching is…every parent was once a student too, and their experience as a student bears mightily on their attitude towards you as the teacher of their child.
Yesterday, we met with our new staff for the second time this year, but really it was the first time to get a hold of them after their first impressions of the classroom have sunken in. And rather than focus solely on what they were experiencing and how they are dealing with it, which is of dire importance, we pushed their buttons a little.
Let me explain: our first year induction program for new teachers was recently revamped to be more of a reflective practice that centers on Dr. Robert Marzano, Debra Pickering, and Jane Pollock’s book Classroom Instruction that Works. This year we also added the reflective feature of asking them to blog about their practices and its relation to Marzano, et. al’s book, on a blog through 21classes. What this enables them to do is to reflect on their own practice, comment on others, but also archives these reflections for them throughout their first year here.
These are all common practices for those who have been blogging for a while; however, to teachers fresh out of college, or new to our district from another district, it set a fairly high bar in terms of the instructional style that we expect of our staff.
Does this reflect how our veteran staff uses technology or their familiarity with social technology? Not exactly. But this is a great start. The conversations that I was privy to during the day all centered on the focus we are putting on not just technology, but also using it in a way that matters, that is consistent with our curricular goals, and that is nearly transparent.
As the day moved from discussion of their program to the nuts and bolts of class website creation and online gradebook setup, several of them pulled me aside and asked if I could help them set up their blog, their podcast (which is the format that they were asked to submit their reflection in for month two), or asked me if I know about wikis. They were excited though, and I made a great effort to allay any uneasiness that showed up. I used Toeffler’s quote about illiteracy in the 21st Century to end the session and let them know that change will define their teaching career, and embracing it would surely lead to greater success and lifelong learning.
On a side note that is somewhat related, if my schedule is any indication of the direction we are moving in, than this year is going to one of great change and innovation.
From David Warlick at 2 Cents Worth in response to a posting from Doug Johnson yesterday about the number of jobs he has held. David really gets at what teaching is going to mean in the coming years: learning how to learn and unlearn, and knowing how to teach yourself to do things. People often state that they can’t keep up with what is going on out there because it changes too quickly. To combat that, we need to focus on knowing how to decipher meaning, teaching our students to pull out what is important, and teach them that learning is not, and should not be, something that happens solely in school.
In my efforts to understand what the labor department’s projections and my work experiences mean, within the context of school reform, I ask myself, “How did I learn…”
..to play guitar (bass & Banjo) and organ? I taught myself!
..to write software? I taught myself.
..to code web pages? I taught myself!
..to self-publish a book? I taught myself!
The schools that I attended in the 1950s and ’60s tried very hard to teach me how to be taught. I believe that this is one of the shifts that we have to achieve as we try to retool classrooms. We need to do less of..
teaching kids how to be taught,
and instead,
teach them to teach themselves.
I think that the point is not that everyone is going to have 10.2 jobs between the ages of 18 and 38. Many of us will only have one job. But how many times will that one job change? 10.2 times? Perhaps not, but when it changes, who’s going to teach the new skills?
We need to stop teaching literacy, and teach learning literacy.
We need to stop teaching literacy skills, and teach literacy habits.
We need to stop thinking about lifelong learning, and instead, work toward every student leaving our schools with a learning lifestyle.
We need to be willing to take every piece of furniture our of our classrooms, clear the walls, burn it all, and start all over again. The world has changed that much.
Let’s take a look at some of the words that are used to describe and “Educational Hero” in this picture:
Provocative: the first on the list, and for good reason. What is someone in education if not provocative. By nature, information is meant to incite in us something that lay dormant or underutilized. Giving our students access to such provocation is an act that we need to do often.
Risk-Takers: We teach our students to take compositional risks, to make cognitive leaps, and to attempt to connect several disparate ideas into one usable and coherent whole. Why should we as teachers not be doing the same? By nature, our approach should be daring, and variable based on “teachable moments.”
Balance-Freedom-Guidance: I like the inclusion of these words, and of “nurturing,” because if nothing else, our students need to feel valuable and safe before they can take the risks that they need to. These words, these actions are what makes it easier for learners to reach from the solid ground of what they know towards that which is shaky, unknown, yet incredibly valuable.
Humble: When I work with teachers who are trying to shift away from being the sole arbiters of information in the classroom, I always stress humility over the stress of trying to know everything. Being grounded, centered and comfortable with the idea that you do not have all the answers, and that these students can help you continue to learn, makes it all beautiful, doesn’t it?
Want to be like them: Perhaps the highest compliment anyone in education can receive. With the omnipresent stream of role models of ill-repute, being someone that learners want to be “when they grow up” is no small feat. I remember the moments that some of my past teachers did something amazing, showed us a door that we didn’t know existed, and then thinking back to it years later as I was doing the same thing to a group of students. It is high praise indeed.
The gentleman that runs our monthly meeting, Ned Davis, just came out with a quote that I thought was interesting regarding the students he teaches at St. Elizabeth College. He was decrying the multitude of resources that they have to sift through in order to get the correct information for their research:
“There is just so much crap out there!”
This, to me, makes a great case for literacy to be revisited at ALL levels of education. Even students who have grown up immersed in technology and are ready to enter the world are often not equipped with the ability to deconstruct multiple sources and recognize validity. Ned’s students, confronted with multiple resources might be struggling because the literacy skills they have accumulated in the academic environment do not fit the types of media and information, or even the amount of information.
How do we teach discerning students? What are some methods we are using to do this in our classrooms or seminars? We talk about digital literacies, but what are some tried and true methods?
I have been meaning to write to you about your futures, but the pressure has not really mounted, being that neither of you can read just yet. However, the ideas and thoughts I have about your futures are beginning to overwhelm me at this point, and I felt that I should at least commence something in the way of a letter to your future selves.
On the way to school today, you and I were talking, Parker, and you asked where the yellow school bus in front of us was going. My answer, without thinking, was of course, “to school.” But you were quicker than that and immediately asked “why?” My answer was to tell you that it was taking the kids to school so they could learn.
As soon as I said it, something in my head clicked. That was the wrong answer, or at least the wrong syntax. The way I said it to you implied that school is exclusively the place where you go to learn, and that could not be further from the truth. This is true today, and will be increasingly more so as you and your sister get older.
Your future contains aspects that no future has ever contained before, the most key being something we call ubiquitous access. What that means is that you will be able to learn, gain access to, and process information from any location you are in: a school, a city sidewalk, running through the woods with your father. That changes things more than you can imagine. For your mother and me, when we wanted information, or wanted to learn, we had to physically move ourselves to where that information was. In most cases, it was school, and in special cases a library, museum, or artistic event. Your future will give you the opportunity to seize an idea at any moment and go with it, unhindered by physical constraints or the constraints of individuals who might want that information for themselves.
The biggest shift for you in relation to my comment about the children going to school to learn: you will have more teachers than your mother and I did combined. Your teachers will be accessible to you at any time and will come in the form of professionals in the field of study you are interested in, databases and visualizations that people create for you, and yes actual teachers in your school who are connecting to teachers of their own to continue to learn and explore. Your learning cycle will not stop arbitrarily at age 18 or 22, but will be continuous throughout your life and will be filled with several careers combined into one. Where your mother and I were taught to be concerned with facts and linear thinking, you will be taught to find patterns, see bigger pictures, and connect ideas that bear no resemblance to one another on the surface.
I know that it was just a question that you asked, Parker, and in twenty years you will not remember it at all, but to me it signified something larger. Your future is not just my responsibility as a parent, it is also my responsibility as someone in the position to institute real change in the way we understand and execute the processes of learning and teaching.
My real hope for you is that you discover what I have recently discovered about working: it has to be grounded in the same ideas you are using now at your ages. Discovery. Mistake. Attempt. Attempt. Attempt. Failure. BooBoo and ouch. Play. Build. Create. Mix. Smear. Mess.
Dean Shareski posted the other day about Possibility v. Probability, where by he addressed the issue of building an infrastructure within his school where change was seen as urgent and necessary in regards to how we use technology in our teaching. This same idea, in various forms, is one that I find myself answering to both internally and with teachers that I work with. The most frustrating aspect of my job so far has been the feeling that teachers don’t see the value in what I do in regards to their own teaching methods. There are two disconnects I see in the schools today: complaints I hear regarding cell phone usage, the ubiquity of iPods, and the persistent time-wasting of online gaming and social networking through MySpace and Facebook and the lack of change in pedagogical methods to captivate that audience and use those ideas and technologies to draw in the learners, and the sore-thumb syndrome, whereby teachers are using technology for technology’s sake rather than as a tool that will foster growth and understanding. Below, is a great clip from Stephen Downes as he responded to Dean’s post and follow up question of what schools will look like in five years, followed by my own comment:
Well there’s no easy answer to that. Schools change very slowly, so although there will be increased penetration for tech (usually sanitized to separate students from society) things will look much like they will today. There will be increased pressure – especially from the U.S. - for alternatives, but it will be difficult to separate educational ventures from commercial ventures.
Meanwhile, online media will have gradually become more pervasive and more immersive. It will occupy an increasing amount of students’ time. Online will be – indeed, is already – be thought of as ‘normal’ and most students will be in constant communication with their friends (watch out for loners shut out of this network, as they will be more isolated than ever).
Mostly, school will be about socializing and learning pushed to the back burner (at least, for students). There will be an ongoing (and losing) battle by teachers to prevent students from using their technology. The number of schools breaking down and accepting the online world will increase. Adoption will be uneven, with urban schools being at the forefront, rural schools late adopters.
The students’ real learning environment – their online world – will penetrate the school environment one class at a time. Innovative teachers will attempt to actually remove students from the school grounds much more frequently than in the old field-trip days (this allowing for 100 percent use of online techs). The amount of school time actually spent ins school, as an average, will constantly decrease (in five years it should be roughly 80 percent, give or take a lot; in ten years it could be down to 50 percent, give or take a lot).
Depending on where you are, as Stephen said above, the ratio of innovative teachers to traditional teachers will fall in favor of transformation. For districts that lie in the suburbs and are truly committed to having their schools remain centers of community outside of athletics and arts, the shift is essential and the acquisition and support of “shifted” teachers will bely their success at being involved in the real learning process of their students.
This thought process that you had, Dean, is one that I have been struggling with as I attempt to penetrate(I hope that word doesn’t sound to pugnacious) classrooms that don’t necessarily see the need for change. My biggest issue is with the technology not being as transparent as it should yet. I have several teachers dieing to use “technology” in their classroom, and several Professional Improvement Plans submitted by teachers that use that terminology “integrate technology” but what for? It’s apparent that they are taking that step just for the sake of using technology. What about making it transparent, so that it’s just another tool, like heterogeneous grouping, that they they use to accomplish the goal of learning? That is where my biggest disconnect is: the technology sticks out too much.
Like most of us out there, we are nearing the end of the year in my district, and with it comes the rush of exams, the spontaneous absence of students due to field trips and warm weather, and all of the various celebratory events that accompany June in New Jersey. However, this is the time of the year where taking stock of past events becomes essential to learning from what we’ve done.
Mark at Anecdote wrote recently about talking to a client of his about sensemaking as it relates to having perspective on situations that we need to understand in our life and work:
It provides an opportunity for an unhindered look at the experiences of participants and the gaining of new and valuable insights into the state of the system under examination; what is working and what isn’t, and the implications moving forward.
A few days ago I had the wonderful opportunity to work with a group of first-year teachers in a two-hour workshop. When the idea was pitched to present to them, I immediately began thinking about what were essential concepts that I could present in two hours. To do this, I looked back at the past year of notes, big paper brainstorms, but most importantly, I looked at the conversations that I have had through this medium. It hit me when I was reading Eric Hoefler’s post called 60-30-10: I am not writing in isolation. The best way to fully experience this is look over previous posts and analyze personal change, notice patterns and assess growth.
This is the essence of sensemaking; we are looking for meaning and deciphering patterns in our own thought when we examine our posts, and even deeper so when we analyze conversations in comments.
In doing this, what did I see? What were those concepts? Considering the discussions and the tremendous amount that I have learned in the past few months regarding direction and philosophy of education, two hours looked like too small a window for me to fit what I considered essential. However, that thought in itself taught me everything that I needed: the information is what is important, not the technology. Jeff Utecht makes this analogy so well in Embedded Technology on his blog, where he promotes the idea, gleaned from discussion on a previous post, that it is far better to consider technology as an integral piece of the planning, rather than a bell and a whistle at the end. My take on the same piece as applied to these two hours was that rather than show them some bells and whistles, I would focus on individual productivity. My choices? Aggregating RSS feeds and social bookmarking.
Upon scrutiny of this past year in terms of my professional development, nothing has allowed me more access to information than my aggregator and my ability to use smarter people than me to search for me on del.icio.us. Two hours on those two aspects was more than enough time, so much so that I was also able to slip in connective writing and creating global classrooms.
In the next couple of days, provided the 8-week old steadily moves toward a more fixed schedule, I will continue to examine this past year by covering some topics that are truly meaningful to me as I prepare for next year, such as changing school philosophy and environment, building teams, and taking risks.
Sensemaking, to return to the original theme of this ramble, is the art of connecting yourself to the larger ideas that surround you. Stopping to take a look at them is the first step towards learning from what you have done.
A colleague of mine asked me the other day whether or not I knew of anyone that had on online portfolio for other teachers, administrators or prospective employers to view. It got me thinking about the nature of what we are all doing here.
One of the principles that is most important in the transformation to school 2.0 is that of ethics and what Will Richardson describes as “being clickable.” I am going to venture to say that my online portfolio exists in the content I create, and how I am able to collect that content via the feeds and links that extend from my blogs. If we are asking our students to be aware of the content they create and to adhere to an ethical standard, I am hard pressed to find a better example to give them the the blogs that we keep.
As professionals, a portfolio is essential. In one of the schools I work in, we are given a yearly “brag sheet” to list all of the accomplishments that we would like included in our yearly reviews. While the content I create here is not done for the purposes of recognition on a yearly review, it is nonetheless something I am proud of, and would want to share with colleagues, supervisors, and yes, future employers if that should ever come up. Portfolios, like these spaces here, also give us the opportunity to reflect on our practice. What goes in? What stays out? That decision making process in itself forces us to contemplate our daily and yearly progress as a teacher or administrator.
As is the case with me lately, I still have to wonder if there is some better method out there. A quick search in Google under portfolio’s in education reveals some interesting things. One that immediately catches my eye is that from Ohio State University’s Faculty and TA Development center. Outlined at the site are some very effective reasons for keeping a teaching portfolio to show the depth and scope of what you have taught. But nowhere does it say that it should be digital or not. Another search under portfolios online, yielded a company called blueskyportfolios, who specialize in creating online portfolios for executives and artists. This resonates, and while I might not want to shell out the money for their services, their layouts appeal to me.
I think I have hatched a new professional development class for my district….
This picture, originally featured in Russell Davies blog, found it’s way to my Reader through Metacool.
As Davies says on his blog, it’s incredibly disarming, yet it’s a fact that is often lost in the shuffle of daily life in education, especially as the children get older. We need to think on this one for a while and let it marinate. How many of the situations you faced today would look different through this lens?
As I prepare for the second week of my Web 2.0 class, I really want to stress to the teachers I am working with the importance of these type of sites, where people can have access to information that used to be considered scarce. I also want to let them see the role they may play in shaping the way students can access that information. It is not that we will be reduced to obsolescence, but rather our role will be to design and shape, and specialize in knowledge management.
If you get a chance, check out LectureFox. I don’t normally get worked up about this type of stuff, and it slightly depresses me for financial reasons (pay scales in New Jersey for teachers are based on graduate credits earned), but this is some great stuff. Now you will have to excuse me, I am going to read up on my Buddhist Psychology.
The challenge we chose to accept was to use video game design principles to design a course to develop students’ digital media skills, media critique skills and overall computer literacy. If successful teachers could effectively take advantage of the resources afforded by the school’s 1:1 computing environment. Our solution – a 90 minute weekly media arts class set up as a simulated record label taught by two members of the Digital Youth after school staff who are involved in the music industry. Each sixth grade class was given the goal of creating by the end of the school year; 2 recording groups, 7 songs, 2 music videos, a publicity campaign that included a 30 second radio promo, a website and a CD. The culminating activity for this Media Arts class is a record label launch party.(from Pinkard: Videogames Inspire a Different Design for Classroom Learning)
The prospect of asking large public schools to infuse technology into their curriculum is harrowing enough sometimes, and asking them to then use the model of a video game, long considered the arch-rival to academic rigor, is one I wasn’t really able to visualize before I came across this article. I like the idea of creating a multi-layer project under the guise of a far-off product release or showcase. It’s authentic to the students and according the article, fulfilling enough for them to use higher-level thinking skills to accomplish. Meanwhile, the students will never see it this way. Through their eyes, they are making something happen, making something appear alive where there was nothing in the beginning: it has value and meaning rather than second-hand obligation. It always reminds me of when I start saving money for something; as the amount in the bank grows, the momentum becomes palpable and you begin doing whatever you can to see it continue and increase. In the end, the correct environment was created.
I am curious as to what the discussions are like among group members in this project and how they have set it up; what was the bait? Thanks to Scott McLeod for turning me on to anti-teaching, and the merits it has in creating questions, rather than demanding answers. Mike Wesch, the author of Anti-Teaching, comes to the realization that the environment where learning takes place far outweighs the benefit of “good” teaching. He states:
Borrowing from Marshal McLuhan’s famous aphorism, “the medium is the message,” Postman and Weingartner argue that the environment (or “medium”) of learning is more important than the content (the “message”) and therefor teachers should begin paying more attention to the learning environment they help to create. The emphasis is on “managing” this environment rather than teaching per se.
The project created in the North Kenwood Oakland Middle School is a fantastic example of this. A non-traditional setting where the students determine the outcomes based on questions that they themselves generate. An environment where structures and scaffolding were not limiting, but rather acted much like a game situation; when one problem or question was satisfied, another level of questions presented itself. There’s the connection then: let us design lessons not to replicate the pace, or even the technology of the video game, but rather its emphasis on challenging the learner with a series of tasks that engage them and move them along a semi-determined path.
If anyone has any similar lessons or designs like this, I would love to start moving toward this with my staff. I know there is a bridge to gap between where the students aptitudes and interests are (see “Manifesto“), but the difference does not have to be made up solely by technology. Mike Wesch does it with little technology, save the digital cameras for recording the outcome, with close to 400 students. This is possible.
A few years back I worked in a publishing house, figuring that to become a writer I first had to understand the business behind the book. Well, what I discovered, aside from the fact that everyone I worked with was also a writer-in-training, was that books did not magically appear from the pen of the author and land sweetly in the hands of the reader. The writing was such a small part of the production of the book, which was itself a commodity. Very quickly, any enthusiasm I had for the job waned, as did my performance. I was king of the minimum yearly raise. Where all of the other hacks I worked with got upwards of 5- and 6%, I slunk by with my 3%.
This recollection came to me after reading Kathy Sierra’s post at Creating Passionate Users regarding how to instill passion in your employees. To quote a passage that struck me:
[UPDATE: I do not consider "caring about the user" as separate from "our work." In other words, I consider one who is truly passionate about their work to have "the effect it has on the user" as a fundamental part of that work. A tech book author/teacher who has brilliant wordsmithing and technical breadth but no effect on the reader is not a professional. A software developer who crafts
brilliant code that doesn't include that code's effect on the user is not a professional. Part of what makes us professional/craftspeople is that we value and never forget the POINT of our work, and the point is--for most of us--what it means for the user. It's quite sad that many of our professions have rewarded work without making the user the most important attribute of how we asses that work.]
I have been having a short conversation with Steve Borsch based on my comment about his post yesterday dealing with the issue of people relying heavily on products that are not really ready for them to rely on. He was talking about YahooPipes, and I was talking about using Web 2.0 apps with teachers. As we use these applications we are discovering that they don’t all work for us: some are great, others unreliable. But, in theory, they are fantastic. Kathy’s post lets us know that passion for the creation of a product is not enough, that there has to be passion and understanding for how the product will be used.
Educators products, are of course the students we teach. So, not to commoditize it, but if we place that model into our schools how does it fly? Let’s look at a special education student for example. When we create curriculum for students to follow, we map out our strategies and lay out our scope and sequence with an eye forever on the state standard that we are trying to satisfy. Our product, the student, will have to go through this “machination” in order to emerge finished on the other side. Education is different in that the “machination” cannot be homogeneous, the processes by which each product is created have to be unique.
So passion is not lacking, and I think parent and child can attest to at least on teacher they had that was truly passionate about their subject matter and the fact that they learn it (thank you Mrs. Fitz). The publishing house taught me a great lesson: I could not work in an environment that did not make me want to, as Sierra puts it “pull an all-nighter because I wanted to.” It had to be something that got under my skin, ticked me off, and pushed me even when no one else was around.
We can add all the technology we want, but that essentially does not change. After all, its just hardware.
This was taken in one of the science labs atSLA last week and it reminded me of a few things, the most prescient being that I love the idea of a school organized around a few wonderful, core ideas. Chris Lehmann has this school humming from what we could see, and I have to think that these ideas are essential to his early success.
In a school here in New Jersey where I used to teach, we had similar organizing principles, called the Quality Standards, by which the students were held accountable for the richness of their work. These here are more geared to the high school level and the methodologies that SLA is employing to reach those goals. Ours were more centered around the middle school mentality and establishing habits in the type of work students produced. They looked something like this:
Following Directions- the ability to perform the tasks asked of you
Presentation- how your work appeared to others when finished
Supporting Details- was your work substantiated
Connections- were you able to make a meaningful connection from your research to something outside of the scope of the project
Higher Level Thinking- the ability to synthesize and evaluate in your work
Evaluation and Revision- your work showed that you had spent time in thought evaluating your finished product
From looking at the SLA model in comparison, I can see that the focus has shifted in education to reflect a new skill set. We want our students to be able to competently show us their abilities in some form–it’s the creative component that we keep hearing so much about through people like Dan Pink.
Having been to SLA, but not really having spoken to Chris about these values, here is how I have come to interpret them:
Inquiry- what questions are you asking, and what makes you ask them
Research- use every attainable and relevant resource available to you to answer these questions
Collaboration- can you use the technology available to you to create meaning with others
Presentation- showing an audience what you have uncovered and the medium in which you choose is paramount in order to convey your message
Reflection- you must be the first one to evaluate the merits of your own research and thought process.
The last paragraph of the Mission and Vision section of their website is what really separates this place from most other secondary institutions at the moment:
At the SLA, learning will not be just something that happens from 8:30am to 3:00pm, but a continuous process that expands beyond the four walls of the classroom into every facet of our lives.
It’s really here. Here are some samples from work our students have recently done using wikis:
In the next couple days, I plan on bringing on the teachers I have been working with to talk a little about their experiences doing the project and the differences they have noted in student learning.
What strikes me is something that you hear all too often nowadays, and yet still not enough: it’s all about the conversation. The learning going on “outside the lines,” is unprecedented for me. Watching these students delegate, make informed choices, and offer up lines like this one to help the group accomplish a task:
“NEEDS FIXING, PLEASE READ We, need to have some place for other imformation, those questions were only supposed to be a rough outline. I suggest having a section for any miscellaneous info any may have found. I am setting up my own. I suggest you make your own.”
Rumors have been circulating around the community that the 7th grade is up to something that has the kids being forced to stop working on their schoolwork and go to bed. That’s got to be good.
Thanks to Chris Sessums for drawing my attention to this:
Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us. Dir. Michael Wesch. 2007.
A link of David Warlick’s post to Julie Coiro’s recent work got me motivated. A lot of my thinking lately has been directed in not only digesting the power of connectivism and the potential of Web 2.0 as it applies to school, but also how to sell it to educators. My job is to facilitate the use of technology in classrooms and to support the staff as they implement it.
It requires a little more when we begin talking about an entire pedagogical shift. It becomes a matter of first making it meaningful to the staff. I would never want to ask a teacher to stand in front of a room of students, especially the digital natives that we have in class today, and have them teach using Web 2.0 tools, unless that teacher had bought in themselves.
Coiro uses the Miss Rumphius Awards as an example for steps that teachers should take when integrating technology in a meaningful way. I like them for what I want to do, and how I want to approach my staff. Taken directly from her site, here they are:
1. Start out small and move through stages. 2. Take a few risks along the way. 3. Take a proactive approach to learning. 4. Encourage your students to share their expertise. 5. Never underestimate the power of collaboration. 6. Seek authentic learning opportunities. 7. Be prepared for change.
Every district has what I term “rabbits,” and this term was bandied about at the conference with Will Richardson on Friday. This morning, I listened to his podcast with Rob Mancabelli regarding how to implement social networking technologies into existing schools and the idea of passion and meaning in regards to selling districts on these ideas matched up succinctly with the idea of the “rabbit.” We need these tools to mean something to our staff before we ask them to take it to the students. They have to buy in and see the value for themselves as learners, before they use them as teachers.
Inasmuch as time hides changes in its gradual flow, slight movements in our philosophies can sometimes go unnoticed, and can surprise us when we are faced with a familiar decision that now has a new outcome.
Listening to Will Richardson yesterday had me spinning in so many great directions. One of the most crystallizing moments happened very early on in the meeting when Will showed us that Christian Long, who was also in the audience, had already blogged about what we were talking about. Christian had noted something that Will said:
“Everyone that comes to my blog is a potential teacher of mine.”
This statement had, up until that point, been an elusive idea for me as I began to blog and to post comments on other people’s blogs. What was it that I was doing? I knew that I wanted dialogue and communication, feedback and even a little controversy. Putting these actions that I was making into the context of teacher/learner shed some light on the relationship between these 2.0 concepts and how they relate to my schools and schools everywhere.
My limited time in education has shown me a few things that work and several things that don’t when it comes to student learning. The most cogent so far is the need for students to connect their thinking, their work, their own meaning, to other people and ideas outside of the classroom. At Smith School, we were always expected to ask our students to show us connections between the subjects at hand and the outside world. This is what blogging has become for me over the last few months, and this is what Will was talking about when he made that statement.
Here is the essential process that I garnered from our discussion yesterday:
Read: the need to seek out quality information will never disappear. Once I find it, I’ll use it.
Think/Synthesize: reflection on what we are consuming as text: photos, videos, text, multimedia. Where does it belong in my network?
Write: put it out there for your community, the world, and let the dialogue begin.
Process: what has happened to your ideas? Do you need to reassess?
Write: respond and defend, acquiesce, merge.
I learn because I pursue information. The tools made available to me by read/write technology don’t insure that I will learn, just as syllabi and extensive reading lists never did. We make choices about our learning as we go through school, and not just about what courses we will take. We choose to retain certain pieces of information more than others; we choose to use certain research over others for our writing. Why?
Because we have learned to be editors of information. The flow of information is now slightly overwhelming, and the ability for us to gain access to it blows me away. The tools are only half the game though. The choices about what we let past our filter determine the depths to which we learn. What is quality, what is not? The days of choosing the top three entries on a Google search (one of my least favorite student habits) need to be altered.
What School 2.0 is to me right now is about creating networks, about placing our schools into those networks where they can become part of their own communities. I want the world to see what we do, so that in turn, we can use that world as part of our network.
I was pointed in the direction of Christian Long’s “Future of Learning Manifesto” and its subsequent additions and expansions by visitors and commenter to his blog. One part of it really stands tall for me and lends itself to my work:
10. Nobody Knows the Answer. Get Comfy with the Questions.
One of the most difficult things to do in life is to cede control of a situation for fear of ceding control of our classrooms. A common theme coming across the waves is that in order for us to provide a relevant assessment and a “school 2.0″ environment, we have to provide environments that are not controlled in the traditional sense that educators have come to know it. (See also remote access “Chaos Theory”)
And I get it on both sides of the equation. On the traditional side, in order to do what the “Manifesto” points us to do, entire curriculums would need to be re-written, staffs retrained, and students empowered in a way that they have not been before. In my personal situation, the logistics behind doing that are overwhelming. I can’t imagine viewing the directive from the standpoint of someone who has been in the classroom for 20 years or more. This would be just another pendulum swing in the world of educational reform and theory. They have seen it before in the way of phonics v. whole language, or inquiry-based learning and PBL’s v. standards-driven curriculum. and any other of a host of attempts to change the environment in a classroom. How does that teacher become convinced? How does that teacher see value in giving up control in favor of becoming the driver of creative questions? And also, what if the students, they feel, are not capable of asking meaningful questions, or lack a solid enough foundation in basic terminology or facts to conduct relevat research?
What is happening in terms of the read/write web and collaboration is intense and unbelievably mercurial in nature. To be tied down to one method for too long is missing out on 4 or 5 others that pop up to supersede it (see del.icio.us v. diigo v. Google Notebook–diigo for me). And therein lies the key. There are more questions than answers now. Which is best of research?(digging on Grokker right now) What method can I use to find primary source material on a topic? How can I find relevant, credible resources out of the plethora of hits I get back on Google? When I saw Long’s #10 on the list, I sighed because I knew this was the way to go. Get cozy with the “I don’t know, let’s play around and see,” approach. That’s where we get the skeptics; Create a possible task and give them tools that make doing it unbelievably easy.
Malcolm Gladwell spoke about the ideas and actions that lead to a radical shift in social policy, design, and consumer power. That is what we are looking at here. Is it podcasts? Blogs? Wikis? Pink or red iPods? No.
What it will be is something that makes accessing information for classroom teachers accessible and safe, something that makes them fearless and confident in front of a roomful of connected students, and something that lets them be comfortable with “I don’t know.”
Two interesting concepts here that I can thank the good folks at Think:Lab for bringing to my attention.
First, is the nanocast: a short quick podcast that relies on pointed, concise questions and zero scripting. Jay Cross at the Internet Time Blog has switched his format entirely to shorter versions of longer podcasts, which he claims do not hold his attention. Who doesn’t have a problem with attention span these days? Nanocasting delivers nano-sized points on a specific topic. The benefit, as I see it, is for pulling in an audience with the promise that you don’t need to keep them for a long time. As I write this, I am already thinking of doing this with the teachers that I work with as a post-lesson wrap up after they have completed their projects and have taken student feedback into consideration.
Secondly, I listened to Cross interview Mark Oehlert on one of his nanocasts entitled: The Future Look of Learning, and I have to confess, I was both energized and slightly awestruck at some of the possiblities that Mark mentioned. As we search out more and more uses for Web 2.0 in education, the quest will probably become more competitive, not between those of us using the technology, but between those who are delivering it. The key word now is customization. What Web 2.0 is allowing us to do more than we have ever seen is to customize our environments to what we would like to see. Think widgets, think your personalized Google homepage or whatever aggregator you are using. The competition to make those type of platforms customizable for schools will be fierce. Once we really begin to overcome our fears of “what is out there,” schools will likely embrace the idea of off-site hosting and “software” that is personalized. Oehlert and Cross mention that learning styles will be met much more successfully because we will be able to create a series of application that appeals to a visual learner by giving that student a series of applications and feeds that provide resources that are specific not only to the topic that the student is learning, but also to how that student will best learn it. I am psyched.
Trepidation here lies within the fact that deciding what is best for those whom I work with will be difficult. What I am grappling with all the time is this very fact of what is best for me. Recommending to someone else is barely in the cards yet.
BTW, I apologize for the bullets, but this post was the result of a failed experiment with Diigo’s “blog this” feature was does not currently support Blogger. End of January, they say.
Now that I have been reading what is an ever expanding blogroll for over two weeks now, I think the time is nigh that I start trying to make some personal sense out of what I have been ingesting.
At the Thinking Stick, Jeff Utecht talks about what the meaning of School 2.0 is, and how it is not enough that we are just digitizing. What the next step for most schools in America is to grab hold of the interconnectivity that their students, the natives, have already taken hold of.
School 2.0 needs to be about creating knowledge, analyzing information, and evaluating both. It’s about understanding a world in which connections and communicating with others is at the foundation of how we learn, that through creating our own knowledge not from what a teacher tells us, but rather from what we read, listen to, and watch ourselves is far more powerful. A teacher is a guide, much like the guide we had in Vietnam. Arrange the boat for the trip, but allow us to experience the trip, answer questions when we have them, and stay out of the way when we want to experience something ourselves. We could have easily called our guide a history teacher showing us the “Hilton Hotel” where POWs were held, allowing us to experience a silk factory, and filling in the gaps that we couldn’t or didn’t know. We did the learning, he did the guiding.
The folks over at Think:Lab in a post dated earlier in the week spoke about the premises that underlie School 2.0 date back to the progressivism of John Dewey. Without a doubt we are not touching on new theory here, but rather using the read/write technology in lieu of a woodshop or any other pragmatic tool used in Dewey’s time. This is what we should take from the terminology: that the influx of technology means little without the useful, practical application of it in contexts that best fit the direction that the learner needs to go in. The guide spoken of in the post above did just that. Provide the framework, manage the tools, answer the questions as they arise, and be prepared for whatever bumps come up.
For years now we’ve talked about being the “Guide on the Side” in the classroom, and that’s what we need to be. Of course it’s hard to do that when you have to fill an 80 minute block. In School 2.0 a ‘tour’ might take 80 minutes it might take 10 minutes. It might be 10 minutes of background knowledge and then 80 minutes of exploration and creation of knowledge. Teachers need time to plan out the route, book the trip, and make sure the experience is available. We need to rethink schools and think about just how messy learning is.
Most of us, at some point in our teacher training, were given the phrase that Utecht uses “the Guide on the Side,” and we chuckled at the rhyme, and maybe even took it to heart. However, the true meaning of School 2.0 lies in that very phrase. My aim as an educator has taken an abrubt turn in recent weeks due to the changing demographics of the American and global workforces.
Utecht talks about a definition of School 2.0:
What is School 2.0? It’s a school that defines learning and knowledge not by seat time, or hours spent on a project, but by what is experienced, created, and communicated.
Everything that has come across my nose in the past few months points to a future dependent upon creativity in problem solving, in collaborative efforts, and in the ability to see solutions to questions that haven’t arisen yet. What better way to prepare student for that than to introduce him or her to the beautifully unsettling world at large through the use of available technologies? I will let you know as soon as I find it…
And did he ever.
“We should see ourselves as all being in research and development.”
” we are going to hit some rough spots, from both students who are not used to being confused or stressed about school, and their parents who haven’t seen their child struggle with school before. As always, we will deal with those situations as they arise.
That being said, I often feel like I would like to sink my teeth into some hugely collaborative project, or even just be associated with one. There’s been a 
