Thoughts to act upon.

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.

Pass the Beaker, Man

“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.”

1. 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.
   1. 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.
   2. 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.
   3. Showing teacher work and student work off
      1. 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.”
      2. 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.
      3. 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“
   4. District-wide PD conference
      1. 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?
      2. The willing and able can present what they do to the rest of the staff and we go from there.
   5. School-wide or grade-wide Custom search engines
      1. 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.
      2. It gives them exposure to the collaborative nature of the web.
   6. 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.

Image Credit: “Comfortable Research,” from Joel Bedford (formerly J.A.L.E.X.)’s photostream

Data, My Good Friend, I’ll Need to See you Soon…

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:

• Compare our ownership stats to the nation, to the world (use this graph from nationmaster.com)
• 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 need to nail this stuff down on the local level.

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.

Image Credit: “Goatopolis-v2 (beta:Matthew Broderick)” from Goatopolis’ Photostream

Discussion Protocol

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)

Next: So What?

Quotes from Day One of BLC

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.”

BLC Preparedness

In a few hours, myself and a team of administrators from my district will be boarding a plane for Boston to attend the Building Learning Communities conference.  If you are a somewhat regular reader of this blog, you may already know how often I reference Alan November’s ideas and what an influence he’s been on my practice.  When I pitched the idea for us to attend, way back in April, I didn’t anticipate all of the us going, but I am glad we are; it will be nice to see the reactions of my colleagues to some of the ideas that will be circulating.

The last few days have been interesting for me here.  On Saturday, I had the great opportunity to talk about new teacher induction programs with Steve Kimmi (the conversation was recorded and can be found on Steve’s blog or on the EdTechTalk site).  When Steve emailed me and gave me the list of topics that we might get to, it was a big one, and my preparations for the conversations led me to do some deeper thinking than I had done in a while–nothing like a deadline to get you motivated.  Steve’s idea was this:

We will be discussing how to prepare new teacher’s for today’s classroom and 21st century skills.  There are a lot of resources that attempt to define 21st century skills, so I will list the one’s that I am privy to.  However, this will also be discussed.

• 21st Century Skills:
• Digital Literacy
• Global Awareness
• Collaboration/Communication

Problem Solving/Inventive Thinking

So I knew I needed to formulate some ideas about them, and it coincided nicely with the direction I was heading in as we approached BLC.

New Teachers and 21st Century Skills

When I saw this heading, I thought immediately back to some of Jeff Utecht’s posts about interview questions for hiring of new staff.  What should our incoming teachers be versed in technologically v. what can we expect to teach them in the induction programs and in working with them over time?  This dichotomy gets at a few things I feel are important.  When new teachers arrive at our offices and classrooms, we expect them to have licensure and credentials as certified by the state and have passed through a teacher training program at a university.  I know nothing of what teacher training programs look like these days, only what the products of those programs, the new teachers we hire directly out of college, show us when they arrive for interviews or as new hires.  As Jeff stated in his post from last spring, we need to be a bit more stringent in what we are asking of our new teachers.  This is much easier said than done when we consider the amounts of schools out there that will open in September without a full staff due to the inability to find qualified applicants; however, for my own personal experience, I don’t think it’s enough to expect that a teacher have a basic understanding of the trends in education, rather, I feel they should be on the cutting edge having come from a teacher training program.  They should understand the power of networked learning, of the use of mobile technologies, and the utmost importance of critical thinking skills and collaboration among both their students and their colleagues.

Digital Literacy/Leadership

In looking back for Jeff’s post above, I came across one of my earlier posts regarding a conversation I had with my Uncle Bill in early Spring regarding the effects of changing systems and the workplace.  He posed a question that is apropo here as well:

“If you believe in changing education, who are you working for now, the students and teachers of today or the students and teachers of tomorrow?”

In the conversation with Steve on Saturday, I mentioned a story I heard via a comment on the “Uncle Bill” post in which she relayed a story that Alan November told audience at the Learning 2.0 Conference last year in Shanghai.  In it, Alan spoke of how Plato struggled with ideas espoused by the current educational system in his day and railed against those in control of it in order to have it changed.  In the end, his conclusion on how to change it was simple: wait for all of those in control to die.

That’s not exactly an option we have; I think of all of the students that would exposed to new pedagogies, all of the teachers that would not come to know the power of a network that can be tapped into constantly and one that can be added to at the same rate.  Steve said it best in the discussion when he referenced the fact that we cannot give up on trying to help teachers develop lessons steeped in 21st Century literacy because what if students have a teacher that uses new methods successfully and exposes them to the use of new tools and transforms the way they learn, only to have a teacher the following year who does none of that.  Does that put the child at a disadvantage?  I don’t have that answer–reason being is that I don’t exactly know what the variables are yet.  What does good teaching with new tools and new pedagogy look like?  Are we at the point yet where one way trumps the other.  I have visions of Dan Meyer floating in my head here:  are we trying to re-invent something that is already invented?

What this calls for, this change we keep referring too, is a change in the vision of our educational leaders.  I am excited to meet up with David Truss this week and get into his head about leadership, and with Dennis Richards to look at what type of vision for schools of today we can forge.

More to come as the week progresses.

Image Credit: “lead type” on jm3’s flickr photostream