Category Archives: teaching

24/7 Support

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I spent last evening having a thoughtful discussion with other educators about a wide range of issues. From integrating technology to creating authentic learning to getting beyond the “testing season,” we dug into the complex concerns about how to provide the best possible education for our students. What we didn’t discuss as much was the impact ubiquitous computing might have on educators.

We know that testing has put more and more pressure on teachers but what about all those devices and that access? I hadn’t thought much beyond the classroom setting until I happened to read this Education Week blog entry reviewing an ISTE presentation on the challenges of mobile devices. The article focused on problems related to sending school-owned devices home with kids and general planning related to rolling out 1:1. But here was the paragraph that struck me:

Devices have been distributed to ninth graders in the district, and students are using them to complete practice problems in class, create videos about how to approach problems, and video chat with teachers from home when they are working on homework. Having that 24-7 support helps academically struggling students get their questions answered and allows teachers to provide more personalized feedback to each student, said Friebel.

I know teachers are all about helping their students as much as possible and many work long past the scheduled work day already. But aren’t we expecting a little too much when we think they should be providing 24/7 support to their students? The article doesn’t say anything about the expectations that have been set for teachers in terms of being online outside of school hours. Are those video chats scheduled? Or do students simply “pop in” when they see their teacher online? What about email or instant messaging? Are teachers expected to provide their phone numbers to students so they can answer their students whenever and wherever they receive messages? I’m imagining the kid who complains that he couldn’t finish his homework because Mrs. Jones wasn’t available for a video chat when he got home from the football game at 10 PM or didn’t answer his 2 AM email.

Talk about trying to find a work/life balance…

The Learning Isn’t Over Until…

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I have been learning non-stop for the past two weeks. First Educon 2.5 and then VirtualVA2013. Lots of conversations, glimpses into innovative classrooms, and connections with other thoughtful educators. I’ve been reflecting on the experiences but haven’t had time to put fingers to keyboard. Here are the big themes that have stood out in my personal reflections…I’ll expand on them in future posts but for now, I’ll start with the bulleted list:

  • Schooling vs Learning…but also Jobs vs Work: This distinction rose out of a conversation about how happy kids and teachers were on snow days. I pointed out that lots of grown ups were also excited to miss a day of work.  There seems to be some parallel between the two worlds: schooling and jobs both imply structure while learning and work seem to imply objectives and goals. The consensus seems to be that we have put too much emphasis on developing structures that are keeping people from enjoying learning or work and really accomplishing worthwhile goals. But can we ditch the structure completely? I was particularly intrigued with an idea I’ve encountered before: that we need to talk about the whole system including the physical spaces where we learn and work. Hacking education goes way beyond a new curriculum or even a new pedagogy.
  • Doing More Than Just Showing Up: In the midst of all this learning, I’ve been reading Seth Godin and he has had a couple blog posts that add meaning experiences I’ve had, especially at Educon. Beyond Showing Up and Watching Is Not Doing address the idea of being more involved in our lives and our learning. Educon is the perfect example: you get out of Educon what you put in. There are conversation leaders who help provide some structure but you are expected to participate by offering your ideas, sharing your resources and tweeting your heart out. We had an “open mic” session during VirtualVA2013 that mimicked a bit of Educon and gave us a chance to talk about some of the big themes that had come out of the week’s sessions. Our opening and closing sessions were more about conversation than slides and the presenters willingly engaged with the attendees.
  • Entrepreneurs vs. Entrepreneurial Spirit: The panels at Educon talked a lot about how we can help kids become entrepreneurs. I just finished reading Yong Zhao’s book World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students as part of an ISTE SIGAdmin book group so I was particularly interested in the intersection of the book with the conversations. Someone made the distinction between the people (entrepreneurs) and their dispositions (entrepreneurial spirit) that made a lot of sense to me. And there’s a lot more here to explore…why entrepreneurs and schooling don’t seem to mix and if schools can produce entrepreneurs at all.

I am also aware that there is a lot of overlap between these three themes…it’s part of the problem I’ve had this week trying to sort out the various strands of conversations. I think it can be simplified a bit: the ultimate goal is to provide learning experiences (spaces?) for our students that challenge and engage them in meaningful ways and help them develop into thoughtful, active citizens.

Grand Challenges are Hard!

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It is 11 PM.  I drove all day, had an online meeting, caught up on email and provided some feedback to my students. I turned off the laptop, turned on the news and then remembered my 30-day challenge: a blog entry every day! So, here I sit, laptop on lap, writing about how easy it is to not write and thinking that if I’m really going to make this change, it needs to be the first thing I do each day rather than the last.

But I do have a quick comment before heading to bed.  My online meeting was with a group of teachers who are implementing a 1:1 iPad project.  They are leaders in their schools and trying to bring the rest of the faculty online after running a pilot program last year.  We spent some time talking about how they could encourage their colleagues to meet deadlines so they could move forward.  While they were a bit frustrated at experiencing reluctance, they also understood the problems: they had not had a salary increase for the past four years and yet they were being constantly asked to do more with less. Professional development often happens after work hours without any compensation and what little planning is included during the day is often taken up with administrivia.

Then I saw one of those Exxon “let’s fix this” videos, the ones that point out how the US is lagging in international test scores and how we can fix it.  They emphasize having knowledgeable teachers in the classroom and breezily suggest we should support our teachers:

As with much of this type of rhetoric, they don’t offer any specifics, leaving it up to the viewer to decide what it means.  Since we live in a pretty toxic environment related to teachers, many probably assume it means getting new teachers.

What it really means is that we should look at how those successful countries treat their teachers: how many hours they teach versus how much time they have to plan or learn.  This article from Stanford is a good starting point.  It focuses on professional development.  Since it’s late, I’ll just quote one example and let you read the article:

In Singapore, the government pays for 100 hours of professional development each year for all teachers. This is in addition to the 20 hours a week teachers have to work with their colleagues and visit each others’ classrooms to study teaching.

I’m wondering if this is what Exxon has in mind?

Scratch Day!

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One of my favorite days each semester is Scratch Day.  Integrating Scratch allows me to give my students the chance to do some basic programming. Most of them have had not experience in this area. In a two-credit class, I can only devote an hour, but it’s amazing what my students can accomplish in that hour.  I give a basic overview of how the program works, show them how they can download and investigate projects and then set them loose to work on their own projects as I work on my own.

In addition to an introduction to programming, they get to see a vibrant professional learning community at work.  When we have questions, we head to the forums where we find answers along with sample code.  They turn into a learning community as well as they share discoveries and help each other.

At the end of the class, I know there are students who are relieved that it is over. They feel a bit inferior, I suppose, because they are generally used to being good at something right off the bat. I try to reassure them that programming is not always intuitive and creating something complicated takes time. Others are exhilarated and can’t wait to get home to work on their projects some more, knowing that they still have lots to learn but confident that they can learn it.

I always learn more about Scratch myself and promise that I will do more…maybe I’ll make it my next 30-day challenge.

 

Of Sweeping Passions and Grand Challenges

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Attending the TedXAshburn event on Saturday was an uplifting experience.  I was able to hear fascinating people talk with great passion about their lives and their work.  They were teachers and administrators and mission workers and musicians who all live very different lives yet shared one thing in common: passion.  Most of them had a single sweeping passion that drove them but they also had a passion for life and a determination to live a life that mattered, a life that made a difference to others.

yin yang graphicI found myself asking the question: what am I passionate about?  What drives me?  The simple answer is teaching.  I do lots of things as part of my work from organizing conferences to balancing budgets to leading book groups. But as I look across the landscape that is the life of a consultant, it is teaching that inspires me. So, I was glad to hear George Wolfe declare that we are all teachers.  I miss spending time with middle schoolers and having the feeling of influencing a young mind, but I know I am making a difference in the ways my pre-service teachers think about their classrooms and in the ways my graduate students approach the use of technology in their schools.

I have a second passion: learning. This summer, I had the privilege of working with groups of practicing teachers in schools across the country as they try to figure out the best ways to use emerging technologies to meet the needs of their students. I was the teacher as I had the responsibility of organizing our work together but, as with any teaching experience, I also learned so much from the participants just as I learn from the students in my courses. Now, as we continue our work together, I am taking on a different kind of teaching role, that of mentor, as I guide and support them as they work on implementation.

Hence the graphic I was inspired to create as I drafted this entry: we teach, we learn, all in the same time and space. I want to make sure my students know that I am learning from them and with them despite my label as teacher.

In addition to the live speakers, we were treated to two TED videos.  The organizers of Saturday’s event chose Google engineer Matt Cutts’ talk about the 30-day challenge.  Cutts suggests that you think of something you’ve always wanted to add to your life and try it for 30 days:

While Cutts talks about doing something “new,” I’ve decided I just want to do something I already do but would like to do more regularly: write.  Specifically, write blog entries. It is something I think about a lot, even going so far as to draft entries in my head, but I never seem to get them written and published.  Life intervenes by way of emails and phone calls and other distractions.  So, starting today, I am challenging myself to write in this blog every day for the next 30 days. I make this personal challenge public as an added incentive for keeping with it.

Art or Science?

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Robert Pondiscio at The Core Knowledge Blog highlighted a video from University of Virginia cognitive scientist Dan Willingham that poses the age-old question: Is teaching an art or a science?  Not surprisingly, Willingham suggest that it is neither:

I’m arguing that teaching is somewhere in between.  Like an architect, a good teacher knows some fundamental findings from science but then also uses creativity and ingenuity to go beyond any strictures science can offer to create something wholly original, functional and enduring.

Pondiscio uses the video to lament the lack of science in education, pointing to what he sees as flawed ideas such as whole language and learning styles as examples of places where educators run off the rails. He focuses on the ideas that Willingham presents in the second half of the video about where science can help educators: by recommending boundary conditions, the “must haves” that are essential to learning (ie, practicing a skill), and suggesting “could dos,” ideas for how educators might teach certain ideas.  Pondiscio concludes, “The larger problem, to put it bluntly, is that education  pays insufficient evidence to science.”

That may be true, but the important part of the video for me was the first half in which Willingham shows how difficult it is to actually study teaching and learning in scientific ways.  He points out that the kinds of controlled studies that scientists like are done outside of the classroom environment, eliminating all the messiness that happens in a real classroom where you can control for distractions or motivation levels of students.  And, trying to do scientifically based studies in classroom is almost impossible for a whole host of reasons.  Even if you can do such research, according to Willingham, classrooms vary so much that findings from one 3rd grade class may not be applicable to any other 3rd grade class anywhere.  For me, to paraphrase Pondiscio, the larger problem is, to put it bluntly, that learning is complicated, kids and teachers aren’t robots, and even paying sufficient evidence to science doesn’t solve the host of problems that confront any given teacher on any given day.

I don’t disagree that we should equip teachers with whatever is known about the “boundary conditions.” And Pondiscio is right to suggest, “This creates an enormous opportunity for the cognitive scientists like Willingham to frame the discussion and offer evidence-based guidance on those ‘must haves.'”  But I worry that those who push us towards scientifically based best practices want to gloss over the conclusions from the first half of the video about the complex messiness of classrooms.  As Willingham points out, knowing a boundary condition doesn’t help with how to teach it and that’s where the creativity and ingenuity comes in.  And, as a teacher of teachers, helping them learn to be creative is a much more difficult task.

The QR Code Game

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I spend two precious weeks on gaming with my students: I introduce them to Scratch one week and then have them play games the following week.  Inspired by Matt Dunleavy’s augmented reality games, I decided to create my own game using QR codes.  While I do not believe they are going to revolutionize education, I do think they have the potential to quickly create interactive experiences for students to promote learning with a dose of critical thinking that comes from playing the game itself.

I tweeted that we were doing this activity and a few folks expressed interest along with the opinion that I was corrupting my pre-service teachers, so I will take a moment to share the pretty simple “rules” for the game.  The goal of the game was to learn a bit about gaming and education, be introduced to a few people I think are interesting or important plus just some fun stuff. Remember, my content is technology so showing them how to create and use QR codes is itself part of the objective of the game.

QR Code Game:

1. Students gathered in class and formed teams.  Each team received the first sheet in the game.  It included three QR Codes: one for the directions, one for the first clue, and one for the next location.  We used the directions code to test their scanners and do some troubleshooting. Then, they scanned for the first clue, used the Internet to locate the information requested and tweeted it to my attention. Finally, they scanned the next location which was somewhat cryptic (ie, the snack machines were billed as “cookies on a hook”).

2. There were five clue sheets in all.  When the completed the last clue, they turned the sheets over.  Each had a letter and they used the five letters to spell a word which was where I was located with the prizes.

Pretty simple.  It got them up and moving and even outside on a nice day.  And it showed these digital natives another use for their phones, something none of them had ever tried before. I didn’t give a quiz to see if they learned but I think they saw a particular activity that had lots of possible applications and did not require every kid to have a device.  One iPad that would scan and had internet access would be sufficient. You could find a work around for the tweeting part if that wasn’t available in the classroom. But I’ve been trying to get them to give Twitter a chance and this was another way to show them its potential educational application.  We tweet everything we create from Voice Threads to Scratch projects so they are shared with the group and the world and it makes it easy for us to display them.

The Middle Way, Another Look

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Yesterday, I considered how we might find a middle path as we figure out how to integrate digital media into our lives.  Two more stories today bring me to continue to consider the notion of the middle way as it applies to education.

Eduwonk Andrew Rotherham, in his take on the movie Bully, worries that educators often respond to problems with knee-jerk reactions that lead to zero-tolerance policies that end up making “eye rolling” a bullying offense.  And Tim Stahmer pointed to a Bitstrip about the Kahn Academy videos that helps put them in context: useful tools but certainly not revolutionary.

Why is it that we always want THE answer in education?  The magic bullet, the shortcut to success, the perfect policy?

When I was a young educator, I remember spending much time crafting my class rules each year in the hopes that if I got it right, I wouldn’t have any discipline problems.  I finally discovered that despite the snappy acronym or musical accompaniment (one year I made Aretha Franklin’s Respect the class song), the real way to avoid classroom management problems for me was to engage the students in learning as quickly as possible.  So, on the first day of class, while the other teachers were busy going over rules and expectations, I just dove into the work of learning. After all, by seventh grade, my students were pretty much aware that they weren’t supposed to talk while I was talking or poke their neighbors with their pencils.  While this approach worked well for me and I suggest it to my student teachers, I also let them know that they will discover their own methods.

It was those same student teachers who taught me a lesson of the perils of painting with a broad brush: we were talking about the Kahn Academy, and I was prepared to be negative when one of my students mentioned how helpful it had been to her in math.  While we agreed that it was not revolutionary, it was a great example of the way the Internet could provide students with extra support in their own learning. It was the student’s ability to access knowledge outside the classroom that was the revolutionary idea.

With some 5.5 million students enrolled in nearly 100,000 schools across the country, the idea that any one policy or intervention will work for all of them is just silly.  If there is going to be a revolution in education, perhaps it will come when we stop trying to make blanket policies and let schools and their stakeholders determine what works best for them and their learners.

 

Are We Superficial?

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This is the question that Robert Talbert asks over at Casting Out Nines. The post itself is mostly a quote from Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the only self-help books I have ever found to be really challenging in terms of doing more than just giving you one long pep talk.

The quote deals with Covey’s distinction between Character Ethic and Personality Ethic and reminds me of the old debate about sincerity: can you “try” to be sincere or is it just something that comes from within. Any attempt to fake it ends in a lack of sincerity. For Covey, the Character Ethic arises when we internalize our values while the Personality Ethic is practiced by those who make no fundamental changes in the way they relate to others, but simply play the game in an artificial kind of way. I would encourage you to read the quote before you continue reading this post…

Talbert ends his blog post with this observation and question:

It seems like this quote is pretty dense in implications for educational systems, student approaches to learning, faculty approaches to teaching… what do you think?

I agree with Talbert.  I teach educational technology and qualitative research courses to undergraduates and graduates.  So many of the big questions with which we deal–digital divide, digital natives, social media, Internet privacy, copyright and creative commons, using technology in the classroom–do not have final, fill in the blank, multiple choice kinds of answers.  Instead, they offer up all sorts of murky waters where students can muck around.   I have my own ideas about many of them but rather than imposing my world view, I prefer to take a more constructivist approach, challenging students to find their own way through the content and then creating projects that help others do the same.

What I have discovered is that while some students really thrive in this environment, others do not, and it is my perception that it was the “good” students who often struggled because the very things that made them good had been taken away.  What was that thing?  The ability to give the teacher what she wanted whether it was the right answer, the neat outline, or  the correct number of words.  Covey’s distinction, which I had forgotten over time, provides a perfect metaphor for this phenomenon: the students who thrive in my environment do so because they care about learning, more specifically, they care about their own learning and creativity, something I like to think I give them a chance to demonstrate.  The “good” students, however, often turn in less than stellar work since they don’t have the personal tools available to them to really create something on their own without precise directions from me.

I’ll never forget the grad student who apologized for using his musical knowledge as a basis for a project he did:  it wasn’t “educational” he thought but he had taken me at my word that I wanted the students to find their own path.  So, he trusted me, but only to a point as I suspect he had been told that same thing in the past only to be dinged when he actually tried it.  I offered reassurance that he had done exactly what I had hoped all my students would do.

This semester, I am struggling with having my undergraduates join the world of Twitter.  I want to give them an experience of a professional learning network that can fit into one semester and Twitter just makes sense.  But, the open ended nature of the assignment makes it difficult for many of them: they want to know how many tweets, when they have to be posted and so forth.  I, on the other hand, am asking them to make themselves part of that world and do what seems right.  Already, the lines are being drawn.  I have had a few great conversations with one or two students and others are starting to come on board, but I can tell those who really want me to impose some order.  I am resisting even as I am offering support: ideas for things to tweet, suggestions for people to follow, and replying and retweeting the things they do post.  I am asking them to pay the price, which is Covey’s distinction between character and personality:

To focus on technique is like cramming your way through school. You sometimes get by, perhaps even get good grades, but if you don’t pay the price day in and day out, you never achieve true mastery of the subjects you study or develop an educated mind.

Just An Old Curmudgeon

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Lately, as I’ve followed the conversations about teaching and learning in the 21st century, I find myself increasingly taking a negative stance. It may just be my natural need to be the devil’s advocate, but I think it’s also a frustration with black and white rhetoric in which old is bad, new is good, ALL teachers are luddites who are stuck in their ways, EVERYONE should have an online professional learning network, and the ONLY way to teach is through project-based, student-centered learning. I could go on but I think you get the picture.

The irony, of course, is that I am a denizen of the digital world with an extensive online PLN, and I have adopted project-base learning methods in the courses I teach believing it is the best way for my students to engage with the content in my course.

So, what’s the problem? Why won’t I jump on the 21st century bandwagon? I think the main reason is that, as I complete my 5th decade on this planet, the biggest lesson I have learned is that the words “always,” “never,” “all,” and “none” are simply not useful. Our propensity towards polls and statistics and nice, neat charts tends to blind us to the infinite variety of experiences that exist in the world. We want to be able to make our case for the best way to live, work, teach and learn, and gray is not the appropriate color to use when we paint that picture.

It’s summed up simply in that old saying, “There’s an exception to every rule.” So, while I don’t lecture, I have known some wonderful lecturers in my day whose words have stuck with me over decades. And while I find it comfortable to engage with community online, I understand that others prefer to be in the same room. In my own realm, I was an early adopter of electronic books but I am also, even as I write this post, surrounded by thousands of books and have no intention of abandoning that habit. I guess my preference is to focus on the exception rather than the rule.

Or maybe I’m just an old curmudgeon.