Choose your position: Are you a gatekeeper, policemen, guard… or teacher? All these jobs are necessary, but which one belongs in schools?

Choose your battle:

Filters that also filter learning -or- High expectations about appropriate use?

Banning POD’s -or- High expectations about appropriate use?

Teaching without technology -or- High expectations about appropriate use?

Make no mistake, having and following through with high expectations is a battle. It takes time and effort to mutually establish expectations, it takes time and effort to develop a trusting relationship, and it takes both consistency and a willingness to follow through on consequences. This is a classroom management issue… and it provides new challenges. It is a battle worth tackling! Why? Because you are a teacher, not a security officer.

Students today carry their unfiltered internet connections in their pockets. They have access every minute that they are not in the classroom.

“… But it is a distraction.”
“… But it makes them lazy.”
“… But they don’t use it for learning.”

As I said in a comment yesterday morning:

I have a hard time seeing technology today as ‘creating more lazy students’ because I don’t see many students today that are more lazy than I was. I was a disengaged, often bored, student. Does technology create a distraction… YES, a huge distraction that can be hard to compete with.
So what do we do? We don’t let kids misuse pens (writing notes to each other) and paper (making paper airplaines) in class http://pairadimes.davidtruss.com/miss-management/ … We place high expectations on their proper use! Keeping technology out of class won’t work nearly as well as placing high expectations of their use in class. Listen to Sonya: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kowGRhWAJeM

We can’t ‘compete’ but it is even harder to ignore. It’s a classroom management issue and it’s hard to deal with because it is new. We’ll lose the battle if we spend our time trying to compete with the entertaining world technology has to offer, but we will engage students if we learn to meaningfully integrate technology use when appropriate and then put it away, like we do for pens and paper, when it doesn’t add value… using our skills as a teacher to make sure that when students use any ‘tool’ in our class, that they are being used effectively and affectively.

So which battle will it be? Do we make classrooms a war zone? A battle zone to keep technology out? Or do we make it a learning zone? A place where we close the gap between digital distractions and digital classroom tools?

Here is a little tribute I shared with my staff at our staff meeting today. I took 3 or 4 of the photos last week, and then yesterday I visited classes and took the rest. It seems that whenever I talk to my staff the conversation is always about the things we need to do better or still need to get done… It’s the nature of teaching that we can always improve our practice.

So, I decided to say ‘Thank You!’ to my teachers for doing all the wonderful things they do. I work in a great place with a great staff, and sometimes we need to stop and appreciate the little things we are doing to make our school great!

Remember to show your appreciation for all the wonderful teachers in your life!

- – - – - – - – - -

Here is the link for this video on YouTube, and for those behind a filter, like my staff, here it is in a drop.io folder.

Music: ‘Walking on Sunshine’ by Me First and the Gimme Gimmes

I’m at a Canadian School in China. At a staff meeting I shared a thoughtful blog post by a student reporter for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. It’s a great post by a student that went and visited ‘Tent City’, built to house the city’s homeless during the Olympics: Olympic Games Side Effects on Vancouver. My Grade 9 teacher asked for the Students Live website and a link to this post. (I mentioned the Students Live bloggers here.)

The Students Live website provides a number of different ways to connect and interact with the Olympic reporter student bloggers. However, we live in China which filters a lot of social software websites and so these were the options that my Grade 9 teacher was confronted with:

Facebook: BLOCKED

Twitter: BLOCKED

YouTube: BLOCKED

Blogspot Blogs: BLOCKED

Flickr: (recently) BLOCKED (again)

I had to use my VPN to bypass the Chinese filter in order to cut and paste the blog post, mentioned above, into an email so that my teacher could read it in his class. A potential global ‘conversation’ reduced to a reading, confined to a classroom. Frustrating!

Now here is the thing… I chose to move to a country where a lot of sites get blocked. I can’t imagine what it’s like for teachers in the ‘free world’ that have their own school districts do this to them!

If you are in a school where filters filter learning, here is a little poster for you to hang up in your front entrance:

We just completed a vacation in Xi’an, one of China’s oldest cities and the starting point for the silk road. The silk road was the first gateway to and from the Orient, it was the first real global link to the ‘Eastern’ countries of India and China. Trade of spices and silk, as well as cultural exchanges, started to take shape and lay the foundation for ‘world trade’ long before Europeans ‘discovered’ the America’s (in their quest for a shorter route to the East). This was the first of many ‘windows’ open to a new, more connected and more multicultural world.

While in Xi’an we witnessed the celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the Communist Party. In a very patriotic country, with only one time zone, the festivities were focused primarily in the capital city of Beijing, and so a vast majority of Chinese were glued to their televisions to see what was a really spectacular parade, on a scale only possible in a country with over a billion people. A very conservative guess would put 25,000 plus participants in the parade, and more than double the population of North America (including Mexico) sitting in front of televisions watching it. Even more ‘windows’ were open as live streaming of the event also happened via the internet.

Until fairly recently, China was a very closed society. Outside of Hong Kong, very few exchanges of information occurred (for the general masses) beyond what was shared from the times of the silk road. Of course this is a blatant exaggeration, but my point is that the central government held a tight grip on what products and information most Chinese got to see from outside the Great Wall. Things changed dramatically about 30 years ago, thanks to Mr. Deng Xiaoping.

On our trip, our tour guide Tony shared a lot of Chinese history beyond just the touristy sites we visited. On one excursion Tony told us about the much revered Mr. Deng loosely quoting him, “A country is just like a house, it has windows and gates. If you close the window, you get no fresh air, and also no flies. But if you open the window fresh air comes in and also some flies.” This marked the first step in China opening many windows and doors to the outside world. Yes, with the fresh air, some flies will follow, but China has become a world economical powerhouse because of it’s choice to ‘open the windows’. What I find interesting is that the one key window they still try to screen (filter) is the internet, much like many schools do today. But there are so many ways to get through the screens and so many tools to help you do it. It’s a battle not really worth fighting, yet in order to keep some of the ‘flies’ out, a lot of fresh air is also filtered out.

Mr Deng was smart enough to realize that an ‘open’ policy would bring with it some things that were not desirable, but that closing the ‘window’ would be far less desirable. I think this ‘open window’ metaphor continues to exemplify my concerns with schools filtering the internet. We fear the flies, and so the windows get shut… thus we also lose a lot of ‘fresh air’. I’ve already mentioned that we need to remove the bubble wrap from our schools, and expressed in that post why filters actually hinder rather than help in education. We need to educate students about the world of information available to them on the internet. We need to teach them to search for information intelligently and we need to show them how to avoid the ‘flies’. We… teach… them!

We also need to teach students to be tolerant of others. To be respectful of other cultures and other ways of doing things. To treat each other with dignity and generosity and to offer friendship… face-to-face and online.

Tony shared another quote by Mr. Deng, “No matter if it is a white cat or a black cat, as long as it could get a mouse it is a good cat” and as Tony continued he explained, “So, no matter who you are, if you do good deeds you are a meaningful person.”

From every country, from every part of the world, from every culture, there have been wise men and women who have thoughtfully shared values that transcend the time and place they come from. Thirty years ago, Mr. Deng was not really talking about windows, flies and coloured cats, he was talking about openness and acceptance. The leaders of today may not always share these ideas, but the school of today can help to ensure that these ideas are valued in the years to come.

Think Good Thoughts,
Say Good Words,
Do Good Deeds.

After a month in China, I’ve come to realize that North Americans live in a bubble wrapped world.

In the ‘Western’ world we walk around oblivious to our surroundings, going about our business feeling safe and secure. I don’t mean safe in the sense of being cautious of others, since in actual fact, I have always felt safe in China (other than in the occasional taxi), and in fact Dalian feels safer than downtown Vancouver or Toronto when I’m out late at night.  I mean safe, in the West, in the sense that there are laws and bylaws and rules in place to make sure that we are ‘protected’ from unexpected harm: Guardrails and warning sign and lit-up crosswalks with pedestrian controlled lighting abound.

In the bubble wrap West we occasionally read or hear about someone who slips right next to a ‘wet floor’ sign or trips on an uneven curb and they end up blaming and suing others: “It wasn’t safe”, “It was faulty”, “The step was too high” or “The railing was too low”. Our day-to-day environment is safe, secure, sheltered… and sterile.

In China, things are different. Pedestrian walkways are a suggested crossing location and give no rights to the pedestrian. White and yellow lines on the roads are mere suggestions for where a pedestrian should stand as cars zip by at speeds up to 60km/hr, the occasional horn blast reminds you not to make any unexpected moves.

Here, doorways have immediate steps going up or down as you cross the threshold. You must walk with your eyes on the curb as a missing tile, or a sudden step may appear, unexpected by Western terms but fully expected here.

At the far end of Xinghai Square there is a structure I’ve only ever heard called ‘The Open Book’. The book opens up with concrete slabs raised to more than 6 meters on the sides, with no rails and a simple yellow line painted to suggest a caution. Nearby a beautiful walkway has a single chain fence that sits gently near the path, supported by short concrete posts- on the other side of the rail, a two+ meter drop onto rocks. Two examples of things that just wouldn’t exist in the west… there just isn’t enough bubble wrap present to permit them.

I think schools have become a bit too bubble wrapped too. We protect the kids from impending harm, bubble wrapping their learning. However I think sometimes we harm them in our attempt to keep them safe. Here are a few digital examples:
1) Instead of teaching them intelligent searching, we filter websites.
2) Instead of teaching them online safety we stop them from creating online profiles.
3) Instead of letting them connect and learn socially, we ban them from social networks where there is potential for bullying.
4) Instead of letting them seek out experts, we hand pick the guest lecturer.

What we are doing is creating a facade of security, nothing more than an illusion of bubble wrap.

1) Filters prevent teachers from knowing what a search will show students at home.
2) Students create online profiles behind teachers and (more specifically) parents backs and put personal information on the profiles since they have not had any adult advice about how to protect their identity.
3) Social websites like Facebook, unsupervised, becomes a playground where the bully tends to ‘win’.
4) Students have no idea how to ‘talk to strangers’ online, but they don’t have their parents or teachers advice when (not if, when) that happens.

Well now it is time to pop some of the bubble wrap. It’s time to remove some railings and teach kids to be careful. There is a whole world ‘out there’ to explore! Yet, I’m not saying be reckless.

My daughters have experienced freedom here like they have never had before, ‘Go play outside and be back by dinner.’ – something I got to do at their age, but my kids didn’t really get in Canada. But, I’m not letting them cross a busy street on their own yet, (the overprotective dad in me says they won’t cross a street alone in Dalian until they are in their 20′s), because they are still at a stage where, if scared they might do something a driver won’t expect, and human/car mistakes aren’t ones I want my daughters to learn the hard way. My point: we will all have different comfort zones, but if we don’t start popping some bubble wrap, we are not really protecting our kids like we think we are.

No-Flow:

I still don’t have Internet at home after a week. But from using my phone, I know that Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, WordPress blogs, and quite a few more sites are blocked here in Dalian. I think both Facebook and Twitter are newly blocked, this past June, as a pre-emptive move before the 20 year ‘celebration’ of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

As I say in my ‘POD’s are Coming’ presentation, ‘Filters filter learning’ and I’m finding the lack of information flow rather challenging to deal with.

One-Way Flow:

For over a year now I’ve had my blog posts automatically imported to Facebook as a note. Every now-and-then I’d get a comment there rather than on my blog. With my move to Dalian, I’ve now had many friends and family, who don’t normally read my blog, commenting on my Facebook notes. But with Facebook blocked, although I get email notices about the added comment and can read the comment in that email, I can’t respond. Thanks to those that have commented. I look forward to connecting more via email & skype when I get Internet at home.

I have discovered that I can update my Twitter status through ping.fm. But for me Twitter has never really been about my status updates, it has always been about learning conversations, so sending one-way updates to Twitter doesn’t really appeal to me.

As a side note, even 3 years ago I would not have been limited by this one-way flow of information, but I live in a different world now and I expect information to flow differently… Wouldn’t this also hold true for students? And so this leaves me wondering what a 1 hour lecture feels like to a student who thrives on communication being something more than just one-way?

Traffic Flow:

I continue to be amazed by how traffic works here. I was in a taxi yesterday and had to ask him to take it easy after he forced a third car to screech it’s tires as he swirved in front of them… done to get me to my final destination all of a minute or two faster. As both my wife and I have learned, taxi drivers have their own rules.

Despite that, there is a distinct orderliness to the general ‘rules’ that basically give priority to any vehicle that has claimed a space in front of another vehicle. You have to be an assertive, good driver to drive in this city!

When it works, it works well, but a couple days ago the sound of endless, unusually ‘angry’ (prolonged) horn blasts led me to my balcony. There I saw a bus stuck in the middle of an intersection with cars driving around it, claiming the space in front of it, and not letting it move forward. Other cars were driving in the oncoming traffic lanes to turn left and avoid going through the intersection. It was absolute chaos!

This traffic flow just seems in complete contrast to the people here. As foreigners, we are treated with kindness and generosity. Doors and elevators are routinely held for us, kind words are always exchanged, as are smiles and attempts to speak English. This disappears when vehicles are introduced, and nowhere is this more evident then when you start to walk across a street and an oncoming car speeds up to claim the space on front of you, kindly honking the horn to warn you that you had better wait.

Life Flow:

Generally speaking the pace in a city of 6+ million is faster than we are used to in the suburbs of Vancouver. Our family joined another family for a visit to the beach yesterday, (our anniversary). We had a wonderful time doing a whole lot of nothing.

I found it interesting to see so many adults wearing innertubes, life jackets and inflatable arm bands, but it makes perfect sense in a place were swim lessons would not have been a childhood norm.

Our kids draw a lot of attention. So far they are taking it well, and willingly being corralled into photographs with people they do not know and will probably never meet again. It will be interesting to see how they handle it as the novelty wears off.

Food adjustments have been a huge challenge for everone but me. Being from the Carribean, having a Chinese grandmother and best friends growing up that were Greek and East Indian, my take on food is that I’d rather not have it still moving while I’m eating… But all else is worth trying, and usually enjoyable! As for the rest of my family, this will take time. We had Pizza Hut for dinner last night and I think Western food will be something we look for at least once a week as ‘comfort food’ for the family.

Work Flow:

Tomorrow morning I meet my staff at the school for the start of the year. We have a week together before the students start. I have most of the day planned or at least outlined. I’m moving to a system very different than I’m used to and I’ll be relying on teachers with experience here to help me fill in the gaps. I like that I will be in many situations where I’m not the ‘expert in the room’ and so I will need the leadership of others to help make the coming week and year successful. This sits well with my leadership philosophy. I’ve met all the staff before, returning staff in June, and new staff at the airport and the day after. I’m really excited about the potential for this year!

Here are 3 personal/school goals that I’ll share:

1. Visit every classroom every day. I hope that, while there, I can contribute to the learning going on in the classroom.

2. Increase the technology available to teachers and students. I’m working on a technology implementation plan, that in turn will be focussed on student learning and achievement.

3. Continue to research ELL -English Language Learning. There is so much I have to learn. Which brings me to the last of my chapters in this Variable Flow post:

Communication Flow:

I’d forgotten what it was like to be spoken to in another language with the assumption that I would understand… Challenging! I came here knowing how to say ‘thank you’, and ‘hello’ in Mandarin, that’s all! I’m learning my numbers now and for the first time I really ‘get’ what it is like for a student new to a language and a country. I’m not sure how much this ‘old dog’ will pick up, as I have a horrible track record in language learning, but I will give it a sincere try and keep my humility and humour about the process.