One of my favourite sayings these days is:

‘Teachers should be the lead learners in the classroom.’

I think that if a teacher goes into a class believing first and foremost that they are ‘model learners’ and that they will learn with their students, then that teacher will create a meaningful and engaging learning environment for their students.

I’ve always been a fan of Kevin Honeycutt, I think he is creative and his podcasts are great. Well now he shares this video that tells the tale about why we need teachers to learn. Enjoy!

Yesterday morning I did a keynote presentation for our High School Pro-D day that I called:  ’It’s not about the Technology -(and it’s not a secret)‘. I’ll share this online after I get back from holidays.

The night before the presentation I sat and looked at what I had prepared and hated it. I wrote on Twitter: “I’m just over 10hrs away from presenting & want to totally revamp my presentation. Not a great feeling.” ~ It really wasn’t.

I appreciated the support and advice given to me, especially from Lisa Thumann, Jen Wagner and Shelly Terrell who all offered to take a look at what I’d done. The problem was that I didn’t like my presentation enough to send it to them… then I fell asleep. I woke up at 3am and realized that I was stuck with what I had, I just didn’t have enough time to change my presentation with just over 3hrs before I had to catch a cab to the train (Qing Gui) station.

I had to deal with the slides I already had. My presentation was broken into different sections that each had the item that is (not a secret) in brackets. I took all those titles, wrote them on post-it notes and juggled them around.

I broke up my presentation and, like Lego, reassembled the pieces into something different. I moved from a scattered bunch of ideas into a story. Suddenly I had a presentation I was happy with.

I slept on the train and when I woke up I ended up in a wonderful conversation with a man who spoke to me in Chinese and continually asked questions that I didn’t understand, and then talked about me to those around us. My broken and very limited Chinese did not serve me well.

Setting up for my 8am presentation we couldn’t get my laptop sound to go through the auditorium speakers without horrible feedback. Small speakers were brought in, (I almost brought my own, but I was at this auditorium just 2 weeks ago and knew that it was well equipped). With the small speakers and addition of my mic, all was good… or so I thought!

I tried to go to the primarypad.com/ pad (an etherpad clone) that I had set up with all my links, and as a backchannel for the session, but I couldn’t get wireless. It seems the new campus wireless doesn’t reach the auditorium other than a few rows in the back.

I started my presentation and within 30 seconds the power went out. I picked up my laptop and said to the 100+ audience members, “Ok, everybody gather around here.”

I started a conversation about ‘What tech tool can’t you live without, that didn’t exist 5 years ago… and by the time people had discussed this with their neighbours and we started sharing as a group the power turned on… “POP” … that would be the sound of the ceiling mounted LCD light bulb burning out.

That’s when I asked a new question: “How many of you have had the experience before of having a lesson planning epiphany… suddenly you are up late at night planning… you head into the school before class starts in the morning and when you get to the photocopier… it’s BROKEN!“ ~Most teachers raised their hands.

“So, keep your hands up if you said something like, ‘That’s it, I’m never using the photocopier again?’“ ~All hands went down.

Sometimes ‘technology’, be it a photocopier, a presentation, or even a pen doesn’t work.

Eventually we got going. I didn’t get to more than 1/2 of my slides, but found a great place to stop so that it felt like my presentation had an ending. Judging from the standing-room only in my break-out session afterwards, what I did was well received.

~~~

There were a lot of reasons to roll my eyes and complain. There were a lot reasons to let frustration prevail… and there was an opportunity for me to model for everyone that it really isn’t about the technology.

What the day was about was professionals getting together and learning, and when it comes to learning, the hardest thing to ‘fix’ is broken attitudes!

Kudus to the staff, they were patient with me, asked a lot of great questions, and eager to learn new things. Reflecting now, the only thing that feels broken is the title of this post.

This year I have been honoured with nominations in two categories for the 6th Annual Edublog Awards. I won’t ‘win’, nor do I deserve to, but that really doesn’t matter. I put a lot of time and effort, (and love) into this personal learning space of mine, and to be placed in categories with bloggers and friends that I both admire and respect is wonderful.

Two things come from these awards that I really value: First of all, (hopefully) a bigger audience. My thinking is often challenged by my readers and commenters, and so more readers means a greater personal value to me as a lifelong learner, and an educator who wants to make a difference. Secondly, these awards introduce me to amazing people doing interesting, thoughtful and compelling writing and sharing. I’ll be spending the next few months expanding my network thanks to these awards.

I would like to thank Bryan Jackson for his nomination for Best Individual Blog. Bryan is a fairly new blogger who deserves a bigger audience and could easily have fit into both the best teacher blog and best new blogger categories. Add him as one of your regular reads, you will enjoy his thoughtful, reflective posts.

I would also like to thank Jan Smith for her nomination for Best Teacher Blog. Being an Administrator, it is such an honour to have a teacher like Jan, (doing amazing work with her student bloggers and someone who belongs firmly in this category herself), include me in this category. In my heart I am and always will be a teacher first and I think there can be no better honour than to be nominated in this category.

So, if you are new to my blog, explore some posts and see if you are interested. There are a few popular posts, and some of my favourites highlighted in the right-hand sidebar… and be sure to Subsrcibe if you like what you see!

Also, here are 4 of my favourite categories to check out in the awards. As I said, it will be months before I get to all the reading and learning that these awards serve up to me.

Make a commitment to click on at least one new blog from each category and if you see something you like, don’t just subscribe, take the time to comment and participate in the learning of others. Thanks again to so many of you for taking the time to read and comment on my blog, and for being my teacher and a co-learner.

Please welcome my daughters, new bloggers Cassie and Katie to the blogosphere.

Cassie has uploaded some photos of our Xi’an trip to tell you a bit about our recent vacation. Katie started her blog with 3 simple introductory sentences and an updated ‘About’ page. I’m not sure how much they will use their blogs yet? My hope is that they will chronicle their adventures here in China, however I don’t plan on making writing on their blog mandatory. They get enough homework here that I don’t want to add anything to their plate that they don’t want to do.

I was waiting for a friend to help me get my daughters set up on a blog. Turns out that my host, Bluehost, makes Wordpress blog integration really, really easy and a quick Google search led me to this blog post with an instructional screencast to help me out.

I’ve added clustermaps and feedjit traffic feed information to their blog sidebars because I think an authentic global audience does a lot to maintain interest in blogging, as does getting comments and feedback. I try to – comment – on – student – blogs – regularly because I know how much it is appreciated.

If you have a moment, drop by and say ‘Hi’, or just click on their sites to give them a visit from your part of the globe. Comments are moderated, I’m letting Cassie moderate her own comments via her email address, with more supervision early and less as we go. I’ll be moderating Katie’s comments, showing her as I go. This should be fun!

Drum Tower - Xi'an, China

Caring across the curriculum

Sometimes I get tired of seeing the school day broken into subject-matter based courses. We don’t teach subjects we teach students, and students of all ages engage in a real life that matters across individual fields of study.

Watch the video* Miniature Earth:

How many different ’subjects’ can we teach with this video? How real is the Math? How relevant is the Social Studies? Can we tie in History? Current Events? Economics? Environmental Issues? Healthy Living?

How far can we extend the learning? These are 1990 statistics from the state of the Village Report. What are the stats now? Can you predict what they will be 10 years from now? “Write a paragraph from the perspective of…”

But caring isn’t just about identifying a problem, it is about doing something about that problem.

Watch the video* World on Fire by Sarah McLachlan:

More real life relevance across the curriculum and proof that one person can make a difference!

So what can a class do?

Kiva.org is a great example of what can be done. Mico-Loans to poeple from many parts of the world that would have a hard time getting regular loans.

Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.

Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.

The people you see on Kiva’s site are real individuals – not marketing material. When you browse entrepreneurs’ profiles on the site, choose someone to lend to, and then make a loan, you are helping a real person make great strides towards economic independence and improve life for themselves, their family, and their community. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates and track repayments. Then, when you get your loan money back, you can relend to someone else in need. (About Kiva )

If you want to know how meaningful this can be to a class of students, check out what Jen Whiffin has done with her Grade 4/5 class. She starts her post: Math Made Compelling: The Kiva Renaissance with this quote:

“Building a thought-filled curriculum serves the larger agenda of building a more thought-filled world–an interdependent learning community where people continually search for ways to care for one another, learn together, and grow towards greater intelligence.  We must deepen student thinking to hasten the arrival of a world community…” (Arthur L. Costa, “The Thought-Filled Curriculum”, Educational Leadership, 2008)

If you enjoy that post, check out her other related posts Math Made Compelling and Math Made Compelling: Phase One of the Kiva Project . Also check out her class’ Kiva profile.

Grade 4’s and 5’s learning about GDP per capita? Why not? But take this real-life meaning away and the math just isn’t… compelling.

A curriculum of caring and making a difference, across many fields of study. Learning that matters and connects our students to the world they live in.

*Update: For those of you ‘Behind the filter’ like my teachers here in China, since you cannot see the embeded and linked YouTube videos. Here they both are: Miniature Earth and World on Fire. You can watch them online or download them thanks to drop.io!

Sue Waters, a friend who has always stepped up and helped me out with just about every request I have ever made to my PLN, sent me an email a couple nights ago. In it she said:

I’ve been asked by some 4th year preservice students to put together a video on the value of blogging. They had wanted me to answer the questions but I decided that it would be considerably better to get videos from people around the World sharing their thoughts — that way we get more ideas.

If you are able to video yourself answering some or all of these questions that would be excellent.
What are some of the benefits of blogging?
How have you used blogging with your students and how has it helped them?
How do the students feel about blogging?
What are some tips for educators new to blogging? (with using them with their students)

So here is the response she got from me, a Canadian living in China:

This was the first time that I used Camtasia, compliments of Techsmith and Alan November teaming up and providing it to all of the BLC09 presenters. It is a great tool that is easy to use with all the features that a Mac lover like myself would expect. The transitions are a little choppy, but I basically sliced and diced up a Powerpoint presentation, ‘This my blog has taught me“, and then recorded my screen as I spoke. The whole process took just over a couple hours and it was a lot of fun to be doing a project like this again, after creating my POD’s are Coming presentation this summer.

I noticed as I watched this and listened to myself that the idea of a blog being a ‘learning space’ came up both when talking about my own blog and when I spoke of the classroom and what technology could do to expand the classroom space. I think that our idea of where learning happens has made a fundamental shift from book knowledge of the last century to anywhere/anytime information access of today. It is exciting to see classrooms make this shift too. Last night I commented on a blog post by a student of Clarence Fisher’s, in Snow Lake Manitoba, Canada. In a way you could say that I visited Clarance’s class. We live in an amazingly connected world and I love that sharing and learning has become so global.

I’d love to see others share their blogging story, and if you do, share them with me and Sue too!

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(Youtube version)
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Credits: I mention Alec Couros’  ‘Thinning Walls’ in the video and I use the following images which I credited, but not very clearly:

• Head Inside: Brain Wash by ArtWerk / Yanko on flickr
• we need more of it. By wei never sleeps / Wei on flickr
• The World through your eyes By The eclectic Oneironaut / Rubén Pérez on flickr

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 know 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.

The adventures in China have begun, and I find myself learning life lessons that only a ‘foreign’ experience can offer.

Yesterday we bought my youngest daughter a bed. I’m not sure if I’d call it a curse, but assembling IKEA furniture has always afforded me opportunities to test my patience and my tolerance towards inanimate objects. After breaking a screw that has left an almost completed bed too assembled with one-way screws to be unassembed and returned, it occured to me that I was missing the slats that the mattress lies upon. Yes, the easy to follow ordering directions did show them as a separate item to be purchased, but I looked at those directions long before we decided on purchasing that specific bed.

So, off I went in search of a taxi to head back to IKEA. It was just after 5pm and there was a light drizzle of rain when I hailed the first of ten, (yes I said 10), taxis. My wife had given me an IKEA bag to show the taxi driver, to help me communicate my intended destination. After the first four taxi drivers denied knowing where I wanted to go, I asked a couple pedestrians for help. They were both kind with their time, but could not understand me. It was after I went back to unsuccessfully hailing cabs that I had my first ‘Im not in Kansas any more’ moment since arriving in China.

Four blocks of walking, three pedestrians and, as mentioned, ten hailed but failed taxis later, I decided to go into a western-looking coffee shop to ask for both coffee, and more importantly, assistance. A waitress and the barista worked together to understand me and armed me with a written note and the knowledge of how to request my destination verbally, (“E-jah-jah-joo” was my phonetic reminder I wrote below the Chinese characters).

Armed with this new information I stepped back into the drizzle and hailed another taxi… And another, and another. Now it occured to me that on my first 10 attempts, the ‘denial’ was not that of misunderstanding, but of willingness to take me to my destination. This realization came to me because the 13th cab driver had stopped, just 25 feet in front of me, for a well-dressed Chinese lady, holding a newspaper or magazine over her head for protection from the rain. I watched her lean her head towards the passenger window and request her destination. The cab driver shook his head ‘no’ and I hailed him as he left the woman at the curb. When I showed him my note, saying “E-jah-jah-joo” his face defined for me what I’d seen, but not recognized, many times before in my quest for a taxi. For the most part, the ‘no’ that I was getting was a choice, rather than a miscommunication of my destination.

It wasn’t me, it was the rain that made my request a challenge. Although I had not tried to hail any already-occupied taxis, I saw this happen a number of times in the hour-or-so that I was out in the light rain… Sometimes with the taxi-hailing person joining the other occupant, and sometimes not. With the rain falling, a seldom-seen occurrence here in Dalian in the summer, a taxi driver can make a lot of money taking passengers on short trips, sometimes picking up additional passengers along the way.  Taking me to IKEA would likely mean a long, and probably passengerless drive back to the hub of the money-making locations.  My trip would equate to a financial loss for the taxi driver.

I’m not sure why I hailed one more taxi, but his denial of service sent me sipping coffee on a quiet walk back ‘home’. During the walk I thought about the contrast in my disposition during the past couple hours. I wanted to scream at the IKEA bed for failing to be less than ideal, but faced with another less than ideal situation, I was willing time-and-again to unsuccessfully hail a taxi in a country where I don’t yet fit in. Perhaps this was because I recognized that it was my own failing that brought about the challenge. Perhaps I might have let persistence cloud my powers of observation, and I could have learned this lesson sooner. I could have also chose to be angry or cast blame on others, but what would that have accomplished?

I got a little wet, I had a nice cup of coffee, and I was given the opportunity to laugh at myself, and at my first misadventure in China. I came her for a journey, about a three year journey, and I can choose to make a failed trip to IKEA the first of a series of upsetting mishaps, or the first of many lessons placed upon this journey… My disposition is something that I can choose. My choice will make this journey everything I hope it can be, and more!

“I can do that without technology” -Actually no you can’t!

Here is the Slideshare.

This was the presentation I first created for BLC08, and I wrote about it here.

I’ve finally edited it for the web… a tedious task as I tend to use a lot of slide transitions that do not convert well to individual slides. I shared a few presentation notes on this Slideshare, but not too much. This is a great feature I’ll probably use more in the future.

Here again is the Ustream: This version was done for student teachers at Simon Fraser University. As a video, it has a slow start with student teachers discussing a statement, and sharing ideas until about the 13 minute mark. Also, the slides in this video won’t match perfectly to the Slideshare above as I had to explain some of the slides for the stand-alone slide show, but it would be easy to connect the two presentations.

I’ll be using some of this presentation as the intro to one of my BLC09 presentations:

The P.O.D.s are coming!

What are PODS? They are Personally Owned Devices, and they are already infiltrating our schools. For now they get tucked away in lockers and backpacks, but as the saying goes, “If there is an elephant in the room, introduce it!” Students are bringing small machines with huge potential into our schools. It is time to introduce these tools into our classrooms and also to make sure that we have the knowledge and the infrastructure to use them to their fullest potential.

And I’ll probably link to this post in my PODs presentation. I first discussed PODs here.

It’s nice to finally be able to share this presentation and as always, I’m offering it with a CC license:

Feedback, as always, is greatly appreciated.