Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.

To the unshifted: Shift or retire… regardless of your age and number of years experience. We have the means to teach differently, now! It doesn’t start tomorrow, it starts today. Pick one thing you don’t like about your practice and change it. Find one thing that engages your students, and has them take over the learning that happens in the room, and do it. Empower, inspire, engage and be the lead learner in your classroom or your school.

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.

To the shifting: Do not go quietly into your classroom. It is an extremely exciting time to be in education. Do not be overwhelmed. A great waterfall begins with a single drop. Information flows too quickly to absorb all that we want to. Things will not flow for you if you try to do too much. If you try a new tool, ask yourself why am I using this? Do not confuse the pointing finger with the moon. What is the learning intention? Stay true to what you want to accomplish and take advantage of tools to help you and your students find your way. Find small successes on your path, let good work and engaged students be your reward.

What we think, we become.

To the shifted: You have an obligation to serve others. The students in your room are a priority, but so too are your colleagues. You are a leader by the default of knowing the way. Nurture your colleagues like you nurture your students in your class. Be the lead learner. Learn with them. Share your enthusiasm and accept your position of leadership with grace and humility.

The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.

___________________________________________________________

Photo: “Behind Buddha” photographed by me, David Truss,

at the Famine Temple near Xi’an, China

Quotes: Attributed to Buddha

This is Part I of a 3 part series.

Part II: Shifting Learning

Part III: Shifting Attitudes

Related post: Statement of Educational Philosophy

How would you define a moment?

I love how this video takes absolutely random visuals and makes a story out of them… a story about the value of time, or at least single moments in time. This video changes my breathing pattern, it alters my thoughts, moment by moment, in a way that says more than words can. I think too often we let moments slip by when they should be cherished. Take a moment now and enjoy…

(for those of you behind a filter who can’t get YouTube: Watch it here.)

__

*Update: November 28th, 2009

David Deubel, whom I first connected with a while back on Classroom2.0 and other Ning networks, wrote about this video here: The Dimensions of the present moment. He takes this a step further by editing out an adult scene and creating lessons for this on the EFL Classroom 2.0! Ning, (you need to be a member to see this but it is free to join). I love it when teachers take a resource like this and make it meaningful to the classroom… Way to go David!

This is a story I think all educators need to hear. The question I wonder is, ‘Am I telling it in a way that they will listen?’

I told this story at BLC09 last week, and I’ll share some of my experience there before getting back to that question.

—–

The Conference:

It is hard to describe a conference like Alan November’s Building Leadership Communities-BLC09. For me it is about so much more than just a wonderful opportunity to present, (thank you Alan), or going to fantastic sessions by great educational thinkers and leaders. It is more about down-to-earth conversations with great people. And as I share a few conversations, my greatest disappointment was having to leave early and not getting enough time to speak to all the wonderful educators that I wanted to. That said, here are some people that enriched my experience.

Liz B Davis gave me excellent feedback for the POD’s presentation: “I’d like to see concrete examples of POD’s being used in the classroom.” -Great point! That wasn’t the intent of my presentation, but it is something that needs to be shared. This is my second year connecting with Liz and Lisa Thumann in Boston and again they contributed greatly to my conference experience being a success. They are both educational leaders that are committed to helping other educators in countless ways.

At lunch with Darren Kuropatwa, David Jakes and Dennis Richards, during the pre-conference EdubloggerCon, I had a conversation where thoughts and ideas were challenged in meaningful ways. This was my introduction to David Jakes and I have to say that I’d love to spend more time with him. David is a thoughtful listener who asks challenging questions with the intent of having a deep conversation. Where this really showed was his willingness to have is own opinion changed by responses in the conversation. I’d swap any professional development experience for conversations like this.

During that lunch Darren spoke of how, while circulating the room and teaching, an administrator would come in and ask to speak to him. His response of ‘I’m teaching’ would be blown off because he wasn’t on stage at the front of the room… hmmm. I have been going back to the metaphor of teacher as compass a lot recently, and I think that needs to become a story. “Teachers need to let students steer- it will take a while for many teachers to give up the steering wheel and become the compass.” If we are helping to point the way, we may not be at the front of the class, (at the helm), but we are still playing an important role ‘on the ship’.

Another very interesting conversation at the conference was at dinner with Tom Daccord and Angela Maiers. We talked about telling a story… not just any story, but one that speaks to a teacher new to technology. It was an interesting conversation for me because the more I think about it, the more I realize that my Brave New World-Wide-Web video is one that seems to ’speaks to the converted’. How do we tell a story that compels people to understand the need for a shift?

—–

The Story:

So what is the story that needs to be heard? How do we move from ‘One teacher at a time’ to a full-throttle shift on the educational highway?

I believe that metaphors and stories are compelling teachers and that we need a good story to shift education. “We need to change” is not a story, it is a warning. Warnings and foreshadowing are important within a story, but they are not the story. I think the story is about Responsibility while the current model seems stuck on Accountability. This isn’t my idea, it comes from Andy Hargreaves. I said in a previous post on Hargreave’s 4th Way, “The key here it to recognize that there is a coexistence between the two and that this isn’t a dichotomy, but rather a priority: “Responsibility before Accountability”.  This is where schools and school districts have the greatest opportunity to change.” This is actually an easy story to tell because it puts students and teachers first… it recognizes the professionalism of educators and makes change a moral imperative.  This is a story we need to adopt and tell well, otherwise the fear that Accountability promotes will prevail.

Both of my presentations at BLC spent time focusing on overcoming FEAR.  I think the big difference between a ’shifted’ educator, and one that sits in neutral letting the digital world speed by, is that technology does not scare the shifted.

—–

The Fear:

What’s to fear? Here are some thoughts, but this list preaches to the converted, it isn’t the story needed.

1.”I have too much to teach” – Somehow the curriculum is just too expansive to ‘add this to my plate’ or to what needs to be done with (or should I say ‘to’) my students. ‘I can’t play with technology and be expected to get everything done’. Would the same be said about a pencil? Technology is a tool, not a product.

2. “I don’t get technology” – Do you know exactly how a photocopier works? No? But you use one… and when you get to the photocopier with a great lesson plan and the thing doesn’t work, you don’t say, “That’s it! I’m never using the photocopier again!” And yet, people try out something techie that fails and it is somehow evidence that technology is ‘bad’, or ‘I can’t do it!’

3. FAILURE – “I can’t because I will fail in front of the students”. We need to model humility and learn from our mistakes if we truly want to see that in our students. “If you don’t make mistakes,  you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.”  ~F. Wikzek

4. Control – This is a false sense of security that I don’t really get? Intuitively teachers know that when students take control of the learning, they soar! Yet, the idea of giving up the central teacher-focus in the room seems so scary to many teachers. There are some ingrained (are they learned?) misconceptions that hold a teacher back… a) Every kid needs to be on the same page so that I know that they have at least ‘this much’ understanding of the curriculum, (or stuff that’s on the next standardized test); b) A noisy classroom means that I’m not in control and therefore not a good teacher; c) Criteria is something done to students; d) Assessment is something done to student work.
Who owns the learning in the room? Who should?

5. “I don’t know how?” – A Grade 9 Math student gets over this hurdle even if they have never seen a quadratic equation before… but usually with help. So ask for help! Many tech integrators are tech evangelists. Contact me or any one of the educators I’ve already linked to. If they can’t help you, they’ll find someone that will. What we ‘get’ that people new to tech don’t is that there is no need to take this journey on your own. You have more help than you think, closer and more available than you think.

—–

The Journey:

As I head off to China in less than two weeks, I’m thankful for people like Dennis and also Jeff Utecht who sincerely offer their assistance ‘any time’. So many more are there to help and I need only ask. What’s interesting about my move is, like Bryan Jackson says with reference to my leaving his school district, I’m “moving halfway around the world (while essentially residing in the same place).” Technology has really made distance and time a moot point in communication and learning. I have so many people to look to for help and inspiration, and I can’t wait to make the jump:

I hope that this new journey brings with it a story that I can share to help others on their journeys.

—–

The Appreciation:

Thank you so much to everyone who came to my presentations. I hope that you found our hour together worthwhile.

Special thanks to my wife for doing so much to prep us for China while I was preparing for and spending time in Boston.

Thanks to Bob Sprankle for podcasting my presentation… great feedback for me to learn from. If you listen to this, the slideshow above does not include a link to the 5 Minute University that I included in the live presentation. Also, SlideShare editing credit goes to Sharon Elin who has the skill to be an editor for a major newspaper (and I’m talking about  one that survives the next 5 years).

Last year John Davitt saved me, handing his computer over to me just before my presentation, this year Seth Bowers went running up to his room to get me speakers as my presentation was about to start.

Thanks to new blogger and twitter-er Mike Slinger for traveling with me to Boston, organizing Red Sox tickets, and taking care of me between my sessions.

And again, thanks so much to Alan November and the November Learning Team. I’m honoured to have been part of the conference for the past two years and for being part of the team in Louisiana.

And thank you to everyone who reads my blog! Your thoughts and feedback are appreciated!

“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.

When my grandfather was a teenager in the Ukraine, he played his accordion for the ‘moving pictures’. He was a member of the band that would play scripted music as damsels in distress were first tied to train tracks by villains, then rescued by heroes.

The music the band played added life to the moving pictures and helped to set the mood or build suspense. Essentially another channel of meaningful information was added to these silent moving pictures… the new channel improved this form of media and created something greater than what was there before.

For his services, my grandfather received two paid entries to these same movies, 20 cents worth of tickets. He would watch movies again and again, and he would charge friends 5 cents (half price) for his second ticket, to earn some pocket change. But never would he sell both tickets, he loved the movies too much. Eventually he would own a cinema, and his fascination and appreciation for movies stuck with him his entire life.

The idea of moving pictures marveled people in these early days! Today we can be momentarily entertained by movies such as this, but not unexpectedly, we expect more from a movie today.

Just as we expect more from our movies and our entertainment, I think our students expect (or at least should expect) more from their classroom experiences today. On a very simple level, how is a poster board different than Glogster or Museum Box? How is an encyclopedia different than wikipedia?

But so often when we make such comparisons, there is the notion of ‘out with the old and in with the new’… this very notion seems to set people off about how we can’t replace the classics or ‘I can do that without technology’. Both of these views miss the point.

We may not be captivated by the ‘damsel in distress’ movies of the past, but we can marvel at the comedic social commentary of Charlie Chaplin; We can study and learn from the the visual story telling of Orson Wells.

We can find value in old black and white films and likewise we can find value in using some important lessons learned in education. We can appreciate quality and learn from what works… BUT… we can’t pretend that times haven’t changed. We can’t hold on to a black and white world.

In one of the most compelling podcasts I’ve heard in a while, Michael Wesch says:

In these rooms… that we are teaching there is literally something in the air that is changing the game completely, and that something in the air is nothing less than 1.5 billion people connecting all around the world… we need to learn how to educate in this media-scape.

If you look at all futurists, all predictions, they all agree on one trend, and that is that we are moving towards… Ubiquitous networks, ubiquitous computing, ubiquitous information, at unlimited speed, about everything, everywhere, from anywhere, on all kinds of devices.

…and meanwhile… scantrons are still happening in our schools where we are testing people for whether or not they are knowledgeable. What I am going to argue is that we have to move from being knowledgeable to actually creating students that are knowledge-able, that is able to critique and analyze and find and share and evaluate information.

It is less about leaving old ways in the dust and more about using the resources available to us. We have always wanted students to think for themselves, to be able to critique and analyze and evaluate what they’ve learned… we just have to do so using a current model. Wesch continues with a question, and his 3-part answer:

How can we create students who can create meaningful connections?

1. Engage in real problems that actually matter to students,
2. Do it with students, and
3. Do this recognizing and harnessing the existing media environment… (including libraries!)

It goes back to this simple realization:

How many channels of information do our students experience outside of our classes? How many in our classes?

We can still watch an old black and white movie, but we don’t go out and buy a black & white tv that limits our ability to see what is available to us in colour. Yet we place unnecessary limits on what can happen in our schools and classrooms, “we need to learn how to educate in this media-scape”.

Educators new to twitter, here is a little walk down memory lane…

Remember your first days of university? You weren’t sure what to expect and you had to put yourself ‘out there’ to connect to new people?

Do you remember going to a class and not knowing anyone?

Imagine for a moment that you enter, for the first time, a small class and the teacher is trying to start a conversation. When you say something in that class you aren’t really sure who is paying attention… (That’s a Tweet). Someone says something and you respond… (that’s an @reply). The person next to you likes what you said and leans over to quietly tell you so… (that’s a Direct Message). Soon you have the confidence to share your ideas in a bigger classroom… (that’s how you build a following).

You jumped into a new learning environment and made it interesting. You can do that on Twitter too, but just like your new experience at university, you’ve got to put yourself out there, you’ve got to be willing to meet new people, and you’ve got to put some time into making new relationships that can be lasting and meaningful.

It doesn’t work if you don’t try.

It doesn’t work if you aren’t doing it for the right reasons.

But if you are willing to make the effort, you are going to find a community of learners that want to connect to you, and learn from you, and give you more than you could possibly give back.

- – - – -

A little over a month ago, a few of us started a conversation and it grew into Gr8Tweets. For the month of March, we would promote the use of a hashtag (#gr8t) in order to collectively share some of our favourite Tweets in one place. When we came across something we considered GREAT, we would retweet it with #gr8t.

I really enjoyed planning and launching this with Laura Deacs, Darren Kuropatwa, Sue Waters, Liz B. Davis, Heidi Hass Gable and Bud Hunt. Special thanks as well goes to the many wonderful -people - who - jumped - on - board - with - blog - posts - to – help - promote - the - idea. And even more thank you’s to those that contributed Tweets to #gr8t.

I think this was a great way to synthesize some of the links and ideas that people share on Twitter every day, and for me it highlighted why Twitter has become such a special part of my PLN. I plan to continue using the hashtag when I find something really worth sharing.

- – - – -

So for those of you that may still be struggling to ‘get’ twitter, check out the resource page on the Gr8tweets wiki. And remember your first days of university. Remember that it takes work and effort to build a meaningful community of friends… and when you decide to join in, put yourself ‘out there’ and give it a fair chance. Once things get rolling, the effort fades and the benefits soar!

I thought I was going to spend the long weekend reading my book for our book club, but I had a Whole New challenge instead: Putting together a million piece puzzle for my kids to play on in our back yard…. swings, monkey bars, slide, fort, climbing wall, and picnic bench all neatly packed in boxes Ikea style… ’some’ assembly required!

Today I was back at school and boy has reality hit! Tomorrow morning our Grade 8 team has to get the ball rolling for our yearly Renaissance Fair (coming in May); Tomorrow at lunch I start training a Leadership Crew to run a Grade 5 leadership retreat/afternoon at our feeder schools; Some time in the next two weeks I have to set up an afternoon to introduce this program to other middle school leadership teachers/admin; I am running a Pro-D session on ‘Starting Your Own Blog’ a week from Saturday and I still have a number of hours work to do to set things up; I have a sleepover fundraiser at the school in just over two weeks; and my kids are in musical theatre plays (playing at alternating performances) this Thursday & Friday night as well as two shows Saturday… yikes!

And then there is my class Science Alive! wiki. As I said in a comment earlier this week, “I think that I am guilty of seeing the value of using technology in guiding learning, but not effectively guiding learning in my technology use.”

I have done a pretty good job of getting my students going… but now as momentum builds I have come to the realization that I don’t have a marking rubric to guide me, or my students, as we move towards a final product.

My class is assembling a lego model without the instructions, or even the image of the final product on the front of the box. This isn’t a problem for the creative/motivated students; they will assembly a better model in ways that I could never have ‘instructed‘ them… but some students need structure, they have been fed it for years and expect it (even from yours truly – this isn’t finger pointing, it is observation).

I let technology supersede pedagogy.

On the bright side, I am a teacher in my 9th year and I’m loving the vitality and enthusiasm my attempts at a 2.0 Classroom have given me. So what if I am out of my comfort zone, as are some of my students. So what if learning is messy. Of course my approach will be more pedagogically sound next time... but as I start putting all the pieces together, I have come to the realization that some things are worth doing… even if some assembly is required!

Feedback and suggestions for the wiki are invited…

—

Images: 050724006lego05 & 050724007lego06 by quadrapop on flickr.

Originally posted: April 11th, 2007 Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting: This is the power of a blog… I won’t reflect here, instead I will let the two comments on my original post do that for me. Thanks to Gabriela and Claudia for being so insightful and contributing to my learning! - – - Comments David, I’ve been reading your posts since I started blogging for my students. I am amazed to see that I share some of your concerns as regards education. Amazed because of the different educational realities we live in and because we teach different subjects.How to deal with “structure dependent” students (most of them) is one of my concerns. They get puzzled when you don’t provide the expected, clear and well organized instructions. I love playing that game, though.I have to admit that I have failed many times. The worst was to feel frustrated and give up. Then I learnt to insist and be patient (both things at the same time). Success is not guaranteed, but when it finally happens the feeling of achievement the students get is so rewarding that it’s worth the “discomfort”. If students have the chance of making decisions, they have an experience and you also have an experience.I had a look at your wiki and I thought: “If I had had a science teacher like him, I would have learnt something at school.”Insist and be patient, and, please, never stay too long in your comfort zone. Gabriela Sellart on Wednesday, 11 April 2007, 23:28 CEST David,I believe there is nothing wrong with needing some structure. It may be a sign of a totally different learning style compared to our own. Let’s say we should learn from it as well. What scientific basis is there to conclude that one style is better than the other? I would refrain from thinking either that the student in need of “structure” should embrace any other way just because it is better to so many other people. I am sure that by taking part in your wiki, they are already experiencing 2.0 style and, to a certain extent, they must have challenged their previous structures for learning. No need to go over the board with efforts to help. The student can be an expert in his own needs. Second, I would not try to device any steps to “instruct” these students. Perhaps I am not the best node in these student’s network to go beyond or learn more. Let’s admit it: we are in love not only with what technology enables us to do but also with ‘learning my way’! So I wonder whether I would not create a sense of lack of confidence in those students if I continue to encourage another learning style. I would definitely help the “structure-needed” student to find a learning node within the wiki members. Peer help will do it. And I would expect that their interaction -unpolluted by my words- teaches me a lesson in learning. As a teacher, I think I would be quite effective if I simply manage to help the student find who can teach/provide the structured view he needs so much. Look forward to your posts about how your students get on with all this. It’s a pleasure to see how your wikispaces grow. Claudia Ceraso on Sunday, 22 April 2007, 22:50 CEST

---

Yesterday, I was in a meeting with a parent and one of my students, (why do teachers have parent meetings about a teenage student’s education and not have the student there too?)

The parent observantly noted that although her son could be physically in a room, he could often ‘disconnect’ and be elsewhere in his mind. For him to be more successful, he would need to engage more in what was going on. I told him, with all honesty, that I too had that problem to the point that my parents worried that I might have been on drugs (I wasn’t). It took until my Grade 13 year (Ontario, Canada) to recognize that I needed to be a participant in the classroom in order to ’stay connected’.

As I was talking my student interrupted and said, “I just had a flash of insight, I’m a mop not a sponge!”

He got it! And today he proved it. He was a fully engaged participant in my Math lesson. I can hear myself in upcoming classes, “Remember to be the mop”.

“Metaphors may create realities for us, especially social relations. A metaphor may thus be the guide for future actions.” George Lakoff & Mark Johnson “The more we understand metaphor, the more we understand ourselves.” Dan Pink

We try to get ‘all the way down’ to the bottom of things when really what we need is insight into things. [Uhhhg! A perfect case-in-point: I just finished deleting an overdone, unnecessary paragraph describing this.]

We don’t need to ‘fix’ as much as we need to understand… (deeply, not literally).

We must dance to the music, not count the bars, or get to the final note.

Metaphors are the foundation of our thoughts. They assemble ideas, they construct meaning, they build understanding. They create learning.

Metaphors teach

---

Some Metaphor Resources:

Tick-Tack-Treat (This leadership lesson plan is a favorite from my retreat!) This includes an introduction to the use of Metaphors and Stories in Leadership Education taken from my Masters Paper.

Teaching Metaphors : Great stories that warm the heart, and teach the soul.

My del.icio.us tagged with ‘metaphor’

---

Credits: Turtles all the way down, story and image are from Wikipedia, but I first read it here: ‘Turtles All the Way Down: Prerequisites to Personal Genius‘. ‘Magic mop’ image by Chris Hogg on Flickr. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson quote, ‘Metaphors We Live By‘, University of Chicago Press, 1980, pg. 156. Quote by Dan Pink:’A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future‘, Penguin Group, 2006, pg. 140. ‘Life & Music’ video written by Alan Watt

Originally posted: April 5th, 2007 Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting: In schools we tend to be so literal and focused on what is ‘Right’ or ‘True’. Metaphors help define us, they help us create meaning… and they even help us identify who we are, and what is important to us. Jeg går en Tur – A self portrait by Lasse Gjertsen

How is a post inspired? Where do the seeds of thought that blossom into these very words come from?

• I have a student in my class that is currently on a very unhealthy diet. I know that I cannot convince her to get off of it without replacing it in some way. I hunt down my copy of Anthony Robbin’s ‘Unlimited Power : The New Science Of Personal Achievement‘ because I remember that it has a very well executed, healthy eating strategy. I find the book and it has a few paper bookmarks in it from a couple decades ago. From the page with the first bookmark:

… you will enrich your world and enrich your work if you bring to it the same curiosity and vitality you bring to your play.

• I read Claudia Ceraso’s insightful post, Blogging So Far , (I like her blogger’s view of Google). I realize that like Claudia, I too have had my blog for 1 year. I follow the links and come across a few “5 reasons I blog” posts… not my kind of post to write, but interesting to read. [From Claudia's post]

A blog is a learning engine
A node in your PLE (personal learning environment ). A virtual zone of proximal development . Learning happens when you connect to other people (other, meaning diverse , not just a group of different people). Reading alone with my books is half way to learning. I need to ask. If the author cannot be consulted anymore, I’d much rather find what their readers are writing in blogs. Always connecting, constructing, learning.

• I re-read Christopher D. Sessums’ How Do Educators Learn Successful Practices Using Social Media/Social Software? and I comment: [Exerpt from the comment]

In my attempt to (im)migrate into a web2.0 user/participant it has been the informal learning that has been most beneficial/rewarding. For example, your post: Competing Paradigms and Educational Reform struck a chord with me almost a year ago, and prompted me to quote you on my fledgeling blog. It was one of a number of influences that has made me questions my practice and the practice of schools.

I am now trying to bring Science Alive for my students in a way I never dreamed I could before… But this did not come from any formal community. It came from a loosely bound community of learners, unequally nurturing and feeding off of each other. It came from a digital web-path of hyperlinks which has helped construct meaning and relationships not easily discovered in a linear learning environment.

I think it is the informal learning experiences: the resourceful, interest-driven meandering between, among and within more formal communities/conferences/platforms and collaboration opportunities that has been most meaningful to me.

In essence I have become an empowered learner!

… This comment isn’t just another seed, it is the roots. It is what this post is about. It is why I blog.

The gardening

I start to make the connections between these seedling ideas.

• ‘Vitality‘. My blog is not work, it is play. Play from which I have the benefit of enhancing what I do in my classroom, in my daily job… which in turn provides even more vitality.

• ‘Always connecting, constructing, learning‘. I haven’t been able to finish my book for our book club because I read for 5 minutes and my eyes/my brain are craving a hyperlink… the lateral shifts in thinking that help me synthesize and add meaning to what I read. I want to interact with my reading, have it engage me. (See the ‘Read a reading’ section of Claudia’s post.)

• ‘An empowered learner‘. I choose. I link. I follow links. I follow my own agenda. I change my agenda because something interests me now. I change my mind. ‘I’ control my learning… and I have never in my life enjoyed learning as much as I have since I started truly ‘blogging’ a few months ago.

The bloom

So how is a post inspired? I find seeds of inspiration, let them germinate in my mind, and a new post has blossomed.

---

---

“Because we all need to take a stand…”

Today is Stop Cyberbullying Day – Friday March 30th, 2007

Here is a great site.

Originally posted: March 30th, 2007 Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting: This kind of learning is so rich, and it is so diametrically opposed to traditional school learning. Hyperlinks bring learning alive for me… they give me choice. How do we give students choice about their learning in school? How do we empower them as learners? - – - Comments from my original post: I’ve also just found a great post on Anne Davis site, http://anne.teachesme.com/2007/03/28/student-to-student-blogging- – with a list of questions for novice bloggers to ask experienced bloggers. Emma Duke-Williams on Friday, 30 March 2007, 17:38 CEST  DavidArrived here to your post through the blog reactions widget. From now on, I will call it seed tracker. I confess I had many doubts before publishing my ‘Blogging so Far’ post. It was a kind of stream of consciousness that made me wonder how much sense would readers make of it. I was talking to myself. Later the same day I found this http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/2007/03/28/christine-hunewells-a-blogger-as-writer/ And I simply had to leave a comment. This empowered learning as you say can point to so many directions, I think it is good to post about it and let others get into conversations with our thoughts. Happy bloganniversary! Claudia Ceraso on Saturday, 31 March 2007, 02:02 CEST  Emma,  Thank you for the link, I really do appreciate it!  Claudia, How serendipitous… When I first read your post, (one of my ’seeds’), I followed some links within your links and came across Christine Hunewell’s a blogger as writer. When composing my post, I spent about half an hour looking for it, it really was another seed to my post! … and here we are full circle with you, once again, providing me the link- thankfully the path is more direct this time. With respect to your ’stream of consciousness’ writing… I believe that state is an ideal writing state, and that some of my best writing has come when I have written to/for myself. Thank you for your comment, and your wonderfully inspiring post! David Truss on Saturday, 31 March 2007, 04:36 CEST

Multiply Two Negatives and You Get a Positive.

So, I take ‘Rote Learning’ and multiply that by ‘Teaching to the Test’ and that equals ‘Better Standardized Test Results’? Well, that’s not exactly what this post is about… but this is a good lead in. And for those of you that don’t know why -3 x -4 = +12, I do provide a link that might help.

In some ways I think this really should be two posts, one on Assessment and one on Rote Learning of Multiplication/Division Skills, but I also think they fit well together.

---

I’m in the process of marking some Algebra tests.

Just so you know, 7 x 4 = 32 and 6 x 8 = 52.

I just want that on the record.

In both cases the student’s algebra was correct.

In fact, in both those cases the error made the algebra much more difficult, with the variable becoming a fraction rather than in integer.

So, how would you evaluate these two questions?

---

Assessment

Before you read this, Dan Meyer’s How Math Must Assess, and his linked mini-thesis are worthy reads.

I remember doing a Math/Assessment Pro-D at the start of a Staff Meeting a few years ago. I gave everyone a Fraction Quiz and an answer key for a fictitious student. The quiz was out of 20. (I have the questions, but need to track down the answers I created to add to this post.)

The first question asked the student to reduce fractions to lowest terms, (4 fractions for 4 marks – they included 2 proper fractions, & 2 improper, one of which reduced to a whole number).

The second question said, “Solve. Put all answers in lowest terms. (2 marks each)”. There were a total of 8 questions, 2 each for adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions.

The student made one consistent error when reducing.

Staff members had many questions including, “Can I give half marks?” -All of which I answered, “You are marking the quiz, you decide.”

On the low end, one teacher who had never taught Math gave the student 8/20 – I think he gave 1 mark each for getting the first parts of the 2nd question correct. On the other end of the spectrum, our LAC (Learning Assistance Center) teacher gave the student 18/20. All other teachers varied within these two scores, with no single score being an obvious favorite.

To be honest, the quiz answers were very contrived, and I doubt a student would make such an error so consistently without making others, but the point was well taken.

What are we assessing? Is our assessment measuring what we say it is? Are we assessing the right things?

---

Rote Learning (for Multiplication Tables… and Related Division Questions)
If you teach Math, here is a New Voice (#6 of 7). I stumbled on to Amanda Waye’s Understanding Multiplication blog doing a Google Search for this post. Her Opposing Views on Teaching Methods has made this post easy for me… read her post and I can get down to the ‘nitty gritty’ without a whole lot of background details.

Rote learning. I know the opposing arguments. I even agree with them as I will demonstrate later. But when a kid arrives in my class in Grade 8 and doesn’t know their times tables it drives me crazy… When they can’t multiply 4 x 7, or can’t see that 7/28 can be reduced… I have to wonder… how can I meaningfully teach them integers or algebra?

Now, I’m neither suggesting that students sit at one table and memorize another table for hours on end; Nor am I suggesting that rote learning is a singular approach to learning multiplication. But in order to get students to be more numerate, we need not have the pendulum swing completely away from drilling some basics.

Multiplication is repeated addition, it is about adding ‘groups of‘ a number. It is a simple concept.

If a student just has rote comprehension of their multiplication tables in their early years, it will help them more than it could possibly hurt them. For those of you that had multiplication drilled into them, did it scar you? Are you wounded by it? If so, I would argue that it was a result of poor delivery, not the actual memorization. I know that I memorized my tables, but as an adult I have no recollection of the process… just as I don’t remember learning to read. Furthermore, as a Social Studies trained, Arts Degree student, I know that a strong foundation in basic skills helped make my transition to teaching Math a lot easier than if I had lacked such a strong background.

Here is the crux of my point: When you have a solid understanding of Math fundamentals, it is easy to build new, more challenging concepts on to your base knowledge.

Example: When multiplying integers I teach the ‘rules’, the algorithm, but I also teach ‘Why?’. A student who has rote understanding of their times tables will see within my Multiplying Integers lessons that multiplication is repeated addition… a student lacking basic multiplication skills usually cannot go beyond the ‘rules’ since the multiplication itself is a neuron-taxing challenge to them.

---

You need an understanding of basic skills before you can move on to more challenging tasks.

You can’t teach a skateboarder to do a Ollie when they still have issues staying on their skateboard… They need to be competent on their skateboard- without thinking about their balance, timing etc. before they learn the more complicated moves. Once a skater has the fundamentals of an Ollie within their repertoire, they have the foundation to perform even more skills/tricks.

Integers and Algebra both build on a foundation knowledge of multiplication skills.

Use rote memorization, flash-cards, games online… make it fun… do a song and dance, stand on your head… but what ever you do, don’t let your kids get to Grade 8 without knowing their multiplication tables!

- – - – -

Image of Skater: IMG_8459 by Outside the Box on Flickr

Originally posted: March 23rd, 2007 Reflection upon re-reading and re-posting: I think my last paragraph is a bit over the top, but I still feel strongly about the ideas in this post. Our move to numeracy: right-brained/more spacial/conceptual/problem based learning is great, but cannot be done in isolation from a strong foundation of basic facts. Now that I am out of the classroom, I think I can be a little more objective about my own practice as a Math teacher. (It also helps that I am giving learning support to two different teachers in Math as well.) I simply was not constructivist enough! Sometimes, I justified teaching the rule first by claiming that it appeased students and allowed them to relax and learn the ‘why’ afterwards… was I appeasing students or myself? That said, Basic Math Facts are the foundation or scaffolding that support conceptual understanding of Mathematics. Any learning constructed in a Math class will crumble without basic support structures in place. Multiplication (and related division) tables are an essential base for success!

Update: May 1st/08 Darren Kuropatwa attempted to post a comment and it ‘borked’, so he posted it instead. I asked if I could share it here too… I couldn’t agree with him more!

Breathtaking post, or was it three? Assessment I did the same exercise with my dept. We also had the same vastly differing results you did. At a provincial in-service about 9 or 10 years back I participated in the same exercise using real student generated work. Results varied from around 33% to 80%. This is one facet of f Academe’s Dirty Little Secret. Anyway, in my dept. we’ve been looking at how we assess all the content in all the courses we teach; one course at a time, one unit at a time. We’re trying to develop a consistent approach to assessment at least within our building. We’ll be “at it” for a while yet. Basic Skills Fluent knowledge and recall of basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts are essential for ANY student to experience success in math. I’m on the same page you are Dave. A grade 9 student, who struggles (mightily) with her multiplication facts, and I were talking about this last week. As I was trying to help her I asked why she thinks I feel it so important for her to become fluent in her recall of the multiplication table: “I know, I know, some day I might not have a calculator and I might need to multiply two numbers.” [Oy! Who tells kids this stuff? And do they really believe that? -- I mean the adults, not the kids. I know the kids don't believe that.] “No. That’s not why. You’ll always be able to get a calculator if you need to multiply a bunch of numbers. That’s not the reason. It’s that you need to know the language of math so you can join the conversation.” “If your teacher is trying to teach you why multiplying pairs of negative numbers always have a positive result, or why, when we divide fractions, we ‘multiply by the reciprocal’ they’re going to talk about stuff like 7×8 and assume you know it’s 56 and go on to discuss some deeper ideas. If you’re hung up on 7×8, need to pull out a calculator, you’re going to miss the entire conversation. Your brain will be back 5 steps while everyone else is talking about this other stuff. By the time you figure out what’s going on you won’t know what’s going on. You’ll feel lost and confused and fall farther behind.” “Why do I need to know math anyway?” “For the same reason you need to know how to read. Because it’s a fundamental way that humans communicate with each other and understand the world around them. If you can read but you can’t understand mathematics then there will be giant tracts of things happening in the world around you that you’ll never understand.” [Whew! Went on a bit of a rant there. I'm going to get a cup of tea ... Cheers Dave!] Darren Kuropatwa