Being the edu-nerd that I am, I often look at parallels between my experiences inside and outside the world of schools and education, (see Bubble Wrap for another example). Now, two-and-a-half weeks into my Thailand & Vietnam holiday, such parallels are jumping out at me, and I think of them as ‘traps’. It seems that everywhere we go on this holiday there are tours being offered and trinkets to buy. The packages and prices are all designed to steer you to the ‘deluxe’ version, “…for just a little bit more, you can also get…”.
Then on the way to your destination the washroom or lunch break also happens to be a great place to buy more trinkets and souvenirs and artwork and…. (insert ‘local’ artisan specialty here). This is also known as a ‘Tourist Trap’- you are committed to the tour, now let’s see how much money we can extract from you while you are here.
One parallel that I see in education is the ‘Textbook Trap’: “Buy our textbook and get the free online supplement! Oh, and by the way, each teacher will want our Teacher’s Guide, and don’t forget the Blackline Masters and the Student Workbook will save your students hours of copy-time so they can focus on the learning. Also, notice how we have designed the books to build upon themselves, you’ll also want to purchase for the next grade too. Of course if you bought more then we can increase your savings to 40%!”
… And there is the trap, you aren’t buying a textbook, you are buying a program. You are ‘investing’ a significant portion of your budget in a fixed ‘paper’ product designed with both features and flaws that become, over time, what teachers ‘deliver’ to students: A fixed/set curriculum, (that is based on, but is not necessarily the mandated curriculum).
That brings us to the next trap, the ‘Curriculum Trap’. I hear curriculum as an anti-technology ‘excuse’ all the time. I won’t even get into the Standardized Testing Trap: “It’s easy to integrate technology into the lower grades, but I have so much content to deliver that I can’t ‘waste time’ with a project like this.”
Instead, I’ll look into another aspect of the ‘Curriculum Trap’… The whole idea of curriculum being ‘fixed’: “After chapter 1 we will do chapter 2, then we get a little crazy and do chapters 4 & 5 before going back to do chapter 3.”
I’ve never seen a curriculum with a requirement of ‘Chapter 3′, and I’ve never seen a textbook that could teach a curriculum better than a creative, imaginative teacher. My kids may not remember what they did on the beach in Ko Phi Phi over a one week span, but they will remember sleeping in a floating hut just a one minute kyak ride away from viewing wild monkeys in Khao Sok National Park, Thailand. They will remember repelling from a 50meter tree after zip-lining from platforms equally as high. And they will remember riding on the neck of an elephant. These events were not part of our planned vacation, they were the side-trips, the unscheduled add-ons that became the memorable moments.
Comparatively, the ‘meaningful’ learning experiences of my education were the side-trips and ‘teachable moments’ that just came up… Discussions about world events and personal interest stories that were meaningful though not mandated or designated as essential.
The opening scene in the movie Saving Private Ryan can exemplify the horrors of war more than any textbook, just as Cry Freedom can teach students the racism of apartheid in South Africa. It’s one thing to talk about Leonardo Da Vinci and still another to watch one of his inventions at work on YouTube, or digitally turn the pages and read one of his notebooks, an opportunity only recently provided to the masses. We have to make time to be side-tracked by things that interest us and make learning memorable.
And one final parallel is the ‘Pro-D Trap’. Professional Development in education has become a fixed-time-and-date ‘event’. There is almost nothing professional about it… Punch-in, do your time, punch-out. The greatest reward a presenter can offer to participants is, “if all goes well then we’ll be out of here an hour early”. Yet, we have entered an era where anytime, anywhere learning is possible. I wrote my last post on a 3.5 hour van ride from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay. I’m writing this on the return trip a day later. I’m ‘unplugged’, but I’m thinking, reflecting & learning. I’ll be adding these posts to my blog over the next couple days and hopefully others will comment and contribute to my… perhaps ‘our’… learning.
And yet we somehow try to compartmentalize our ‘professional’ learning into ½ & 1 day sessions and we even divide those up into 45 minute, 1hour and 1.5hour sessions. Often these sessions are not even contextually meaningful: “We’re going to talk about blogging for the next hour, and you’ll know how to sign up for one when we’re done… But we don’t really have any time today to look at, comment, or discuss effective examples of blogs.” Hmmmm.
In the last two Pro-D sessions that I ran, I provided ‘play time’ in the agenda. I also provided choice: “Here are a few different resources that you might find useful. Go to one of them now, ’start’ you learning here, use me as a resource too.”
We need teachers to participate and interact with tools that engage learners and learning. We need them to take their own learning outside of their Pro-D sessions. We need them to try, to participate and to have a safe environment to make mistakes and learn from, and through, the frustrations of their mistakes. We need them to take this ‘real learning’ back to their schools with them and be the lead learners in their schools and in their classrooms.
It’s easy to fall into these traps, it’s harder to recognize them for what they are and step out of them.
Augmented Reality (AR) has been around for a while. Fans of Monday Night Football have always had the television advantage of ’seeing’ the first down line conveniently added for their viewing pleasure. A more advanced version of augmented reality can be seen here, where you can see information about all the nearest subway locations in New York superimposed onto your iPhone’s camera view.
And now from Ewan McIntosh I’m introduced to this application of Augmented Reality, possible due to face recognition software.
Ewan says, “…In a schools context this could be seen as lethal.” And then he asks:
“But there are some amazing potential side effects – what would yours be?”
I can think of a few that are really exciting in a school context:
• What if teachers could see a student’s attendance record, allergies, current marks and timetables.
• In class you could see links to a student’s current projects AND see your most recent comments/feedback to that student.
• A live RSS feed of all the things a specific student is working on in class.
• Students can see who still needs a group partner or search tags to see who is working on similar projects to them.
• Counselors and Administrators can see what a student needs to hand in, marks in their courses and office referrals.
• A quick scan of the room with your phone and attendance is taken. The office and parents can be instantly notified if a student misses a class.
Even without the face recognition aspect AR could provide classroom data like:
• What class is in session, what subject matter, what’s on the homework board, who the teacher is, and links for the lesson.
Concerns: Who decides what should be shared, and with whom? Do we want Big Brother kind of surveillance on students, or for that matter on teachers? That said, most of the information that I’ve mentioned is already tracked for students… on paper and in digital data banks. We aren’t talking about collecting new information, just providing timely information to people who could use that information to benefit a learner’s experience in school.
Seeing someone’s social networks is fun, and may be useful in social and work environments, but seeing someone’s Learning Resources and connecting to their Learning Environments… instantaneously… that’s something that can be very exciting for education!
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.
I would like to thank the following people for contributing so much to my learning. I’m only nominating in categories where the impact has been powerful and potent. I’m also going to cheat and add a few ‘honourable mentions’: These may not mean much to the Edublog Awards, but they mean a lot to me, (if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll already know that I follow my own rules that work for me in my own learning space).
I actually almost never go to Stephen Downes’ blog, as I read his daily email updates. Since his is the only daily read that I do, and since it leads me all over the web and exposes me to so many other ideas and points of view, I can’t say anyone has had more of an influence on my learning this year.
So much of what I end up sharing myself has been introduced to me via Alec Couros. He is integral to my PLN (Personal Learning Network – and – Professional Learning Network).
Honourable mention to: @SueWaters since Sue will always step up and extend a hand to anyone in her network, and @ShellTerrell – Shelly is the Queen of ReTweets, she finds gem after gem and shares them.
Bryan Jackson is a wonderfully reflective teacher and he has a fantastic job working with some of the most gifted kids in his district. This gives him a great playground for bouncing around innovative ideas and his reflective nature produces wonderful insight.
I love this caption from the blog, compliments of teacher Jan Smith: “Please notice our successes, not our mistakes. Our blog is a invitation to see what we are up to. Some of our work will be polished, and some will be in draft form. Please honour our attempts.” Jan makes student blogging a learning experience that it should be, and not just an exercise in doing old things in new ways. Don’t just visit her blog, go to her student blogs and check out what they are doing!
Honourable mention to: Clarence Fisher’s Idea Hive. I’m sure there are other classes doing work as meaningful as Jan and Clarence but in my eyes they are in a league of their own. Like Jan’s students, Clarence’s students deserve a visit and a comment.
Liz B. Davis‘ brilliant post that helps others to lead the way with teachers new to tech. A MUST READ POST!
Honourable mention to: Would You Please Block? My favourite line from this wonderful Bud Hunt post: “Students off task is not a technology problem – it’s a behavior problem.” Be sure to skim the many comments too.
Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion: Blogworthy Tweets
I love the opening sentence by Claudia Ceraso: “These tweets of mine need not be noteworthy, except that I want to make a note of them. To make sure they do not vanish in cyberspace. They deserve a spot in this personal learning scenario.” What strikes me with this post is the realization that some of these less-than-140-character thoughts are deserving of more thoughts and discussion. These are not truly a series of tweets but I have a bias in that it was posts like this by Claudia that got me onto twitter.
Honourable mention to: #EdChat I haven’t been on twitter too much to join in recently, but I peek in occasionally and it is always a rich conversation. This isn’t a blog, but worthy of mentioning.
Kim Cofino continues to be my teacher and I’m a big fan of teachers who help other educators. Kim is tireless in her attempts to promote globally connected teachers and students.
Lesley @Bookminder Edwards is going to retire soon, yet she is leading the way for the next generation of teachers. I want to be as inspiring as her when I reach that part of my career. She may be stepping away from schools, but I hope she doesn’t retire from sharing her wisdom online!
If you are a blogger, you’ve probably used some advice found here, or shared here first then modeled by others. Sue Waters consistently brings sound blogging advice and direction to readers.
Best elearning / corporate education blog: elearnspace
Sorry, no corporate blog here, George Siemens brings you up to speed on the latest ideas in e-learning. If you don’t know what connectivism is, it’s time to sign up for his weekly email.
It’s Sue Waters again. This time offering an easy launching point for people who want to expand their Personal Learning Network.
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So there are my nominations. Besides Stephen Downes, who only follows one person, I’m connected to every one of these educators on Twitter and I’d be remiss in not mentioning that. In reality, I have seldom opened my RSS reader this year and so the list above was greatly influenced as a result of my connections to some amazing people on Twitter.
I enjoy the Edublog Awards because they always expose me to blogs and connections that I would not have had otherwise. I don’t believe there is a need for competition amongst edubloggers, but I do believe that highlighting the people you admire is worthy. Thanks again to these wonderful people for their inspiration and for being my teacher… I look forward to learning and sharing more with you.
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.
This was written on a scrap piece of paper while doing some ‘big thinking’ with Heidi Hass Gable. I’m sharing it exactly as it was written, but adding links to some of my other posts to liven it up a bit… Feedback, as always, is appreciated.
I spent most of my teaching career teaching at least one subject daily that I delivered to two different classes: The same lesson, repeated back-to-back. Many times the second class got the better deal. I tweaked, I edited, I improved what I did, and sometimes I even tried something completely different. But sometimes, things went awry. Sometimes, what worked perfectly in my first class simply floundered in my second class.
The fact is that teaching is very individualized and context driven. What works for one child or one set of students, may not work for another child or another set of students.
Looking at (today’s) definition in Wikipedia:
Best practice is an idea that asserts that there is a technique, method, process, activity, incentive or reward that is more effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other technique, method, process, etc. The idea is that with proper processes, checks, and testing, a desired outcome can be delivered with fewer problems and unforeseen complications. Best practices can also be defined as the most efficient (least amount of effort) and effective (best results) way of accomplishing a task, based on repeatable procedures that have proven themselves over time for large numbers of people.
I don’t think there is ‘best practice’ in education. There are ‘processes’ that we should have in place, but these are still not ‘best practice’. For instance, it is desirable to have teachers do formative assessment rather than just summative assessment… BUT is there a ‘best’ way to do formative assessment? Does this self-reflective process work the same way for all students? Can you take any one assessment and apply it to different lessons or contexts or classes or students? No.
Teaching is a practice. We practice teaching. We have an obligation to do our best, but that will ultimately change as we… practice. If we want to apply ‘best practice’ to teaching, then we need to look at ourselves as role model learners. We need to be relentless learners striving to be our best. We need to be self-reflective, we need to seek advice from our mentors and teachers, we need to engage in learning conversations, and we need to share our enthusiasm for both teaching and learning. We need to ‘practice teaching’ to the best of our ability.
What we don’t need is a bunch of processes labeled as ‘best practice’ to limit us from seeking something that is yet more effective. Best practice is still just practice.
I wish people would stop trying to compare old ways with new ways and started asking, “What can we do with this amazing new tool?” or “How can I use this to engage learners?” or better yet, “How can this empower students to pursue their own learning?”
And we had better start doing this soon!
Why?
PODs. We are about 5 years away from most of our students bringing PODs to school, Personally Owned Devices. I’m talking about pervasive access to laptops and iPhone-like devices in our schools. Every kid coming to school with more capability in their pockets and hands than most teachers have on their desk right now.
So now a big question comes to mind. At the pace we are going now… Will we be ready to utilize these amazing tools that will be brought into our classrooms?
I say no!
So, new questions arise: What do we need to do to be ready? What needs to change? How do we maximize what we can do now? Who makes this happen?
No it’s not about the technology… you don’t need technology to promote inquiry and a love of learning in students. It is not about preparing our students for the future… it is about preparing our teachers for the future. It is about asking ourselves the right questions and promoting a spirit of inquiry with our teachers. And finally, it is about leadership.
But traditional leadership alone won’t work. It is YOUR leadership that we need. Do not go quietly into your classroom. Do not go quietly into your schools. Do not wait for PODs to arrive. You are the one that can make a difference… ask yourself, “How can I prepare my colleagues for the future of education?”
I’ve asked a lot of questions, and I’ll provide an answer to one of them now:
For the last couple Mondays I have presented to two of Betty Gilgoff’s TLITE Classes, (TLITE- Teaching and Learning in an Information Technology Environment). I did two different presentations one based loosely on Learning Conversations and the other on This My Blog has Taught Me. Both presentations asked for teachers to contribute to a VoiceThread and to join a cohort diigo group.
I’m really impressed with this SFU program and the teachers who have signed up for it. The TLITE program offers teachers an entry point into engaging students with technology. Both classes have students with very wide ranges of digital competence, but all with a willingness to learn within a community of other learners.
Check out some of the comments these teachers contributed to our VoiceThreads. The first Voicethread was created for my Learning Conversations presentation, but I didn’t encorporate any time within the presentation for participants to use it and as a result it wasn’t really used -lesson learned there! The second one I put together just for the TLITE class. Please feel free to add you own voice.
I wanted to introduce a tool that would be easy to sign up for and easy to see value for in classrooms, and so that’s why I chose VoiceThread. And I also wanted to help these teachers learn from each other and that’s why I chose diigo groups. The first session felt rushed when we got to diigo whereas the second session was given more time. In the second session I talked a bit about the potential for using diigo in the classroom… what a great opportunity for educators to use this tool with students!
Thanks to Betty and to the two TLITE cohorts for inviting me into their classes. It excites me to see teachers in learning communities engaging with new tools.
This is the last post that I have to move and so I thought I would put my reflection first.
I actually posted this after I went back to the beginning of my blog and started the reposting process. There is only one other time that I interjected a new post during this reflect and repost process, and I did that because the issue was time sensitive. That said, many reflections have been posts within posts with new ideas developed and shared.
So here now is my final post reflection in this format… I have now officially moved my blog completely over to this new feed.
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Audience does matter… and so does authority. Even in some of these reflections I have seen a shift in my tone on this blog. To be honest, it has been a healthy shift. I still rant, as the first link above demonstrates, but I think I have found a much more positive spin on things thanks to my change in position as well as the choice to put this blog at an address with my name on it.
Every e-mail I send out has the Zoroastrian quote, “Think Good Thoughts, Say Good Words, Do Good Deeds”, and in fact, so do most of my online profiles. Yet, my frustration with the slow process of tearing down archaic institutional walls that hinder the use of transformational technologies in schools has left me frustrated, if not outright bitter, at times. But who are my audience? What does a somewhat negative tone tell them about blogging or working with technology?
As I say below:
We need to be empowered learners if we want to lead other learners.
Anger and frustration may spur the desire to learn, but these ‘hot’ emotions do not encourage a positive learning environment, they do not enhance a learning experience, they do not empower us to be leaders.
You’ll still see me rant, and I’ll still show my frustration at times, but I hope to keep the tone positive and I hope to keep my very own personal learning environment, my learning hub, a place where my thoughts, words and deeds are inherently good.
Thanks to inspiration by Alec, I ended up staying up well past my bedtime (again) and writing a Forum Post in an online Dialogue for our Building Leadership Capacity group. This is a group of teachers interested in Leadership within the District, they meet for 3 session and the discussion forum is designed to keep the conversation going between sessions, (it is just getting started). It is interesting being one of the facilitators after being a teacher-participant for a few years. Regular readers will see that my comments are tempered with a slightly different tone as I figure out my voice as an Administrator. We tell students, “Audience Matters!” But now I am experiencing that first-hand. Here is my discussion forum post:
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Here is an interesting video.Schools as institutions are so slow to change. I think if we really want to be leaders we must prepare our students with the tools of today and tomorrow, not yesterday!
From Alec Couros’ Letting Go “…we’ve reached the point in our (disparate) cultural adaptation to computing and communication technology that the younger technical generations are so empowered they are impatient and ready to jettison institutions most of the rest of us tend to think of as essential, central, even immortal. They are ready to dump our schools.”
Harsh words, but as our own district ramps up its’ online learning and districts like West Vancouver do the same, we must ask ourselves how best to meet the needs of our students in schools? On the topic of technology use, I created this slideshow to show to SFU Student Teachers at a pro-d session earlier this year: Brave New World-Wide-Web. Towards the end, it highlights some of the tools that students used to empower their own learning.
And that brings us back to the idea of leadership. We need to be empowered learners if we want to lead other learners. We need to create an environment that fosters doing new things in new ways, like many cutting edge organizations do. However, this isn’t a complaint about what we need and don’t have. I read a lot of blogs by teachers across the globe. Here in Canada, and in the US, there are countless districts where not every classroom has a computer, or where draconian online censorship by the district limits what a teacher can do. Compared to most school districts, we are actually leaders on the technology integration curve, especially with respect to our ideology of openness and what we have with the My43 portal.
So as leaders, how do we harness this advantage? If we want to build capacityand empower the leaders in our district, what is it that needs to happen to foster a culture that thrives on challenge
and change? What do we need to do to nurture our own learning? How can WE become educational leaders that prepare our students for an age of prolific technological advancement?
Two Wolves Which wolf will you feed? A Remembrance Day Post
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Warning! We filter websites at school. Filters filter learning!
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My blog is my PhD I have given myself a Blogtorate of Philosophy.
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Bubble Wrap What we are doing is creating a facade of security, nothing more than an illusion of bubble wrap.
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Who are the People in Your Neighbourhood? My (digital) neighbourhood spans the globe.
Background
