I found a really handy tool recently: blogbooker.com

“BlogBooker produces a high-quality PDF Blog Book from all your blog’s entries and comments.”

I then took the pdf and archived it on Scribd, Slideshare, and a fun (but not-so-convenient) reader called Youblisher. Bookblogger numbers links and adds them at the end of posts and does a great job of creating a table of contents that is clickable, (not in Youblisher). All three platforms allow downloads. Scribd let’s you choose a mobile version, but I tried and don’t know if it is a China cell phone issue or not, but I did not get it sent to my iPhone as requested.

I occasionally save back-ups of my blog, but it’s nice to know that I have preserved and digitally archived my blog, with comments, on a few online places. The reality is that I wouldn’t want to lose a record of all the things I’ve learned, and I actually do go back and read old posts and follow old links. So, I want my learning archived.

I shared Blogbooker on Twitter and then got an interesting reply.

Sam Morris suggested using it to use it for student eportfolios:

This brought about the idea for this post, as I’ve thought of this often:

When we create projects with students and then share them digitally, who owns the learning?

When a student leaves a class or a school, what happens to their blogs, wikis & ePortfolios? Can students take these with them? Blogbooker seems like one way to help with this… at least with (public) blogs, but I think we need to ensure that there are opportunities for students to export their work from our Kindergarten all the way up to University programs.

I left my ScienceAlive project ‘out in the open’ and students along with about 65,000 others, (including over 6,000 from a total of 108 countries in just the last 2 months), have been able to go back to the site… a site that has been dormant for 3 years. Now, I’m not sure if students would want to have a record of this project, but it is there for them. My point? Everything we do digitally has the possibility of being kept, shared & redistributed by students long after they projects are completed or ‘handed in’. Yet, much of what is done is hidden from students or deleted after the class is over, or archived on a school’s district server somewhere.

I know privacy is an issue many districts are worried about. I know some projects will be done safely and securely inside private, protected, ‘walled gardens’. Yet, I think it’s time for us to realize that portability of projects, of the learning that happens online, needs to be a consideration when deciding what tool(s) to use.

We don’t own a student’s learning; It’s their learning. Whenever possible we need to be thinking about how we can provide students with an archive of their work… and that has to include the conversations (or comments in the case of blogs) and the hyperlinks that made the learning experience richer and more desirable to keep.

We don’t own the learning and so we shouldn’t keep it away from the learners. Let’s not put an expiry date on our digitally shared learning experiences.

Background

In the past two weeks I’ve moved from a school with just 3 projectors in a 4 floor, (no wireless), school to a school with:

• Projectors in every classroom (that we will be using next school year).
• Netbooks for every teacher.
• Wireless in key rooms and common areas.

AND…

• Beginning next September our Grades 7-9′s will be bringing their own laptops to school!

The pitch

Sometime soon I’ll share the 50+ page/slideshow presentation that I presented to my boss to pitch the idea of moving in this direction. (I need to change some copyrighted images & track down some more image credits first.) I’m sure some of it will be useful to others for the same reasons.  My boss asked me great questions, provided me with the budget, and helped me get things moving with some tech support- (even more than I asked for!) I’m thankful for the faith he has put in me and I’m confident that my staff will convince him a year from now that this was an excellent move towards a new kind of teaching and learning.

From idea to implementation

I created this question and answer page for my parents:

Grade 7 to Grade 9 Bring Your Own Laptop Program Outline for 2010-2011

…and I’ll highlight a section of it, and a section of my newsletter introducing the program, here. I have to thank Matt Montagne for sharing resources with me & saving me a lot of time and effort building things from scratch.

_____

From my newsletter:

Why laptops? (or netbooks)
I have been very involved for the past 4 years in researching and writing about the effective use of technology in schools. I firmly believe that a current education is one that prepares children to engage in intelligent, safe technology use, where students are prosumers of information, (those that don’t just consume, but also produce information and content). Information is becoming more and more abundant and ubiquitous. Resources available online can both greatly enhance what students learn in class, and also extend the classroom beyond the walls of the class and school, allowing for a rich and global learning experience. The goal of this initiative is to provide our Seniors with a true 21st Century, international learning experience.

_____

From the link I shared above:

Will the use of computers affect my child’s learning?
Yes… in a good way!
Some of you may ask, “What about learning the basics, like Reading, Writing, Math and Science, and in an International School, English Language Learning?”
A 21st Century learning model starts and ends with these subjects! The use of technology in the classroom is to provide current, interactive and collaborative tools to help students communicate better and demonstrate their creativity while improving speaking, reading and writing, as well as learning in Math, Science and other key subject areas. Our technology goal is to enhance and enrich the great learning experiences students already get at our school, not to replace those experiences. We already have students from many parts of the world at our school, but now we can truly bring an interactive, global learning experience into our classrooms as well.

_____

Background (Part 2)

I’ve read about laptop programs failing, and it seems to me that most if not all of them were the result of overspending on ‘hardware’ and not spending enough on what Ian Jukes calls ‘headware’. The fact is that when you commit to purchasing laptops for every student, you need to spend a lot of time and effort being product managers rather than educators. But “Bring Your Own” programs were not viable before the OLPC $100 Laptop Initiative helped to drive laptop and netbook prices down. Now the focus needs to be on orienting teachers and students into a new way of thinking about using these tools in class. Still, there is a lot of logistics and planning needed to make a BYO Laptop program successful.

The pitch (Part 2)

Thinking about this, I stumbled onto a post by Will Richardson about a plp team.  On a video clip in the post Ellie Preston said her team had made a final project video about their school becoming a BYOLaptop school next year. But, there was no link to the video so I requested one and Will put me in touch with Cary Harrod. Shortly after that Cary and I connected on, and started chatting on, Twitter and she said:

From idea to implementation (Part 2)

So, here is a new group I started for anyone interested in sharing their BYO Laptop (and also 1-1 Laptop) experiences and resources.

I see three possible goals for such a group:  (Please suggest others)

1. Create a resource useful to anyone interested in starting or developing a BYO Laptop program.

2. Develop a resource of 1-1 teaching and learning strategies.

3. Provide support for all those little challenges that come up in a BYO Laptop or 1-1 school.

So if you are interested, please join this group, share, and learn along with us!

_____

Related posts:

Just last year I was presenting on bringing POD’s (Personally Owned Devices) to school, but I was thinking this would be iPod’s, iTouches and cell phones.

And now for the same reasons that I’m not a fan of the iPad in schools, I think laptops and netbooks are a much better approach!

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

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

Facebook: BLOCKED

Twitter: BLOCKED

YouTube: BLOCKED

Blogspot Blogs: BLOCKED

Flickr: (recently) BLOCKED (again)

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

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

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

In his weekly email newsletter, George Siemens wrote/quoted:

This is one of the more insightful statements I’ve come across recently – What Google Could Learning From Goffman: “When we merge social groups together, we are challenged to manage our disclosures across these groups, which have different norms of propriety.”

The social software I use regularly – Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin – allows me to form different social groups. I have different interactions with different people in each….

Google, however, smashed together different social groups with Buzz, forcing information to flow between groups that were previously distinct. Buzz’s failure was not one of only disrespecting privacy, but rather one of dishonouring social clustering.

This really hit a chord with me and I can’t help but relate this to a Seinfeld episode where George Costanza sees his ‘Worlds Collide’ when people from different social groups connect.

It gets very funny when George declares that ‘Independent George’ will cease to exist by an encroaching ‘Relationship George’.

Although Google Buzz isn’t causing my worlds to collide in such a dramatic fashion, I am keenly aware that it opens up my social communities and combines them in a way that I am not sure I’m prepared to do. Fred Stutzman calls this ‘context collapse’:

When you create a profile in a social network site, or share a stream of Tweets, you’re essentially creating a representation of an identity.  As we’ve seen time and time again in Facebook, we run into problems when identities collide during “context collapse” – when people from a different segment of your life view an identity you’ve constructed for your friends.

For instance, I tried linking Twitter to Facebook and all I did was infiltrate my non-twitter friends Facebook timelines with context-less tweets that really meant nothing to them… it lasted about 24 hours. Similarly, Buzz came out and I started chatting with a few people in it, then my daughter (a Gmail user who was quicker than I to figure out Buzz) said to me, “Dad you sure talk a lot about buzz with people.” And this got me thinking about how I’m normally very purposeful with my online identities. I think about where I say what, to whom and why… I contextualize my conversations to the tool.

It’s not that I’m hiding anything… My tweets are open to the public, so is my LinkedIn profile. Meanwhile, except for my recent updates to Facebook while on holiday, I keep that more candid, limiting my profile to students that I’m connected to, and being selective about what information I share in my profile. That said, there is nothing in my Facebook profile that I am ashamed of or that I wouldn’t want others to see, but I talk differently there to my family and friends than I do on other networks. I tend to share my blog everywhere and so that too has a different voice than with other tools in other contexts.

In his post, Stutzman paraphrases Erving Goffman:

In essence, Goffman argues that identity and interaction are performative, a concept that maps very well onto social network sites.  By “creating” identities, we’re not living dual lives, but rather engaging in a well-established performance of identity that lets us share the proper “front” in context.  We act differently on LinkedIn and Facebook because these sites have contextual norms, not because we’re duplicitous.

Later in the article Stutzman continues:

…it was simply too much to ask us to configure ourselves to the technology.

By fabricating new social groupings, Google ran head-on into Facebook’s biggest problem – that of context collapse.  When we merge social groups together, we are challenged to manage our disclosures across these groups, which have different norms of propriety.

Google Buzz has mashed all these ‘worlds’ together. I don’t really want my daughter or my LinkedIn network to see me telling Seth Bowers (in reaction to him asking when I’m going to finally get on Buzz) to ‘Buzz off!’ On Twitter, with an @reply, there is context and even appropriateness in the comment (as poor as the humour may be). To my family and Facebook friends, that could easily be seen as rude, and more to the point, irrelevant when it is ‘pushed’ at them in a different setting with different norms than where the message was intended to reside.

As Seth said in his only two Buzz comments so far:

I don’t know if I need my inbox to be social…

and

Man Google sucks at social…

I may be wrong, and perhaps Google Buzz will catch on, but I think it has a bumpy road ahead, because the social web requires socialization, which in turn requires contexts for appropriate social norms and behaviors.

I’m not freaking out like George Costanza on Seinfeld, but I really don’t want a tool that merges my digital identities and forces my worlds to collide.

Cross-posted on Fireside Learning Ning: Conversations about Education.

For me it is a little bit difficult to think about the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics right now… I’m in a car outside of Hanoi, Vietnam heading to Ha Long Bay for an overnight boat cruise. The car ride is about 3.5 hours long and so I thought I’d use this time to plug a great project happening on the other side of the globe.

If, (unlike me), you are at a school that is in session during the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, be sure to share this link with your students. Chris Kennedy, Assistant Superintendent of West Vancouver School District, has helped to organize 12 student bloggers to report on events at the Olympics.

These student reporters will be given access to many of the Olympic events & venues and they will be blogging, photographing, vlogging, tweeting, and updating their Facebook group page with all kinds of reports about the Olympics. I think it is fantastic to have students sharing their perspective on the Olympics and that we are starting to give students a legitimate voice in documenting world events. What will make projects like this really meaningful is interaction between these students and students around the world, so I’d like to encourage educators to get students and classrooms to follow these reporters and engage with them online.

Today, before leaving on this trip, I was connected to the hotel lobby wireless, checking email, and saw that Danny from Jan Smith’s grade 6/7 class left a comment on my blog, (Jan told me on Twitter that he did this on his own). I had a few minutes so I commented back on his blog. I mention this here because I think that as we encourage students to blog and connect online it is important for us to not just encourage but also to support these endeavors! One of the key things that makes blogging an effective learning tool is that it gives students a legitimate audience. Danny ends his comment with, “…so thank you for being a blogging teacher from the other side of the world!”

Also, Danny’s classmate Lizzie commented on my daughter’s fledgling blog and asked a question, so I encouraged my daughter to reply and then I helped her go to Lizzie’s blog and comment.

The next time I get online, after posting this, I’ll be visiting Jim Wenzloff‘s wife, Chris’, new class blog, THE CLEM, and commenting on some student posts… And I’ll be mentioning that I’m writing from Hanoi Vietnam & living in Dalian China. I would like to encourage anyone reading this to take the time to comment on some student blogs from across the hall, across the city, across the country, or across the world. If you don’t know of any then visit Chris’ or Jan’s students… Or check out Sue Waters who is an excellent advocate for student bloggers that deserve a global audience.

And finally, I’ll end where I started, recommending that you help connect students around the world with the student reporters at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.

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.

It’s time again for the K12 Online Conference.

It was David Warlick‘s Keynote that introduced me to this wonderful, free online conference, and although I had a blog for 6 months before that, I wrote a key post that influenced my future as a blogger.

And now a much admired friend Kim Cofino has created this wonderful 2009 Pre-Conference Keynote:

Going Global: Culture Shock, Convergence and the Future of Education

As someone living in Asia now, Kim’s metaphors in Part 1 really hit a chord with me. I especially like from about the 5:30 mark until the 14:30 mark: ‘Lessons from Culture Shock’. At the 7:45 mark of this presentation Kim states,“We have to find ways of more nimbly, realistically and effectively adapting to the new status quo.” What excites me is that the ‘status quo’ is based on connecting the students in our world in more meaningful ways… We now have the ability to foster cross-cultural connections with kids who aren’t just ‘growing up digital’ but also ‘growing up global’.

As one of Kim’s connections in Asia, I had the chance to play a small part in this presentation. I sent her the video below that she edited and added to the presentation above. The idea for this actually came from a Twitter discussion with John Davitt as he was preparing for a presentation. I sent him these-two-tweets and very shortly after Kim asked for a video clip… it was already written, I just had to film it.

Here is my ‘Connected World’ Video that I made for Kim:

It is a fabulous time to be an educator! Watch Kim’s presentation. Watch it again and think about the potential for what we can do in our classrooms today. Connectivity is key. Adaptability is key. We live in a connected world and our students are going to have to learn about each other, connect with each other and adapt to different working and living environments. Let’s adapt our schools to meet the needs of student today, instead of trying to make students fit into an old model of what schools used to look like.

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).

My Nominations for the 2009 Edublog Awards are:

Best individual blog: Stephen’s Web

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.

Best individual tweeter: @courosa

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.

Best new blog: Mr. Jackson’s Blogosphere

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.

Best class blog: Huzzah!

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.

Best resource sharing blog: Larry Ferlazzo’s Website of the Day

Yes he is probably nominated already, but his is the resource sharing site I most often end up on.

Most influential blog post: 10 Tips for Teaching Technology to Teachers

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.

Best teacher blog: Always Learning

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.

Best librarian / library blog: The WebFooted Booklady

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!

Best educational tech support blog: The Edublogger

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.

Best educational use of audio: Seedlings

Alice Barr, Cheryl Oakes and Bob Sprankle not only offer great interviews, they support new teachers on their Ning network too!

Honourable mention to: Bit-by-Bit by Bob Sprankle on his own. He has recorded so many presentations worth listening to!

Best educational wiki: PLN Yourself!

It’s Sue Waters again. This time offering an easy launching point for people who want to expand their Personal Learning Network.

___

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.

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.

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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!