I love this conference more than any other for a variety of reasons, the conversations (instead of presentations), the level of understanding and “enlightenment” among the participants, the many friends who’ve I made over the years all in one place, the absence of vendors and agendas, and the emphasis on making the world of education a better one for our kids, to name just a few. But the absolute best part of this conference is being in a school where the teachers and the students and the leadership all share a common purpose and live learning every day. I know being in the moment here, still in the midst of these powerful interactions, colors my view a bit, and that some of the SLA edcrush will wear off as I head away in an hour or so. But I can honestly say that this is the one school that I know I would want my own kids to attend without reservation. Not to say there aren’t others that I don’t know about. But this is about as good as it gets right now. It’s all about kids learning, making them an important driver in the process, and supporting and celebrating their efforts at every turn.

And so this is my Educon moment, when in the middle of the stream of pictures and Tweets and blog posts and live video today, this Tweet from Kristen Hokanson ’bout knocked me over:

Whoa.

I wonder how many schools can even come close to understanding a) what that student is talking about and b) what a powerful description of a learning culture that is.

We’ve spent a lot of time these past couple of days talking about change and learning and kids and parents and schools and more. It’s been heady. In some ways, the conversation hasn’t changed that much from last year. I don’t get the sense we’re much closer to the goal or even identifying the goal or even figuring out whether there is only one goal or many. But the difference between Educon and all of the other places where these conversations happen is captured so simply in that Tweet.

Change is possible. It is real. It is happening here. It can happen and is happening elsewhere.

And most importantly, the conversations need to continue.

From the just released 2009 Horizon Report:

Information technologies are having a significant impact on how people work, play, gain information, and collaborate. Increasingly, those who use technology in ways that expand their global connections are more likely to advance, while those who do not will find themselves on the sidelines. With the growing availability of tools to connect learners and scholars all over the world — online collaborative workspaces, social networking tools, mobiles, voice-over-IP, and more — teaching and scholarship are transcending traditional borders more and more all the time. (Emphasis mine.)

Another pebble for the pile…

So if you agree that social Web technologies are causing some fundamental, “tectonic shifts” (Shirky) to many traditional structures in our global society, that businesses and media companies and political organizations are being forced to reinvent themselves in some pretty profound ways because of the ways we can network and connect, then this snip about the music business from Seth Godin’s book “Tribes” should resonate:

The first rule the music business failed to understand is that, at least at first, the new thing is rarely as good as the old thing was. If you need the alternative to be better than the status quo from the very start, you’ll never begin. Soon enough, the new thing will be better than the old thing. But if you wait until then, it’s going to be too late. Feel free to wax nostalgic about the old thing, but don’t fool yourself into believing that it’s going to be here forever. It won’t. (93)

Think education instead of music.

Then, consider this:

When the world changes, the rules change. If you insist on playing today’s games by yesterday’s rules, you’re stuck. (114)

And finally:

The safer you play your plans for the future, the riskier it actually is. That’s because the world is certainly, definitely, and more than possibly changing. (111)

Godin talks about all of this in the context of leadership, of how important it is for leaders to fight through their fears, to actively seek ideas worth criticism, to fear the status quo. Fear is the reason we don’t change either individually or systemically. And I love the way he puts this:

In every organization, everyone rises to the level at which they become paralyzed with fear. (44)

I know we talk about this ad nauseum, the fears that educators have and what to do about them. And I know the answers aren’t easy. The problem is when the music industry gets paralyzed it loses profits. When the education system goes that route, we lose kids.

One last quote:

“Established 1906″ used to be important. Now, apparently, it’s a liability. (17)

(Photo “Yellow Crowd” by TwOsE.)

Playing around with Prezi.com here but also trying to capture what I think is an interesting shift in the way we learn about, gather and share news these days. Comments on form and content both welcomed.

(For a little bit clearer version visit the Blip.tv page.)

I’m really, really, really happy to report that my hourlong interview with Howard Rheingold from a couple of weeks ago has FINALLY appeared in the Ustream archive. I had a great time getting the chance to pick his brain, and I hope you enjoy it as well.

Online TV Shows by Ustream
UPDATE: Thanks to Bud Hunt and Robin Ellis, here are about the last 30 minutes of the chat for this UStream session.

So there’s lots congealing in this post, which, btw, is one reason I’m sure is going to exhibit some of the thin thinking that I described earlier. For one, we’re seriously looking at options for our kids’ education, one of them being a nearby Waldorf School. Two, I’m reading Sir Ken Robinson’s excellent new book “The Element“, and third, I had lunch with my former partner in crime at my old school Rob Mancabelli who usually pushes my thinking on all things technology and world related. There’s actually a fourth component to this and that is the continual struggle I’ve watched over the years for some teachers trying to dip a toe in these Web waters. In short, all of it’s got me thinking about how Web 2.0 technologies cater to a certain group of abilities or intelligences more than others, and it’s got me wondering about the consequences.

Rob started it as he talked about the difficulty of trying to apply Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences to these tools. We started talking about kids who might be primarily bodily or logical or naturalistic learners and where they fit into all of this. And it got me started thinking (once again) how blogging caters to those who can write and who feel confident in they way they express myself. I know for a fact that one very well known educational consultant who speaks about these shifts doesn’t have much of a 2.0 footprint because he/she simply abhors writing, and I’m sure there are millions of folks for whom blogging or wiki-ing or all these other tools will be a struggle. If you believe Gardner, and I know there are skeptics, you’ll do fine here if you are highly verbal and interpersonal; I know the verbal part is why I love this so much. If not, it’s a much harder road.

The Waldorf School that we are looking at seems to look at kids as individuals and treats the curriculum as a journey not a deliverable. Sure, the rhetoric gets a bit crunchy at times, even for me, but I can’t deny that it has a strong appeal for me, especially in the context of the conversations I’ve been having the last seven years. But here’s is the irony: the school uses very little technology. That undoubtedly will play into any decision we make, but it’s not a deal breaker for me. My kids have lots of access at home, and I know they’ll love having me mentor them if it comes to that. (Really. I mean it.)

And I love this little twist from Sir Ken’s book: It’s not “how intelligent are you?” as much as it’s “how are you intelligent?” He talks about “The Element” as being at the intersection of “unique personal aptitude combined with a deep passion and commitment” (46). It’s a wonderful place to be, I can tell you. And I want it desperately for my kids and for other people’s kids too, because I believe with Sir Ken that if we don’t help our kids find that space as they grow into their adult lives, especially today with the complex problems that face us, we are all going to be worse off.

So I’m wondering through all of this what role social technologies have for those who may not have the aptitudes to tap into their potential. And what do we do about that? Whether we think this new learning landscape online is a good thing or not, the reality is that it’s not going away, and that having the skills to make the most of the opportunities here are only going to become more and more important. But how do we make that happen for those who don’t find the entry point as easy as most of you reading this have found it?

Lots of questions, I know. Not a lot of clear answers. This truly is one of those testing posts.

None of this is anything new by the way; others have been pounding me over the head with it for years. And I have listened, but not as deeply as I could have. But what’s different now is this long, hard look I’m taking at my own kids, trying to help them find their passions or introduce them to classrooms or pedagogies where that might happen. Where they can actually do the problem solving, critical thinking and collaboration that are not new ideas but have been neglected for so long by this ridiculous regime of testing that we’ve had that I think we feel the need to repackage them under the guise of “21st Century Skills.”

If any of this makes sense, would love as always to hear your take…

Heard while driving home from Tess’s basketball game earlier.

“But Dad, I’m the only one in my class who doesn’t have a cell phone.”

“I know Sweetie, but that’s not a great reason for getting one.”

“But Dad, it’s like embarassing.”

“I’m sorry Tess, really. Mom and I will talk about it again, but for now…”

“Ugh.”

Silence for a few minutes.

“So, anything happen at school today?”

“No.”

“Nothing?”

“Ugh. We got a writing assignment.”

“A writing assignment? What kind?”

“We’re learning persuasive essays.”

“Persuasive essays? Well that’s kind of appropriate.”

“Like, what do you mean?”

“Well, don’t you have something you want to persuade me to do?”

She looks at me and smiles. “Cell phone!” Pause. “Ugh.”

“What?”

“I can’t do it on cell phones.”

“Why not?”

“”Cause I had to pick from a list.”

“And you picked…”

“Why we shouldn’t be forced to wear uniforms at school.”

“Ugh.”

Still in the progress of rethinking my online reading habits. About three weeks ago, I deleted every feed from my Google Reader and decided to start over, and I’ve been slowly adding feeds as I come across things of interest. But I’ve also been looking at different avenues to find the most interesting, most relevant stuff, and, most importantly, to shift my reading to include more diversity. Here are just some unsorted reflections and benchmarks so far.

• I’ve stopped subscribing to all but a handful of edublogs. For some time now it’s been feeling like there’s not much new in the conversation. I may be guilty of that as well, and I think that’s a product of my narrow scope of reading.
• My main source of reading right now is my Delicious network, which I am constantly revisiting. I’m thinking that for me at least, 50 people is about the right amount of flow. This is without question, however, not a very diverse group of folks in terms of read/write web worldview. It’s almost all info candy. I continue to find it really interesting, however, to see the types of reading themes that people dive into as it tells much about where a particular person’s thinking or research is at.
• I’m finding myself devoting more time to the “friend’s shared items” in my Google Reader, which is a good and bad thing. The bad is that the “friends” list is generated by who is in my Gmail contacts which means I can’t add or delete folks from this stream without some difficulty. The good, however, is that there is some diversity in there as some of my contacts actively read and share thinking that is outside of my box at least. It’s been a main part in pushing my thinking about the whole “21st Century Skills” label, about which my thinking has been evolvoing quite a bit. (Short answer: Not much new there, but the label has some value.)
• This post by Marshall Kirkpatrick at Read/Write Web really has my thinking about filter creation a la Clay Shirky. There is something about this experimental phase that I really love, and I’ve been itching to figure out some different ways to identify, collect and sort the most relevant information out there. Not rocket science, and I’m sure others are farther down this road than I, but I’ve been hacking around with PostRank the last couple of days and waiting to see the results. I know that using a sorting feature to bring me only the most saved, commented upon, bookmarked posts from any blogs has it’s downsides, timeliness for one. But I’m playing with the choices.
• I’m also digging more deeply into the Google News search and subscribe features as well as the Twitter search stuff. For instance, you can do a search for any Tweets that have the word “literacy” and includes a link. Problem is, of course, that it doesn’t catch everything and much of what it does catch is irrelevant.
• I’m growing increasingly enamored withe Google Notebook as a way to capture the best snippets and ideas for a variety of purposes. More and more, I read with an ear for saving the most salient parts, which is really challenging me to think of my own organizational schemes in a good, but somewhat frustrating way.

So I’m asking for a couple of things, here. First, how do you create diversity in your reading? What strategies do you use and who are some authors that your read to get out of your own boxes? And second, what other ways of filtering information have you come across or do you use to increase your signal to noise ratio?

There is so much to read, and I want to read it all, but I know I can’t. What is most important to me right now is that my reading stretches me and pushes me, not just affirms what I think I already know. I feel bad on some level on giving up many of the blogs I’ve ready for many, many years now. But if I can tap into the strengths of the network and the best filters that are currently out there, I trust that the best thinking and writing from those long-followed sources will float up through my attention stream anyway.

(Photo “Research Team” by Dean Shareski.)

So at some point in recent weeks the blog-post-o-meter rolled through 3,000, and if I’m even close in my estimation that the average length of posts over the last seven and a half years has been around 3-400 words, that suggests about 1 million words of writing and reflecting and thinking here. That’s a pretty staggering number in my feeble brain.  You’d think that after all of that output this publishing thing would be almost as easy as breathing.

Well, it’s not.

I’m reminded of this because of conversations we’ve been having of late with team leaders in PLP. While the successes are many and impressive, a good number of people still find the thought of publishing to an audience, even a relatively small, private audience of like-minded souls, to be too daunting. It’s just way outside their comfort zone, and they just believe that their contributions would either not be relevant, interesting or useful. It’s hard to nurture these folks, to convince them to take small steps, to help them see the potential upside. And I really believe that there is an upside to sharing what you know and do with others; it’s the foundation for building learning networks.

But here is the thing: no matter how you slice it, blogging is a risk. And it’s a risk not just because you are putting yourself out there for the world, but because unlike many other types of writing that we do, it’s unfinished. At least that’s the way it feels for me. I don’t KNOW very much for certain. But blogging isn’t about what I know as much as it’s about what I think I know, and I find that to be a crucial distinction. For me, it’s the distinction that constantly makes this hard. It’s also the distinction, however, that makes blogging worth it. The one thing that a potential global audience does more than anything else is create the opportunity to really learn through writing in various texts, through the conversation and feedback that ensues. I say this all the time, that while a lot of my learning occurs in the composing of the post (or whatever), most of it occurs in the distributed reactions (when they happen) after I publish.

One thing I do know is that when I write with a humility of not knowing I get a lot more learning in return. That plays out in my reading as well. I am not the greatest commentor on other people’s blogs (though I am working on that.) But I find I am much more compelled to comment on posts where the author is obviously testing unfinished ideas. Where that person is not simply saying “this is the way the world is.” I find those types of posts less compelling.

And, obviously, the other risk is that my “thin thinking” will not simply be responded to but will be ripped to shreds at the hands of those who disagree or who may be smarter or more wordly than I. (They number in the billions.) Fortunately, that has not happened very often here, with some notable exceptions. What is hard to convey to new bloggers and publishers is that the debate is almost always civil, and that those naysayers who denigrate and tear down what they perceive as ignorance are not worth listening to. They are not teachers. I welcome disagreement, but I will tune out those who voice it with cynicism regardless of the validity of their response. When I read those constant smirkers, I wonder if they would treat younger learners the same way? Luckily, it seems, few of them are in classrooms.

Despite all of this, for me, right now, the rewards far outweigh the risks. I just wish I knew better how to convey that to those who see the scales tipping steeply in the other direction. And I wish I could help them understand that the angst I still feel every time I press “publish” is a good thing on balance, not something to avoid as much as to embrace as a path to a greater awareness of myself and of the world around me.

(Image “Sanskrit Blogging on the Rise” by chucks.)

Clay Shirky in the Columbia Journalism Review:

I’m just so impatient with the argument that the world should be slowed down to help people who aren’t smart enough to understand what’s going on. It’s in part because I grew up in a generation that benefited enormously from not doing that. Right? The baby boomers, when we were young, we had zero, zero patience for the idea that people who are in their fifties in the ’70s and ’80s should somehow be shielded from cultural changes because somehow the stuff that we were doing was upsetting them. So, now it’s our turn and we ought to just suck it up.

Right on.

I’m not sure this will ever come to pass, but talk about standing the world on its end. Chris Anderson of Wired and Ted answers the question “What Will Change Everything” with this: “The Web Empowered Revolution in Teaching“.

For one thing, the realization that today’s best teachers can become global celebrities is going to boost the caliber of those who teach. For the first time in many years it’s possible to imagine ambitious, brilliant 18-year-olds putting ‘teacher’ at the top of their career choice list. Indeed the very definition of “great teacher” will expand, as numerous others outside the profession with the ability to communicate important ideas find a new incentive to make that talent available to the world. Additionally every existing teacher can greatly amplify their own abilities by inviting into their classroom, on video, the world’s greatest scientists, visionaries and tutors. (Can a teacher inspire over video? Absolutely. We hear jaw-dropping stories of this every day.)

Whoa.

Jay Matthews wrote a piece in the Post this morning titled “The Latest Doomed Pedagogical Fad: 21st Century Skills” to which I replied what follows. Would be interested to hear your thoughts, here or there…

I don’t disagree that the majority of “21st Century Skills” are nothing new, and that we should have been teaching them all along. As computer and online technologies evolve, we have more tools that we can use to teach those skills in perhaps more relevant or compelling ways. But that depends on the teacher’s familiarity and comfort level with those technologies, obviously.

What is different here, though, is something that is not being articulated by the Partnership or many others, and that is the learning that can be done (and is being done already) using online social tools and networks. I’d point you to a recent MacArthur Foundation study which concludes that “New media forms have altered how youth socialize and learn” and that this has very important implications for schools and teaching (http://tinyurl.com/55a878, pdf). While most kids’ uses of these technologies are “friendship based”, the more compelling shift is when their use is “interest based” or when they connect with other kids or adults around the topics or ideas they are passionate to learn about. With access to the Internet, and with an understanding of how to create and navigate these online, social learning spaces, opportunities for learning widely and deeply reside in the connections that we make with other people who can teach or mentor us and/or collaboarate with us in the learning process. That, I think, is where we find 21st Century skills that are different and important. Sure, those connections require a well developed reading and writing literacy, and critical thinking and creativity and many of the others are skills inherent to the process. But this new potential to learn easily and deeply in environments that are not bounded by physical space or scheduled time constraints requires us as educators to take a hard look at how we are helping our students realize the potentials of those opportunities.

Having blogged now for seven years and having learned in these interest or passion-based online networks and communities for almost as long, it’s hard to begin to describe how different it is from the classroom teaching that I did for 18 years in a public high school. My learning is self-directed, and everyone in these virtual classrooms wants to be there because they too are interested in pursuing their interests. They come from all over the world, all different cultures, all different experiences, a diversity that is hard to fashion in most school classrooms. We share our learning openly, admit anyone into the conversation, and constantly seek to make each other smarter.

But while that can sound like a pretty positive and powerful space, it is fraught with complexity. We have to learn to read not only texts but to edit them as well, not just for accuracy but for bias, agenda and motive. In the online learning world, we have to be full fledged editors, not just readers, because the traditional editors are gone from the process. And, we have to be creators as well. In order for us to be found by potential teachers and collaborators, we need to have a presence, a footprint. I’m fully convinced that my own kids need to publish, need to establish their reputations early by creating and sharing and engaging in ideas in provocative and appropriate ways. These are not easy skills to master.(I’d refer you to Dan Gillmor’s new essay “Principles for a New Media Literacy” http://tinyurl.com/4b3pos for more on that.)

My kids need the help of teachers in their classrooms who understand all of this on some personal, practical level. They need teachers who can help them navigate these complex spaces and relationships online that require, at the very least, a different application of traditional skills and literacies. I think as educators we have a duty to do so. You can call it a “fad” if you like, but the reality is that these skills are sorely lacking in our teachers who are suffocating in paper, policies and processes that prevent them from exploring the potential of online networked learning spaces. It’s imperative, I think, that we change that. To quote Kansas State professor Michael Wesch, “We [need to] use social media in the classroom not because our students use it, but because we are afraid that social media might be using them – that they are using social media blindly, without recognition of the new challenges and opportunities they might create” (http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=192). To me, that’s what 21st Century Skills are all about, teaching our kids to navigate the world as they are experiencing it, not the world we experienced.

Just for the record, I love this quote by Michael Wesch:

We use social media in the classroom not because our students use it, but because we are afraid that social media might be using them – that they are using social media blindly, without recognition of the new challenges and opportunities they might create.

Emphasis on the opportunities. I think this is a key part of making the case to teachers and schools as to why we absolutely need to consider these technologies and make them a part of our own practice. But the other key here is that we as educators cannot use social media blindly here either. Whether we think it’s a game changer or not, we have to understand how our kids could experience the world if they use these technologies well.

Happy 2009!

I did some counting yesterday. Totalled up all of the blog posts and comments on those posts for the last three years, and found a pretty interesting relationship. Seems the less I write, the more people comment. (Click the picture to view my first “pencast” on the subject and to get the numbers if you want them.)

Hmmmm…

Now I know that there may be a host of explanations for this, and certainly, the reasons for the reduced number of posts at least are pretty obvious to me. In order, my work with PLP, the craziness of my schedule last year, the desire to spend time playing with kids vs. blogging when not on the road, and Twitter. In short, I’m just not the blogger that I used to be by more than half over three years ago if you’re just totaling up the numbers. Yet, somewhat surprisingly to me, there’s more conversation. I know this isn’t just happening here; it’s not unusual to find comment threads of over 25 or 30 in various places around the edublogosphere. And while I’d like to think that my ideas are getting more compelling or stickier (or maybe more debatable), I think most of it is just Twitter. The somewhat bizarre reality of my Twitter existence is that it’s become a tool to drive readers here. (In fact, I’d love to be able to see what percentage of people commenting come here via Twitter…I’d be willing to guess at least a third.) That’s not a bad thing, per se, but I wonder if that’s really the direction I want to be moving in.

I’ve suggested here many times that I think the size of the audience for these conversations (loosely, very loosely defined as those having to do with how learning and schools change in the context of social Web tools) is still amazingly small. I still believe that. I’d sincerely love to hear how others view this, but my own very general estimation is that maybe, maybe 5% of the educational professionals in this country are compelled enough by these shifts to think seriously about changing their own personal and professional learning practice. Maybe. When I think of that in raw numbers, even 350,000 feels high. Really high. You’d think with 350,000 we’d have some sort of organized movement or conversation. If anyone can tell me where it exists, please let me know.

So, looking forward, I’m still in the same place in terms of where I want to spend more of my energies…not so much on the people who have already showed up, but on the people who don’t know that this production is even playing. Sure, presenting and speaking can accomplish some of that. But if you take the aggregate effect of all of us supposed idea peddlars, I’m not sure that’s where substantive change is happening. (That’s one of the reasons I’m drawn to the PLP model…sustained PD not just drive by.) I wonder this: what would happen if 5% of the 150 million or so parents in this country started thinking about this stuff? What if we had 7.5 million or so in some coordinated effort to rethink this system that is serving us so well? Possible? I think it’s something worth continuing to explore. And maybe collectively, we do have the reach, the networks to have some real effect on policy…assuming we can coordinate a message. More to come on that…

Along those lines, one of my goals for this year is to continue to write offline for print, for magazines, another book, and any other ways I can think of to bring more voices in. And in that process, I really want to try to extend myself as a writer. (I’d love to start a “Craft of Writing/Blogging/Essay” group or something if anyone is interested.) So that trend line for my blogging may continue downward in 2009, perhaps not as steeply, but downward nonetheless.

Sincere thanks to all of you who participated, commented, read in 2008. Here’s to even greater learning in 2009…