I finally got around to finishing up Sir Ken Robinson’s new book “The Element” which, for the most part, was a great read. He lays out a pretty compelling case for the power of passion in learning, and the absolute need for schools to help students identify their own passions through which they can learn just about anything they need. I’ve said in the past that the one thing I want from my own kids’ teachers is for them to help them find what they love to do more than anything else and then support them in their learning endeavors around that topic. Unfortunately, that is not something the current public school system was build for.
Toward the end of the book, Sir Ken lays out the case for personalizing our kids’ educations in the context of transforming (not reforming) schools:
The key to this transformation is not to standardize education but to personalize it, to build achievement on discovering the individual talents of the each child, to put students in an environment where they want to learn and where they can naturally discover their true passions (238). The curriculum should be personalized. Learning happens in the minds and souls of individuals–not in the databases of multiple-choice tests (248).
He argues that we should do away with the hierarchy of subjects and that we should work as hard as we can to customize, not standardize, each student’s experience of schooling. Oh, to dream.
As I thought about those points, I started thinking about how we treat teachers and their learning as well. So much of professional development is throwing everyone in a room and having them learn the same stuff. Maybe there is some choice in the offerings, but by and large there is very little attempt at creating a customized professional development curriculum for teachers. Yes, we have our PIPs, but those usually address deficiencies or weakensses, not passions.
The other day, I was having a conversation along these lines with a good friend who serves as the Director of Technology at a local school. We were talking about change, about how hard it is, and how long it takes. While he’s done a great deal to move his school forward in terms of open source and social tools and technology in general, from a pedagogy standpoint, he had been racking his brain trying to figure out how to support individual teachers in these shifts. Finally, he came to the conclusion that the only way to do it was to create an individualized learning experience for each teacher, to take them where they are and mentor them, individually, to a different place. He’s in the process of surveying each teacher to determine what technologies they currently use, what their comfort levels are, and what they are most passionate about. Then, using those results, he and one other tech educator at the school are going to start going one by one, talking about change, looking at tools, making connections, and shifting the pedagogy.
Whoa.
It echoes Sir Ken:
Too many reform movements in education are designed to make education teacher-proof. The most successful systems in the world take the opposite view. They invest in teachers. The reason is that people succeed best when they have others who understand their talents, challenges, and abilities. This is why mentoring is such a helpful force in so many people’s lives. Great teachers have always understood that their real role is not to teach subjects but to teach students (249).
Teachers are learners. If they’re not, they shouldn’t be teachers. In a world where we can engage in our passions through the affordances of connective technologies online, we need to be thinking about how to personalize the learning of the adults in the room as well as the kids. This is not the easy route, by any stretch, but it’s the best route if we’re serious about moving the education of our kids to a different place.
Last night some edubloggertweeterwikiists launched a pretty cool idea for marking the best Twitter posts for the month of March. The idea is pretty simple; see a valuable Tweet and ReTweet it with the hashtag #gr8t. You can then either read them as they come through on this wiki page, or subscribe to the RSS feed from the search.twitter.com results page.
Used judiciously, this could be a fine way to track some of the most informative Tweets out there. I’ve been trying to keep the number of people I follow to a minimum, so for me, tapping into the best of the edutwittersphere in this way could be pretty helpful. It’s like a delicious for Twitter, kinda sorta. (It should also benefit those who follow like 10, 459 people too.)
I’ve always struggled (though not too mightily) with the signal to noise ratio on Twitter. Through the people I follow and with the varying amounts of time I spend on it per day, I probably average about half a dozen good links a day. While I enjoy the back and forth somewhat, I’m really looking for links more than anything, and I’ve been pretty successful at mining Twitter search for Tweets that contain certain words AND a link. Lots of ways to do it.
So, anyway, for next month at least, add your #Gr8t Tweets to the list…
I voted for Barack Obama, and I’m still a supporter, but I’m growing more and more doubtful that things are going to change much from an education perspective any time soon in terms of leadership from above. This post “Is Arne Duncan Really Margaret Spellings in Drag?” by Diane Ravitch in Bridging Differences (a blog every educator should be reading, btw) coupled with a slew of articles like this one titled “Utah to buy education technology with stimulus funding” from The Salt Lake Tribune are pretty telling not only in where the conversation about education remains but the total lack of vision on the part of those making the decisions.
In the Ravitch post, she writes:
It turns out that Duncan, like the Bush administration, adores testing, charter schools, merit pay, and entrepreneurs. Part of the stimulus money, he told Sam Dillon of The New York Times, will be used so that states can develop data systems, which will enable them to tie individual student test scores to individual teachers, greasing the way for merit pay.
And it’s telling that in the lede to the piece from Salt Lake, we get that assessment piece again.
Utah will use some of its federal stimulus money to pay for high-tech teaching software and new computer labs in Utah’s poorest schools as part of an effort to use new technologies to boost test scores.
I mean, how sad is that line when you really think of it. “Boost test scores?” Heck, we can do that in a nanosecond by making the questions easier, if that’s all that matters. (Read the comments if you really want to get depressed.) Sure, spending all that money, in Utah’s case about $500 million, on computers and assessments and other goodies may do something to boost the economy, but it will in no way “virtually reinvent the schools” as state superintendent Patti Harrington suggests. Even the poor ones. That actually takes some vision and some practical understanding of the world as it is, not as it was.
You want to make the most of the stimulus? Invest it in getting teachers and students connected, and in professional development that goes far, far beyond the one-day Powerpoint workshops many are mired in to something that focuses on how learning changes in a networked world. One that helps teachers see the world differently and helps them re-envision their classroom practice. I mean how many of the people in charge would even begin to understand this statement from Kathleen Blake Yancey in the new NCTE report on Writing in the 21st Century?
First, we have moved beyond a pyramid-like, sequential model of literacy development in which print literacy comes first and digital literacy comes second and networked literacy practices, if they come at all, come third and last…perhaps as never before, learning to write is a lifelong process.
I can’t imaging that Arne Duncan or Patti Harrington or most decision makers would have any sense of what that shift represents in terms of curriculum and instruction, and their brains would implode should they try to figure out how to use common assessments to measure those literacies. Frankly, I’ve yet to find anyone at the state level anywhere who has a footprint that would suggest writing literacy at the level NCTE is discussing right now. Call me a snob.
So, you want to use the education piece of the stimulus to boost the economy? By all means, keep your brain in the box. But if you really want to use that money to improve learning, use it to help the teachers in the schools understand how to help the kids in the classrooms become the readers and writers and mathematicians and scientists that will flourish in a networked world.
Indeed, the whole learning process is changing thanks to the Internet. First professors posted syllabi online and used e-mail to supplement their office hours. Then learning activities like classroom presentations were supplemented by student-published Web pages, searchable discussion forums, and collaborative wikis. In a curve that has only been accelerating these past 20 years, we now have an educational economy of information abundance confronting an educational delivery system that was built for a time of information scarcity. Colleges have shared some of their best teaching using new systems like Apple’s iTunes U, OpenCourseWare, and explosive content-creation activities underway in countries like India and China.
Future generations of learners will no doubt look back at the global economic crisis of 2008-9 and reflect on which institutions were agile enough to make a difference by bringing the wisdom of their scholars together with the acumen of their technology officers and the ingenuity and determination of their university leaders. It’s actually not only the future of the university that is in play. How we produce, organize, and distribute open education resources is at the heart of the future of education around the world. [Emphasis mine.]
While this is obviously a look at higher ed, it has implications for the K-12 set, no doubt. He also talks about the looming demise of the textbook industry. Good stuff.
So I’m thinking the March issue of Educational Leadership (due on their website soon) represents a not so insignificant marker in the continued deepening and broadening of the change conversation around these shifts and technologies. It’s not just the theme, “Literacy 2.0″ but the quality of the articles and authors that are included. And, most importantly, it’s the level of understanding that most of the pieces display around the idea of living and learning in networks and communities online.
I feel privileged to have a piece in the collection, “Becoming Network-Wise,” (which is why I got the advance copies) especially so when the other authors include Jason Ohler (”Orchestrating the Media Collage”), John Palfrey (”Mastering Multitasking”), Michele Knobel (”Let’s Talk 2.0″), Howard Gardner (”The Best of Both Literacies”), James Paul Gee (”Welcome to Our Virtual Worlds”) and others. And there are articles on “The Importance of Deep Reading,” “Stepping Beyond Wikipedia,” and “Plagiarism in the Internet Age” as well. And I’m most happy with a piece titled “The Joy of Blogging” by my old friend and compatriot Ann Davis, with whom I did my first classroom collaboration almost six years ago now. It’s great to see her research in classroom blogging finally begin to see the light of a larger audience.
The small little problem, however, is that most of these articles will be inaccessible to a general audience. While Educational Leadership usually publishes full text of one of the pieces from each issue to it’s website, the full slate of articles will only be available in print. As far as I can tell, they never become fully available even in the archive (which appears to be down at the moment.) That, of course, is an ironic problem in a world where most of what we learn is a direct result of the transparency and accessibility of ideas.
Still, if educational leaders take the time to read this issue, if they really think about the ideas and experiences captured within it and consider deeply about the changes that are underfoot, the boulder will move a few more inches (if not feet) up the mountain. Make sure the leaders at your school are on the lookout for it.
Great article by Clive Thompson in the new issue of Wired (the paper version, so no link to the text right now) about the ways in which netbooks are changing the laptop landscape. And, at the same time, cementing the idea of cloud computing in our lives. Estimates are that netbooks will hold 12 percent of the world’s entire laptop market next year, which is amazing when you think that the Eee PC is less than two years old. And their adoption says a lot about how we think about our computers these days.
As Thompson points out, 95 percent of what we do on computers can now be accomplished through the browser. I don’t need a huge hard drive or speedy fast processors as long as I have a solid, broadband connection to the Internet. (And even then I don’t need much; I’m writing this in a Google Doc while offline on a plane to Seattle.)
Netbooks are evidence that we now know what personal computers are for. Which is to say, a pretty small list of things that are conducted almost entirely online…Netbooks prove that the “cloud” is no longer just hype. It is now reasonable to design computers that oursource the difficult work to someone else. The cloud tail is wagging the hardware dog.
Nice.
I’m looking at my almost two-year-old, dropped a dozen times, bent up MacBook Pro, thinking I’m going to need to replace it in the next few months and wondering should I go with a netbook. Better yet, should I go with like seven of them (or more) which is about many I could buy for the same cost as my Mac. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Mac. And I really want to do more video work using iMovie this year. But it would be really nice not to lug this thing around everywhere in my travels.
So I’m hoping some netbookers might chime in here. What did you buy? Why do you like it? What are you doing about the things you can’t do on it?
Just finished up a really interesting interview with Carol Dweck, author of the book Mindset, and it’s got me thinking hard about the language I use with my own kids in terms of creating a “growth mindset” in them or a “fixed mindset.” I’ve always believed that we should focus on effort to improve as much if not more than what we can actually do at any given moment. In the interview, she talks about assessment, teaching learning and much more. Hope you enjoy it.
I read that as a whole lot of parents and teachers are dipping their toes in the pool and at least beginning to come to terms with social networks. Whether they can see the potentials for learning is another discussion. But I can’t help but think this conversation for reform which includes teaching kids how to learn in networked publics and online communities will be given a boost by their participation.
…Despite new opportunities to engage in such distribution of content, relatively few people are taking advantage of these recent developments. Moreover, neither creation nor sharing is randomly distributed among a diverse group of young adults. Consistent with existing literature, creative activity is related to a person’s socioeconomic status as measured by parental schooling. The novel act of sharing online, however, is considerably different with men much more likely to engage in it. However, once we control for Internet user skill, men and women are equally likely to post their materials on the Web.
The study states that as far as kids are concerned, those with at least one parent with a graduate degree are much more likely to publish, and that “while it may be that digital media are leveling the playing field in terms of exposure to content, engaging in creative pursuits remains unequally distributed by social background.”
Obviously, this is not especially good news, but it’s not at all surprising. The significance of it is clear, however, from one other line in the study:
If we find unequal uptake of these activities then such discrepancies imply the emergence of a two-tiered system where some people contribute to online content while others remain mere consumers of material. Those who share their content publicly have the ability to set the agenda of public discussions and debates. (Emphasis mine.)
I think that’s another bullet point to add to the compelling case for teaching these technologies in classrooms, and especially in those classrooms in lower socio-economic areas. It reminds me of the quote from the Horizon Report a few weeks ago that said:
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.
I’ll admit I still marvel at how long it’s taken the system to even show signs of understanding what’s happening and taking steps to deal with it. For any of this to happen, we need teachers in the room who can expand their global connections as well. But the more we can begin to distribute this type of research to the educational leaders in our schools, the more opening we have to starting the conversations.
Edutopia writer Sara Bernard is looking for student input in terms of advising teachers on how they might use technology in the classroom. I’m wondering if anyone out there might want to pose the following to his/her students and send Sara some responses. It would be great to comment back here as well so we can see what kids are thinking.
What if you had to teach the classes you are taking now or something you learned years ago? How would you use technology to do it? What devices, software, games, networks, or applications would you use to help students learn more easily — and have more fun learning?
For instance, imagine that it was your job to teach algebra, Charles Dickens, volleyball, poetry, a foreign language, science, or the Civil War. Would you have your English students use Facebook to create profiles for each main character in Jane Eyre? Would you have them use Garage Band to create a World War II song or the national anthem of a fictional country? Would you use instant messaging or cell phones as tools for classroom discipline? Could you learn math from Mario?
The point of this is for Edutopia to gather specific ideas and advice from you for teachers to try in their classrooms. So, be sure to describe things in a way that a teacher – any teacher – would understand. You might want to mention any rules about technology and media that exist at your school and whether or not they would need to be modified. We’d love to hear as many suggestions as you can think of!
According to Sara, “student responses can be based on experiences that they’ve actually had in class or just ideas that they’ve come up with themselves. They should also feel free to offer basic advice for teachers about technology integration, or any other thoughts they have on the topic. Also, this isn’t an essay contest, so no pressure — students can just drop a few lines into an email if they like (though I’d appreciate it if they could include their name, grade level, school, and location).” Her e-mail is sara.bernard@edutopia.org.
(Full disclosure: I am a National Advisory Board member for the George Lucas Education Foundation which publishes the magazine.)
I’ve blogged before about how Wendy and I limit the amount of media time that Tess and Tucker get, that we struggle with knowing how much time is too much or too little to be on the computer, watch television, play the Wii or poke around on the iTouch. Most people think that since both of us spend so much time of the computer that we’d naturally let them play all they want. But we don’t. In fact, I get the feeling we’re more restrictive than many parents, ironically. (Tess swears there’s only one other kid in her grade at school that doesn’t have a phone yet.)
When I mentioned in passing our 45-minutes-a-day on the computer policy during a recent presentation, I was seriously amazed at how many people came up afterwards (and even e-mailed me later) and asked about that. There was like a whole ‘lotta angst going on in terms of people wondering if their kids were getting too much screen time and how we came to the decision to limit our own kids. I had no answer for the first part, and I felt like I stumbled through the second part because to be honest, it’s a really complex equation that is going to be different for every kid, every set of parents. For us, I think it’s a combination of having two very energetic kids who love to physically play, a reaction to the struggle for balance in my own life, and an expectation that when we’re together as a family, we’re together as a family that interacts more often than not without media. Frankly, I don’t even like it when Tess plays the apps or listens to her iTouch for long periods in the car. But she (and Tucker) can read as much as they want, and they do. We always bring their books with them and we encourage that at every turn. (For some reason, my kids don’t get car sick when reading.) Is there a huge distinction? I don’t know. Books give us something to talk about. Mario on the iTouch? Notsomuch. And there are exceptions. Tess happens to really like Google SketchUp, and she can almost always get more time if she’s making something or exhibiting some creativity. All I know is that we, and I mean we, tend to push back against technology for our kids as much as we embrace it for ourselves. And that is ironic, I know, but that’s what we’re comfortable with right now when they are 9 and 11. As they get older, they’ll get more time, but I know that we’ll monitor what their doing and have lots of conversations about it. When they get ready to start creating and publishing in earnest, we’ll certainly help them if that’s what they want to do.
Now does that mean that isn’t perfectly ok for some other parents to make other, perhaps more liberal choices about their own kids media time? Absolutely not. To each his own, and I’m not suggesting to anyone how they parent their kids. I’m also not holding myself up as the poster child for fantastic parenting. (I could tell you stories.) All I know is that’s what we’re comfortable with right now, that the real cuts and scrapes they get in their physical worlds are more important than the virtual ones at this point, that we are always struggling with it, and that for today at least, I really like who my kids are shaping up to be. They’re creative, social, articulate, thoughtful and fun to be around. Most of the time. And I hope some of that, at least, comes from our parenting around technology and media in their lives.
Fewer than 25 percent of educators feel comfortable teaching students how to protect themselves from online predators, cyberbullies and identity thieves, says a new study from the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and Educational Technology, Policy Research and Outreach (ET PRO).
So those of you who have heard me speak know that I love to tell the story of Laura Stockman and the good work that she’s been doing in her community and writing about in her blog “Twenty-five Days to Make a Difference.” Laura is only 11, but her willingness to do community service of all kinds and to share those experiences with others sets her apart in many ways. Through her blog, she’s been able to connect with people from every part of the globe, and she’s even been asked to teach other kids in other classrooms how to go about changing their own places for the better. Because of her efforts, Laura has been invited to the Special Olympics in Idaho this year to be a part of its Global Youth Summit. It’s all good stuff and I think a great testament to how even younger kids (with the help of their parents and, hopefully, their teachers) can use social media to sincerely “make a difference.”
Now, Laura has embarked on expanding the idea even more. With her mom, Angela, and Jenny Luca from Melbourne, Laura has started “Working Together to Make a Difference” which is an attempt to connect kids and adults from around the world in the name of community service. Teachers are beginning to bring service learning into their classrooms, and they’re sharing their work for others to collaborate with or to learn from. Right now, there are 44 members from Australia, Canada and the US, and they are looking for other classrooms that will participate because they want to, because they truly want to change a part of their worlds.
No doubt, this is a time when there are more people out there needing our help, and if we are to raise a generation of kids to be stewards of the world rather than simply consumers of it, we need to teach them the importance of giving and helping. Soap boxy, I know, but this is such a great attempt by one young woman to really have an impact, and it could serve as such a great model for your own students to follow and to become involved in. I really urge you to get involved if you can.
I finally got around to finishing up Sir Ken Robinson’s new book “The Element” which, for the most part, was a great read. He lays out a pretty compelling case for the power of passion in learning, and the absolute need for schools to help students identify their own passions through which they can learn just about anything they need. I’ve said in the past that the one thing I want from my own kids’ teachers is for them to help them find what they love to do more than anything else and then support them in their learning endeavors around that topic. Unfortunately, that is not something the current public school system was build for.
Last night some edubloggertweeterwikiists launched a pretty cool idea for marking the best 
So those of you who have heard me speak know that I love to tell the story of Laura Stockman and the good work that she’s been doing in her community and writing about in her blog “