As we continue to have conversations around change with the 800 or so practitioners were working with in PLP, I continue to be struck by the frustration I’m feeling at the seeming separation between teaching and learning. I know that this isn’t new; I’ve been writing about teachers’ difficulties with being learners first here for a long time. When presented with the concept of building learning networks for themselves through the use of social learning tools, of making connections with other learners around the world who share their passions, many just cannot seem to break through the teacher lens and be “selfish” about it, to make it a personal shift before making a professional shift in the classroom. We want to teach with these tools first, many times at the expense, it seems, of making any real change in the way we see that learning interaction for our students because we don’t experience that change for ourselves.

More and more, though, as I look at my own kids and try to make sense what’s going to make them successful, I care less and less about a particular teacher’s content expertise and more about whether that person is a master learner, one from whom Tess or Tucker can get the skills and literacies to make sense of learning in every context, new and old. What I want are master learners, not master teachers, learners who see my kids as their apprentices for learning. Before public schooling, apprenticeship learning was the way kids were educated. They learned a trade or a skill from masters. When we moved to compulsory schooling, kids began to learn not from master doers so much as from master knowers, because we decided there were certain things that every child needed to know in order to be “educated.” And we looked for adults who could impart that knowledge, who could teach it in ways that every child could learn it.

My sense is that we need to rethink the role of those adults once again, and that we’re coming full circle. George Siemens had a great post last week about “Teaching in Social and Technological Networks” and he asked the same question that we had asked at Educon: What is the role of the teacher? It changes:

Simply: social and technological networks subvert the classroom-based role of the teacher. Networks thin classroom walls. Experts are no longer “out there” or “over there”. Skype brings anyone, from anywhere, into a classroom. Students are not confined to interacting with only the ideas of a researcher or theorist. Instead, a student can interact directly with researchers through Twitter, blogs, Facebook, and listservs. The largely unitary voice of the traditional teacher is fragmented by the limitless conversation opportunities available in networks. When learners have control of the tools of conversation, they also control the conversations in which they choose to engage.

George goes on to suggest a totally different way of thinking about “teaching” one where “instead of controlling a classroom, a teacher now influences or shapes a network.” And he discusses seven different roles that teachers will play, all of which are worth the read. The one that sticks out for me at least is the role of modelling, where he writes:

Modelling has its roots in apprenticeship. Learning is a multi-faceted process, involving cognitive, social, and emotional dimensions. Knowledge is similarly multi-faceted, involving declarative, procedural, and academic dimensions. It is unreasonable to expect a class environment to capture the richness of these dimensions. Apprenticeship learning models are among the most effective in attending to the full breadth of learning. Apprenticeship is concerned with more than cognition and knowledge (to know about) – it also addresses the process of becoming a carpenter, plumber, or physician.

But I would argue it goes further than that, that apprenticeship for every student in our classrooms these days is not so much grounded in a trade or a profession as much as it is grounded in the process of becoming a learner. Chris Lehmann likes to say that we don’t teach subjects, we teach kids. And I’ll add to that: we teach kids to learn. We can’t teach kids to learn unless we are learners ourselves, and our understanding of learning has to encompass the rich, passion-based interactions that take place in these social learning spaces online. Sure, I expect my daughter’s science teacher to have some content expertise around science, no doubt. But more, I expect him to be able to show her how to learn more about science on her own, without him, to give her the mindset and the skills to create new science, not just know old science.

How we change that mindset in teachers is another story, however, and I know it has a lot to do with expectations, traditional definitions, outcomes, culture and a whole lot more. But we need to change it to more of what Zac Chase from SLA talks about in this snip I Jinged from the “What is Educon?” video posted by Joseph Conroy. (Apologies for the audio and the stupid pop up ads.)

We still need to be teachers, but kids need to see us learning at every turn, using traditional methods of experimentation as well as social technologies that more and more are going to be their personal classrooms. How do we make more of that happen?

First of all, thanks to all of you who chimed in as to how to go about crowdsourcing this idea. Some great ideas that I’m going to try to navigate here in an attempt to offer a consensus plan. And just for the record, I’m struggling a bit with what the role of “Manager of a Crowdsourced Project” is since I don’t want to be the final arbiter or any of the decisions made by the participants but also feel like we’ll be spinning our wheels without some attempt and creating a process. There is also the danger of taking an eternity to agree on a process. So, with that said, and with the knowledge that not everyone is going to be happy, here are some suggested next steps:

Idea 1: A couple of people floated the idea of asking for “lead” editors for each of the questions, setting up a separate space each of those questions, and opening it up to having people come in and add their thoughts. The “leads” would then make a concerted effort to fashion those thoughts and ideas into a coherent draft, and then put that draft up for review. At that point, people could revise, edit, etc., and we could also add a space for dissent or at least a conversation around competing ideas.

Idea 2: A number of folks noted that most of this flows from the really big question of “What is the purpose of school?”Perhaps we should tackle that one first and then set up pages for the other questions?

Idea 3: A few people suggested a combining or re-ordering of the questions. I do think that, for example, that questions 1, 2 and 9 could be merged into one, which would allow for some of the runner-ups to be included.  I’ll throw in my own personal bias here: I think there has to be a discussion around assessment somewhere in here. I don’t want to open up a whole ‘nother round of voting on questions, however, so if it’s easier, we can just go with what we have.

Some other random ideas to consider:

• I’ll offer up the tag #10forEd to track all of this. That ok?
• We could have an Elluminate series of discussions around each of these questions. Interested?
• Shelly Blake-Plock is interested in exploring some historical contexts of all of this. Could be an interesting addition to a finished piece.
• Can we shoot for Monday as a deadline for hashing out the process?

Seems people are pretty interested in seeing this turn into some type of “real” document that schools can use as a starting point for conversations. At some point, we’ll have to get really clear on our intents as well, and we’ll have to define some process for the actual crowdsourcing piece. But I’m thinking we can move this forward without too much delay.

Thoughts?

For those who may have missed it, or anyone who wants to relive the experience, here is the Elluminate session archive for the interview with Allan Collins and Richard Halverson, authors of Rethinking Education in an Era of Technology. The mind bending sometimes thought provoking chat is here.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by, and apologies to those who were shut out when we maxed out our seats. You’ll have to get there earlier when we continue this conversation with Jon Becker on March 4 at 8 pm.

So as of today, 220 of you were kind enough to vote on what you thought were the 10 most important questions from the list that we generated at Educon. Here are the “winners” at the moment:

1. How do we support the changing role of teacher? 116
2. What is the role of the teacher? 110
3. How do we help students discover their passions? 110
4. What is the essential learning that schools impart to students? 109
5. What is the purpose of school? 102
6. How do we adapt our curriculum to the technologies that kids are already using? 100
7. What does and educated person look like today? 97
8. How do we change policy to support more flexible time and place learning? 97
9. What are the essential practices of teachers in a system where students are learning outside of school? 92
10. How do we ensure those without privilege have equal access to quality education and opportunity? 92

And here were the next three that didn’t quite make the cut:

• What is preventing us from being adaptable to change? 79
• How do you validate or evaluate informal learning? 77
• How do we measure or assess the effectiveness of individualized self-directed learning outside of school? 68

You can see the complete results here. I think it’s kind of interesting what didn’t get many votes. Obviously, few of us think physical space schools are going away anytime soon. And there doesn’t seem to be too much worry about the level of commitment schools have to kids. No doubt, the wording of some of these could probably have been better, I’m sure, but I think these 10 capture the challenges pretty well.

So what next?

The “plan” I proposed for this last week was to tackle each of these questions individually in a blog post and ask for comments to extend whatever thin thinking I threw at it with the eventual goal of “crowdsourcing” or collaboratively writing a response to each one. (And let me be clear, I’m talking crowdsourcing the response in the way Wikipedia does it.) If we’re really game, we might put this together in some form that could serve as a conversation starter for schools willing to tackle some of these “big” questions in their own planning for change process. Maybe even publish it as a book on Lulu.

So I’m wondering two things: First, what your reactions are to this list, and second, what are your thoughts on how we can turn this into something more “actionable?”

Just wanted to give a quick heads up that I’ll be interviewing Allan Collins and Richard Halverson, authors of Rethinking Education in an Age of Technology, this upcoming Monday night at 8 pm EST. More than any other in the past year, this book has really been pushing my thinking about the urgency of the shift and the potential outcomes if we don’t begin to address them. I used quotes from the book to frame my Educon conversation and to start the crowdsource project that we’re trying to undertake. (More on that in a bit.)

It would be great if you would add some questions for Allan and Rich in the comments below. It will be a quick hour, I’m sure, but one that I hope might start and or further some conversations in the network or in your schools. Here’s the link for the Elluminate room and we’ve got a hundred seats. Hope you can join us.

(Note: Your participation is requested below…)

So it’s taken me a couple of weeks to get to this reflection on the conversation I led at Educon. I hope those in attendance and online feel as I do that it was a pretty compelling session, and I like the fact that we had a tangible albeit undeveloped takeaway. I’m hoping maybe we can dive more deeply into it here.

Just as a reminder, here’s a link to the session description. We had about 100 people in the room and another 40 or so online grappling with the question “What are the ‘big’ conversations that schools should be having in relation to the ‘tectonic’ shifts that are occuring with social learning online?” After some small and large group discussion, here is the list we came up with in no particular order:

• What does an educated person look like today?
• What are the essential practices of teachers in a system where students are learning outside of school?
• If some percentage of schooling is socialization and relationship building, how would that happen outside of school?
• How are we going to shift the expectations for schools from all of our constituents?
• How do we change policy to support more flexible time and place learning?
• How does our thinking of the physical space change?How do we support the changing role of teacher?
• What is the role of the teacher?Do we really need a physical space?
• How do K-12 and higher ed have this conversation about change together?
• What is the purpose of school?How do we teach kids ethics and citizenship?
• How do we continue to make school available to everyone?
• Is school a resource or it something we do?
• How do we adapt our curriculum to the technologies that kids are already using?
• How do we ensure that every child has access to learning opportunities outside of school?
• How do we make school fun?
• What should be compulsory about school?
• How do we make sure that the weakest forms of traditional schooling don’t get amplified by technology?
• How do we avoid the social justice implications of an elitist model of education?
• How do we ensure those without privilege have equal access to quality education and opportunity?
• How do we become better equipped, both as individuals and as systems, to deal with change?
• What is preventing us from being adaptable to change?
• How do we rethink the reallocation of resources to support individualized instruction?
• We will be creating a new class of marginalized people with these shifts?
• What is the essential learning that schools impart to students?
• How do public schools prove that they are commtted to education all children?
• What risks are we willing to accept?
• What is our obligation to collaborate with other systems going through similar changes?
• How do we measure or assess the effectiveness of individualized self-directed learning outside of school?
• How do you validate or evaluate informal learning?
• How do we help students discover their passions?
• Who is going to pay for equity of access to these environments?
• How can we use our best resources more effectively for our students?

May just be me, but that’s a pretty impressive list. And pretty daunting in some respects. I think many of these are worth delving into further, and I’m hoping you might be willing to help narrow these down to the “top 10″ of these and then start a conversation on each one of them through a series of blog posts.

Keep the conversation going…Join in!

I’ve added all of these to a Google form where you can check off the 10 that you think might be most worth diving into. (I would embed it, but it’s not rendering very well in the blog.) If we could get a bunch of people to chime in over the next couple of days, then perhaps we could really crowdsource some responses. Heck, maybe we can even collectively write a book around these ideas that might work as a guide to starting these conversations in schools. Dream big.)

Anyone game?

So I ran across this Smart Ease of Use video in the course of one of our threads in a PLP cohort and I have to say, I can’t seem to shake it. I mean, maybe I’m missing something here, but if this is a vision of “transformative” technology, we’re in some serious trouble. Worse, if this marketing piece actually does the job and creates sales of Smart boards, we’re in even bigger trouble.

Is this really a vision of classrooms and learning that we aspire to? Is it all about being “easy”? And what does it say when the manufacturer of one of the most popular pieces of technologies in schools presents this picture for what teachers and students should be doing in schools?

Help me…what am I missing?

If I could put in a few phrases what I took away from this year’s Educon experience it was this:

Stop complaining. Be the change. Love your students and do well by them. If that includes technology, so be it.

And it was those first two that stood out, for me at least. I heard variations on those themes more in the last two days than the first two Educons combined. Maybe it was because there were more people this year. Maybe because we’re finally getting tired of talking about change, about waiting for something or someone else to change. Or maybe because when you get into a room of people who are seriously reflecting on their own practice and their own schools, getting fired up and committed to action is just easier to do. I kept thinking during the sessions I attended that if I could start a school picking my teachers from those who were in the room, it could be a pretty amazing place.

But while most in attendance want to change the classrooms and the schools they work in, that vision of change is still amorphous. Jon Becker wrote about that fact pre Educon, and I hope he follows up with more thoughts post. I mean David Warlick and others were talking about creating a new story for education like four years ago and we still don’t seem to have a handle on it. It’s the tease of having the conference at SLA where you get to spend a couple days in a school that probably comes as close to what most of want our schools to be. All sorts of tweets along the lines of “I’d kill to work here” were popping up in the stream, as if SLA were out of reach at their own schools.

But do we all want an SLA? I know that I would want the culture of learning and the singular focus on kids, something that I don’t see very much in my travels. I mean I’m sure that SLA teachers have their complaints, but their good fortune is to work in a culture of teaching and learning that represents no new vision of schooling as much as it does leadership that can successfully navigate the current minefields that work against that vision. What I’m finding more and more as I visit schools that are getting more serious about “change” is that they have someone at the top who is willing to focus on the learning and not on the other crap. And you can pick these people out in a heartbeat; they are leaders AND learners, and they’re not ashamed to share the driving questions they have about their schools with those around them. They have a passion not for making AYP or top schools lists as much as they do supporting their teachers to be learners, allowing them to look at their own teaching as a deep learning experience and share that learning with others. I see those types of leaders very rarely. But more and more this year I heard, “so what?” I heard “you [teachers] have more power than you know.” I heard “It’s too important to wait for permission.” Create your own vision for change that you think is best for your students and implement it. Love the struggle. Love your kids. Lead. What choice do you have?

One of the things that makes Educon special is the structure: these really are conversations, not presentations. I don’t go to sessions to learn as much as I do to think, to contribute, because that’s where the best learning takes place. But I’m wondering if (and I hope to talk more about this later in the context of my own session) if next year we can call the sessions “conversations/actions” or some other phrase or term that captures that “be the change” idea. We’ve been talking about this stuff for so long; maybe 2010 can be the year we really start creating a clearer 2020 vision for our schools with more of a roadmap of how to get there.