Tech Ed-dy

Back to the blog, and lots to blog about.

It’s interesting to reflect on how the nature of my participation in Social Media has changed.  At first it was all about the blog, and now it’s more about Twitter and Nings.  But  I miss my blog.  It’s the place that makes me slow down and be accountable for what I am thinking and saying.  In contrast I am more inclined to lob something half baked out into the Twittersphere to see what will happen; I own it less.  However (now that I am thinking about it) since I am braver on Twitter it is also the space that has encouraged me to seek out people that challenge me.  This twitter post for example:

As someone who has been guilty of spreading the “factory model” meme I considered this one worthy of a retweet because right or wrong it made me take a step back and examine my own thinking.

Through Twitter I also recently found a Globe and Mail article called Information Rich and Attention Poor in which they argue  that since data and information today are in abundance the scarce commodity is time and attention, and a growing consequence of this shift is an increasing emphasis on speed at the expense of depth.  In other word there are so many things we could be doing it is hard to justify focusing on one thing.  Like blogging … when I could be tweeting instead.

The article also has this great quote about the production of knowledge:

We may think metaphorically of the production of knowledge as a function of “information” and “attention,” with attention understood as the set of activities by which information is ultimately transformed into various forms of knowledge.

So if attention is one the wane, how do we turn information into knowledge?  Maybe I am missing something here.  I know that there is a lot of power in the collective intelligence of the masses, but what this article seems to imply (and which I might be inclined to agree with – if I wasn’t such a fence sitter) is that this collective intelligence can cover a lot of ground, but not dig into it very deep.

The article goes in to discuss the decline of the “expert”.

But while hundreds of thousands of Web-empowered volunteers are able to very efficiently dedicate small slices of their discretionary time, the traditional experts – professors, journalists, authors and filmmakers – need to be compensated for their effort, since expertise is what they have to sell. Unfortunately for them, this has become a much harder sell because the ethic of “free” rules the economics of so much Web content.

The irony of all this is that most of the knowledge that “the crowd’ uses and remixes originally came from experts.

The system works because it is able to mine intellectual capital. This suggests that today’s “cult of the amateur” will ultimately be self-limiting and will require continuous fresh infusions of more traditional forms of expert knowledge.

For someone like me who is usually so immersed in the ra-ra world of web 2.0 this perspective on information and attention was a refreshing change and like the tweet that I started this post with, it made me revisit some of my assumptions.  Which I hope, in the end, will keep me honest.

(This will be my last blog post for the summer.  It is time to hang out with my family and attend to my non-digital network.   I’ll be back in September)

I was indirectly tagged with this meme because I read Claire Thompson’s blog post on this subject and thought that putting my summertime pro-d aspirations down in a blog post was probably a good idea considering my inclination towards taking on too much.

My normal approach to summer pro-d is to randomly plug away at anywhere from 5 to 10 projects that usually get left to the last minute as a result of summertime distractions.  My hope for this summer is to focus on a few projects and actually accomplish them (along with moving house).  So here are the projects I will prioritize:

• Help plan and organize for the ISABC summer institute with Alan November.  In particular my goals are to: 1)set up a diigo group for the institute with a tag list and then embed diigo links in the institue wiki by subject and age level; 2)use the institute wiki to collaboratively plan the events for each day of the institute; 3) populate the institute ning with relevant and provocative (?) discussion topics.
• Move all of my gr6 to 9 technology lessons to a central wiki location so that they are easier to share.  As part if this process I plan to write up each lesson properly using the Understanding By Design process.
• Submit conference proposals to CUEBC and k12online.  I have in mind a presentation that starts by looking at how the nature of information has changed and how Diigo can be used as a powerful resource for finding, annotating and sharing resources.

Other projects I would like to undertake (but won’t commit to in this blog post) include:

• Planning my math 7 lessons.  My goal for this year is to use the Mathletics learning platform and a class blog to differentiate instruction and give my students as much ownership of their own learning as possible.  On the blog I plan on supporting classroom instruction with instructional powerpoints and links to online activities and tutorials.  I’m hoping to find a lot of these over the summer.
• Reading Clay Shirky’s “Here comes everybody”
• Learn more about managing Wordpress and Wordpress MU so that I can do more with our school blogs.

OK, I know this is too much.  My next plan is to map out a possible schedule for completion and see what is really possible.  Maybe I’ll link it to this post as a way to keep myself honest.

Like Claire I can’t bring myself to point the finger at anyone else, so I will finish by borrowing her words:

If you are reading this, first off thanks!  Secondly, if you haven’t been tagged already and think you’d like to participate, then consider yourself tagged

(note: this post was written in Evernote on my iTouch while hanging out with my daughter.  I am constantly amazed at what this little computer can accomplish.)

http://clifmims.com/blog/archives/2447.

I was aware that NECC was happening this week and feeling a little blue that my current circumstances prohibit me from just picking up and flying off to another cool conference.  Then I came across David Warlick’s great blog post called Gathering the Information at NECC, which explained how I could set up a search on Technoratti for the NECC09 tag and then subscribe to the search results via RSS.  It was like importing the NECC conversations into my Google Reader.  I was amazed at how many people were blogging their notes and reflections on the keynote speakers and individual sessions.  Here are some of my favourite finds from NECC 2009:

EdubloggerCon 2009 Reflections by Jeff Utecht.  I thought this post gave a very good overview of the main topics of discussion and some insight into the dynamics of EdubloggerCon.

Putting Gladwell’s Compensatory Model into Practice or NECC 09 Keynote Part 2! by Liz Davis.  This post describes the results of a brainstorming session aimed at figuring out what the Compensatory Model would actually look like.  Some interesting ideas and a nice way to move the conversation forward rather than getting stuck on whether or not he should have talked about Fleetwood Mac for most of the keynote.

Classroom 2.0: What is Web 2.0’s Role in Schools? I don’t know how Wesley Fryer managed to capture so much of the conversation in his notes (he obviously types faster than I do)?  He does a great job summarising the key points from a panel discussion that included Chris Lehmann, Julie Lindsay, Darren Draper, David Jakes, Steve Hargadon and Sylvia Martinez.  He also does a great job summarising the Tony Vincent presentation called Do So Much with an Ipod Touch.  The amount of details in his posts is amazing.  I suspect it has something to do with the meticulous way he prepared for NECC.

Thank you to all the NECC attendees who so willingly shared their sessions and reflections online.  I really enjoyed following along.

I injured myself this week.  I was frantically trying to get some templates created and in the process injured my hand through repeating the same mouse movements over and over again.  I couldn’t believe a) how much it hurt and b) how much it impacted my productivity.  So yesterday I went out and bought myself a very expensive ergonomic mouse (not the one pictured) and couldn’t believe how comfortable it was.

This has gotten me thinking about my responsibilities as IT coordinator at my school.  I am in the process of encouraging teachers to use more technology in their classrooms, which by default means they will probably be spending more time working on computers.  The state of our school budget being what it is most of the teachers (myself included) are working on reconditioned computers with old keyboards and mice (mouses?).  A quick survey of teacher desks reveals that most of them have positioned their screen at the side of their desk so they have to turn to see it, and no-one has their keyboard in the correct position.  I am also championing netbooks at our school as a way to move towards 1:1.  The small screens, keyboards and ease with which they can be used anywhere seems to be to be a recipe for repetitive stress injuries.  In light of my recent injuries I believe that this is not sustainable.

I realise that I need to start lobbying our administration to find some money for teacher training and upgrading of keyboards and mice.  It makes no sense to get everyone excited about using technology only to have them all come down with repetitive stress injuries.  I’m curious how other schools and school districts are approaching this issue?  Are there any exemplars out there of schools taking a really proactive approach regarding RSI?

photo by morgret on flickr

I have just finished reading a really fascinating article called How David Beats Goliath: When underdogs break the rules.  The main gist of the article is that throughout history underdogs have had unbelievable success when they decide to compete on their own terms rather than conventional terms.  In the David vs Goliath battle David

hastened and ran out from the lines toward the Philistine

rather than battling toe to toe with Goliath.  Of course, he also chose to fight with a sling and stones rather than swords.

The article then goes on to describe a breathtaking array of examples where the underdog won for two main reasons (the two parts of the insurgent’s creed): being willing to go against the conventions of society (do what is “socially horrifying) and being willing to work harder than anyone else (which takes courage).  In the end victory in these examples came down to effort.

Effort can trump ability – legs … can overpower arms – because relentless effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coordination.

Threaded throughout the article is a story about a middle school girls basketball team that enjoyed incredible success despite being inexperienced and not very skilled.  Their secret was the full court press.  In short they tried harder than the other team.  When there was a turnover they didn’t run back to their side of the court to defend, they tried to get the ball back.  They didn’t bother covering the person throwing the ball, instead they focused their energies on getting to the ball before the other players.  They played by their own rules and had incredible success as a result.  The article goes on to describe the career of a college coach called Rick Pitino who went on to use the full court press to win championships with teams that didn’t have many all star, potential NBA, style players on them.  It was obviously a very successful strategy, but it was never widely adopted because it took too much work.  Pitino described his workouts this way:

The players are moving almost ninety-eight percent of the practice.  We spend very little time talking.  When we make corrections they are seven second corrections, so our heart rate never rests.  We are always working.

The implications for how I run my classroom seem obvious.  It’s really such a simple observation that effort and motivation are the keystones of effective learning that I wonder why I don’t always see it?  I can get so caught up in either the content or the particular output that I want them to produce that I am not always asking myself what I am doing to keep them motivated.  Sometimes I am guilty of assuming that if I badger them enough they will somehow find it in themselves to be truly interested in what I want them to learn, when deep down I know that the only really useful thing I have to teach my students is a love of learning.

If we don’t treat motivation as intrinsic (or something that can be turned on and off as a result of badgering my a teacher), then we can start to explore the things that really motivate in a classroom.  I can come up with three:

1. Control.  As I understand it, if our students don’t feel in control of their learning their hypothalamus  has been triggered.  They are in some sort of fight or flight mode.  When this happens information gets backlogged in their “primitive brain” and never makes it to their cortex for processing.  So whatever I teach them will never stick.  Conversely if students feel that they are being listened to and have some control of the process then it stands to reason they will be willing to invest more in the process.
2. Choice.  This is linked to control as having choices helps students feel in control.  Cathy Nunley does a brilliant job with this in her Layered Curriculum Model.  I taught Science with this model for a few year and was amazed at how motivated my students were, I couldn’t stop them working!
3. Value.  In order for effort to be valued there needs to be a reward linked to the effort.  Of course we have grades, but often grades are a mystery and if the direct path from effort to reward is not obvious then how can I expect grades to motivate?  Using rubrics and being clear about grading schemes can obviously help here, but even then grades have very little intrinsic value.  They are all about getting something;  for example, if you get good grades you can go to university.  Portfolios and exhibitions are a lot more work than just giving grades but it seems to me that the social aspect of the feedback received in these situations carries a lot more value than grades.

Finally, I wonder how all this will play out as more and more courses go online?  In my experience online courses are wonderful for students who are already motivated and willing to put in the effort.  But if I don’t physically have the student in my classroom, what can I do to motivate them to buy into the “full court press”?

Photo by Sebastia Giralt on Flickr

These are all great videos and slideshows.  I’m sure there are lots of common threads but I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by it all.  So my plan is to park them all here and come back from time to time.

21st Century Pedagogy by Marco Torres

21st century schools with Stephen Heppell

Some great presentation zen style slideshows by Kim Cofino.

The 21st Century Learner

The 21st Century Educator

I recently received an email response from someone kind enough to read my most recent blog posts.  The response was honest and thoughtful and I couldn’t get it out of my head.  I responded by email and was given permission to post my response here.  The quotes are the original email remarks.

I am a little more skeptical though.  Over the past 2000 years, ‘classical education’ (is there such a thing?) has delivered the greatest minds known to us; the scientists, the poets, the musicians, the architects, engineers, linguists and, above all, the philosophers.

I`m not convinced that the Industrial model of education that we have today IS the type of education that has existed over the past 2000 years.  It has been argued that our current system emerged as a way to mass educate students to participate in an industrial society.  Before that education consisted of more of an apprenticeship model.  This learning happened in a social context that gave the content real world relevance.  I`m not an expert on what it was like to be an apprentice but I would guess that it involved a lot of conversation and working through problems with other people you trust and respect.  I think that the power of these new internet tools and Personal Learning Networks is that they can allow us and our students to go out and find mentors andpeople we trust and learn with and from them.  Sort of like a high tech apprenticeship-mentoring model.

Your comment makes me think of Einstein, who we hold up as one of the greatest minds of our time.  He did not do well in our `Classical`schooling system and for most of his professional career worked through his ideas and thoughts in letters to colleagues.  Think what he could have accomplished if he had had a blog

I fear is that we lack the rigour that produced the great Renaissance men; that technology is raising very clever young people, but also ones that lack the discipline, work ethic and insight to change the world we have created.

I share your concern that because project based learning and social learning is more complex and dynamic than more traditional classroom learning there is a danger of students being distracted and not learning about rigour.  But if you start with the premise that PBL and social learning is real learning then I think our challenge is to introduce rigour into the process, not be put off by the fact that it is difficult to do.  I see the MYP design cycle as being a useful way to start doing this.

Maybe there is a balance between these two polar views?

I think this is the key.  In my experience in order for students to really engage in higher level explorations they first need to be taught the content and skills to build on.  There will always be a place for direct instruction, but I don`t think we should just automatically default to this way of teaching.  After reading Disrupting Class this year I have started using an online math program twice a week to give my students more autonomy in how they learn math in my class.  I am still doing some direct instruction for the students that need it and I am doing regular checks for understanding, but I am really impressed with how many of my students are able to figure things out for themselves using the tools I have made available to them.

Image by smiling_da_vinci on Flickr

Right now my brain is obsessed with 21st century professional development and what it looks like.  In my last post I suggested that this needs to start with teachers learning how to leverage the power of certain tools to start building a PLN.

I recently came across a post by Kim Cofino called The Next Generation Conference that I think had some more practical insights into what makes for a really successful pro-d event.  She suggests that in order for a conference to be exciting, engaging and community-building it needs to include the following:

We need to make conferences more practical, not just hands on training with new tools, but a focus on the actual creation of something that bridges new learning with what you already know, and asks you to create something useful.

I agree completely.  I think the trade off is that creating something new and meaningful takes time and often at a conference or training session participants and organisers are focused on filling up the time with as much content as possible.  Often when I am at a conference I feel frustrated when 3 sessions I want to attend all happen at the same time and I can’t get to them all.  I feel like my role as a participant is to be a gatherer of content.  If I was asked to enage in meaningful creation and collaboration at a conference then I think I would get frustrated because I wouldn’t be able to collect as much “stuff”. In order for me to be able to by into a pro-d opportunity that focusses on creation I would need to be prepped to go into the entire process with a different attitude.  So how can that happen?

I would love to see a conference where attendees were grouped the first day, and spent the whole conference reconnecting in various formats with a group leader.

All groups could have an ongoing task that lead you through the conference, asking participants to put their new knowledge to work, building on each plenary and presentation session, and then culminating in the production of something practical and useful during a hands on workshop time.

In order to ensure that there was enough cross-pollination across all conference attendees, the group action projects could be structured in such a way that each group is required to interact with members from the other groups in order to complete their project.

I really like this idea beacause it gives the conference/pro-d attendees a framework for thinking about and using their new knowledge.  It also spreads out the group/creation process over a longer period and intersperses it with plenary sessions and practical sessions that would make me feel like I was getting my money’s worth out of the event.

Students could do … sessions on how to use new tools or on what they’re doing with technology outside of school, or what they’d like to see in school (imagine that?). What about having students as experts on a panel discussion of what schools should be doing with technology? Or how technology has changed the way they receive, create and distribute information?

This one has gotten me thinking.  At my school we have some older students that use technology in incredibly savvy ways (they are linus experts, run their own web servers, jail break their iphones) and they tell us that they don’t see technology being a big part of their schooling because they don’t think we can catch up with them.  It would be great to have them involved in helping train and tutor teachers on how to use new tools.  This would have two potential benefits: 1) Teachers would become more aware of how these tools are an integral part of many of their student’s lives and 2) It would free up time for more big picture discussions around curriculum and pedagogy.

No matter how much you know about a topic, there is always a need for discussion after an engaging session. After each session, a group leader could facilitate an unconference style discussion, with a focus question or Visible Thinking routine to get people processing the information.

It’s amazing to me that this doesn’t happen more often.  In our classrooms we are always talking about Blooms Taxononomy and Constructivism but when it comes to our own learning we often default to the lowest level of Blooms.  Maybe it’s because that’s the way many of us were taught and it’s the mode we are the most comfortable with.

Picture by netopNyrop on Flickr

Will Richardson recently wrote

the real power of the Read/Write is not the ability to publish but the ability to connect.

This really resonated with me and I think provides a key to unlocking really powerful Professional Development opportunities.  I’ll try and explain my thinking below.

I need to start with my own experiences.  After a few years as a lurker, this year I have stared to participate more actively in the social web.  I have started to blog, I have involved my students in a global collaborative project, I have participated in Ning discussions, and I have tried to comment and not just read blog posts.  Recently I am starting to realise the power of Twitter.  I knew about all these tools a year ago, but it wasn’t until I started to use them personally that I began to understand just how powerful networked learning is.  My network is small, but through the process of sharing my thoughts and experiences (both good and bad) I have started to make contacts with like-minded teachers throughout the world.  This fledgling network has not only taught me a lot, but it has also supported me as I struggle with ideas and different ways of teaching.

I have learned a lot from my network and been more inspired than I have ever been in more formal professional development situations.  Not that face-to-face interactions aren’t important, but when the interactions at a face-to-face event are restricted to the faces in the room the potential is restricted.  If instead each of the individuals involved is connected to a Personal Learning Network (PLN) and they all bring that network with them to the face-to-face meetings, the connections and potential increase exponentially.

In my opinion effective 21st century professional development needs to start with the Networked Learning piece.  All participants in the event need to be supported as they learn how to build an effective PLN.  The question is, what would this look like?  Well, in my opinion there would be blogs; there would be commenting on blogs; there would be RSS and aggregators involved so that the power of pulling information can be realised; there would be social bookmarking and folksonomies; and maybe there would be VoIP?  The key would be to set all of this up so that real connections are made and that the platform used is flexible enough that it can beused far into the future.

One obvious platform for supporting networked pro-d is Ning.  I think that a Ning in principle is a great idea in that it combines a lot of the key ingredients in one central platform.  Participants can blog and tag their posts, participate in forums and grab RSS feeds from differet kinds of content.  The danger of creating a new Ning to support a particular event is that the Ningwill never gather enough momentum to sustain itself.  There are a lot of Nings out there gathering dust because they never managed to get all the ingredients right.  Blogging on a Ning is also a little problematic in that then then the Blog is always attached to the Ning and doesn’t necessarily become something individual that represents each particular teacher.  As such the danger is that the blog will only remain active as long as the pro-d does.

So what are some alternative platforms?  I like the Ning platform but I wonder whether there is a need to create a new Ning when there are so many good ones out there already.  If a goal of the pro-d is to help teachers start to create a PLN then wouldn’t it be more effective to start a group within an already established network like the Classroom 2.0 Ning?  I also think that the more you an customise the online space from which you share and network the more likey you are to stick with it.  The Ning blogs are for the most part quite generic.  I think that there would be a greater chance of participants continuing to blog if they atart with a platform like Edublogs or Blogger that allows for much more customisation.

What about the tools?  I am a believer in just in time and inquiry learning, but in my own experience there is also a place for direct instruction to provide a baseon which further explorations can build.  I believe that in order for teachers to start building a PLN they first need to understand the fundamentals of: how a blogging platform works; RSS and how to populate a feed reader with relevant and engaging information; tagging and folksonomies and how these have changed the way information is organised.  I believe that these topics need to be taught directly because they are fundamental to creating and sustaining an effective PLN.

What about lesson plans, teaching and curriculum?  In theory once participants at a pro-d session have started to build their PLNs they will have access to a wide range of lesson plans that iincorporate web 2.0 tools and will be able to read reflections on how those lessons went.  They will be able to read reflections by teachers trying to implement the kind of curriculum that rally leverages the power of technology.  They will be able to look for links between the experiences of other teachers and their own teaching practices. And they will be able to engage in deeper and more meaningful face-to-face interactions because they will be drawing on the experiences of their network.

What about the keynote speaker?  I think that their role is to share inspiring examples and stories that illustrate the power of Networked Learning.  They should also inspire good questions.  participants should emerge from the keynote understanding the importance of life long learning and be excited to start tackling the hard questions with the help of their PLNs.

Am I crazy?  Is this too hard to facilitate?  I don’t know.  But I do know that professional development that does not help teachers leverage the power of the internet by building robust Personal Learning Networks runs the risk of only having a short term impact, not a life long one.

Network Diagram by Sue Waters

It’s been a while.

After enjoying a brief few months as a prolific beginner blogger life seems to have gotten in the way and the blogging momentum has tanked.  I suspect that this is a common trend amongst us blogging newbies and I think that, in my case at least, part of the difficulty has been in taking myself too seriously.  I enjoyed blogging a lot more when I used my blog as a platform for thinking and trying out ideas, rather than as a place to store fully formed thoughts.

I suspect that the shift towards “serious blogging” stems from the fact that I am trying to write posts that I can cross post between Tech Eddy and my school blog, and the school influence is pushing me towards “seriousness” and “finished” rather than “work in progress”.  I prefer “work in progress”.

So, in the spirit of thinking out loud … recently David Warlick wrote a post about 21st Century Literacies in which he quotes James Paul Gee:

In my view, in the twenty-first century we need the following—and we need them fast and all at once together: embodied empathy for complex systems; “grit” (passion + persistence); playfulness that leads to innovation; design thinking; collaborations in which groups are smarter than the smartest person in the group; and real understanding that leads to problem solving and not just test passing.  These are, to my mind, the true twenty-first century skills.

I found this a refreshing change from the usual topics normally associated with 21st Century Literacy, so I wanted to try and unpack a few of these ideas.

embodied empathy for complex systems

The world we live in and the problems we face are all really complex.  In my experience as long as a teacher tries to be the repository of knowledge they will end up simplifying the issues and students will end up with a limited understanding of the problems and a very simple ideas regarding the solutions.  The only way we can really help students understand the complexity around us is to allow for messiness and “not knowing’ in our classrooms.

“grit” (passion + persistence)

It seems to me that it is easier than ever these days to find a community that shares and can support your passion, but I was recently in a staff meeting where I was told that universities are complaining that kids these days are lazy (read lack of persistence).  I’m not so sure.  I think that kids learn differently and have different expectations regarding the ease with which they can access information, but I’m not sure that equals laziness.  I do wonder though whether the ease with which my students can use technology to access information makes it more difficult for them to learn persistence.  If they can’t google it or find it on Wikipedia they are apt to give up.

playfulness that leads to innovation

This is all about not taking yourself too seriously so that you aren’t afraid to make mistakes (sort of what this blog post is about).  You have to be willing to make and learn from mistakes to innovate.

design thinking

I think that embedding the design cycle into all my lessons has been one of the best changes to my teaching practice, ever.  Why?  Because I can see my students starting to look at what they are producing and asking themselves “Is this the best solution to the problem?” rather than “Is this going to get me an A?”  Ok, this might be a bit of an exageration.  They still want that A.

collaborations in which groups are smarter than the smartest person in the group

This is the next step I want to take in my classroom and school, I’m just not quite sure how.  The past year of blogging, tweeting and being involved in a flat classroom project have convinced me on a personal level of the power of personal learning networks.  Now I have to figure out how to gently introduce these concepts to my students and teaching colleagues.

real understanding that leads to problem solving and not just test passing

The first thing that comes to mind when I read this is YES, but “how do you measure this?”.  In my technology classes I can honestly say that I do teach this 21st century skill.  It’s all about project based learning.  But my math class is a different place.  I want to teach real understanding, but sometimes and for some students the rules have to come first and the understanding later.  And sometimes real understanding is what helps them pass a test.  I still struggle with this one.

Photo by by FotoRita [Allstar maniac] on Flickr