So we did one in our office today, and it was useful. We scheduled a block of time, sat down, and wrote. We weren’t all writing the same things, or for the same audiences, but we were trying to get stuff written. And it was mostly successful. There must be something in the forced accountability that comes from saying to others “We’re going to write. Right now.”1
If you’ve never considered scheduling a writing sprint with a trusted colleague, or, as Jane does, a complete group of strangers, I’d suggest you give it a try.
As important as writing is, it’s still a challenge for me to work writing time into my day, which can fill up fast with e-mail, phone calls, meetings, and other IMPORTANT STUFF. But writing is important, too. Got to fit it in. [↩]
I’ve still plenty of writing to do, but we made progress today. Always a good thing. [↩]
All of this, of course, requires certain dispositions. It means we must, at times, slow down and be reflective. We must develop the intellectual side of ourselves — the place where we can open up to others with curiosity and interest, where we can consider options or ideas we hadn’t thought of before. We have to develop the capacity to identify and explicitly work on the questions that matter most to our students — the questions or aspect of our practice that perhaps make us most uncomfortable. When we engage in collaborative inquiry, we become students of teaching and learning for one another, so we have to learn to frame good questions and develop the habit of taking an inquiry stance toward all that we do. We must become comfortable being uncomfortable — and get used to being in the place of not knowing more often, with a greater capacity for ambiguity. In fact, as Dana and Yendol-Hoppey point out, one of the reasons we engage in teacher inquiry is that it honors the complexity inherent in all our teaching. Inquiry insists that we routinely unearth our assumptions — our assumptions about our students and their families, our assumptions about our colleagues and ourselves, our assumptions about achievement and what constitutes a meaningful education — and to examine these assumptions with others — because we believe that the most effective schools have adults in them who are the least satisfied with their practice. We must be willing to collect and make public the evidence from our practice — the data and the students work. We can’t be afraid of hard work, or of saying, “I was wrong.” And we must find courage in community, as we hold each other accountable for acting on what we learn. (page viii)
That’s a mouthful of a quote, but it’s spot on. Teacher research is hard work, work that we’re about to engage in here in my school district. But it’s worth doing. And I pledge, right here and now, again, mostly to myself, but to you, too, that I’ll do my best to honor these dispositions, and to ask nothing less from my colleagues here in St. Vrain who will be doing this work with us.
I’m sitting at Denver International Airport this morning, waiting to board a flight to Austin, Texas, and the first meeting of a curators group on a project I’m involved in with the National Writing Project. The goal of my piece of the project is to help create a website, called “Digital Is,” that attempts to show what digital composition looks like here at the start of the second decade of the 21st Century.
As I wait to board my plane and anticipate the work ahead, I’m reminded of my conflicting thoughts on what composition looks like today. Howard Zinsser wrote in his book, On Writing Well, that:
“The new information age, for all its high-tech gadgetry, is, finally, writing based.”
Writing has never been more important than in this digital age. It is almost inconceivable to achieve academic success without good writing skills. And, while the fundamentals of good writing remain constant, new forms of writing are quickly evolving. Words are now regularly joined with images and voices.
Writing, or composition, isn’t all that different from the writing of generations past.1 Since we first started making markings on clay or stone or paper, we have been trying to capture thoughts in a way that would make them understandable to ourselves as well as others. We write to remember, to share, to understand. We compose to be heard, to stand up and say “This is True,” or “I am here,” or “This was scary” or “hard” or “dangerous” or “exciting”, or “emotional”, or whatever we would like to convey.
And although I make my marks today on an iPad,2 a device that makes the making of marks very easy, and almost immediately shareable to anyone who can get to the Internet, I am reminded of just how hard it is to say something in a way that accomplishes my goals as a writer, that captures what I am, or was, thinking, that lets you into my head and thoughts.
That we now have more tools for making marks, and that we have new kinds of marks – photographs, videos, complex visualizations – doesn’t make the essential task of making meaning any easier. In some ways, as our options for composition increase, it gets harder to decide, to choose which way of making marks will get the point that we wish to make across. Harder, too, is what we must do in classrooms to convey the power of language and to help make our students critical participants in the literacies and literatures of our/their/our futures/our pasts.
And what counts as “writing,” or “composition?” Is a tweet a text, or a piece of a larger text?3 Is a rambling audio podcast, recorded from the driver’s seat of my car, a composition on par with a Master’s thesis, or an essay? So long as a test or assessment or evaluation of a text occurs within a limited definition of what counts as writing, are these other forms valid? How do we who is a “good” writer? What is “good” writing?
Is “connective writing,” a term that Will and I and others use to describe blogging, a new form?((The more I think about it, it isn’t. But it’s a useful way to talk about and describe some types of “good” writing.)) What’s new? What’s different? What’s useful? What’s good? Who gets to decide such things?4
And how in the world does a language arts teacher, sitting in an airport tapping away on a virtual keyboard, find himself in a place to ask such questions, or to attempt to answer them for others via this particular project?
Just a few questions, questions I always wonder about, that are surfacing for me as I prepare to embark on this work.5
Is it? Would love to hear your take in the comments. [↩]
Finished and published on a laptop, because the iPad isn’t quite the writing device I need it to be. [↩]
And how does federal education policy muck with these questions, in sometimes good and sometimes not so good sorts of ways? [↩]
I am humbled, as always, when I think about the power and majesty of language and teaching and learning and the fact that even a guy like me can use the Internet to talk to the world about these big ideas. [↩]
In today’s podcast, recorded during my drive home from ISTE’s final activities, I talk a bit about Tuesday and Wednesday of the conference. There’s talk of the filtering panel I was fortunate to get to sit on, Howard Rheingold’sresources on crap detection, and also some of my thinking about how we must work to model the things that we want to see in our schools. Always. I thought ISTE was a good and useful conference. Thanks to those of you who made it so for me.
In this podcast, recorded on my way in to the ISTE 2010 conference this morning, I talk through my conference experience so far. I mention the Leadership Bootcamp, some of Chris’s thoughts about events like those, a conversation I’m having with Dean about digital writing, and some other highlights, as well as a concern I have about how we (don’t) read so well, perhaps.
So yesterday was the first ever ISTE/TIE Leadership Bootcamp, an event that I was happy to get the chance to assist with. Before it gets too far away from me, I thought it’d be useful to get a few thoughts down about the day, events like it, and what’s next.
The event itself was pretty straight forward – get a bunch of smart people together and talking with each other, as well as sharing some suggestions for how we might best move forward in our various leadership capacities. Prime folks ahead of time and invite lots of folks to come along in various capacities. The frame of thinking about leadership as communication I thought was a good one, although perhaps understated.
Of course, at the Leadership Bootcamp, “leader” was defined pretty broadly. As it should be. There were teachers in the room. Superintendents. IT staff. Librarians. Plenty of other folks. Point being – leaders aren’t just the folks running the ship there’s plenty of leadership for all of us to be engaged in and doing, no matter our roles and/or job titles. Jeff Piontek got the day started, but I didn’t feel like we were in high gear and rocking and rolling until the first presenters got going.1
From there, it was a non-stop roller coaster ride of content and conversation across several strands. Of course, the best part of the day for me was the fact that twice folks were put into roundtable groups to process what they were hearing, seeing and thinking about. I don’t think a formal “Stop. Write. Reflect.” component makes it into our professional learning opportunities. But, as Chris reminded us during his lunch keynote, if you believe something’s important, but you don’t have it built into the structures and schedules of your organization, then you don’t really think it’s terribly important at all.2
The protocol for the roundtables wasn’t too complex, but it’s worth sharing. So here it is. Help yourself to it if you find it useful. Here’s the graphic organizer that we used to help structure folks’ reflections. Just a few minutes in a very busy day, but I think those were pretty important minutes. If you were there, I’d be curious as to your take on that portion of the day, specifically.
The day ended with a panel where we were challenged, and rightly so, to figure out how to keep building momentum and moving forward to make the positive changes that we believe we should be seeing in education. Chris even suggested that it might be time for a string of little events, Educons everywhere, as a way of keeping things moving. I like that idea, and it’s one reason why we began Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation three years ago. 3
I hope that little events like the Leadership Bootcamp keep happening. I hope that folks who attended saw that, yeah, they might could organize such events, too.4 The resources, in terms of schedule and process, are freely available. They need only be used. 5 Again, if you were there, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the event. There will be a follow up webinar to talk through what folks did with the day in October – I’m looking forward to that.6
Thanks to all of the presenters and facilitators and behind the scenes folks who made the day a useful one. Special thanks to Michelle Bourgeois and Alison Saylor for co-ordinating the entire event. There were aw awful lot of really smart folks in the group. Let’s hope it, or something even better, happens again. Lots.7
If you were there, let me know how it went and what could’ve been better. Or tell ISTE directly – they’ve set up an evaluation survey for your feedback.
And now, on to ISTE.
And, I’ve got to be honest, I still don’t understand the “I wrote a book on blogging, but I don’t find it to be valuable and so I don’t do it” position that I’ve now heard Jeff articulate a couple of times. I hope that I can hear more from him on that at some point, not because I think everyone should have a blog, but because I think if you’re going to value something enough to write a book about it, specifically one that encourages folks to use that thing, then perhaps you should be engaged in that thing, at least from time to time. Help me understand that if you can. [↩]
And writing as a learning tool is terribly and wonderfully important, which is why I’m sitting here writing right now rather than heading off to visit or do something else. [↩]
Maybe it’s time that event became Learning 2.0: A Colorado Educon, instead. I’d be okay with that. [↩]
“No one is coming to save us,” Chris says. He’s right. [↩]
Although, I worry, as I usually do, about whether or not folks will attend. Seems to me like as much as people say they want to engage in longitudinal PD, it doesn’t happen much. We seem to have “one shot day” stuck in our brains, and may, by then, have moved on to other things. Let’s do better. [↩]
And, heck, across the street was another group of really smart folks at EduBloggerCon – it was too bad that the events were held at the same time – but it was neat to see so many people moving back and forth between the two. I was one, if only briefly. [↩]
Anne Collier‘s sharing a new report on online safety and technology, “Youth Safety on a Living Internet.” I wasn’t eager to see yet another report, as I’ve read a few – but as I skimmed the first several pages, I understood why she was excited by the work. She was the co-chair of the Online Safety and Technology Working Group, the folks that produced the review, and there’s plenty of thoughtfulness baked in. I’d encourage you to take a close look. It’s indicative of a shift in thinking about how the Internet should be viewed and used by kids, teachers, parents and schools. (Notice – How. Not if.)
In particular, I found the frank discussion of youth risks, while not new, to be refreshingly written. Here’s a taste:
So, based on the research and the opinions of several experts, one of the biggest risks to children may be adults who try to shut down the informal learning involved in their use of Internet technologies at home or school. (p. 18)
Quite right.
There’s lots to like here. I hope someone in a position to do something about the working group’s recommendations is taking good notes as they review the report. Anne’s got a full wrap up of coverage on her site. The report’s below.
Today’s podcast, recorded last week, is a response to some comments on the “learning is social” conversation. I’ll let you give that a listen, then let’s talk some more. Next up for me, in this conversation, is Claudia’s post. I’m still working through Stephen’s thoughts on the subject, spoken just before and transcribed and published just after I wrote the social learning piece. Interesting conversation. I’m learning, I think.
