I always enjoy a good double meaning in a title, so I’m pleased that this podcast, recorded during my drive home from NECC, is called what it is. I find myself driving at the moment, refreshed and recharged. That’s what I wanted out of the conference. I’m pleased it worked that way, and grateful to lots of folks for all the conversation and push back. It is good to be in community (or communities, or whatever) with smart folks. I wanted to get this podcast up, mostly for my own benefit, before I lost some of that momentum.
I’m off to the beach for a week, hoping to top off my batteries, and will be doing my best to be offline - but I’d welcome your comments here on the podcast as a way of keeping me driving and moving when I return.
Oh - and below is a piece of the conversation that I mentioned in the ‘cast. Thanks to Kevin Honeycutt for recording it and Darren Draper and David Jakes for facilitating the conversation. Not sure if a complete recording exists, but you’ll get the gist of the conversation, one of my favorites.
Goal: Work to build multiple and overlapping communities of learners in our district who have knowledge, expertise and/or interest in the hardware and software and services that our district is supporting. Help those communities to begin to learn from each other and to support each other in their teaching and learning. As best as I can, document and share the learning and stories of the community.
I’m aware of so much potential in our classrooms and schools, and so many new tools that are coming online in the district that can be used to help students and teachers create deep and meaningful opportunities for learning and reflection in our classrooms. These are tools like laptops (three new elementary schools, opening in the fall, will have laptops for every teacher; many more schools are investing in laptops for some teachers to be used with) interactive whiteboards, and/or clickers and document cameras, software like ActivStudio, which we’re trying to standardize on across the district, and services like Moodle, which powers our St. Vrain Virtual Campus.
There are a multitude of projects and programs that already meet and discuss some of these issues - but there’s nowhere to go to see all of those conversations, or for folks who aren’t already connected to those groups to have the opportunity to find ways into the conversations. I also know that, with so many resources out there, we need to do a good job of aggregating all of that stuff somewhere (or somewheres) and then helping people to find that space.
Also, if we can work to build and/or sustain these communities, we can work to develop leadership on instructional issues in our district. Better yet, we can help teachers to teach teachers. That’s a good thing. I believe very strongly that the answers to most of the important questions facing schools and teachers and learning and students aren’t going to come out of school districts - they’re going to come out of classrooms. It’s my job to help get the stories out there and the people connected.
I guess the biggest frustration to me regarding the “Oh no - we didn’t realize the policy and now we’re certain that ISTE’s out to get independent media and citizen journalists and quash the edupunks and destroy any chance of education reform ever in the history of forever!” hysteria over ISTE’s NECC audio/video policy is that so many of my colleagues, people whom I respect and value, are probably going to end today or start next week thinking that this conversation and its tone was/is/shall forever be a fine example of the power of blogs and new media to make change. And that would be wrong.
The problem I have with seeing this as a victory is that the bloggers in this one come out looking like a cross between Chicken Little and Tony Soprano. And that’s not a good thing. In the past 24 hours, I’ve read misstatements, threats, assumptions, and lazy research. “I’m taking my ball and going home” lines, too. From educators. Attempting to solve a problem. It’s disappointing. A rational, responsible, and patient tone would have been much better than some most of what I’ve seen and read in regards to this issue.
I’ll be the first to say that I’m pleased to see the policy changed, albeit temporarily. It was an old rule that didn’t fit the current media landscape. ISTE, I hope, would be the first to say that. And I’m pleased that so many bloggers felt compelled to address the issue. But I’d like to think that some more patient and questioning language might have been used in the “investigation.” Questions inviting dialogue, perhaps, rather than assumptions and anger. I felt like we were headed up the mountain to the monster’s castle, pitchforks and torches in hand.
We’d never let our students get away with this type of conclusion jumping and invective. And so, we shouldn’t be happy about the methods, but we should be pleased about the outcome. I hope the folks who make it to the table in future conversations on this and other matters of policy and disagreement are those who approach with patience and kindness, checking their assumptions at the door. And I hope that, if I’m ever guilty of such poor choices in language and attitude, that you’ll be quick to call me on it.
My goal here is not so much to place blame - but to suggest that perhaps we could all do better. I know I’ve been guilty of getting excited and forgetting to do a gutcheck in the past. Let’s all try not to do that. There are too many rules and policies and issues and problems and situations that need changing and will require our best work.
The more I work as a professional developer and teacher of teachers, the more I am resolved that I will do my best to never create a resource for one situation that cannot be useful in another. There are too few of me and too many needs in my district to do otherwise.
I think, though, the careful consideration of audience and purpose that I engage in before creating a resource is a valuable one for all readers, writers, and creators. Perhaps there’s value, in a connective writing class, in spending some time on rhetorical analysis, specifically in the vein of thinking about multi-purposed work.
This isn’t a new statement for me to make, either here or in my classroom(s), as I’ve always operated under the assumption that the best writing happens when writers consider their audience and their purpose for writing, allowing them to determine the focus they should take in a particular piece. This idea (often called the rhetorical triangle, with each of the points defined slightly differently by the person(s) doing the defining) can and should be expanded to include all kinds of composition and writing, not just print texts. This leads me to the teaching point that I would want to include in my connective writing work:
As much as possible, all texts should have a life outside of the classroom.
This “extra-curricular life” can take multiple forms, and won’t make sense for all types of writing and creation, but I strongly believe that we should never create something that will die after a teacher has blessed or cursed it with a grade. I’ve always believed that, but the more I learn, the less I’m willing to suggest that such multi-purposed work should only happen at the end of a course, after all the practice work is completed. Project-based learning, too, embodies this philosophy, as projects should have a life outside of the classroom.
What does “extracurricular life,” or multi-purposed work, look like in a professional learning experience for teachers? One way I attempted to create a multi-purpose-able resource in CyberCamp was through the series of Works in Progress (WiP) presentations that we asked every participant to do. As I explained at the beginning of CyberCamp:
One of the values of CyberCamp is sharing. Talking about what we’re up to is a good way to better understand our own work, and the act of sharing it with a group is useful, too, because it allows your fellow CyberCampers to help you out, be it through good questions, suggestions, or becoming an extra set of eyes and ears in the world seeking resources to help you with your project.
Because sharing is so essential, we’ve set up time here at CyberCamp for everyone to have a 20 minute block of time in which to share their work. Each day, we’ll ask two of you to share what you’re working on and then we’ll give ten minutes to the CyberCampers to give you some constructive feedback. We’ll be talking more about what “constructive feedback” looks at CyberCamp, but know that you’ll be getting help - not criticism.
Again, because sharing is so essential to what we do, we’ll be adding an extra level of sharing to your process. We’ll literally be sharing your Work in Progress conversation with the world and archiving your presentation here on the blog using a tool called Ustream. This will allow you to share your work with, and to learn from, the world. While that can be scary, trust us when we tell you that your work is important and worthy of being shared.
Not to toot our own horn (or whistle, to stick with the camp metaphor), but it seems to me that a twenty minute investment of class time here (thirty minutes if you leave time for some feedback) leads to an excellent archive/snapshot of a work in progress, a chance to get very specific feedback, and a permanent record of the event that is available for further scrutiny, reflection and commenting. Not bad, as far as multi-purposing goes. Add in the fact that these presentations also become resources for other people working on similar projects as well as models of our activity for future CyberCamp experiences, and we’ve got some handy multi-purpose resources.
Other examples of multi-purposing in CyberCamp include our project proposals as well as our blog. Pretty much, any well-written blog (as a whole, not each entry) is a fine example of multi-purposed writing. But perhaps that’s another post.
One of the struggles, of course, with trying to build multi-purpose resources, or to find ways to ask learners to do so, at least one that I worry/wonder about, is making sure that I’m never putting the needs of future learners or secondary audiences ahead of the learners who are the “primary” audience for a particular activity/event/experience. Let me try to say that better - we can sometimes create problems for our class when we try to create opportunities with “outsiders,” particularly if we’re forcing a connection that maybe isn’t organically or authentically there. Connections just for connections’ sake are bad ideas, maybe even educational malpractice. The trick becomes figuring out where those lines and boundaries are, and when to say no to kind invitations to meet/Skype/join up with others who may or may not be in a similar place, educationally speaking.
Another struggle, I suspect, is figuring out how to contextualize those creations in a way as to make them as useful as possible. I’m beginning to practically understand why so many higher ed folks talk about learning objects and repositories and a slew of related issues, and struggle with those things, too.
At the risk of getting a little too meta, I’m going to be talking through my history of thinking about linking, or conective writing, today during CyberCamp as a part of our series of “Works in Progress” conversations. I’m inviting you, if you’re interested, mostly to help me model how a backchannel and uStream conversation can be of value to a face to face group, but selfishly, too, because I’m always interested in how others are thinking about these ideas. So, if you’re willing and able, join us at around 11:30am MST for a short uStream presentation. All the details are on our wiki.
Beginning today, I’m going to be co-facilitating my school district’s CyberCamp, a two-week summer institute focused on teachers building projects that help them to integrate technology into their classrooms. You won’t see me much here, but I do hope you’ll join us over at CyberCamp’s digital HQ as we do some intense learning and thinking and questioning together.
In fact, I’m counting on it.
One of my hopes for CyberCamp is that we are able to model how transparent and connected learning doesn’t have to be limited to a specific time, place and location, that teachers in my district can learn from you, and that you can learn from them. We’re all in this together, and that’s a good thing.
We’re putting so much of CyberCamp online in part to honor the wisdom and knowledge of our teachers, but also because we want to model the power of learning networks as professional learning communities. But that only works if people stop by and join with us in learning and sharing and thinking and questioning and . . . well, you get the point. If you’ve read this blog for any period of time, then you know that I think we’re all better when students and teachers all share and learn and take turns leading. Teaching and learning can be so isolating - but it doesn’t have to be that way. CyberCamp, I hope, is an attempt to demonstrate that.
So, I’m writing this post to formally invite you, whoever you are, to come and join in the fun. And the hard work. I’ve nothing to offer you except a great deal of learning. But if you do come and leave a comment or two when you can, our CyberCamp will be all the better for it. I thank you in advance, and hope to see you at CyberCamp.
Oh, and by the way - we don’t own this model of learning. There are plenty of folks trying this type of work - and I am grateful to them for sharing what they do as they do it. That said, I wanted to explicitly remind you that, if you like what you see here, feel free to take it and adapt it to your communities, to your needs. I pledge to you that I’ll happily come to your CyberCamp. In fact, I look forward to it.
Today’s podcast is a short description of CyberCamp, a summer technology and learning institute we’ll be doing this summer in my school district. I’d love any feedback you have on our event, as well as links and info about similar events. In addition to the book that I mention in the podcast, Suzie Boss & Jane Krauss have a solid blog about the book and their work.
