Not #beyondthetextbook. #betterthetextbook

Posted on March 18, 2012 by Bud Hunt

A big bunch of friends, associates, colleagues, and interesting strangers will be sitting in a conference room in Maryland this weekend, talking about the future of textbooks. This is market research, but hopefully semi-public and sharable to others. I suspect it’ll be an interesting conversation.

I’ve written before about some of what I think needs to happen when it comes to textbooks at schools. And my colleague, Kyle, is working very hard with our curriculum staff to prototype some of what our new curricular resources might look like. But I thought it would make sense to share some thoughts here, as grist for the mill of conversations in Maryland.

I’m hoping that folks’ll at least take some time to make sure they’re working from shared definitions when it comes to words like “textbooks” and “resources.” Might not hurt to define “curriculum.” The problem with those words, and others that are likely to come up in the conversation, is that “everyone knows what they mean.” But they know that differently. Shared definitions matter.

I’d humbly offer this definition for textbook – “A collection of information organized around thoughtful principles intended to provide support to instruction.” It’s not the best definition – I’m sure there are better¹ – but before you go too far into a conversation about moving beyond something, it’d be good to have a sense of what it is that you’re going to move beyond.

I might drop “book” from the word, but I’m divided on that, as I’ve learned it’s hard enough for people to consider that video or audio are “texts.”² The book part really bugs people. That said, a “book” has never been a codex. That’s the delivery technology.

In your conversations this weekend, try to separate the delivery technology – the way the information gets to the people – from the information you’re trying to send. If you argue that “the Internet is the textbook,” then you have failed to separate delivery from information. You can’t completely separate the two – the way something comes to you affects what you get, of course – but try to at least be aware of the two elements. And take advantage of the right delivery tools to allow for the types of stuff you want to see your textbooks do.

Also try to refrain from overgeneralization. “Textbooks are dead,” might feel good to say, or to retweet, but is a foolish statement. No, BYOD solutions aren’t the only answer. Student 1:1 environments aren’t the only answer. There is no one size fits all answer to the problems you are trying to solve. Platform and device neutrality and Web standards are pieces of the puzzle you’re trying to solve. So is on-demand printing. Or sometimes mass printing. Paper is not the enemy, nor are screens the savior.

Don’t be afraid of relying on expertise. Expertise, after all, is what you’re looking for in a textbook. The reason for textbooks is to bring a collection of human expertise on something together. But do not let that expertise lie in a publisher’s office alone.

The best textbooks moving forward are likely those that start with small building blocks from publishers, OER repositories, classrooms, websites, movie studios, and pretty much any other source for interesting information, and they become textbooks when they are hung onto a curriculum frame by a local school district. This might be done by a committee of teachers, or a small group of curriculum coordinators in a front office somewhere, but what important is that it’s not done by a salesperson seeking to please a state official in Texas or California.

The shift that I hope is coming in instructional sources is the local creation and curation of this stuff, followed by the local distribution of it to students. Some of this local curation work will be scalable and useful to other places – that is one advantage, for both business and school interests, of the Common Core State Standards. But lots of it won’t.

If textbook companies want to sell us things for and in the rest of the 21st Century, they should be selling the building blocks of content. Small pieces. They should be selling expertise and guidance in how to create these local curriculum creation teams. They might sell the platforms that help us to put the pieces together and distribute them to our communities. Discovery actually does this now – and could lead in this area.

But no publisher can sell us monolithic books written for imaginary populations of lowest common denominators. That’s why folks are so angry with and about textbooks – in the race to create One Book to lead them all, our publishers gave us stuff that wasn’t super-duper for anybody. And we bought it.

We’ve got to better the textbook. Not move beyond it.

Looking forward to seeing what folks come up with during the conversation. I suspect I’ll have more to say on the matter.

Wikipedia’s isn’t bad. [↩]
Wikipedia even has trouble differentiating between the format and the content in their definition of “book.” But the entry on the term still might be useful. So, too, would “text.” [↩]

#dml2012: (Not Accepted.)^3 But I Still Like It.

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Bud Hunt

Last night, I got word that my proposal for the 2012 Digital Media and Learning Conference was not accepted. While I am a bit disappointed that the session wasn’t accepted, I know I’m in good company – according to my rejection notice¹, they have a 30% acceptance rate, so lots of good stuff got left behind. I suspect what made it in will be pretty interesting. But I liked the language of the proposal, and thought it might be of interest to others, so I’m posting it below exactly as I submitted it.

Practitioner Inquiry in the Digital Learning Collaborative: Teacher Research for Reform from Within

Educational reform efforts are often conducted on schools and teachers, rather than with and through them. Teachers are asked to conduct scripted lessons nested within scripted curriculum. Too often, genuine inquiry, an essential skill and mindset for students and teachers, is given lipservice rather than real attention and focus in the classroom.

In at attempt to change this dynamic while also creating a new way of thinking about teaching with technology, the St. Vrain Valley School District in northern Colorado created the Digital Learning Collaborative in the Fall of 2009. The DLC is an attempt to introduce intentional institutional subversion through a model that recenters teachers as both learners and researchers. With their students as partners, teachers in the DLC engage in a two-year professional development program. In year one, teachers are encouraged to explore, in small teams, technologies that they are curious about in an attempt to better understand them. In year two, they bring those technologies into their classrooms and use a teacher research (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, _Inquiry as Stance_, 2009) model to explore the impact of that technology on student achievement. With students as partners in this inquiry, teachers in the DLC have explored the effects of computerized assessment, the use of iPods as visual vocabulary tools, and online networking and writing environments, among others. Through a partnership with the Colorado State University Writing Project, and informed by the teacher inquiry work of the National Writing Project, these teacher researchers in the DLC are emerging as experts in residence in their schools, not as outsiders, but as insiders invested in the schools and students they serve. The DLC by design allows for the research of its members to spread throughout the district and, through the use of the Web, beyond.

In this workshop, we will explore the DLC model, as well as engage participants in an exploration of the inquiry produced in projects like these. We will also explore the opportunities and challenges that such a model for professional development presents and consider the impact practitioner inquiry, and also intentional institutional subversion can have on an organization. Participants will leave with a better understanding of how teacher research, and teacher researchers, have much to offer conversations on education reform while they are working to improve their practice. Participants will also consider the implications of teacher research on a school through some scenario explorations, and explore how teachers in the DLC can become colleagues from a distance as the power of the Internet can bring us into each others’ inquiry work as partners and responders.

The democratization of education reform requires that teachers and students are engaged and informed voices for the practices, habits, and mindsets that are essential to an informed citizenry. Teacher research is a powerful force for institutional subversion that can lead to a better learning environment and experiences for all. Through the DLC, and groups like it, thoughtful and inquiry-grounded innovation can be nurtured through an organization and shared beyond.

Which I got three times, I’m guessing due to a glitch somewhere. That stung a bit. [↩]

Digging Out My Sash

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Bud Hunt

I took a quick peek at the Mozilla Open Badges project a little while back, and liked what I saw.

It’s an attempt to create an open infrastructure for badges around the Web. I like the technical pieces that allow anyone to offer any badge to anyone else in a consistent way. It makes sense to build tools that work for everybody, and that are open. I like that.

And I thought I was something I’d want to explore later, as I’m always looking for ways to help make the professional development I’m doing to make sense to other people. Maybe, I thought, a badge could help¹. I put that idea on a side burner.

Then yesterday happened, and I’m going to have to pay a great deal of attention to the project. In a hurry.

That’s because this year’s Digital Media & Learning Competition is all about the badges.

It was fascinating to listen to the announcement² and to follow along as the tweets came rolling in. It was, and is, also fascinating to consider the possibilities opened up through the use of badges to build portfolios of experiences and skillsets, to show the world what students, of all ages, can learn and do.

Except. Hang on a second.

I’m writing this post when I should be working on my thesis. The thesis is the last thing I’ve got to do in order to earn my ~~badge~~ Master’s degree in English Education. But it seems like there’s an awful lot of important questions wrapped inside assumptions in DML’s competition announcement. Felt right to at least try to get them down.

The Twitter stream of commentary, a piece of which was captured earlier by Audrey, was chock full o’ questions and concerns. Alex and plenty of other folks have all written thoughtfully about the announcement. It was clear to me, as I watched the announcement follow up panel, that the group, as a whole, didn’t have a consistent idea about what badges were/are/for/might do. I heard each of these possibilities:

Badges as credentialing

Badges, I heard, might be used as a way of denoting that someone has a particular skillset in a field in which there might not be a current credentialling method. Makes sense, and is the most straight forward use of a badge. Think Boy Scouts. Girl Scouts. Medal of Honor.

Badges as awarding credit

This one seems mostly similar to the previous function of credentialling, but it’s not. Quite. Earning a badge that counts as credit would require that a credit-granting institution³ would accept the badge in lieu of another requirement. Put enough badges together, and you get a really advanced badge. Or a diploma. Or a degree. So, not only can you do something in the eyes of an institution, but will another institution believe them and let you take a pass on their test of competency?

Badges as a way of honoring non-school learning

I’ve written before about how I find some of the most interesting learning taking place on the edge of school and home, in semi-school spaces. After school clubs. Fringe projects. And I want that learning to “count,” in the sense that I don’t think that teachers should have to fight so hard for those types of learning experiences. But I wonder if the best way to honor that learning is to make sure it stays out of school. If, as I heard a panelist say during the announcement, school is so ineffective and terrible at learning, then shouldn’t we try to fix school? Might we want to move some of the good semi-school learning into the classroom?⁴

If badges are an attempt to rebuild school, well, that might be a fascinating idea. Or a terrible one.

Badges as motivation

Students will be more inclined to go after a particular type of learning, I heard, if there were a motivator to push or pull the student along.⁵ That’s a dangerous reason to even consider a badge, I think, as I know enough about motivation to know that, as soon as the badges go away, the learning stops. Not good. Uh uh. Don’t pursue this one.

Badges as assessment

Actually, the badges wouldn’t be the assessments – just proof of their successful completion. And that’s where this starts to get tricky for me. For one thing, I don’t think enough folks understand that a badge involves assessment of one sort or another. And it’s the assessments and experiences that we want to fiddle with in school.

Badges as curriculum design

If badges can count as far as credit in traditional schools and universities, then badge program designers are now curriculum designers. What I didn’t hear at the announcement, but hope to hear about soon, is how folks might think about the Common Core SS, the current consortia developing the next generation of school assessments, and their thinking about badges.

Those were the purposes I heard in the time I was listening. And that’s complex stuff.

Other folks, I’m sure, who are smarter and more articulate than I am, will soon start talking about this work and what it means for power relationships between traditional schooling and other institutions.⁶ But what I’m not hearing people talk about, or suggest that they understand, is what it is that it means to “count.” I mean count in two senses of the word – both the mathematical meaning of seeing how many of something that you have, but also the way a student asks when they’re handed an assignment – will this count? Does it matter?

And, at school, we’ve done a bad thing by tying “counting” or “mattering” to “grading.”

If all badges do is fiddle with the object that students are taught to worship, rather than working to eliminate idol worship altogether, then there’s not much sense in exploring them.

If badges transform all grades that matter into “pass/fail” situations, well, that might be something. To match what students can do with their academic credentials as measured by actual performance tasks would be a good thing⁷.

But, if the DML competition encourages thinking and writing and exploration and action around ideas like the idea that any accountability system, or accreditation system, is ultimately a subjective system, made by people, however we design it, then I say, let’s rock. But let’s do so carefully.

Badges are not magical. They do not cure cancer. They are unable to stop large (or small) scale forest fires. Badges, particularly digital ones, cannot be eaten. The digital kind can’t even be burned for fuel. Badges do not make children smarter, or hard work less difficult.

But they’re certainly worth talking about, if they might lead to productive change. And, if they’re going to make a grand entrance in teaching and learning, at school and in the community, then I hope to goodness that teachers are paying attention.

Give us a way to show scope and sequence, or perhaps a “brand” for our teachers in a way that would be postiive. I wasn’t sure, and still am not. [↩]
I only caught the second half, but I think that was the really fascinating bit. [↩]
school, university, etc. [↩]
Or, can that learning only happen on the fringes? If that’s the case, then I want more fringe. [↩]
Cathy explains that idea further here, in point four of a definition of badges. [↩]
As I was about to post this, I ran across this post from Alex. And while I don’t have a place to stick this quotation properly in the text, I wanted to save it and share it with you, so here it is: What I believe we must resist is mistaking real motivation and meaningful learning for increasing our value as a human commodity in the marketplace. I’m fairly sure that education doesn’t make us “better” humans. I don’t even think learning can make us “more” human (whatever that might be), though it could expand our experience in interesting ways. The one thing we have to prevent is schooling making us feelless human. [↩]
Parents and plenty of other people would have trouble, for a time, as ranking their children to other people’s children might be more difficult, but that would pass. [↩]

September 12th, 2001. A Wednesday.

Posted on September 11, 2011 by Bud Hunt

September 12th. That’s the day everything changed.¹

A few weeks previously, I had begun my teaching career as a graduate student teaching freshman composition in room 110 of the Natural Resources Building at Colorado State University. I remember room 110 very well because it was where, six years previously, I took my first English class as an undergraduate at the school. Introduction to Literature. ²

As an undergraduate, it was my job, I thought, to unpack the secrets of the stories and novels and plays that we read together. And I wrote. Lots. Every week, I produced two typed pages of thinking and reflection and wondering about what I was reading and why it mattered. This was college. It was important.

And back in room 110, with my class of college freshfolk, I was in charge of helping them to unlock the mysteries of the College Essay, the texts that they were expected to produce early and often in their college careers. These 18 and 19 year olds were looking to me, a 23 year old grad student, to provide them with the keys to college literacy. Or, they had to take the class, and I was in their way. Either way, there we were, from 10:00 to 10:50 every MWF.

September 11th was a Tuesday. I remember because that made September 12th a Wednesday. At 10:00am, I was supposed to “teach.” And no one said otherwise.

I made one of the most important discoveries of my teaching career that day³, when I decided that class would be optional. It made sense to go. People, I thought, were counting on me to make sense of this. And that couldn’t be done.

But there was something I could do.

I emailed the class that no one had to be there, but that I would be there. Attendance, for a change, would not be taken.

I didn’t expect anyone to show up. But they came. Not all, but most.

And I started class. Sitting on a table in the front of the room, I reminded folks that no one had to stay that morning. I would not advance the syllabus. Instead, we were together, and something monumental had happened. What, I wondered, did folks want to talk about?

And I don’t actually remember the specifics. I remember that there was lots of misinformation and rumor in the air that morning, and that mostly, as someone who had read several articles, watched some CNN, and had spent the previous afternoon in the newsroom of the student paper, where I had worked as an undergraduate, and would work again that Spring, and pulled everything I could off the AP wire as it was released, I was likely the “expert” in the room.

Like that makes any sense.

But I dispelled rumor where I could, suggested sources for folks to explore if they wanted to know more. I mentioned the school’s counseling program for students. And it was quiet. Not silent, but much quieter than a usual day of argument and conversation. We were together, but we weren’t really talking all that much.

I guess it was just normal, or whatever on September 12th could approximate normalcy in the wake of the events of the day before, and normal, on September 12th, 2001, felt pretty good. It was enough.

On Friday, September 14th, we resumed talk of what makes good summary, and how to use others’ ideas in the services of our own, and all the things that you talk about in a college writing class.

We kept going.

And now, as we look back and consider all that’s happened in the world in the last ten years, and how that day changed this country, and me, and most other folks I know in some way, I get the feeling that keeping going is a pretty good way to honor that day.

By all means, take a deep breath and a look back. Think about what happened and what that changed or what that didn’t change. Reach out if you need or want an ear. Look after yourself. Consider what’s worth doing and what’s worth remembering and what’s worth working to restore. But then, one last deep breath.

There’s much to do.

Let’s keep going.

Sure. September 11th. I woke to the phone ringing and was told to turn on the news. I’d been married for all of three months and what I saw on TV didn’t make sense. Still doesn’t sometimes. [↩]
I sat next to What’s Her Name, who took good notes and who, three years later, I would date. Once. And screw that up royally by inviting a friend over to watch television with us. As I drove her home, I backed into a car in the street behind my apartment. It did not go well. A second date was dodged. By her. Repeatedly. I didn’t understand what happened there, either, until much later. [↩]
The discovery, for me, was in two parts – first, that the world doesn’t stop when you start your class. Be of the world and in the world as often as you’re about and/or removed from the world. The second part is about modeling and how teachers, in some sense, are always on. We are always being seen as teachers. So might was well act like one, even if, at 23 then, and 33 now, I don’t always have a clue as to what that means or should look like. ”What would a teacher do?” is a question I approach as I prepare for any class or learning experience. And it’s one I’ll always struggle with. But in this case, a teacher would dig in. Check facts. Explore sources. A teacher would seek to be sure his students were okay. A teacher would pause and reflect. So that’s what we did. [↩]

On Being Afraid

Posted on August 21, 2011 by Bud Hunt

On Friday, Converge did a quite nice write up of some of our district’s work with technology. I found it to be a splendid piece. Specifically, a large portion of the article featured some of the work we’ve been doing with the Digital Learning Collaborative. If you need a one sentence summary of that work, well, Paige does a fine job:

It was awesome and scary for some to be in charge of their learning.

I think that pretty much sums up what I’m seeing with regards to the way that we’re asking teachers in the DLC to take control of their own learning. It is scary for many of our teachers to take control. And it is awesome, delightful even, when it happens.

More often than I’d like in the DLC, the teachers that we’re working with, and we work with the leaders of the teams, folks identified as teacher leaders in their schools, so chew on that a bit, are afraid, or unwilling, or unable, to take control of their own learning. These teachers, quite fine and thoughtful people, are often waiting for Michelle or I to tell them what’s worth learning and/or doing. That’s troublesome¹.

This is mostly a rhetorical question, but I’d encourage you to consider it anyway – what’s happened to teachers and teaching that it’s so difficult for teachers to feel they have agency enough to follow their own lines of inquiry and learning?

And why in the world is that okay?

And the word “troublesome” is quite the understatement, I think. [↩]

So I’m Going To Be Teaching This Class. And Could Use Your Help.

Posted on August 20, 2011 by Bud Hunt

I like new frontiers. That’s why I’m excited to be participating in Karen’s attempt to create a School of Ed at P2P University this fall. It should be a neat opportunity to fiddle with what it means to do PD.

I couldn’t be more excited to be facilitating a course we’re calling “Common Core & Writing: Deeper Learning for All.” I pitched the course as “a course on writing to learn for non-English teachers” and that’s almost exactly what I’ll be teaching¹. Better yet – some of my friends from the National Writing Project will be helping me to develop the course.

The six week course, which will begin mid-October, is going to begin with a deep look at the Common Core State Standards, and particularly the section of the standards that addresses the role of writing across the curriculum.² Then,’ we’ll tackle writing in the classroom from two distinct lenses:

1. Writing to Learn – the habits and bits of writing that you do to make sense of whatever it is that you’re learning and exploring.

2. Writing for the Disciplines – the writing that’s specific to content areas other than language arts. How do historians write for each other? Scientists? Mathematicians? And why does that matter? How can we help our students to write in these ways?

As a final project, participants in the course will use this protocol from the NWP to help them develop some writing assignments for their own classrooms that should result in some thoughtful writing for and with students. We should all get some good ideas.

As I’m developing the collection of resources, I know that NWP’s Digital Is will be an important text for the group. And I’m also reminded of Peter Elbow and Donald Murray and their essential contributions to writing as process and writing as something that teachers just, you know, do.

But I could use your help.

Here’s a Google Doc where I’m beginning to draft a collection of readings and resources for the folks³ who I hope will take this course.

I’d sure be grateful if you’d offer your favorites and help keep me honest by pointing participants to actual examples of the two areas I outlined above.

And of course, this entire experience is, for me, first draft thinking. I’d be open to your ideas, suggestions, and feedback as I’m working to construct an experience that’s ultimately useful to teachers and results in increased use of writing in their practice.

Thanks in advance. And perhaps I’ll see you in class? Sign up opens soon.

Er. Facilitating. Teaching. Guiding. Whatever. The participants and I will experience it together. And we’ll all take turns. [↩]
Yes, technically, this is a rather large section. Pretty much the entire language arts section. But we’ll hone in on the specifics of writing for the disciplines other than language arts. [↩]
Remember – a targeted audience of non-language arts teachers. [↩]

I Can’t Give That to You. No One Can.

Posted on August 16, 2011 by Bud Hunt

This post lived in the depths of my drafts folder. I brought it out tonight because it seemed the right time.

Too often lately, I’ve read statements from teachers that sound something like this: “We have to give students voice” or “We have to give our students control over their learning.”

Sure. Students should have voice. And control. And agency. And plenty of things.

But, well, a student’s voice just isn’t mine to give.

By that, I mean that there’s a big problem with “giving somebody” their voice. As a teacher, I can’t give you much of anything that you don’t already have. Nourish it? Cultivate it? Help develop or refine it? Sure.

But give? No. Because that would mean that someone took it away in the first place. And that’s not okay. Further – that would assume that such a thing was mine to take.

And any time we assume that we must give our students those things, or that teachers, too, must be given those things, we make it that much more difficult for the exchange to happen. We get the entire power dynamic backwards when we are handing out voices. Or power. Or control. Human beings have those things, anyway. With or without our permission. We would do well to remember that in the classroom. And plenty of other places.

Teachers, and students, have voices. And agency. It’s up to them, to all of us, to use those things in the service of what’s important¹.

Don’t work to “give” students voices. Help them find the ones they already have.

And, yeah. You’ve got to decide what counts as “important,” too. No free lunches here. [↩]

Safe Places & What Is Yet To Come

Posted on August 10, 2011 by Bud Hunt

I had the opportunity earlier this week to sit in on a conversation with teacher librarians and other media staff during a kickoff event to start the school year. We were sharing some lunch and talking about our hopes for the year – specifically, we were discussing how we will be working to build libraries that are places of community.

That’s a fine thing to be discussing.

One media staffer said that it was important to her that her library be a safe place, a place where students could expect to be sheltered from, well, the stuff that can be unsafe about a school.

And that was a good hope. Lots of head nodding. Lots of talk of sitting in circles and making things and libraries as spaces where crafts were made, and stories were read and books were explored and questions were asked. And often answered.

And I thought that was good. They spoke of love without using the word. What could be wrong with that?

And, at the same time, I started to get angry.

See, many of these library folk that I visited with the other day were facing new challenges as library folk. Some were in the library alone, whereas before they were a part of a team. Others were entering into roles as clerks in the absence of a full teacher librarian¹. As we seek ways to save money in our school district, we have had to make hard choices about whether to staff classrooms or libraries. These are not easy choices.

But when such kind and thoughtful people advocate for such important spaces as school libraries, well, I feel like maybe they shouldn’t have to fight so hard.

A project I’ve been loosely following is asking folks right now to think of libraries as enchanted spaces, and of libraries as verbs. And I will think this year of this round table of library folk, dreaming of spaces where children find love and security and story and words and literacy. Spaces and places where the skeletons of dreams receive flesh and animation from books and pictures and websites and exploring and wondering and discovery. And I am enchanted.

And I am enraged.

This week, our state courts are hearing the case of a large coalition of school districts arguing that the state of Colorado is not meeting its constitutional mandate to provide a proper education for the children of the state. And our Governor, while supportive of the intent of the lawsuit, is concerned that it might succeed, because of what that might do to the state budget.

What might not investing in enchanting spaces and people do to the state? That we have to have this argument in court suggests we’ve all lost.

On the same day that I got to have lunch with our library types, our school board president addressed the library group and talked about some of the research that he conducts in his day job. He studies institutions and public policy and, well, people. It’s fascinating work.

He mentioned during his talk that while it makes sense to consider the points and arguments that would lead to rational loyalty towards institutions one would value, folks don’t fight for rational loyalty. They fight for, and will work to save, protect and defend, the places and institutions with which they have emotional attachments. And I want our schools to be places of emotional attachment in the best possible way. Places of pride and hope and joy and love and respect and kindness and the best of what we might could be.

We are, after all, beings of emotion and then ration, rather than the other way ’round. No matter how hard we might wish otherwise.²

And I wonder how to go after the emotional jugulars rather than the heels of rationality. As one who pretends rationality, I wonder about the best way to do this. And I remember the teacher who called across the parking lot to me the other day to tell me that she might have lost her way, that she might not know what’s worth talking about or spending time on lately.

And I know what she means sometimes.

And I write tonight because I don’t know if I’ve lost my way or not, either. But I seek enchantment. And safety. And hope. And think they’re within reach.

And I remember a kid with glasses too big on a face too small in pants too tight with friends too far between who needed a quiet place to read where no names were called and the books and the stories could keep coming. And I remember the library folk who made sure that I could focus on the dreams in the books rather than the whispered pokes from the jerks.

And I am enchanted anew.

And so I’ll keep reaching, and seeking. And I am eager to begin a new school year, to reach again with smart folks to try to be the best that we can be.

You come, too.

It’s cheaper, you know, to staff a library with a clerk rather than a licensed teacher. But what, I wonder, does that savings really cost? [↩]
It’s true. Rationalize your love for the child that left a soggy mess in one of your shoes the other morning. The little girl who made you dance on the sidewalk with her. In front of all the neighbors. Simply because she could. You can’t rationalize that. You love her anyway. [↩]

Determining Failure

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Bud Hunt

I’m off again on a short vacation, but I couldn’t let this paragraph escape at least a word or two. Over the weekend, Bill Gates was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal. From the piece:

One of the foundation’s main initial interests was schools with fewer students. In 2004 it announced that it would spend $100 million to open 20 small high schools in San Diego, Denver, New York City and elsewhere. Such schools, says Mr. Gates, were designed to—and did—promote less acting up in the classroom, better attendance and closer interaction with adults.

“But the overall impact of the intervention, particularly the measure we care most about—whether you go to college—it didn’t move the needle much,” he says. “Maybe 10% more kids, but it wasn’t dramatic. . . . We didn’t see a path to having a big impact, so we did a mea culpa on that.” Still, he adds, “we think small schools were a better deal for the kids who went to them.”

Now, there’s lots to say about the “success” or “failure” of the small schools work done by Gates and others. And I know that Bill Gates has said that small schools offer more than just college readiness. But I suppose what I’d like to contribute here, or at least to push back with, is something like this:

Perhaps the metrics used to evaluate the effort were the wrong metrics. College attendance may not be the right way to measure whether or not small schools are good places for our children. We might want to investigate some other metrics and see how they tell us about the experience of students in smaller schools. I’d wonder about things like safety. Or the knowledge that students in a small school are members of a cohesive and human community. Were these students well looked after and mentored by grown ups who genuinely cared for them? Were they engaged in work that was meaningful and purposeful? Did what they did each day matter?

You can say those schools failed – but let’s make sure we know what your criteria are. The more someone¹ is pushing to tell me what counts as a “good school,” the more I’m finding I’m willing to say -

Hang on. Wait. What do we want our schools to be?

And just what do you mean by failure?

I think those’re some of the kinds of questions that the folks who are organizing the Save Our Schools March are asking.

If I could be, I’d be there in Washington DC as they congregate to push for change. Perhaps you will be. Take good notes.

“Like Bill Gates,” I want to say, but it’s not about him. Like anyone who wants to tell you what’s working or what’s not. Dig deeper. Ask more. [↩]

#ISTE11: NWP’s Inaugural Hack Jam

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Bud Hunt

Yesterday afternoon, I had the opportunity to attend the first ever National Writing Project Hack Jam, an exploration of the opportunities to fiddle with text and writing and code on the Internet. It was a useful event for me, as we were able to think and play with ideas about what “hacking” means right now, and how it’s about reading and writing and thinking.

Masterfully facilitated by Chad Sansing and Meenoo Rami, the event took us to some interesting places and conversation. Here’s my recap.

We started the day in table groups with a box of Monopoly and a simple task – hack the game. Chad and Meenoo explained that our task was to fiddle with the rules until we found a game that was better than the one we were handed – and so Sandy and Gail and I tinkered our way through a version of Monopoly that was all about freebies. Other groups fiddled to make the game about tossing pieces and giving to charity. It was good¹.

But the point of the hacking was to give us an opportunity to explore that games and systems have rules – rules that were made by people. And we can mess with those rules if we understand the underlying principles involved. That’s powerful learning – and applies not just to board games, but to school, and to work, and to civic engagement and to computer systems or the Internet.

Hacking matters. Douglas Rushkoff would say that we need to Program or Be Programmed, but I’d fiddle with that statement and say instead that we need to hack or be hacked. Someone made the rules and systems of the Internet, power structures, as John Spencer called them during out conversation yesterday. And, as others have said before, we’ve got to help our students fiddle with them, understand them, and, hopefully, change them.

We moved from that work into a visual exploration of our definition of hacker – folks focused on several things, but I was reminded of MacGyver, and thought of duct tape and wrenches and making things out of what we’ve available. Purposeful play.

This led to some interesting conversation that I think was my key takeaway from the day². Paul Allison, who is always thoughtful, wrote this during the workshop:

My first thought is that hacking sounds like an important idea, but really? Do we need another word that takes teachers out of the mainstream “common core” standards conversation? Does hacking get my students more college-ready? Like gaming, isn’t hacking just another thing that pushes the risk-takers into the margins, and makes risk-adverse teachers run? How do we find a way to be more inclusive in our language and processes? Is it just a language thing? What else might we call hacking?

Later on, Paul continues³:

So part of why we hack has to do with understanding our sources more deeply, and this is absolutely an academic concern. But don’t we need words like “analytical reading” and carefully sourced research? Right so what else might we call hacking? It’s about creativity, but it’s also about making new things by really understanding the old, and this is a traditional, academic exercise.

I’m looking for language that will encourage the risk-adverse teacher to join with us in these enterprises.

And that’s what I leave thinking about. Hacking matters. Academic reading and writing matter. And they’re not unrelated things. Groups like the National Writing Project know an awful lots about good reading and writing practice, and are exploring thoughtfully things like gaming and hacking – but can they do so in a way that doesn’t scare off the “risk-adverse teacher,” as Paul asks?

I think we need the National Writing Project and folks like them to help navigate these spaces, and to explore them thoughtfully with teachers – and to help folks recognize that reading and writing and thinking and gaming and hacking are related – but in a way that doesn’t lead to further fragmentation and paradox. I think we need teachers to play, like we played in the Hack Jam, with the rules and ideas that affect them.

Yes, let’s teach kids to hack. Both the Internet and Shakespeare. Minecraft and Fitzgerald. Wordle and essay. Picture and paragraph. Logarithm and link. Tweets and Tennyson. Second Life and the State Legislature. It’s a big world.

Worth doing. If you get the chance to attend a future NWP Hack Jam – you should go. I’ll see you there.

Because it was a National Writing Project event, there were snacks. Good ones. [↩]
And I know I’ve buried the lead, but that’s okay. [↩]
Read the whole piece. It’s good and I can’t stop thinking about it. [↩]

Bud the Teacher

Inquiry & Reflection for Better Learning

Category Archives: Current Affairs