But in our rush to make and play and tinker and connect and engage in learning that matters in institutions that might not, I feel like I’m missing the love. #

No, that’s not quite right.  Actually, I’m finding notions of love everywhere I look.  But perhaps that’s because I’m focused on looking for it, and you know how it goes – when you look for something, when you look really hard, you can find it anywhere. #

I keep coming back to this interview that Fred Rogers gave to the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.  You should watch the entire series, but here, at 5 minutes and 17 seconds into this particular segment, Mr. Rogers give his definition of teaching and talks about what he was trying to do with his television show: #

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His words here stick hard with me – I cannot divorce his concept of love and teaching from my way of thinking about teaching now.  And the Internet, or a school, or a community center, or a museum, or any institution of and about learning, can and should provide examples of teachers in love with what they love in front of others as a way of communicating that love, and helping students to find and communicate their own. #

And I see resonance with that in the talk of the new DML Connected Learning Research Network, especially in Mimi Ito’s description: #

In a nutshell, connected learning is learning that is socially connected, interest-driven, and oriented towards educational and economic opportunity. Connected learning is when you’re pursuing knowledge and expertise around something you care deeply about, and you’re supported by friends and institutions who share and recognize this common passion or purpose. #

And while I’m not sure that love, itself, can scale, I wonder if finding love maybe can.  Certainly people have limited capacity, and can only love so many so deeply, but computers can help us to find each other.  Networks can help us to find each other.  Institutions can help us to find each other.  Then we can do the human pieces better. #

And finding each other, then looking after each other, is well worth doing¹. #

In this morning’s panel on technical and social innovation, I saw too much emphasis on systems designed around outputs.  I think that’s a large problem in education – we look heavily at what comes out of a system, but not so much on what we put into it.  I’d argue quite strongly, with anyone who’ll listen, that we need to look quite closely and intentionally on what goes into a system, and on what sorts of inputs are privileged in our infrastructures.  And how we inject love and care and compassion and concern into infrastructure is very, very important.  It’s not considered enough, if at all, and these things rarely show up on measures of output. #

So how do you build love and care into your systems and infrastructures and learning environments and experiences?  How are you doing so in a way that doesn’t over simplify the complex backgrounds of the people and communities you’re learning from and with?  How are you looking for ways to increase the love and care in your systems? #

What are you loving in front of your students and colleagues?  What would they say gets loved in your spaces? #

1. Certainly, too, it’s worth wondering about people who aren’t getting found, or served, or looked after, by institutions of love and learning.  How do we make sure that we focus on entry points so that those who wish to be found can be, and those who don’t want to be found can do that, too.  I’ll say more on entry points, infrastructure and inputs in a future post.

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The short answer is because I don’t find value in following every person that follows me. It’s a bit more complicated than that, though. #

But the way I screen Twitter followers and make decisions about who to follow is pretty simple:  If I find the person or the content helpful to me in my work or engaging in some other way (funny, wise, curiosity-inducing, teaching, etc.), I follow.  If I don’t, I don’t. #

It’s not personal.  Except when it is.  By that, I mean that there are far more people in the world than I can learn from at any one time.  If I find a stream useful, I keep it around.  If I don’t find it useful, I let it go.  If the person or stream is more distraction than help, I let it/them go, too.  I don’t have a magic number of people or a ratio, but about four to one seems to be consistent – I get the question of “Why are you not following as many people as follow you?” enough that I’ve noticed the trend. #

I don’t follow all the folks that follow me for a bunch of reasons.  Some folks aren’t teaching me anything.  Others are sharing resources I’m finding from other sources.  For the most part, I don’t block folks whom I don’t like or find “offensive” that follow me. #

I expect no reciprocity in my reading and/or following habits.  I continually think others who expect such are misunderstanding the opportunities herein, or are using social media for drastically different purposes than I, which is fine, except when they expect me to follow their “rules.”  I try to approach most of these spaces as places in which I can be selflessly selfish. #

There’s very little new here.  Friendships and other relationships in “real life” are often one-way.  We get a little hinky sometimes when we see these relationships documented, though.  No need. #

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Here’s how I would report that to the Department of Education: #

Number of members of my family: 4 #

Number who are technologicaly literate: 4. #

See, what I did back there, and what most folks who collect statistics do all the time, is that I got to define my terms.  For the purposes of this data reporting, I have defined technologically literacy as the ability to turn the TV in our living room off with the remote control.  Everyone in my family has accomplished this action – although not all of them deliberately so. #

I was reminded today, as I sat through a conversation about data reporting now and data reporting to come, that reporting a number in a column or a data field seems like such a simple thing.  How many computers do you have?  (Easy to answer – you can count.)   How many 8th graders do you have?  (Easy to answer.)  How many of them are technologically literate?  (Um.  Well.  That one’s harder.) #

That last one all depends on how you’re defining technological literacy.  And how to assess it.  And we’re not all in agreement about the best way(s) to do that.  The devil continues to be in the details.  (Oh, and while we’re kind of on the subject, here’s an analysis of many of the different definitions of 21st Century Skills, which Nancy White happened to tweet along while I was in the other conversation. We’ve got lots of definitions, and now definitions of the definitions, but we still don’t know how to teach the blasted things.  Nuts.) #

When you see a statistic, I hope that you are looking past the number and seeking the definitions and the methodology.  I hope you’re teaching your students to do so, too.  I continue to be worried that, for all the data we’ve got, it isn’t any good. #

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