Bud the Teacher

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.

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.  

Thanks in advance!

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.

I’m writing this morning from the National Writing Project’s web presence working retreat, an event I’ve been fortunate enough to have been involved with as a facilitator since its inception last year.  This is the second time we’ve run the event, which is an attempt to provide some time and structure for teams from writing project sites who wish to think strategically about their web presence.  We’ll spend the weekend thinking through the identity of our respective organizations and what we can do online to both reflect and support that identity and the good work that all of us are trying to do in our various locations around writing and teaching and learning. That means lots of things to lots of people, but there’s plenty of intersection in the general trends.

The event is pretty intense, and, while designed for sites to think about their organizational web presences, is very helpful to me as I think about my personal and professional life online.  One of the big questions that we’re asking people to think about is how their web presences are a reflection of and a lens into their work.  My personal web presence should be like that, too.  But I’m not sure that it is.  I’ve got content spread around the web in a variety of places, everywhere from Flickr to Twitter to this blog to my wiki (which is desperately in need of an update or seven) to my work with other groups and schools and people.  There’s plenty of personal mixed in with the professional, and I think the boundaries between those two areas of my life, never truly separate in “real, offline” life, continue to blur and fade and shift from day to day, week to week, month to year.  (That’s a good thing, I think, for the most part.) How do I, as a blogger and a teacher and a learner and a father and a husband and a citizen, do my best to ensure a consistent presence across the Internet that reflects what I believe to be important?  Just as essential - how do I bring all of that content that sits all over the place into some sort of a coherent whole?  Or do I need to, so long as all that content in all of those places, and others, reflects the message(s) that I want so desperately to convey - that learning and writing and thinking and engaging and passionately working for the benefit of others are essential habits and skills for everyone, regardless of background, culture, or profession?

I think, too, about what “web presence” means.  Having a presence and creating a presence are not necessarily the same thing.  Being and doing aren’t necessarily the same, either.

These are some of my thoughts as I head into a pretty intensive planning process, where, if last year is any indication, I’ll learn as much, and probably a great deal more, than I’m hoping to facilitate.  This summer, I’ll be doing a three-hour session on presence tools, a class of software that are about making one’s presence known in some formal and informal ways, Twitter being one of the tools that I’m most curious about at the moment.  I also would like to explore more about digital identity, a conversation I sort of started here a little while back.  My work this weekend will continue to influence that work.  Lots to learn.  Luckily, I’ve got plenty of smart folks here to learn from and with.  We should all be so lucky.

The Reflective Teacher, one of my favorite reflective practitioners, left his blog behind recently.  But now he’s back with another:

Anyway, I figured it was time for a reinvention as a teacher. I see in myself a different person than I was when I became a teacher, and therefore have moved things over to another place. What’s here will be erased but not forgotten. This place is invaluable to me, but I must let it go.

The kids always call me “Mister,” and when they address me, it’s as “hey, mister.” Therefore, you’ll find me at heymister.

Worth subscribing.

As a complete aside, I find the decisions that folks make about what’s public and what’s private, and how they create (or recreate) and negotiate their digital identities completely fascinating.  The rhetorical and practical decisions that go into everything from creating a screenname to deciding what and where to post are really interesting.

I’d love to facilitate a roundtable or panel discussion about this at some point in the future.  Lots worth exploring.  And, of course, for those of you who blog anonymously (which I can understand but not quite condone), we’ll provide brown paper bags and electronic voice scrambling.  Or something like that.

Would you attend such a conversation?

I didn’t want to let too much time go by before responding to Doug’s post, and the others that have followed it, but I haven’t have time for a thorough response.  There’s plenty of thoughtfulness in the posts and comments, but I did just want to state, again, that I’m pretty sure an awful lot of the “conversation” on the post(s) is based on a bad assumption, which is this:

There isn’t one “edublogosphere.”  Never has been and never will be.  So to ascribe universal characteristics to something which isn’t (universal) is problematic, to say the least.  Here’s how I said it in November:

Mostly, the assumption that’s troubling me so much is that there’s one group (community - whatever) out there that exists for educational conversation via electronic media, and that we should all try to engage and involve everyone in that one (fallacious) group so that we’re all friends and reading and commenting each other.  And that we’ll all agree on where that group should go, when they should meet, and what we’ll all do when we get there.  Or that we ever agreed in the first place.

Ain’t going to happen.  Not now, not ever.  Never did happen, in fact.  We all construct our blogrolls, our Twitter friends, or our other social networking relationships for our benefit and to meet our own unique needs.

Would I prefer to see more reflective or data-driven posts around teaching and learning practices?  Yep.  But me (or anyone else) not seeing them doesn’t mean that they’re not there.  I’d encourage you to read the rest of that November post for more explanation of my position.

Jeremy posts an interesting question from a teacher:

I am very concerned about a small group of AP Environmental Science students (3) who have taken an aggressive stand opposing my teaching of climate change. I already teach it from the perspective of “here’s the data, figure it out” but they think that I made the data up. I showed them where it came from (NASA and NOAA) and they think it is a conspiracy by the left wing to infiltrate and brainwash the American public.

Normally, I would let it go but these kids are being disruptive and belligerent to the point that I have had to refer them to the administration.

I feel like there are two things I need to do here:
1) diffuse the situation so that we can move forward
2) create a packet of peer reviewed literature that is understandable for hs students

Does anyone out there have any suggestions?
Regards,
Science Teacher

There are some very interesting responses, as well as a ton of great links to resources. Worth a click or two.

It was about a year ago that I wrote a piece for English Journal on teaching “blogging” vs. “writing with blogs” that was pretty much a re-hash of some blog posts that I thought were saying something. The trouble is, I wasn’t sure what they were saying. I’ve been fumbling at this one for a while.

I’ve always found something particularly special about writing online, or at least I’ve learned that there’re more options, more possibilities, and plenty of challenges that make writing online much more complicated than cutting and pasting a Word file into a text box and hitting “submit.”

But most folks that I see beginning to use digital writing spaces aren’t treating them any differently. And I can’t quite figure out why. I also can’t quite figure out how to articulate the differences, even though I think I get some, if not several, of them. And if I can’t articulate them, perhaps I can’t teach them. (Not sure about that, actually - but work with me.)

I think one good way to articulate some of the differences is to tell you a story. Here goes.

Tonight, I’m sitting in a local cafe, enjoying a cup of wicked sweet coffee and some tunes. As I wrote that last sentence, and added the links in, I wondered how you would read it. Are you someone who clicks on any link you see in a blog post? Or are you more like me? I use a browser that shows me the URL of the link I’m pointing to, saving me the trouble of traveling here if, after reading the URL, I see that I don’t need to follow the link, perhaps because I already know the site, or I don’t want to go to the site, because I’m worried about pop-ups, or a virus, or something that I don’t actually want to see. I love that browser, except when it leaks memory.

I could continue, but I think (hope) I’m making my point. I could have written that paragraph without the links - but I would’ve need an awful lot more details to tell you as much as I did with the links. And you each will have worked your way through that paragraph differently. Some of you read and clicked and fiddled. Others of you read differently. (Oh - and here’s a minor nit - but how many of you, in that last sentence, read, ahem, “read” in the past tense? Present tense? Language is hard. But anyway.)

I don’t know what my students do/did when they see blocks of text with links. And I’m 98 percent sure that there wasn’t another teacher in my school who was thinking about how to explain that to students, much less about how they read that text themselves.

Digital texts have the potential to make a big, juicy mess of a linear experience. Or to turn a so-so piece of writing into a masterful collection of references, linktributions, and pointers to other good stuff. My hunch, a rough one, but one I’ve held for a while, is that reading and writing that way makes you (ultimately) a better reader and writer. I just don’t really think I know how to teach that way yet, or at least, I don’t know how to teach other people to think about teaching that way.

Will Richardson asked me recently (well, it was two weeks ago - but that counts as recent if you forgive me the week I spent sick. And I do.) about connective writing, and what a course on it might look like. I blame him for the frustrated typing that I’m up to right now. And the posts that I suspect are forthcoming. (And I’m thankful, too. I needed a push.)

What would such a course look like? What would it cover? How would it differ from a “regular” (I know - bogus term.) 9th or 10th grade high school writing course? How would it be the same? (Why wait until high school? I’ve been thinking through blogs as science or inquiry notebooks at the elementary school level.) What happens when we add video(s)? Pictures? Embedded widgets? I’ve got to believe that some analysis of what links do and how they do it would be a necessary piece of any such course. So, too, would be copious quoting and linking to others, building a network of classroom texts that would be added to the greater networks of the world.

I’d kill to teach that class.

Perhaps I’ve stumbled across another thesis idea. Again. Nuts.

_______
Postscript - I had thought that perhaps I’d dig into the research on hypertextual writing a bit before I started down this post. I know these ideas aren’t new. But I couldn’t help myself. I made it four pages into this fascinating article before I started writing. Worth a read, I think.