Bud the Teacher

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!

This podcast, one of several I recorded today at the Colorado Podcast Summit, is a conversation from the end of the day with several podcasters and other educators, discussing data, action research, and podcasting.  I thought it was an interesting conversation – I hope you do, too.  The discussion was moderated by Brent Wilson, a professor at CU-Denver.  Enjoy.

    I’m at the airport in Hartford waiting for my ride to Denver (NOTE: I began this post there.  Finished it @ home. – BH).  I’m sucking down podcast updates on the free wi-fi here at the airport so this seems like the right time to try to capture some of my thinking about the web presence retreat before time gets in the way of the learning that happened this weekend.

    This post is probably more useful for those of you who are affiliated with the National Writing Project in some way, as I’m going to slip into NWP-speak a bit.  Ask in the comments if something doesn’t make sense.  One note as I begin.  When we (those folks who are writing project people) usually talk about those entities that are affiliate local writing project organizations, we call them local sites.  So, for example, I work for and with the Colorado State University Writing Project.  I usually call CSUWP my "local site."  When you start to talk about websites, then it gets tricky.  "Let’s take a moment to think about our site’s site."  Get the point of potential confusion?  So we on the planning team for this event began to distinguish between a web presence and a local site.  So throughout this post, I’m going to refer to a local site’s web presence, meaning the web stuff associated with a particular local site.  The larger point here is that with any group or network, there’s a shared language that can sometimes be both an aid and an obstacle to understanding.

    I want to remember that and try to use language precisely, as jargon can make things helpful — or can completely destroy meaning for folks.  But anyway — on with my reflection.

    Saturday was a very long day, as we began to walk the retreat participants through a process of examining their respective local sites, thinking about what they do, why they do what they do, how they work, and who they’re made up of.  We intentionally spent the first half of Saturday away from our websites, asking folks to think about who and what is important in their local WP sites.  As a way to model everyone’s thinking, we asked the local site teams (each local site that participated had a team of two people there at the retreat) to build a visual representation of their local site.  (Yes, there was yarn involved.  I’m beginning to wonder if I should own some stock in a yarn production company.)  The end product of all that examination was to develop an inquiry question that would help to guide the rest of the time we spent together. 
    I was really struck by the depth and the range of the questions that folks were and are asking.  Some sites wanted to know how to turn their great resources of people and programming into useful online tools and resources.  Others were interested in using their web presences to develop communities that would support the work that their members were doing as well as to help them keep in touch.       

Once we had a handle on individual sites and the work that they do, we moved off to a computer lab to explore various research interests arising from the inquiry questions that we created for ourselves.  From there, we asked each site team to think explicitly about how they would go back to their local sites and further the conversations that we were only able to begin.  I do hope that folks returned home feeling confident that their time was well used.  I got the sense that most people did.

    There are plenty more details that I’ll be thinking further about and digging out of my notebooks and notes over the next few weeks.   But for now, I want to share a really great metaphor for thinking about web presence that Symmetris and Amanda from the AAMU Writing Project came up with during the visual representation section of the day.

    They thought about their work as a house with two stories.  The first story is where everyone is invited over to share and to take part.  When you have a party, you don’t have it upstairs — you invite your friends, neighbors, business acquaintances over to your house and have the party in the living room or the dining room.  Some folks get to go upstairs in the house, but not everyone. 

    The first floor of that house can represent the very public work of a WP site – sharing writing resources, working with schools and teachers and principals and everyone that wants to come over and dig in.  The second floor of the house is for the work that WP sites do that is not necessarily for everyone.  Invitation only workshops, institutes, programming, etc. 

    Thinking about the web presence of a WP site, or of any project, as the windows in that house is very helpful, I think.  The windows on the first floor are usually more open.  Perhaps the blinds are raised so that lots of light can get in and people can see in or out.  The windows on the second floor are more thoughtfully open.  Not every window is open, some are obscured by blinds, but they’re still there.  We share lots of information about the first floor stuff and less about the second floor. 

    But we still have windows upstairs.  That’s important, and I’m glad that Symmetris and Amanda were able to help me think about that.

    I’m not articulating that metaphor as well as I would like to, but I will be returning to it in my thinking over the next few weeks.  I hope that others will share their experiences and learning from the retreat, too.  We’ll be sharing some of that work via listserv, as it was a second floor or upstairs experience, but I do hope some of it makes its way to the various web presences of those folks who were there.  I learned a great deal, and I hope to continue to.  More information and resources are available at the wiki if you’re interested.

    On a side note, it was a special treat for me to get to meet some of the folks in my blogging network.   Kevin, Gail and Bonnie have all taught me a great deal, and it was a pleasure to chat face to face.  (I promise my ABC movies will be in on time, y’all.  Well.  At least close.)   Susan is becoming a blogging comrade, too.   Now if I could only get the rest of the folks that were there to start a blog, or to tell me where I might find theirs  .   .   .   .

    Been quiet lately.  It’s one of those weeks that’s about introspection. 
    I’ve been writing a little, though, and I thought I’d point you to the post I just put up at the CSUWP Advanced Institute Mother Blog. Take a peek. 
    If you’d like, you can join us in our Book Club which begins in about a week and will run up until the start of the AI.  The book, Working toward Equity, is available as a free download.  It’s a book of and about teacher research.  Feel free to join in on the discussion.  Check out this post for details and a reading schedule.

Cindy, director of the CSUWP (check out the new website — lots of great interactive stuff!), wrote up her experience at the first session of our Advanced Institute on technology and inquiry. 

    I don’t know yet if I like Doug’s model for teaching transparently, but I like the philosophy.  I just don’t know if publishing my lesson plans is a useful way to be transparent.  (His handouts section is a winner, though.)
    Steve Burt also mentions transparency (and administrative nervousness about it) in a recent Ed Tech Insider post.  Lots of good questions about podcasting and its future in the classroom.  Anybody got answers yet?

    By the way, I’ve added a new category to my category listing.  The add has been long overdue.  The new category is called "teacher research."  Teacher research is defined slightly differently by lots of different folks, but here’s one pretty good definition, taken from a review of a one of my favorite teacher research guides:

It is research conducted by
teachers as they go about their daily work.

    That’s a simplistic definition, but there’s a lot in those few words.  Teacher research is the systematic examination of one’s practice, say Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan Lytle in their book.  It occurs as a piece of the school day, not as an extra part.  Students and teachers work together to improve learning.  For everybody.
    I’ve been conducting systematic reflections about my classroom on this blog for the last several months.  But I’m not quite to the research stage yet.  So much of who I am as a teacher is about asking good questions and attempting to find and document factually accurate answers.  It’s high time I talk about teacher research in this space.
    Certainly, many of you are already familiar with teacher research.  It’s transformative and affirming to know that one can improve oneself through systematic study.  Especially now, as teachers lose more and more power in the classroom. 
    If teacher research were a web application, it’d probably be a blog.

    Spoke to my graduate school advisor about my thesis today.  I completed my coursework a year ago and am a thesis away from getting my Master’s degree.  It’s not been going too terribly well.
    The problem, in addition to moving twice and having a baby, is that I get pulled away by a bunch of different questions and ideas.  All of which fade as I get into the next one.  However, I think I might know the general direction that I want to go.  Might as well share.
    I’m thinking about doing my thesis on the educational technology stuff that I’ve been immersed in these last seven or eight months.  I haven’t been here long, but I’ve found technology to be a thread throughout my teaching and learning.  These new mediums are fascinating to me — not because of computers, but because of the ability to connect, reflect and build community.  I can do stuff with the web that I can’t do in the classroom.  My hunch, and I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here, is that these technologies, used properly, can help us to teach better. 
    No.  That’s not right.  They help students to learn better — because they require that students take the wheel and drive their own learning.  It’s not too hard to fake a worksheet — but try to fake a blog or active participation in a learning community. 
    I’d love to back that up and be able to cite some research on that.  I’d also like to analyze what works when it comes to creating community online.  I guess I’ve got at least two research questions here:
    1.  How do web-based technologies affect student learning?  Teacher preparation? 
    2.  What are some effective strategies to use when teaching with these technologies?  How do you create a successful and (self)sustaining community of online learners? 

    These are definite first draft sorts of questions — but I’ve really been thinking about them for a while.  I know I’m not alone.
    Thoughts?