#edchat
#RSCON3
#140edu
#TEDx______
#edcamp____ #

Many of the educators who participate(d) in the events listed above and others like them report that the events are/were perfectly wonderful; amazing even. Apparently, this social media-aided PD is more powerful than any PD they’ve ever done; better than any grad school course they’ve taken. And, it may very well be. #

But, many of the folks who take part in events like these have been at it for a couple/few years now. And, we’ve become pretty good at sharing what they’re learning and even doing. Theres value in talking about and sharing ideas and actions, but that only gets us so far. Furthermore, many knowledge claims are made about how awesome these ideas are. Students are learning more! Students are so much more engaged! etc. #

So, then, what are the warrants for these knowledge claims? What evidence is there that all of these new forms of professional learning are making a difference for kids? #

Think of it this way: imagine parents of a student in your classroom wants to know if the new stuff you’ve tried with their kid this year worked. How would you respond? What evidence would you offer? Imagine a principal considering awarding you professional development credits for participation in these events. How would you convince the principal that these professional learning experiences are legitimate? #

Join us. #

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The DLC will be embedding a teacher research group within the Innovation Academy and its planning in order to see if the work they’re doing, and that students and district staff are enthusiastic about, has something to teach us about how we can make positive change in the classroom. #

During the meeting, two statements really caught my ear and got me thinking about the work ahead. #

The first was a statement, made during the meeting and repeated by several folks in the conversation, that the goal of Innovation Academy was to create an environment that didn’t feel anything like school.  Both our district staff and our business partners felt this was important.  I find that both makes sense to me and is, well, rather odd.  That we’ve a shared understanding of school as something that isn’t conducive to learning is troubling, but I get where they’re coming from. #

The other thing that caught my ear was a mention, in passing, by one of the IBM partners that during last year’s camp, he noticed that the younger students involved in the camp, Kindergarteners, were plenty able to think in creative and nontraditional ways.  That’s not quite how he said it, though.  He actually said that sometimes, the youngest students were the best able to be engaged in the work of the camp². #

If, of course, we are trying to build learning experiences that are not at all like school, then it makes sense that our least schooled students would be the best at them.  Of course, it’s also possible that the Kindergartners at Camp Innovation are students who’ve not yet had their imaginations stamped out by school. #

I’m eager to begin the observational work of documenting what makes the Innovation Academy exciting and engaging for students and staff.  And also I’m looking forward to teacher researchers teasing out if they can fiddle with their classrooms in ways that make school less school-y. #

There is something worth going after in the space between the school-y and the not so school-y.  I hope it’s a piece of the possible future of public schools. #

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1. Last year, the project was called Camp Innovation.  Names change.  I like the camp metaphor, but it wasn’t my call.
2. And now academy.

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But that’s cool.  I was curious about the process and I learned a bunch about the problems and opportunities of badges and badging.  In case you were curious, below is the full text of the application.  You can read the winning Stage 1 proposals on the DML Competition Website. #

Teacher inquiry has long been recognized as a valuable way for teachers and students to critically examine their learning and pedagogy. We define teacher inquiry, sometimes called teacher action research, as a process by which teachers identify a problem of practice, gather data about that problem, systematically analyze that data, prepare a public presentation (lecture, workshop, published article) about their findings, and then adopt a series of action steps to improve instruction. In countries with very successful national curricula, such as Japan and Singapore, systematic teacher inquiry practices such as lesson study are central to efforts to improve educational systems and help individual teachers develop as practitioners. #

In the decentralized education ecosystem of the United States, teacher action research has been adopted less systematically, but it remains a promising and powerful approach. For instance, the DataWise program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education has had tremendous success in helping schools and teachers adopt a structured cycle of inquiry in order to use assessment data to improve instructional practice. We propose the development of a badge recognition system for teacher recognition activities. Such a system would both encourage teachers to engage in these effective professional learning practices and to provide teachers and districts with a map through the complex landscape of teacher action research. #

We propose that within teacher research there are at least five specific skills that might benefit from badging: #

1. Asking thoughtful questions
2. Intentional Data Collection
3. Systematic Data Analysis
4. Publishing Findings
5. Improving Instructional Practice #

By providing teachers with a structure for exploring teacher action research with badging, we provide teacher-researchers with a map for using teacher inquiry to improve practice. Since professional development structures in schools are not designed to support teacher action research, we believe that a badging system could help teachers use their own more flexible prep periods or team and department to make progress towards these goals. In total, the five badges would represent a sixth badged identity – that of teacher researcher. #

Several organizations seem likely candidates to participate in the infrastructure to award these kinds of badges. Districts like St. Vrain could be responsible for awarding badges to their own faculty who participate in projects like the DLC professional development program. Consultants or other professional development organizations, such as those providing training on the DataWise method, would also likely be willing to serve as distribution nodes in a badge network. #

2. Teacher Researcher Badges as Signals to Organizations #

All learning organizations need more thoughtful, reflective practitioners who carefully study their own practice. Teacher Research Badges can serve to signal to organizations the presence of these teacher researchers in the organization or within the larger community granular detail about the kinds of professional learning that teachers have explored, and are much better suited to helping teachers spotlight their teacher action research. #

Moreover, Teacher Researcher Badges could be used to build bridges across districts and demonstrate a national or international “teacher researcher community,” one where teacher researchers could discover and support one another. #

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. Badges that help to cultivate and mentor the next generations of institutional subverters can lead to thoughtful and inquiry-grounded innovation that can be nurtured through an organization and shared beyond. #

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I welcome your comments and suggestions, as always. #

Direct Link to Audio #

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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. #

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

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Successfully¹. #

So. I’ll have a Master of Arts after graduation in December. I started graduate school in the Fall of 2001. Just finished. It was a good trip, with plenty of side trips and time off the trail. #

This process has reminded me that, as with most of the writing I do, when the text is “finished,” meaning it’s time to hand it in or pass it along or hit “submit,” the value in the work is the process more often than the words that process leaves behind. #

That said, several folks along the way said they might like to see the finished project. So here you go. Thanks, Internet Friends, for all your help and support. #

Seriously. #

1. With distinction, according to my committee. I was honored. Still am.

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So maybe I’ll just try to do a little bit of freewriting here and see how it goes.  Here’s what I think I know right now as it relates to my research. #

To start with, here are my research questions: #

• What does reading and writing for school-related purposes look like in school-sponsored online writing spaces?
• Who is doing the writing in these spaces? The reading?
• Are the new tools and affordances of online digital writing, tools like hyperlinks, and affordances like immediate publication and world-wide audience, a factor in these spaces?  If so, how?

And, to start with, there’s just not enough of it.  In three weeks, I can count on both hands the number of classrooms doing public writing in this space.  And that leaves me with three fingers left to count other things. #

Are students and teachers blogging or writing online² in other spaces?  Certainly.  One of the limitations of my study, one that I knew would be a problem for some of what I was wondering about, was that I am limited to public stuff.  If I wanted a fuller picture of what the writing that’s happening online in my school district looks like, I need to interrogate our district’s Moodle.  I need to peer into our district implementation of Google Docs.  On Thursday, a teacher in our district started sharing a Google Docs collection with me from one of his classes.  He was excited about the number of texts they were producing together.  I’ve not yet opened the folder – but I’ve watched a hundred or so documents enter into my document list.  Sometimes in real time, I’ve seen them drop into place. #

Writing is happening. But why not here?³ #

Here’s what I know about the writiing that I am seeing: #

• Students and teachers aren’t talking to each other, for the most part, via the blog engine.  I suspect they are talking in class, but they’re not writing back and forth in these spaces.  Three quarters of the posts I saw during the period of the study contained no comments.  Of the ones that held comments, only another large handful could be considered any sort of conversation – back and forth between the author of the post and the commenter(s).  If these students are writing because they expect an audience, well, then they’re still waiting.
• Because no one’s responding, there’s a sense that no one’s reading.  Multiple times, I saw little snippets of text, clearly put up as tests, or left behind as mistakes, that weren’t taken down or adjusted.  Why bother, if no one’s looking – or it doesn’t seem like anyone is?
• The kind of writing that’s being asked of students in these spaces?  Well, it’s interesting – I can break it down into three types – daily summaries, written collectively by elementary school classes; reflective essays about various topics; and responses to teacher questions.  Lots of it is writing that doesn’t require a blog.  And it’s writing that involves very, very, very little source material.  Very few quotes.  Very few links.  And the links, when they’re present, are not  embedded in the text.  They lie naked and open in the text.  And that seems problematic to me⁴
• The writing that staff are doing is a little bit better⁵ – like students, they’re writing reflective essays, and sharing lots of newslettery information.  But I can’t be sure, from this data set, if the folks they want to reach are being reached through this vehicle.

1. And, yeah, I suppose that means that I’ve a significant bias about blogs and the power of blogging that, if I haven’t yet, I need to be sure to disclose somewhere in the thesis.
2. Oddly, in my world, and perhaps in yours, the word “blogging” has come to mean anything written in a Web browser that isn’t an email, no matter where it ends up.  Isn’t that interesting?  I might be a blog snob, but that bugs me.  And it probably shouldn’t.  It’s less of a problem for me than it used to be – I don’t correct people now when they say that.  I used to.
3. That’s not one of my research questions.  So what?
4. But, again, I may well be a blog snob.  But if the potential of the “writing of the 21st Century” is that it happens online and organically and is connected to other texts and blah blah blah – suppose it’s not.  Is that *bad* or *problematic* or just unfortunate?  Or is it just so?  As I’m in the middle of arguing that we need to make sure students have the tools to do this sort of work, a body of data that suggests, nah, it’s not so important,” is a little bit problematic.
5. Oops – judgement again.  Might need a better word than, ahem, “better.”

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We read a sample teacher research study that Michelle and I are fond of.  I like the study, a short piece on a teacher wondering about the value of a pullout literacy program in her school, because it emphasizes three things I think are essential to consider, and often re-consider, when ot comes to teacher inquiry specifically and qualitative research generally: #

1. Teacher research is an opportunity to dig into the “I wonders” and the “what ifs” that come up from time to time in your classroom.  But it’s not the same as “what good teachers do every day.”  It’s more intentional and purposeful than that.  And that’s a good thing.
2. Teacher research is contextual.  It comes from you, the researcher.  The classroom you teach in, the students you know, the wonderings you have.  That works two ways – both the questions and your answers to them are contextual.
3. Teacher research involves “data” that doesn’t show up in a quantitive study.  Stuff that doesn’t count because it can’t be counted.  Or, at least, not as easily.  And what matters, or at least what should, when it comes to measurement and paying attention is not either/or but yes and.  Qualitative and quantitative measures are friends.  Honest¹ .

Folks make statements, when we start to fiddle with traditional notions of “data,”² about their stats professors, or n values, or other things that suggest that Math Is THE Way of Knowing The Universe. #

While I find lots to like in science and math, it’s not the only way to go after what’s right and good and true in the world. #

Teachers, of all people, should have a good and always developing sense of this: they should know and understand what it means to measure, and how measurement affects the thing you’re measuring, and how there are ways other than percentages and standard deviations to explore vital areas of life and living and learning. #

If you think that’s wrong, and that cold, hard numbers are the only way to Know Something, well, consider this - #

How do you know you love your spouse?  Your best friend?  Your children?  Your parents? #

Prove it. #

But you only get numbers.  I’ll wait here.  Take your time. #

1. As I write this, I’m in the middle of a mixed-methods study.  The two go nicely together.
2. And the air quotes make appearances usually at this point in the conversation.

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Earlier in the year, I wrote about my proposed research topic, and about how I thought I might proceed.  Tomorrow, I’m digging into the work in earnest. #

I’m curious about how we, in our school district, are actually using our blogging engine, a WordPress installation that’s coming up on three years old.  I read what gets posted there, but I’ve never taken a real hard and descriptive look to see what’s there.  So tomorrow, I’m going to sit down and take a close look at a three week window of the blogging engine from this year, and I’m going to try to read, annotate, and classify every posting that appears there.  Then, based on what I see, I’d like to follow up with some of the authors, both teachers and students, and see if I can learn more about what they’re blogging about and why they’re blogging at all. #

Why am I looking ? Well, in large part because I want to see what’s happening in the space, and to go after promising practices that are present.  And, to be brutally honest, I’m looking because I expect that what I’ll see is a great deal of using blogs, rather than blogging, and that’s worth knowing and quantifying. #

So I’m digging in.  I suspect it’ll be an interesting look.  And, as with most teacher research, I suspect my questions will change a bit as I get into the data and see what there is to see. #

Wish me luck. #

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Back in May, I wrote some about my possible questions: #

I wonder about how these spaces change classroom practice. I think about how writing, and more generally, composition, becomes an extension for learning, particularly when there is a public audience for the work. Who is using these spaces? To what ends? How do the use of blogs and online courseware change the experience of teaching and learning in my school district? (Does anything change?) How are teachers using spaces like these? Is the learning day extended? What kinds of writing are happening in these spaces? To what effect? #

Those are the questions I’ll start with. As for data – well, we’ve got lots to look at. The blog engine itself is a public repository of the use of these tools. What are the ethical implications of studying, in public, a public space where learning is taking place? I plan to blog my research log, a tool that I’ll use to keep my reflections and observations about what I’m seeing and learning as I study these questions. In addition, I anticipate that I’ll conduct interviews with people using these tools in my quest to understand their impact. I intend to publish these recordings, as well, prior to my analysis of them. #

One question – and it seems a silly one – but should I start a separate blog over in the district blogging engine to collect all this work, or should I separate it a bit by placing it over here, at my place? I’m leaning towards creating a space there. But I’m still thinking. #

And I guess, too, that I’m still thinking about how we use those tools – how their presence affects what happens in the classroom. If what happens is “well, the notes are on the blog,” that’s not a terribly big change – or is it. I’m going to explore some examples of interesting blogging practice and try to see what influence those have on the classrooms they came from. A few teachers come to mind for my inquiry – but I’m still wondering if I want to try to look at these questions as someone looking at the texts or at the practices that generate these texts. Or both. #

I know from my own classroom experience that the potential exists in these publishing tools to extend the school experience beyond the walls of the school – and to bring the outside world in. Permeable walls are possible through publishing. But are they happening? Should they be?  Writing³ is powerful learning.  If we create more opportunities for writing and being thoughtful, might that make a positive difference for students?  Teachers?  Learning? #

As of right this minute, that’s what I’m thinking about.  That said, as with all good inquiry, I suspect my questions will change over the next several weeks as I dig in further. #

1. Good grief. As we roll out Google Apps in our district, any student will be able to publish anywhere without the intervention of the teacher. We’re rolling in places to post and share.
2. Oddly, my “classroom” as an instructional technology coordinator is actually a virtual space – and, because of the areas of my interest right now, is the Internet. Which is pretty big. So I’m going to have to try to limit that somehow.
3. or composition

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