I always enjoy a good double meaning in a title, so I’m pleased that this podcast, recorded during my drive home from NECC, is called what it is. I find myself driving at the moment, refreshed and recharged. That’s what I wanted out of the conference. I’m pleased it worked that way, and grateful to lots of folks for all the conversation and push back. It is good to be in community (or communities, or whatever) with smart folks. I wanted to get this podcast up, mostly for my own benefit, before I lost some of that momentum.
I’m off to the beach for a week, hoping to top off my batteries, and will be doing my best to be offline - but I’d welcome your comments here on the podcast as a way of keeping me driving and moving when I return.
Oh - and below is a piece of the conversation that I mentioned in the ‘cast. Thanks to Kevin Honeycutt for recording it and Darren Draper and David Jakes for facilitating the conversation. Not sure if a complete recording exists, but you’ll get the gist of the conversation, one of my favorites.
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.
Had a delightful and energizing time at the Constructivist Celebration on Sunday, a day of teacher play, experimentation and, in the words of Gary Stager, time spent with folks who have “a commitment to use computers in creative ways for the benefit of children.”
I took my XO along as my note-taking machine for the day, thinking that it was poetically appropriate to do so. Brian C. Smith did the same, and, wouldn’t you know it, there were several other XO’s in the room, too. I ended up doing plenty of OLPC and Sugar evangelism, which was fine by me. I also got to play and explore and create.
But more important than my play were the statements and commitments by Gary Stager and Peter H. Reynolds, the day’s speakers, about the importance of creation and exploration, both for my practice as a teacher, but also, and of far greater value, my growth as a learner. I hear a true committment from both gentlemen that there is great value in creating rich environments for children and that we, as teachers, need to model the creation that we want our students to do.
Our students need to see us struggle and reach and grow and try and explore and learn and fail and stand back up at the end and say, “Wow. What’d I learn here?” That’s probably the best motivation for them to get their hands dirty. And we’ve never any credibility if we ask kids to do something that we won’t do.
I thank everyone involved with the event for a special day of battery recharging play. Special thanks to my friends from IMSA, April-Hope Wareham and Scott Swanson, who brought a whole mess of XO’s and taught me plenty about them.
Today’s podcast is a short reflection on my learning experiences today, as well as some seriously first draft thinking about information and knowledge. As always, I hope the conversation continues.
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.
One hundred percent of my family is technologically literate. No, really. I’ve got the numbers to back that up.
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.
If you know me or my family at all, I suspect that you would challenge my numbers. Why? Because two of the four members of my immediate family are children. Young children. One’s three. The other’s a ten-month-old. How in the world are they technologically literate?
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.)
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.
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.
One of the frustrating bits about working in technology rather than in language arts for the last ten months is that I haven’t really had a good reason to keep up on all the great YA literature out there. I’m not in a position to recommend books to students at the moment - so I’ve gotten a little bit out of touch with the YA world. I was reminded of this this morning when Philtweeted that he was headed off to a teen literature conference. I love going into the libraries in our schools and spending time with the displays of new and popular books.
But I really miss book talks with students. Those conversations in front of bookshelves where we try to match their interests with the right book or books are wicked intense and always a fun challenge. Talk about a rush.
While I can’t necessarily meet my need to talk books with teens at the moment, I can at least catch up on my reading. I happen to have a book store gift card and a desire to make a donation to a school library (after I read the book, of course).
So, dear readers and teachers of reading, what should I purchase? I’m looking for something newish - the last six months or so - and I’m aware of Twilight and the Uglies. I’d love something a little unconventional, perhaps ARG-ish (And I know that the sequel to Cathy’s Book, Cathy’s Key, comes out in May - so I’ll be getting my hands on a copy of that, too, I hope.), or a good graphic novel (I really enjoyed the Invention of Hugo Cabret, as did the students I shared it with.).
Please share your recommendations. What are you reading with students? To them? For you? Can’t keep on the shelves? Wish you had a copy or two of? I’ll buy the book that I like the best and tell you how it goes. Thanks!
I recently finished reading Seymour Papert’s book The Children’s Machine: Rethinking school in the age of the computer, and I’ve got lots to say formally about it. But I only have a minute at the moment and I wanted to ask a question. In the book, Papert forwards the idea that we should have as big a body of knowledge about learning and how to learn as we do about teaching and how to teach. (He even postulates at one point that “learning theory” is much more about teaching than it is about actually learning. And I agreed with him. Too often, we think of education that is something that we can do to someone, rather than with someone. We certainly can’t do it for someone.)
Since I’d never actually heard of the word before I read the book, I’m guessing that it’s not a big term/idea in teaching and learning circles. But I don’t know - perhaps I’m out of the academic loop a bit. It seems that the term does surface in some academic arenas, and has for some time, but I can’t get a sense of its meaning in those contexts. I guess I’m writing right now to both ask about your knowledge of the term as well as to ask if you think it’s true that we spend way too much time thinking about teaching without taking the time to think about learning. Or, rather, are we too busy teaching to bother to learn? I’ve read plenty of posts that suggest as much, and in fact, I think I’ve said it myself. If that’s the case, what are we going to do about it?
Papert says it, at one point, this way:
…participants thought of themselves as teachers-in-training rather than as learners. Their awareness of being teachers was preventing them from giving themselves over fully to experiencing what they were doing as intellectually exciting and joyful in its own right, for what it could bring them as private individuals. The major obstacle in the way of teachers becoming learners is inhibition about learning. (p.72 - from this page of quotes, which are worth reading)
It’s frustrating that this isn’t a new idea, but that it’s still revolutionary. Read the book. I’ll give it a more formal review later. Short version: Two thumbs up. Mindstorms is on my nightstand, now, sitting on top of my XO, which is appropriate for so many reasons.
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