I’m typically the guy who pays attention to the latest gadgets from a distance, reading up on them and learning about what they can or can’t do, but not striking on the first day of any new thing, for a number of reasons. For one, I’m cheap. I also don’t do well in lines or crowds. And buying most stuff on day one is buying into a public beta period, and often the better deal is a few weeks or months down the road as hardware is revised and software is tweaked.
But I had an extra few minutes on Saturday around noon, and I had a hunch about Apple’s iPad inventory. Namely, I figured they’d have plenty of devices to fiddle with at the Best Buy on my way home from the gym. So, with Ani and Teagan along for company, I wandered in to take a look at Apple’s iPad, released earlier that day.
I should interrupt my story here to tell you that, just prior to the visit to the store, I happened across this article on children and mobile devices for learning1, so I’m certain that my brain was thinking about my children and learning when we made it into the store.
I spend lots of time thinking about how my kids and the kids in our schools will think, learn and live in a world that will be digitally quite different from the world I grew up in. And I find myself jumping back and forth from the positions of “It’s all the same – the stuff is different, but the world is the same place” and “Holy cow. There has never been a time or place like this one.”
And both are valid positions, but they coexist. I spend lots of time in the spaces between those two poles. I’m that guy who sees that there’s value in highly structured and sequenced learning as well as time for exploration and play without outwardly driven purpose. Most of the important things in life aren’t binary, they’re much more complex than that. And I digress. Still further.
The implications of the iPad have weighed heavily on my mind this week, as I’ve read pieces like Cory Doctorow’s:
Buying an iPad for your kids isn’t a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it’s a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.
Dale Dougherty’s piece on Hypercard and its influence on a generation of young hackers is a must-read on this. I got my start as a Hypercard programmer, and it was Hypercard’s gentle and intuitive introduction to the idea of remaking the world that made me consider a career in computers.
Plenty of other folks have, in the last few days, said some pretty interesting things about the iPad either being the end of the world as we know it or the beginning of a new revolution of creativity and interactivity – and I’m just2 a dad trying to figure out how I want to introduce my daughters to the world of possibility and wonder that awaits them. I want them to tinker, to play, to explore and to dream. I want them to grab hold of the stuff of the world and make new from raw ingredients.
I worry that such making will happen in a locked down world, the world that Howard Zittrain saw when he wrote The Future of the Internet3, one where the generative devices that spawned the Internet become, like the iPad and the iPhone before it4, locked down and controlled by the people who make them, not the people who own them.
And even as I say that the iPad is a locked down device, I know that there’s creative opportunity and potential from within constraints, and that what’s locked down may or may not be a problem so long as there’s still a space for open, so long as there’s a multi-platform world where the languages spoken by one ecosystem are understood by others. My iPhone is a powerful tool. I suspect the iPad is, too.
But again, I’m a dad who’s struggling to figure out how to bring his children into the world of information and digital stuff while keeping roots in the good stuff of language and learning and literacy that came before the digital. 5
When we entered the store and fidgeted in a short line to play with the demo iPads, the girls were not interested. In the line. The moment they could get to the iPad, then begun to touch and poke and pinch and explore. They were immersed in the content, in words and letter and pictures and touch this to do that. I was struck by how powerful the experience was for them, more so than a random kids-touch-the-buttons experience. They were trying, as they could, to make meaning. I got what reviewers meant when they said that using the iPad was like interacting directly with the content, and not with the device the content’s delivered through. And, again, I know that it was the article and the pressure and the fact that I was a little high on the Apple expectations myself.
But I bought one. Against all my typical instincts and dispositions. Right then and there. What better lab for their experimentation? What father wouldn’t do such a thing?
I came to my senses about ten minutes later, just before I had to try to explain to Ms. the Teacher just what it was that I did, and just why it was necessary. She’s my grounding influence oftentimes, and she reminded me of a few things. Namely, I’m cheap, my kids have access to lots of the analog and digital world already, and, well, it’s early yet. There’s more exploration for me to do before I’m sure this is a useful tool for my girls. The right tool. Or one of several, which is more likely. I returned the iPad, unopened, later that night.
If you’ve made it this far, then you might be hoping this is the paragraph where I have the epiphany, the jewel that makes this experience worthwhile. And I’m so sorry to let you down. I’m finding that, often, there are few certainties when it comes to what technology is the right technology for helping kids to learn, or societies to remain free, or work to get done, or whatever it is that you want to make the tool do.
But my kids and I are going to be exploring this world together in a way that is new for me. As Ani heads out to Kindergarten next school year, and as Teagan’s not far behind her, there’s lots of work for us to do as co-learners together. Gadgets and gizmos and questions and tinkering. There’s much to do.
And there’re plenty of voices in the wilderness calling out to us with suggestions about how to do this thing.
We’re listening. But I’m also remembering what Ani’s face looks like in that picture at the top of this post, her tongue set between her lips as she digs in, determined, to play, to explore, to make. That’s a learning face. That’s what we’re aiming for.
Written by Anya Kamenetz, who’s also written this book on DIY Education that I’m very much looking forward to reading. [↩]
Just. I couldn’t understate the importance of that job more. [↩]
Yes, that’s a wonderful book that you can download for free. Read it. Please. [↩]
Two devices I find fascinating and yes, I use two iPhones. Daily. [↩]
Language that, itself, is a tool and a technology, like books and magazines and pencils and pens and ink and pretty much everything that folks think about when they think about the “good old days.” It’s all technology. I know. [↩]
I spent today engaged in some work with the National Writing Project and several of their thinking partners at the Digital Is . . . Convening event, a day of structured thinking and looking and conversation about what it means to write and teach writing at a time of such profound technological change in the world and, perhaps, our schools. It was a classic NWP event, in the sense that there was a good collection of really smart folks present as well as thoughtful processes and protocols to help us have productive conversation and inquiry time.
What follows are a collection of the thoughts and ideas that swirled around my head today as I moved from conversation to conversation. I’ll probably pick a few of these to expand on in future posts, but I wanted to get them down now before they drifted away into the nebulous space of “I’ve got some notes somewhere about something important.” Here goes:
It seems like many (but certainly not all) of the projects I looked at today were created in semi-school environments. By that, I mean that they were created in after-school programs or through work that students are engaged in outside of the traditional classroom. I think that’s interesting for several reasons, one of which being that perhaps the role of schools and teachers is changing at the moment, or we’re stuck doing the “boring bits” that help students to be ready to engage in extracurricular projects like these. More thinking needed here, as I know that many other pieces of work shared today happened within classrooms.
Lots of talk about the need to expand and fiddle with the definitions of “reading,” “writing,” and “text.” Words, too, like writing might not be broad enough to encompass skills like making movies and extensive digital projects. “Composition” continues to be my go to word for the common skills of making meaning that I see across genre, medium and mode. I like the way that Pat Fox said it this afternoon in one conversation: “We need to renegotiate the terms that we use.”
Many of the tools that I use every day in my work and with students allow us to turn our processes into texts and to continually take apart and easily republish our final products. Examples of “process as text” are recordings of classroom conversations, considered temporary and fleeting, that become something more than a passing conversation when they exist as video or audio recordings. These types of texts stay fixed – we can’t really go back and change the flow of a conversation – but our finished products, when published digitally, are easily and perhaps even secretly editable and revisable after publication. So we’re able to fix the temporary and fiddle with the permanent. That seems interesting and worthy of further exploration.
Is “digital” a new skillset, or do we need to refocus on, as Chris Lehmann said this evening, “Teaching tool and teaching audience is nothing unless we teach thoughtfullness (sic) and wisdom?” To say it differently – is there anything terribly different about what students can do today with the digital tools they have available to them? If there is, what is it? I think there are differences, but reaching for them is difficult. (This is a question that I’ve been thinking about for a very long time. It came up multiple times today, particularly in tweets I passed back and forth with Paul Allison. I wrote a little bit more about it just before lunch:
This morning I was in a pretty fantastic session on the Youth Roots work in Oakland, California. What it reinforced for me was that so much of this work that we’re doing with digital texts and tools is sooooooo not about anything other than what we’ve been trying (often well, often not) to do in schools for a very long time – help people to be better people, preferably together.
What I mean by that is that we might’ve had a very good conversation fifty years ago about “Analog Is” – although we wouldn’t've known to call it that, because we didn’t have the other space of digital to compare it to. In that conversation, we would’ve talked about the tools that we had and how they helped us to better connect our students to the world and the world to our students. And we might’ve talked about the importance of honoring our students as people, and their passions as important. And we should’ve talked about what was happening in the world that wasn’t school, and what was worth bringing in to our classrooms, and what wasn’t. We would’ve had a great conversation about how the media of the day were reshaping the world, and what that meant, and how we could push back as we attempted to better understand that.
And now, we’re talking about what CAN happen in school, and what IS happening out of school, and how the two are or aren’t connected. And we’ll always be talking and writing and thinking about this, and I’m okay with it.
But as we sit here at the beginning of an explosion of writing and composing and making, I’m reminded of our humanness and our deep desires to connect and to be heard and to make a difference, to matter. And I’m excited because the tools have never been more accessible and never more powerful. Our work is as it was and as it will be, but still – there’s something new here, I think.
Media literacy continues to be vital. But like so many things, we’ve never gotten that as right as we could at school. Making media seems more and more to be the best way to help students see how media influences audience. So, making media becomes the way to teach media awareness and literacy. Yes?
A short movie, scripted and shot and edited and scored, takes much more time to make than an essay, it seems. In fact, at least two texts are created – the script and the movie – so how do we assess all that “extra” work when we give students options for projects?
For that matter, what happens to assessment when we find ourselves in the middle of digital studios of made meaning? How do classrooms that look like this get “measured” against schools that look more traditional in nature?
I heard again and again today that teachers must immerse themselves in the world of digital writing and media creation if they are to teach such things well. I agree with that, and often say that I’d never do anything to a student that I wouldn’t do myself first. But where does the time for such exploration fit into an already over-crowded school day?
Are digital texts necessarily more dynamic than analog texts? (Espen Aarseth makes a good case in his book Cybertext that the answer to that question is often that the digital texts are more linear and less flexibly read and responded to than their analog cousins. I think he’s right.)
How do questions of power and control get fiddled with in digital spaces? Are there different relationships between those with power and those without online? The same? A little of both?
There are issues of technology here. Many times today, I heard that “It’s not about the technology, it’s about the learning.” And that’s true. Sometimes. Other times, it’s most definitely about the technology. It’s hard to make movies without cameras. And editing stations. Impossible to record music without recording equipment. What sorts of purchasing decisions affect what kinds of literacies get taught? What sorts of server connections and bandwidth considerations ensure that students leave school comfortable in networked environments? How do those technical decisions influence the culture of schools and communities? Culture, after all, follows structure.
Whew. Going to stop there for now. As always, more questions than answers. I’m okay with that. I’d be interested in your thoughts on any of these ideas. If you’re interested in others’ thoughts from the day, you might want to check out the NWP Digital Is Ning.
The President will be speaking to students at 12:00 EST today about the importance of education. You may have heard about it. There are plenty of places that you can watch the talk – but I thought I’d stick a viewer here just in case.
I got immediate feedback that some prompts might be useful. So let’s give this a whirl. Our first prompt is this photo. Take a look. Think about it a bit. See where it takes you. Then write. Publish. Share.
(I’m using the tag npm2009 for these posts. Maybe you want to use it for your poems, too. Maybe not. It’s cool.)
Buried in the comments of Barbara’s latest post (an excellent think-piece about different blogging styles) is a fine statement that sums up quite nicely why I ever bother to put fingers to keyboard or pen to paper:
I want to write better than I do: lean and lush, deep and real, sitting down with a bunch of frayed threads of clashing colors and see if I can weave them into something beyond myself.
Good morning from the 2008 NCTE Annual Convention. I arrived yesterday and got the lay of the land while visiting with old friends, many of them at the NWP Annual Meeting, which occurs concurrently. (Too much good stuff crammed together, if you ask me.) Today, I’ll be doing a couple of sessions and hoping to attend several more. In my continuing quest to find the better, real time collaborative tools for convention or conference chatter, I’ve decided to try using Chatterous for this one.
I’ve created a group in Chatterous called “NCTE 2008″ that I’ll be using to share information on the ground from the conference. I’d love to chat with you there, either if you’re attending or if you have an interest in what’s shaking here. If you are attending, you might consider trying to connect with friends via the chat room, too. (It’s okay to type lots there, is all I’m saying. I’m sure you’ll think of several good things to say or do in the space that I’ve not considered.) I like Chatterous because it plays nicely with mobile devices, which is a must for this event. If you’re interested in seeing my notes, or chatting with others, I’d encourage you to join the room. If you haven’t an account, you’ll need to create one.
Selfishly, I’m hoping some folks will share session notes from events and presentations that I cannot attend.
I hope this is useful. If not, there’s always the mobile version of Cover It Live to try at the next conference. Or, for that matter, tomorrow. I’m here all weekend.
Tonight, as I picked up a mostly sleeping little girl from a car seat and hefted her into the crook of my right arm, balancing the bag of toys and clothes in my other hand, I realized that Teagan just isn’t a baby anymore.
This is a rather absurd observation, in the sense that she will turn 17 months tomorrow, and she has not technically been a “baby” for a while now. She walks. Mutters a bit. Follows instructions (sometimes). Laughs. Chews her food. Plays tricks. Dances. Has a unique personality. She is a little person, and has been for some time.
But today, I could just feel the difference. Not sure why, or why today, but it was, and is, the case. She’s bigger, and a wee bit more difficult to carry. She’s not a baby.
And every day, she’ll get just a little bit harder to carry. I’ve experienced this with my older daughter, but not with Teagan. It’s both wonderful and dreadful. And not at all easier than the first time this happened to me. I can’t begin to fathom what it’ll be like when I won’t be able to twirl either of them around, listening and watching for giggles and laughter.
While I wouldn’t trade it for anything, parenting definitely brings with it some bittersweet moments.
I’m working with some high school students this week on a research assignment for their Wired 9 course, a class on digital literacy and responsibility. As a part of that work, I’m helping them to generate some good research questions that they can explore and dig in to. Since I thought the topics might be of interest to folks who aren’t in the class, and since I also know that you have plenty of excellent questions, I thought I’d seek a little help while also create a resource for others doing similar work. I wonder if you might be willing to contribute a resource or a question or two. I’m certain that the 9th graders that I will be working with will thank you in advance.
I thank you, too.
(If you’re not comfortable using VoiceThread, feel free to leave a comment, question or link to a resource in the comments of this post, and I’ll be happy to transfer it to the VoiceThread, which I’ll be sharing with the students.)
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.
photo credit: Bud the Teacher
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