Bright Spots: Snow Day Meeting Goes Digital

In 2005 (2005!) Marc Prensky wrote about the process of technology adoption as typically a four-step process:
Dabbling
Doing old things in old ways
Doing old things in new ways
Doing new things in new ways.

When a new technology appears, Prensky noted seven years ago, “our first instinct is always to continue doing things within the technology the way we've always done it.”  Seven years later, we are still struggling to get past dabbling or doing old things in old ways.  Witness our extolling the virtues of the “flipped classroom,” which merely flips two old things done in old ways – lectures become homework. As Ira Socal argues, it’s “the same classroom, just re-arranged”.

But it’s hard to figure out how to do new things with these new tools when we are still comfortable with our old ways.  Jared Cohen is a Google Ideas director thinking about how we can harness what he calls “connection technologies” (the term social media, he argues, is too limiting) to address global challenges.  He argues that new things happen in places where necessity inspires innovation. Witness, he says, the Arab Spring.

The hardest part of doing new things is that you cannot imagine them.  Today, a bright spot for me was doing an old thing – a meeting - on Google+.  It was necessitated by snow – it seemed dangerously ridiculous to drive when we could meet online.  What was marvelous, as we navigated the new space, figuring out the glitches, finding the features – is beginning, at the edge of our imaginations, to consider the ways we could use this tool that we were using in an old way. But using it was a start. Using it with imaginative, passionate, thoughtful colleagues was even better.  I’m betting that right now they are already thinking about how we can have book clubs with students across the district or peer edit sessions between schools or connect students meaningfully with community mentors or…..

Bright Spot: Blogging Educators

A moment ago, an email arrived to approve a post for a collaborative blog we’ve set up for a technology project we have under way.  The post took my breath away – just the honesty of it, the thoughtfulness, the hard work of it – to reflect after a long day, to learn in front of the world (or at least a few colleagues) – so that together we can all learn from and build upon those experiences.

Chris Kennedy argues that BC is leading Canada (and perhaps the world) in the professional use of social media in K-12 education. He gives a list of seven reasons to explain it.  I’m not sure about the first six (although they make sound sense), but I’m absolutely certain of the last:  “We have an amazingly dedicated profession:  Even in challenging times, it is stunning to see the number of teachers, school administrators and other educators spending time in their evenings and weekends to reflect and share through their blogs, Twitter and other venues.”

Blue Monday Bright Spot

We all tend to focus on problems rather than strengths.  Very few of us spend time analyzing what we are doing well, so we can do more of it.  Instead we stare at our faults, our warts, our bad habits and weaknesses and try to fix them.  But Chip and Dan Heath in their book, Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard, note that especially in times of change (and surely there is no dispute that we are in the midst of profound change) there are problems everywhere, so focusing on them becomes a recipe for inaction.  Instead, we need to use our power of analysis to figure out what’s going well with an eye to doing more of it in the future.

We have a lot of Bright Spots in our schools, even on the most depressing day of the year, even when our plans come apart (for a million reasons) and our failures and disappointments loom large in our eyes.  As Senior Alternative teacher Ray Andrews said, the question about what’s going well was “a reminder that there have indeed been bright spots. For example, I have two students who are likely to achieve early graduation (Dogwoods, of course).”  According to extensive research, “An individual’s educational attainment is one of the most important determinants of their life chances in terms of employment, income, health status, housing and many other amenities,” so the opportunities opened to two students whose risks for dropping out were very high is a sun-glasses-on-it’s-so-bright  spot.  (See Cost of Dropping Out.)  Next: let’s ask the
students what worked and why they beat the odds.  And then – let’s do more of it!

Watch Dan Heath share how to find a bright spot.

7 Ways to Learn and Use Technology Even When You Have Very Little Technology or Technology Knowledge

A collaboratively created list.

Project Success Gathering

1.  Curate the Web
Organize your links for students using some of the online tools that make it easy for you and easy for kids.
Jog the Web
Live Binders (Steve Anderson’s binders are a great resources for educators wanted to use technology)
Symbaloo
Delicious
Diigo
Sqworl
The best thing about these tools is that our links, bundles, “jogs,” and binders can be shared.  Working alone, curating the web is overwhelming – working together, we can each do less better!

2.  Create a Container
Where will you put your collections so they are easy to access?  Wikis are a very easy to create, easy to use, and easy to maintain space – and the best part – designed for collaboration.  Try either pbworks or wikispaces. What makes Wikipedia viable is that it is built and maintained by hundreds of thousands of people.  On our own, a wiki just adds one more thing; when we work together with our colleagues, we can each contribute our strengths and get help where - and when - we need it most.

3.  Keep Deep and Meaningful Learning in Mind
Technology only amplifies the work we do.  Just as we wouldn't tell students to “write a story” and expect quality results, we can’t tell students to “create a PowerPoint” without explicit instructions.  It isn’t enough to show students merely how to add and delete images, for example; more important, they need instruction, for a start, on what makes a good image and how we credit images.  (And let’s put our lessons and the resources for them on a wiki to share, so each of us doesn’t have to reinvent!)

4.  “I Can” Attitude
So often we begin with “I can’t.”  There is a lot we CAN do.  And one of the hardest things to know that we can do:  we can make mistakes, flounder, look like a novice (because we are) and learn out loud with our students.

5.  Support Each Other
We really, really need to find ways to work together, to team teach, to touch bases regularly, to remind each other to take baby steps (and cheer each one!), and to accept - embrace - that learning will be mucky and slow.

6.  Get Students to Teach
Teaching is still the best way to learn deeply.  Students are both familiar with technology and comfortable in that environment: let them teach each other (peer teaching, buddy teaching, partner learning) – and best of all, let them teach us.

7.  Waste Time!  
Leave time for “timewasting.”  Explore. Play. Discover. Tinker. Laugh.  And best of all, waste time together.    

Saying Yes and No to Technology

For me the question – should we have technology in schools? – is an unconditional yes.  We have, at our fingertips, the capacity to personalize, differentiate, support in “just-in-time” ways; to collect, organize and share the information we need exactly when we need it; to spark and sustain curiosity by bringing into the classroom the capacity to follow any question to the greatest depths known to man.

People ask continually – But what about slow, deep, contemplative thought?  What about exercise and just “going outside” to play?  What about community and teamwork?

First, I can think of at least ten ways I could use technology in service of all those goals in a classroom, even the “going outside” part.  Here’s one:  research the effect of nature on the brain – we all need to know why we should do what someone else tells us is “good for us” – and then use a tracking program like metracker.com to do an experiment to see if the classroom community experiences a difference in learning by spending more time outside.

But more important, we can say no.  Right now we’ll use a pen, a book, our physical senses, conversation only, a silent space.  Just because we have technology doesn’t mean that it must be constantly on or used endlessly.

It is similar, I think, to the grave fears over the last decades about television.  Is TV good or bad?  Does TV harm us? TV is a mode of entertainment.  The only thing new is that it is instant and in our homes.  Parents can limit TV for children; we can limit it for ourselves.  And we ought to.  The overuse of media by children is the decision of adults who struggle to say no to their own desire for peace, quiet, ease (or, because we do not yet have effective, affordable child care, they cannot supervise their children. As a society, we have decided that other things are more important.)

If only it weren’t so hard! Previously, we did not have to set internal limits to our entertainment.  They were limited by access – the carnival passing through the village, for example.  Now, entertainment is in our pocket.  We have to learn how to say no.  And this “no” extends, among other newly abundant and easy things: buying what we can’t afford in a credit-easy world, abusing our bodies through excess food and sloth in a world of fast food and remote controls, and destroying our planet when pre-packaged and throw away are everywhere, instant, and so very very easy.

Our children will live in - have always lived in - an instant world – one where they can make a decision to publically shame and humiliate someone they don’t understand; where they can access pornography and violence with a click; where they are continually inundated with requests to purchase the next best thing.  It is also a world where they can instantly connect with the knowledge of the world and our global neighbours, where they can have a say on important issues and become active citizens.

We do not serve them by putting them in technology-free schools.  We serve them by teaching them (I’m not really sure how, but probably through modelling, through strategies, through positive experiences, through actively engaging them in conversations about decision-making and providing a framework of values against which to make those decisions) to find ways to say NO to excesses that harm us and hurt our neighbours and to say YES to the power, at their fingertips, to do good.

I hope they are better at it than we are.  Our future depends upon it.

Yes - From erix!'s photostream
No - From Mr Jaded's photostream

Living Slow

I’ve been living Slow for a few days: slow cooking – cookies, pastries, all the trimmings for Christmas dinner – polishing, cleaning, wrapping presents, festive decorating – and then two perfect days of food and conversation, board games and laughter.

On Christmas Eve, after the dishes were done and the extra guests had left, my daughter and her husband sat with me for a bedtime recap of the day.  I don’t know, Katie said, if I can continue this tradition.  It is all so…much!   Katie is a doctor, her husband the CEO of a social media company; their lives are intense, fast-paced.  Katie is on call for the rest of the holidays; Ben has various meetings scheduled, emerging issues, new challenges.   They live in a beautiful condo downtown Vancouver, but all of us smile at the image of our Christmas clan – and trimmings – shoehorned into the space.

At first I thought, perhaps it doesn’t matter.  Perhaps these traditions are simply the continuation of “women’s work,” a kind of subjugation to kitchen that is no longer appropriate in this new world.  But by morning I had rethought.  Although it no doubt will have to continue differently – and it has to become the work of everyone – I’m pretty sure that this “women’s work” – slow, loving, knitting together of family and friends – is essential to continue.  I say work, because I’m pretty sure that what’s important is that it can’t be instant – a phone call to a caterer, let’s say.  I think what matters – and it matters now more than ever as the pace of living increases – is that it is Slow.  

Things I did this week that I didn’t even know about five years ago

• Put together a Christmas Connections Listserv “cool links” email by adding content saved to my Delicious social bookmarking site .
• Posted information about a new book in our DRC collection on our Facebook page.
• Developed a Twitter workshop, including an online poll for choosing our discussion question.  
• Helped a school team set up iPads. 
• Helped a teacher set up a web camera to use as a document camera in her classroom.
• Approved a post to a collaborative Posterous blog that I administer.
• Posted a picture of a classroom strategy on a Pinterest bulletin board. 
• Added an information flyer to our wiki.
• Uploaded a video to youtube and then shared how to embed it on a classroom wiki.
• Took videos of a student showcase of learning that I will edit (soon).

And then wrote about it here.

The question is - is it helpful for kids and teachers?  Or am I just creating more binders to gather digital dust and files that disappear into digital cabinets and “toys” that distract us for a while and then are shelved, too, never to be seen again?