Dangerously Irrelevant

George Couros says:

“Kids don’t have enough balance.”

“We are dumber because of technology.”

“People are disconnected from one another because of how we use technology.”

“Technology kills our face-to-face interactions.”

In my travels, I have heard all of these arguments.

…

You will hear people say things like “Twitter is stupid.” Just to clarify, Twitter is a thing and can’t be stupid. It is the equivalent of a student not understanding math and then saying “math is stupid.” It is often our lack of understanding that leads us to make statements like this, which I made myself. One of the questions that I ask people when they make these remarks is, “from your use of Twitter, tell me why it is stupid?”, which is sometimes followed by, “Well, I have never used it.” That would be the equivalent of me saying that a Lamborghini handles terribly. I could say that, but I have never experienced driving one, nor have I ever done any research on the vehicle.

via http://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/4271

Justin Reich says:

if you are building things that are familiar, how are they going to substantially change education?

If our problems are mere inefficiencies – if we need students doing basically exactly what they’ve been doing before but faster – then the gambit of building apps that mirror typical classroom practices will work out great.

If you think that the problems in classrooms are not just about kids doing things a little faster, but doing different things than is current practice, then you need to build things that will be unfamiliar. If your technology is unfamiliar, you need to patiently build a network of educators experimenting with your ideas, reshaping systems – bells, exams, furniture, devices – to accomodate your new technology into a new vision. Initially, these people won’t buy your weirdness; you will practically have to pay them to implement your new ideas.

…

You, hungry entrepreneur, … you are going to take some familiar feature of classroom experience – the textbook, the flashcard, the lecture, the worksheet, the sticker, the behavior chart – and you will digitize that feature.

…

Wrapped in a language of transformation and disruption, the ed-tech start-up scene is profoundly conservative.

Our problems in schools go far beyond mere inefficiencies. Are inefficiencies rampant? Absolutely. Can various learning and management technologies help address these inefficiencies? Absolutely. Does merely addressing inefficiencies result in educational ‘transformation?’ Of course not. The rhetoric of most educational technology ‘solutions’ is vastly overblown…

Image credit: Clicker, Tom Magliery

Kakul Srivastava says:

Millennials are more likely than any other previous generations to daily access their outside-of-work networks to get work done. The forces of micro-entrepreneurship are increasing making each of us our own “corporation,” reliant on our outside networks to make things happen. Finally, as our previous work experience becomes increasingly irrelevant to our future work problems, our real asset to bring to any endeavor becomes our network.

Will Richardson adds:

for most of us, our PLNs are “sharing networks” in that the main currency in our connections are links and or ideas that, in theory at least, amplify our own learning about whatever it is we’re interested in. But seeing our networks as “critical to getting our work done” is a step up for most

What are we doing as school leaders to foster our students’ and educators’ development of ‘get stuff done’ networks? Usually nothing.

Image credit: Although you’re far…, Aphrodite

Seth Godin says:

If you’re eager for change, every bit of information and every event represents an opportunity to learn, to grow and to change for the better. You hear some advice and you listen to it, consider it (possibly reject it), iterate on it and actually do something different in response.

On the other hand, if you’re afraid of change or in love with the path you’re on or focused obsessively on your GTD list, then incoming represents a distraction and a risk. So you process it with the narrative, “how can this input be used to further what I’ve already decided to do?” At worst, you ignore it. At best, you use a tiny percentage of it to your advantage.

via http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/11/your-incoming-process.html

At 7pm Eastern on Monday, October 28, we launch the fourth and final Connected Educator Month book club. Contributors Joyce Valenza, Kevin Jarrett, Richard Byrne, Kristin Hokanson, and Stephanie Sandifer will join Chris Lehmann, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, and myself for a 1-hour online discussion of technology leadership issues. We will discuss topics from our book, What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media, as well as anything else that we or our audience brings up. Please join us!

• UPDATE: Archived recording of the Oct. 28 kickoff webinar

At 7pm Eastern on Monday, December 2, our book club will conclude with a second webinar. Joining Sheryl and I that evening will be Doug Johnson, Steve Dembo, Dean Shareski, David Jakes, and Pamela Livingston. Hope you’ll join us for that one too!

And, in between, we’ll be talking about the book in our online discussion space. Learn more about the book club and sign up to participate with us. See you online!

[It’s been a good month for our book. Not only did the U.S. Department of Education pick our book to be one of the four featured for Connected Educator Month, last week the Illinois Principals Association offered a copy to every attendee at its annual conference. Woo hoo!]

Dear Prairie Lakes principals and superintendents,

Over the past six weeks, you’ve been getting to know our new tech integration team. We’ve made it a top priority to try and get into your buildings, meet you and your teachers on your turf, and start to build meaningful connections and relationships.

By now you’re probably starting to realize that… well, we’re a little bit different!  :)  Not different just to be different, but different to be better. We’re passionate about what we do, we’re willing to think as far outside the box as necessary, and, yes, when it comes to ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it,’ we confess that sometimes we’re a bit irreverent.

Commitments

1. We are deeply committed to the idea that professional work and professional learning both should be fun. And meaningful. And challenging. And so should our classrooms.
2. We are deeply committed to quality. We’re building around principles of effective adult learning and we’re using the Influencer design framework to maximize possibility of actual implementation. No more sit-and-get. No more yawn-inducing, one-size-fits-all ‘training.’ And as little drive-by, short-term work as possible.
3. We are deeply committed to trust and transparency. We will publicly post every single one of our evaluations. We will actively solicit and act upon your feedback. If you’ve got ideas for us, we will listen and adapt. We promise.
4. We are deeply committed to service. It’s about you and your needs, not ours. We’ve got lots of ideas – and beliefs about powerful learning - but ultimately we’re here to serve you. No dictates. No mandates. Wherever you are, wherever you want to go, we’ll do our best to be of help.

We’re on a mission. A mission to #dreambigger, #designforit, and #makeitbetter. We hope that you’ll join us.

Thank you for the warm welcome, and thank you for giving us the opportunity to be of service to your amazing educators and students. Please stay in touch, and be sure to connect with us online. We are looking forward to our continued work together.

All our best.

SCOTT

Image credit: for Flickr friends 2011, mengjie jo

[cross-posted at rethink. redesign.]

Astro Teller says:

I think if we’re aspiring to take moon shots, designing things for today’s cultural norms, on any front, doesn’t make any sense.

via http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2152422,00.html

Implications for how we redesign learning, teaching, and schooling?

Trying to keep things conceptually simple, I see schools needing to make 3 big shifts:

1. From Low-Level Thinking to High-Level Thinking. From an overwhelming emphasis on students doing lower-level thinking tasks (factual recall, procedural regurgitation) to students more often engaging in tasks of greater cognitive complexity (creativity, critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, effective communication).
2. From Analog to Digital. From local classrooms that are largely based on pens/pencils, notebook paper, ring binders, and printed textbooks to local and global learning spaces that are deeply and richly technology-infused (devices + Internet).
3. From Teacher-Directed to Student-Directed. From classrooms that are overwhelmingly teacher-controlled to learning environments that enable greater student agency (ownership and control of what, how, when, where, who with, and why they learn).

I think the third one’s going to be most difficult. As educators we are not ready to give up control…

How is your school doing with these 3 big shifts?

Download graphic of this table

Image credit: 3, Brittney Bush Bollay

So far Paul Bogush’s class commercial (10:34) is my favorite education video that I’ve seen this year. I’m not sure which part I like better, the first two-thirds with upbeat pictures and videos or the last third with student quotes, some of which nearly bring me to tears.

“Chin up and be fierce.” You are in Room 301!

Your class is difficult to describe. It’s not so much social studies … as it is life.

Before this class I had never sat in a classroom for a whole period without being bored or looking at the clock and hoping it’d move faster … but in this class I found that things were constantly interesting and looked at the clock hoping it would slow down.

With all the conversations in class it showed me that I should not be a speck of dust in a room of crowded people … but I should be the Eiffel Tower.

I know I have become a better person from your class with a little more knowledge … and a whole lot more heart.

You pulled me out of the shell … that other teachers put me into.

I want this for my kids. And yours. And everyone else’s. More of this, please.

Over at Education Week, Jenna Barclay describes how she compensated for her 8th grade students’ lack of access to digital learning tools by making do with the analog teaching resources that they had on hand. They simulated ‘wikis’ with butcher paper and colored pencils. They made a ‘table top blog’ using notebook paper, moving around the room and commenting on each other’s paper posts. They summarized an article by passing back and forth paper ‘tweets.’ And so on…

All of the comments on the post praise Jenna for her initiative and creativity. And rightly so. Instead of whining and giving up, she found innovative ways to try and foster the thinking skills needed by her students. By all accounts, she and her students had many successes. But the more I read, the more I just wanted to cry. Here’s the comment that I left on her article:

I think this is a wonderful tale of a teacher creatively ‘making do’ to serve her students as best she can. And, yes, one can teach critical thinking, collaboration, and other essential skills without technology.

BUT… digital technologies and the Internet take all of this to the next level. For example, as great as what Jenna did here is, it didn’t allow for students to expand their voice – and interact with relevant, meaningful audiences – beyond the local. And as creative as students can be with butcher paper, the simple fact is that students can be even more creative when we expand their toolkit with digital creation, connection, and collaboration tools. We can’t pretend that analog learning environments are equal in power to digital learning environments, particularly since nearly all knowledge work done OUTSIDE of schools is done with digital technologies.

So I love what Jenna did. AND I also want her and her students to have access to robust digital learning technologies so that they can be even more powerful and amazing and relevant to what they’ll need when they leave their analog school environment.

Heroic tales of innovation like Jenna’s are wonderful testaments to the creativity of the teaching spirit. But how many school leaders and policymakers will use stories like hers as an excuse to not put digital tools into the hands of students? Too many, I’m afraid.

In a digital, global world, access and equity issues are important. Jenna and her students deserve true power, not artificial, simulated, “look we can pretend we’re really doing this” experiences that sort-of-but-not-really capture the essence of the real thing. We would never say that using two cans and a string is the same thing as actually making a phone call. We would never say that scooting around in a plastic children’s car is the same thing as actually driving. And we would never say that lying on a flat surface moving our arms and legs is the same thing as actually swimming. Nor should we when it comes to learning with digital technologies and the Internet.

Instead of having our hearts warmed by this feel-good story, how about if we do a better job of getting teachers the tools that they and their students really need?