Motivation for Tech Careers a Reflection

I have loved science fiction for as long as I can remember. I have a vague memory of going to the neighborhood bookstore Doron and purchasing my first book, Asimov's Foundation. Science fiction primed me to be incredibly curious about computers. Four years later, my father went on sabbatical to Boston and we all came with. In the summer of 1982 we landed in Newton Massachusetts. For the first two months, we lived in the house of the Alroys, who were spending the summer in Switzerland. This part is unclear to me but their neighbour and friend a mathematician asked for help watering the plants and in return he let me use the Atari 400 (in today's dollars a $2000 investment). I remember my utter delight in programming simple Basic programs I learned to create. It started a life-long obsession with technology and that first encounter with a well designed technology and the delight in what it could never really went away.

Reading Kara Swisher's memoir/ history/ critique of Silicone Valley and the big tech companies it feels like I was not the only one. A whole generation of us on the dividing line between the baby boom and Generation X grew up and matured with the tech industry and loved it deeply. I am wondering if the generation emerging now has that sense about any technology? As we work hard to get students excited about technology I am finding that the sense of wonder and excitement is rarely there. Have we become less optimistic? Do they need to feel that they are rising up with new ideas (say AI, for example)? To better recruit teachers and students and increase diversity in tech, we must understand what motivates them and what they most like to be part of. At the same time, we must think about ways to get them excited and feel that they are at the beginning of something great.
 

High Quality Materials and Teacher Learning

 The Nebraska Department of Education invited me to the IMPD network conference. I am always happy to participate and see if I can learn and contribute. At the same time, I have to admit that I am somewhat skeptical. I do not doubt that high-quality materials are helpful and more useful than low-quality materials. However, I think about it in an 80/20 split. High-quality materials will contribute to better instruction, but that represents a contribution of about 20% of total improvement. The 80% is in teacher professional learning and development that will raise efficacy and skill. 

The upside of High-Quality materials includes teacher confidence in the curriculum and reducing the need to scrounge for resources late at night. This confidence reduces the pressure on teachers' out-of-school time and gives breathing room for thinking about differentiation and accommodation of different learners. From an information processing perspective, we are reducing teacher cognitive load to enable more effective instructional procedures. 

From this perspective, High-quality materials are a no-brainer; bring it on, and engage with the process. Let's do it! The challenge, however, can be articulated at the individual teacher and system levels.

The cognitive load question can play an opposite role at the individual teacher level. A teacher is using a familiar curriculum is able to be creative around it and differentiate for her students. The familiarity reduces the load, an effect I have seen in reverse every time a district adapts a new curriculum. As a teacher educator, I have placed students in classrooms every semester for the past 20 years. Every time our district decides on a new reading curriculum, teachers reduce the number of preservice teachers they will host, disallow any creative deviation from the curriculum, and be fairly stressed. After about two years, the familiarity once again allows for more adaptation. So the question becomes, does the new curriculum adapted is such an improvement on the old one that it justifies the change. If you accept the 80/20 idea, the bar for improvement is quite high. This effect can be mitigated if you use curriculum change for significant professional learning. Then it becomes a leverage point for growth.

This is when the systemic effect presents with a second challenge; since schools invest significant attention into the process and money into materials, little is left for meaningful professional learning. The danger is that by the time materials are selected, bought, and introduced, everyone is exhausted and does not pay attention to the professional learning required to make it work. The calls for fidelity and making sure spending is justified clash with the individual needs of teachers and students. Moreover, school administration often projects implicitly or explicitly a conformity message that constrains teachers from acting in their best professional judgment.

In the context of our professional learning in Art TEAMS,
we are working very much on the 80% side of teacher professional learning. We acknowledge curriculum and work with teachers to develop ways to differentiate and deepen using metacognitive strategies (such as the creative inquiry process (Marshall and D'Adamo, 2011)) pedagogic moves, and collaborative learning opportunities. It would be interesting to see how teachers change their use of the strategies as the curriculum shifts.

Happy New Year- New Ventures

 The last few months have been extremely busy, and I had fewer opportunities to blog. As the new year commences, I am sharing of our new projects for 2023. This time I would like to focus on our podcasts/ video series coming.

Nick Husbye and I started a podcast for Graduate Students, and junior faculty in Education called "Not that Kind of Doctor. You can find it on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

The ART TEAMS project Podcast has lunched at the beginning of December:

Tech EDGE in collaboration with the Nebraska Department of Education will launch a series of video podcasts with Chrystal Liu on integrating technology in the World Language Classroom.  YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. You can catch it here: https://www.youtube.com/@techedge01 episodes start February 1.

Drop me a line with any feedback on the main issues.

Teaching Fast and Slow Lessons from Art TEAMS Weekend

 This week the Art TEAMS teams got together again to start our Fall activities. We had a joyous day reconnecting and discussing the work we have started doing with our students based on the summer courses. The meeting has taught me a few lessons that will sit with us as we plan the interactions throughout the semester.

Lesson 1:

The impact of deep learning in the summer has already created impact on classrooms. Many of the teachers have reported implementing the Creative Research Journals and even starting the Inquiry Cycle. While it is hard to attribute the implementation to a specific cause. I believe that it was the mix of highly motivated teachers and the powerful learning we had in the summer.

Lesson 2:

Movement is still magic. We started the day with movement, and the teachers are hungry for more movement that is applicable for the classroom. We can make a real difference if we help teachers figure out this part of their work.

Lesson 3:

We always try to teach too much. We have provided our teachers with many tools. Now is the time to create more "air" in the curriculum and make sure teachers have enough time to share their work, plan next steps, and think deeply.

Finally a personal lesson from my reflection about the EMA project led by the Fabulous Gretchen Larsen.

When ideating, go slow and make sure that you spend enough time thinking about the centrality of your idea and my real commitment to it. I have moved too fast to really evaluate my commitment to the purpose of the design. Now I am slowing down and evaluating my project in early iteration. More soon!

Thinking about the Future of Conferences

 For the past three weeks, I have been to three conferences. SITE, the Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education, in San Diego, was an international hybrid conference (I went in person). NETA, the Nebraska Educational Technology Association, was an in-person-only conference. And finally, AERA, the American Educational Research Association meeting in San Diego, is a hybrid conference, and I am attending virtually only.

These are in no way my first conferences after the pandemic. Still, their concentration in a span of two weeks allowed me to think about the affordances and limitations of technology. First, there is no doubt that the face-to-face interaction of in-person conferences allows a different set of interactions. For example, after one of my presentations, I just happened to meet Erkko Sointu from Eastern Finland university in the corridor; a short interaction resulted in his declaration "Go Big Red" and a discussion about his ties to Nebraska. This led to great conversations, me hearing about some of the work done by the group and a cluster of proposals for a conference they are holding next Fall (Hybrid). NETA is a practitioner conference. At NETA, I  spent a good part of my time interacting with teachers in our booth. I reached out to passers-by and engaged with them. This would not be possible at all in an online format in which participants have to choose to engage with me specifically.

Right now, I am in a hybrid format meeting of AERA. I have not engaged in many sessions despite paying and having an interest. The online interaction is more challenging because staying at home/work means that I have many competing commitments away from the intellectual benefits of the conference. Not seeing people in person lowers my level of engagement considerably. All of these reasons point to the significant affordances of the in-person conference. Well, not so fast.

On Thursday afternoon of the SITE conference, I walked down the corridor. Four rooms had no living person in them but had a projection of presenters and participants, all online,  engaged. It was an eerie experience that felt like bad science fiction; however, the participants included many who were limited in their ability to travel (cost, health) or international participants for whom the travel was onerous. The result is that many participants who would not otherwise have access to the work were able to present, learn and grow. 

Travel, especially by plane, has a significant carbon footprint. There is no doubt that in-person conferences are full of growth opportunities, serendipity, and fun. But are these qualities worth the price in carbon footprint? 

I do not have an answer to what we should do, but I would like to suggest:

1. We should keep exploring alternative formats for conferences that engage participants in fuller ways than they do now. 

2. We should be highly selective of the conferences we choose to attend in person.

3. We should experiment in other ways to interact with each other through digital means- perhaps ed camp (unconference) style.

Finding my way around Fargo North Dakota and other Metacognitive tasks

 This weekend I went to Fargo, North Dakota for an athletic event. Navigating a new city is always a challenge, and I started by activating Google Maps to get everywhere in town. I quickly found out that relying on google maps without any idea about the general direction was a disorienting and challenging experience. 

I ended up looking at the routes for destinations in town before I started every drive. In this way, planning made me more certain of where I was going and less dependent on the device as the sole (and not always most efficient) guide. In the work we are planning to do in the next five years, our Art TEAMS project, we have been discussing sketchbooks as a metacognitive scaffold. It is a way to represent inquiry in a layered visual form opening up eyes to connections and insights. This weekend's experience opened up a different avenue of metacognition that I have not considered in the context of our current study. That is the use of planning and directionality to illuminate the initial experience and ensure that we have enough of a scaffold to begin, so we (and our teachers) do not feel disoriented. 

I find that planning is often missing in students' work. They write an essay, code a program, or create n art product with very little planning. The lack of planning often adds to resistance to editing and revision, which are the keys to moving from a fail to a win. It is hard to get our students to plan, but it is perhaps the most important metacognitive skill that we can teach. Make a plan, execute, iterate, and then reflect. But it all starts with a plan.

The workweek then had a significant planning session led by Kimberley D'Adamo. it was a gratifying experience to start charting the path we want to walk, making sure we feel like we know where we are going and having a reasonable plan to get there. 

Skill, Digital Creation and memory

 

I have always thought digital creation as a potential shortcut to help creators leapfrog traditional barriers created by skill. The core idea is that software, such as iMovie, Adobe apps, can help individuals be creative with a low skill threshold. I am attempting to do exactly that on my iPad. However, I am still struggling with results finding myself repeatedly reaching out to physical materials and their subsequent digital manipulation with existing media. 

This idea of new boundaries of creativity allows me to rethink about affordances of the latest technologies and my skills within them. The images I collect and create are reorganized and even layered in ways that rephrase the bluntness of my message. For example, in the image to the right, I started reflecting in writing about my relationship with scraps of paper as ephemeral representations of my life. Messages to self, lists of steps, ideas, doodles, and even notes about what I will say next in my meeting. All of these I throw away with glee once I dem them unuseful or past expiration date. For the first time, I tried to reflect on why I may feel this way? I have so much joy in presenting a clean slate and reinventing myself. One of the reviewers for my promotion file asked (and I am paraphrasing), "Who is this Guy?" 

For someone who has stayed put for 20 years in the same place and job, I seem to be constantly reinventing myself, perhaps pathologically so. Maybe that is why I find the internet's inability to forget us and the things we have done so frightening. My current interpretation is that it links up with the multigenerational experiences of repeated migration. And as usual still processing. 

Clean Your Windows so you can see the fireflies

 I am continuing my journaling journey. This week I started thinking about my learning for the week while cleaning the windows in my living room. One of my sons came in and asked: Don't you have people that do that? Yes, I answered: but I love cleaning the windows occasionally. I get so used to the dirty-ish window that I stop noticing it. I sit in the chair and look outside, accepting the dirty window as part of the view. I literally forget that it is just a distortion that I have some power over and that I can remove. 

As I was cleaning, I realized that it was an interesting metaphor that calls on me as a researcher to stop, slow down, and examine what in my process of looking at the world needs cleaning. Is the distortion I see a result of dirt/noise in my control? This can go to weak beliefs and theories that stop me from seeing clearly. It can be unrelated (yet powerful) emotion or just constant activity that prevents me from realizing what I need to be paying attention to.

This may also be true of the devices and apps we use to see the world, algorithms, scanning, and attentional processes obscure what there is to see. Once in a while, we need to stop and clean our windows making sure that we are doing our best to see what is out there. Making what we are seeing is not just the distortion on our window.

This is my Journal page, I noticed that my processing has many more questions than answers or solutions. It could very well be that many of the questions are the ways I am scaffolding my process, or it could be that this early in the research into Art TEAMS, there are questions with answers pending. Leading to one of the only declarations: I have more questions than answers.

I am still leaning on the firefly metaphor. Systemic change is tough, and most of the time, efforts to innovate and make change are limited to our immediate environment. The light fireflies make is the light of individual change agents. While making the world better for others (very few for a short time), we are also looking for others like us to collaborate with us. 

In many ways, the grant is trying to help new fireflies increase their signal, find their light, and join the other fireflies. Yes, there is a slight chance of systemic change, but even if that does not happen, we change ourselves and the lives of our students. The role of projects and universities is to create communities of fireflies. Places where they are safe, cherished and supported, so they can continue.

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South Africa- The promise and Challenge of Education

My last day in South Africa I had lunch with faculty from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban. I had an enlightening conversation with Vusi Msiza a lecturer and current PhD student. The conversation was focused on what I prefer to call the South African miracle- the fact that South Africa was able to emerge from Apartheid with a bloody civil war.  Vusi helped me see how close South Africa came to a civil war and how the combination of luck and leadership prevented a downward spiral. We then turned to the recursive relationship between poverty and educational attainment. I made my argument that for South Africa to succeed in its lofty educational goals it needs a different approach. What I saw around the country was mostly a striving to reach 20th century panaceas. At the same time we both recognized the impact of economics on potential outcomes for kids as can be seen in the figure below.

On the flight back I continued thinking about this as a design problem and came up with a few interesting ideas that emerged from my observations of education in South Africa.
1. Elementary schools should be bilingual immersion program that include a local non-English language (say isiZulu) and English. Right now some school are monolingual in k-3 and then switch to English. The research literature really supports bilingual immersion programs and they can offer many cognitive benefits. They also offer identity benefits as home language can be supported longer. Finally it prevents hard transition when language of instruction switches to English.
2. An effort like will need an emphasis on teacher training for teaching in bilingual environments- a job for leading university. Another need would be to create enough curriculum in all 11 languages so a vision like that could come to pass.
3. Use out of school time to encourage entrepreneurship and technology use. The current school system is not equipped to provide these development tools quickly and it may be easier to do outside the traditional systems with their established matric goals.
4. Realize that change in education has to come with community development and job opportunities. Without those any effort will die because those participating will lose hope and may eventually become a radical element.

There is much more that needs doing but these are my ten cents and my frustration. I dislike not being able to do anything about it!

Ingenuity

Yesterday we visited the Langa township and took a walking tour. One of the things that struck me as we walked around was the ingenuity of the inhabitants in reusing materials to build what ever was needed.
We saw a little girl play with a colorful push toy similar to the Fisher Price one. It was ingeniously built, rotated nicely and I have a feeling worked better than a real one would given the conditions.

A second example is the radio transistor for sale (in the picture). The cretors have emptied a transistor radio and then used recycled materials (bottle caps, wire, cans to create a beautiful pop art product. Even more ingenious is the fact that the creators found ways to mass manufacture the device.

It made me  think about the potential of the same minds if we dropped a "Do Space" in the middle of camp. I suspect that with minimal guidance kids, young and older adults could create products in 3D pronter , learn from computers and CODE like demons. I know I have sometimes naive ideas and that they may not work. What I know for sure is that the other, standard ways, are not really setting up the kids of that area for success.

South Africa, Tech, and the Future of Education

I am in South Africa with a vibrant group of educators. It is my second visit to South Africa. We are on the dawn of our second day in Cape Town.

The visit to one of the leading countries in modern Africa poses real educational questions and concerns. From my previous visit it is fairly clear that there is great concern with "catching up". My sense is that this game of catch up will never succeed. Nor should it. I think that the potential of the new economies and the innovator nations is in finding alternatives. In redefining.

My mind keeps coming back to Mitra's presentation in his 2013 TED Award presentation. He claimed that our current education system was designed to feed the human computer system in the Age of Empire. This argument rings true, it combines many claims by others about the industrial nature of modern education with a much more practical aspect of it.  But the most powerful statement is the one I think can guide schools in a nation like South Africa just like it can in a nation like the US. Education is NOT broken. It is obsolete!

If it is so, then South Africa (or any developing country) is on equal footing with any developing nation. Technology and new ideas can serve the foundation to a whole new approach that is alternative to the Imperial Machine. Somewhat appropriate if it grows in post colonial countries. I doubt this happens until someone decides that chasing 19th and 20th century goals.

It is akin to the revolutionary effect of cell phones in developing countries- hurdling over multiple development phases and landing in the present. I do not agree with all of Mitra's points (it is hinted at in this article) but he presents a compelling rationale for change.

I have embedded Mitra's presentation below.


 

Writing Tech into Grants? You must read this first!

In the last week, I have been on a panel for a federal grant. I cannot and will not reveal details but I do want to share some advice. In simple terms, grant proposals are supposed to address a pressing need and suggest that there are enough planned supports that would make said action succeed.

The proposals I have been reading have done an admirable job convincing me of their capacity to do everything they said. Except integrate technology. So here are some general rules:

1. Someone needs to manage devices. If you aim to purchase student or even teacher devices, you must show that you have a system that can distribute, manage the devices, provide basic support, and maintain when needed.

2. Technology is not magic (on its own). If you buy new  technology teachers and students have to be educated about its use and supported through modeling, coaching and on-going Professional Development.

3. If technology is a major part of your grant make sure that you hire or show that you have leaders who are well versed in technology integration. In the grant proposals I have been reading, all project directors were content and school experts but nowhere did they show evidence that their professional developers knew much about technology integration.

4. Have a theory of action of why technology will make a difference. Just buying teacher devices, for example, will  NOT automatically improve student achievement. It may, but as the grant writer, you should make the connection obvious.

In short, please treat technology like you would every other aspect of the grant. Technology can be magic but ONLY if you have all the conditions to ensure success.

Are We Ready for Cyborg Ed?

Knee Replacement Vimeo

 I have been recovering from ACL surgery in the last two weeks. As I move (with difficulty) about, many passers-by notice my condition and share their own experiences. As a result, I am much more aware of the number of people who have had knee replacement surgery. The anecdotal information is informative but I was looking for a sense of the data on a US wide perspectives. Over a million operations of knee and hip replacements are conducted annually according to the CDC. If I add pacemakers, stents, and even selective plastic surgery the trend is clear. We are becoming what science fiction used to call cyborgs, a combination of man and machine. It improves our quality of life and increases our life expectancy.

Prosthesis Legs

I believe that mobile technology in the form of phones and tablets is very similar. We always have it with us and we communicate with it constantly. In fact, we have come to rely on digital tools as a way to store information (phone numbers, email addresses, calendar etc) and provide access to information that in the past needed to be looked up laboriously or just memorized. The fact is that we are becoming cyborgs not just in limbs but in our mind as well. I know some lament this development, hey I am not completely sure I like it at times. But, like it or not, it is happening. The question is, what does it mean and are we ready for it?

In the book we are currently writing, called Mind, Models, and Mentors, my colleagues (Brooks and Sayood) and I had a long discussion about the way the internet changes education. If we are truly becoming cyborgs then education has to adjust. The key is moving away from knowledge accumulation and memorization to problem-solving and searching.

"While memory remains important, it is clear that technologies (language, writing system, printing press, Internet) change the demands on human memory. What was essential a thousand years ago in order to discuss a text effectively (memory of the whole text) is potentially less critical now when we can easily refer back to texts in paper or digitally. This does not mean that students are learning (memorizing) less; instead it means that they need to memorize a different subset of knowledge linked to more complex operations and procedures." (excerpt from Brooks, Sayood, and Trainin, 2016)

I do not believe that there should be no content knowledge. The most needed tasks and information should be available in long-term memory and immediately accessible. The rest... should be accessed through search. This change is guided by three interlocking facts:
1. We have devices that allow us to be constantly connected. They are fast and comprehensive.
2. Modern knowledge is too extensive for anyone to know it all in detail.
3. Knowledge is developing and updating at increasing speeds. It makes what your Dr. learned in med school 10 years ago is now potentially obsolete or even dangerous.

As a result, the skills that our students need are the skills of searching and evaluating the quality of information available, problem-solving and self-regulation of our memory to make sure that we remember is accurate and still relevant.

The term cyborg has always been a negative one. Reality around us shows that we are becoming cyborgs, mechanically, and cognitively. This is our evolution and we must make sure that we adjust our schools to fit reality.

It's Time to Decide What's Next in Ed

Stanley Howe CC License

Over the last decade, education has developed a dual personality. One is the high stakes assessment driven culture that focuses on a narrow top-down curricular vision. It is a vestige of the 20th-century vision for education. It is organized, clear in its means and outcomes. The yardsticks are set, and we are all measured against them. After trying this way for the better part of 20 years, we can say a few things. The first is that the accountability put in place helped shine a light on educational inequities that were sometimes hidden by local reporting practices. Accountability done well showed clearly the "achievement gap" and its relationship to income and other inequalities. However, the neo-liberal expectation that exposing certain inequalities will lead to a self-correcting system through a system of rewards and punishments has failed miserably.

At the same time, educators have realized that the post-industrial economy presents new challenges and need a decidedly different educational output. The vision was not necessarily new (Dewey was right) but it was now deemed necessary not just by humanist but also by business leaders. The call for education that is creative, problem-solving oriented, and includes soft skills is now coming from all sides. The problem is that we cannot do both at the same time. At least not well.

We have tried for a while to claim that working on 21st skills will also lead to growth in test scores a-la Dr. Seuss and Jack Prelutsky (Hooray for Diffendoofer Day!). The linear nature of tests defies this logic. From an effort perspective, you get more "bang for your buck" (the buck here is time) if you focus only on tested skills than if you work on a complex wide array of outcomes many of them long term. My mentor Lee Swanson used to call it confusing the independent and dependent variables. In this case, limited measurement gives you a false sense of impact.

What I see in the field are schools trying to satisfy both personalities. Let's score high on the test with a narrow curricular vision AND be creative. The reality is that our days are too short, and both teachers and students find it very hard to pivot from a structured almost canned curriculum to creativity and soft skills and then back again.

The question is how to combine the advantages of the accountability era, namely accountability that shines a light on inequities, with 21st-century curricular goals. The answer is simple. Technology. Technology allows us to record everything students do. The need for a narrow window of time in which all students are measured on a narrow set of skills can be replaced by a flexible system that records everything that students do and tags their growing abilities. My personal work with Actively Learn is an example of how this can be achieved. But for that to work, we need to put our attention to making sure that we have the right personality.

Notes from the Field- Technology Literacy and Art- Monique's Story

Monique and I go back a long time. She is one of my favorite teachers and one of the most thoughtful educators I have had the pleasure to work with. We have not worked together for quite a while but recently she sent me a short note on her work integrating technology so here it is in her own words (I took the liberty to make small changes for clarity).

Monique writes:

Earlier in the year I tried "tech buddies" -- a sixth-grade class & teacher graciously came to my room and worked with my students (I observed) in doing a little research, and each made a field-to-table Po
wer Point-type thing.   That was great, but a one-and-done experience because I only had access to the iPads for 40 minutes every other week. And I still had those mandatory tests/quizzes to work into my scheduled time!

My latest push of myself to use technology and use it a little more creatively started with a mask-making art project and the desire to get EL (and all kids) talking more in a purposeful way. I remembered that D. (1st grade ArtsLINC teacher) had her students successfully use a program/app called Chatterpix.  I had been introduced to Chatterpix by colleagues in the Nebraska Writing Project years ago,  but it had been shelved in my subconscious until this spring.   I had been talking with D. about iPad management (cart versus a few) and wondered how she did it. She told me how she has a small set of them in her classroom all the time (I  think 6) and teaches the kids how to manage and help one another.  She encouraged me that 'for sure' my second graders could make the masks talk with Chatterpix!  Then she told me how she had them post their work in an online journal called Seesaw.  She was making a believer out of me, but... I still felt like I needed a hand, a push or a kick --so --

I invited her over to our school site to provide an afterschool PD to our volunteer "Art PLC" to instruct us just in Chatterpix and Seesaw. (it was not a course in everything iPad, just two things!) Everyone was invited.  We had half-dozen teachers and our principal even came!    She not only walked us through using the apps but talked realistically about classroom management with young primary students.  She also made me realize I could probably do it with a few iPads and not a cart-full.  

So I checked out one (1) iPad from our principal and started in!   They photographed their mask.  They wrote a script for the speech that their mask would give.  (I had given them directions /ideas based on all the pre-learning before the Mask Making.). Then they recorded it using Chatterpix and uploaded it to their individual spot in our Classroom Journal I had set up on Seesaw.  They accessed Seesaw by using a QR code created by Seesaw when I signed up.  I taught two kids and then they managed the rest of the class!   When it was recording time they gave me a signal, then I just said "quiet on the set" and my class was immediately silent!  (they knew their turn was coming!)

The way Seesaw is set up, the teacher has to approve everything before it's posted, so that came after school.  Then -- my entry into integrating Art, Writing, Speaking, and Technology was successful!!

Seesaw also lets you invite parents to view just their child's portion of our class journal, so I did that and have several parents following their student's work now!  

Beyond this original project, I had kids use just Seesaw to take photos of their art and read what they wrote using the audio recording portion several times.  I video captured them reciting a poem of their choice.  They've given oral bi-weekly book recommendations (written first like a book report) all year, so I had them take a photo of their writing and accompanying art and audio-recorded their "speech."  In all cases, they could re-do if they reviewed-listened and weren't pleased.  

Student Masks (photo by Monique)

In the middle of our second "project", I invited the principal to come and see it in action-- with the kids doing it ALL!   I wanted to thank him for finding an iPad for me (my kids) to use and have available all day, every day.  He was as jazzed as I was.  He also saw that I was able to continue with MY passion of art and literacy integration (speaking, listening, reading, writing) and add technology and parent communication.     Within a few weeks, he asked if he could bring a group of principals into my room to see it in action.   THEN a week later he brought by a School Board member!   It was very affirming.   And even an old teacher like me can do it!

So next year, I'll be starting with Seesaw in the Fall to document & share most (if not all) of our ART & literacy (and social studies & science)  projects!    I'll still hang some on the classroom wall and in the office, but this will reach the parents much more quickly and is accessible to me in places other than my classroom!

Take care!

Monique

What Girl Volleyball taught Me about EdTech

I am visiting my mother in Israel for a few days. Sitting around the table were some family and friends that came to say hi. My aunt was telling us about her granddaughter who is just over 15 and already 6'2". My first thought was, does she play volleyball? This is what I perceive to be a Nebraska question. After 14 years in Nebraska, I think like a Nebraskan. It is unusual for a girl who is tall not to be involved in sports. Einat, a long time friend, and an athlete, chimed in does she play basketball? The answer was No, she does not do any sport. Instead, she is modeling. My aunt explained that there were no opportunities afforded to her in sports.
Einat, who is a former pro athlete, lamented the status of women's sports at all levels. The opportunities aren't there, and there is very slow change.

I started thinking about what made the situation in Nebraska and the US different. While the status of women in the US is somewhat better than Israel, it is not dramatically different. Israelis love sports. While speaking, I realized that the main difference was schools and extracurriculars. I have to admit that I have an ambivalence towards high school sports. But through this discussion, I realized how the structure of extracurricular activities allows schools to open opportunities across ethnicity, income, and gender lines. The fact that it is a school sanctioned activity allows students who might never find such a home to "try out" new selves. In this case to try out their identity as athletes. This would not happen for many students unless schools offered the activity. In popular culture, I am reminded of the path that Jesminder 'Jess' Kaur Bhamra took in Bend It like Beckham. I am convinced that the road would open to many more girls and minority women when it is a school activity.

So what does that have to do with EdTech? Quite a bit. I hear calls to limit the use of technology in
schools or even not teach with devices. Teach thinking, basics, writing. I believe that much of this argument is coming from a middle-class belief that students will eventually get there. I make this point often about my kids. If their school fails to teach them about digital citizenship, search, or tools, I will show them. The problem is that this approach leaves too many capable students behind. Students who will not find a guide that would help them explore if they are interested in science, programming or gaming. Without schools affording to expose all students to these areas we are reproducing gap and losing some of our most talented future creators. We should teach science, technology, and making to ALL in school right NOW.

3 Reasons Scaling Up Open Educational Resources Should be the Next Step

Open Educational Resources (OER) have been with us for over 20 years. The world wide web revolution made them accessible to anyone with an internet connection. The move in schools to 1 to 1 devices is making it possible now to rely on OER to replace curriculum companies. I believe that this is the time to scale the use of OER and move our schools boldly forward. I believe that the movement has matured enough to move from the periphery to the center of the education process. Here I outline the three most important reasons to do so.

1.  It is democratic. Well vetted OER breaks the hold that publishers and some states (Texas, CA, NY) have had over the creation of materials. The use of OER allows districts, and potentially even teachers to exercise their professional judgment in curating the curriculum without having to create everything themselves. This will help build the professional capacity of educators to make decisions that fit the students and communities they are serving. The challenge here is tackling the potential for dealing with overabundance and the paradox of too much choice. To make this reality, a vetting process should be added to OER, so teachers have a sense of quality. Such curation is visible on sites such as OERCommons and ReadWriteThink.
2. It is flexible. OER can be updated and corrected in real time without lengthy editing processes. In effect, we can use a Wikipedia-like process with super-editors who help maintain the integrity of the process. The value of OER is, therefore,  based on the quality of the original and the willingness of users to keep the resource updated and commented on. The use of crowdsourcing to determine the quality and maintain the "freshness" and accuracy of the information can be invaluable.
3. It is (almost) free. Resources saved by not buying textbooks and teacher materials can be turned to making sure that schools have adequate technology infrastructure, adequate device distribution and most importantly- turn most of the savings into professional development that makes sure that teachers are well positioned to take advantage of the opportunity afforded by OER.

An Open Letter from a Teacher Educator to EduTech Companies

I am a teacher educator. I work with pre-service teachers every day. I am also an EdTech expert leading professional development and research in this area. I love apps OERI and bells and whistle. I want my students to use tech tools for every opportunity it fits their lesson. I want them to give feedback electronically and use the best tools for the job. But I can't. The simple truth is that my students are having less open access to the technology. As a result, my students have very limited access to the tools used in their school district.

Here is the deal,  curriculum companies turn into Tech companies joined by startups in the field. They all try to sell district-wide products. The problem is that they are selling to school districts, but my students who are in practicum, internship and student teaching in the same classrooms do not belong to the district. As a result school districts do not want to pay for licenses that will not benefit teachers or additional students.

The problem is that more and more the cost is locking my students out of the materials they need to teach. There are hundreds of thousands of pre-service teachers in the US. EduTech companies, please figure it out. Use some of the capacity for innovation to create a profile for pre-service teachers.

Help us make the next generation of teachers connected capable and ready to go.

Now and Next in Ed

"Maison tournante aérienne" by Albert Robida

I spent some time at the Early Childhood Summit this week. It was an excellent opportunity to hear some innovative research. Quite a bit of the research presented was incremental, based on past assumptions and deeply linked to education as it used to be. In a sense, I find that the incremental advances in much of the work are too tied to 20th-century conceptions of education. The problem is, as Berliner noted that much of educational research is related to context and time. Once the context has shifted significantly, it becomes irrelevant.

This led me to think about the now and next in education. The NOW includes two changes:
The shift towards individualized or differentiated instruction. Technology is poised to make fully differentiated instruction possible since it decouples curriculum delivery from its dependence on the teachers thus freeing teachers to focus on guiding students and managing complex information systems needed to support students moving from different starting points. This process is far from over. In fact, I would say that we have only begun. There is, however, an emerging consensus that this is the right direction. This consensus allows teacher education, curriculum providers, and professional development efforts to focus on the task.
The second shift is towards Open Educational Resources (OER). I have spent the better part of the last decade trying to promote these practices from the bottom up. Now with federal support and some states buying in it feels like this tide has turned as well. We can produce quality curricular materials that will be accessible to any teacher and student making the proposition of differentiation affordable for any school. The shift in costs can help education agencies focus on the development of teachers and their ability to deliver differentiated instruction.

The NEXT is linked to assessment. Our current assessment systems are slaves to pre-information-age technologies. In the past snapshot in time assessment technology was the only one available. We simply did not have the technology to capture student performance in-vivo. We had to resort to a weekly spelling test and annual achievement tests. We have perfected these snapshots and now use technology to better and more efficiently capture them. In essence, we are still captive to this thinking- there has to be an assessment event that counts, that we prepare for and then celebrate. Technology and big data have opened the door on a completely different assessment technology. One that captures everything our students do and can measure it in real time. The need for snapshots has passed. If my students writing is captured electronically, then every teacher can get a report of their students spelling without a need for a special event. Instead, they can know how their students are spelling when they are writing authentic texts. Real performance for the real world.

I know that charting potential does not guarantee it will happen. I just hope that researchers and funders and eventually schools can move beyond the practices of the past to recognize the shifts in technology go beyond a more efficient snapshot to describing authentic performance across academic tasks.

What my Ski Accident Made Me Learn about Ed Tech

It is the last day of spring break, and I hobble around on crutches. Our family travelled to our favorite spring skiing spot in Park City Utah where we had a fantastic time, and where I had a skiing accident.
I was skiing down the slope on the last run of the day. My skis got caught, and suddenly I found myself on the ground facing the wrong way with one string of thought flooding my brain: "pain, knee, stupid." Someone came to my aid (thank you whoever you are) undid my skis and called for help. Ski patrol took me down the mountain, and an enthusiastic intern at the clinic informed me that I had an MCL injury.
Having gone through this delightful experience has been an opportunity to think about what I can learn from the accident beyond being more careful when I ski. So, here are some of the lessons I came up with that are relevant to my daily life.

1. The affordances of technology. The first two items I got from the clinic were crutches and a knee brace. The crutches are ancient technology, effective and crude. The knee brace, though, is fantastic. The treatment for my torn MCL in the past would have been a cast for an extended amount of time. It being my right knee it would have prevented driving and exercising for a prolonged period. Instead, this knee brace is hinged, flexible and removable, allowing me to function more normally and start walking within days instead of weeks. We sometimes focus on the downsides of technology and the burdens it adds that we forget the joyful affordances it introduces into our lives.

2. The power of partnership. I was on the slope on my own. There were other skiers around but none that were with me. My dad (78 and till skis better than me) lamented that had he been there this would not have happened. After joking about the way we parent at any age, I started thinking that he was right. Having a partner that helps you have a perspective on the path if he is in front of you, on speed if he is by you, or the responsibility of leading, if he is behind, would have probably caused me to slow down and be more aware of my environment. The parallel to innovating with technology is evident. When we innovate with colleagues, we can prevent burnout (or ski accidents) by working with others. That someone else has to be on the slope with us to help us pace, consider our surroundings, signal when to slow down and rest and help us when we fall. Without this kind of collaboration may be doomed to refuse to put on skis ever again.

3A. Fear is good. A healthy amount of apprehension is good. It keeps us from making catastrophic mistakes. Yes, I fell and got hurt, but I up and about and will be able to do most things within a few weeks. Fear kept me from going much faster and kept me focused on the path.

3B. Fear is bad. I cannot let my recent experience dictate that I will never ski again. I will do so cautiously, but I will certainly try. It is common to fail the first few times we use new technology in teaching. These failures increase apprehension in many practitioners; we must make sure that it does not paralyze us from trying again. As teachers, if we model giving up, how can we foster a "try, try again" attitude in our students.