Technology, Attending, and the Arts

I have three iPads, a laptop (or two) a smart phone and an e-reader. When I work at home I have 2-4 devices open. The evidence has been in for a while we cannot truly attend to more than one thing at a time. In fact, trying to attend to multiple things at once results in n effective execution of both in most cases.

Why am I bringing this up (again)?

One, I left my phone behind when I snuck away to write at my favorite spot, the Village Inn around the corner. I had my laptop only. I ate lunch and got the two most productive focus time hours. I was online but I resisted answering emails.

Two, my undergraduate student all have devices of some sort that I encourage them to use. This, however, sometimes have negative consequences when they are unsuccessfully trying to multi-task listening to class discussion or lecture (they asked for it) while on Pintrest, Facebook, registering for classes, or one of the thousand other things they can do online.

Three, I am reading Getting Things Done, and am surprised to find interesting parallels from the beginning of the mobile era.

So... Technology has its down side. I love it, I use it every day, but it has a dark side. We have to teach ourselves to attend to the world around us. After we find ways to do it ourselves, we must find ways to teach it to our students.

I think one tool to teach students to attend, is through genuine engagement with art. It can be visual art, plastic art, movement or music. In all of these activities success can be found when you are fully attending. The lure for students (and adults) is the unique feeling that feel when you reach Flow. If someone asks why the arts, one possible answer can be that art creation can teach students to experience focus attending fully to a task. These moments of creative joy can serve as an idea of what we can achieve when we are fully present.

Now I will leave the computer and go attend to my children.

Testing Teachers: Arts and Technology Integration

This week I was invited to participate in a state panel examining which test Nebraska should use as one of the criteria for certification. Teacher testing has become very popular across the states with encouragement from the office of education. There is very little evidence that such tests are connected in any way to teacher quality. For example in a recent report Angrist and Guryan (2013) say: "The results suggest that state-mandated teacher testing increases teacher wages with no corresponding increase in quality." The tests, however, are apparently here to stay and even Nebraska usually one of the last holdouts on testing has decided to cave in.

Nebraska has chosen to work with ETS and our task at the panels was to review from a selection of tests and make a recommendation about which tests are most appropriate and what should a cutoff score be. One of the more relevant options we considered was the Parxis II with emphasis on pedagogical decision making. As we read through the items (which I cannot disclose) I found that quit a few addressed arts integration through theatre, movement and visual art. It was clear that integration ideas were well integrated (at least into the version of the test I saw). 

Technology was mentioned in two items only. The technologies mentioned were: looms and books on tape... There was nothing that incorporated Internet searches, evaluation of Internet resources, reading on screen, or any of the other skills mentioned in our state standards, the common core standards and professional organizations. Now, I know there is no consensus over what exactly do new teachers need to know, but no technology integration, no reference to digital modes of literacy?

We made sure our concern registered. I worry because tests (even marginally reliable ones) cause some educators to "reverse engineer" their curriculum. We need more about technology integration in our pre-service programs not less. As for the tests, they need to adapt quickly to these changes to stay relevant.

Yo Yo

The last two weeks have felt like the perpetual motion of a YoYo. After presenting at the state conference - a high note, we came back to earth with our students midterm reviews. Laurie and I co-teach a reading/language arts methods courses. This semester following our passion for technology integration and its rising importance in schools we decided to be playful and layer in a variety of technologies and ideas. Our students were somewhat unhappy, and a few were so disconcerted that they wrote a quite lengthy review that was frankly a bit hard to read.

So Laurie and I sat down to process why the reaction to our efforts was so negative. We came up with four main reasons that overlap to a degree.

1. We assumed that students who grew up in the 21st century would have an innate understanding of why technology integration is important. It turned out they don't- quite possibly because while they grew up with the internet and a multitude of devices they were never an integral part of their school experience. Laurie and I were so immersed in this topic we forgot other aren't.

2. Our students are making their first steps as pre-service teachers. When we integrated a large number of technologies they became overwhelmed and lost the single most important aspect which is the link to teaching. Practicing teachers we work with see the relevance almost immediately in our Tech EDGE Conference.  Our students are simply not quite there developmentally.

3. This generation of students is used to the chaos of internet resources and the vast number of media available. In college classes, however, they want us to help them organize the information and sort out what is important. That said I think it is a set of skills we need to help them develop- something that should probably start long before junior year of college. 

4. Beginning professionals want straight answers and procedures. We attempt to give complex responses in an effort to teach them to think in an organized way- while dealing with ambiguity. This tension is at the heart of teacher preparation and Laurie and I may have crossed the boundary for this group of students.

Laurie and I have regrouped and refocused the work we do. Since we have just under half a semester to go we hope to be able and present a more balanced picture that will allow them to learn and use technology integration skills that are appropriate developmentally. The same can probably be applied to anyone scaling up technology integration with teachers. We must recognize where teachers are developmentally and support them in the steps that they need to make next.

iPad Momentum

On friday Laurie and I presented at the Nebraska State Reading Association annual meeting in Kearney Nebraska. We were (as we find out) the bookends for a full line-up of iPad sessions. Presenting right after us were our colleagues at UNKearney have been experimenting with a campus-wide iPad implementation. They have reported that the campus has suggested dropping the program because implementation for many departments has been weak at best.

This is a lesson we seem to learn time and again. When we scale up from a small dedicated group of volunteer implementors to mandated large group we have to remember that motivation and support are key. This is the danger for all tablet (mainly iPad) implementation momentum. The iPad can serve as a catalyst for instructional change and enable students to do much more than they ever did. But for that there must be a change in the way we teach. If teaching stays the same, then the new devices like any other educational innovation will fall flat. The bottom line is that Tablets of all kinds are just tools (excellent ones at that), it is up to the user to use them well or not at all.

In many ways this is why I am continuing my video work on iPads in the Classroom. At the same time we are taking the "show" on the road to conferences and are working on a new book. Most importantly, we are continuing our research on iPads so we can evidence to back up what is possible using mobile technology in all classrooms. There is no iPad revolution instead iPads can fuel the next shift in teaching if we use them to change the nature of instruction.

Creativity in Teaching, Alchemy, and Technology?

One of my new colleagues Lauren Gatti has recently summarized her research interest as "The ways teachers are alchemizing a crappy curriculum". It is such an apt metaphor of what we do in teacher education- that I had to share. In alchemy early scientists tried to make gold out of lower metals, and we try to teach our teachers to make something out of top down often ridiculous mandates about content, delivery, and assessment.

The driving force in alchemizing I would argue is creativity. My reading and thinking about creativity has led me to think about creativity as a process and not a product. Bob Woody a colleague who has great insights about creativity has recently twitted this review of a working paper on creativity. At the heart of the argument is that creative minds are inquisitive, persistent, imaginative, collaborative, and disciplined. It occurred to me that while teaching creativity is an oblique idea, teaching these qualities is not just possible but in many ways is already happening. If we focus on process and not product we can help our peers, colleagues and students develop creative processes- the kind that can help them alchemize crappy curricula and directives into meaningful learning.


So what does technology has to do with this? Well, technology is not necessary for the process.You can alchemize without high-tech tools. Technology, however, provides a space and time to be creative and open horizons that are usually closed. I find that many of the more creative teachers I work with gravitate to technology because it provides them new, multi modal ways of being, thinking and alchemizing.

You Tube for Professional Development: or what I Learned Making iPads in the Classroom

Friday I had a conversation with Dave Brooks a colleague and a friend. He is also the person who seems to be two steps ahead of me in his thinking. Well, a few steps ahead of most of us. My favorite example is MOOCs, that he has been running for 15+ years on his servers.

During our conversation he mentioned that he watched one of my iPads in the Classroom shows recently. I smiled, he said "how are planning you monetize it?" I looked back somewhat quizzically. He continued: "This is a new area you should write it up. Writing is how we academics monetize". I whole heartedly agreed.

So what have we learned making iPads in the Classroom?
Just do it- don't wait until you know what you're doing. The medium is new and the only way to move forward and create something meaningful is to try. Everything about the show has changed. It is shorter, snappier, easier to make.
Keep changing- listen to your audience and team and make changes that allow you to deliver a better PD product.
Learn from others. We are constantly looking at other outlets trying to see what may work for us. Our original model was "iPad Today". More recently we've been looking at "AppleBytes"
PD is unlike other media. Content and quality rule. This limits how much you can learn from other video outlets.
Persistence- perhaps the hardest thing is to keep producing. But viewership and feedback come only if you keep at it.

Simple I know but as more PD goes online it is important that we learn from each other!

Should We Use Digital Technology in Elementary Education?

Last week I happened to be talking about technology to a teacher when someone (not a k12 educator) intervened and said in complete confidence: "I do not know of any benefit of using technology in the classroom."

I will admit that at times I have my doubts about technology integration. There are technologies I find useless for most users (e.g. smartboards) and others I find incredibly powerful (iPads). What struck me, however, was the complete confidence- of someone who is not a classroom teacher.

I am pretty sure that when the piano was introduced, someone stood up and said that he does not see any benefit of using this new technology over older instruments. Probably stating that such technology brings disorganization and laziness to peoples way of thinking about music...

So here are my top eight reasons to integrate technology in the classroom:

1. This is what students will encounter in the world. Students who will not be exposed to technology in school will be at a great disadvantage especially if they grow up in families that cannot fill up this void- i.e. students at-risk.
2. Differetiation: The ability to tailor instruction to student needs.
3. To teach students to find and sort through information for quality and validity- as we shifted into the knowledge economy finding information is no longer the challenge. Instead it is the ability to filter relevant information.
4. Become careful consumers of media, services, and products.
5. Become global citizens communicating with people from different locations and cultures
6. Be able to answer questions about facts and basic knowledge quickly so we can move to problem solving and real world applications.
7. The ability to represent the world and learning through multiple media products.
8. Teaching students about digital social spaces.

The way I see it, technology is here part of our daily lives. Our role in universities is to explore its impact and design evidence based ways of using it in positive ways.

Gaming and being Social

A lot has been made about the role of gaming in creating lonely and isolated teens and possibly even adults. I think that it is a complex problem and that gaming can have multiple impacts on any individual- I would actually like to suggest that we stop treating the problem as a pro-con problem and instead admit that any impacts of gaming are complex (cognitive, social, emotional) and depend on both the gamer and the game.

I am a casual gamer, I usually like games that can be played with short bursts with minimal set-up times that can be learned quickly. I simply do not have the time or attention span for more. A few months ago I decided to try a social game on Facebook. I have played social word games before but not games that involved long term engagement. As I like strategy games I tried a strategy game that required me to manage resources and raise an army that can battle computer simulated foes as well as other players. When I started playing I immediately turned off the chat feature. I was not interested in the interaction just in the gaming experience. As the game is geared toward short bursts of activity I slowly built my forces over a few weeks until I decided that I was ready to challenge other players. I attacked a few small outposts. The next time I logged in I found that my forces have been attacked by multiple players and repeatedly laid to waste. This seemed to be more than just an attack. I turned the chat on and asked. The response came immediately: "This is not how we behave in this sector". At this point it dawned on me that by not understanding the social aspect of the game I was missing a window into how gamers are creating social norms and mores within games.

I do not know how this links with life outside gaming if at all. What is certain is that it does not necessarily true that gamers would be less capable socially- the need to communicate with peers whom you cannot see and develop norms and values may have great value in a digitally connected global society. There may be a great potential in developing such games to teach ideas in history and civics.
There might be some strength in helping students see the connection between their online social experiences including gaming and their behavior in the real world.

Happy New Year!

Future Perfect?

A graduate student left Steven Johnson's Future Perfect in my mail box last week. I am logging my first few reactions and puzzlements as they relate to the topic at hand- education.
Before I get to education I would like to talk about knowledge. This is a feature I find lacking in much of the modern popular writing and even news. It is the lack of deep historical knowledge while cherry picking what the authors seem to remember from high school or early in their college days.

Steven Johnson juxtaposes traditional hierarchical governments with his modern peer network ideas. I am not opposed to looking at peer networks and their power to solve problems, but if you start from a historical perspective you should more than a high school textbok understanding of events as Braudel and others referred to the longue duree. I would actually hazard a proposition that peer networks and hybrid networks were more common historically than strong centralized states.

But enough about history. The book ignores education for the most part (very disappointing). Towards the end Johnson mentions that Obama's department of Education seems to rely on peer networks- but no evidence is provided in any way. He does talk a bit about merit pay for teachers but the discussion is short and lacks extensive examination of the evidence.

So why discuss Johnson through the lens of educational progress? I think that there is a potential for peer networks of teachers students and parents to disrupt educational process and product in helpful ways. Much has been discussed about the power of students working together in loose networks to learn both on and off line. What has been ignored to a degree is the power of teachers to do the same. Communicate and create a wiki-riculum or open-source curriculum. Not  anew idea and I have discussed before in this blog. Recent work I have been doing with some schools highlights the difficulty in unleashing the power of peer networks in schools.
1. The first one is compensation. I believe that in many cases teacher's compensation (material and otherwise) is so comparatively low that they do not pass the threshold (as suggested by Dan Pink) that allows them to contribute without the promise of financial gain.
2. Mandates and regulations inside educational organizations prefer centralized control limiting teacher's ability to find utility in materials produced by peers. These mandates are often a results of public pressure leading to politization of education standards and measurement. The price paid in this highly regulated and centralized system is limited innovation.

At the same time we must recognize that peer-networks in education must be studied. The best place to start may very well be in existing structures such as Edutopia. Thi is my first reaction more thinking required.

On Being Puzzled

A few weeks ago I found "The Room" from Fireproof Games for my iPad. It is a beautifully executed puzzle game but that is not the main point. I enjoyed playing and marveling at the quality and challenge of the game play. What I didn't expect was the excitement and joy that my two younger sons had helping me advance. Oren (8) and Itai (6) were full members of the team and we all had great ideas moving us forward at different points. Their joy in discovering another clue or opening another section was hard to contain- and they literally broke into a dance when we figured out a particularly hard puzzle.

The series of small joys at each step solved reminded me very much of Johnson's "Everything Bad is Good for You". The way video games can reward our brains in small bursts is almost unparalleled. To me this is what a learning game should be like. I try to avoid the term educational as it invokes unpleasant memories of unimaginative drill games. Well it is a learning game...
It teaches to think creatively, look closely, experiment and persist. These are skills that transfer well to any open ended problem that artists and scientists attend to. My play with my boys added another dimension, namely learning to work as a team: we take turns, practice patience, share victories and most importantly never play without the others.

We have since moved to new puzzle games not all of them as visually pleasing but the effects are still the same. They now insist on daily common gameplay and I happily concur. We are creating habits of mind and family bonding. I can only wish that we will find ways to combine this superb game play with content that reaches educational standards.

Speaking of Khan

A couple of weeks ago I caught Salman Khan on CNN. I have been a critic of Khan at times, but I do have to admit that the "unpolished" demeanor he has in interviews is somewhat endearing and usually lessens my resistance enough to actually listen. The anchor was interviewing him about the current state of education. I have to admit that I was initially miffed. There are many professionals that have dedicated their life to studying education and are coherent speakers on the matter. But here is this innovator commenting on the status of education, the Obama initiatives and what may come next. I understand why you would interview Khan about the future, but about the current state of affairs?

Then I listened to the interview (you can watch part if here Khan Video) and I have to admit that I was impressed by the clarity and focus of the statements. I especially liked these:

1. International rankings are not what we should worry about. We still lead in creativity and initiative.
2. At the same time we need to worry about who has a chance to participate in this economy- namely issues of equity.
3. We need room for creativity and problem solving.
4. We should preserve the room to make mistakes.
5. More homework is not rigor...

What Teachers do, the role of teachers in the 21st century.

I recently happened upon this meme on Facebook. The forlorn (yet handsome) man laments that everything he learned in college can be found on wikipedia. I glanced at it smiled and moved on only to double back and think. How is it different from previous generations? While it is true that wikipedia provides an ease of access and somewhat vetted information, it is not inherently different from the world in the last century. We had (and still have) books and journals in libraries some even available (gasp) for purchase. This made reflect on an ongoing question that we are grappling with as we rewrite our book on the Universal Learning Model (first edition here). The question is the role of the teacher in the learning process. We know that we are not the first nor the last to tackle this problem. Our angle though is cognitive, that is why do individuals  need a teacher for learning when the learning process itself is a set of brain activities? Why don't we just go to the library and read (or go online)? It is easy to understand the role of the teacher in the primary years. Early on they provide the skills that will allow you to access information effectively. The question is why continue into high-school and beyond?

Some might argue that schools are part of the power structure and seek to replicate themselves. While not without any merit, the universality of education in complex societies proves otherwise.

Here are my efforts to place the role of the teacher:
- Motivator- Teachers motivate their students to learn. We need motivation because learning is effortful. We seem to be much more motivated through human feedback than through any other means. For example Krashen described what he calls the affective filter.
- Model- Since thinking and learning is a temporal task largely absent from reading activities teachers can model the "how to" or procedural knowledge top their students in a way that is easier to follow than that of a text.
- Connector and organizer  This is true today more than any other time. We have access to a lot of information but we need models of how and when toi make connections. Even more so to have an organized view of  domain it's development boundaries and connections. These are hard to discern without a guiding hand.
-Mediator- Teachers adjust their action to the reader to make sure they are "getting it" and provides incremental steps to make sure a student experiences success.


I remember my first semester of undergraduate studies in History. My brain was on fire, fully engaged for the first time in my life. I read a lot but without classroom interaction, feedback, discussion, and lecture (yes lecture) it would not be as engaging and I would have probably stopped. So I would argue that the one piece of teaching that cannot be effectively emulated by machines or strict curricula is the affective/ motivational aspect of teaching- that is why machine based instruction (google, wikipedia, online video lessons or wolfram alpha) will never work. We need human interaction to motivate us to put this effort forward.

Cart, Horses, and iPads

A district I work with just announced they were ordering sa large number of Dell laptops. One of the key reasons mentioned in the news article announcing this move was the need to have enough machines to conduct state testing. Now, I don't mind assessment and accountability but I do think we need to start considering the impact on school decision making. I do not have a problem with the districts decision making progress, they are facing a reality and need to respond. I am, however, questioning a system in which accountability pressures dictate everything from teacher bonuses to decisions about which technology to buy and what it will be used for.

I will pull a NASCAR metaphor. In racing, crews choose tires to fit the conditions of the road so their driver will have the best chance to win. In education we invest in the photofinish camera instead... Only problem is with the wrong tires the photofinish camera views will be very sad.

As an iPad fan I have a request from Apple. Districts are asking Apple to create an ecosystem that will allow students to participate in assessments on the iPad essentially locking other features so students could not "cheat" (on the nature of cheating another time). I am begging Apple to not succumb to this pressure. If you will create such an ecosystems you will undoubtedly sell more iPads but they will be used in all the wrong ways for all the wrong reasons. Experience tells us they will have a whole set of closed apps that will disable the joy of exploration and cross validation. At the same time such devices will be unavailable for instruction months each year so students can participate in testing.
It is time to put the horses in front of the cart. It is time to invest in the right tires so all students can get to the finish line.