Curriculum Unhidden

This post is a result of a series of conversations I recently had with a number of people vis-a-vis more recent developments in curriculum development and rejection.

So first things first- the hidden curriculum, according to Wikipedia is, "A hidden curriculum is a set of lessons "which are learned but not openly intended"^[1]

 to be taught in school such as the norms, values, and beliefs conveyed in both the classroom and social environment.^[2]" (Wikipedia). More recently, efforts like the 1619 project curriculum were recognized as subverting the hidden curriculum. In the past attacks on new curricula were often somewhat veiled in language that claimed that these new approaches will lead to children not learning. This was very clear during the attacks on "New Math". I do not want to get into what New Math is or even if it was working. I just want to note that it was an innovation that got ridiculed without a serious look. My point is that it got attacked because it was new, and it was in some ways disrupting elements in the Hidden Curriculum. The attacks on the Common Core standards are very much the same. The common core became a political target as explored in informative ways in the website #commoncore project.

We have changed since then. The attacks on Critical Race Theory and banning curricula, for example in Florida, have made it clear that there is no more hidden curriculum. Instead, we have a hotly debated curriculum that is at the center of a political maelstrom. In some ways, I welcome the open discussion about the content of education. On another level, this makes education at the center of the culture wars in ways that are not welcoming for students and teachers. 

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. 

Personal Reflection on Cultural Appropriation and Cowboy Hats

This reflection is in no way an attempt to define or argue the boundaries of cultural appropriation. Instead, I am attempting to think about what cultural appropriation means to me as a Jewish/ Israeli immigrant to the United States, who is nonetheless white, educated, abled, and doing well for myself.

When I started wearing cowboy boots a few years ago, I was not confident about my ability to "pull it off" and I was worried about appearing to be appropriating a culture that I did not belong to. One afternoon I brought that up with Al Steckelberg, a native Nebraskan, and a friend, he waved me off and said: "we all used to wear western gear, we were all pretending". I love my cowboy boots and recently added a hat (at least in the sun). As I sat in my backyard in my hat I was intrigued by the shadow my hat made. The shadow created a distance and felt like it was not me but some other. It led me to a new journal page that became a collage. To the collage, I added detail from a painting by Eakins c. 1888 and a Jewish Gaucho in Sante Fe Argentina. 

As an immigrant to the US, I am always in the process of figuring out how I belong. I live in the liminal space between my past culture in Israel and the culture I live in now. As a result, I often find myself appropriating language, expression, and communication styles in an effort to find a place. The process itself is inherently flawed and often I find myself trying out patterns that cause the people I am interacting with to give me a second and third look. I have a sense that I crossed some boundaries but since most of the boundaries are not articulated clearly and never spoken out I am not always sure what caused the reaction. 

In some ways, I wear cowboy boots and hat as a way of defying expectations. In Nebraska, I am often the first Israeli ex-pat people have ever met, doubly so when it is cowboy boots wearing Isareli. At the same time, the cowboy image in popular culture and in real life is linked to masculinity and freedom. Finally, I believe that the cowboy image connects me to a sense of place (the great plains are the birthplace of the classic cowboy boot), and at the same time allows me to connect to Jewish cowboys and Gauchos- a pocket culture that nevertheless existed.

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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So I went to NAEA for the first time

The National Art Education Association meeting was in New York City this spring. Despite many years of being involved in arts integration, I have never had the opportunity to go. This year after our grant application for Art TEAMS was funded Was a great opportunity to go.

Wikipedia First: New Rules for Online Research

A recent article in Wired revisited how attitudes toward Wikipedia come face to face with the reality of Wikipedia. It is the world's eighth most visited site, it is free, it is not monetized. Students still recite that you cannot get information from Wikipedia- that it is not a reliable site.
In short, there is a gap between what we say "Wikipedia is unreliable, and the information on it cannot be trusted" and the reality that we all use Wikipedia and often for all the right reasons.

One of the common critiques about Wikipedia is that consensus might not be the best method to determine what is "true." That is a compelling argument and not without merit. It is, however, precisely what researchers do. Send papers to scrutiny "peer review" and research results become "true" when most of the research community thinks they converge, and we reach consensus until new information disrupts it.
In fact, a whole section of the Conceptual map about the Nature of Science (bottom right in the figure). Has to do with the community.

I will not repeat all the support and critiques of Wikipedia - you can read those on Wired in the original. I would like to instead suggest an addendum to how we treat Wikipedia when we teach students about Information Technology.
Let's make it Wikipedia first, never Wikipedia only. We always need to corroborate any information, but Wikipedia, with its basic information and the next set of links, can launch a search that is not guided just by the commercial and parochial interests of the monetized search engines only.
Wikipedia first

Why Silent Reading Rates and Stamina are More Important than Ever!

Freddy Hiebert currently of TextProject, Emily Hayden of Iowa State and I recently published an empirical paper about patterns of silent reading. This is the work we have been pursuing for quite a while. Studies of silent reading in the context of reading development is a crucial element in expanding our understanding of reading in the context of new literacies. Reading in the 21st century is quickly becoming a substantially different task than before- a task that, as educators and researchers, we need to explore. The reading task in the age of new literacies combines much of the old skills (e.g. decoding, word knowledge, fluency)  with newer challenges emerging from distractions, nonlinear texts, and the richness of multimodal texts.

I believe that one of the least understood elements of reading in the 21st century is persistence. This is inherently a different challenge than it was as little as twenty years ago. Modern readers seem to be almost assaulted by distractions and behaviors that challenge their attention to a continuous text. At the same time, comprehension of complex texts can emerge only from sustained close reading. In this, I go back to the notion of motivation as the ability to sustain attention to a specific task- reading.

The results of the study show that many students do not persist in reading even when they comprehend well. At the same time, it is clear that students that do persist in reading with comprehension adjust their reading rate after one text section and then slowly increase their reading rate. These patterns show the benefits of persistence and highlight the challenges of distraction. If students are distracted they will attempt each piece of the text as if new, unable to use the feedback from the previous section to adjust their reading rate to ensure comprehension. It is very likely that such behaviors make reading considerably less efficient and thus increase the odds that readers will not persist reading longer texts with comprehension.

I believe we have two challenges, the first is to research reading in modern contexts and the second to develop a framework for instructing silent reading with persistence and comprehension. From our conclusion:

"...we believe that the most pressing issue within reading instruction at present pertains to instructional tasks and interventions that support silent reading proficiency. One of the few projects on supporting silent reading within classroom settings in the archival literature is that of Reutzel, Fawson, and Smith (2008). This study, conducted with third graders, showed that a treatment of silent reading produced similar results on assessments of ORF as oral reading practice... To date, we have been unable to find a framework for designing tier-one, classroom instruction that begins in the early grades and ensures that students develop strong patterns of silent reading. If we are to prepare students for the tasks of the twenty-first century, such frameworks for instruction are urgently needed." (Hayden, Hiebert, & Trainin, 2019)

Teaching as a Craft

Occasionally I browse the books available on audio from the library through my app and listen to an almost random pick. This is how I came by Eric Gorges’ A Craftsman Legacy. It turns out that the book emerged from a TV show with the same name. Eric reads a string of interactions with craftsman  while telling his personal story in a reflective measured voice. The result is almost hypnotic. What I found magical in the way Eric read his book was that it provided space to think. Eric who is a craftsman himself visits exceptional craftsman interviews them while learning to create in their medium. This allows for a conversation and a juxtaposition of a master, a novice, and the learning process.

I remember grappling with the conflicting ideas of teaching as an art or as a science. Following Eric’s argument I believe it is a craft and that the metaphors and rumination that emerge from the book can be useful when thinking about teaching. For example, Teaching curiously enough relies quite heavily on an apprenticeship model that Gorges sees disappearing in the physical crafts.

One strand that Gorges pulls as the book evolves is the notion of play. His interviewees often describe a path that starts in childhood, constructing a bow, taking a clock apart. But for them play never stops and the hours they put in make them an expert while keeping the element of play. As we recognize the role of play in encouraging curiosity and discovery I believe that exposing kids to physical crafts can be magical.

I have had the chance to visit with Justin Olmanson discussing his efforts to include Making in our teacher education programs. It seems like our students initially resist the effort required to actually iterate and make. The demand forces them to slow down and make time. What Justin says has helped is describing the emotional journey that accompanies making. In the same vain I wonder if we used craft of teaching as a guiding metaphor it would make it easier for our students to understand the iterative nature of learning to teach.

Is Listening Reading?

In the last few years, I picked a habit. At the beginning it was innocent. I listened to a podcast or two. I picked up Duncan's History of Rome and binge listened. The habit developed slowly and now I have about 10+ podcasts that I listen to on a weekly basis.

It turned out this was just the entry drug. A few months ago I took the plunge and joined Audible while using Libby to consume library available audiobooks. I like Libby, but often the books I wanted were not available or my time to consume them ran out mid-book. I have since started consuming books on audible while still using paper and digital print.

I find audiobook especially powerful when the reading adds more than it takes away. For example, for MLK day I listened (consumed?) The Radical King by Cornell West (editor), the audio version used some of the leading African American voices adding depth and meaning to the text.

Turns out I am not the only picking up audio. In 2017 alone the growth in usage was over 20% (see here). the reports also show that listeners also continue reading on paper. This signifies a potential change of habits, use of libraries, and eventually education.

So why am I bringing this up? I wonder what consuming books in this way does to comprehension. Does it impede comprehension? does it make it easier? What strategies can we use to improve listening comprehension? A literature search on Google Scholar quickly showed that most of the research on listening has been done through the lens of second language acquisition. While this makes sense it also means that we truly do not know what impact will listening have on literacy. Time to roll up my sleeves and do some research. I promise to report back when I do.

Still Thinking

I have been away from the blog. It was an opportunity to explore other skills and ways of acting in the world. I am ready to integrate my new skills as a recruiter and administrator to the work of innovation.

This morning I listened to the Freakonomics podcast after weeks of Audible listening. In the interview with Andrew Yang. Mr. Yang shared his anxiety about the country (indeed the world) preparing for the social changes resulting from automation and AI. I think that whatever the next few transition years will yield in society, we as educators should be readying our students for this future. This next generation of citizens, workers, and thinkers will need flexible skills and be habituated into learning constantly.

This is not a simple task and we really do not fully understand what it should look like. What I do know is that we have to experiment and design new teacher education efforts that will give us and the next generation a fighting chance.

Designing new programs is not a guarantee that we will succeed. Not trying will guarantee failure.

Innovative Schools Teacher Preparation

Lately Laurie Friedrich and I have been spending time thinking about preparing teachers to thrive in innovative schools. We spent a significant amount of time laying out the outline of a path that will lead us there. Our mission is to prepare educators who are effective and confident facilitating learning in innovative settings.

This goal emerged from our interaction with school leaders who have indicated to us a challenge in finding and retaining educators who can be effective teaching in innovative settings. We think that it it because traditional teacher education programs are not providing the skills and dispositions needed in innovative learning settings. The group we are proposing will lead to a program that will support innovative schools by providing teachers who can facilitate learning in a variety of settings using inquiry, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration. Our objective is to have a program to supplement traditional teacher education with the skills and dispositions that will create educators who can be consistently successful in innovative schools.

Being a full citizen in the 21st century requires life-long learning that fosters design thinking and innovation. This life-long learning is shaped during the school years. Innovative schools show how to grow this next generation of thinkers and creators, and lead the way for more traditional school systems. Our program aims to grow the educators that will be the backbone of transformation. These schools need the teachers who will make sure such schools are successful and can try new ideas. Our plan is to help these schools by preparing interested classroom and prospective teachers who can step in ready to teach in innovative ways.

The Challenge of Aurality/Orality

I am an avid podcast listener. I listen to fiction podcasts such as Fictional, the Moth. I listen to a whole host of non-fiction podcasts including the History of Byzantium, History of Rome and Tides of History among others. At the same time I see the rise of Audible and Amazon audible books.

I love spoken audio. I actually prefer it to music most of the time. What I cannot figure out yet is what that means for literacy. Literacy development has been determined by print, its limitations and power. Storytelling from memory was replaced by reading from the page (still out loud) to finally being replaced by silent reading and prolific writing. Radio brought back listening to stories and reports. The rise of the internet has made all of us potential authors. Now the ability to deliver audio has opened a new opening for orality.

The question that I would like to pose is how will the proliferation of orality impact literacy and by extension schools. Do we need to teach more listening skills? How do we add oral creation to our composition classes?

One area to use as a bridge is poetry. Poetry even when written, always pushes toward the performative, the audible. Poetry out loud, spoken word competitions, and raps can help see orality and text as part of the same yarn.

That said I am still wondering about the relative value of orally consumed text. Does it stick in memory as well? What strategies help comprehension and recall? No answers, mostly questions.

Dashboarding and Self Regulation

I have two new devices in my life. The first is my iWatch bought last weekend in LA and the second is my Ford C-Max hybrid. I love both devices (and yes my car is a devices).  They both speak to my other devices and operate as part of my digital life.
Both have dashboard that are aimed at improving my behavior. the iWatch has an activity monitor that uses a very simple design to see if I am reaching my daily movement goals (exercise, standing, and walking). It is easily accessible through one tap on the face of the watch.

My hybrid has a dashboard that informs me how green is my my driving. It provides feedback on energy storing, breaking behavior and overall effective energy consumption. This has changed my behavior, at least in the short run. I am driving more cautiously and I am keenly aware of accelartaion and sudden stops.

I always knew that movement is good for me or that driving in a more even way would reduce fuel consumption. At the same time there quite a gap between knowing and acting on the knowledge. This is where the dashboards come to our rescue. Dashboards tell us how we do and give us formative feedback so we evaluate our performance in situ and even take corrective action. What I am less sure of is how long this effect will last. But if the dashboards create a lasting effect then it is worth thinking about the potential leverage in critical points in education.

I do not think that we can dashboard our whole life- it is simply too much to take in on a regular basis. But if we can identify critical practices that would be supported by a dashboard then we should at least attempt to that.

My idea is to start with device use for students. I can easily imagine an app that shows device use across 3-4 categories: Reading, Games, Social Media, Learning. A dashboard like that can easily show students how much of the time they are using different modes. This is especially important as we consider what might be a productive learning use of devices provided by schools.

Three reasons ed researchers should create digitally

I have a large digital footprint with hundreds of blog posts and video series with over 100,000 views. In addition I put everything I publish online without pay walls the second I am allowed to. I have profiles on Academia.com, LinkedIn, Google Scholar and Researchgate. If you are an educational researcher you are most likely to have less of an online  presence. Many researchers do not have any. Here are three reasons to have a meaningful online presence:

1. You gain readership. Let's face it, most professionals and amateurs start learning about any topic using a simple google search. If you want to find your audience and your audience to find you, you MUST be online where they can find you. Once they find you (through a piece you wrote, a blog post etc.), they can follow up on anything else you published on that or any other topics. They might even register to follow any updates you make. This is a great way to connect and have an impact. Because:
2. Educational research is highly contextualized. As a result it has limited shelf life. That means that you need to reach your audience quickly. In a few decades (or even less) contexts changes enough to render many of our conclusion invalid. If no one consumes (read, watch, listen) to ideas, and results now they may be obsolete by the time people find them. Which brings me to my last point:
3. We need to talk to a wide constituency. It includes students, teachers, administrators, policy makes and the public. Writing for a wide audience is much more effective through digital channels that give everyone free immediate access to research findings and thinking.

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.

Neads, Wants, and Tech

In the las two days Jennifer Davidson and I have been discussing needs vs. wants. Which led me to ask myself a few questions. The first is what are needs in 21st century education. I would argue those are access, connectivity, internet, caring teachers, mixed with hope and actual opportunity to enact your hopes.

Yes there are more basic needs (air, shelter, health,, nutrition) without which educational needs matter less BUT in the 21st century the internet and person to person connectivity are items that must be available. Without them distributed equally, gaps within and between nations will continue to grow.

What are your tech needs vs. wants?

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.


 

I'm Back

It has been almost a year since I blogged last. I took much needed time away from blogging to think, rethink and pursue other duties in administration. But now, that I have finished some of my administrative duties I have decided it is time to come back to blogging as a path to thinking and sharing projects ideas and thoughts. My goal for blogging is to think through what is next and tinker with bringing some of that vision to life.

Ten Ways to Use Pokemon Go in your Classroom this year

You may or may not be a Pokemon player. Either way as Pokemon Go fever sweeps the world it can serve us well to understand it and find ways to make it useful in our classrooms. And, NO, I do not mean use it as a reward. We have been here before with Minecraft so you can definitely take some of the ideas and use with other games as well.

1. Make them write fan fiction about Pokeomn Go adventures.

When it is appropriate let and even encourage students to write about Pokemon Go. Students often lack detail in their writing, Pokemon Go can be a great catalyst to adding details to a story. The complexity and richness of the Pokemon world can also encourage students to write fan fiction stories that spean multiple chapters. The advantage of supporting longer more complex writing is conducive to writing development, new and rich vocabulary and reading comprehension.

2. Make them write tips or steps.

Expository writing is often hard for students. One expository task is writing directions. I have seen many students struggle to write out directions for making a sandwich. Instead, we could challenge our students to write out the steps to achieving a goal on Pokemon Go. Imagine the direction to hatching a Pokemon egg, or getting your squirtle to evolve. If you know nothing about Pokemon, that's OK, your students can generate these ideas very readily.

3. Make a directions video.

This is very similar to the previous point but this time the composition is multi modal. Students can use still frames or video of a partner playing to create those. They can even narrate and edit the video teaching 21st century composing skills.

DO NOT FORGET TO LET THEM PUBLISH ELECTRONICALLY

This will create a sense of audience and provide examples of products

4. Learn about cultural or art sites.

POkemon Go relies on public sites. Ask your students to report on the sites available in the community. Students can write down the sites and then research the site, artist and significance.

DO NOT FORGET TO HAVE EQUIVALENT ACTIVITIES FOR THE NON-PLAYERS

You can use non- gaming apps like Google Maps or paper alternatives.

5. Work on the metric system and conversions.

Poekemon Go is metric. This is a great opportunity to discuss metric measurement and their conversion. This is great because I hear that metric is important for science.

6. Discuss the value of effort and learning from experience.

When we develop Grit in students we emphasize the role of persistence and coping with failure. Make students relate their efforts on Pokemon Go. Every one of them will have a story of persevernce that you can then turn into a story about academics.

7. Gamify your classroom with Pokemon Go like idea.

This is definitely for those ready to use game mechanics in their classroom. You will need to get at least a rudimnetary sense of the game before you start. I can easily see a classroom in which workstations are poke stops generating tokens for completed works. The tokens can be converted to Pokemon eggs. Hatching eggs can be related to number of pages read, homework completion- you name it. Leaderboards would also be helpful.

8. Create a Pokemon Go diary.

Have students write a daily diary about Pokemon or other daily activities. The richness of their experiences can help support their notion of strategic thinking and problem solving- if you help them occasionally to think in those terms.

9. Use Pokemon go ideas to teach about observation in nature (bird watching, animal watching etc.

10 Teach self-regulation with devices using activity journaling.

Maybe the hardest challenge in teaching 21st century kids is the difficulty in teaching self monitoring of device use. A way to negotiate this difficulty is to ask students to log in their device use as a way to start thinking about how much and for what ourpose they use the phone. Manuaaly logging the information in is crucial because it makes them actively think about their use.

In short I belive we can use popular games to support learning of skills and as a way to update our classrooms and make them more engaging!

The Three (Plus) Collaboration Apps I Use Every Day

1. Google Drive

There is nothing like it! No one has figured out how to enable real-time digital collaboration like Google did. At the composing and creating phase, I do everything in google drive and especially in google docs. The ability to travel in time in a single fully integrated documents has made collaboration seamless and always a blended experience. Even when I work right next to colleagues, we all look at the same product. In the days before the Google suite, we shuttled documents back and forth often losing the flow at one point or another.

2. Video Conferencing
I did not name one such app because I use different ones with different collaborators. Since I am fairly adept at technology, I use whatever others are used to. That is why I use: Adobe Connect, Skype, Zoom, Hangouts, and even Facetime. If I were pressed, I would name Skype as my most commonly used video conferencing app. This is how I connect to co-authors, students, and potential collaborators.

3. Social Media
Social media is my way to learn from people I do not know (or at least know well). My favorites are Twitter and Google Plus. Twitter has a massive reach, and I find many like minds. The downside is the 140 characters limit that collaboration- and I often find myself frustrated by the speed and brevity. Google Plus is a much smaller community, but I often find that interactions are productive and more enduring.

There are many ways that technology complicates our lives, but in collaboration it allows us to collaborate better and further than ever before.

The Power of Gaming- Pokemon Go

There is an ebb and flow in the attitudes and buzz around gaming in education. This week, with the release of Pokemon Go, I saw, once again, the power of gaming in action. Pokemon Go was released. Pokemon Go is an augmented reality game that allows users to interact with a Pokemon world overlaid on the real world.

My younger kids play it (10,12) of course delighting in the Pokemon they find as we drive around town. My 22-year-old son and 26-year-old nephew are also enjoying it. Reliving parts of their childhood they are interacting and discovering the hidden world around them.

Next to my house there is a park, now visiting the gazebo gives you Pokeballs and the sign is a Poke Gym. Traffic around the park has more than doubled with kids teens and adults stopping to explore the digital and the real.

My point is not to celebrate this particular game. My point is that gaming is something that appeals to the digital generation. This app makes participants move (you need 2K steps to hatch a Pomkemon egg). If done correctly it can generate learning, motivation and a sense of adventure. I can easily see a game app at a museum, sending users to find specific exhibits and discover ideas and histories. There can be a real reward but just as easily you can just have a leaderboard and levels that seem to motivate gamers. Imagine a city creating an app that provides points for each landmark, and cultural event.

Just imagine what we can do!

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