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.