Staying a step ahead of evolution

Lest the title of this post cause the reader to get sidetracked concerning issues of science vs. religion, I assure you these thoughts have nothing to do with either.  These thoughts were prompted by a tweet from someone (whom I cannot remember or locate at the moment) which said something to the effect of we don't know how to plan for innovation, selling televisions, and this article about the abolishment of cursive writing in the state of Indiana.

Planning for innovation - some companies do it well.  Google is probably the flagship organization in this area.  There are others and you can read about them in The Future of Management by Gary Hamel.  It's worth the read if this post stirs you in any way.

Selling televisions - I work part time for a major electronic retailer in the home theater department. I was helping a customer pick out a television the other day when she said, "I want to buy something that will keep up with all the technology and advancements for the next ten years." To which I responded, "That's impossible. Technology and innovation do not work that way." I then explained using concrete examples of what has happened just in the last eighteen months in the home theater industry.

Abolishing cursive - This is one I've almost come full circle on. I'm currently sitting at about 270 degrees. For you trig people that would be three-halfs pi, but I digress. We currently home school both our children. My wife and I spent a lot of time debating whether we should teach cursive to our children. In the interest of marital bliss, I gave her the deciding vote and she voted yes. No biggie. I kept my thoughts to myself about how no one uses it anymore; it's a relic left over from the days of reducing ink smears when writing with a goose feather; in fifteen years nothing will be written by hand, it will only appear in the air as you type on your holographic keyboard, etc.

The article quotes Andee Anderson of the Indiana University Northwest Urban Teacher Education Program as saying teachers haven’t had the time to teach cursive writing for some time because it’s not a top priority. As a result students’ handwriting is atrocious. Man, I can concur with that last one. I teach in North Carolina and I could have sworn that my students were writing in Sanskrit or Hindi this past year. My humanities teammate instituted the Handwriting Rescue program for these students. Part of the motivation was also because some research had shown that because students had not learned the skills of forming letters properly that seemingly unrelated areas of their brains were not properly developed and therefore they were deficient in other areas like critical thinking, problem solving, etc. I was sold because I was witnessing the latter skill deficiencies.

Such interconnectedness fit nicely into what I would tell my students on a frequent basis. We know now that the brain is fairly plastic. During the preschool and adolescent years, neural pathways get created and pruned depending on how the brain itself is used. Research has shown (sorry, didn't have time to look it up) that students in China think differently than students in the US partly because they use a pictographic handwriting system. It creates different pathways in their brains and therefore potentially different skill sets. And let's not forget this iconic article Is Google Making Us Stupid?.

I promise, this is nearing a conclusion. From a pedagogical and curriculum development perspective, how do we factor all this in? "Research-based" is the buzz word. Marzano is the point man here. He has gone as far as to say that use of such methods will cause an increase in student achievement. Justin Baeder has written an excellent critique of those claims here. Let's assume that the claims are true. Living by such methods only makes us guilty of getting what we always got because of doing what we've always done. If our teaching methods and by extension our assessment methods are based in the past, how are we planning for innovation? How are we allowing for the brain to develop new skills? Has the quest for the "science" of teaching really become a religion of devotion to a particular philosophy?

In other words, how do we teach the students of today for the world of tomorrow?

Spending a year offline - part 1

This past school year has been very interesting for me.  I spent most of it offline.  I don't mean just absent from Facebook and Twitter, the latter having been my preferred place of residence.  I mean almost completely offline.  I blogged maybe twice during that time.  I only participated in two or three #edchats.  I rarely even checked my personal email.  I think the bulk of my online activity was Googling for map directions or Christmas gift ideas.

What happened?  The short version is this:

1. I had to take a part time job to make ends meet.  I made the decision to spend my little free time with my family instead of on a computer because I knew I would never get off otherwise.
2. My access to technology at school dramatically changed.  

• I went from having five desktops in my classroom to one, and that one worked REALLY slowly.  
• The laptop carts were in constant use.  This was in theory a good thing for all the students.
• My own personal technology died on me - my LCD projector, my netbook, and my homemade IWB.  All purchased with my own money.  If you want to know why I didn't repair it, see #1.

So the past ten months provided an opportunity to gain a new perspective on things.  First, the immediate consequences.  I felt really disconnected.  I am amazed at how strongly I felt about the relationships with my online acquaintances.  Besides all the nuggets of wisdom I used to glean everyday, I enjoyed the social interaction.  I missed the convos that would happen during #edchat or when other hot topics would pop up.  I missed trying to keep up with all the feeds in my Google reader and then sharing all that I had learned.  I missed our own local edcamp and the opportunity for F2F interactions as well.

Second, it totally changed the way I taught.  When my personal equipment failed, gone was the opportunity to stop whatever we were doing as a class and search for an answer or connect with another class for input.  I had to come up with new ways to make sure that I was creating learning opportunities that challenged all my students on all levels of Blooms and did so in meaningful ways, not just for the sake of work completion.  I found myself slipping more and more into not only out of vogue techniques, but less effective ones as well.  It was hard and I felt bad for my students many days.

I don't know if anyone cares about Part 1, much less any future installments I might write about. But I am an extremely introspective individual (some have called me a "frowny faced introvert"), so more will come.  I did learn a lot as a result of this year and some of it is worth sharing.  Thanks for helping me weed through it.

Today was great day. . .

Today was a great day in the classroom.  In fact, the last two weeks have just been awesome.  This year I am teaching 7th grade and I have one section each of general math, pre-algebra, and algebra 1.  And for the record, I am at least 1 month behind in getting everything on the standard course of study (SCOS) covered in time for Testivus and its annual celebration of end of grade testing.

Why am I behind?  I'm glad you asked.  I'm behind because we have spend so much time just learning and making connections.  I took more time than was recommended on a few key concepts to ensure that my students really understood what they were doing.  The last two weeks have been so great because we have spent that time going BEYOND the SCOS and exploring other connections.  Today I was just giddy with excitement as I watched all the little light bulbs flicker above everyone's heads.  I then shared why I was so excited.  Do my kids think I'm weird?  Definitely, but that was a foregone conclusion without today's behavior.  Did I demonstrate to them a passion and excitement for learning?  Most definitely/.  Did some of them experience that for themselves?  I gotta say yes.

Today was a great day.

"How'd you get your kids to do that?"

That was the question asked of me yesterday at the end of the school day.  Another teacher and I were just chitchatting about our days.  The conversation began with her asking, "How was your day?" To which I replied, "It was awesome.  I'm done. I don't have to teach anymore." (We have two weeks left, approx half of a semester). I continued, "I have the students teaching now.  I told them they have taken all this before.  They already know it.  It was time to step up."  To which she asked our title question today.

I was surprised at her disbelief.  Her response was, "My kids are too retarded for that." With that she left the room.  So how did I get my kids to do this?  And for the record, they are doing an AWESOME job.  Their peers are being assessed just as if I had been doing the teaching and they are doing well.  It all began on day 1 when I told them that none of them were stupid.  Most of them were repeating the class in summer school because of poor work ethic, personality clashes with the teachers, and a bunch of other reasons that had nothing to do with their intellectual or academic abilities.  They have been required to synthesize and analyze their knowledge everyday and intelligently write about it.  They have taken part in two other inquiry based projects already this summer.  This was the logical next step.  Getting to do this was actually pretty easy.  They can probably do even more.

Building Student PLN's

Tonight's #edchat was about how social media can/is changing education.  Social media's influence has greatly benefitted me.  My PLN, built primarily around Twitter, has enabled me to change so much about how I teach.  My personal growth over the last year has been exponentially greater than my previous eight years as teacher.  Part of my learning has resulted from the sharing I do as well.

What if my students' could build PLN's?  How would their learning change?  What would be the impact on their education?  After tonight's chat, I'm determined to begin that process tomorrow, even if there are only 12 weeks left in the school year.

So how do I get this started?  There are some important logistical and legal issues that must be considered.  Some I have thought of.  Others I need your help on.

• Find a service permissible and properly secure for your age group that is accessible on your school network.  This includes getting them email addresses.
• Find an avatar creation site so kids won't have to use their real pics.
• Teach them proper digital citizenship.
• Model and demonstrate how a PLN can be used.
• Create an IMMEDIATE use for them.

What am I missing?  What services would you suggest?

The Joy of Learning

My wife and I are both the oldest children in our respective families.  Naturally, we started having kids before our sibs.  It's interesting to watch all my nieces go through the stages we have already passed through.  Sometimes it's a relief to say, "I'm glad we're through that!" and other times it's "I miss when they were that age."  My youngest niece is 7 months old.  Her entire life centers around exploring and learning.  She is so excited about everything around her.  I really do miss that stage of my boys lives.  Samantha is learning so much in such a short period of time.

A kindergarten teacher told me today that she chose that grade level because "it's the last fun grade in school."  What?!  That can't be.  Certainly it takes us at least three or four years to beat the enjoyment of school out of them doesn't it?  Thinking about my niece made me think about how I could create that type of environment in my classroom.  What would it take to foster a "I want to learn and explore everything" attitude in my classroom full of learners?  Tonight's #edchat addressed that very thing.  How do we best promote student ownership in their learning?

There were a lot of great ideas thrown out.  I'm looking forward to trying some of them out.  Heck, I'm even looking forward to trying out some of my own ideas :-)  That's part of the problem.  My friend @kellyhines concluded her participation in tonight's #edchat with this tweet:

Something about tonight's #edchat isn't sitting well with me tonight. We know the what & the how, so why isn't "ownership" happening?

I confess.  Ownership isn't happening in my classroom as much as I'd like.  Sure, almost all of my kids enjoy my class, even love my class.  What kid wouldn't when their teacher is as big a goofball as I?  Plus, I'll stop a lesson on a whim or a student prompted question to go off on a tangent and project all the findings on the screen.  But where is the ownership?

Last fall I set up all sorts of goals.  My classroom was going to be a "learning community".  Students would be self-directed, wholly invested learners.  It went great for the first quarter.  Then I got tired of staying up until 1:00 am every night.  All sort of other deadlines hit me.  I was negotiating philosophical perspectives with my PLC.  All I had time for was the usual.  Our first week back from winter break, one of my kids asked, "When are we going to do all the stuff like we used to do?"  I was caught red-handed.  I was convicted of my own sin.

To answer Kelly's question, it's hard to make it happen every day.  Some of us have a lot of bad habits to unlearn and even more good habits to learn.  There is the reality of NCLB, RttT, and every other false measure of accountability (editorializing? yep!).  There is the pressure we all feel to make the grade.  We talk about wanting to dig all the way to the bottom of Bloom's, but something about those pacing guides and standardized testing keeps us from leaving the shallow end of the pool.  But we still have to strive for it everyday!

I'm idealistic enough to believe we will see more student ownership of learning.  I believe it will happen because the number of us who share our own joy of learning is growing each day.  It will happen because there will be enough of them who don't get sucked dry by the system and they will become teachers themselves.  They will force shared ownership/leadership in their schools and districts.  And I believe I will see it in my day.