Think Like a Teacher

Favorite question of teachers and parents of Bubba/Bubbette the teenager:

What WAS he/she thinking?

Answer:

He/she doesn’t know how to think.

Recent research explains teen brain development, specifically underscoring the teen’s underdeveloped prefrontal lobe as the culprit. Alison Gopnik’s WSJ column makes the research meaningful for teachers by sharing ideas about what the research means for policy makers, teachers, even parents. How do we help Bubba/Bubbette become better thinkers? Practice, practice, practice. Fortunately,  smartphones and the web make to easy to put the practice in our teen’s hands.With a few nudges to toward a favorite gadget and some real world prompts, we just might be able to shape that brain a little sooner.

You get to be a good planner by making plans, implementing them and seeing the results again and again….

Need a way for Bubba/Bubbette to practice this? Try Strike, reviewed here.

The experience of trying to achieve a real goal in real time in the real world [today] is increasingly delayed, and the growth of the control system depends on just those experiences.

Need a way for Bubba/Bubbette to practice this? Try Accompl.sh, reviewed here.

[The prefrontal lobe] is the system that inhibits impulses and guides decision-making

Need a way for Bubba/Bubbette to practice good decision-making? Try Decico, reviewed here.

As Ms. Gopnik points out, the key to learning — the key to creating patterns in our dynamic brains –is apprenticeship of repeated, hands-on experience. I wonder whether repeated clicked-on experience can help. It’s certainly worth a try the next time Bubba is clocked going 85 in a 35 mph zone:

Bubba, make a list of the things you will do to pay off that ticket and get your license back.

Now there’s a long term goal to practice with.

The day after the State of the Union, in the midst of presidential primaries,  and at the height of school budget (cut) announcements for the coming school year, I find myself itching to mimic Judith Viorst’s classic poem. I even found a handy online form for students — and teachers(?) — to write their own versions modeled in the same format.  Here is my first crack at it. Try one yourself…and pass it on. Maybe even post yours on Facebook (!).

If I were in charge of the world
I’d make thinking something to brag about and write about.
Instead of “like” or “rate,”
The options would be to reason and respond.

If I were in charge of the world
There’d be art and poetry breaks in every office and warehouse,
live music playing in every Walmart,
and open ended questions during every newscast.

If I were in charge of the world
You wouldn’t call any class a “special” or an “elective.”
You wouldn’t make kids choose between chorus and sports.
You wouldn’t have budget cuts
so obviously done without thinking.

If I were in charge of the world.

When an Apple falls from the Cupertino tree, the world listens to the earthquake and reports each aftershock. In the ramp-up to an anticipated Apple “event,” the predicto-blogs and tech columnists crank out preshocks. Edtechers from every basket, including Apple core-owners, Apple picker-enviers, and rotten Apple sighters, all stop and pay attention. This week was no exception. Predictions of Apple’s Thursday  “event” at New York’s Guggenheim tallied over 4000 Google News results 20 hours before the event. By the time you read this, that number could easily exceed 10,000. Exciting but sad.

What if we and our students anticipated school as an “event” as widely discussed. What if the buzz about what we’d be learning were a topic for bloggers, consumers of learning, and every basket of self-proclaimed “expert”? Wouldn’t it be nice if just the kids in our classes generated as much excitement about what was going to happen Thursday at 10 am?

What if we asked our students: What will happen next Thursday at ten? What do you predict? What do you really wish it would be? Knowing what you know as a seasoned school-goer, what will you tell your audience to expect? Could you possibly shape the “event” simply through your predictions?

As teachers, how will we react to what they say, especially if they are brutally honest and predict something as unprecedented as peanut butter and jelly? Are we willing to allow some of their more unique or intriguing prophecies to come true? Are we willing to let our students make their own visions happen? Are we willing to act on their responses to, “What do YOU think?” It certainly is worth asking them to play the role of expert prognosticators. Try that as a writing/thinking prompt this week, if you dare.

Are you a teaching Twinkie?

Twinkies are comfort food. There is something about the greasy slip from the cellophane wrapper, the burst of “creamy” filling (likely absolutely nothing related to cream), and the rush of sugar from that first bite. Twinkie aficionados have many approaches: squirting the cream out with your tongue — then eating the spongy cake, freezing the Twinkie and eating it as it thaws, or deep frying it for more grease than a 1960 Dodge pickup after a lube job. Even the post-Twinkie sheen on your fingers says “yum.”

The media are bemoaning the possible impending loss of this junk food jewel.  Twinkies are a rare, secret weakness held in common by nostalgic adults of almost any age, politics, or philosophical persuasion. But does the common experience of Twinkies make them worthy of preservation?

School is familiar. All adults remember the pattern: lesson/lecture, practice, homework. We may have found our personally preferred ways of squirting out the homework first and eating the lesson last, but school is a Twinkie experience, especially if we –as teachers –are Twinkies.  We may be so familiar with our wrappers and slippery sugar that we never stop to question the nutritional value of Twinkies. Nostalgic adults assure us that our Twinkie lessons yield solid basics that everyone should know — and solid test scores. Taxpayers like familiar Twinkie teaching. Everyone knows and understands Twinkies. Twinkies are easy to count, stack, and understand. Besides, our grandparents ate them.

What would happen if Twinkie teaching disappeared from our schools? Greater nutritional value? Healthier minds? New recipes for learning?  There are certainly plenty of Twinkie replacements ready for our menu. Invite the demise of the teaching Twinkie.

“The only way to do justice to our onscreen lives is by summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any screen.”

-Pico Iyer, “The Joy of Quiet” in the New York Times, Dec. 29, 2011

 Amen.

I think a lot about what it means to be in touch, connected, and able to synthesize all that bombards my mind and  screen daily, nightly, weekly, constantly.  I love being able to see and read and listen to so many more voices and images than I could even a decade ago. But I  yearn for the disconnected days Iyer prescribes. As teachers and model learners, we have an extra responsibility to excavate the issue of finding clarity, digging deeply in front of our students (and our own children).

For a moment I indulge in public excavation:

Should being “in touch” occasionally mean something tactile?

Why do some blogs make me long for time to just look at and wonder about things?

How can I seam all the pieces together better?

Do our kids ever have a chance to seam things together or dig deeply to form clarity? Should we artificially require them to do so  or wait for them to feel an intrinsic drive to do so on their own?

School rarely offers the Joy of Quiet. Frenetic School — where most students live a double life, publicly doing what they should while secretly doing what they want below the desk — erases any time for the Joy of Quiet.

Sometimes the lyrics of a song validate my thoughts and provide the seams, stitching clarity. Sometimes it is the words of a character in a novel. More often today, it is a someone’s blog post that starts the sewing machine of my mind. But I know to look for and relish these moments as Joys amid the din. I know to walk away from the screen and take a walk with the sounds of the lake or perhaps an iPod.

Our schools need to facilitate the Joy of Quiet, too. And I don’t mean an old lady whispering “hush” in the library.

Happy New Year! (See my Geogreeting* to you)

This time of year, everyone offers carefully studied retrospectives,  the “Top Ten” this or that from the past year. I see so many amazing sites every year that I could never choose a top ten. Instead, I offer this random, personal collection — just some of the many visual, interactive sites that intrigued me for more than a moment during 2011, at least long enough to say, “WOW!”

TeachersFirst reviews them — so I don’t need to explain them further. My job lead me to find these WOWs among the 714 Featured Sites on TeachersFirst during 2011.  [Actually, one was featudurian late 2010, but it remains a Tip Top Fav of mine.] On any given day, I could close my eyes and click on a dozen or more from among the Featured Sites archives and experience the same “WOW!”

How fortunate I am to have a job where I experience WOW every week.

———————-

Random, personal  WOWs from 2011 - in alphabetical order. (The titles within reviews are links to WOW.)

60 sec recap (review) Definitely ad-heavy, but the concept is great. I once had a hilarious cassette tape of literature classics in two minutes, including Hamlet, but this is even better. Makes me want to create my own or do one with a group of gifted kiddos.

Exhibition Monet (review) Breathtaking. Steep in it.

Foldplay (review) Put anything in a visual container, even abstract concepts and experiences. This is the way I think.

Font de Music (review) Because music and words make poetry together.

Gettysburg Address (review) I live not far from Gettysburg and find this speech moves me more and more as I grow up. I think I finally am starting to get it.

Google Search stories (review) * actually from 2010, but an all time fav. I find myself imagining new stories while sitting in traffic or waiting rooms. This should be an app for my phone.

Information is beautiful (review) The title says it all.

Instagrok (review) I love learning new things, and Instagrok invites me in.

Newscred (review) Learn and read just what I want. To think I used to have to ride my bike two miles to experience this wave of knowledge in the stacks of the public library when I was a kid.

Spicy Nodes (review) As I have said many times, I am a visual person. Concepts = images. Cool.

TeacherWall (review) Morale booster! Not only do I see great teachers. I also feel our profession lifting up and taking me with it.

Virtualswim (review) OK. I like to swim. I think under water. This one is just for me. Aquaphobes, stay away.

Wondersay (review) Because message is about both words and visuals. See a poem.

Yulia Brodskaya (review) I love art, and visually rich sites lure me in for hours. This one is striking.

*The tool that made my greeting above is reviewed here.

TeAching is tech that has earned an “A.” I hope to improve my peer teaching performance to earn that “A.” Last week I wrote of my resolve to improve the way I share edtech expertise with tech-challenged teaching peers in 2012, to help the tech-challenged in a way that enables and respects their ability to help themselves. So I may actually stick to this resolution, I propose five simple “insteads” of respect:

Five Insteads to earn an A:
1. Instead of,  “It’s easy, let me show you,”  I will try, “You have the skills to do that. I remember you showed me … (fill in something my new techie did the last time we met).”

2. Instead of,  “You haven’t tried X?”  I will try, “I just heard about X, but I haven’t had time to even look at it. Can we figure it out together”

3. Instead of touching the mouse, I will keep my hands in my pockets and try to contain my twitching. When I am about to blurt something out, I will offer to fetch us each a cup of coffee so my new techie can play on his/her own. No coffee? I’ll go to the rest room! I will leave for a few minutes so the new techie can explore without a witness. But I’ll be sure to return soon enough to prevent meltdown.

4. Instead of, “Yeah, I’ve done that,” I’ll confide the list of tech tasks I haven’t learned yet or can’t figure out. This will also apply when a fellow edtech guru boasts about a new tool. I will admit what I do not know.

5. Instead of, “Just let your students show you,” I’ll  ask, “Which of your students needs the boost of knowing something the rest of the class does not? Maybe the three of us can do it together first.”

I hope that these “insteads” will encourage a new wave of teAcher techies who have earned the golden A as tech evangelists who support, encourage, and empower. We owe it that respect to our hardworking teaching peers as we pay our expertise forward.

This is the traditional time of year for charitable giving. We try to share our good fortune with those less fortunate. Then we make resolutions to be better people on the New Year. Some of us are fortunate enough to have strong ed tech skills (and/or tech bravado) and can easily be lulled into a sense of superiority as we help others throughout the year. The approaching New Year is the perfect time for us to pay our knowledge forward, but try to do so without the bravado that undermines our very help.

So I resolve in 2012 to improve the way I offer tech help: to help the tech-challenged in a way that enables and respects their ability to help themselves. This post is the first of two installments as I mull ways to improve my tech help offerings and follow through with my “pay it forward” resolution. May this warm up my muscles for edtech help to the needy while respecting dignity, frustrations, and phobias. Three empathy exercises come to mind. Each has happened to me in some form, and I learned from it. Perhaps you have some empathy exercises of your own.

Three EdTech Empathy Exercises

1. Phone techs
   Try giving computer directions over the phone — blind.  Select a task such as learning to put an attachment on email or save an attachment with a new name in a new folder inside at least three other folders. For extra variety, do this on an operating system you have not used for two years. The computer in use at the other end of the phone must be one you have never seen (no school district issued “models” allowed).  If you are seething after just a few instructions and begging just to see what is happening, that’s what your tech-challenged peer feels like every time you start giving directions about “click on this” or “minimize that.” Improve your empathy (and verbal directions)  further by extending this exercise to an octogenarian at the other end of the phone.
   
   
2. Why’s Guys
   Pretend you have a three year old with you at all times, asking, “Why?” Do not move forward to the next step until you answer the question — every time. If you forget to explain to your invisible three year old, you must restart the entire task but may never repeat the same explanation or analogy to explain “why?” you did that step.
3. Timed Tech Taboo
   Just as in the party game of the same name, try to avoid forbidden words. Appoint an independent (non-geek) judge to prepare you for a session with a tech-challenged person. Speak for five minutes about the tasks you will be doing with your needy case — without uttering any and all computer terms. Set the timer on your iPhone or Android. Every time you slip, restart the timer. How much concentration did it take to last for five minutes? That’s how hard your tech-challenged peer works to focus on the directions you rattle off  as he/she tries to keep up. If the task you plan to teach takes ten minutes, practice until you can achieve ten minutes on your timer. THEN approach the needy person and teach the task.

We are all aware of our digital footprints these days, and we caution our students to be aware of the potential future impact of their digital droppings. I wonder, however, about the opposite problem:  the footprints we leave in sands to wash away with changing tides. How can we, as children or adults, plan and preserve the digital archive we want without having to reformat or create new versions every 24 months or so? If a student today wants to be able to retrace his/her own path, what shoes should he/she wear on the trail? How can we avoid having to reformat our lives to fit ever changing media so we can preserve a digital footpath to be retraced in the future?

In the past couple of months, I have helped my husband sift through family archive photo albums as we emptied out an apartment of a loved one who had passed away. I have mourned the changes to the recently aired version of A Charlie Brown Christmas (an heirloom of a sort in this family) as compared to the original 1965 version. I realized that no two are alike: the 1965 version I have memorized (and sang in), the VHS tape for which we longer have a player, the recently remastered BluRay version, and the current on-air version. I even tried  the iTunes version…all different. Stashed around our technojunkyard house we have LP’s, CDs, MP3s, Hi-8 video tapes, VHS tapes, DVDs, BluRays, 3 1/2 inch floppies, USB sticks, zip disks, negatives, paper prints, scans, digpix, SD cards, compact flash cards, iCloud files, Win files, Mac files, Facebook pages, Picasa pages, Google+ photos, and — yes — some very old photo albums from the days when photography was new, hanging precariously from black corners that have lost their adhesive.

I want my four year old grandson to learn to build a digital pathway instead of leaving random droppings. Unless he/we constantly revisit(s), reformat(s), and re-collect(s) the footprints of his life, we will never have the same kind of treasury that once resided in smelly old photo albums. And as we revisit, we will be tempted to change the versions just a bit. I wonder about the ethics of being a revisionist vs an archivist. And selecting the tools will never be a “final answer,” but simply a prediction of today’s high and low tide media. This is the other side of digital footprints. Something more to teach and learn.

I know you. I have known you since you were 7 (or 8 or 10). You can act like an idiot, dress like a hooker, talk like a sailor, and saunter through these school halls flexing your freshly-sprouted muscles, but I knew you when you sat on the floor for story time and whispered in my ear that there really is no Santa Claus.

I am excited for you. I see you questioning who you are and trying out new identities. I see you beginning to dream of a world beyond school. You ask me questions about that world that I cannot answer, but we can explore them together. As long as we who pretend to control your life make our classes seem relevant to that world, you humor us by participating. Occasionally, you let us see that you actually like learning.

Does it matter that I knew you before grade 6? It helps. Could a teacher new to you know you as well? Probably. Does the very act of transition to this middle school  threaten your progress just by removing you from the K-5 learning home where you sat on the floor?  There is a study that says it hurts your academic progress to move to this middle school instead of remaining in the same building where you abandoned Santa Claus. I am fortunate that my job as teacher of gifted spans grades 2-8 in several buildings. So I know you, no matter which grades are in the building around us.

I would argue that it is relationship that defines your learning experience. You need someone who knows you. You need someone who knows that today’s cocktail party outfit is just a trial balloon of your sexuality (and who will tell you when it is not appropriate for school). On the inside, you are still the person who pretended to be a cat for the class play and who likes to read Shel Silverstein poems. You are also the mathematician who showed me a different way to solve that word problem and the computer geek who figured out html as a hobby.

You are the lucky one. You achieve because you have adults who know you and notice you. You have history with us. Your parents who know us, too. No matter how much the experts study and mine the data about you and your classmates, I know you. I cannot wait to see what you become long after our time together here.