Think Like a Teacher

“However, it is important to realize that we also need to spend time away from the grid in order to remain focused on areas that interest us. By focusing on specific ideas and using other people as sources for our learning, we don’t have to do all the work ourselves.”

So says Kelly Christopherson (KC) in a wonderful post about prioritizing the overwhelming “informational tsunami” for educators on technology, web 2.0, and change. I feel overloaded every day. When events like a family crisis or days at a conference keep me (blessedly) away from my computer–well, except for emergencies– for days at a time, my RSS reader becomes a Horrendous Heap to read, and I often resort to fast-scan-then-give-up-and-mark-all-as-read. But curiosity still nags at me. What treats did I just throw out?

So how do I balance my selfish curiosity (“I just wanna read about it so I know what it is and how it works– in case I am missing something”) with the focus that KC suggests to keep myself sane? With a web site such as TeachersFirst to orchestrate, I am very aware of the wide range of teacher needs we try to meet– for free, without bias, and with respect for our users. We can never be everything to everybody. We are generalists, seeking to deliver from our bakery variety pack a selected, deliciously-frosted cupcake for each teacher-user. We cannot possibly deliver an entire cake to each, but we hope that our cupcake variety is diverse enough for everyone to find just the taste they need now and to return for another cupcake soon. For some teachers, TeachersFirst may entice them to get involved in baking themselves, taking a course or researching “recipes” for techno-treats independently. Others will always opt for our delicious bakery, simply as a trusted time saver.

Personally, I want to know how to bake every type of edtech cake, fill it, frost it, and even list its nutritional content. I know I will never meet that goal. But I will try to take KC’s advice about “taking time away from the grid” (or the bakery). I feel as though he has given me permission to hit the “mark all as read” button when I am feeling overwhelmed.

Perhaps the most important permission I can give myself when confronted with so many edtech treats is permission to follow the bakery scents that intrigue me most and write with passion about those. I may never learn to make every cake, but those I do pursue will taste genuine, indeed. Those who read TeachersFirst and choose us as their favorite bakery will, I hope,  appreciate our authenticity.

The Washington Post describes a palatial new school where technolust has run amok, dragging teachers down into negativity and frustration instead of engaging them and building learners. “Technolust,”  or technology for technology’s sake, does more damage per incident than any initiative (or lack of it) in education today. Technology attracts attention by its sheer luminescence, and the attention turns negative when the money spent carries no planning for the implementation and collaboration that would scaffold successful impetus for learning and change. Taxpayers smell waste instead of seeing success.

Or, to put it bluntly: Shove technology at a faculty without thinking like a teacher and involving the teachers, and you might as well turn on the fan next to your stack of bills.

Sadly, what I am saying is NOT new. Research backs it, and the research on successful implementation is readily available. You don’t throw hardware at people and expect them to use it or use it well. More broadly, you don’t throw ANY concept at a learner and expect them to seize it and integrate it into their understanding without some context, some involvement, some sort of connection to their own “reality.” We KNOW this.

Conversely, you could make Universal Mr. Potatohead (U.M.P.) into a successful initiative if you did it right: let teachers experience a workshop using Mr.P.  Challenge them to think of ways Mr. P. could provide connections and allow students to engage in the subjects they teach. Involve some teacher-leaders in Pilot Potatoheads. Brainstorm. Challenge creativity and reward teachers for using it: Mr. P. can provide cells for the microscope in bio, write stories from his own point of view in English, discuss natural resources in social studies, plan an ideal potato city in civics class, observe food chains in potato land, read stories aloud, make friends with fellow potatoheads on the other side of the world, calculate fractions of potatoes in math, and so on. Let teachers collaborate on their successes and problems with the new U.M.P. approach. Share the Mr. Potatohead successes with the taxpayers and invite them to participate. Do we NEED Mr. P.  to be able to teach? No. If we stop and think about ways he could become part of our toolbox, however, he might actually make some concepts “stick” (he’s starchy, after all). Mr. P. MIGHT even make us rethink ways to look at our curriculum and learning through creative eyes in general.

Those folks in Alexandria bear more resemblance to potatoheads than effective planners. And now their story will spread like melting butter, preventing deserving schools from getting anything but small potatoes in their technology budgets.

When I read a piece of good writing, it sings. The feeling is much like the chill up my spine on hearing a perfect choral performance or that sense that a dive or gymnastics performance just IS a perfect 10 — even before the scores show on screen. You just know. There is a sound a guitar makes–I believe called harmonics– that is beyond the earthly, normal, and delightful plucking or strum. That’s what GOOD writing is. It does not happen often. It stops me and says, “Did you hear that?”

Rewind–replay in slo-mo. Yes, I DID hear that, and it is just as good the second time around.

I worry about web2.0 desensitizing us so we no longer can hear writing that sings. Even worse, I worry about the sound simply being drowned out. It is marvelous that everyone has the opportunity to create that perfect piece, and ironically sad that no one will likely even know it is there. The ease of tools makes one wonder about craft. Web2.0 may be the equivalent of the introduction of the power tools into sculpture. With artistic creation so simple and so much faster, are we losing anything?

I am an art quilter. I celebrate the heritage of hundreds of years of women’s quilts as the underpinnings  (sorry—pun) of my work, but I also deny them in pushing the medium, cutting through it, redefining its edges into non-edges and its techniques away from a rigid 10-stitch-per-inch standard.

I don’t think writing should be subject to such a standard, either, but I will be truly sad if we can no longer hear it when it sings. Is there a way to tag a blog post that sings?

Imagine a flexible triangle, three sides made of grudgingly stretchy material, with pivot points at the vertices, so the triangle can change from right to scalene to equilateral, extending and contracting its sides in the process. For a couple of years, I have stood inside  such a triangle between teachers, web2.0 developers, and policy makers. The sides of the triangle and the degrees of the angles constantly change, the elastic sides never staying the same for long.

The clearest side for me, of course, is that defined by teacherworld: seeking positive learning, managing logistics and hours in the day, attending to parent concerns, etc. I know this world well and can paint it for anyone. I also know that teachers can stretch their side when motivated.

I act as liaison between teacher-world and another side: web2.0 tool developers. I explain the culture of schools to developers, especially the barriers to free and open use of their tools in schools. The toolbuilders are rarely aware of the protective policies and logistical limits a teacher faces in facilitating student-created content online.  The most common response from developers on issues teachers face: “I never thought of that.” They know their own side of the triangle. Fortunately, most developers offer a degree of “stretch” in making the tools more useful or less convoluted for teachers to use. There is no such thing as a totally philanthropic developer, however,  seeking to do good for the benefit of students everywhere. Their elasticity conforms to the practical limits of business.

The third side is the group I broadly name “policy makers.” This includes everyone from the local principal and tech coordinator to Congress. Their priority has little to do with looking for the best new tools for learning. A litigious society and thirsty media assure that technology innovation, for them,  is a dragon to be slain — or at least safely contained.

As I pass along web2.0 tools to the TeachersFirst Edge review team, I wonder, Who do we push hardest> Teachers to learn and try new things? Developers to remove barriers? Or policy makers who do not realize the implications of their fearful approach to technology policies? Should we push at all?

I’d like to think that we are better off pulling at all the angles of the triangle than pushing on its sides: luring teachers to try, luring developers to tweak, and luring policy makers to actually LOOK at what kids do with the tools.