Think Like a Teacher

I have previously posted perilous predictions comparing how a five year old boy I know sees the world today and what his 2025 mindset will be. I continue with a few more thoughts as I head home from a busy week at ISTE2012.

2012 – Music comes from the big screen, the phone, the iTouch, the computer, and the backseat DVD : 2025 – I have music in my head all the time

2012 – I learn what I like by choosing an app : 2025 – I choose my school cohort — and plan college and job– to fit what I like to learn.

2012 – I Facetime my cousin on the computer, iPhone, or big screen : 2025 – I say my cousin’s name when I think about him, and I hear him answer me.

2012 – I have friends and cousins in different states : 2025 – I friends who speak to me in different languages, and I hear what they mean.

2012 -playlists are what mommy and daddy choose : 2025 – Life is my playlist.

2012 – I love my teacher : 2025 – Teacher? I remember those. I hadn’t heard them called that since middle school.

Want to venture a prediction — so the future can laugh at both of us?

Two convergences are humming inside my head like songs I cannot shake. I attended SocialEdCon Saturday and the ISTE 2012 opening keynote yesterday. At both the talk was about helping kids find their passion. The hum in my head was still strong — asking me to connect to the post I just did about today’s five year old.  He will have the chance to pursue his passion when “left to his own devices.” I’ll just let the personal passion song keep playing in my head as I continue through ISTE.

The second inside song (a clever harmony?) has lyrics about MePortfolios (a distinction form ePortfolios). EPortfolios are for the teacher or principal or department of ed. Meportfolios are for the audience I want to share them with. My five year old will have a MePortfolio, portable, personalized, and completely adaptable to the audience of choice.

That’s it… I am off to another session.

I know a five year old boy. He will graduate from high school in 2025, assuming we still have high schools. With all the changes occurring in technology,  funding, and public education policy, who dares to predict what this five year old will see during his K-12 years. (Arguably, education’s slow pace of adaptation could mean we will see very little change!) Each year, Beloit College publishes a mindset list for college faculty about the incoming freshman class. What would be on the mindset  list of today’s five year old? — and what dare we predict may be his mindset in 2025? I venture some wild predictions, knowing full well that they are likely to be laughable long before this five year old is even out of elementary school. My musings are formatted:

2012 – mindset of today’s five year old : 2025 (or another year) – related prediction

Here we go:

2012 -all interfaces are touchable or talkable : 2025 – I just think it and it happens or explains why it cannot happen.

2012 -I swipe away what I don’t like : 2025 – I see, hear, or experience only what I DO like.

2012 – Maps talk : 2018 – There is no such thing as “map skills.” Direction and location are experienced, never represented in 2D.

2012 – Words talk when I touch them: 2025 – Text constantly changes/evolves as I “read” and adapts to my thoughts about what it says

2012 – My fingers change how things look : 2025 – My eyes and mind change how things look.

2012 – I “play a level” to move ahead : 2020 – My level is always a perfect challenge match for me, even at school.

2012 – I can repeat a level if I want to find all the magic coins and tricks : 2017 Levels change so when I return, I must learn something new.

2012 – Books and apps talk : 2015 –  I talk back, and it responds.

2012 – Mom and Dad are “connected” to something via gadgets all the time : 2017 – I am connected to ALL devices from my own device ALL the time — even at school.

2012 – I control the backseat movie, the app, the game :  2020 – I control the start and stop of school.

2012 – My preschool classmates “graduate” with me : 2025 – My “class” has constantly changing membership, and I belong to cohorts for dozens of places, times, interests, and ages.

To be continued…

Try this creative mind game:  What if everyone — past and present — had a hard wired Twitter account sharing their thoughts. Who would you “follow”?

My first impulse is to go for Leonardo DaVinci or Vincent Van Gogh or Claude Monet or  Shakespeare or David Macaulay of The Way Things Work fame. I simply want to listen to their thoughts because I so admire them all. But these folks had avenues to express their most distilled thinking. Perhaps there are more productive ways to use Twitter-brain-listening.

How about today’s politicians? Could we make more informed decisions about our votes if  their tweeting thoughts were unedited and unmediated? I find the idea a bit frightening, but maybe I could follow for a day or two to solidify my voting decisions.

I would love to use this imaginary tool to simply learn. I would crash Tweetdeck and never do much of anything else. Of course, I’d be tempted to DM back with my retorts and questions: D wshakespeare R U sure 2b or not 2b is the ?

I think the better curiosity might be to follow the Twitter mindstream emanating from that student with crossed arms, closed eyes, and/or no homework. These students are not really trying to “hide” their thoughts, just veil them behind a socially patterned signal system. Yesterday I discovered a secret “tweet” from a student who posted a finished infographic assignment on a class wiki a few months ago. This student had resisted the whole idea of infographics in my colleague’s class but by the end of the year had decided that making infographics was the coolest way to learn. His teacher and I roared aloud to discover that he had named one of his midyear assignment files “stupidinfographic.jpg”  That was his DM to his teacher. With the magic Twitterminder, we might not have missed it.

I can hear you cringing now, ” I would not want to hear all the thoughts that are flying in my classroom.” I wouldn’t either, but wouldn’t it be  a learning experience to set a Tweetdeck column to our class hashtag and hear the thoughts for just a little while? Talk about formative assessment!

Happy summer to many. Take this creative mindgame to the beach with you.

Listen to kids talk about a tough project after it is over. You will hear complaints about how long it took, how they wish they had started sooner, how they did not really understand “what the teacher wanted,” how they wish they had read the rubric more carefully before they started, how they wish they had done a little bit each day. Resist the urge to say “I told you so,” and you will hear pride seeping through: pride that they eventually figured it out, pride that they know how to approach such a project the next time, pride that they can even offer advice to other students who “get” you as a teacher next year.

This is the time of year to let the kids talk — and for us, as teachers, to listen. My colleague, Louise Maine, took time during the final days of school to have her students talk about the many infographics they made this year in her ninth grade bio classes (the classes who provide fodder for our upcoming ISTE presentation). This Voicethread illustrates one student infographic as the student comments resonate with deep knowledge. They reflect and think about thinking and learning. What more could we ask? [The comments all appear to be from one Voicethread member because they used the teacher’s log in]:

Shelley Wright recently suggested that we should “flip” Bloom’s Taxonomy to make Creating the first level we approach with our students. She explains that in a science class, “It makes their brain[s] try to fill in the gaps, and the more churn a brain experiences, the more likely it’s going to retain information.” Listen to Louise’s kids in the Voiethread, and you will hear them talk about exactly that experience.

I am not sure we need to have a single, flipped graphic analogy to represent Bloom’s as Shelley suggests. I advocate for something more like the layers in an image editing program such as Photoshop or Fireworks. The layers palette allows me to move Creating to the top or to put it behind Analyzing for a while as I edit my learning (or my students edit their own). Bloom’s levels/layers can be rearranged as needed. They can even be “hidden” temporarily in order to focus on one. But none of them ever really goes away. Click and they reappear, ready to drag up to the top or down into the background. As the students in this Voicethread reflect, they discuss nitty gritty vocabulary terms (Understanding). They talk about visual communication and tools (Creating). Another layer– of affective knowledge– is also present: time skills, work habits, etc.

If  we listen, we can hear the layers of learning. What a joy at the end of the school year! #eduwin!