Think Like a Teacher

As Thanksgiving approaches, I thought it appropriate to talk about the blessings of educational technology for which we should all be thankful.

I talked with several teachers this week about what concerns them most as they plan a technology-infused activity or project with their students. As part of an OK2Ask online professional development “snack session” TeachersFirst conducted, we asked teachers, both preservice and experienced, what challenges they encounter in these activities.

The sampling of attendees in these online sessions came was a non-scientific one, comprised of about 25 preservice folks: teacher-interns, undergrad and graduate level teacher certification candidates,  and about 25 current classroom teachers.  The results knocked me down with a wave of deja vu. Almost every teacher currently in the classroom emphasized concern over availability and reliability of the hardware and Internet connection needed to do the activity. The 25 newbies voiced similar concern along with general management and planning issues.

When I moved full time into a role as an instructional technology specialist/technology integrator about ten years ago, this was the cry I heard from teachers. Before that, when I was just another teacher trying to convince fellow teachers to try using the Internet, the cry was the same.  Has nothing changed? Even in schools blessed with better-than-average facilities, the demand is higher, so the barriers grow proportionately. Will we ever get past the wall of “I can’t get the (reliable) computer time I need”? Is this barrier real or perceived? Has this complaint become a habit, or do teachers still have trouble with the Internet going down mid-class? My experience was that if a lesson”failed” once, it took ten times the effort to convince that teacher to try again. And I can’t say that blame them. It is a nightmare to have thirty eighth graders off task while you trouble-shoot the wireless or make up new directions on the fly because the Internet is glitchy. And you end up planning two lessons: the ideal and the back-up.

So where are the blessings here? In the last ten years, the students have come to the rescue. We are blessed with kids who can help figure things out. We are blessed that the demand has grown to use technology in the schools. We are blessed that bandwidth has improved dramatically,  even in poorer schools, but so has demand.  With every blessing comes another barrier. When a Humpty Dumpty of a lesson idea falls down, we have better tools to rebuild him, but he will probably fall off his new and improved wall again and again. We can rebuild our bionic Humpty Dumpty over and over. New barrier, new fall, new blessing. Teaching really hasn’t changed. We just have faster-evolving blessings and barriers these days.

For the past 18 months or so, I have been a big fan of a certain web 2.0 tool that allowed students to create online books that could be viewed interactively and shared by URL. In a big email push this past week, they revised their user agreement. I read it carefuly, but even my skeptical eye did not catch the fact that they had removed the capability to see the book interactively unless you are actually logged into that “personal” account. No longer can teachers have students create books and share them electronically with family and friends at no cost. No longer can teachers create interactive ways for students to understand new content. No longer can all the teachers to whom we have “plugged” this tool use it with their classes in any functional way.

Some of the other changes related to content ownership are even more disturbing, but this one is the deal breaker right up front. If it is not free, TeachersFirst cannot review and recommend it. The sad thing is that I thought their business model MIGHT actually work: provide the tool for free, but ask parents and teachers to pay if they wanted a printed copy of the book. In an ordinary economy, it should have worked. Seeing your child’s (or grandchild’s) clever writing would be enough for parents to shell out the bucks. The school library or a teacher  might select the very best books created by a class for actual printing and permanent display on school shelves. Even in an era where reading has become more and more electronic and less tactile, people can be overcome by the urge to make a moment in a child’s life “permanent.” It should have worked.

But the economy strikes again. So we will be removing mention of this once-amazing tool for scaffolded or open writing experiences from over 80 reviews on TeachersFirst. Instead of recommending that students create online books, we will recommend another content-authoring tool…until that one dies, too. Let’s hope the economy improves before it sucks all creativity out of learning. There are enough forces at work trying to do just that. Economics should not be one of them.

Have you ever found pieces from two different jigsaw puzzles that actually fit together, one a blue piece of a geometric design and one a scrap of sky from an entirely different puzzle box, yet surprisingly an appropriate “match”?  Two posts from separate feeds in my Google Reader today interlock for me into a new idea. One was from the New York Times, a post about today’s young parents and the need for them to turn off their cell phones, iPods,  and Blackberries and just talk to the stroller set. Nothing in that post was new to me, but it got me thinking about thinking out loud and its importance for learning. The other post was elementary teacher Brian Crosby’s post about allowing students time to process what they have done and learned, even (especially?) when the learning is project-based. Whether toddlers, elementary kids, or even adults,  we need time to think out loud about what we have done. Those around us understand us better and learn from us when we do. Young ones grasp our language to build their own language of understanding. Peers and elders appreciate what we have done when we can stop and explain it.We find our own meaning better when we do it out loud.

But the world does not like to grant time for thinking aloud. Brian Crosby bemoans the fact that  end-of-day recap time has slipped away in his classroom. Most of us who take the world with us via iPhone or Blackberry use that once-precious think-back time to check email now.

Maybe we need an app for that. I’d like a “thinking aloud allowed” app that lets me record my thoughts aloud at the same time that it blocks email with autoreplies telling others that this is my time for thinking, so go away.  The same app would turn OFF young parents’ iPhones, etc. until they had conversed about red stop signs, sidewalk cracks, and at least twenty-five other topics with their stroller-bound munchkins. How could the app help Brian’s students? Maybe it could ask them to record their reflections, prompting and saving their comments so they could store them up like Bandaid box treasures (do you remember metal Band-Aid boxes and their treasure-holding capacity?).

No one would make money on this app, but they would make learners and thinkers. Thinking aloud allowed. There’s an app for that.

For those of us accustomed to being told when to talk, walk, eat, and even go to the bathroom (in 41 minute increments with 3 minutes between), the shift in culture between our familiar schoolworld and the broader e-world is as difficult as right-brain/left brain shift. Forget the digital native/immigrant thing. All of us are living a tectonic shift in time/space reality.  This may sound like an easy excuse for the life-by-the-bell set to claim disability, but envisioning a lack of time definitions and physical locations is hard on the brain. We can accept them when we see and experience them, but moving counterclickwise to IMAGINING the potential experience of tools such as Skype and Twitter is much harder when we have spent most of our daylight memory since age 5 in school-scheduled time (a time zone of its own, for sure!).

This post is an informal exercise to help your brain, much like drawing with your non-dominant hand or covering one eye to see how it changes your vision. I start by giving a few thoughts on the shifts in time and space envisionable via just two vehicles: Skype and Twitter. As you read, close your eyes and picture each of them occurring.  See the faces, hear the voices and words. Then, after experiencing a few,  add your own visions in a comment on this post.

For those who find this easy, add as many as you can. For others, read more and add only a few. The goal is to help your brain shift back and forth in time and space enough that it MIGHT even start to do so on its own. All of a sudden one day, you and your class might spontaneously shift without thinking about it in advance. And this shift will cause neither earthquake nor cerebral hemorrhage. You might end up late to your next class, but you won’t even notice.

What Skype is Really For:

a two year old trying to make sentences when he sees his deployed daddy during brief shore leave

an octogenarian in Vermont telling stories to a grandson in Dubai- landline to Skype connection

a former student co-presenting at a conference with a former teacher - both colleagues far from home, one in person, one not

a humor break for a grieving parent from their child’s long-long  friend

Tehran to CNN eyewitness reports

witnessing a lab experiment

sharing the first picture of the baby on ultrasound

What Twitter is Really For:

hashtagged #skool2day mentions of what is new in “morning meeting” in classrooms (where?)- popping up on multiple Tweetdecks (where?)

quotes of the day from people you know only as @thinkr or @ideaman

cries for help with a software program or scary error message

a quick idea for a substitute from someone she does not know

debunking…anything

telling disembodied anybodies about the cool idea you just read

singing a thought in 140 characters

playing “telephone” in the modern day (if U R old enuf 2 know what telephone game was)

telling people you are from Alaska when you really live in Mississippi

deciding who you trust

Water skiers know that the key to getting up on the water is making sure you do not have slack on the rope that pulls you. At least that’s what seems to work. I am no water skier, but I watch them every day this time of year. Once you allow the rope to slacken, you fall, causing uncomfortable things to happen with your bathing suit, skis, and the hard surface of the water. But some skiers have mastered a graceful way to let go of the rope, gliding gently down into the water in a planned drop-off. They decide to take some time off the rope entirely, perhaps hopping back in the boat, but better prepared to “get up” easily the next time without bruises and sore places from a slack-rope fall.

The problem with technology’s speed is that teachers (and indeed MOST of us), do not have a chance to do a graceful drop-off. We dare not risk slack. If we don’t hang on to that rope and maintain some kind of form, we suffer an unpredictable tumble. And  the technology boat seems to have a bottomless gas tank and possessed driver.

There are times when I am flying behind the technology boat, carefully navigating new wakes (like a new computer 24 hours before a major meeting!) when I just want to let go, ease back down into the waves and float a bit. I believe all of us need permission to let go of the rope. The consequence may be that we do not progress as quickly to working on a single ski or a more advanced challenge, but it is worth it. We need to recognize that none of us is going to ever master all the new waves of technology, and we deserve some grace in our decisions. It is OK to decide not to ski into that wake, turn around that cove, or face that wind. There will be another soon. Even though the technology boat continues on its course, the waves in the water dissipate. So it is OK to ignore some of them. What is important is that my decision is not to risk slack on a rope I have chosen to grasp. My rope-release must be consciously done to avoid a painful smackdown.

Today’s waves I do not choose to navigate on the rope: my Google Reader’s 3000+ items since before NECC (and before computer crash). I think a graceful “Mark all as read” is in order.

Bobbing here in the water feels great.

This is the third day of NECC, and I haven’t even been to my blog. This year the conference has been a Tweetfest…people discovering the power of sitting in sessions “tweeting” out commentary, feedback, arguments, links, and tweetlogs of the session proceedings to other in the room, elsewhere, and nowhere. I am waiting for another session to start as I begin this post, and I have joined the #necc09 tweeters off and on, therefore have not “blogged” more about the sessions.

And those of you not here ask, “who cares?” I tell you about this as another example of the swimmers’ obligation.

My BreakNECC tweeting has been another opportunity for the swimmers to give swimming lessons to others. A novice backchanneler myself, I helped three people install and configure Tweetdeck (”Here, just hold onto the side and kick…get a feel for the water.”). I watched the tweets going by and adjusted my technique—watching those swimmers more expert than I. Will I stay in this pool? I’m not sure, but I certainly am glad I jumped in and found the feel of the water. I just tweeted out a request for a recommendation of a good plug in for Wordpress MU (the program that makes this blog run), so I can share mytweets automatically in the sidebar. Stay tuned for the results. If you want swimming lessons, I can probably get you to Red Cross Beginner Tweeter level. I’ll have to find out if there is a patch for that. (The Red Cross used to be big on patches, but I date myself here).

Here we are in DC! EdubloggerCon has grown from about 45 people in Atlanta to over 200 here. The topics for discussion range from web 2.0 tools (and these are THE adopters who know the doodads!) to school reform…the most exciting part is that these are educators who takes the time, pay the extra night in the hotel, and bring together serious passion and deep concern for the future of kids and the adults they will become. There is not a person in the room (or hallway, sitting on the floor) who came here to maintain what is. They are all interested in what can be, will be, and should be. There are some who are “consultants” or educators morphed into other roles, but all are here talking about the “what if” and the “why not.”

That is what makes EBC different. I am sitting in a session about the K12 online conference, an “unconference” that has happened for a couple of years and is being planned IN THIS ROOM for later 2009. How do we get teachers to pay attention? How do we avoid overwhelming people who have never heard of it?

What I wonder:

1. How do we help teachers prioritize which things they MUST know, since there is so much to learn, with more every day. How do we talk about tools entirely in the context of their application and USE for learning? I am listening to people make suggestions for “packaging” new ideas and technology USES in a context that is meaningful and personal to a teacher’s situation.
2. How much bigger will the gap between Group Know: those who dedicate significant time to personal prof dev and are NOT afraid to appear as a learner in from of their student,  and Group O (for overwhelmed): those who are concentrating on day to day survival in an environment with little professional support, unreasonable bureaucratic demands, and personal lives that are less than “perfect”?? I see the gap growing and growing. The marvelous people who hang at EBC are often those who spend ALL their time on this stuff–and GREAT stuff! They have also  continuously paid attention to new developments in both technology and in learning. Group O is like someone who has had their TV off for six months or suffered a traumatic brain injury. They are not just behind on today’s news or weather forecast. They may not even know who the president is…
3. Do the people who make it to NECC and EBC have more time in their day/week to continue exploring or do they just skip sleep?
4. I wonder whether the Facebook idea would help… Teacher apps: Which teacher is more like you? What is your edtech IQ? Take the quiz now… Send an edtech Bravo to your favorite teacher.
5. Can we embed ongoing learning into everyone’s life? What’s the code?

Just a few thoughts (unedited and without my usual metaphors) as I eavesdrop on session 3 of EBC09 and reflect back on the day so far…

Few of us remember the first time we jumped into water over our heads.

I do not recall figuring out that I could not swim. I do not remember discovering the power of  water. I try to imagine how it felt.  I could not get my feet to touch the bottom at the same time as I opened my mouth to gasp above the surface, and I had no idea what to do about it.  But some kind parent or bigger person reached under my armpits and supported me, laughing and congratulating me for a great jump. He or she likely placed my hands on the pitted concrete of the pool’s edge and told me to “kick big kicks and blow big bubbles.” Trusting, I must have done so, because eventually I learned to swim.

Swim coaches describe a knack their best swimmers have to “feel the water.” Watch the good ones: the feel, the ease, the awareness. Witness their flips, their streamlines as they push off walls, the faces they make to keep water out of their noses during those quick flipturns.

Water is not a natural place for human beings, but we can gain a feel for it. Some gain it faster that others, but even the nervous child who falls in by mistake will learn to move about using a comfortable stroke to get where he wants to go, given the right encouragement and support.The swimmers among us owe our time and support to those less comfortable so everyone can find a “feel” for the water. Stop and try to recall the panic you felt at falling in. Remember watching your child or a neighbor who genuinely believed that he/she would NEVER be able to move through water. Think about those you know (maybe it’s you) who swim only with their faces OUT of the water, safe and dry. Their head-out style wastes energy,  but it is what they know. They can change it, but each one’s needs will be different and each will require encouragement, time, and a chance to “feel” the water.

As we go to NECC, edtech-swimmers all, we should remember the swimmers’ obligation to share the feel of the water and find ways to make it part of our “swim practice.”

I talked this morning with a representative from a university where I earned a graduate degree, and he asked me to describe my dream scenario for an event I would like to see happen on their campus, something that would follow my passion. Always willing to brainstorm and dream on a moment’s notice, I spun a scenario on the spot, and I continue to allow the idea to incubate. So here is how it looks so far (incubation time: 2 hours, ten minutes). Feel free to add to the dream. Of course, this might someday become a reality, so please don’t rip off my ideas without at least talking to me first. Think of this as Creative Commons with attribution and limited distribution for ideas (I know…you can’t copyright an idea, anyway…).

When/where: one week, summer — sometime (indefinite year), on the university campus but simultaneously via virtual experience from anywhere on the web

Who: a combination of classroom teachers (K-12), teachers-to-be, articulate high school and middle school kids, maybe some kids involved in on-campus summer programs for K-12 kids, people from TeachersFirst, people (ANY level) who infuse technology well in their teaching and learning, anyone who wants to join in online

What: A replicable “Infusion Project.” Modeled loosely after the National Writer’s Project, teachers come to learn together. The special feature of this project: they collaborate and learn alongside kids who could be their students, other teachers, and quasi-experts: people who are excited, experienced, articulate, and supportive about effective use of technology as a tool for learning. In a non-threatening environment, teachers can learn about tools and learning from students who are comfortable with the tools and eager to use them. The experienced “experts” can share and support other teachers who are just feeling out new ways to teach (and learn). In small groups of mixed expertise, the project can use good theory and practical knowledge and experience to let new ideas explode into the curriculum of local teachers and those at a distance. Groups would include: a K-12 student (or two), a teacher who wants to learn, an “expert” (teacher who has had some success), a teacher-to-be,  and one or more other teachers who join in virtually. That’s as far as I have gotten, but I am thinking about how we could structure the tasks and exchanges so the whole  experienced in each group is greater than the parts and how the same experience could be replicated all over the world.

How: I need to think more about this part… money, stakeholders, politics, all that fun stuff.

Why: Here is a start on a bulleted stream-of consciousness (is that an oxymoron or what?) of reasons so far…

• Kids are comfortable with the tools but can benefit from hearing how teachers make decisions about teaching….and they can contribute their “side” of these decisions.
• Putting different points of view on ways to learn together can force all to talk about the “why” as well as the “how”
• Teachers uncomfortable with “looking stupid” might be willing to learn from students who are not in their own classes
• Including people from other locations allows the spread of ideas and injectsideas outside the local experience
• Creating a model that blends F2F and virtual collaboration will let teachers experience it wihtout being forced to plan it themselves

and more…

But I need to get back to today’s Tasks. I will let this one incubate a bit more (total incubation time now a little over three hours). Feel free to add to the dream.

This is a story through a teacher’s eyes. This teacher was a veteran of many years and many trends over more than three decades. She was the kind of teacher who embraced each new trend as an opportunity and loved trying new things. She had discovered computers and the Internet early on and had become a techno-evangelist among teachers. More recently she had crossed over to join The Suits, the people who meet in the principal’s office wearing visitor badges, catching only glimpses of “Evan” or “Jamal” being hushed and scurried along at the end of the line and into the classroom door across from the office by a woman in a colorful sweater and “teacher shoes.” She had left the trenches to travel as an “expert.” But she savored the quick glimpses she could steal on her way into the principal’s office meetings.

On this particular day she visited two schools: one an elementary school, and one an elementary school building turned into district offices. The schools were in neighboring districts. There the similarities end.

As the kindergarten line skidded into the room across the hall from school office #1, our teacher signed herself in and printed a visitor badge from a laptop just inside the office, then settled into a wooden fifth-grader-sized chair around a table in the principal’s cluttered office. The principal pushed aside a few papers and a handmade book about a principal superhero, neatly handwritten on purple construction paper.

The small group talked about the upcoming Earth Day and a chance to use a new technology from a garden lab a mile from the school so students could stream video directly to the Web and tell about their applications of environmental science in the garden. The laptops and webcams would share the event with parents, other classrooms, and anyone who wanted to watch on the Web. When our teacher asked about any district policies that might limit streaming video, student-created content on the web, or use of web-based tools that require memberships and profiles, the principal smiled knowingly and suggested that he could get a parent release for the students involved and take care of it. Our teacher saw the knowing look as he went on to tell how he deployed new technologies among his teachers by modeling them in a staff meeting and then “letting them play for a while to see what ideas they come up with for their curriculum.”

The meeting ended and emails exchanged, our teacher signed herself and the others out and brushed past the hand-made tiles of the hallway mosaic and out into the sunshine.

Later in the day and 10 miles away, the group stopped in a parking lot and rang the doorbell as the desk buzzed them into school #2, the former elementary school. They signed in on the sheet and clipped their visitor badges into their suit lapels as they were ushered through aisles of horizontal files and name plates, finally arriving at a windowless conference room. Everyone exchanged business cards across the empty laminate table and began the conversation about that same new technology. The Gatekeepers of the Network pronounced the need for streaming video to be unproven and, yes—theoretically possible, but only available if someone could show that it was needed. The Gatekeepers declared that even wifi had not been installed in their schools because no one had shown that it was needed. But perhaps this technology could be used to track the school busses or help with emergency evacuation plans. The Gatekeepers had a Robust and Secure Network and –by the way—far better tax support than their neighboring district whom they declared to be “broke.”

On the way out, walking in the single file line of Suits back toward the security entrance, our teacher composed this blog post in her head and cried as invisibly as the ghosts of children in this former school building.