Think Like a Teacher

As the new school year begins, teachers attending OK2Ask® sessions are noticeably more stressed and overwhelmed. During these sessions, we share many, many resources and teaching ideas. We pack the sessions with choices: so many tools, so many interactives, so many strategies for organizing lessons that put technology tools to work for learners. Those of us who prepare and teach these sessions are steeped in the stuff. We can name (or at least retrieve) dozens of creative tools and strategies for any learning need : tools to make multimedia presentations, tools to comment and interact with peers, tools to learn about vocabulary and word choice, ways to improve digital citizenship. Honestly, even we are overwhelmed as we narrow down our offerings to fit 75 or 90 minute OK2Ask sessions with eager teachers from all over the world. Practically speaking, none of us can do it all. It is time to give yourself permission to limit your attention to a chosen few.

No, I don’t mean a few students or a few curriculum concepts. I mean give yourself permission to master a chosen few new tools and lesson strategies. Choose one– and only one –of each:

tool for collaborative writing

tool for graphic organizers

tool for sharing images and adding text to images

tool for “collecting” things like web links, pieces of text, images, drawings

tool for creating or clipping video

Is this enough? A handful is plenty. If you are in a BYOD school, you might want to find DATs (device agnostic tools) to do each of these so every kid can use the same tool and collaborate across devices. Or you can assign your students to find and learn one of each type that they can use on their own device. If you are using school machines and network, be sure your chosen few all work inside your web filter.

Then what? Make your choices meaningful by focusing on the learning instead of the tool. Challenge yourself to complete a chosen few “bingo” board that has five tools by five learning strategies that students will do (the possibilities are endless — I just chose 5):

Collaborate to create a group product

Prioritize/choose and justify choices

Practice and teach a skill

Publish, then respond to others’ reactions

Discover new information and organize it in an intentional, understandable way

Make a bingo board for yourself and keep it handy on your desk (or computer desktop). Or use this freebie I am sharing on Google Docs. (Open it and SAVE A COPY for yourself so you can edit.) As you plan an activity this year where students use one of your chosen few tools in one of the learning strategies, put a brief description of the activity  and date in the square. Aim for Blackout Bingo by spring! Think of it as your personal professional development plan. Happy New Year!

Our classrooms face the same engagement challenges that the Wall Street Journal describes at historic sites across the U.S. More and more, consumers enter school doors with digital devices glued in their hands or tethered to their brains. BYOD/BYOT (Bring your own device/technology) is here. Even if the devices are NOT officially allowed, they are here, hidden under desks or behind books.

Historic sites have responded more quickly than most schools. You can play a texting game in Williamsburg, scan QR codes to learn more at almost every museum these days, or load an app to let you interact while physically standing at historic sites. Curators and education staff worry about the invasive juxtaposition of technology in a Shaker barn and the constant need to update their apps to avoid appearing “outdated.” Teachers face the same concerns managing new technologies. If they believe they must “stay ahead.” they are doomed to fail. We will never “stay ahead” of  what enters the school in students’ pockets.

Historic sites must woo consumers to perpetuate their income stream. They face a digital challenge: “How do we continue to appeal to consumers armed with — and distracted by– devices? What activities and apps can we make that will engage them via those devices?” But schools are more or less guaranteed  our “consumers” for longer periods of time. We therefore have a chance to flip the digital challenge around, asking ourselves, “How can we make students active participants in making the ‘school’ experience one where we not only participate, but create,  leaving a legacy for future learners?” Historic sites have little chance for participant legacy beyond good reviews on TripAdvisor. The difference between a historic site “visitor” and our “learners” is the legacy our learners can leave for those to come.

As I read about the digital experiences at Williamsburg, I wonder if we could gradually make school a digital immersion. Imagine a classroom filled with QR codes — that the teacher does not have to make. The learners make them. Imagine texting games or QR treasure hunts that kids embed in the physical space of a classroom.  Image simple apps, games,  and interactive maps created by kids. As current technologies age, they could be replaced by later student projects. Instead of “turning in” student projects for a grade, we could “turn on” student projects for future audiences of learners. In many classrooms, teachers already have students creating digital projects. The missing step is making them part of a perpetual learning place called school.  Imagine how much harder kids would work for such a vast audience. It would be interesting to find out whether a seventh grader would continue to monitor responses that come in to his fifth grade game about Explorers or would monitor the number of times her QR Treasure hunt was accessed. I am not sure, but I’d sure love to find out. If I were in charge of a physical learning space today, I’d be one of the learners alongside my students, plastering it with digital experiences for any learning consumer who walks in.

David Brooks recent column, “Why They Fought,” describes a bygone era of bloodborn patriotism and passion for a cause, a time when men (and women) faced unthinkable circumstances at Gettysburg, firm in “a belief that they were born in a state of indebtedness to an ongoing project” [the noble Union called the United States]. It is certainly hard for us to imagine this pervasive sense of mission in a day when YouTube talking puppy videos garner more attention than hard news.

We rarely witness such shared sense of mission among today’s citizens. I do, however, witness a safer but parallel passion among educators whose ongoing project is re-visioning education. These teachers converse, blog, and adamantly promote reframing education into 24/7, global, student-centered learning enabled by today’s technologies. I do not see any teachers willing to die for the cause (thank goodness), but I do hear more and more articulate voices joining in to explain the vision, punctuated with viable examples and thoughtful questions. They converse and retweet in #edchat on Twitter. They convene at EdubloggerCon, Hackeducation, EduCon, or the many unconference venues where they can find like souls.  They host discussions like Deeper Thinking w/ EdTech: Do we know it when we see it?  They inhabit endless blogs and social networks. They proffer articulate spokespeople whose posts and interviews occasionally find their way into mainstream media (whatever that means). Some of these spokespeople build second careers offering keynotes and inspirational talks to paying school districts. Some are passionate enough to stand alone offering TED Talks. They can be heard in nearly every session at ISTE, and certainly in the Blogger’s Cafe. But most of them (us) are simply teachers who enter the fray every day, willing to continue the passionate construction of true learning communities where our students can find their voices and become self-directed, motivated learners for life.  Though the unthinkable circumstances of our “battlefield” do not  include anything like Gettysburg, the circumstances of teaching grind and disable many.

Thinking Teachers simply don’t give up. They/we have a sense of  “indebtedness to an ongoing project,” the metamorphosis of education from an industrial era model to an information era model of thinking, questioning, and learning anywhere, any time — for life. Given the pace of change in public policy and in education’s institutions, this sounds like a pipedream. But I don’t hear anyone giving up. If you have not heard the voices and you care about the future of education, you owe it to yourself to listen more carefully. Start at #edchat and build your network to learn about this ongoing project. What history will say in 150 years, who knows.

Happy Independence Day.

I am back from ISTE 2013, the annual conference for the International Society for Technology in Education. It was enormous, collaborative, and agile. My colleagues and I think of ISTE as the preview of what will become commonplace in 2-3 years. Imagine about 20,000 people, all passionate about learning and using educational technology to make learning both possible and powerful. Imagine 20,000 people, each with at least one device to take notes, tweet, take pictures, vote, save bookmarks, post to Facebook, text, question, and generally share. 

Every line you stand in at ISTE  is a collaborative opportunity, even the inevitable lines in the women’s restrooms. Sadly, the ubiquitous devices tempted some attendees to share via device, ignoring actual humans close by, but that was their loss.

My observations during ISTE bring our own device sessions reinforce my thoughts about my own iPad and iPhone.  Mobile devices force us to be connoisseurs of DITs and DATs.

DIT: do it tool

DAT: device agnostic tool

Whether using school-owned or “bring your own” devices, teachers and students need Do It Tools for each task we face.  It might be an app or a web tool, but the DIT must match the demands of the task: I need to draw and add text labels. I need to annotate an image. I need to collect poll results via smartphone. I need to take notes and be able to access them from my laptop, my iPad, and my phone. I need to track a twitter hash tag. We need to collect urls and citations along with them. Some DITs simply solve the problem of getting “stuff” from one device to another or sharing “stuff” among multiple people. Startup DITs appear daily and die off nearly as quickly.

My experience tells me that the app version of a DIT is often a willing compromise to gain mobility at some loss of ability. Over and over at ISTE I hear, “The app version does this, but the web version does these other things as well.” Using a mobile app reminds me of shopping at Walmart. I enter Walmart looking for something to accomplish a certain task or meet a certain need, and I end up purchasing something that meets about 80% of the need. Mobile DITs therefore must be DATs to ameliorate the Walmart effect.

Device agnostic tools (DATs) allow us to access the work begun on a phone and continued it on an iPad or a laptop. A DAT lets us share the file with an Android user or reopen it in a laptop to finalize the task, often using enhanced or quicker tools. The web version is mostly likely the most able while being the least mobile.

At ISTE connected educators vocally share solutions to the DIT and DAT challenges that emerge during BYOD sessions. ISTE attendees are collaborative problem solvers. As our world becomes a full time BYOD environment across work, school and personal life, all of us must be fluent finding DITs and DATs to simply live and certainly to learn. Once again, ISTE is the preview of the world to come, a world of DITs and DATs.

Everybody loves a summer beach book. We all need time to sit, draw with our toes in the sand,  and enjoy a paperback (or ebook) with an engaging plot, transparent characters, and a marketable title. We need to linger and muse.

My role as a Thinking Teacher splashes hundreds of web resources and apps onto my various screens. At this time of year, I am drawn to those resources that are the technology equivalent of a “beach book,”  those that may have valuable learning potential but — above all — are engaging to me personally. They make me want to linger and muse. So I share a few of my favs from TeachersFirst’s recent Featured Sites.

Question Generator  is a powerful tool for teaching at higher levels of thinking. It can be the technology equivalent of a visiting three year old grandson. Imagine the questions you can make — and debate. We could even make this an evening beach party game! Close your eyes and point to a word in your beach book, then spin the question generator to turn it into a question. I enjoy musing about the many ways to spin this thinking game.

The Literacy Shed brings the movies into learning, using the power of visual media oh so intentionally. I love the way the ideas are sorted into “sheds.” I have a feeling I will be building “sheds” in my head as I watch movies from now on. I want to just hang out and explore the sheds.

OhLife is the antithesis of this blog. You are reading where I “blog” professionally, playing my professional role and trying not roam outside that role or reveal too much “personal stuff.”  Oh Life is a like blog BFF. It asks you about your day and keeps the answers to itself. In today’s post-and-tweet world, that’s as refreshing as a beach book, for sure!

Quotesome is a shell collection of quotes for beach days. I love to collect quotes. I have always used colorful, electronic sticky notes to collect quotes as I come upon them. Quotesome lets you do that in their online space.  I can now take them  home in my Quotesome shell-bucket, rinse them off, and arrange them into any containers I wish.

I’ll share a few more beach books as the summer goes on. For now, I wish everyone a great start to summer as I head off to ISTE 2013 (#iste13). Hope to see you there.

Recently I have heard the same message from teachers in meetings, TeachersFirst user surveys, and OK2Ask® sessions: “I would love to do more technology-infused lessons with my students, but  the computers/devices in our building are completely booked doing test practice, online testing,  and remediation software. They simply are not available for anything else.” [I can hear your groaning now.] I wish I could say these are isolated incidents, but, alas, they are not.

Trying to be dispassionate and analytical about this for a moment, why would this be the case?

• Schedule drives school. We would like to think that individual needs drive instruction, but any principal will tell you that the schedule drives everything. Scheduling technology access is part of that same engine.
• Schools pay a lot for that software to help bring kids up to grade level. They therefore make using it a priority.
• Schools pay dearly if their students are NOT up to grade level, and these packages can “fix” them, right?
• High quality, sophisticated software packages do a good job of observing student response patterns, collecting data about weaknesses, and presenting material aimed at the individual student’s needs. That’s what data-driven software is all about, right?
• Some folks (administrators?) simply have never seen technology used any way other than drill and practice.

All these reasons are understandable, even if regretable. The problem is that those who allow such monopoly on technology access do not realize the high price they and their students are paying.  I wonder: what is the cost in lost growth for students unable to partake of student-directed learning projects, unable to generate digital products to build and demonstrate deep understanding, unable to interact with peers from other times/locations to learn collaboratively, and unable to build “21st century skills” that require access to digital tools?

I have no idea how this “study” could be done, but I would love to do a bang for the buck comparison:

On the one hand, create a fancy formula that combines:

• Costs to the school for remediation/ test prep/testing software
• Gains in student achievement from said software
• Financial benefit (or loss prevention) to the school from this increased student achievement

On the other hand, generate a similar formula combining:

• Cost to the school for ongoing edtech coaching PD (peer to peer, please) so teachers can generate meaningful, student-directed, challenging learning experiences—knowing students will have access to the technology they need
• Costs to highly able or motivated students (and the community outside the school) for limiting student access to go above and beyond, to innovate and explore, to blast past the ceiling of standardized tests
• Cost to the school for network improvements and initiatives allowing student BYOD (bring your own device) where students may have them
• Financial benefit (or loss prevention) to the school from resulting increased student achievement in REAL terms (may include testing as ONE of several measures)

This last is the tough one. If any of us had the  dollars and cents formula to prove what our gut tells us is right, I would not be hearing the teacher complaints about lack of access. I keep hoping to be hit in the back of the head with a pendulum that takes education funding (and therefore priorities and schedule “engines”) back to seeing learning as something we must build, observe, and measure in many, many ways, each valued ($) and respected. But I don’t hear anybody yelling “DUCK!” yet.

There is another kind of digital divide: when kids go from a “connected” learning environment back to a traditional classroom. Yesterday I visited a sixth grade classroom filled with students about to make an uncertain (and possibly sad) transition. Their current class is connected. They know the experience of collaborating and learning with students from schools across the country. For the past year, they have lived their roles in MySciLife (more info here).  They know how to approach a question,  look for information both digitally and in print, learn, then reshape what they have learned into a creative and personal connection. They talk about the challenge of taking a set of knowledge and an unlikely prompt that forces them to look at things from within a different role: as a force of nature, an obscure animal, or a weather phenomenon. They talk about how these creative challenges, nestled into an online community, have helped them learn from what other students have said and by asking about or commenting on others’ ideas. They flow smoothly from online tool to tool with the help of self-taught student “experts” within their class or by “teching it out” on their own. They stop and think about which tool best suits the task. These kids are connected at so many levels.

One of the students began talking about next year (a favorite topic among kids about to graduate into a new building). He was talking about what he would do in MySciLife next year. I did not have the heart to tell him that he won’t be in MySciLife next year. Why? First, because MySciLife is a limited pilot for now. More disturbingly, who knows whether he will have a science teacher who is as comfortable with breaking out of the usual teaching patterns and putting students in charge of their learning (helped by technology, of course).  Teachers operate at such widely varying  levels of technology comfort and availability that — even within the same district — a student may move back and forth from connected to disconnected and back again during the same school day or from year to year. The digital faultlines could cause a learning earthquake for anyone.

I wonder how long it will be before kids can expect a minimal level of “connectednesss” no matter where they are learning. I wonder how long it will take the slowly moving plates to stop dangerously rubbing against each other and settle to support learning without the divides. Kids are resilient and adjust to many teaching and learning approaches, but we owe them greater consistency. Think about the kids who suffer when we pull the plug. Then ask yourself how you can help a tech-timid colleague.

1993: a year that none of today’s K-12 or college students can remember. No one texted or tweeted,  only some people used email, AOL was brand new, and nobody had ever “googled” anything. Nothing but the flu went viral. Friends were just that. We got bank statements and bills in the mail (yes, paper), and news came from the TV, radio, newspaper, or playground. Bill and Monica hadn’t had an Oval Office encounter yet, and the Twin Towers still towered. Many of us used computers and tried to use the Internet, but there was really nothing there.

At school, we had shifted from hand writing to typing IEPs on Apple IIe  keyboards and saving them on 5 1/4 inch floppies. The library was still the magic place to find out, and my students and I were pleased to find a single source that answered our question. My  interlibrary loan article requests for grad school research came back as Xerox copies from bound, printed periodicals via U.S. mail. I considered myself lucky not to have to pay for articles I needed for my research.

Yesterday was the official 20th birthday of the world wide web. The people at CERN — who originated this re-vision of what the then-obscure Internet could be  — posted their original page again to remind us of just how far we have come. What began as a way for researchers to share files and data had the most marvelous unintended consequences: Learning became both free and a matter of personal responsibility.

Twenty years later, we have so many sources we must sort them for value and reliability. We can find out from anywhere. We can waste more time than mankind ever knew we had, and every year a billionaire-creating innovation rides into our lives thanks to the www. Wwwe are bewwwwilderingly dependent upon it and occasionally wwwistful for the days wwwhen wwwe wwwere free of it.

It is impossible to explain what life was like before the www. Only by talking about the cultural details of life before www can we help our students understand. Is it important for them to knowww? Yes, because learning is free and a matter of personal responsibility. They need to know the difference between having to ask for a chance to learn and having the tools available to anyone. They need to know why the www made it important to find out instead of waiting to be told. In a broader cultural/historical context, they need to know how a seemingly minor innovation can, in just a few years, change so much. They need to ask questions about impact and change.

If you have any time remaining in your end-of-year plans, give a small assignment. It can fit in any subject. Ask your students to interview an adult who was “grown up” by 1993. If you teach science, have students ask about how people learned science before the www. If you teach history, ask about how people learned history or tracked current events. If you teach English, ask how people found books to read or places to share their writing. Most importantly, have them ask when their “adult” realized that the web was changing things.  Then have them share their findings on the web: blog, tweet, Faceboook post, whatever.  Back in class, make sure they read what their classmates found out — and ask them wwwhy it matters. By borrowing twenty years of perspective, maybe they will realize that learning is free and a matter of personal responsibility.

This is the  second in a series of reflections as TeachersFirst celebrates its fifteen birthday this month.

TeachersFirst’s non-profit parent company, The Source for Learning, has as its mission:

… to create and deliver high-quality, technology-based content and services that enhance learning for all children, and to empower teachers, child care providers, and parents to support that learning. An important part of the mission is to increase access to our services for underserved children and adults.

Just as all teachers have days when we question our effectiveness, we at TeachersFirst have worrisome days about accomplishing our mission. What haunts me is not whether TeachersFirat empowers teachers.  Thank goodness for the many, many teachers who tell their stories, assuring us that we do have an impact. The monthly traffic and Twitter followers add stats to support the teacher anecdotes. What specifically haunts me is whether TeachersFirst can:

increase access to our services for underserved children and adults

The frustration? If teachers do not have reliable technology, readily available and supported by an administration that understands how technology empowers learning, how can the they access TeachersFirst  — or any other web-based tool for teaching and learning? Each time circumstances build a barrier, whether it is limiting teacher decision making about lessons or having unreliable Internet connections (or computers), teachers lose access. For every real barrier that exists, downtrodden or “underserved” teachers perceive the barrier as four times hugher. Each time we hit our heads against another wall, we decide to delay trying again. Barriers breed excuses.

The barrier I hear about over and over is that students lack access to Internet-connected devices both in and out of school. While some schools have well-planned BYOD/BYOT programs where students can bring tablets or laptops to class, many other schools lack the network capacity or their students lack the financial means to own a device. The gap between technology haves and have-nots gets bigger and bigger. Underserved means unsupported and disconnected.

Gutsy teachers keep on trying, even after they hit repeated barriers. They beg, borrow, or grab computer time for their students anywhere they can. They come in early, skip lunch, or rotate kids through one available machine. Meanwhile, other schools have iPad carts and 1:1 programs.

My birthday wish for TeachersFirst is a wish for all schools: 

increase access to TECHNOLOGY for underserved children and adults.

If I blow out the candles, will it come true?

This is the first in a series of editor reflections during April, 15th birthday month for TeachersFirst.

As a technology “coach” who works with my fellow teachers– albeit at a distance– I struggle with how to encourage, evangelize, and develop a healthy mutual trust while also nudging myself and my colleagues forward to better teaching decisions. Fifteen years ago this month, when TeachersFirst first went online as a service to help teachers understand what the Internet could do and how to use it to inform and support teaching and learning, the goals were pretty easy: help teachers find the best of the web and understand some basic ways to use these resources. Convincing teachers may not have always been easy in the first couple of years, but obviously this Internet thing has stuck. (Duh moment as of the turn of the millennium,  for all but the most hesitant teachers). Long ago, TeschersFirst’s mission moved far beyond a simple Web 101.

As coaches, we are obligated to ask the tough questions, the ones that require both bluntness and tactful support. I share some of them here:

Coach to teacher-colleague (or teacher to self or COACH to self):

Why are you using this (technology-based) teaching strategy?

Are you simply replicating an old way of  teaching, done with clicks instead of pencils? (Is it an effective way, or just a familiar one?)

If you are replacing drill sheets with drill and kill practice web sites, is it any better? (Do you and our students get data, tracking, instant feedback, etc)?

Do you ever go beyond drill and practice?

 Are you treating technology as simply a way to ENGAGE students… and nothing further? What then?

 How have you changed the way you use technology as a tool for learning in your classes this year (or in the last five years)?

 Which did you think about first: the big ideas and goals for your lessons or the technology you wanted to use?

 When is “fun” not just fun? When does it have meaning?

 Are you checking the box: Technology used this week? Check.

How often do you ask about a lesson strategy: Is there a way that is quicker, more flexible, a better differentiator? Does it happen to use technology?

These are just a few of  the sticky starters for the conversation between teacher and self, teacher and coach, or coach and self. A little warmth can soften the stickiness of the conversation and possibly even make it flow more smoothly. Ask these questions with a cup of coffee, the best accompaniment for something sticky, and see where the conversation goes. The nice thing for coaches is that we don’t have to judge our teaching peers. We help you judge (and change) yourself. TeachersFirst will continue to subtly ask the questions. It’s part of our birthday cake’s “sticky” frosting.