Think Like a Teacher

The day before ISTE11 officially began, I attended EduBloggerCon, a marvelously relaxed and genuine opportunity for passionate educators to talk, mull over ideas, focus for an hour at a time on big issues in education and edtech, and just plain think out loud. I have been fortunate to be at all EBC since its inception in Atlanta a few years ago, and I would never miss this chance to renew my faith in grassroots educators as MiracleGro to a thinking society and to positive change. This group avoids the weeds of griping and generates blooming images of “before and after” learning than any educationinfomercial.

One of the discussion topics I chose to join this year was entitled Why isn’t education on the front page of the news? (Let’s talk about strategies to push this important discussion to the forefront in a positive and meaningful way). The gist of the discussion was that yes, we can convince local news to cover a unique event at our school, but that’s the end of it. No one will ever hear positive stories about learning in today’s schools in higher venues. When will positive stories about the bloomin’ good (see previous paragraph) ever gain national notice?  It is much easier (and generates ratings) when the media cover:

a. stories of education failures

b. stats of comparisons to other cultures– limited to the first sentence of the Executive Summary

c. stories of the high cost of education to taxpayers

d. all of the above

Fortunately, this EBC group was pro-active in approach and did not linger in the weeds of  woe-is-us-nobody-likes-teachers. We brainstormed. We generated a very do-able, very positive, and very realistic strategy to make the voices of winning education stories resound beyond the local news: the hashtag #eduwin.

Here is how it works:

• Every time you see a change in a student because of something that clicked, write about it in a tweet or a blog post, hashtagged #eduwin.
• Every time you see another teacher do something that works, share it, hashtagged #eduwin.
• Every time you see a tweet from another educator  about the way students are LEARNING, retweet it or share it on Facebook, hashtagged #eduwin.
• When you’re having a bad day, set up a Twitter search or do one on Google (when they get Real Time working again), looking for items hashtagged #eduwin.
• When you hear people griping about the state of education today, share a story you saw hashtagged #eduwin.
• When your class does projects, shoot some video and upload the clips of kids talking about what they did to YouTube, hashtagged #eduwin (cute kids or kittens can’t hurt…)
• When a parent volunteer wants to be helpful, ask him/her to take some pictures of the good things going on in your class (maybe from the back or close-ups of hands so there is no concern about identifiable pictures) and share them on Flickr or Facebook, hashtagged #eduwin.
• When your kids make glogs, Voicethreads, or other online projects that shout powerful evidence of learning, add the hashtag #eduwin to the very best examples (and resist the urge to put the hashtag on ones that could be appreciated without context)
• When you give awards to your students, us the title EDUWIN on the awards.
• When that one non-reader finally recognizes the sight words, clap and say “EDUWIN!”
• Collaborate every day with teacher colleagues on the digital storytelling of EDUWIN

As an FYI, one of those in the discussion asked whether the tag is Ed-U-Win or eduwin or edUwin or edu-win. It is read as any and all of these, but written simply, #eduwin.  For through #eduwin, you win, our kids win, we all win, and edu wins.

Now you have to pass it on. #eduwin. You’re it.

Top Ten things to do the day after ISTE:

10. Sleep. At least a little extra.

9. Dig through the bags, pockets, and cases, sorting all the IMPORTANT cards and little notes that people handed to you– that is,  those who still use paper.

8.  Go outside and breathe non-city, non-convention center air (if you have it).

7. Plan the next 10 blog posts about amazing things you learned but had no time to blog about.

6A. Revisit the plans and files for your presentation, making note of all the things you would change if you gave it again.

6B. Revisit the best presentation you went to and make note of all the things you will say when you give the sequel next year.

5. Run a million loads of laundry. (Dirt is a reality, even in edtech world.)

4.  Dig through the iste11 items you threw into Diigo and add other, more meaningful tags so your library isn’t a giant ISTanglE

3. Resist the urge to do nothing but read #iste11 tweets for another day. #istechocolate is not a food group.

2. Decide which great new idea you will try first, write about, ask your tweeps about, or build.

1. Start item 2.

As I head off to EduBloggerCon and ISTE this weekend, I keep thinking about the teachers who won’t be there — who will never have a chance to even imagine anything like it.  I “meet” a few of the more adventurous ones in OK2Ask sessions. I know that many of them relish the weekly Updates and use TeachersFirst regularly. They are the teachers whose schools never provide them time or opportunity to learn about using technology as a tool for learning.  A few of them will step off the cliff and join an OK2Ask session to learn on their own. Tens or hundreds of thousands more remain on desert islands without the nourishment of professional growth.   They never have a chance to propose individual professional development goals; they never have a chance to learn about the power of learning leveraged by even the simplest technologies. They may have a new grant-funded gadget dropped into their classrooms, but no one ever sits down to talk with them about how it might fit into (or CHANGE) the ways their students learn. Even worse, no one even makes sure it works or fixes it when it doesn’t. These are the teachers on desert islands, and there are far more of them than there are of us, the fortunate few who greet each other at ISTE as if the rest of the teaching world should be following our lead.

I know there are plenty of teachers who have closed the door and secretly thank heaven that they don’t “have to” learn about using technology. But there are far more who simply do not have the professional development or support network. We can’t expect teachers to do it all on their own, but what choice do they have? And what are we doing to find them and help them? Yes, legislation for EETT– including professional development — is a great way to manage top-down, but what are we doing bottom-up to visit the desert islands? We expect them to come to our online communities and learn. We expect them to find those communities. We expect them to figure out how to repair things. We expect them to keep trying to swim off the desert island, but we don’t make an effort to find them and provide the encouragement they need to even try.

The state-of-technology-in-our-schools surveys are too generic to reveal the number of teachers on desert islands. These surveys are filled out by administrators eager to make their schools look good.  The way the questions are asked does not reveal the reality of one projector for a school of 30 classrooms (and a missing power cord)  or one very unreliable computer with a shaky Internet connection per classroom. It does not tell the tale of non-existent funding for professional development or tech support. When I talk to these teachers about why they should use tech, they laugh the laugh of a homeless person watching HGTV.

What are those of us lucky enough to attend ISTE doing to get the word — and some personal encouragement– out to the hundreds of thousands of our peers who will never see a conference, never have a tech integration specialist drop by, never know more about technology than what they see in a broadcast news 15-second filler? Yes, desert island teachers have a responsibility to learn and grow, but we have a responsibility to find them and help them. Would you volunteer to join something like “Habitech for Teaching” a la Habitat for Humanity where we go in and build it together with them so they can live in it and pass it on? What could that look like? How could we at least let them hear an actual human voice of support? I am guessing telling them to call in on Skype isn’t gunna happen.

I think I’ll mull this one over as I complete my ISTE conference planner. Surely there is a way all these creative, energized folks at ISTE can share with those on desert islands.

I spent most of the weekend prepping for one of my #ISTE11 presentations, “Cycles vs. Checklists: Fostering Creative Process in an Accountability World,”  In the process, I learned a few things that actually became part of the presentation:

1. one place is better than multiple places
2. color coding works
3. I never have to throw anything away

One the the best things about submitting ISTE proposals a eight or nine months before you actually give the presentation is the delightfully long incubation time to pull the presentation together in your head, make it better,  let it evolve to a higher plain. During the time from acceptance (December) to delivery (June), you collect, refine, do more research, talk to colleagues, read, read, read — and eventually create. At some point, it seems that everything you run across in your browsing and tweet-reading relates to what your upcoming presentation topic.

Along the way, you grab ideas and toss them into storage. In my case, Diigo seemed great at first because I could tag and add notes on the angle that particular image or article or video provides on creativity and creative process. But I also had my own ideas popping into my head: pithy things to say, questions to ask, things I wonder about, etc.– all related to the preso topic.  So I jotted some of them in a word doc on my cluttered desktop. About three months out, I also began a linoit wall– they call it a “canvas”–* which I dubbed my “idea bin.” I filled it with stickies and video clips and links, all related to the preso topic.  [*I chose linoit.com over Wallwisher because it has an app version for iOS users. Wallwisher uses Flash so would prevent the iPad folks from “seeing” and participating in the space. I considered Evernote, but I like the ease of lino.it for newbies. I also wanted to try something new to learn it.] Unfortunately, my own lack of consistency meant my idea collections were in three places. The lesson I learned: when it comes time to cull, arrange, and construct the actual presentation,  three attics filled with ideas are unmanageable. I had duplicates, lost things between the cracks, and wasted a lot of time.

Having learned that lesson, I tossed almost everything into my linoit “idea bin,” with the intention of sharing it during the preso as a model.  The result is a very cluttered space, especially it you are an outline-style person, which I am not. To help myself out, I found that color coding was huge! I sorted by making the “thinking question” stickies one color, the “MUST include” quotes another color, and so forth. If I had been really organized, I would have used tags on each sticky to sort, but I am visual, so I went for color. I even played with fonts and shrinking the relative size of less important ideas. Note that I intentionally did not “finish” color coding/sorting so people could see an idea-bin-in-progress. I LOVE this process and will use it again. It fits me.

An added benefit: That idea bin isn’t going anywhere.  I don’t have to throw anything out! I still have all the unused ideas as fodder for blog posts, future presentations, articles, maybe even a book. I am an idea hoarder, and having an omni-present, accessible place to throw things is right up my alley. Another lesson learned.

I have learned more than I could ever share about my topic, something about a tool, and something about myself in the process of preparing this presentation. And isn’t that what we want our kids to do?

If you are going to ISTE, I hope you will join me Wednesday, 6/29/2011, 10:15am–11:15am PACC 204B. If not, You will be able to see loads of related materials and resources — the equivalent of “handouts”– on the presentation support pages after June 29.

ISTE 2011 is just three weeks away, and I am as bad as the kids who procrastinate on projects. Circumstances have made it tough to wrap up my presentations, work I would normally have pretty much completed by now. Typically, I’d be adding extras at this point. Maybe this is a good experience for me. Now I know how the kids feel when they have no control over circumstances and end up working down to the wire. Yes, there are such things as personal accountability (I am a big proponent of pointing it out) and planning. Then there are occurrences and convergences you simply could not anticipate. For the kids, it may be the parent who simply does not share enough computer time or who does not have the money to buy a new printer cartridge. It may be the family trip your student did not realize was that weekend– the same one she had set for doing the project. Or it may be the younger siblings she is supposed to babysit. Even the most responsible student can become entangled in circumstances that force a rushed project.

How can we tell whether this is a controllable situation or not?  How do we know which speech to give to that student: the you-should-have-planned-ahead  speech or the how-can-you-reprioritize-to-make-the-best-of-the-time-that’s-left speech or the it’s-not-the-only-grade-you-will-get speech? Or is a speech really going to make a difference, anyway?

The important thing is the learning experience. I am going to select my own “speech” for my ISTE presentations: the how-can-you-reprioritize-to-make-the-best-of-the-time-that’s-left speech. I suggest that we need to ask our students to select the speech they should be hearing, too. Even better, as we promote creativity and more project-based learning, we need to make this discussion part of the experience. Just as we ask kids to develop intrapersonal awareness of their ideal creative surroundings, we must help them become aware of how they handle roadblocks and obstacles, self-made and external.

These skills do not show on tests or state standards, but they matter. A lot. In life. Which speech do you give yourself? How do you handle the detours?

Why is it that some people can articulately describe and actually facilitate their personal creative process while others have no idea how they go about “making” things? You might think just “letting ideas happen,” sparks the highest level of creativity:  serendipitous fireworks that splash across our mental and aesthetic skyline. I would propose that those who pause to notice, name, and massage their personal creative process — a seemingly UNcreative thing to do– are the most prolific artists, writers, and thinkers.

Analyzing how a successful project evolves requires a very sophisticated level of metacognition, a true intrapersonal intelligence. Taking note of the circumstances that help you generate ideas or pluck the best from a messy pile of possibilities will help you “set up” similar circumstances the next time you seek to complete a project.It seems counterintuitive that those we call “creative” people actually do this. We think of artists and writers as somewhat random — or a little crazy. Artists, writers, and deep thinkers may not call it metacognition, but they pay attention, tuned in with a powerful intrapersonal awareness, to how they work. Their studios or workspaces may seem disorganized, but there is method to their madness, and they KNOW that method. Those less aware among us may founder when asked to “be creative,”  not because we lack ideas, but because we don’t know enough about how our own creative process works to move from inspiration to fruition.

In about two months, I have a presentation about creative process at ISTE2011. Right now, I am struggling with exactly the process I propose to speak about. I need to manage my own creative process, putting this presentation together on a deadline and subject to the accountability of my own presentation proposal.  I know that allowing subliminal incubation time with a looming deadline has always worked for me. Mulling questions in the background as I swim, walk, work, drive, and do other things has always helped me reach an AHA! moment when ideas explode to the forefront. At that moment, I know how to put the presentation or quilt or blog post or article together. But it is frightening to manage this need for a looming deadline and time for incubation when I have so many other tasks at hand, not the least of which involves relaunching a huge web site on exactly the same timeline as the presentation! And I wonder: Is it better to work up against pressure and a looming deadline or force ahead now to be overprepared and possibly stale? Which makes for the most creative, vital product? How much should my own messy creative process be shared as part of a preso on creative process? Obviously, I am still at the messy stage right now.  So I will step back to look for the learning that can come from this moment.

I think creative process matters for all of us, even those who call themselves “just teachers.” Teaching is a blessedly creative process, if we allow it to be. We sculpt a product — a plan for learning. We try it, revise it, tear it apart, remix its pieces, and try it again.  I wonder how many teachers experience teaching this way? I can’t imagine teaching any other way, but it is all I have ever known.

During my stay in China, I received notification that my two proposals for the ISTE conference in June, 2011 had BOTH been accepted. I am flabbergasted, excited, and a bit daunted by the challenge of putting together two very different presentations to be given within the same morning. What an opportunity!

One is on the cyclical nature of creativity and how that can be respected and fostered in an education world of linear, point-A-to-point-B accountability. The second is on taking the control of IWBs (interactive whiteboards) out of the hands of teachers and making them student centered for learning. While I will be sure that both presentations have practical, learning-friendly strategies that teachers can envision and implement, they begin from very different directions. One springs from a deep philosophical discussion about the nature of creativity (born of my interests in the humanities and listening/reading/teaching about creative process). The other bounces defiantly out of the back alleys of argument that began with Bill Ferriter’s blog post almost a year ago, “Why I Hate Interactive Whiteboards” and the unfortunate practice of distributing technology hardware as a teacher-centered panacea for student achievement.

So I have a lot of work to do between now and the spring to piece and quilt two separate presentations.  In the meantime, I will enjoy “collecting things” for both. Sometimes the pre-presentation, messy time is the highlight of my own creative process as ideas, images, and examples collect like scraps for a quilter. The virtual floor of my office (a.k.a. my MacBook) is going to be deep in material.