Think Like a Teacher

I am writing this on a brand new computer just days before I leave for NECC and hours before an important semi-annual board meeting for my non-profit company. There is nothing like having a video card die on a  computer just as you are headed into critical days. Yes, I had thorough back-ups, etc., but the time required to reconfigure everything on a new machine (and new PLATFORM!) does not fit within the 24 hours I had. Thank goodness for a helpful spouse who continued installing things while I ran to an emergency dentist visit (on top of all this!) and a thoughtful boss who said, “Just go buy one NOW” when the display on my old brain machine was shutting off at random times.

Lessons learned: 

Each of us is at risk of the unexpected every day. Nothing will ever prepare you.

When push comes to shove, it’s the people who make the difference, not the machines.

New toys are not nearly as much fun on a deadline.

I hope all at NECC will help me continue to learn about this new machine. It IS the people who make the difference.

I am participating in this “meme” thanks to Louise Maine, a fellow techno-junky teacher and contributor to TeachersFirst. I love the fact that she and I have never even met face to face, though we “talk” often in email, on Twitter, via webcam, in the OK2Ask “classroom,” and occasionally on the phone (how mundane). The very fact that we work together is a case study in professional/personal  learning networks and the power of the web. I will finally meet Louise at EduBloggerCon and NECC later this month.

As someone who went over the wall from full time teaching to twelve month work at a non-profit three years ago, I miss the annual cycle of a school year and the summer change of pace for professional development (see my post on summer growth). But I can give this one a shot.

BTW, here are some definitions of  meme for those who may not know the term. In this case, a meme is simply a way of using people’s blogs to pass along this summer professional development idea and to use the power of “tags” or “categories” to connect what all of us are doing so you can find the ideas easily. Think of it as word-of-mouth-follow-the-leader-copycat-gone-internet-viral thanks to little packets running around telling each other things. I have this vision of kindergarteners on the playground when one of them tells a secret…

Directions

Summer can be a great time for professional development. It is an opportunity to learn more about a topic, read a particular work or the works of a particular author, beef up an existing unit of instruction, advance one’s technical skills, work on that advanced degree or certification, pick up a new hobby, and finish many of the other items on our ever-growing To Do Lists. Let’s make Summer 2009 a time when we actually get to accomplish a few of those things and enjoy the thrill of marking them off our lists.

The Rules

NOTE: You do NOT have to wait to be tagged to participate in this meme.

1. Pick 1-3 professional development goals and commit to achieving them this summer.
2. For the purposes of this activity the end of summer will be Labor Day (09/07/09).
3. Post the above directions along with your 1-3 goals on your blog.
4. Title your post Professional Development Meme 2009 and link back/trackback to http://clifmims.com/blog/archives/2447.
5. Use the following tag/ keyword/ category on your post: pdmeme09.
6. Tag 5-8 others to participate in the meme.
7. Achieve your goals and “develop professionally.”
8. Commit to sharing your results on your blog during early or mid-September.

My Goals

• Sort through all the “check this out” items I have thrown into Delicious, tagging them and USING them rather than having them just sit there
• Stop and spend some time with my feed reader, organizing it and paring it down so it is a welcome friend to visit with each day instead of another item on my to-do list
• Successfully pull off a live video streaming event that any teacher COULD do (OK2Ask LIVE from NECC)- and have teachers join us!

I tag Melissa Rivers and Ollie Dreon (I hope….if I can find his blog URL!) and Jim Gates, all fellow PA folks in “different” teaching positions these days. What do you want to learn this summer?

For those of us who have adventurous mothers, this weekend is an opportunity to give a special kind of present: tech help. Over the past ten years or so, I have spent countless hours on the phone  across the 400 miles between me and my fearless mother, helping her remember how to print multiple 4 by 6 prints onto an 8-1/2 by 11 sheet of photo paper, save an email attachment where she can find it, delete incorrect email addresses from her address book, or download the photos from her digital camera. At this point you are probably guessing that my mother is about 60 years old, maybe…right? Nope. Try over 80. (She’d shoot me for saying that, but she probably won’t read this).

Her age does not matter. What matters is that I am her personal tech learning network, and she loves it. My help is needed, appreciated, and custom-made to “fit.” I may have to “give” the same gift a few times until she gets it, but she revels in telling me every time she uses a tech skill. How often do you give a gift where the recipient brags back to you every time she uses it? So here is my list of tech-help MDay gift suggestions for moms at various levels of techspertise. And none of them requires a coupon at Macy’s. I hope you will comment back with ideas of your own.

1. Set up an account for her on Facebook so she can be friends with grandkids.
2. Use a free trial of GoToMyPC to fix all the things she cannot fix herself and customize her Favorites. Maybe even give her desktop shortcuts to great online games and word puzzles to keep her mind sharp.
3. Email her links to the same games, in case she forgets they are in Favorites.
4. Set up folders in her email, including a HELP folder where she can file away all your “How to” emails. Be sure you put “How To: [insert topic here]” as the subject line for subsequent tech help emails, so she can find them easily!
5. Have her try right-clicking on everything while you watch or talk on the phone. Explain what those options mean–and have her try some.
6. Make her a template for a photo greeting with her choice of layout and fonts ready to go. All she has to do is add the message and print.
7. Offer to digitize her Christmas card list. Then do it before December.
8. Set up an account on Voicethread and show her how to upload and record narration for family photos. You will LOVE watching them.
9. Pay for her virus protection subscription and set it so it is foolproof!
10.  Send her a list of travel links to go on virtual vacations. Talk her through organizing them in a single folder of Favorites.
11. Show her how to RIGHT-click nasty pop-ups to close them from the taskbar (in case they have nastiness linked from the little X).
12. Set up groups in her email and show her how to compose mail to one of them.
13. Show her how to find magazine images on the web from the decade of her childhood…then listen to her stories about them.
14. Help her organize the images from her digital camera. Tell her it’s OK to delete the blurry ones of her feet. Then set her screensaver to cycle through them at times when she is bored. (Warning: she may call you and start narrating the pictures as they go by).
15. Teach her how to copy and paste by keystroke. Copy is easy. Paste: think VELCRO to “stick it there.”
16. Show her how to use quotation marks to search old friends’ names on Google. Show her how to screen the results before clicking.
17. Set up Google Reader with feeds for her  from pubs and blogs you know she’d enjoy (there are tons of recipe blogs). Show her how to check out the Reader’s suggestions for more—and how to delete feeds she no longer wants.
18. Send her a new feed idea each week for a couple of months so she remembers how to add a feed.
19. Set up that digital picture frame you gave her so it actually works with current pictures of the grandkids.
20. Set up a wish list for her on Amazon and make sure she knows how to add to it and edit it. Now you have gift  ideas for the next occasion!

PS. When “showing” her, you are not allowed to touch the mouse. Put your hands behind your back and TALK.

Happy Mother’s Day to all.

The greatest luxury I have in this job since leaving the classroom is permission to play. After 27 years of completely scheduled or overscheduled time, I can dedicate a morning to comparing tools in search of the ideal one for a given technology task. I can play at will and seek answers: on my own, from help screens, among online forums, or from my PLN (personal learning network). What a luxury to have “permission” to learn from play.

This week I spent several hours comparing different ways to deliver the upcoming OK2Ask sessions on TeachersFirst. I started with a desire to model entirely free tools that any teacher could use without TOO much trouble. I played with all sorts of freebies, all with jibberish names that are de rigeur these days. I embedded myself, recorded myself, shared myself, chatted with myself (on several computers at once, rolling my chair back and forth), gave myself tours, denied myself privileges, gave myself control (and took it away), took polls of myself, clicked myself, made innumerable profiles of myself, moderated myself, muted myself, dragged and dropped myself, tagged myself, explained myself, reverted myself, and even broadcast myself looking stupid as I played on Mogulus.com. (I guess that was “channeling” myself.) It was pretty funny when– for a bit — I could not figure out how to STOP channeling myself.

But I learned. And I found what I sought. In the process, I refined my search, defined my criteria, and even articulated them several times to  complete strangers. I was so glad to have permission to play and learn. And teacher-guilt made me feel bad that others are not allowed to do the same.

Our kids play this way all the time. They play with any available tool and toy. They may not be systematic, but they are comfortable. They know how to play. [At this point the early childhood people I work with would be yelling ,”Of COURSE they do. Play IS learning!]

As the OK2Ask sessions approach, I wonder if we should have named them “OK2Play” instead. I also wonder if teachers have forgotten how to play because they are simply never been given the time to do so.  I have a fundamental belief that teachers try to do the best they can for and with their students. They have been schooled in the Best Practices, research-based methods, etc. But I hope the denial of play time has not removed it from their repertoire.

I don’t really believe they have forgotten how because I have run innumerable inservice sessions where teachers have been as excited (and disruptive) as little kids as they have played with a newly-introduced technology.  I have always given them permission to play. This may not appear to be the most cost-effective, responsible, mature adult thing to do while being paid taxpayer dollars, but I would assert that these same teachers, give a meaningful mission such as I had in selecting a tool for Ok2Ask, would make permission to play into permission to learn. All it took was a focused goal.

I will find out in a couple of weeks whether my recent play time went between the goalposts or veered wildly out of bounds. Either way, I will learn from the experience.

This is an open letter blog entry to a valued colleague because she is someone who aways responds,”Why not?” when I hatch some hare-brained scheme…and she adds her own hare-brain!

Donna,

Six years ago we were in the midst of doing something no one else had done (as far as we knew and still know now). We were about to take six very bright kids to Alaska in winter and have them teach their peers via the web using what they had taught themselves through the web and real-life contacts in Alaska. Sounds old hat now. Except  that in 2002-03, there were no wikis. There were no photo and video sharing sites. We did it all by figuring out solutions using available tools and begging for freebies. If we’d had wikis and Youtube…..my goodness!

Roll the clock six years. Read what the MacArthur Foundation says this week about time spent online and how kids learn today – really about how all of us should consider re-visioning what education is, based on how kids are learning. My electronic “quote wall” pulled from the summary:

change the dynamics of youth-adult negotiations over literacy, learning, and authoritative knowledge?

“interest-driven” networks

Self-Directed, Peer-Based Learning

“geek out”

specialized knowledge groups of both teens and adults

gaining reputation among expert peers

erases the traditional markers of status and authority

outcome emerges through exploration, in contrast to classroom learning that is oriented toward set, predefined goals.

skills that youth value are highly variable depending on what kinds of social groups they associate with. This diversity in forms of literacy means that it is problematic to develop a standardized set of benchmarks to measure levels of new media and technical literacy.

New role for education? ….What would it mean to really exploit the potential of the learning opportunities available through online resources and networks?

So, Donna, if kids really learn by poking around online themselves — and we know they do– and have entirely separate networks of experts (and ways to define “expert”) on topics we, as the “adults,” do not even know about…why not invite a dozen or so of them to redesign their education and see how well they could meet two masters: the legal one that says they have to meet certain “standards” and the personal master within themselves. I would hypothesize that given the right environment, the right tools, some no-B.S. adult  mentors, and the motivation that they might actually be able to affect change, you  and I could guide a group of HS kids to redesign learning into something meaningful to them. Here is the beginning of a framework of sorts:

To start, give the kids the standards, explaining that this is the part over which we have no control-yet. Tell them to find the “expert network” to learn about it themselves (and prove it). 

The kids proceed to: (with the side-by-side participation of “teachers,” as needed and specified by law)

• Find the source/community of experts 
• Verify the knowledge level of the source Who else links to him/her? How can you tell he/she is good? Do you find this source referenced over and over again? Can you find out anything about him/her?  Would you trust him to fix/use your computer? etc.
• Engage and question
• Participate and interact with their own questions and exploration
• Show learning—turn in the URL from the online community where their learning “shows”—along with a list of the questions they still want to know. 
• Show where this fits into the “standards”- the kids do the alignment
• Maybe keep a personal RSS Reader organized by academic topics? 

They end up as content experts in their own right, with a vast network of places to return and learn more…including through their peers who are also engaged at various stages in the same process. Most importantly, the kids are involved in actually defining and evaluating this very cyclical process: Does it work? What should we change? What is B.S.? What is cool?

So, Donna, looking back on 2002-03, isn’t this what the better participants in CV/AK did? As they found connections to prescribed curriculum, they went off into their own expert networks to learn what “fit” for them—and what they thought would fit for their peers.

We won’t talk about the “management issues” of watching over 150 kids instead of 12…that’s another day on Think Like A Teacher. That’s an outdated concept, too…

Not bad for something hatched on a Friday. After all, CV/AK came out of a breakfast at (now defunct) George’s.

Why not?

TeachersFirst is fortunate to have a reviewer/contributor who is building a significant learning network among edubloggers, school reformers, and edtech proponents. Louise Maine not only was the focus of articles on wikis in the classroom in the current Edutopia, she will also be presenting for the K-12 Online Conference coming up in October. Louise’s level of involvement as part of a network of enthusiastic educators involved in edtech-as-part-of-ed-reform movement makes me both optimistic and concerned.  I wonder how many teachers even know about the opportunities for virtual conferences, online professional learning networks, and edublogs that spark discussion with thought-provoking reading. Wouldn’t it be great if we could both spread the word and have some means of tracking the spread?

Steve Hargaddon’s efforts at Classroom 2.0 provide one helpful stat: the number of members (11,474 as I write this) . The number of free edu-wikispaces surpassed 100K last week, another meaningful stat. But what do these numbers mean…and do most teachers know that the opportunities are virtually limitless?

I hope that this year’s K-12 Online conference will provide two things: a way to get a picture of the spread of virtual professional development and resultant CHANGE in education and more ideas for reaching the stressed and buried among teachers. While I do believe there is an obligation for teachers to seek new ideas and learn about new trends, I also know that the barriers for many are simply impossible. What will K-12 Onliners do to make the message virtually limitless?  Can we brainstorm efficient, clever ways to reach the teachers who suffer with unreliable infrastructure, resistant administration, untenable working conditions, and immense personal pressures?  Just as we talk about removing barriers for student success, we need to look at the big picture of teachers’ lives and help them access the virtually limitless opportunities being enjoyed by this energized* bunch.

*Louise and I have been emailing about energy and entropy as she plans her K-12 Online presentation. I have thoroughly enjoyed the dialog…and am spreading the energy here in honor of her efforts.

Apologies to any readers who may not have been at NECC or even know what it is. This post is part of my personal reflection/debrief on the National Educational Computing Conference, my biggest annual opportunity for formal professional development.

I have concerns about the hats we wear — or the choice of invisibility cloaks – for the many forward-thinking educators who come into NECC  with more than one role.

Feeling the Tension

When I arrived at NECC this year, it was with a sense of regret that scheduling had prevented me from attending this year’s EdubloggerCon (EBC), my favorite part of NECC ‘07 in Atlanta.  I followed enough of the blogflak about video and gleaned between the lines of ISTE’s policies about recordings, though,  to know that Pearson’s videotaping at EBC was a hot issue.  I also read and commented on pre-conference discussion on the NECC Ning regarding “commercial” postings there. A conversation with friend Jim Gates on NECC day 3 was the third time I felt it: there is a stigma attached to any role or affiliation that makes a NECC attendee or presenter “unpure.”

Reflections 

As a  27 year teacher who went over to the “dark side” two years ago by switching my moonlighting  job to a full time job, I am aware that no modifier I can include in the description of my role running TeachersFirst can erase the stigma; “free,” “ad-free,” “service,” “non-profit,” “noble,” even “saintlike” would be inadequate.  If I choose to don my TeachersFirst hat publicly, I am tainted. Even worse, my ideas and contributions become suspect.

I would maintain that many respected contributors and organizers at EBC, NECC, and the most respected educational technology/ education reform collaborations have additional “hats.” Many individuals moonlight outside of their classrooms as consultants. Others have relationships with publishers, tool developers, or hardware/software companies. I have no problem with that. Teachers need the money, and the good ones have good ideas to share. Many in the “inner circles” at EBC or NECC are aware of the consulting/training  that others do. I would suspect that there are quite a few other “hats” would show if everyone engaged in complete disclosure.

So what to do?

The dilemma: is it better to don an invisibility cloak  (and remain quieter) or wear your hat? Aren’t we, as teachers forever (for that IS what I am– a teacher — no matter who pays me) , just as entitled to learn and grow out of genuine interest in the topics at hand? If NECC is a part of my personal learning network, what is the best way to participate: hat on head or invisibly? Are my ideas less valuable because I changed jobs? Should I refrain from speaking because I come from the dark side? I don’t think so.

I wear my name badge with job title. I tell people what I do when asked. I share ideas that others seem to value. But I must “be careful.”  At what point do my ideas become suspect as an agenda instead of the honest contributions to the conversation they are meant to be? And at what point does the suspicion prevent me from learning as well?

I am frustrated at Pearson for raising the suspicion level of everyone by showing up to “document” EBC. I will admit that I am also suspicious of them, given the fact that they are not participants or teachers, just a commercial company videotaping. They recently launched a “foundation,” and that raises my antennae, too. Will their “foundation” status end up throwing more suspicion on genuine David (to Goliath)-sized non-profits such as my employer in the long run? Is their foundation an intentional invisibility cloak?

So I throw these question out ot the twitting-blogging-Ninging-gadgeting crowd from NECC and beyond:

1. Where and under what circumstances are teachers who wear multiple hats allowed to go for fully-engaged professional growth?

2. How would you prefer to see the hats that these teachers wear?

3. Is there a difference between moonlighting educators and those who retire and take that second career?

What are your thoughts?

I am following up on my previous post about TagUrIt, my mythical tool to pull all outside feedback and response into a single place for a learner to synthesize feedback received from all products and projects, no matter what the medium. Lifestream apparently does this. (I have a vague memory of reading about Lifestream a couple of months ago….so my “dream” tool in the previous post may really have been a figment of foggy memory.) Once again, somebody already thought of my great idea. I wonder if it can pull a feed from tagged email, as well. For a TRULY one-stop shop, I’d want to be able to include feedback emails, too.

 Of course, I don’t see Lifestream rushing to market themselves as a tool for education or personal learning network/professional development. If they are interested in a powerful use of their tool, they should talk to our team at the TeachersFirst Edge. We know how to learn from web2.0 play: bridging the gap from web2.0 into learning. I guess there’s a better market in building customers’ egos or helping them track their social web presence than there is in making webworld a wide-open classroom. Or maybe they never thought of it?

Thank goodness for teachers (like those on our Edge team and the earlyadoptereducators who hang out in places like Twitter) who see the freebies and find amazing power in applying them in new ways. I can’t wait to see them all at NECC where the bloggers cafe and laptop users seated on the floor in public spaces are always abuzz with new toys. It’s hyperstimulation of the highest order: Thoughtstream.

I spent the morning sorting through old emails for pull-quotes to use on some promotional materials, and the process brought on a surge of reflection. I have been in this job since 2006 and have always kept a “teachers out there” folder within my email for messages that tell me good and bad about how TeachersFirst is doing. I even have subfolders for mail from college faculty users or those who comment on the Interactive Raven. I make folders as a reference system to find emails later , but I had no idea of their impact as a tool for reflection. Bear with me as I muse on…

Imagine if every student had an email account (yes, I know…. archiving, server space, bullying, etc…everyone has a reason NOT to provide these). Imagine if they could file emails from peers and teachers all year as a way to sort out reactions to major projects (like my Interactive Raven folder), comments from outsiders (like my webmaster email or “teachers out there” folders), and feedback from specific professionals (like my college faculty folder). Then when the time came to “pull quotes” (verb, not noun) to share as part of an end-of year reflection, each student could read back through and see progress, consensus and even direction. A new personally-organized learning network.

Taking it further: Maybe students don’t need email to do this. After all, so much of their input likely comes in the form of web 2.0 “comments” and can be sorted by “tags.” Perhaps what they (we) need  for School (or Work) 2.0 is a tool that allows us to organize responses to ANY and all media we create (email, wiki, blog post, dig pix, online comic strip, YouTube video, podcast, or cute web2.0 doo-dad) in a single location by tag or “folder.” Suddenly we have “Response Central,” a place to see trends among very diverse products and to allow meta-analysis of our own strengths and needs for improvement. If EVERY tool provided RSS feeds for comments, that would be one way to do it: by tagging the responses within the reader using a consistent system.  We could have our personal RSS (Response Sorting System) Reader. Not every tool provides RSS for responses or comments, though. Many do.

I wonder if anyone has ever done this. Of course, setting up the tagging system could be the kicker. The first few times we did it, we’d discover that some tags did not “work” over time. But the second year would be a lot easier. We could make New Years Day the unofficial tag reorganization day as we watch parades and football…but I am getting carried away.

So there’s a skill to add to School 2.0/Work 2.0 so we can reflect on all those marvelous comments and actually learn from them. Anybody have a cute name for it yet? (TagUrIt?) I am sure some developer is working on it.

Last Friday I spent the day at a conference in Princeton on Children and Electronic Media: Teaching in the Technological Age. There were presentations on current research concerning the impact of electronic media on children and youth, innovative uses of technology in classrooms, and professional development using electronic media (synchronous and asynchronous). The presenters were all recognized voices; many in the auditorium were also recognized “eyes and ears,” as well as practitioners. Kevin Jarrett, one of the presenters and “Mr.  Second Life” of education [my nickname], blogged the event today, and his reverence for the minds in the room is quite appropriate. It was an energizing gathering — one that seems destined to echo in orange.

I spent a good part of the weekend letting the conference incubate in my head. The issues of implementing teacher professional development in rigorous, differentiated, yet supportive and respectful formats are so critical to the future success of our students, and there is simply SO much for so many to learn, and never “be done.” The ProfDev concerns I have been mulling:

1. Time. How can we streamline the start-up and personalization of PD in a one-size-fits-all mindset? So many administrations simply want “all staff” to “complete” this or that Prof Dev “training,” whether it is on special ed procedures, a new language arts program, or –oh yeah– we have to do the technology stuff (Why so many do technology “training” in isolation is a major issue, as well!)

2. Respect and expect. How do we shift to a  model that allows differentiation hand in hand with rigor: respect where teachers say they are (”I need to learn more about teaching xxx in a project-based approach but am also nervous about doing anything with technology”) yet expect them to step outside of their comfort zones with respectful support and encouragement. Without both, you waste your money and their time. With both, change can actually happen.

3. Hanging together. In a standard, hierarchical arrangement of admin and teachers, there may well be administrators placed in the position of evaluating and approving personalized Prof Dev plans who know the topics no better than the novice participants. Shouldn’t they simply do it together as part of the cohort,  just as we would like students and teacher to be able to work together as learners? What better way to model a new way of “building learners”?

4. Real life. Different teachers have varying degrees of “free” time. There are stages of life when doing anything after 4 or 5 pm is extremely difficult for a teacher: infant at home, aging or dying parents, carpools and coaching for their own kids, moonlighting jobs to pay kids’ tuition, and innumerable other pressures spread and stress so many teachers. This is where the asynchronous options actually make a difference, assuming the 3 concerns above have been resolved wisely. Kevin says

Who has time for PD? We all do. It’s a matter of deciding what’s important. When you’re personally vested in the process, somehow, it gets done!

It’s the “personally vested” part that is tough to achieve in stressed people. We need to respect the limits of real life and expect progress without expecting the same level of expertise from all in the same time frame (NTLB?). If  life’s pressures are unreasonable, teachers will never be “vested.” Humans protect their own survival by fighting.

5. Making it meaningful. We are supposed to do this with our students and should expect that our own learning should be the same way. It is our own responsibility to be sure that our OWN prof dev is meaningful. If it isn’t, speak up and ask if you can adjust it (respectfully of course).

6. Vastness. We will never be “done.” We can’t even stay even. We can sift, sort, listen, and ask questions. David Brooks wrote Saturday about The Cognitive Age:

The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. [my italics]

Teachers need to not only do this absorbing, processing, and combining and with their own skills; they must do it well enough to teach it to tomorrow’s adults. The vastness of this task is huge.

Bright orange is the color of fire, of lively energy and hope, and of sunsets. I hope the fire from this conference will burn brightly as we who were there light some flames in others,  and avoid sunset.