Think Like a Teacher

I admire someone who is willing to change his/her mind. I don’t mean fickleness. I mean changing one’s mind as in thinking deeply, allowing ideas to steep and evolve, finally realizing that thoughtful deliberation has changed one’s intellectual travel plan. The New York Times today documents just such a “U-turn” by Diane Ravitch, educational historian and scholar. If I were giving a project-based learning grade to Dr. Ravitch, she would earn maximum points for process and extra credit for risk-taking. For a professional “scholar” to change her mind is the most risky and admirable way to model true learning we could ever hope to witness.

Whether or not you agree with Dr. Ravitch’s current positions, her intellectual process of intellectual evolution is exactly what we need in our young people and leaders both now and into the future. Perhaps it is the willingness to change one’s mind that has been most lacking in recent years as ed reform has heated up and we have worried about the very future of learning in a new century. If teachers, schools, parents, communities, and policy makers are not willing to change their minds through carefully deliberate process, we are mired.

I have no idea how we make mind-changing an accredited process, component of adequate yearly progress, or a measurable datapoint, but it must somehow be part of the process of 21st century learning. Forget the trendy century label. A mind is a wonderful thing to change, no matter what the century.

(previously, in the town of Forwardthink…)

The elders of the town of Forwardthink have surprised the Innovators once again.  A mere week after they invited Innovators from far and wide to re-display their latest ideas (even those that entered after the first deadline), they have locked the doors of the town hall. The doors have a generic notice explaining that the elders will be back in March to announce the decree of the magical judges about who will enter the finals in the tug-of-war between the Wisdom of Crowds and Outright Competition. The windows are covered, though a definite glow passes ’round the edges of the room-darkening shades. There is life moving about inside the hall of Innovative Ideas. Moving figures and glimmers cast small slivers onto the ground outside as the Innovators wait, separated from their ideas left behind in the display hall. No one can see their precious Innovations any longer. The Wise crowd can no longer comment. Occasionally a tweet flies out via a small trap door high up on the oaken doors, much as the pronouncements of the guard at the Emerald City: come back soon to see what we’re doing behind these Doors of Mystery.

Outside, Innovators huddle and occasionally intermingle as they speculate or flatter each other about the likely results. Some wander off in search of the next town’s competition. Separated from their orphaned Innovations, the Innovators find less to talk about and share. The creative juices chill as each innovator seeks rudimentary shelter and a strategy for waiting and wondering.

Perhaps the Innovators will band together to find other routes and other locations. But for now, Innovation has been stymied. And the question remains:

In a tug of war between the wisdom of the crowd and competition, who wins? 

I recently came across this post about task analysis, an approach to helping many students master new concepts by carefully breaking them down into steps:

I believe that every new skill can be broken down into steps. We follow a certain procedure no matter what we do. Everything has its own recipe.

I fear that so much of education has swung in this behaviorist direction that we are losing touch with the countervailing trend in what our students do on their own, with their own time and self-directed learning. We have also created entire generations of teachers who learn — and therefore teach– via this step-by-step approach.

There is no question that for many learners, both young and not-so-young, staircases work. The risers are of equal size and measure out to arrive exactly at the landing after the prescribed number of upward swings of the legs. No single step is too taxing, and success is virtually guaranteed, provided we allow for differing rates of speed in going up the steps. Once a teacher masters the analytical skill of measuring out and calculating the amount of rise and number of steps, he/she is likely to guide most learners to the desired landing.

Now look at how our students learn when left to their own devices. Instead of staircases, some students’ learning takes place via giant, expanded Habitrail-like environments with wheels, chutes, interwoven tubes and shortcuts, and even a tube with an open-ended escape the big, wide world. The speed and rapid turns of these learners may not be suited to staircases, but they often have no other choice. They may see tasks a big pictures, with favored route that go by way of the big,wide world. They may even chose to climb three times farther and descend to the desired landing. They may never even cross that landing becuase they have built a direct chute to a whole different level. In a web 2.0 world, learning can be much more of a build-your-own Habitrail than a well-designed staircase.

Some kids prefer running up and down stairs over and over. As adults, we assume that everyone wants to go up. Some learners want to start at the top then appreciate the steps by exploring them (or striding briefly past a few at a time) on the way down.

I sincerely hope that those who teach do not forget that staircases, no matter how admirably engineered, may not be the way their students learn. Trying to navigate even a well-designed staircase can be a bruising experience for the leapers and learners who choose another way.

In a tug of war between the wisdom of the crowd and competition, who wins?

The elders of the small town of Forwardthink, nestled at the delta of Hereandnow River, declared that they wanted the very best Innovators to move to their town. They had heard that many innovative thinkers and other wise people lived beyond the Hereandnow watershed and could help the town of Forwardthink live up to its name. To find the Innovators and lure them in, they decided to award the Forwardthink Keys of Gold to the best Innovators. So the elders planned a competition and announced it far and wide, sending messengers out by Tweetboats and The RSSFeeder ships:

Innovators welcome. Earn Forwardthink Keys of Gold for the most innovative ideas.

They carefully posted the rules of the Forwardthink competition on the doors to the Town Hall and sent copies along on the Tweetboats and RSSFeeder ships. The deadline came, and the First Fortnight of competition began.

Each innovator displayed the very best of ideas in the Forwardthink Town Hall for all to see. Once the displays are erected, visitors from far and wide traveled to see them. The elders grinned as they watched the visitors mingling among the displays. They encouraged visitors to comment. The rules on the Town Hall doors explained that during the First Fortnight the Wise Crowd would help the Innovators improve their ideas. The elders planned to close the doors after the First Fortnight so the Innovators could clean up the scribed comments and straighten their displays, perhaps even combining with another Innovator’s display.   The doors of the Town Hall remained open 24/7 as visitors appeared and scribed their thoughts on each exhibit.  The Innovators even talked among themselves, commenting on each other’s ideas and pondering ways to learn from them. For they knew that sharing their ideas aloud and listening to others would truly breed the best Innovations — and possibly Keys of Gold!

The elders stood by with arms folded. listening to the Wisdom of the Crowd and talking with the occasional visitors, as well. But none of the Innovators heard the conversations with the elders.

On the evening of the 14th day, as the Innovators prepared to rework their displays, the elders held a special meeting. They quietly took down the rules from the Town Hall doors and used an enchanted spider’s web-eraser to changed one paragraph:

Please plan to learn from the Wisdom of Crowds and rework your display after the First Fortnight. Only those who shared a display in time for the First Fortnight and stood with it throughout the First Fortnight will be allowed to share a display during the Second Fortnight.

became:

Please plan to learn from the Wisdom of Crowds and rework your display after the First Fortnight. All who wish to create a display during the Second Fortnight are welcome to compete for the Keys of Gold, including newcomers from the Wise Crowd.

The Innovators were stunned as they watched new displays appear. The elders clapped their hands to see such innovation and quickly forgot the old rules from the First Fortnight. They forgot the copies that had traveled far and wide via Tweetboats and RSSFeeder ships. In their greed for Innovative ideas, they forgot the Innovators of the First Fortnight, for the ideas were the most important thing.

And how does this fable end? The tale has yet to be told. Perhaps the Wise Crowd will know.

In a tug of war between the wisdom of the crowd and competition, who wins?

[To those who are mystified by this post and wonder what it has to do with educational technology, thinking and learning, or teaching, I suggest that you can find hints to this open-ended fable in some of my previous posts. I certainly do not know what the moral of the story will be.]

So Apple has come out with the iPad. Not news. We knew it was coming. Everyone is venturing their predictions about this, the latest in a successful series of innovations from a company we expect to roll out new things at least once a year. Ed tech people tweet about where the iPad might fit into (or “revolutionize”?) education. David Pogue critiques, the ATT network-busters scoff, and we all read every word of it, secretly wishing someone handed us a free iPad to test and review.

The same week, 721 collaborative groups of creative folks  share their latest innovations for digital media and learning. With far less fanfare than Apple — but equal passion and hope– they toss carefully crafted 300 word catalysts for change into a web-based competition for thousands of dollars and a chance to alter the face of learning. [Full disclosure: I am one of them.]

The same week, hundreds of thousands of teachers wrap up their mid-year grades, probably entering them into an online or electronic grade book program designed ten years ago.  They dig out the materials for next week and check the plans to see what they want to change this time around. They add a new web site, change the requirements, or find an alternate way to have students explore the topic that comes up next in the curriculum.

The cycles of change and sameness rarely allow any of us much time to pause and reflect.  On a Friday afternoon I can become skeptical that those who always plan for change will be the instigators while others who rarely plan for it will only stumble into it. But then I recall last night.

Approximately twenty teachers from Toronto to Florida to Michigan joined in the second session of an OK2Ask offering, excited to create and use wikis in their classrooms. Are wikis new? Maybe not new the way iPads are or DML entries could be, but these teachers welcome fresh ideas: new ways to  draw students into their own learning, and new ways to invigorate their own professional lives. Their pace may not be the same as Apple’s, organizing strategic “rollouts” months in advance. The changes they propose are not newsworthy. But neither will be the accomplishments of an individual third grader or a high school health class.

We need to keep some perspective on  the relative value of change. Maybe everyone needs a little Friday afternoon skeptical pause to trace the ripples emanating out from the innovations we observe in progress. I am not willing to discount the small ponds. Fluid mechanics sometimes have a funny way of making ripples go a long way with less splash.

The thing I enjoy most about teaching is the chance to dream. I have been lucky during my entire adult life that my jobs have allowed me to create and implement new ideas with kids, not locked into a script or fixed curriculum sequence with specific required materials or approach. I have always been encouraged to dream blue sky “what if” scenarios for new ways to inspire and experience learning together with my students or teaching colleagues.

Today that blue sky grew wider as I collaborated together with three top-notch educators, Jim Dachos of GlogsterEDU, Ollie Dreon of Millersville University, and Louise Maine of Punxsutawney Area High School (PA) , to submit an application for a Learning Labs grant from the MacArthur/HASTAC Digital Media and Learning Competition. What a rush of excitement it has been to brainstorm, dream, and distill our ideas into 300 words or less. The excitement of the ideas keeps growing in inverse to the number of words we have available to explain it. This project, like the learning environment it envisions, is as wide as the sky and has taken on a life of its own.

(Ed. Jan 27): MacArthur/HASTAC have released the entries for public comment on the DML competition site. Please stop by, read our entry, and comment. We value your input as we prepare for the resubmission phase where we incorporate new ideas garnered from the greater public.  This competition has VERY quick turnaround, so please do it NOW. This phase ends in less than 2 weeks. Be a part of our blue sky: http://www.dmlcompetition.net/pligg/story.php?title=543

Our sky is expanding, and I cannot wait to see where the horizon may move as comments on the application expand the blue sky of our dreams.

I can’t see 3D movies. I mean actually, physically will never be able to make the neuro-messages from my two eyes converge into a three-dimensional experience. As far as I know from talking to ophthalmologists for decades, there is nothing in current medicine that will change this.

As I read all the hype about Avatar in 3D and the possibility of 3D television and more and more 3D movies in theaters, I am downright resentful. How dare they leave me behind as someone who will not be able to see any movie or show projected or broadcast in this fuzzy new medium? Don’t they know there are people like me who will be abandoned as lost?

My reaction bears a strong resemblance to some we as teachers and/or technology “leaders” may have  passed by as we jog ahead. Learning support students have always felt abandoned and resentful during lessons taught through means they cannot “see.” When the faddish, highly patterned posters with hidden images first came out over a decade ago, some of us could not force our eyes to decipher the hidden images. My most empathetic teaching colleagues finally understood how their LD students felt and changed their lessons to include multiple approaches to concepts. Just as those posters were not the only things available to hang on the wall, however, finding other options for teaching was similarly easy.

Now , with people marveling at Avatar  and promoting the prospect of ubiquitous 3D, I  am experiencing my first near-terror at technology “progress.” For the first time in my tech-loving life, I am not an early adopter. I am negative and angry that I could be considered “challenged.” I do not know of a way to “fix” it and am secretly afraid that NOT welcoming 3D will make me less of a an innovator-teacher-communicator. I don’t want to be the old person who doesn’t try the new thing. This is not my role, and I resent being pushed aside.

pause for Aha moment

THIS must be the way some teachers feel as technovations beyond their vision whizz through their worlds like hummingbirds on steroids.

I have the luxury of time to play and commitment to make the effort with every new technology, always excited to figure out how it could fit into learning. Like many edtech leaders and willing educators, I continue to add, adopt, adapt, and build my PLN with new tools. In two years, Twitter has cycled from a curiosity to a regular part of my day/week. The difference between my initial Twitter reaction and my 3D reaction is that I can’t see 3D.

If teachers truly believe that they are similarly hampered, organically or logistically, they must be feeling the same resentment and embarrassment.   Can’t See It empathy must be part of  planning for all of us who lead and teach our fellow educators, even those who simply teach alongside a peer in a similar panic.

I know I have written about the issues of  technology adoption, fear, and teachers’ professional obligation to grow and change before. But now I am living Can’t See it, and the intensity of my reaction is the perfect fuel to do my job better.

Hindsight knocks us over each New Year’s Eve. Television, radio, RSS feeds, and tweets bombard us with “top ten most important” lists to summarize the closing year or decade. And older we get, the more tempting it is to build retrospective castles of glistening memories, assuming that an Antiques Roadshow of the Mind will somehow locate unexpected value amid our mental junk. Yes, time generates perspective, but it is rarely unique or profound. Our New Year’s reflection is no more powerful than what occurs on a daily or monthly basis in classrooms of sixth graders. For us, the realizations may be new and the insights fascinating, but to others they are old hat.

What moves a glimmer of reflective thought from ho-hum to the Roadshow of the Mind Highlights Edition is one of three things: timing, audience, or true uniqueness. The same three make the difference between ho-hum classroom learning and moments that can change a kid’s life of learning. So humor me by considering my comparison of Roadshow reflections with what learning can be.

Timing

Sometimes we just happen to think the right thing at the right time when the supply is low, the commodity desirable, or the interest “in vogue.” Any New Year’s reflection or decade summary that includes a perspective about globalization, green technologies, or diversity will sell well today. The “auction value” of these thoughts and concepts is very high right now. For a student who masters new classroom concepts and relates it to any of these (or other) timely topics, the learning is more important. It may even help him/her seek a new path in life. Timing can take a personal reflection beyond a simple New Years or classroom experience to a new plain.

Audience

The appraisers will tell you that if no one comes to the auction, even your greatest mental treasure will not have any value.  If you share your thoughts on the closing decade with no one but your best friend, these thoughts have little worth beyond the mundane. You may find yourself yelling at the television when some highly-paid commentator says the same thing, but YOUR auction did not even draw any bids for those treasured thoughts.  If a sixth grader tells the teacher what he learned by making a cool multimedia comparison of the 1960s and the 1920s, it is just another gen without bidders. (My New Year’s reflection in this post is another reflection with limited audience and bidders.)

True (or likely) Uniqueness

You and I and our sixth grader buddies have little control over whether our thoughts are unique. To us, they are. My reflections here comparing New Year’s retrospectives to classroom experiences or Roadshows of the Mind seem unique to me, but more than likely, they are just a remix or coincidental restatement of what others are tweeting otr telling their best friend as I type. We’d all like to think we are unique, but uniqueness depends on circumstances well beyond our view. The Internet allows us to throw things out there to the wise crowd to assess uniqueness by user-generated “research.” Positive comments, such as a Roadshow appraiser stating he has never heard anything like it in this color or size, can add value to my reflections by increasing their likely uniqueness. But “true” uniqueness cannot be proven. Only a wide net of appraisers can generate some sort of standard of uniqueness. Wonderfully this decade, that network now includes more “us” than it ever has. Here you and I and our sixth graders work together.

So, as you add to “top ten most important ideas” list of the closing decade, don’t forget to add the sixth graders who include timely topics within their new realizations, share their ideas with audiences beyond their teacher, and even take the time to rate the uniqueness of blog posts like mine and yours  along with their own.

Our eyes cry out for images. Images grab us, connect us, and tell us the real story. We see color before words, faces and light before that. Vision is central to our understanding and growth.

In a classroom, images provide ways to dig inside our brains and find nuance,  sometimes beyond the subtleties even the richest English vocabulary can conjure. Lynell Burmark provides the concise research substantiation for including the visual in everything we teach in her blog post “Teaching Students, Not Just Standards, With Visual Literacy.” And I wholeheartedly agree with her. But I also know many teachers who have never experienced things visually because they personally are highly verbal and simply learn well from print.  Perhaps their own visual school experience was limited to the emergency evacuation map and classroom rules, laminated in perpetual faded form. To meet the requirements of the administration or suggestions of  teacher ed programs, these visually starved teachers hang a few things on bulletin boards “for the visual kids” and call it done. In their defense, they may not “see” the need for anything more. This is where they can call upon their students to help, and this may be the easiest first foray into creating a learning community that moves away from a teacher-expert to a shared learning model.

How do I do this, you ask?

Ideally, you would completely change how you present the unit, but let’s keep it simpler for you this first time. Teach the lessons much as you have before (I can’t believe I am saying this), but shift them enough that you can take time each day to Create a Vision. Perhaps instead of one of the quizzes, you can “get a grade” from students by their contributions to the Vision. Here is a brainstormed step-by-step. I hope others will comment with steps and ideas, too.

1. Be honest. Tell the kids what you are doing: This unit we are going to Create a Vision together as we learn.

2. Strip the bulletin boards and start fresh.

3. Open the cupboards where you have any old art materials, and turn the classroom computer (if you only have one) so it is a walk-up station facing the kids, maybe at the side of the room so you can see what they are doing.

4. Beg, borrow, or buy a new printer cartridge for sharing paper-based Visions created on the computer.

5. Beg, borrow, or plead for a projector to connect to the computer for sharing electronic Visions.

6. As you teach, have students create a Vision of what they learned. This can happen every day or two in class. With very young students, show them how first. It can be as simple as selecting an image from Google Images or from CompFight (reviewed here – for images without copyright concerns!) that “explains” what we learned today and helps us remember it or as detailed as a concept map (both visual and verbal) or as creative as a “poster.” Those who like to draw or create collages can use paper, but t does not have the lasting portability of an electronic vision. There are tons of free, online tool options. Here are just some of those we have reviewed on TeachersFirst.

My favorite ones (lately):

Bubbl.us – reviewed here and with an example below. Concept maps/grphic organizers made by YOU- can be shared, done collaboratively, and ADDED to or changed as the unit progresses– revisiting the vision!

Glogster EDU- reviewed here. Online tool to make electronic (or printable) “posters.” Can have all the glitz and trashy look of a preteen jewlry store. Certain to appeal both to students who have not yet developed visual “taste” and those who HAVE.

Diagrammr- reviewed here– no membership needed, very quick, but does not save for return visits

Voicethread- reviewed here– images with narration!

Any comic creation tool: (there are many more–search Teachersfirst for comic and tool)

GoAnimate-reviewed here

Bubblr- reviewed here

Pixton- reviewed here

Other electronic/printable poster makers/ tools for adding text to images:

Automotivator -reviewed here

Captioner- reviewed here

BigHugeLabs Magazine Cover Maker- reviewed here

PicLits- reviewed here

Scrapblog -reviewed here (makes a scrapbook more than a poster)

7. Extend the vision by sharing and revisiting it. Post the student-made visions; put them on the projector as students com in the next day; have students explain them; let others add to them and correct them; rate them; give students stars to mark Favorite visions (even on the  bulleting board). Essentially PLASTER the room and your class’ experience with visions. Ask students to make a “memory book” of visions from the school year (paper or electronic) and email it to themselves or save it for posterity. You will be amazed what they feature as highlights of their learning.

———–

To practice what I preach, here is a concept map for this blog post “lesson,” created with bubbl.us.  (I would embed it here, but we need to upgrade WordPress MU to be able to do so….another story…). You can interact more fully with the map here. (I can’t give you access to change it without making you a “friend” on bubbl.us). Click to see the full map! Are you getting the vision?

If there were one thing I would like to model to the teachers I work with and students I teach, it is risk taking. Yes, I know that many teens need no encouragement to take foolish risks. (I raised two kids and taught hundreds, maybe thousands.) Those risks, the physical kind, are not the ones I am advocating. To be real thinkers, we need to be willing to share ideas out loud which might otherwise stagnate in silence inside our skulls — or insolently kick up a lasting intellectual headache.

A day or two ago, I was fortunate enough to hear that one of my presentation proposals was accepted for ISTE 2010 (the conference formerly known as NECC). It should not surprise me that, of my three proposals, this was the one that was the greatest risk: an idea I had never really shared out loud but had held for some time. I don’t know if I have ever even heard or read anyone on the topic. It is just an idea that had been kicking the dirt inside my head for quite a while.

The rush of validation I feel that others thought this idea was “worthy” is a rare occurrence. I can point to times in my life when I have felt the same way, always because I took the risk to step off a creative cliff. I want all teachers to feel that rush, to model it, and to help their students find it.

This may sound as though I am advocating for wholesale disruptive behavior or challenge to authority. Actually, I am simply saying that we, as teachers, need to say those things that we wonder inside. We need to say them to kindergarteners and to high school seniors. Such opportunities should not be reserved for professorial types or op-ed writers. We need to be honest when we question, muse, or mentally hum:

Sometimes I wonder why we teach this…

Was this really the cause of the civil war? The way out of the Depression? The Founding Fathers’ greatest hope?

What would Martin Luther King, Jr. say if he saw me teaching about him this way?

Why is this story the one they chose to put in this anthology?

Why is this work considered a masterpiece? It’s hideous.

I know we cannot confuse students by barraging them with risk-taking ideas when they have no solid ground, but dropping a few into the conversation once in a while is the most honest way we can help them find lifelong curiosity and innovative thinking of their own. Maybe you could raise a flag with a question mark and cliff icon as a signal when you ask them, but you must ask these things aloud.

You never know. You might be asked to speak at a conference among your peers and those you admire. Oh, the presentation topic that was accepted, you ask? “Dimensions of Creativity: A Model to Analyze Student Projects.” Guess I am kind of hooked on this creativity thing.