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Question 125 of 365: Who moved my privacy?

Published on May 5, 2010, by in 365 Questions, Uncategorized.
Portrait of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)
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Virginia Woolf wasn’t kidding. Having a room of one’s own matters. That is why teachers who keep their materials on carts are the ones who we pity. It is the reason why we still have stigma around cubicles. It is the reason that we put our names on doors.

In a couple of weeks, I will lose my own room. For the past 9 months, I have been able to meet with people on my own terms. I have been able to put my children’s artwork on the walls. I have been able to avoid ridicule from everyone who ventures into our office for my manual typewriter sitting on my desk.

We are all moving to a historic school building, one of the first ones built in my district. And this is rocking our department to our very core. We spent at least an hour today meeting to just discuss the anxiety around the move (not the move itself, but dispelling the anxiety around it). There is a serious reorganization underfoot and it makes everyone nervous. The feeling in the air was that our family was splitting up. It was a divorce proceeding, or at least the aftermath of one.

“On this day, you can pack your stuff. The next day, you will no longer be able to visit your old home. The day after that, you will be surrounded by strangers.”

This isn’t what worries me, though. I could care less about the loss of being around a few key people. I usually talked with them through online collaborative means, anyway. The thing I am worried about is losing my own space, and losing my sanity along with it. There are very few places that I can really be alone in thought. My room was one of the last vestiges of a bygone era.

For years I lived in the basement. I did this on purpose. As soon as my parents would let me, I moved all of my solid-wood furniture down to the basement and set up camp. I put up christmas lights on the ceiling. I plastered the walls with posters from the local art movie house. I let the technology on my desk spill over onto my dresser and on my bed and on the bookshelf and on the floor. This was the space that other people only visited when I asked them.

I don’t want to return to those days, but I do wish that I could figure out how to preserve some of that privacy. For as open as I am about my work and my collaborative instincts, I feel the need to have a space to spin around in my chair if I need to and not be questioned about it. I am not in any way looking forward to going back to sharing the music I choose to listen to with others. The privacy that I crave is the kind that relaxes shoulders and puts feet on tables. The kind of privacy I desire lets me put up sticky notes and record videos of them.

I want to be able to go for a few hours at a time without having to put up a facade of work sarcasm. The small talk gets ridiculous after a point. And, that point is about after the first 15 minutes of the day for me.

So, I internalize this privacy and I put all of the christmas lights into my head. I use headphones and I step out to make phone calls. I drop out of the space that is supposed to be so colegial. I find reasons to be away from co-habitation. And that is exactly what it is. It is an environment in which we are all a part, but no one has the space to create something new. Everything just seems to take on the sanitized undertones of being civil to one another all of the time.

And this is the grand irony. In all of my calls for collaboration, I still want it to be a choice. I want to be able to go in and out of collaborative spaces at will. I want to be able to begin from a place of personality rather than homogeneity. And for me, this isn’t negotiable.

My privacy isn’t up for debate. Whether or not my official space is found within cubicle or an office, I will always seek out a room of my own. I will plan on finding the spaces that will let me set up shop and let my stuff spill out onto the floor. I will intentially create works that require collaborative spaces that others CHOSE to come into rather than are set as a default.

While I do not bemoan change in my life, I believe in marking its passing. Others can be nervous about shifts to job description or responsibilities, but the only thing I will be looking for are places to ask real questions and get beyond the political fight awaiting all unchosen spaces.

If I had a glass in my hand I would raise it to this:

To finding the next room of my own, wherever that may be.

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Question 69 of 365: Why is action such a surprise?

Published on March 10, 2010, by in 365 Questions, Uncategorized.

I have had a number of conversations recently that have resulted in someone saying that they were surprised that things were getting done. They were surprised at action. While I was somewhat baffled by the reaction, it made me think about what the root of this surprise might be.

Getting things done has traditionally been hard. It has required labor, huge amounts of time, or many people who were highly skilled in the areas that needed attention. Action has required a level of organization and planning that almost insurmountable considering everything else that needs to go on. It also has necessitated permission to actually “do” something. Meetings must be had, protocols must be followed, the chain of command had to remain intact.

In fact, we had so much protocol, there is even an entire mystique and formula for who you should cc or bcc on an e-mail. We have created a space that requires little action in any given day. We have set up systems to look like getting things done: Things like conference calls with the vast majority of participants muted, like conferences without the time to implement what you learn, like tracking systems for time/milage/payment that are removed from the ideas and the tasks that generated them.

Action has become foreign to many. Because we don’t produce any products, we don’t have things to show for our work at the end of the day. We have become inbox cleaners and document hounds. We wait, in a bad way, for people to finish their part of the problem for us to start on ours. Action is a surprise when we find it.

I am a firm believer in creating at least one thing every single day of my life, and I believe that this is my humble (or not so humble if I keep talking about it, I suppose) way to make action unsurprising in my life. The things that I create (Blog posts, trackable conversations, online courses, companies, learning objects, and collaborative spaces) may not look like much in the face of people who create real objects, but I believe that in my own way, I am trying to stave off the starvation of ideas. I am trying to figure out how to solve the problems, and then actually solve them. I am trying to answer my e-mail, not pass it around to someone else. I am trying to engage those who are unengaged in the process. I am trying to solicit others as directly as I can to act on their own behalf.

Because action should not be a surprise. It should be a regular part of our day, something that we celebrate and see in everything that we do. We should see the change we create. We should see the products, even if they take some time. We should see the spaces that we inhabit as malleable, because getting things done isn’t hard anymore.

It stopped being hard when we could create virtual goods and services. It stopped being hard when we could create things on our own and solicit help from people outside of our organization. It stopped being hard when organization became as easy as a hashtag.

So, start a school. Start a business. Start a project that requires something important of you. Be deliberate in engaging others in conversation. Intentionally break protocols in your organization so that you can get things done. Not haphazardly. Not unreasonably. Purposefully and with a huge amount of hope: Act. Do things. Now.

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Question 51 of 365: What do we model in our networks?

Published on February 21, 2010, by in 365 Questions, Uncategorized.
I believe that I am not modeling the uses of my network that I actually use my network for. If I have created my network, I have done it wrong. Let me clarify further…

I model the link dump quite often by connecting my delicious feed to twitter. What I actually want is conversation about those resources. I model the connection of all spaces, when I actually only want to connect with an individual. I model the information overload that I actually seek to stop it. This is not okay.

Mostly, it is not okay because I am not being a good steward of my network. I am not “being the change” in the way that so many of us talk about doing it. This is not okay.

If I am a node of my network and if I am responsible for the connecting of other nodes to myself, and the further facilitation of the other nodes that need to be connected. I must make the effort to establish connections that are not based upon what I think will happen in the future. I need to stop making those connections based upon how it is that I want the conversation to occur after my link dump happens or after my thought travels through the tubes I have created for it. It is simply not okay that I have created a network that I don’t want to be a part of sometimes. I am what is wrong with my network.

The connections I have made are too important to squander them. They are too valuable to waste on what doesn’t matter. For those people who want to connect to my delicious, let them do that there. For those who want to follow my questions and conversations, let them do that on my blog and through twitter.

My network has been hijacked by advertising for things that don’t give life to my network. They may lead to the ReTweet, but they certainly don’t lead to a novel idea that will change my practice. Knowing that more things exist doesn’t make my network better. Knowing who people are and why they are passionate and what kinds of questions they are answering… that is what leads to a better network. I am my network and my network is me.
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Response to Paul (on PD must be better)

Published on November 20, 2009, by in Uncategorized.

This post is in response to a comment on my last post which went something like this:

As I read your list I went back and forth agreeing with you.

Do you ever question if it is not how we do PD but the audience that we have hired and put into the “seats?”

Do you think we could stop “doing PD” if we simply hired a different caliber of professionals?

Do you worry that we have to “give(!!!) context, meaning and perspective” to teachers?

Here is my response:

I do think that it has to do with who we are talking to and what messages they will accept. However, I really do believe that if given enough reason to change, everyone will. I believe in the power of people to see something great and to become a part of it.

I also think that we could stop “doing PD” once people start thinking about networks as PD, but I still think we need to give people time away from their classroom responsibilities to actually create that network and to do their learning. We are passionate about learning what is “new”, but not everyone is. Others have to be given the time to do so, even if they are able to be a networked learner. They need to have the space to network.

All learners need to be given a space that has context, meaning and perspective. While I may create a lot of the context for what I do, I live it every day. I cannot expect people who do not blog to understand the context of blogging. I cannot expect people who do not use twitter to understand the context and meaning of a twitter conversation. And, I cannot expect people who do not use wikis and revision history to create a perspective to gain that perspective by doing anything other than actually using wikis and looking at revision histories.

When I say give, I believe that I am giving an experience. The experience is what matters to me. It is what will allow them to start creating context, meaning and perspective. Nothing else will do this and expecting them to create that experience on their own is just a little to harsh for me.

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SpeedGeek Learning Version .1

Published on November 9, 2009, by in Uncategorized.
I am pleased to announce the following features within the first prototype at http://speedgeeklearning.com:
I would love it if you would test out all of them and see what there is to see. I would also love any feedback that you can provide this prototype, either by simply e-mailing it to me or by leaving comments on the Planning site (if you don’t have access to that yet, let me know).

The other two things you can do to help the project at this point are as follows:
  1. Think of any way that you could use the SpeedGeek Learning platform within your own work. If there are any videos that you use and would like to collaborate upon, let’s set you up with an instance of your own. If there are certain big questions you would like to answer, let’s answer them with video and collaborative documents. Start to think about pushing the platform to be what you would like it to be. I am up any ideas you have. Just let me know.

  2. Spread the word that the prototype is available. I would love to get as many people answering these questions in the collaborative document and passing the link around as possible. If you feel the need to blog about it, do so. If you feel the urge to tweet, please do so. I pushed out the initial idea, but this is the first version that I can actually show off.

Thank you so much for your continued interest. I can’t wait to get to phase two, which will include:
  1. Recording your own videos within the interface.
  2. Analytics about individual video views
  3. Greater collaboration with the presenters of the sessions
  4. More ways to organize the sessions
  5. Further design work to flesh out the platform
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Conflict of interest

Published on June 20, 2009, by in Uncategorized.

I accidentally posted this too soon, but here is the official version
of this idea (which is bound to change at some point).
 
What does it mean when you are faced with the following challenge:
 
The place that you work has given you the freedom to explore different
learning platforms, work with creative people, collaborate on process,
policy, and pedagogy, and the means to not have to say no too often.
 
The future you see for education is different than what is being planned.
 
The opportunities to branch out and create your own learning spaces
have never been more numerous or more engaging.
 
The community you actively engage in advocates for open communication
and documentation of every move forward that you make with your own
learning.
 
The boundaries on that communication have never been more clear: “Some
meetings are secret.”
 
The platforms for learning and support that you use are at odds with
“having someone on the other end of the line” when something goes
wrong.
 
So, what here is a conflict of interest. Can all of this coexist and
not create chaos, unrest or animosity between my job, my network, my
living, and my passion?
 
(Too vague? Give me a few months, and perhaps specifics will surface.)

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The most trusting of folks

Published on June 9, 2009, by in Uncategorized.

We trust that things will happen , that the projects we are working on
will eventually see the light of day.
 
We trust that by sharing our information and learning, good things
will occur. We trust that feeds are freedom and voice if virtue.
 
We trust that when we create something of value, that others will
recognize that value.
 
We trust that tomorrow will, in fact, be another day.
 
We trust that change will occur if we will it into being. We trust
that learning isn’t static.
 
We trust that a great many things will be stable, though too.
 
We trust that networks are not based upon the platform they were
created in. We trust that people will still be humane when faced with
the possibility of being so.
 
We trust that truth still matters.
 
Or, at least I do.

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What winning looks like.

Published on May 22, 2009, by in Uncategorized.
Interactive whiteboard at CeBIT 2007
Image via Wikipedia

I have been quite energized by a lot of the basketball games that have been going on during the playoffs this year. There have been a lot of tight games and quite a few overtimes. As with anything that I am engaged in, I bring it back to learning.

It is my contention that there are a lot of really “close games” in education at the moment. With the amount of budget cutbacks and lack of consensus on what the best technology investments are for education, it is hard to see anything as coming out as a clear winner. The conversations are all happening (Online Learning, Technology Integration scaling, Netbooks, Cell Phones in the Classroom, Blended Learning, Student ePorfolios, Interactive Whiteboards, and a few others), but it remains to be seen whether any of them will make for long lasting changes in education.

So, what does winning look like?

When will we know that the inroads that Interactive Whiteboards have made are enough to change who controls information in the classroom?

Does winning look like the “No Cell Phones” Signs coming down?

Does winning look a 1:1 netbook program where the kids actually own the laptops?

Does winning look like every student having an ePorfolio filled with artifacts from their required elearning or blended learning class?

I really want to know.

(By the way, I do get the fact that “winning” isn’t really an appropriate metaphor for the kind of change we are looking to create. I understand that there are lots of competing factors, and not just two simplistic sides. But, my hope is that it will create some discussion at least.)

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Communal living

Published on May 10, 2009, by in Uncategorized.

I never realized just how important community was to me until my wife
and I asked our best family friends to come and live with us while
they are saving up to buy a house.
 
For many years I have written about online communities as being an
essential part of authentic learning. Yet, I have never lived in such
close quarters to another family, and thus did not know how much is
learning by being a part of a close-knit real-life community.
 
Daily I learn what actions by my children and theirs “really mean”. I
now know why personal space has so much value. I know what to expect
from our community and what my community expects of me.
 
The reason for this post is that it has gotten me thinking about our
need for a nurtured real-life community that supports everything we
attempt to change in education. While I would like to think that the
twittersphere is all that I need for support and community, I need the
people that I can look straight in the eye and brainstorm the greatest
learning activity with.
 
I guess I will just state this idea as a challenge to myself: if I am
not cultivating my real community as hard as I am doing so for my
online community, I will never be able to accomplish all of the things
I would like.
 
Or, to put it another way:
 
The number of people you can touch with your work depends upon how you
work with the people you can literally touch. (Although, that sounds a
little creepier than I wanted.)

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I won’t buy anything that only does one thing

Published on May 3, 2009, by in Uncategorized.

I have been thinking a lot about this recently: I don’t want anything to do with a device that only does what it was advertised to do. It is something that I have slowly realized as over he last few years as I went through the experience of using a Smart Board, CPS clicker system, an iPod touch and an Apple TV. The two former products are meant to do one thing well. They are advertised specifically for educational purposes, and they work. But the two latter products are meant to do anything that the community makes them do, and they are not specifically marketed as educational components.
 
The latter products I keep on coming back to because they can do more and more as the community supports future development, and I guess that this is the difference between products I want to use and ones I don’t. The ones I care to use for education, are the ones with built in communities. They are the ones that get pushed to their full potential.
 
So I guess what I am saying is that if I am ever put in change of large purchasing decisions for a district or school, I will be choosing to purchase and support products that connect together and have a community surrouning them.
 
For example: I am right now using my iPod touch with an open source program called boxee (remote on the touch and the full program on the Apple TV) that is a full fledged media center in order to watch powerful TED talks in high definition on my TV using WiFi to stream the content. It is all connected.
 
Shouldn’t it always be this way?
 
(As an aside, I realize that this example is filled with apple products. I don’t believe that apple has a monopoly on connectedness or hackability, it happens that this is the community that I associate with most easily. I would actually love to hear about other devices that you keep on coming back to because they increase in value over time.)
 
Sent from my iPod

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