The Ripe Environment: Backchannels exist.

Whether we provide students or teachers with a backchannel, one will form. So long as there is more than one voice in a learning environment, the need to be heard will be undeniable.

Students may pass notes or they may text message in their pockets.

Teachers may point to a highlighted passage or simply make a face of disgust.

These things are not meant to stay in the background. They are essential, and as such, must be elevated to their rightful place in the classroom. The backchannel must influence the front-channel and must become the front-channel if the discussion and learning going on there is more important.

But, before I get too ahead of myself, let me set my definition of a backchannel:

A backchannel is the running commentary (critiques on, questions about, distractions from, references for, resources under) the dominant information stream. This dominant stream could be a lecture, discussion, video, or any other attention getting activity that would normally occupy the majority of the learners.

This may sound like quite a distraction. Why should we bring the note passers into the discussion? Why should we encourage distraction? Because it is how we learn.

Kelly Christopherson does a really great job of highlighting how a backchannel actually functions in a Ripe Environment, but I think the hardest thing to understand about a backchannel is balencing the two things that inherently have to go on within an classroom, but are not always so center stage. He says it this way:

Watching the crowd made me realize that we have a long way to go as educators. Many people in the room seemed to be having difficulty with the two things going on at once. Maybe that is why so many educators become frustrated with the use of cellphones or laptops in their classes; they don’t see how the two things can be going on at once.

The rapid fire writing down of resources, texts, or quotations is all well and good during a class or PD session, but what about questioning those things. When does that happen? If all learning is conversational and requires relationships, when are those relationships born and when do those conversations occur? They occur during the backchannel, if and only if one is set up and is relevant to those in the audience.

The experience that Kelly describes above is one that happens far too often. Those who do not find the backchannel relevant write it off as distracting, or worse, destructive. They want the front-channel to be the only channel, even though their brains and pens are commenting non-stopped on what is being said. We need to teach the value of commentary, fact-checking and questioning. We need to construct The Ripe Environment for the backchannel.

What we need from “the district.”

The Principal of the Online School in my School District asked me a really interesting question regarding the growth of our vision within the district and the region. She asked, “What are the 2 or 3 big pieces that we need from the system/district?”

I was taken aback by this question. Is it possible that my district really wants that kind of input? Can I really influence the future just by asking for it?

This question begs us to examine what we want to ask of our institutions. Many times we just assume that our institutions are not interested in what we have to say or what we would like to create, but perhaps they just need to know what it is that we need. So, this is what I have been thinking about:

What are the 2 or 3 big pieces that I need from “the system” in order to create the Authentic Learning Environments I have been writing about, podcasting about, trying to create, and aching to find?

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• We need teachers who do not have to pile technology-rich learning experiences on top of their every day classrooms. We need teachers who are hired to simply do the work of creating a ripe environment for students online (or are at least shared with a brick and mortar in some kind of ratio that makes sense).
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• We need to be able to rewrite the rule book a little on what tools are okay to use in classes. It should not be a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. It should be a conversation about which technologies really do produce the most authentic learning for the most students.
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• Ideally, I want access to a learning spa, where teachers can come in and learn all that they can about teaching online without the fear of being rushed or having to regurgitate the information for students. I want a place that will create culture among students, a place to do projects with kids that will get them comfortable with the tools they will need in order to take courses online. I want a place where teachers are encouraged to create a community, to have a shared vision, to stay informed, and to create something new. It would be nice if that place existed as a brick-and-mortar entity and not just as a consistent webinar meeting.

What would you ask for if you knew your district was listening?

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The New Graduation Requirements

I have been thinking a lot about how we have the same graduation requirements that we have always had. We may have upped the number of Math and English classes, but each student has to do the same things in high school, jump through the same hoops. Why is it that none of the new literacies and skills are included in the graduation requirements? Why should each student accomplish the same things in four years, when they will all be doing different things with their lives? Shouldn’t we be preparing our students to compete, to stand out in a crowded field of applicants? Well, this podcast tries to answer a few of these questions.

The Discovery School within a School

A colleague of mine and I were brainstorming all of the technology implementation possibilities for the next school, when he suggested that what we were talking about was not merely two classes (Social Studies and Language Arts) collaborating, but that we were shifting the paradigm of teaching to a School within a School.

On this podcast, I attempt to flesh out what a technology-centric School within a School would look like and I hit upon a couple of things:
1. Online interactive notebooks.
2. Collaborative note taking.
3. Curriculum wiki’s that are edited by students and teachers.
4. Teacher reflective blogging.
5. Strands of curriculum that students could learn all disciplines within.
6. Synchronous and Asynchronous online discussion.