Question 176 of 365: When is networking just drinking with friends?

The largest technology and education conference has come to Denver. Is the one time of the year when people from all over the world get together in a single space and talk about the issues that are most important to them, whether those are of equity and access, 1:1 computing, open source software, social media, online learning, or curriculum standards. All of those conversations are going to happen this week, and it isn’t the first time they have happened, either. In fact, many of the people who are here this year were at this conference last year, and perhaps the year before. And even if they weren’t, it is highly likely that these people have met online or at another conference.

So, networking is hopeless for these people. They know each other. They have had these conversations before. The contexts are different. The setting is different too. Perhaps, even something new is created. But, the unbridled networking that is the signature of seeing new people and figuring out how they find significance in your life is not something that happens when the same people have the same conversations about the same important issues.

Instead, we just have friends sitting down for a drink with one another. And maybe that is the best thing that we can be doing right now. Maybe it has always been about finding the people that we can sit down with and share one true moment, without introductions. We need to know people before we really can see their potential as collaborators. We need to see them as consistent parts of our creative lives before we let them in to the rest of who we are and what we have to offer.

So, let’s sit down and have a drink. Let’s continue the conversations we have started. And for those new people who we have never met before, let’s start the next conversations so that in a few months or years we will be able to see those individuals as collaborators, and more than that, as friends.

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Blogs as Continuing Professional Development

I got a message on twitter that 5 posts from this blog are now available to anyone who is a part of Continuing Professional Development in Scotland. It appears as though this means that people will be able to read my blog for some kind of credit.

While I am intrigued that my writing may make its way into any type of curriculum, it makes me think a whole lot more about how we package learning materials from others.

Can we make anything into curriculum? Can we offer credit for any type of academic pursuit?

I think that the kind of work that brings outside resources into the realm of canonized professional development is just wonderful. But, since they are linking to me, perhaps I am little biased.

The cost of not doing anything…

I was in a great meeting this week where we were considering whether
or not to go ahead with a full scale implimentation of the Moodle LMS
for assessment purposes in our district. It was a great meeting not
because of the topic but the way it was being handled.
 
We were talking about the absolute costs of an open source LMS and of
staying with a custom-built assmessment solution. We were really
looking for a venn diagram moment when one of the curriculum and
instruction representatives said something really smart: “There is a
cost to not doing anything as well. It may not be a dollar cost, but
it will cost the teachers the ability to know more about their kids’
knowledge and it will cost the kids some learning opportunities.”
(Paraphrased by me.)
 
Too often we do not think about the cost of doing nothing or of doing
things too slowly. Does appathy in the face of huge choices cost our
kids the best learning years of their lives?
 
So, it got me thinking: What are the costs of doing nothing (or doing
very little) to change school?
 
Share an idea if this makes you think as much as it has made me.

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The Ripe Environment: Collaboration as Instinct

I sat at the over-long table, as I always do on Mondays and thought about the next time I would meet my students for Extended Learning Time (our version of a multi-discipline course without any set curriculum or standards to give guidance or restrict us).

“Well, it is earth day in a couple of days.”

Immediately, my colleague and I started a Google Document called Earth Day 2008. We started dropping in links to pages we found.

“Oh, I did hear something about an event on the National Geographic Channel. Did you hear about it. Something about the human footprint.”

We were pushing hard now, 25 minutes before kids arrive. Link after link being proposed as a starting point.

“What is the question we are really trying to get our kids to answer here.”
“Is Earth Day important and why?”

And we we started writing out a discussion, a plan of attach. We eventually came to the conclusion that there were others who were interested in asking this same question, experts even. And yet, within 30 minutes we created an authentic question and activity around it. Our instinct was to create and collaborate, rather than offer worksheets as an attempt at lesson planning. This is our Ripe Environment, and the class that the students came into that day was Ripe too.

They couldn’t wait to see who had the bigger footprint. They couldn’t wait to collaborate on their own weekly or monthly collection of soda cans or milk jugs. This process of not waiting to be told, of instinctively knowing that it is the right thing to do, that makes it truly authentic.

So, how do you foster this instinct for collaboration. Well, by saying yes to it as often as possible. It is my personal belief that there is never too little time to create, too little time to collaborate.

If you have only a minute:

1. Put a request for a resource out on twitter.
2. Do a delicious search instead of a google search (it is a community of people waiting to help).
3. Link to someone who is talking about it.

If you have a half-hour:

1. Start a google doc and invite a few others to join in.
2. Search technorati for new blogs, videos, and people who are interested in the same thing.

If you have a longer:

1. Start a wiki and get people to contribute.
2. Start a blog and get people to contribute.
3. Start a movement and get people to join.

Learning Language

I don’t usually post personal things on this blog, but I thought that this was just too important to leave unpublished.

My daughter is learning language at an amazing rate. She knows more words at 18 months than I thought was possible, but they aren’t just any words. They are words that are important for her. They are words that have a meaning and a context for her life.

Normally I would turn this experience into an educational rant about creating authentic places for our students to learn language and curriculum, but for now I will just leave you with this video.

iloveyou

Working with Online Elementary Teachers

Today I am working with elementary teachers who are writing courses for an online school. Whatever your stance on virtual schools, the most resistance is in the elementary sector (a totally subjective statement, by the way). Many of these teachers (who haven’t even started writing their curriculum) have had push-back from colleagues on the issue of kids’ social and developmental needs. But, when I asked the teachers at the beginning of the session why they wanted to be a part of this project, these are the reasons they gave:

• 
• Why should we limit the opportunities? There is no way for all students to benefit if we have a one-size-fits-all model.
• 
• There is something to be said for working with kids who may fall off if we aren’t there. The kids are already on the bleeding edge. We need to meet them there.
• 
• Students are not engaged by redundancy. They are engaged by novelty and by authenticity.
• 
• Survival isn’t for only the fittest, most savvy, or greatest players of the “education game.” It is for all.
• 
• If we aren’t worried about including the curriculum, the students, the pedagogy, the technology, or the authenticity that matters, what are we worried about?

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End of the Year Denouement

For all of the times this year…

that we have doubted ourselves.

that we have felt like we haven’t made a difference.

that we hoped for more.

that a lesson didn’t go according to plan.

that we have worked toward something that didn’t come to fruition.

that we have been wrong.

We must know that these things are better than any sense of certainty or definitive answers that we can muster. Doubt is the manifestation of powerful reflection. Knowing that we haven’t reached everyone shows us just how many we have reached. Hope for the future is why we are here in the first place. Failure is only a negative when it is uninspired; inspired failure is the birth of the most authentic teachable moments. The direct path toward change can’t always be plotted, even if we are working for it. But, we are changed by the work we do, and that can be enough in most cases. Finally, being wrong is beautiful when we can acknowledge it and strive to make it right.

I had to write this because of all of the great things that I have done this year, I have so many great regrets. I say that they are great both because they are large and because they are valuable to me. I hold them close to me to show me the way forward. I gather them together and wear them as a badge of honor. These are the things I will tattoo across my curriculum next year, the things that I will use to transform my teaching, again.

A Personal Curriculum Post.

The first piece of my personal curriculum that I have decided to tackle is reading 3 boy coming-of-age novels and starting one of my own. This is not something I have done absentmindedly, but rather with the strange focus of something that has true importance for my life. You see, I keep coming back to coming-of-age novels about boys who struggle within their teen years. All of my favorite books are ones that I can see from the awkward perspective of pubescent life. The only problem is that I don’t know why.

Sure, I had a pretty tough time in middle school, but everything worked out in high school, if in an overly eccentric way. I always identified with the loners and nerds, but I stopped thinking that those were bad things long ago. Why then do I seem to obsess over the minutiae of teendom. Why do I care if a boy picks up a cigarrete out of boredom or explores his city for the first time? Why am I so concerned with the first time around, when I am at least on my second? Well, in an attempt to try and figure this part of my personal curriculum out, I will be analyzing these books that have left such an impact on my reading life.

For a while now, I have been compiling a list of all of these particular influential books, and here is what I have come up with:

1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
2. The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green
3. Looking for Alaska
4. Catcher in the Rye
5. Old School
6. King Dork

I would like to analyze my affinity for each one of these books individually in the hopes of find out why they force me to keep looking that this part of my life with a critical eye. I think that I am both up for this challenge and up for doing something, anything to work through this obsession.

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.