Question 127 of 365: Whose hands are we in?

I used to have trouble reading. Not with the words that were on the page or with figuring out the metaphorical language either. I had trouble listening to what the author had to say. I constantly let my world view crowd out anything that was being intended. It can be said, that for a time, I couldn’t read.

Specifically, I couldn’t read Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. I couldn’t understand that there could have been a time when people thought of God as only angry and not filled with grace and love. I kept apologizing for the author. I kept on injecting my evangelical upbringing into the equasion because that is the only way that it made sense. My background blinded me to the truth that was meant to strike fear into anyone that heard those words. When I spoke from this ignorant perspective, my English teacher corrected me, and rightfully so. He wanted me to be able to see what was really there and not what I was putting there in its place.

I would like to think that I can read now, that I can listen to everything that is coming in and respond to it as truth. I would like to believe that my response to the world is not of replacing reality with my own, but in responding to the reality that other represent so that we can all exist without modification.

But, I’m not sure I still can read things while I suspend my own world view. I’m not sure that I can have conversations without my narrow-minded focus getting in the way.

Today, I had a discussion about the virtues of collaboration, as I do on many days. This time, though, I monopolized the conversation because people were looking to me for possibilities. I brought forward options for co-authoring a resource. I put together a collaborative document, and then let the idea fly.

My question is, what didn’t I read by doing this?

What world-view, no matter how steeped in my own experience, is causing me to keep reliving the same event with my English teacher all those years ago. Back then, I was told I was wrong. Today… nothing.

The biggest reason for it is that I didn’t allow allow silence to occur as it naturally would as people are thinking. Akward pauses do not mean that people have nothing to contribute, but I treated them that way. I didn’t allow the pause to mean as much as the note (to borrow one of my favorite musical metaphors). If I was half the collaborator that I am claiming to be, I would have let people not talk for more than 30 seconds. I would have asked people their stories about their own co-creative endeavors. I would have not tried to “push-back” on others ideas, but simply listen and try to absorb what it is important.

Here is one thing that I believe: All the world is a text.

Not a stage or a performance or a game or a challenge. The world is a text, to be read and understood. To be listened to and noted. It doesn’t need my additions in order to be complete. It needs me to underline and annotate. It needs me to put up sticky notes and tell others just how great it is.

And if the world is a text, I need to read it better. The information is there, I just have to try and figure out what it is telling me.

So, here is what I would like to do:

1. Take 1 e-mail a week and try to figure out with other people exactly what is being communicated. I would like to dissect the diction and parse the syntax. I would like to analyze the stories and try and see the significance of the words. I would like to ascertain the author’s purpose and use all of this information to better figure out just what the relationship is between the sender and myself.

2. Take a single meeting a week and not talk. I would like to take copious notes on everything that I hear, but I would like the luxury of not talking in at least one meeting a week. I would like to use this time to hone my listening and contextualizing skills.

3. Draw a lot. I am a terrible artist, but there is nothing that is so honest as a few chicken scratches. I don’t feel awkward about being wrong in a drawing. I can represent the texts that I see around me, and be proud that I am doing my best to represent them alone because I don’t know how to be more artful. In writing, I can make things more descriptive (and perhaps deceptive) than they really are. In a crappy drawing, they are what they are.

In the end, I want to be in the hands of anyone that is angry. I want to get caught up in the text of those experiences. I want to know them intimately and believe that they are someone’s truth. Those hands are the only kind that matter to me at this point because the hands that I chose to create only support an increibly small amount. I want big strong hands, those that support everything we need to experience the texts around us.

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Staying away

This is the first time in a few years that I did not attend NECC
virtually. I have never attended physically, but I have anticipated
all of the thinking and writing that happens during this conference.
This year, however, I am on vacation. I have not taken a vacation from
thinking or pushing myself in all things ed tech. Rather, a vacation
from the competition for attention. A vacation from large halls with
standing room only (for even virtual attendees). A vacation from
second-hand commentary standing for research.
 
Really though, this vacation isn’t about escaping NECC. It is about
sleeping on a hammock with my daughter and waiting for the warm Austin
wind to take us away from everything that plugs in.

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

What I would be doing tomorrow…

Because of my deep love of words, I have always been very excited by unique writing projects (such as NanoWriMo and Myths and Legends), but this one is by far the best thing I have seen in a very long time.

If you haven’t seen 1,000,000 Monkeys yet, please go there now and check it out. It is basically a writing space that allows you to collaboratively create a story based upon the idea that socially choosing the path for the story will end up making for a much more interesting read. The possibilities are endless for this type of writing, but I will let their FAQ explain it a little better:

This site attempts not only to harness the literary power of one million “monkeys” typing but also to generate some truly wonderful texts and social networks. It is part Exquisite Corpse, part Choose Your Own Adventure, and it works by having multiple authors work on the same stories with each adding their own segments. Each segment (or snippet) will have the opportunity for 3 offshoots — those that are ranked highly will gain offshoots of their own, and those that are ranked poorly will wither and die.

If I were in the classroom, I would be using this site for the rest of the school year to write a story that twists and turns around every writing thought my students could build upon. However, since I am not, I will need to live vicariously through someone else. If anyone else uses 1,000,000 monkeys before the year is out, let me know. I think it is just BANANAS (pun most definitely intended).

So, Any Takers?

The Ripe Environment: The Markers

The “I know it when I see it” form of collaboration is no longer valid.

We need new ways to tell if learning is happening through group contribution. We need to be able to assess collaboration, but we can’t do it the same way that we assess writing or proficiency. Those skills are much easier to boil down to a continuum or rubric. Others have tried, and we have been for the most part satisfied with their traditional, enigmatic, and mostly non-educational continuums for collaboration.

These forms, however, are not worthy of our cause. They provide us with a way to see things in an abstract sense, showing a fictional path to collaboration that is just as hopeless as using the term as a buzzword to show that change is occurring.

Instead, I would like to outline the types of collaboration that occur in The Ripe Environment. These are the markers that we should be striving for and looking for:

1. Learning objects to be used by multiple learners, created by multiple learners. (This does not include one person writing or creating and the others supplying their input. True collaboration means that everyone has their fingerprints on the potting wheel.)
2. Collaborative asynchronous lists. (Never underestimate the power of listing. And yet, the power is not in the listing. It is in the reordering, reorganizing, and reconstituting a list. Think of wiki collaboration here.)
3. A followable thread of discussion (This can be through linking, commenting, or something like voicethread)
4. Shared Space with over 10 revisions (Any object or space that has been edited or revised more than ten times by multiple authors can be considered a respectable work of collaboration).
5. A mash-up or remix of anything (This type of collaboration marker is the halmark of true collaboration. The best examples are when the masher doesn’t know the mashee. That is when the unintended (but most amazing) concequences of sharing and collaboration kick in.)

Obviously this is not an exhaustive list. What are the other markers of collaboration in The Ripe Environment?

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.

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.

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).
• 
• 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.
• 
• 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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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.
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• Students are not engaged by redundancy. They are engaged by novelty and by authenticity.
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• Survival isn’t for only the fittest, most savvy, or greatest players of the “education game.” It is for all.
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• 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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Observation with teacher.

I had the pleasure of observing another teacher in my school today who teaches the 8th grade. We are creating a partnership of practice (or something with less alliteration) so that we can find out exactly what good teaching looks like from different personalities, in different classrooms, with different demographics. It is something that I really don’t feel like I do enough. I know what my own teaching looks like and I know what the teaching of teachers looks like. But, how connected am I to the practice of other teachers when I can’t be in their classrooms? I must constantly remind myself that the answer to the question that authentic learning presents should not always look like MY CLASSROOM. It is the approximation of an ideal, the learning environment as work-in-progress. Plus, it gives me so much more time to reflect upon what I do that it seems ludicrous that I don’t make more time for it. No matter what my future job description looks like, I always want to observe classrooms and be a part of this. It amazes me.

1. 
• I really like the ways in which students immediately were proud of solving the puzzle. Does it approximate success?
2. 
3. 
• I like the idea of a more relevant poem.
• Is there a greater purpose for this kind of thinking/writing?
4. 
• Do kids settle for just those answers when they are enumerated?
5. 
• How can the bigger questions be answered in the student discussion as well as the teacher-led discussion?
6. 
• The relevancy to student life is easy to see. Is there any way for students to be as critical of the lyrics as they are of the news article?
7. 
• I love the modeling. What kind of modeling works the best (student created, teacher created, discussion created)?

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Imagery in Blogging (and Cell phones in the Classroom)

As my students work more and more in the non-fiction realm due to their new found niches, they have a tendency to lose sight of just how descriptive and beautiful their writing can be. As a blogger, I have found that some of my greatest pleasure is derived from my ability to string together an image or a particularly well described passage.

A blog is informative, but stylistically so. The ability to craft a unique image within the information is a virtue that we should all be striving for. So, in an attempt to put these words into practice, here is what I am talking about.

Topic: Cell phones and iPods in the classroom

With his two fingers pushed together, carefully spreading them outward across the screen, one of my students was doing something that I had never thought of a couple of years ago. He was blogging from his iPod. Immediately, we gathered around the gadget, pondering its significance. It was distracting and powerful: the ability to blog about anything at any time. Just think if twitter wasn’t blocked at school.

I still can’t quite wrap my head around cell phones being used for things other than voice. I have been saying for quite a while that we need more laptops in the classroom, as many as there are laps. But can’t we get done most of what we need with our plans from verizon and AT&T? Watching the mini-safari browser spin into action leads me to believe that we aren’t far off from this reality.

I want my students to be thinking about how they can utilize their cell phones in my classroom not how they can sneak a look at what time it is on the display when I am not looking. Their cell phones are bejeweled with authenticity. In many cases, their cell phones are so representative of their lives that given the choice of losing a cell phone or a limb would cause them to pause to think.

Where is the research that says cell phones are great for the classroom. Well, mostly it doesn’t exist yet, at least not that I know of. If anyone has seen any great studies or has done some great work with non-laptop ITC, please share. All I have right now is anecdotal evidence from my classroom and the presentation from K12 Online 2007. Surely there is more to it than that.

I have italicized (for my students) the moments where I intentionally added imagery or description in order to make a potentially boring subject interesting (at least to me). My hope is that blogging moves closer to this style and further away from the dense writing of academic papers. Let me know what you think about either idea.

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