Learning is Change

45: Not just one thing. #LifeWideLearning16

I have made dozens of mix tapes and cd’s for people that I love. I have written songs for them too. I have planned romantic dinners and I have traveled long distances, all under the guise of love. All of those things were true in that they really happened. But were any of them “true love” as we might remember it from The Princess Bride? No.

Because true love isn’t a romantic dreamscape that you can walk in and out of if just wish hard enough. True love is bigger than romance or adventurous outings. It is more than love letters and gifts on appropriate holidays.

True love is watching your wife give birth to your children and knowing that she is giving more to you in that moment than you thought possible.

True love is apologizing to your kids when you have done something wrong by them, no matter how insignificant.

True love is not knowing exactly how you are going to pay for a dinner, but going out anyway because you have to talk to the one other person that makes sense to you right now.

True love is sitting next to your wife and watching as she struggles for words after receiving a concussion in a high speed skiing accident.

True love is worrying about your child’s fever that just won’t go down no matter what you do.

True love is going out for something that your family needs at 2:13 in the morning.

True love is driving for hours to see your best friend for just a few minutes before they get on a flight.

True love is the first phone call after something amazing happens.

True love is the years’ worth of ongoing texts that tell the story of the mundane life you often lead.

True love is the unexpected happy hour.

These are the things that don’t quite measure up to the platonic ideal, but are nonetheless much more satisfying. That is what makes true love “a thing.” The fact that it isn’t one thing, but rather a series of amazing things that fulfill your waking hours with life. There are many alternatives to true love, and I do not begrudge anyone theirs. But, when given the option of romance or truth, I will always choose truth.

44: Bold Social Networks #LifeWideLearning16

I have never understood Facebook. From the friending and the wall posting, I find the whole thing to be more than just a little bit gross. Every time I push the like button, it feels like I am less real than I was a moment before, like I am being sucked into a thing that makes competing for attention into the goal of our existence.

Twitter is different because it feels like there is point to posting there. I have a digital archive of every thought for the last seven years that I can search and create things from.

Youtube is different because I get to decide how my videos are displayed and how they are shared. I also get to be a part of a community of creators that are all building something together.

Google+ is different because the conversations are within a community. All of the people engaged there are focused on a given topic, looking to learn together.

Medium is different because it is all about communicating and creating voice. So many new ideas are being shared openly and honestly in words that seem to flow into one another. The passion is so blisteringly apparent.

But, Facebook, is about friendship and family at the core. It isn’t about the community or the words or the wonderful work that people are engaged in. And because of this, it feels false. It feels like something that I am passively succumbing to. And I don’t want to.

I want real friends. I want to have real conversations. I don’t want to find out about your birthday because of an alert on a social network. I don’t want to find out about your baby’s latest milestone because the number of likes on that post tells the algorithm that I should see it in my feed. So, I prefer to meet in coffee shops and bars. I prefer to catch up after 3 months of not hearing a single thing from you. I prefer to be real-life friends and not Facebook friends.

43: I have been lost for years. #LifeWideLearning16

I do not even attempt to remember directions now. I don’t know street names or recognize how many blocks are between landmarks within my own city. In many cases I don’t care about cardinal directions other than to recognize that the Mountains are to the west as I head toward them from my home in Littleton.

Instead, I only listen to the little voice in my pocket, commanding me to follow the directions it lays out after analyzing traffic patterns and crowdsourcing accidents and construction incidents. I trust it so completely that I drive down roads that I have never seen before, believing that it will get me exactly to the place that I have asked. And, it does.

In fact, I get directions from my phone each and every time I leave the house, even if I have been to a location hundreds of times. Because I am consistently routed around obstacles to my morning commute harmony, I trust Waze over my own instincts. I make turns even when I know going straight will get me to where I need to go.

To put it another way, I have been lost for years.

I have no idea where I am going much of the time. That may sound like a metaphor, but it is much more real than it ought to be. I have no clue, nor do I care. Not knowing where you are going  isn’t terrifying, it is a conscious choice. It is something that I embrace willingly.

I am lost.

And my pocket can guide me home. That may seem pretty weird, but it isn’t any less true. I feel most lost is when I am out of cellular range. I feel unhinged at that point, incapable of finding the right turn that comes next. So I drive aimlessly until I find the cell signal again.

I’m not sure it is altogether different than trusting a higher power to find your way. I trust little signals in the air. I trust that my battery wont give out before I arrive. I trust that passengers in other cars are keeping the data up to date enough for me to pull into the driveway at exactly the right time.

You being lost isn’t so hard. It is losing your cell phone that matters most. I don’t know that I could handle the daily commute. At least no without memorizing the dozen or so roads I have traversed for the last 3 years. And who wants to do that?

42: Fiddling with Style Sheets #LifeWideLearning16

I want to be able to code.

I want to be able to start with an idea and make it happen by tapping out a few hundred lines in objective C or Javascript. I want to be able to look at what is going on behind the scenes of my WordPress install and know all of the reasons why my blog is loading slowly or causing my hosting provider to keep contacting me for hogging all of the CPU power on a shared server. I want to be able to make an app or extension that people can instantly use and find value in.

Instead, I hack things together. I copy and paste code and hope that it works. I string long and convoluted workflows together because I can’t build more elegant solutions. I fiddle with style sheets and send terminal commands at random to see what sticks.

It isn’t for lack of trying, either. I took coding courses in high school. I have started many a MOOC on software development. I have even paid to be a developer for the App Store and submitted a few things that I could figure out how to compile together from ready made services. This does not mean I know how to code.

Rather, it means that I lurk around code.

I read huge amounts of articles on Medium in regards to building apps and starting up companies filled with nothing but elegant code. I watch as companies compete for millions of dollars in revenue in spaces that I saw coming, but couldn’t pull the trigger on because I lack the ability to implement my own ideas. I have conversations about what I would build if I only could build. 

I don’t blame others for this shortcoming. I know it is only because I lack the will to make it happen. I sit back and wait for others to program their futures. I will write mine in words and hope that a few hyperlinks, videos and workflows are enough to get me through.

41: My Last Best Self #LifeWideLearning16

I am a loser of self.

In middle school I would read books during class. I would sit there while all of the other kids were doing their work, and I would read Michael Crichton or John Grisham. When I wasn’t reading, I was actively trying to sabotage the lessons in my Spanish or Science classes. I would often be thrown out of class for these disruptions, but no matter. In my mind, “Middle School Doesn’t Count.”

I am so glad that I lost that self.

As a teacher, I wanted my kids to have access to all of the tools they needed. We would schedule large blocks of time in the computer lab. We would check out the laptop carts whenever we could. I kept my old teacher laptop when I was issued a new one so that we could have one more dedicated machine in the classroom whenever a student needed to use it. When I was told that there were other teachers in the school who did not have regular access for their students, I was incredulous. I didn’t want to give up my access for someone else’s equity.

I lost that self too.

In my daily life, I am passionate about the work. I talk about classrooms and schools incessantly. I build prototypes of projects and systems for teachers and leaders to use. I record my thinking out loud on videos. I can write endlessly on the improving professional learning. Because of this ever-present passion, I struggle to ask about people’s lives outside of the work. I do not inquire about their children without great effort. I do not request information (or offer it) about weekend plans unless provoked to do so by someone else.

I am working to lose this self too.

I have lost more selves than I care to count, and in each iteration, I have found more to lose. I am not tied to who I was, but rather who I will become. It is both much easier and much harder that way. It is easier because I don’t have to keep all of the baggage of my middle school or high school self with me as I make decisions as a father. It is harder because I am constantly questioning “who” is making those decisions and whether or not I could be better.

The last self I lose will be in my death, and I hope that the last one is best self of my life.

The Problem with YouTube Filtering and Whitelisting in Our Schools

There are some very important legal issues to sort out in the ways we filter the internet, and more specifically, YouTube within schools. I do not believe, however, that the legal implications are the right lens to show us the way forward with an academic purpose or strategy for supporting students in learning. As Youtube represents the single largest repository of easily accessible and searchable educational content that the world has ever known, I believe that this may be one of the most pressing issues facing schools.

Further complicating matters is the work that Google has done to make it easier for districts and schools to filter out large portions of Youtube for their Google Apps for Education customers. While not well documented just yet, districts can now have more specific (and in many cases, more strict) filters and controls. In this post I will attempt to explain the current state of filtering for Youtube within Denver Public Schools, the problems inherent with this approach, and a few solutions we could implement in order to support better access to millions of minutes of educational video.

The Filter/Whitelisting In Place in DPS:

  1. We have Restricted Mode set at the network (wifi/wired) level.
    1. This means that most videos on Youtube are restricted according to these guidelines or the “other signals” outlined within the Restricted Mode. There is precious little information about what the “other signals” are, but from what I have gathered, the restrictions are on any channel that has not been specifically vetted as Educational through the now defunct Youtube for Schools program or the Auto-generated Education channel (read more about Auto-generated channels here). The huge majority of videos that are educational, are from very small channels with a few thousand subscribers or less. This means that the auto-generated Education category is unlikely to pick up on this and it will cause most videos to have to be approved individually to be used in schools.
    2. While an individual has always been able to turn on Restricted mode for their account, by locking it at the network level means that there is no simple way of switching this setting from on to off (if you don’t see it when you go to youtube.com, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page): 2016-02-16_20-14-22
  2. There are three levels four levels of users of Youtube on our networks.
    1. Non-Logged In Users: This is the level of user that most students and staff find themselves within when they click on a link to Youtube or try to watch an embedded video. In most cases, the policy above, will force them to log in to see the video. Only pre-approved videos will be available to this user type, meaning only ones that a part of the Auto-generated Education Channel or Youtube for Schools areas of youtube.
    2. Restricted Users: In DPS, these are students or anyone else that is within an organizational unit within the Google Apps domain who has been designated as “restricted”. In order to be in this user type, a student must log in to their GAFE account. This will allow them to see any videos with the pre-approved designation as well as any videos that have been deemed appropriate by “the approvers.”
    3. Unrestricted users: These are adults/staff who are designated within organizational units of our Google Apps domain as being able to view all of the videos on Youtube so long as they are logged in to their account. This means that they can see anything, but cannot approve additional videos for the Restricted Users.
    4. Approvers: In a Google Apps for Education domain, like the one in DPS, these are users within the Google Classroom Teacher google group which is designated as verified teachers within the domain. This means that each person who wishes to approve Youtube videos must go to classroom.google.com and login and then choose “teacher” and be approved to be a member of this group. Additional Organizational units can also be designated as approvers as well:2016-02-16_20-23-08
  3. There is an official approved video whitelist for our Google Apps for Education domain.
    1. As stated above, “the approvers” can add as many videos as they would like to the whitelist for restricted users to watch. Each approval goes into a single list that is not (currently) searchable and requires admin access to override (take off of the whitelist). Each video that is within this list is approved for the whole domain (K-12).

The problems inherent in the above filtering and whitelisting approach:

  • Students can’t create/upload using YouTube: There are many parts of YouTube that are about creation rather than consumption, and by filtering youtube to only be a specific set of Videos that teachers must first approve, it denies students any agency to become creators of their own content.
  • They add barriers between students and learning: If students cannot search for their own learning on YouTube, it means that their experience of learning using these resources is one of gatekeeping and not serendipity and curiosity.
  • They render secondary Youtube channels on GAFE Accounts almost unusable: Many teachers and leaders open up specific Youtube channels for specific projects and scopes of work. Only the main GAFE account is an approver of videos. So, when a teacher uploads on a separate channel, they still have to switch back to their primary account to approve that video in order for it to be seen within the network.
  • They severely hamper Embeds and Mobile devices: Because an embedded video doesn’t always know which account is logged in for YouTube, it is likely that each time a student clicks on an embedded video, it will not play correctly. This works similarly on tablets. The browser or app has to be logged into by the student in order to watch the video, and because these are shared devices, there are many issues with logging in and out. Additionally, Youtube runs its own login scheme and in many cases requires a secondary login for the GAFE account if a user has not set up his/her own Youtube channel on the account.
  • They are not flexible enough because YouTube is not a Core GAFE service: Because Youtube is solidly in the “additional Google services” and is not covered under the Google For Work agreement as a core service, it lacks much of the granular control so that certain schools can have more restrictive whitelists and other schools can have less restrictive whitelists for videos. This denies the flexibilities for an individual school (or potentially, grade level) to make important instructional decisions that directly affect their use in the classroom. This also means that any videos that have been approved for use at the high school level are approved to be viewed by kindergarteners.
  • Personalized Learning is made more difficult: YouTube specifically empowers teachers and students to curate playlists of content together that specifically meet the needs of an individual. When a teacher not only has to create the playlist, but also approve each video in the playlist, it puts an undue burden on them and it denies the role of the student for creating those playlists and proposing alternative learning routes. It decreases the level of agency of the student, systematically.
  • They explicitly tell teachers and students that they are doing something wrong by accessing Youtube: Any time a teacher runs into the following image, it makes him or her think twice before accessing that resource again. Whether we like it or not, the messages that deny access can have a cooling effect on the level of access that teachers are willing to provide for students:

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  • They confuse classroom management solutions with technological solutions: If the primary reason for the filter is to stop students from getting off task in the classroom, the issue is engagement and not technology. By placing such an emphasis on the technological solution, we run the risk of relying upon the technology for pedagogical decisions and relying upon teachers as policing behaviors rather than supporting learning.
  • They dictate specific use cases for an open-ended tool: Youtube is not one thing. It is a radio station, it is a library of brain break activities, it is a choose your own adventure narrative, and it is a repository of reflective practice for teachers. It is all of those things and more. By filtering out nearly all of those possibilities and only letting in a select few (which have to be approved one by one), we are lumping violent content with classroom videos. We are placing music videos next to profanity. We are placing historical footage next to cyberbullying. More than that, we are limiting what is possible. And if the last 10 videos that were approved within our domain are any indication, there is a lot more that is possible than just lecture videos and typical educational content:

2016-02-16_21-34-59

Possible solutions to this filtering and whitelisting problem:

I am definitely tipping my hat on some of these suggestions to the great work that the DOE has done around CIPA and E-rate. My favorite summaries of this work are by KQED in this article and this one too. I encourage everyone to read them in full.

  • Include more than just Teachers in the Unrestricted and Approver user types: One of the great things that the new revisions to the GAFE domain controls for Youtube have done is to allow for specific organizational units to be designated as either having “unrestricted Youtube access” or having the ability to “approve videos” even if they are not part of the Google Classroom teacher group. This means that whole schools (think high schools) or even small subsets of students could be given additional permissions as an effort to further increase the agency of kids in their learning as well as support earning privileges for great digital citizenship.

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  • Turn off the network-level Restricted Mode for the adult-only wireless network: As the DOE points out, there is no law that requires the filtering of teacher access to the internet. Because we have a separate wireless network for the adults in our buildings, we could turn off the filter entirely for them as a show of respect and trust for teachers in making the right educational choices for themselves and their students.
  • Create and/or leverage a robust Digital Citizenship curriculum for students and Professional Learning for adults on the use of Youtube within the classroom: Even though we can give unfettered access to the worlds largest repository of video, that power comes with a huge dose of responsibility. We must support our teachers and students in making great instructional decisions through robust professional learning for the use of video in the classroom as well as the further work of Digital Citizenship with students. We have much of this content from Common Sense Media and Google itself. We just need to implement it and provide ongoing support for teachers who are making great use of Youtube for learning.
  • Provide examples of good uses of Youtube at every grade level: Many teachers and students will only go to Youtube at school for what they use it for in their daily lives unless they are given compelling alternatives and examples of what is possible. We should be actively curating a list of playlists and channels to support great learning throughout our district. We should be supporting a network of teacher and student creators as well who could be sharing their work and telling the story of great teaching and learning within our schools.
  • Transparently communicate our legal obligations as well as our educational recommendations to schools, teachers, parents, and community members: Most school leaders, teachers, and parents are unaware of the specific legal obligations for schools to protect children. And that lack of specificity leads to Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. It also leads to implementing more filtering than we need. If we can publish widely what our legal obligations are and the educational recommendations for the uses of Youtube within the classroom, it will go a long way to supporting both the parents need for information and the teachers’ need for protection and understanding within the learning environment.
  • Treat Youtube like the rest of the internet: For much of the internet, we do not whitelist individual websites within our filters. Rather we either blacklist or use categories and tags to better filter out objectionable material. Much of the required filtering has to do with sexual acts and child pornography, and beyond that is mostly at the discretion of the district. Surely, we can come up with a better set of guidelines for such a vast resource as Youtube rather than the blunt instrument of filtering everything out and letting videos back in one by one.

I hope that this look into the filtering currently in place for Denver Public Schools makes the case for developing a pedagogical strategy for Youtube rather than a technological one. I strongly believe that the relationship between the teacher and the student is the best filter you can invest in. I want to make this recommendation within my own school system as well as advocate for it elsewhere.

In an effort to make this more transparent (at least within my own state of Colorado), I have created a spreadsheet to allow for each district to designate their own methods and models of filtering and whitelisting Youtube. If you are a teacher or administrator within any colorado district, please help fill in this spreadsheet to continue this conversation within all our schools.

40: The breath that you catch. #LifeWideLearning16

I believe in Santa.

That may be weird to say, but I mean it with 100% sincerity. I believe in the strange ritual of the chimney and the cookies and the presents. I do not believe it because there is proof of his existence. In fact, as I have purchased a great many Santa gift and placed them under the tree myself, I know this cannot be. And yet, what I see in my children as they open up their doors to find their Santa pajamas hanging from their bedroom doorknobs cannot be described by anything else but Magic.

It is a wonder in their eyes at something that cannot possibly be, but somehow exists anyway. It is a truth that builds upon nothing but itself, a circular logic that you don’t mind wearing around for a while.

I believe that science and inquiry can explain away every bit of magic that we can conjure. It dispels falsehood and superstition, laying to rest any doubt within ourselves. And the farther that we inquire, the less room there is for Magic. And that is why Santa is so important. It is the rejection of the rational and the embrace of the sentimental that allows for us to build our own myths and traditions. When we banish logic for a few short hours, we become like our own children. We see things as they do, in a brand new context, thinking that anything is possible. Because for those moments, it is.

It is precisely because we can’t live within the magic forever that makes it all the more special. Because we must come back to the understanding of real-world sled physics and American materialism, we can continue to embrace a Magical Santa for a few short hours while presents are being opened. Because there are no flying reindeer in the real world makes us banish those thoughts as we hear things that could qualify as hooves on the rooftop.

Magic is the moment before you know what really happened. It is the breath that you catch before exclaiming “Aha”. It is the difference between innocence and ignorance.

Magic is believing in Santa as a father of three when you didn’t grow up with him as a reality in a single Christmas of your own childhood.

39: Buzzfeed made me do it. #LifeWideLearning16

I’m pretty sure this question has been answered in a Buzzfeed article or two. It is so perfectly positioned to be a “listicle” that I feel as though I would be doing it an injustice to stray from the format. So, without further ado, here are the Top 5 Lessons Ben Wilkoff Learned from the Movies: You won’t believe what made it to #1!

5. Everything is beautiful, especially when you are in high school: I learned this from American Beauty. I saw this film no fewer than five times in the theater, and scene with the plastic bag flowing in the wind resonated with me for years. I am well aware that it was ridiculed and parodies mercilessly, but I found it to be just the right flavor of optimism for my uninitiated high school self.

4. Sincerity is the most sincere form of flattery: I learned this from Waiting for Guffman, a film with no hint of irony or sarcasm. Everyone is all in, and that is what I love about it. By being so sincere, the characters are human in a way that hipster sensibilities will never be able to touch. When the characters are real with one another, they are investing in the moment. It is what I try to do as often as I possibly can.

3. Your story is bigger than you. I learned this from Good Will Hunting. I still consider the moments between Matt Damon and Robin Williams to be some of the best in all of cinema, but they taught me that our stories are not entirely up to us, but rather exist in the moments between the decisions we make and those that are made for us.

2. You are both the child and the father. I learned this from Juno. As it turns out, getting older means that you can no longer see coming of age stories from the young and boundless protagonists points of view. Sadly, you must consider what the older generation knows and believes. I say “sadly” because it is so much easier to only learn things for the first time rather than seeing the regret that comes from learning them again and again. It is more complex, but ultimately more satisfying to see both.

1. We don’t always recognize that the race we are in is a race to the bottom. I learned this from City of God. When the children in the movie end up killing one another for what seems to be very little, there is no other conclusion to find other than we have reached the very lowest depths of society. Even thought trajectory is not always known, the compromises of conscience inevitably end in the lowest level of intelligence winning out. When there is no one who has come before, we will only ever have a series of first time efforts. We must listen to one another and learn what can be learned. Otherwise, we kill off our future even if we aren’t doing it literally with guns in the streets.