Learning is Change

Edmodo for Online Schools… wait, for all schools.

Image representing Edmodo as depicted in Crunc...
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(Cross-posted on the Edmodo Blog. I have not taken any money for this endorsement. They just asked if I would write a review.)

I don’t usually make it a point to call attention to a particular technology as being so overwhelmingly beneficial to education as to set itself apart from those that have come before it, but in this case I will make an exception.

I have used social networks and collaborative environments with students for a number of years. Everything from Wikispaces and Google Sites to Voicethread to Ning. Each one had a significant impact on students by creating a space for student ownership and collaborative contribution. However, each time that a project ended, the community dried up and withered away. There was no underlying instinct to share or create with one another because it was always focused around only an academic understanding of student needs. By only going after part of the student, both the technology and my understanding of what was possible were severely stunted.

Enter Edmodo.

While I had used Edmodo two years ago to have students reflect upon their progress for a particular activity, both the web application and my understanding of it have advanced considerably within the last month. You see, last month our school district instituted a pilot for Edmodo as an institution. The first step of that pilot is within our k-12 Online School. Some would say that this is a poor choice for a pilot because it isn’t like a brick and mortar school with a traditional bell schedule and scarce technological resources.

Here is why I made the case for it’s inclusion in the pilot:

Every school has walls. The online school just has them in a learning management system. Every school has a gradebook. The online school’s just doesn’t require as much manual entry. Every school has curriculum. The online school’s is just hyperlinked. Every school has a hallway and a cafeteria, but until Edmodo, our Online School did not. We needed a place for students to share what was going on in their lives within a safe and school-based environment.

That was the case that I made, but I wasn’t fully prepared for the results. From the very first day of school, our students have made this space their own. They never had any doubts as to what it was or why they needed it. Here is how I know:

  • The students have asked for (and received) the creation of over 40 different groups that are both academic and social. Here is a list of what they have requested: Book Chat, Baseball Fan Club, The games lounge, lunch room, The music club, The Coffee Shop, Lego Fans!, All Sports Talk, Movie Talk, Film Fans, Sidewalk Art, The sience room, Sophomore Class!, Modern Warfare (Video Game), OtakuFans, The Official Hallway, The Bench, Click This (Photography), Recess!!, Class of 2014, aero space science, anime chat lounge, The fun Palace, Pizza Place, 5th Grade Hallway, political conversation, cat lovers, Quantem Tag-Team Underwater Basket Weaving Club, Mario club, Acting101, Help Pets, The Asimov & Tolkien Reading Lounge, field trip ideas, volleyball lovers, Hockey chat, Creative Writing Club, Let’s Talk
  • They organized and created a weekly news show for our school (completely on their own). Here is the first episode.
  • They created their own music and music videos.
  • They have shared art, photographs, and literary discussions.
  • They have created screencasts to help one another with the technology (and to do interesting things)

And that is just a taste of the things they are doing in Edmodo. I can honestly say that I didn’t know a group of students from all ages would coexist in such an open space and work together to create things of learning and beauty all because they had the tool and the opportunity to do so. Throughout this year we will see students who are more engaged and less apathetic because they feel confident that their schools is real in the ways that matter.

I can already hear detractors for this evidence. I know that they would come from two directions and I would like to tackle each one individually:

  1. An online school isn’t like a regular school. Those kinds of uses would work in MY school.
  2. That is too social. It will take away from the time that my students use for studying and doing homework.

An online school is different than a brick and mortar environment. No doubt about it. And yet, learning still happens. Students still attend class. They are still children with needs for guidance and mentorship. They still want to congregate and get to know their friends. And, in many ways, what we are attempting to do with Edmodo is what every school school be doing. We are establishing an academically-based social space. Many schools, while being physical in nature, have highly dysfunctional hallways and lunch rooms. Students bully one another and they get into fights over insignificant (and decidedly non-academic) pursuits. We are modeling the social interaction with a tool that provides for safety and co-creation. We are telling students to come in and use their judgement to ask intelligent questions and contribute their work. By stating that online schools are not places you can learn from, you are walling yourself off from the possibility that Edmodo just might save your school culture. It has done at least that much for us. Our students come to us from all places in the state and with all different backgrounds. Brick and mortar schools are equally challenged with differentiating among each type of student. The only way that we have successfully been able to meet each student where they are is to let them differentiate for themselves within Edmodo. The level of individualized learning is too massive to ignore.

As for the idea that Edmodo is too social and would take away from student achievement. I concede nothing on that point. Student achievement can only be based upon student engagement. Students who join extra curricular activities are less likely to drop out and more likely to achieve than those who do not take advantage of those opportunities. Students who stay in the school past class time to talk to teachers and one another will do better on their tests and projects. Edmodo is an essential part of the school because it is where every one of our clubs is housed. It is where the five minutes before class is held. It is the space that the kids want to talk about their classes and their assignments. They seek and find help from those that are have been there before. It is the place that they engage with the school, not the place that they goof off and distract themselves. They are proud of their accomplishments and will daily tout when they have their work done. Learning is social, and Edmodo is one of the only places that really gets it.

So that’s it. We have seen incredible success with Edmodo because we saw it as our school’s best chance to connect all of the disparate parts and stakeholders. We continue to see the potential for new types of learning within this platform and we are excited to see what the future holds. Whatever that is, we will definitely keep Edmodo along for the ride.

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Question 241 of 365: What is a unisexual?

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Torker Unicycle taken by Andrew Dressel
Image via Wikipedia

U is for unicycle.

I know because a toy told me.

My daughter asked me about the validity of that statement. She wanted to know about unicycles. She couldn’t quite understand why someone would want want to ride on a means of conveyance that looked like that. More than anything, though, she wanted to know why they called it a unicycle.

To that question, I said this:

“Uni means one, so its a cycle with only one wheel. Bi means two, so a bicycle is one with two wheels.”

Innocent and unassuming, but I could have gone even further. I could have spoken about the immense amount of balance it requires or that clowns ride them quite often. I could have also called her attention to the boy who was riding one outside of the drug store in Aspen. Instead, I just made the simple delineation between two and one. There are so many things that can be made simple through the means of a good prefix. By adding a few words to the beginning of the words we use, we can be so descriptive and precise. The problem is in when we use the wrong ones.

Monocycle sounds incredibly strange. And yet, why not? We say Monocle and Monorail when there is only one and yet we use Unicycle instead. Uni somehow implies independent and freeing; it is universal and unidirectional . Mono is monotonous or monomaniacal; it stands for the worst of being a single one.

Entire debates are framed about prefixes. The debate over homo or hetero is quite serious and intrusive into our lives. The most troubling part of the debate is that there seems to be no middle ground. One prefix means same and the other means different. And yet, a bisexual is someone who is attracted to both sexes. With the logic required of a four year old to understand the differences in cycles, why isn’t a unisexual those that are attracted to only one sex?

Wouldn’t it just be easier to describe those that are engaged in singular relationships to have a singular word to describe it?

Sure, unisexual doesn’t exactly have the same entitled tone that homosexual or heterosexual has, but I think that is only because of all of the baggage that those two words have had to carry for so long. The common ground here is in the fact that a great many people are attracted to one sex over the other. If that is something to celebrate, do so. By categorizing people with only the straight or gay prefixes, unisexuality has no ability to take hold. We are caught up in trying to find ways to slice up demographics and drill down to who likes, has done, or is passionate about what. We should be looking to the unicycle for inspiration.

Whether or not a children’s game told me that U is for Unisexual or not, I don’t mind. A unicycle is independent and crowd pleasing. Unisexuality can be too. We can go anywhere and support tiny changes to the creations of the world around us. We can explore the language of us and leave behind the language of “you.”

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Question 240 of 365: Why are lists important?

It is my 6th wedding anniversary.

Every year, my wife and I make a list of all of the memorable things
that have happened since our last anniversary. It sounds hokey, and I
guess it is a bit. We sit down after our meal on the night of our
anniversary and we usually come up with 20 to 30 things that just roll
right out of our heads.

We don’t write down the stories of those moments. We don’t explain
each one to each other. We simply write down a few words that are
enough to represent the moment to us.

This year we wrote things down like Zac, Vampire Weekend, and Tobias’
first sentence. With each of them, we visualize the great
contributions that they have had in our lives over the last year. And
that is why lists matter.

They don’t have to be profound, although they can be.

They don’t have to be long, although that is sometimes the case.

They don’t have to be well written, even if they do have a haiku like quality.

They just have to have meaning.

And in a world so filled with confusion and disorder, each list I
create and each year that it represents is one place that I feel less
confused and more at peace with all that has happened.

The lists are meant to put to paper the things that we take away from
struggle and pain. They are the ways in which we find closure to open
wounds. The lists are a way to find our own small piece of elusive
truth.

And it feels great each time. I hope we never stop listing, and I hope
we never stop doing things worthy of the list.

Posted via email from The Throughput

Question 238 of 365: Why is everything a phone?

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I just got the message today that I am now able to call domestic phone numbers from gmail. In one fell swoop, Google has become my default phone service. I can use my computer to call any cell phone or land line for free over the web. It essentially has taken all long distance service out the equation and has made me question the needs for skype, home phones, and even cell phone providers that don’t use VOIP. Telephone service has become data service. Minutes don’t matter and neither do phone numbers. All I need is a contact to make a connection.

And, I realize that this isn’t the first time that the ground underneath telephony has shifted. I get that Voice Over IP has been around a long time. And yet, it makes me realize that everything is a phone now. My computer, iPad, and iPod. Anything that connects to the web is a phone. Soon (with the release of the iTV in a few weeks), my TV will be a phone too.

I didn’t have a cell phone until 2003. I put it off because I thought that the expense wasn’t justified. I didn’t want to just make phone calls from more places. That wasn’t interesting to me when I could pick up any phone and have the same things as I would on a cell phone (minus the contact list). Why would I want a monthly fee to have instant access to others. And, maybe I was right to question the expense. Certainly, Google has.

They do not see the value in the phone calls themselves, but rather everything else around it. They see value in the ads in gmail. They see value in keeping us on any device connected to their networks rather than going anywhere else for our connections. We are moving to a place where phone calls essentially cost nothing. We are going to pay for data. We are going to pay by clicking on ads. And everything will continue to become more and more like what a phone was and not what a phone is today. The actual call will become such an easy portion of our communication that it will be built into every gadget and device we purchase. Phone service will cease. It will just be service.

Here is what I see as the future of our telephony:

We will be completely device independent. No matter where we are, if someone is trying to reach us via voice the things around us will ring. Refrigerators and tables will have confirm or deny buttons. And then we will have phone calls with the air around us because everything will be a microphone. It will just be too easy to accomplish. We are living in an internet of real objects, and each one will be able to connect to our Google Voice account (or whatever it becomes) because the alternative is to give up connection to some other service that is willing to do this for free. The value of communication will continue to be around the amount of data it requires to make these calls and not on how long we are on the phone. Because with our voice will will be sending files and video to one another to any screen that just happens to be around. And those bytes that we send will be where people make their money. We will pay for the privilege because we are already on the phone. We are already communicating and the cost of sharing has been completely obscured. And, sharing is what the future is all about.

And the future started today.

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Question 237 of 365: Is the username dying?

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Hackers (film)
Image via Wikipedia

I remember Hackers, the awkward mid-90’s movie, fondly.

It represented a do-it-yourself future in which those who understood computers could game everyone else. And, for the most part it got that right. It also figured out that the hacker culture was going to drive an open source understanding of information and responsibility. We are all in this (online communities and privacy issues) collectively and no one person should wield too much power online. The part that it didn’t get right (and maybe it didn’t really attempt to) was the idea that we would all need handles to protect our identities (and to be cool). As one character put it:

 I need a handle, man. I don't have an identity until I have a handle.

And with names like Crash Override, Acid Burn, Cereal Killer, and Lord Nikon how could you argue. Their handles, or usernames, seem to represent a time in which we couldn’t share things out in the open. It represented a time when social networks didn’t exist and all forums and chat were done in pseudo underground spaces that only those with access and interest could take part in. Grandmas (mostly) weren’t online posting pictures and blogging hadn’t happened yet. Usernames were the ways that we separated ourselves from “real life” because we could choose them. We didn’t have to worry about being ourselves because this was a world that rarely crossed over into people who were honest with one another about their true identities. The two spaces were separate and we liked them that way.

At the time of watching Hackers in 1995, my handle was The Atomic Angel. Seriously. I was convinced that it made me cooler and more respectable than just using my name to identify me. I used it on Bulletin Boards and in AOL chat. In short, I was awesome. And now, I look at what I use and it pales in comparison. I am Ben Wilkoff pretty much everywhere. Online and offline, I don’t have a single space that I am not completely me.

That is incredibly satisfying in some ways, but also a little terrifying. I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not and I don’t have to splinter my personality for every given account or service I join. But, I can’t get away from my own identity either. There is no hiding from my history and my mistakes. I have to take responsibility for all of it. I also don’t have the choice to leave and remove myself. Google remembers me.

The username is dying because of Facebook. We are who we are on there. We can pretend, but it is hard to pretend an entire life. It is hard to fake pictures and videos and a network of people that you communicate with. We always end up just reverting to ourselves. We are people, not handles, not usernames.

We aren’t there completely, but with things like Google Profiles, Facebook Connect/Platform and Open ID, we will have a single login to rule them all. We will be able to share our network and our connections with every new application built upon the single authentication device. And when that happens, we will no longer be setting up new identities for each new thing that comes along. It will all be tied to a single name, our own. It isn’t the one we chose, but it is the one that we must use in this new space where we can’t hide behind a fictional character or absurd nome de plume.

Hackers didn’t get it quite right. I have an identity without a handle. Sometimes, though, I’m not sure I want the identity I’ve got.

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Question 236 of 365: Who wins when others fail?

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Epic Fail
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I don’t want to hear about other people not doing their jobs right.

It isn’t interesting, novel, or beneficial. It may make for cleverly underhanded conversation or ambitious posturing, but it doesn’t really do much good. I can complain about others not pulling their weight or not working the way I would, but I just end up feeling petty and unoriginal.

I don’t believe in basing my worth in an organization based upon the worth that I see in others. Everyone is judged on his or her own merits, and I am not responsible for the final word on quality. Even if you are evaluating work done by someone else, talking about it as an absolute failure is negating any contribution you may have made to the work. If you see yourself as so separate from the community of work that we are all engaged in, I don’t see how you have any ground to stand and judge what others have done. If, on the other hand, you are subject to the same environment, then you are responsible for making sure that mediocre work is not valued in the community. It is your responsible to set standards for yourself and others, but not to impose a sense of superiority about whether or not others have made the cut.

The fact is: you didn’t do the work. You could have, but you didn’t. And anyone can stand and tell you that they could have done a better job, but their lack of experience is disengenuine. You look at others work as a representation of the person who created it, and criticism of that work as criticizing the person. While I believe in being a critical friend sometimes, I cannot stomach the glossing over of hours of work in the hopes of summing up contributions into a soundbite.

You are either building capacity or you are burning bridges. There is hardly anything in-between. If things don’t look like the way you want, build relationships with those people who aren’t “doing it right.” If there needs to be a change in personnel, so be it. Don’t talk about it as if it were nothing. Don’t talk about work as not being worthy of your own prerequisites.  There is no line in the sand, across which is your sweet approval.

For our ears only is a hollow sentiment. Stating that something is not good enough to everyone but the person who could make it better is dishonest at best, and downright evil at worst. Nothing good comes from tearing down our future before we can even get there.

No one wins when the people around us fail. We are not better than those we work with, and we do not know better either. We just know different, and if our different is indeed better, then others will see that too. If our different is truly a success, there will be no denying it. Pointing out failures without providing a viable alternative is not winning. There is nothing learned from it because we haven’t done any of the work and we don’t know what lessons can be gathered from the failure itself.

I don’t need to hear it. It is one of the things that is holding us back from creating real change.

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Question 235 of 365: What is the real nightmare of testing?

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Cover of "Waking Life"
Cover of Waking Life

I don’t put much stock in dreams, at least not the kind that you can have when you sleep. Most of the time, I like to think that my subconscious just has a little more room to roam. I have an off switch and nighttime is when I flip it. My dreams do not require deep analysis because most of the time I don’t remember them, and when I do, there is nothing even remotely interesting in them. Sure, I have an odd dream that will amplify something going on in my daily life or reveal a desire that I have internalized. Most of the time, though, I don’t have to worry about those kinds of things. My dreaming life mostly leaves my waking life well enough alone.

Last night was an exception to the rule.

I had a nightmare about testing. The weirdest part was that it wasn’t the kind of nightmare that I feel testing presents in a very real sense. It wasn’t about sharpening number 2 pencils or in standardizing the world into easily photocopied and graded booklets. It was about an entirely new approach to testing, which I think presents an even grimmer look into the future if the current trend continues.

The real nightmare of testing isn’t in prescribing a certain brand of English and Math for every student. It is in trying to prescribe everything else too.

In my dream, I was the one being tested and I had little to no idea of what the goals were in mind. I was looking all over the place for a path to the end of the test. Instead, all I could find were a series of tasks that were being monitored and assigned, which had little bearing on whether or not I knew anything.

For example, I was tested on how fast I could text. I was given a cell phone that was connected to an oversized monitor and I was asked to text a message quickly. I wasn’t given a person to text to or a purpose for doing the text. I was just being asked to text. All of my errors were being shown up on the screen for everyone to see and I didn’t know if I was really doing right by the test or myself.

This is what we do with our testing now.

We remove all semblance of purpose and audience from the act of writing or reading or doing any kind of problem solving. And in this case, it was being applied to a task that is obviously forthcoming in the curriculum. Many students all over the country are now being given their tests on computers, and what is to stop us from taking their temperature on their method of input? What is to stop us from asking them to do a simple typing or texting test?

In my dream, we were asked to perform video game like sequences in order to reach predetermined goals. We didn’t know whether we were doing it right (as in real video game dynamics where you have constant feedback), but we had to perform anyway. The isolation within the gaming environment was intense, just as all testing experiences I have had to date have been isolationist exercises.

This is where we are headed. We will make each task of our modern upbringing into inauthentic shells of their current selves. And we won’t stop there. Even as we are testing students in new ways that have the appearance of real life, we will push the boundaries of inauthentic tasks in the business world as well. I can see the effects of such actions even now:

We ask for one another to “blog” in internal systems (mostly in corporate settings) without the ability to comment, syndicate, or permalink. We create entire systems of accountability that offer nothing but check boxes and filling out forms with hollow goals and meetings that would be generously be described as formalities. We send e-mails just to send e-mails, cc’ing everyone that could even casually be interested. We ensnare one another in the busywork that are our little ways of testing one another to make sure that we are still buying into the same illusion of authentic relationships.

So, in that way, the culture of testing does match up with our real life counterparts. The only problem is that I want better for all of us. I want better for our kids in their stuffy testing rooms and I want better for our adults in their cramped cubicles. It isn’t enough just to change the ways in which we test. It isn’t enough to add gaming or texting as another way for each of us to feel better about how much summative information we get from those whose entire existence up until this point is formative.  It isn’t enough to change the ways in which we do business to have the illusion of transparency and collaboration. We can’t just introduce social media or networks into our businesses and say that we have done right by consumers and employees.

None of us want to life inauthentic lives, and yet that is the direction we are headed.

When testing becomes a part of the every day data of learning, we will be doing right by our children

When community is a part of every transaction in business, we will be doing right by our corporate interests.

Nothing less is worth our time.

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Question 234 of 365: What is the new mix?

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ITunes Store
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I used to make music mixes for every occasion of my life. For birthdays, for anniversaries, and for Christmas. There was no occasion too small that it didn’t call for a music cd or at least a playlist. A few years, I even attempted a list of best songs of the year which could be sorted in an Excel spreadsheet. I was ambitious about my mixes because I believed that the held the key to chronicling time and making sense of the world around me.

Now, it seems almost tragic to think that I am no longer making those mixes and my world is spinning out of control because of the lack of coherence and preservation that music provided to me. For the past few years, I have approached music in a more utilitarian way. It is in the background so that I don’t have to listen to other people in my office. It is in the car so that I can think more about what I am engaged in. It is on at home so that my children can dance.

I used to make music so that I could put order to the world, and now I don’t because the order has been dictated to me. My daily life is no longer unpredictable. I don’t wake up thinking about whether or not I will go out that night. We have these things planned weeks and months in advance. I don’t require a series of songs to give me a sense of what my existence is like because at any given moment, my life is a lot like the previous moment. While there is most definitely a progression from one thing to another, the haphazard stylings from many different genres that are put together on a mix would hardly be applicable to what I’m going through.

Which is why I am so keen on the album. The album of familiar or newly unearthed songs that I can listen to over and over again is something that much more fits my current lifestyle. I like to see the progression of a single narrative and know exactly where it goes to and from. The single can get me excited, but it never sustains me like a truly masterful album. I don’t want to put things on shuffle. I want to know what is coming next and to see it coming and feel good about it.

Making a mix feels good when you want to introduce someone to a band or when you feel as though there is something at stake. You are trying to make a statement or figure out who you are. You are trying to decipher the relationship to whom you are giving the mix. This makes sense when all of your life is up in the air. But, as things come together and make decisions that set you on a longer path, the long playing nature of an album sweetly cradles you. You don’t have to worry about the jarring transitions or the awkward filler tracks. You are content with the albums you grew up with and the new standards that you spend months with in your car. It isn’t that you are unwilling to change or to mix things up, it is just that you want the friendship of an album and not the acquaintance of a song. You are ready for commitment to a set of artists, instead of jumping from one genre to the next at a moments notice.

So, the album is the new mix, and it is a shame in the era of iTunes that this form of music is dying or giving up on itself. While the digital media revolution of the past 20 years may eventually get rid of the 10 song CD, it may push us out further into never having to listen to an album for 2-3 good songs. We expect more out of the music we consume. We expect every song to be good. And that is why the albums of today are so comfortable. I won’t tolerate a set of music that is only good enough to be put onto a mix. I won’t let those few moments I have for truly solitary music listening to be soiled by either the schizophrenia of the mix or the unevenness of a bad album.

I want only the good stuff, but I want the good stuff to have a story, an arch. I want it to match who I am right now without having to work all of that out in a playlist creator. I want the artists to be like me and I think that is slowly starting to happen. We are all trying to make our way in life, and it requires an honesty of vision and the relentless pursuit of iteration.

I will be better tomorrow than I am today, and I want music that shows that same level of maturity.

(Any albums you care to share with me on this journey?)

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Question 233 of 365: What is a morale dilemma?

My morale is conflicted. In tending the communities I created, I have constructed an almost impossible conundrum for myself. It goes something like this:

I am most happy when I talk to those who need my help and I am most engaged when talking to those who have things to offer me.

Usually there is a certain back and forth that I gain, but lately, it seems to be one or the other. Those that need nohing from me are the ones I am drawn toward. Their ability to create things without my help is incredible and awe inspiring. They don’t require my guidance, although they do seem to at least tolerate it. They start projects that subsist. They are amazing and all I want to do is watch.

And yet, I am most happy when those people are coming to me and directly soliciting my help. When they can’t figure something out or they need a tool to figure out their next move, I couldn’t be more fulfilled. I am conducting the work of teaching and it feels satisfying in a way that is primal and instinctual. Getting a problem resolved in the on thing feels productive, the one thing that makes me feel useful.

So, it isn’t a moral dilemma that I am speaking of, but a morale dilemma. I am conflicted about what I should be spending my time doing.

In the long run, is it better to be engaged or happy? While they may be related to one another, they are not the same thing. Both are temporary and both sustain me. The former consumes time, whereas the latter consumes energy.

Obviosly this is a false dichotomy because I don’t have to spend my time doing only one. I can use both to my advantage. But, as I look out into the future, the choices I make are not concrete and the positions I take are not all mine. When I advocate for what to work with most often, should I derive my morale through those I consider my equals and betters or should I be pursuing opportunities to work with those who I can really work with and help to understand what is really possible?