Learning is Change

Question 69 of 365: Why is action such a surprise?

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I have had a number of conversations recently that have resulted in someone saying that they were surprised that things were getting done. They were surprised at action. While I was somewhat baffled by the reaction, it made me think about what the root of this surprise might be.

Getting things done has traditionally been hard. It has required labor, huge amounts of time, or many people who were highly skilled in the areas that needed attention. Action has required a level of organization and planning that almost insurmountable considering everything else that needs to go on. It also has necessitated permission to actually “do” something. Meetings must be had, protocols must be followed, the chain of command had to remain intact.

In fact, we had so much protocol, there is even an entire mystique and formula for who you should cc or bcc on an e-mail. We have created a space that requires little action in any given day. We have set up systems to look like getting things done: Things like conference calls with the vast majority of participants muted, like conferences without the time to implement what you learn, like tracking systems for time/milage/payment that are removed from the ideas and the tasks that generated them.

Action has become foreign to many. Because we don’t produce any products, we don’t have things to show for our work at the end of the day. We have become inbox cleaners and document hounds. We wait, in a bad way, for people to finish their part of the problem for us to start on ours. Action is a surprise when we find it.

I am a firm believer in creating at least one thing every single day of my life, and I believe that this is my humble (or not so humble if I keep talking about it, I suppose) way to make action unsurprising in my life. The things that I create (Blog posts, trackable conversations, online courses, companies, learning objects, and collaborative spaces) may not look like much in the face of people who create real objects, but I believe that in my own way, I am trying to stave off the starvation of ideas. I am trying to figure out how to solve the problems, and then actually solve them. I am trying to answer my e-mail, not pass it around to someone else. I am trying to engage those who are unengaged in the process. I am trying to solicit others as directly as I can to act on their own behalf.

Because action should not be a surprise. It should be a regular part of our day, something that we celebrate and see in everything that we do. We should see the change we create. We should see the products, even if they take some time. We should see the spaces that we inhabit as malleable, because getting things done isn’t hard anymore.

It stopped being hard when we could create virtual goods and services. It stopped being hard when we could create things on our own and solicit help from people outside of our organization. It stopped being hard when organization became as easy as a hashtag.

So, start a school. Start a business. Start a project that requires something important of you. Be deliberate in engaging others in conversation. Intentionally break protocols in your organization so that you can get things done. Not haphazardly. Not unreasonably. Purposefully and with a huge amount of hope: Act. Do things. Now.

Question 68 of 365: What does it mean to be a breadwinner?

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a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, top slice ...
Image via Wikipedia

While I do not particularly like the designation or the baggage that goes along with it, being a breadwinner is something that is very important to me. I am not interested in being the sole breadwinner or someone who does only that, but there is most definitely a part of me that has to bring an income into my family and provide the things that we need and want. While this need is definite, it needs to be redefined.

In fact, I think that bread needs to be redefined. If it is the staple that sustains us over all others (carbohydrates in general, I would argue), then the bread that I win must do more than fill my family’s bellies. I would like to make the case that I have to win our bread doing something that my children and wife can understand, respect, and rely on.

I want my bread to be something I am proud of, something with my own signature texture. I want my bread to be complex and sophisticated, but also work well with what my kids love (peanut butter and jelly in the physical bread’s case). I want my bread to be plentiful, but for everyone to always know that it took work to create. I want my bread to rise, always.

I guess if I am to win this kind of bread, I had better start making some choices as to what I will and wont do for it.

What I would be willing do:

  • Work with people I wouldn’t associate with otherwise.
  • Do tech support
  • Push buttons (as long as I can design the buttons)
  • Work on other people’s projects

What I won’t do:

  • Stop blogging, tweeting, or working on my own projects
  • Regurgitate what other people have said or done
  • Work in isolation
  • Travel multiple times a month.

The reason why I choose to focus on these matters now is that as I continue to figure out where my career path is headed, I need to know what it is that I am striving for. I need to figure out just what I’m willing to sacrifice and what I’m not. I need to be able to see the learning curve on all of it, too.

Should I put out this want ad, and see if someone will take me up on it? Should I go into every situation and state my assumptions? Are these biases enough to get me through?

I can honestly say that I am a breadwinner, and that all of the baggage that the word gives me is okay, so long as I can pack up the really important stuff and take it with me wherever I go.

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Question 67 of 365: Why is time theft so seductive, and in many cases, productive?

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I am a time thief. I take away time from my current employer in order to work on things that are not in my job description. I will admit that freely, even to the people I work for. But, up until recently, I have been able to keep it under control.

Until recently, I have kept my Twitter habits down to asking questions and sharing resources. I have kept my blogging to a few times a month. And until very recently, I have not tried to create brand new communities on the fly. In other words: I used to be an undercover time thief. I was able to couch everything that I was doing in the guise that I was working very hard on some specific project that someone has asked me to do.

Now, though, I brandish my time theft, hoping that people will catch me in the act. I blog daily. I have set up a new twitter account, and I have been creating a community of folks who are interested in working through the creative process as I am.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I get my job done. I answer my e-mail and all of my deadlines are met. I work on the things I have been assigned and even take on “official projects” that aren’t tasked to me.

But, here is the difference: I used to cultivate resources and ideas just in case the opportunity arose that I (or someone else I worked with) might need them. Now, I build those resources and explore those ideas and see if they are worthy of exploring further. I used to wait upon future productivity, and now I am productive, constantly.

This is the virtue of Google’s 20% time. It is the virtue of being 80% done.

I am now a firm believer in the idea that no authentic conversation is isolated. I believe that everything that I create can be used for multiple purposes and that the knowledge that I gain from stories in one arena directly benefits me in all other arenas.

Now, I can say this because all of the things I am interested in are in roughly the same genre. I am not, for example, working on crop dusting instead of building an online school. What I am doing is figuring out how to better ask questions, create networks, garner feedback, and create buy-in. All of these things are ones that I have needed to figure out in my school district, but I have lacked the audience necessary to get them done. Because I no longer have a group of kids that I get to think things through with on a daily basis, I must turn to figuring things out within a network.

I’m not sure why it took me so long to figure out that I had to be a time thief in order to create that network, though. I’m also not sure why I hid it for so long. I believe that we should all be time thieves. We should all be looking to create something new that could directly benefit the work we are doing if only someone would ask us to do it. I believe that doing these things within my daily work schedule allows me to see what is coming and to create an environment that is ready to receive it.

I now believe that doing your job as it was created is tantamount to disloyalty. Stealing time should become an honored tradition. It should be something that we should tack up on the walls of our companies and schools.

“This is what I did, when I was finished with all of the other things that I had to do!”

“These are the conversations I had.”

“This is what I created.”

Because, let’s call Twitter what it is: Time Theft. It isn’t a required function of your job, and yet you do it anyway. Let’s call blogging what it is too, and facebooking and recording videos, and doing Google Chats with colleagues across the country. All of these things are time theft and until we celebrate them, we will never truly understand the power that doing something “else” will bring. We will never get the authentic environment we all crave. We will never learn to be better.

Open Letter on Behalf of the National Writing Project (cross posted)

This post is cross-posted here and was written by Mr. Chase.

The Gist:

  • The current draft of the federal budget cuts direct funding for the National Writing Project.
  • The NWP has been one of the few extremely successful examples of a nationally-networked effort to improve K-12 writing for 36 years.
  • We must communicate with Congress to change the budget.

The Whole Story:

Dear Rep. Fattah, Sen. Casey and Sen. Specter:

I write to you on behalf of the National Writing Project. More precisely, I write to you on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of students and teachers the program has transformed over its 36 years.

Under the budget proposed by President Obama, national funding for the NWP would be cut. In a Feb. 1 press release from the U.S. Department of Education, the NWP was lumped in with 5 other projects losing funding because the DOE claims they “duplicate local or state programs or have not had a significant measurable impact.”

As the NWP is unique as a networked writing instruction program with 200+ local sites serving all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, I am left to believe Sec. Duncan is claiming the NWP falls under the category of not having a “significant measurable impact.”

This too is untrue.

A 1987 longitudinal study on the effects of the NWP by Kathy Krendl and Julie Dodd found participating third through twelfth graders showed an increase “in interest in learning about writing, in their level of confidence, and in their association of self-esteen with good writing.

Not only that, the study also found a decrease “in students’ feelings of discomfort about completing writing assignments and in their feelings that they do not write well and that writing is difficult.”

In a 2007 study of the NWP’s Local Site Research Initiative, across nine localities students showed significant or non-significant favorable results in all seven categories.

This should not have been surprising considering the DOE’s own data listed the NWP as exceeding its performance targets in 2001. Indeed participants’ ratings across all categories ranged from 95-88 percent reporting positive impact at their follow-up assessment of the program. This went well above the program’s target of 75 percent in each category.

Were this simply an impassioned plea, I would have hesitated to write. The data speaks for itself, the National Writing Project has offered a significant return on investment in its 36 year history. Federal funding for the NWP must be maintained if we are to continue striving to meet the Project’s goal of “a future where every person is an accomplished writer, engaged learner, and active participant in a digital, interconnected world.”

I thank your for your time and attention to this matter. Please, let me know if I can be of any assistance.

Sincerely,

Zachary Chase

English Teacher

Science Leadership Academy

Philadelphia, PA

(Note: See also Bud Hunt’s post on this topic.)

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Question 66 of 365: What kind of relationships do our communities require?

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I have a daughter and a son. My wife is my best friend. I live in the suburbs. Whether these are cliches or not, they are the truth that I live each day. The seemingly mundane existence found within these three facts is a lot of what makes me who I am. And yet, a lot of the communities that I have tried to be a part of, do not value these kinds of relationships.

Many of the communities I believe in are not interested in “staying home” with my son on Tuesdays and Thursdays so that my wife can go to work and school. These communities could not care less about the fact that I would rather watch a dvd with my wife than answer e-mail or tweet more consistently. They require a certain amount of commitment that I reserve for my family. And so I must be on the outside looking in, sometimes.

That is not to say that they that they aren’t worthwhile, or that the people that are more committed have given up their families. I believe that there are some families that understand the level of commitment required to take part. Mine doesn’t want to understand that. And, I respect them for it.

Yet, the communities of Entrepreneurs, and Ed Tech folks that I am interested in allow for many different ways of engagement. I can lurk and I can attend on occasion. I can go to a bar to talk about an idea. I can travel to a conference out of state.  I can attend a webinar. I can blog.

These little pieces of attendance that I can string together will allow me to keep the pulse on these communities. They will not allow me to lead them, but they will allow me to engage people in conversation and create something with those people who can overlook my unwillingness to get past my “other commitments.”

I do look forward to a time, however, when my family and life in a suburbs will not be a liability. I look forward to communities that do not make the distinction between having a family and creating something great.

When I come right down to it, I will not be able to develop software or create engaging professional development as fast as someone without children or a significant other. I just don’t have that kind of time. What I can commit to, however, is creating something every day. I can commit to the knowledge that my family sustains me more than any amount of work ever could.

My wife pushes me to blog every day. She makes sure that I have deadlines. My children always make me think from their point of view. They make me understand what it is to be human and learn things for the first time.

And those are the type of people I want to work with. I want people who would rather go out for dinner with their family than people who want to go out for a night of drinking. I want a community that requires deep relationships, not a lot of tenuous ones that are interchangeable. I want a community that respects all forms of taking part as equal, and not just the folks who have the most time on their hands. But, I may just have to create it because I don’t see a whole lot of it going on right now.

Question 65 of 365: How do we get there from here?

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As much as I try to get excited about of the journey, there is still a really big part of me that just wants to arrive. The point A to B stuff gets tiresome, and I just want to do be done with it. I wan’t to claim victory and not have to see everything through just to prove my point.

In essense, I would like to have a map already laid out and know what the mile markers are going to say. If StreetView can put together a viewpoint of the inside of stores, surely I can see my way to the end of the year or the coming collisions within my life, right?

In Maine they have a saying, “You can’t get there from here.” And I believe that this holds true for a lot of what I am trying to do in starting a new business or in starting a new school. The progression doesn’t seem logical. It seems as though we will have to jump over vast lakes that stand in our way. And if that is the case, what will those jumps be?

I would like to proclaim now that my ideas will be profitable within a year. I would like to proclaim now that education will be better because we have rethought it in this time and space. I would like to proclaim that the networks that I live in will be forever changed because I have taken part. These proclamations are not made out of hubris, but rather, out of passion for making them happen.

And yet, what jumps will let these proclomations come true?

I believe that the first jump will be because of a single person. I believe that a single person that I do not yet know will see what we are trying to do and decide that he or she wants to invest their time and money into breathing them to life. I believe that this person will have a unique perspective that I have never considered. He or she will be able to better see my goals than me and will be better able to articulate them to a wide audience. This person will become my muse for a while. He or she will make me want to work nonstopped to figure things out and prove my worth. This person will not wait for me, but will encourage me to keep up. And I will.

The second jump will be because of a technology that doesn’t yet exist. It will help me listen better to everything going on around me and let me iterate upon my ideas more efficiently becuase of it. This technology will focus my energy on creating something new rather than monitoring what I have already created. It will single-handedly change my discourse to be about making connections and sustaining them. It will change me too.

The third jump I will make to get from here to there will be because of a loss I will undergo that I cannot yet see. I will have to give up a very large part of my ideas or of myself in order to prove that I can go on. I will lose so completely that it will be hard for me to pick up the pieces, and yet I will. I will continue to pursue what I have always pursued: an authentic way to work and learn. And that is what will still be there. The loss will haunt me, but it will solidify my resolve to get things done and I will work even harder to make sure that what I have lost will not have been sacrificed in vain.

While these predictions are somewhat ominous, I think that they are completely true. I beleive that the only way that we can make true strides toward our vision of the way things should be is through loss, disruptive technologies, and supportive mentorship (not an exhaustive list, however). I shall have all three.

Question 64 of 365: How can we be for ourselves and for an entity at the same time?

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I have realized that an idea can’t grow if I don’t let it stand on its own. I have figured out that I cannot be the idea. If people are going to get behind it, it can’t be me they are getting behind.

And yet, I have been branding and rebranding myself for years. I have been writing for me. I have not been party to any party line. I have not been pushing something other than my own thoughts out into the world. In fact, I have been careful to not align myself too closely with something that isn’t me because I don’t want to be let down by what it becomes. And yet, there is a time to be for yourself and a time to be for an entity, an ideal. There is a time for placing yourself into a label and owning it.

Yet, the label must be something that I can change to mean what I want it to. It must be big enough to poke holes in and not collapse. It must be something that others will want to try on and become a part of. It must have a presence that interacts with real people and not as one idea to another. It must be ongoing and unique.

So, that is what I am trying to create now. I am trying to inhabit the Open Spokes presence and let the ideas flow through me to it. I am working toward creating actions that I set in motion but continue on without me.

And, it is freeing.

I can follow whomever I want on Twitter. I can write things that I would never write as an answer to a question. I can be as open to new opportunities as possible. I can obsess over things that I never have before. I am more than me. I am it… sometimes.

And that is strange and scary. I have never been able to be my employer because I have disagreed with my employer about many things. I have never been able to be classroom because my classroom wasn’t all that I wanted it to be. I have never been able to be a learning theory or a particular tool (even though I talk about connectivism and Google Apps on a regular basis) because they aren’t really mine. All of these things are what I use to make sense of the world, but they are not me.

I can only be what I give birth to. I can be an idea only if I can run alongside and hold on to it, like a bike without training wheels for the first time. Open Spokes is a child of mine. And, at some point I will let go and watch it roll down the street unaided. I will see where it goes and be proud of it for pumping its feet as fast as it can and finding balance against gravity.

Because we are all challenged by gravity. It is what makes us think that we have to speak on behalf of things we do not believe in. It is what makes us think that we cannot reinvent who we are and what we do. It is what will slow us down if we let it.

But, we can launch a lot of bikes down the street. We can birth many ideas. We can be more than we are. We can be for the things that will make a difference and not forget just what it means to have a personal identity. And that is nothing short of brilliant (The act I am describing, not the writing).

Question 63 of 365: Can we create passionate and purposeful Serendipity?

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I don’t know all of the things that are going on in the world, nor do I really want to know all of them. I am content to know that there are good things going on around me and to see that I am loved. I can see things in my life working together and I can set so much into motion that I can orchestrate from beginning to end. And yet, it is the things that I don’t know about and have no control over that seem to affect my life most and create the most fulfilling experiences.

When I speak of Serendipity, I am talking about those people and events that happen TO you. They do not happen because of you or through your efforts, they are events that happen TO you, for better or worse. Given that definition, is there really any way to orchestrate serendipity?

Is there any way to hear from the people that could give you a new job if you just knew to ask? Is there any way to receive e-mail and phone calls from people you don’t know and immediately engage them in conversations about your mutual passions (not tit-for-tat opportunities)? Is there any way to join the known and the unknown on a consistent basis through channels of your own choosing?

You see, the friends I have made since College are almost entirely serendipitous. I do not work with them. I do not live near them. I do not have an overly social nature that would allow for accidental meeting or memorable repartee. Starting relationships is not an easy act, and it would be nice if I could point to something that makes finding best friends and business opportunities easy and constant.

And yet, I can point to ways of finding people and businesses. I can figure out the equation for getting more followers on twitter or having a bigger blog readership. I can decode exactly what it takes to receive massive amounts of e-mail about things you think a lot about.

But, I can’t figure out how to create a serendipitous experience for the things that I really care about. I can’t figure out how to find people that I would love to really create things with or become life-long friends with. I am at a loss for how all of the stuff I put out on my blog and Twitter feed effectively creates traction for passionate connections that are not self-serving and unreciprocated. I want a filter for those who are would want to be “all in” with me.

I understand that it is very hard to know who those people are right away, and yet I think that the filter could be created. I feel as though there has to be a way to test a connection for how strong it is and how important it will become. There has to be a test that could be applied to all of our serendipitous actions (comments on blogs, tweets and retweets from people we don’t know, new friends on Facebook, etc.).

It might go something like this:

  • Will you challenge me to be better?
  • Will you create something new every day?
  • Will you share everything that is worth sharing?
  • Will you tell me stories?

I guess that is the kind of Serendipity I am looking for, but perhaps that too high of a bar to set. Perhaps, I will just have to go through the manual process of vetting people and ideas and not jump directly to being “all in” with those who already know that they fit the above criteria. Perhaps it is good thing that serendipity only takes us so far.

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Question 62 of 365: Why does waiting matter?

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In so much of what I write and think about, I am interested in what is instant and what I can will into being. I am so interested in creating what I can’t yet see. I want to be a part of the conversations that create change and I want to be with people who are passionate and have purpose behind their actions.

And yet, there is the waiting.

I wait because other people make me wait. I wait because I want to know what they have to say. I wait because that is the only way that listening can occur. I wait because being told no should always be an option on the table.

So, today I waited for a response. I waited to hear a judgement being handed down. And while I waited, I wracked my brain for what I could do better. I wrestled with every conceivable question that could have come up, every roadblock that someone else thinks I have. I sat nervously trying to iterate without a concrete direction. I wanted to speak, but knew that it wasn’t yet my turn.

And in the end, I wanted so badly just to be able to reach inside of someone else’s head and change their mind. I wanted to write the e-mail that told me I was doing a good job and that all of my hard work had paid off. And yet, that isn’t what makes waiting important.

I am not going to Techstars for a Day, but I will be continuing to iterate on my ideas and see if I can make it into the big show. This news wasn’t what was important either.

The waiting was the best part. It was the not knowing that provided the most freedom to have hope and hopelessness. It let me see two diametrically opposed futures: one in which everything goes exactly according to plan and I have an easy time convincing others that my ideas are valid and the other in which I have to fight for every conversation and every user. The reality is somewhere in the middle, but it is important to be in limbo sometimes and weigh both sides as equally possible.

Only waiting can let me get comfortable with ambiguity. Through waiting, I am able to doubt everything and come out on the other side. I can challenge my assumptions and figure out just why those assumptions were stupid. Flat out rejection is too harsh because you end up throwing out everything. Pure success is equally damaging. It can make almost anything seem like a good idea.

Waiting is what makes us vulnerable enough to let others make us better. And that is what I did today. I got better.

Question 61 of 365: How do we make renewal more accessible?

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Sometimes, making a single change to a long held practice will completely renew your interest and commitment to that practice. One of those times was this week.

I am renewed in my fascination and commitment to blog comments.

For years, I have thought that along with PDF’s (as Will Richardson puts it), they were where ideas went to die. They only lived as tiny little attachments on the end of a post, an asterisk on an idea. While they may spark a lot of debate or be the most interesting part of a blog, I could never help but feeling as though they were a waste because of how little they were incorporated into everything else I was doing. Sure, you have been able to subscribe in e-mail to comments on blogs, but it never felt like a cohesive conversation. Sure, people have had threaded comments for a couple years, but it always worked more like just an extension of the regular commenting structure than a real debate of ideas. The threads never really went anywhere besides what the original blog post had envisioned.

So, why this renewal?

The switch to Disqus comments has fueled my new outlook on comments. The simple ability to respond to a comment directly in e-mail and then see all of the threads as a conversation in gmail has made me think that there really could be a commenting renaissance in our future. Because each comment now has its own short link, I can send it out on Twitter or Buzz and continue the conversation.

I am now looking at my comments as ways of forming relationships and beginning/continuing conversations that were impossible to do previously. And, all from one simple switch to a different commenting system.

So, this has gotten me thinking about whether or not the entire process of renewal can be made more accessible to others. It makes me want to figure out which feature of a process could be changed in our every day lives that would cause us to buy-in anew and want to create something.

Which aspect of collaboration can I change to incite renewal for others?

Which part of meetings can I shift in order to renew interest in talking with one another?

What can I change in the writing process to allow people to see it as a renewing force in their life?

And there is the crux. In order to make renewal available to everyone, there is a level of investment required. All of these things do require someone to DO something. So, by focusing on things that people are already doing, we may be able to shift them one or two degrees in order to bring about real change.

In essence, what I need to figure out is not so much what are the changes I can make for others, but to really figure out what people are doing and go from there. Unless I have a good understanding of exactly how people are using a given tool, protocol, or idea; I will have no chance of making a lasting change that brings about renewal. I need to hear more stories about how people are meeting and collaborating, about how they are asking questions and about how they are leveraging the people that they know in order to find answers.

Until I listen, I can’t renew or reinvent anything.

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