Learning is Change

Whenever I feel like I’ve run into a wall in online school I start thinking about all the possibilities for communicating and things just seems to open up. Long story short I am looking for a way to use google ups as a domain as internal communication system that we can slowly open up with the wider world more buying from IT and the stakeholders.

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The IT department is an interesting beast in any school distrct. It has so many good ideas for how to get things done and it has the technical knowhow for making forward thinking learning projects go off without a hitch. However, it can also be at odds with the community of learning that teachers and administrators are trying t create. Well, it is my hope that we can bring together some of the very different goals that I see from both sides of the devide.

I have been given the task of creating a presentation to bring our rogue online school, eDCSD, into the fold with what IT has been working on, and do it without losing much of the hard work that either IT or eDCSD has done. I don’t want to comment too much on it at this point, because I haven’t given the presentation yet. However, I thought I would share it with you just in case you found it useful for any reason in your own quest to tie things together.

At this drop.io account, you will find both the presentation and a screencast of the presentation with audio explaining my thinking. I will also embed the presentation for more easy viewing.

Although I have already written my This I Believe a few years ago and you can even hear it if you wish, but I have been asked to consider the prompt again in a new light, telling a story of learning that exemplfies your beliefs about learning.

My story of learning goes like this:

Boys struggle in middle school. I know this because I struggled. Not academically, but with knowing who I was and where I fit. Now, I don’t agree with the absolute that all boys have an inner turmoil that drives them to be disruptive, but I do agree that all boys struggle to be who they are between the ages of 12-14. I believe this.

Because of this, I have a soft spot for this struggle now. Just like when I was in it, though, I don’t have any concrete answers about how to make boys believe in themselves. Instead, I use books. They are not answers or advice, they are stories of someone’s struggle that you can either relate to or ignore. Those boys who can relate, create for themselves a space to be themselves, even if it is only within the confines of the story.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower is the one book that I would recommend over any other. The boy in the story feels things more deeply than nearly any boy at that age allows himself to feel. He is awkward out loud. And, he survives. I gave this book to one red-headed boy who would not put it down. He read it during my class and throughout the day.

Now, this is a boy that doesn’t read. His red hair flips in front of his face every other second and gets in the way of him seeing almost everything. This time it did not get in the way. He saw the boy in the book, Charlie, distinctly. In fact, he saw himself in the story.

After he finished the book, we talked about the experience. He spoke to me about having to fill the role of “kid brother” with his friends. He spoke about how mature he wanted to be and how much he saw that he just couldn’t express. He spoke about his frustration with his overprotective parents. This was a different voice than I had ever heard from him. He did not have the characteristic sarcastic tone in his voice. He did not pretend to be someone else. He a boy, sans the red hair.

I believe in the transformative power of stories. I believe that boys only survive middle school through this transformation. They only make it through because of the words that they relate to, that end up defining them. If they have no stories to help them with this definition, they will remain unhappy, unknowable, and uninspired.

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For a long time, I have been kind of snobby about deciding where I can learn. I had made the decision that I could only learn when I am with people who have the same vision for education as I do, and after going to Educon 2.1, I think that this was both reinforced and destroyed. It was reinforced because I was in a room with a whole bunch of people who do share my vision for connected learning and it was wonderful to push the boundaries of my thinking. However, it was completely destroyed because I realized that in saying we have a monopoly on the future of education, we are shutting out nearly every voice that will actually make that future happen.

Today I am sitting in a training for Digital Educators in Douglas County. I started with this group when I was teaching 7th/8th grade and even then I was frustrated by the skill set of my cohort. Now though, with a lot of reflection and some understanding about how we all learn (connected, just-in-time, etc.), I realize that I have just as much to learn in this environment as I do at Educon 2.1. It is my job to hear all of the voices around me and to synthesize it into my own learning environment.

This is my learning network too.

I never understood that before. I always just made it about my online PLN. It is my job (not because it is in my job description, but because it is the way that I will be a better learner) to connect all of my learning network to one another. I need to share what I learn from Twitter with the people I see and the people that I see need to be able to reach my Twitter network. Why has it taken me this long to figure this out?

(I guess this isn’t the revelation that I am making it out to be. I have been tweeting about what I’m learning for a while now and I have been sharing links and resources with my district as well, but I don’t know that I ever made it a goal that I would try to create continuity between those two spheres. How have you connected your virtual networks and your real-life networks? How can I do it better?)

Today I had two really good conversations about what is truly important in creating a learning environment for a large organization. We talked about collaborative tools, LMS‘s, project-specific resources, among others. We talked about what were absolute requirements for our institutions (our district and an online charter school through the district). Based upon these conversations, I have realized something pretty big for me.

For a long time, I have been tread the line between the one-size-fits-all model of online learning, in which we try and make a single LMS do everything that we need it to and trying to use and truly going after Small Pieces Loosely Joined. In reality, there is no one solution that creates a learning environment for all stakeholders. However, it is also true that the spirit of joining together small pieces of the web doesn’t mesh with many org charts I know. So, what about this:

What if we have the face of the learning space be a single login page, a portal that determines what type of learner you are. Are you a student, a teacher, or an administrator? Do you learn by collaborating in groups? Do you learn by getting all of your resources delivered right to you in a list to check off?

Once it determines your role, all it would do is present you with a series of links and embedded content. If you are student, you would have links to your classes. If you are a teacher, you would have links to your collaborative lesson planning wiki. It does not have to be beautiful or elegant, it simply has to work. It has to sense who you are as a learner and then present you with a menu of learning options.

This way, you can have as many small pieces as you want and you can change them up as much as you want as an organization, but the face of the organization remains the same. You, as a learner, are serviced by having access to the best specific tools for specific purposes, but the organization is serviced by funelling all of the information through one space.

So, the metaphor goes like this: Every year we are asked to do more and more with less and less. We are asked to run around the room again and again with more chairs taken away. When are forced to shove more people onto the same amount of chairs. And I say, this is a good thing. We need to be whittling down to what is essential. We need to be able to put all of the learning and experience of the people in our institutions into the smallest number of logins and tools… Until we arive at one chair.

One day, we–along with all of our tools–will fit onto a single chair. We will know just how to stack ourselves and our resources so that we fit together perfectly. Until we get there, though, we need to keep on pulling the chairs out. We need to keep on finding ways of simplifying our learning spaces. We need to find ways of joining together the small pieces, to create something great.

When I look out onto the learning landscape, I see people who are heavily invested. In making sure that students know what they need to, invested in the future, invested in the past, invested in keeping kids in schools, invested in unschooling children. We are invested in so many things, and that is why the landscape is so beautiful.
 
I don’t ever want to live in a place where we only want one thing in education. It would be easier, but so much less fulfilling.
 
Let’s never try to kill the landscape of learning with saying it only has to happen one way. We are all invested. Let’s find a way to make a huge return on all of our investments.
 
(Although I would like to find a way to make it less cliche.)
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Posted via email from olco5’s posterous

Tim was the best man at my wedding. He was my friend before I had any others. He was the one who helped me to understand IRC and modem speeds. He was the one who made being geeky okay. Anyway, this post is for him because he is intrigued by my use of Twitter and other connection tools in the world of education. He is also a generally curious person, and when I decided to come to his city for a certain conference hosted by a certain school all based upon the connections in my Twitter network, Tim decided it was too much. So, he joined up today.

Now, it is my job to tell him why he has made a good choice, and how perhaps he can even use Twitter to the benefit of his own scholarly pursuits (he is a PHD cantidate at UPenn for Mathematics). Well, here goes:

Even though Tim has already decided to take the plunge, I still think it is a good idea to talk about why twitter is not a total waste of his time, and why it is worth the time it takes to build a new network even though he has a vibrant Facebook presence and he seems to have quite a bit going for him in the world of academia…

Here is a nice little story about how twitter was born. – It is always nice to know just how something begins and why it begins too.

Here is a really great piece on what twitter can do for musicians and the rest of us. – I really like this piece because of just how many different ways that twitter has influenced the lives of the musicians and other people in the article.

Here are some personal reflections on why twitter makes sense to use for learning – Although this is a small sample, Tom Barret, puts together a pretty compelling reason for using twitter to learn as an adult.

Now, as many of you know, I don’t like to talk too much about the tools, but seeing as how I have a special assignment today, I figure I will have to from time to time.

Now that you are on twitter, you will need some voices to listen to.

I recommend using a few different tools in order to figure out which voices you are interested in:

• Tweetgrid or Tweetdeck – These two tools let you monitor the conversation on any topic that you choose. All you have to do is type in a Hashtag (a tag that starts with #) or a keyword. Tweetgrid is a web application and Tweetdeck is adobe air app. Once you find someone that is saying something interesting, follow them so that you can listen to what they are saying even when they are not talking about that given topic. These tools are also the best way to follow a conference or event.
• Twellow – This site, although ugly, is incredibly helpful at finding people who are interested in what you are interested in. It is basically a sophisticated twitter people search.
• Liz Davis‘ List of Educators on Twitter or Jane Hart’s Directory of Learning Professionals on Twitter or the Twitter 4 Teachers Wiki– These three lists are pretty exhaustive and at least the list from Liz can be sorted to fit your own needs. The Wiki is well sorted and has every different type of user I could think of accounted for.

Once you have a least a few people that you are following, you will want to hone your network to make sure that you are not missing out on voices that are influential or are startling. Here are few more resources to do that trick:

• Who Should I follow?– This analyzes your current friends and makes sure that you are listening to people that are relevent and close to you (geographically).
• Mr. Tweet – Mr. Tweet is single-handedly responsible for growing the readership of the readership of the edublogosphere many times over. A great resource, but don’t get suckered into following too many people.
• Friend or Follow – Once you have a lot of people to follow as well as people who are following you back, you will want to see just how far the reciprication goes. This service allows you to see just how popular you are with the people who you find interesting.

Once you have a network of people that you want to listen to and you have a general voice for what you would like to talk about, you need to start tweeting and holding conversations.

• Dial2Do – Tweet by calling a phone number and speaking.
• Tweetree – Look at the conversations on twitter as threaded discussions, including media (photos, videos, etc.)
• Tweet.im – Tweet through your instant messenger client.
• Posterous – Tweet via your e-mail.
• Twhirl – This is still my favorite twitter client for tweeting and receiving updates. Because I need something to come and hit me over the head with updates from time to time, the fact that it pops up in the bottom right corner when one of my friends has said something is a really big plus for me.

How do you extend your twitter network into the other stuff that you are already doing?

• Friendfeed – Tie Twitter and all of your other social networks together.
• Twitter Search – This will allow you to create rss feeds of searches that you would like to be updated on at all times. In practice, I like to have a few of these rss feeds going directly into my google reader so that I can stay up on topics even if I miss things while I am away from twitter.

More than anything, Tim, twitter is about listening for me. As much as I want to be a part of the conversation and engage others. Twitter is about listening to the voices around me and trying to soak up all of the information I can and learn from the network. I say and contribute enough to never be accused of lurking, but I know that my value is in putting pieces together, not in being the first to tweet out a story.

As I am reflecting upon my two years on Twitter, I would say that more than anything else I have learned how to have good conversations, learned how to create community, and learned that posting to twitter about the birth of your second child is just awesome.

Connecting is the hardest thing to do in learning. If you don’t believe me, ask a student how many times they have received meaningful feedback today. Ask a teacher how many parents know exactly what goes on in their classes. I want to do this connection every single day and I’m setting up ways to do so. I’m very excited about them, but I was out buying a house today, so I will be blogging about them soon. I guess stay tuned.

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I want to be able to depend upon all of the spaces that I choose to learn and work in. I want to know that they are there when I need them. Would it be too much to ask that the Learning Management System for our online school work every day and not be the slowest web application that I have ever exeperienced?

When the expectation is that it will be slow… When I have to wait until 10 pm to see if I can actually get some work done… When I need to explain away all of the valid reasons to be frustrated at it… When just having it up and running is enough to be satisfied… Are those the points when it is just too much and you have to make as switch, never looking back upon what was all of your hard work and time.

Now, this is a rediculously specific example, but if I can make a more general point, I would say it is this: What is the point at which you realized that you have been sucker punched by your own decisions? When do you just suck up all of the things you have done and go in a completely different direction because the price of not doing anything is much worse than the pain of tearing yourself away from what has come before?

If something doesn’t change within the next day or so, that time is now.

I received an e-mail from an attendee of my educon presentation, The On Button: Instant and Always on collaboration. She was asking about one of the items in the presentation, in which I described adding an opml file (which was created by a Live Search OPML creator). Rather than simply e-mailing her and walking her through it, I decided to use ScreenToaster in order to do the nuanced topic a little more justice.

Here is the link to the tutorial.

Now, I have been a big fan of screencasting for a long time, but until tools like ScreenToaster and Screencast-o-matic become more common place, I don’t think that we will really start using it as a way of communicating our thoughts. When it is easy enough to demonstrate your learning, I think it is heinous not to create an archive of that learning.

I guess my biggest question is, how much learning has dissapeared because e-mails get deleted or the school period ends?

My next question is, what can we capture now that we couldn’t capture before?

Why shouldn’t students be able to show what they know, literally.

(Also, as an aside, I will be expanding on many of the ideas of my presentation over the next few weeks. Let me know if there is anything specifically that you would like to hear more about.)