Learning is Change

We need a Brave (New) World:

What resonates with me most about this post is when speak about the world being weak:

“It is this world that we live in that can be weak. This world that is too afraid to embrace change. This world that is too afraid to stand up and speak up for those who are not able to. This world that would rather talk about apps and computers and Twitter than use those things to talk about how to make our schools safer for all of the people inside of them.”

I find this infinitely true. We are afraid and we are weak. We find it easier to put everything into little boxes that fit into what we believe school is or should be.

However, the narrative that I think is most at odds with us making schools safe for all teachers is the one that claims teachers don’t have a life outside of schools. If we admit that teachers don’t only exist between the first bell and the last, we have to accept that they are complex enough to have personal lives. If we stop believing the only purpose teachers have in this world is to grade papers and plan lessons, we would have to think hard about how they are human, and they are us.

As an educator, we are brave when we deny this narrative. As a non-educator, we are brave when we see teachers as complexly as we see ourselves. We all deserve this brave world. We all deserve to see people for who they are, and not merely the roles they play within our small corner of the universe.

Thank you for showing that teachers are people and for sharing your complex and wonderful story with others. There will come a time when the world is brave enough to accept this from everyone, but until that time, I am glad you are thinking and writing out loud.

via Please Don’t Call Me Brave: For Those Who Continue to Teach From Within the Closet | Crawling Out of the Classroom.

Finding EdTech Unicorns is one of my favorite things:

I find data ownership (by the learner) to be such a mythical creature in the world of EdTech. The ability to “carry my data with me” in a digital backpack should be what we are developing toward, but instead we keep on making lots of lockers for people to store their stuff within.

I would also want to think through how the “online” components of these communities aid and influence the offline components. So, meetups yes, but also twitter chats (or their equivalent). Also, capturing real-life learning and reflecting upon it online.

I also believe that we need better ways of organizing our curated information. If we continue to simply stack information or pull it together in piles, we will get very similar results in terms of overload. If we can find intelligent ways of creating small networks of information in the same way that we create small networks of people, I think we will do more to curate and create the future.

I’m not so sure that technology is neutral. I’ve seen tools that enable things that were not previously possible and I’ve seen tech that holds back a learner. Tech is not a panecea, but it’s choosing the right tool for the right purpose and showing that it can transform the learning environment, if done right.

via The Mythical Unicorn of Ed.Tech — The Saxifrage School — Medium.

Why Gossip can suck the culture right out of a school:

The part of this post that really caught me off guard was this: “A large number of teachers haven’t ever really left school.”

I think that this is absolutely true. It is both amazing and difficult to swallow. Gossip is definitely a byproduct of this system, but so are the ways in which perpetuate “school” in other ways. The ways in which we are taught influence so much the ways in which we teach. Especially if we have never learned within any other system.

The questions I have is these: What does it take for someone to question the system that created them? Is it just realizing that what you have always done is no longer working? What does it take to stand up to not only the gossip, but the other ways in which our system is resolved to just keep on going?

I don’t have answers to those questions, but they haunt me. Thank you for calling attention to this. I am glad you are standing up to this gossip, and I am glad you are looking for ways to change “school.”

via Standing up to gossip | Time Space Education.

There really is a difference in the way you approach student access to social media:

I really like the way that you have framed this as a case of “modeling” rather than of “gatekeeping.” I don’t see the need for a digital content ‘license to drive’ as much as the need for really great use of digital content within learning experiences.

I also think it is important to think about the idea that great use of any medium (paper, video, etc.) doesn’t happen all at once. The first few hundred tweets I sent were mostly rubbish until I figured out what social media was all about. Can we allow a space and time for kids to be able to experiment and get better, rather than expecting them to be experts instantly?

Lastly, I think your point about making connections is an important one. The difference between social media and traditional media is that it about building a conversation and connecting with those that previously lacked connection and context. We are enabling a “citizenship” that isn’t just about being informed. It is about informing others and sharing in the process of information. The digital contribution is how we get there.

Nocking The Arrow: Does Digital Contribution Trump Digital Citizenship?.

An amazing piece from a teacher who is trying something new in the classroom and feeling understandable pushback from students and parents:

I think this fear is absolutely understandable. You are doing something amazing, and that is scary.

My favorite thing that you have done about this fear is face it WITH your students. You have admitted to them that it exists and you have called it out on these wonderful posters.

It is my hope that you recognize that not one of your students will forget this year. It is theirs and yours together.

Your entry does have a point: You are learning out loud, which is just what you are asking your kids to do. Is there a way that the EdTech (or Medium) community can help support you in this work?

What if you asked students to post their work online for each other to comment on (or for fellow educators/classrooms) to respond to? What if we could all grapple with the duality of love and fear?

Idle Confessions of a Teacher Trying Something New — Teaching, Learning, & Education — Medium.

A wonderful rebuttal to the Education Week article decrying differentiation:

I had similar issues with the Education Week article, and I am so glad that you have framed differentiation as difficult but still worthwhile. I think your list of “maybes” is the most compelling argument for defining differentiation in a new way.

Differentiation is not simply giving kids more or less work. It is about giving kids different work and different entry points into the work. The one question I have, though, is who is actually responsible for making this happen?

If it is entirely up to the teacher with 30 other kids in their classroom then differentiation is pretty near impossible. However, if a lot of responsibility for making these choices and navigating resources to support learning can be done by the children themselves, then it becomes much more manageable. If they feel empowered to help each other as a community of learners, then it isn’t only the teacher doing the differentiating.

I think that is my central problem with the Education Week article. It is dependent upon believing that the only teacher in the room is the one standing at the front of the classroom. This is a myth. Every child is capable to teaching some else. Every child is capable of making choices for their own learning. If we deny these things, differentiation is an enemy, sapping time needed for THE teacher to teach. If we accept them, it is a pathway toward better outcomes, and much more ownership of learning for each individual student.

via Differentiated Instruction Does Work | Living Avivaloca.

Very disturbing privacy statements from Edmodo, Schoology, and Coursera:

Thank you so much for compiling these three excerpts from the policies of tech companies. I think that most of us are blissfully unaware about these kinds of practices, but I’m not sure that we can use ignorance as an excuse any more.

I am trying to figure the way forward, though. I want to be able to use tools that allow for the best types of collaboration while ensuring that students own their data. How can we ensure that teachers (the ones that are closest to kids) are making good decisions about student data while not being hamstrung by the inability to use “cloud-based” platforms? Do we have to literally own all of the servers in order to make it safe? And, is it safer when the data is “owned by the district” than when it is “owned by a company acting on behalf of the district”?

These are the questions I have, but I don’t want these statements to exist. I don’t want student data to ever be an “asset” that can be bought or sold. A student, and their learning data, is precious and for the time that their parents have entrusted us with them, we should do right by them. We should give them their data any time they want to leave or when they graduate. But, we should also let them publish their work and reflect upon it publicly if they want to do so.

The student data privacy conversation may be murky, but companies selling student data is not. It is never okay.

Who Is Going To Be The Next ConnectEDU? | FunnyMonkey.

An honest reflection on how to build a PLN from scratch from someone who is less than a year in:

This is probably one of the best statements made about building a PLN that I have heard in years:

“This is perhaps my most important lesson of all: You need to find your people. Being connected isn’t about building a PLN like a house, it is more like building a home. Your PLN is about the relationships. It is really about how and not who. It is about how you develop the relationships with your PLN, not who you add.”

I would emphasize the ‘your people’ part of this statement. There are plenty of people on social media, plenty of educators and folks who are doing interesting things. But, ‘your people’, is a whole other animal. Finding the people resonate with you or the people that want to learn with you is so critical to maintaining your sanity within an online space. If it feels like a exercise in broadcasting or argument with the ether, then it is highly unlikely that anything meaningful will come of it.

I am always intrigued by how someone starts this journey of becoming a connected educator. I would be interested to find out what it was for you that helped you to see the value in spending time on Twitter or writing a blog. What is it about these spaces that is proving so valuable to you? How are you building relationships rather than just ‘adding people’ to your network?

Thank you for chronicling your journey. We have a lot to learn from folks that are actively engaged in “building their PLN home.”

via How Being a Connected Educator Works | btcostello05.