Educational Discourse

Recently I’ve been involved in some discussions about how teachers might become better users of technology. It began with a post over at Dangerously Irrelevant where Scott McLeod posted

In many industries, knowledge of relevant technologies is a necessary prerequisite for either getting or keeping one’s job. Sometimes the organization provides training; sometimes the employee is expected to get it on her own. Either way, the expectation is that use of the relevant technologies is a core condition of employment.
Why aren’t our school organizations expecting more of their employees? Are we that desperate for workers?

The discussion that follows is worth reading just to see the complexity of the issue. Now, I don’t think that we are desperate for workers or anything like that but it made me wonder why it is that there are many teachers who are not taking advantage of these tools in their teaching.

Now Scott pointed me in the direction of Greg Farr, an administrator in Texas, who has some great posts about technology and its use in the classroom. I suggest that you take a look at what he has to say about technology use in education plus a whole lot of other things.

One of Greg’s posts deals with the use of technology and it being a tool that should be used just like all the other tools a teacher has at their disposal. He describes, very well, the whole idea that teaching is not about the tools but

True teaching and learning MUST allow for subtleties and nuance, for opinions expressed in tone of voice, for emphasis via a small hand gesture, or doubt cast with the slightest raising of an eyebrow.

He goes on to say

I maintain that TO THIS DAY the best way to assess a teachers ability is to take them outside, give them a group of 20 students, no pencils, no paper, no electricity, nothing but a pleasant day and a tree to sit under. And tell them to teach. A true TEACHER would take this opportunity and run with it.

I have to concur 100% with this. Teaching concerns human relationships. It is anchored in assisting students to add to their knowledge, seeking ways to scaffold learning to push them into places where they will need to stretch and question, examine, accept or reject and search for more. It is sometimes uncomfortable and challenging, frustrating and rewarding the whole while being centered around relationships.

A similar thing was happening over at Teaching Generation Z where Graham Wegner’s Parable2.0 provided for a great discussion about how teachers who are wanting to share their passion for the use of web2.0 tools often find it frustrating. The parable looks at how, in their desire to bring other teachers on board, often end up in a frustrating situation. The discussion that followed explored how many teachers identify with the parable and how it unfolded. One such contributor was Clay Burell from Beyond School, his blog looking at teaching, technology and a few other things. Clay’s comment

As a classroom teacher who does drive his own geeky projects, I know how overwhelming it can get – and I have the skills to survive and troubleshoot and tolerate frustrations and “Crosbian Messiness.” To expect others to be able to handle the strain of things too ambitious, or too time-consuming relative to the rest of the teaching load on the teacher’s plate, is dangerous.

is right on the mark. Those of us who are using the tools and doing various projects are able to do so because we have advantages that others don’t. Now, some of these advantages include what Clay points out:

skills to survive and troubleshoot and tolerate frustrations and “Crosbian Messiness.”

However, the one thing that isn’t stated is that many of us have created networks of other users and “techno geeks” with whom we can discuss, question, collaborate and bounce ideas off of. Many of us twitter, pounce, Facebook, Ning, …. sharing our discussions, thoughts and, now that we have developed relationships, parts of our lives. We have adopted the interconnectedness of the networks and built relationships which are now leading to people planning meetings at conferences (like NECC where I WON’T be going!) and personal rendezvous for such things as golf.

Relationships – this is what brings, and binds us, together. Whether it is Sharon Peters looking for feedback on a post, Alec Corous looking for assistance with web conferencing, Vickie Davis and Julie Lindsay discussing their Horizon Project, Will Richardson and his discussions of learning or Dan Meyers, who questions and challenges, helping to stretch the discussion, helping us to reflect on our ideas and thoughts while providing some great tools and insights into using web2.0 tools in teaching, these relationships help us connect and develop, grow and learn, keep our perspective and motivate us These relationships have become a large part of how we are growing and developing our teaching and understanding. These are the relationships that those teachers not engaged DO NOT have.

Showing other teachers all the tools isn’t what is needed. Helping them develop relationships and make connections is. We can show and demonstrate, rave and mandate; it will not bring others to question, grow and adopt. We have many examples of educators who are beginning to delve into using these tools. Overwhelming them with the possibilities just pushes them away. Helping them to build their own networks, seeking out teachers who, like themselves, are testing the water and encouraging them to continue in their own lifelong learning will empower them to develop even more. Not all of them will see the benefits of all the tools they encounter but the relationships they develop during this process will go further, I believe, to bringing about powerful change than any tech person can hope to do by themselves. Maybe that’s the lesson we need to take with us as we continue to approach those around us, showing them the power of our networks and the learning that these networks encourage. As was posted tonight on twitter

kolson29 finished watching really bad movie, off to bed. Twitterverse very different from even a week ago…….more “conversations”, less telling.

Let’s invite others to start their own conversations, starting where they are and moving forward instead of where we want them to be.

Things have not been going quite as I had planned. In fact, if I were to plan how they could go awry Monday , today would have been pretty much bang on. Okay. I arrived at school at my usual time, went to grab a coffee but it wasn’t ready yet so I go down to my office and began my morning looking at paperwork that I had ignored yesterday. (that was my first mistake, looking at paperwork so early) I proceeded to go talk with some of the teachers, stopped in the hall to talk to a few students and then back to my office to look at email. My normal Tuesday morning ended. What do I find but a reply to my email about a meeting today that I figured was in the afternoon. Nope – 9:30. Location – an hour away. Time now – 8:35. I didn’t panic but I also didn’t get my cup of coffee.

For the  next 20 minutes, I’m dashing around trying to get someone to cover my supervision, cover my class, be acting-principal (never have figured that one out. How come someone else who takes my place is acting? What does that mean when I’m there?) Then there is the phone call home to make arrangements for hockey practice and a few other after school activities. By the time I leave town it’s now 9:10 and I’m driving in fog so thick you can cut with a knife.

Why am I doing this? Oh, yeah, it’s for the kids and I love my job and I have payments.

The meeting was ….. – it was about technology use in the division. The coffee, when I finally got there, was pretty good and lunch was great – lasagna. I figured that things were turning out not to bad and I was going to get home in time for hockey pick-up. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I made a fatal error at that moment. Something that usually only rookie principals make. Something that I should have remembered. It’s Tuesday. Go home. Nope, not me. Not today.

I went back to the school. For some reason I do this when I’ve been at a meeting out of town. Even though I kept telling myself to just go home and go in early tomorrow.

We had 7 new students register in school. One who will need a full-time aide and others with some learning difficulties. Teachers are going on breaks already and the substitutes aren’t really ready to come in yet. I have a request for semester 2 timetable for a distance ed class and, well, I’m not even close to being done. And to make things really interesting, my office is now the football equipment room and old computer dumping ground for the moment. It’s only Tuesday!!!

See, if I’d gone home, I wouldn’t have known any of this until Wednesday and you kind of expect this kind of stuff on a Wednesday. I mean, it’s the day when many things take place because everyone is finally fully awake and recovered from the weekend. People are finally realizing that the paperwork isn’t in or they’re missing a form. Parents feel that all kids need to be back at school because, well, it’s Wednesday and they were feeling okay this morning. (especially after they threw up. Really. They did.) Teachers are realizing you had said you’d do something and are reminding you that you said you’d do something. (Thank goodness that by Thursday afternoon they forget because neither of you can remember what it is you said you were going to do.) Kids have been aggravating one another for two days and someone is going to get it and you might have to figure out who got what and who was really aggravating whom (even though this has been going on for longer than they have been in school and will only end with, well, probably old age and death) but you still have to work through things to make sure that everyone knows that you actually did something this week.

But oh no. I figured I’d just drop by and see what went on during the day. Thus I began my Wednesday work today and I’m not really ready for it. My body and mind are still in Tuesday and what I’m needing to do is really in need of Wednesday thinking. But I’m here so I’d better do something besides write this post. Post writing doesn’t really have a day. You can write on any day it’s just the content will be different depending on the day. Like if this had been tomorrow, I would have written about it being a typical Wednesday with all that was going on and what had happened.

All this has really messed me up but, as I work through this, I realize that if I’m already doing Wednesday work that means that Friday can be partly Saturday so I can leave early and begin my weekend Friday at noon. Hey, that’s sounding not bad. Wait, I have to go to a basketball tournament with my boys team which will not only make it impossible to leave early Friday but I have to spend Saturday with students so it really won’t feel like a Saturday.  Now I’m really down. I don’t think even an Aero bar is going to get me over this. What was I thinking when I booked that? It was probably in early November when all those stupid tournament requests come out and you figure “Hey, that’s sounds good. What’s the worst that can happen? What, will Tuesday really become Wednesday?” and you laugh it off. Every year the same thing happens and yet I don’t remember. I think that when they took out my heart and my sense of humour (you have to have those removed to be an administrator. True story. Mine are in a jar on my desk so I can show the kids when they come in.) they also removed also done a bit of a nip and tuck on my longterm memory so that I only recall things after I’ve committed to them. (Probably why I sit on so many committees.)

I was blocking it out and not thinking about it but now I end up thinking about it all because my Tuesday ended up being a Wednesday.

Better get at planning semester 2 and figuring out where I’m going to put all this stuff stacked in my office. And to think, I’m the guy supposedly in charge around here. Can you imagine what Thursday must be like;)

Tomorrow morning life will once again begin that familiar cadence as school begins for 2008. We’re almost half-way through the year but 2008 is just beginning and with it all the expectations of a new year. It seems kind of funny to be starting a new year in the middle of a school year. I mean, all the rest of the world works on the calendar year, beginning in January and ending in December, kinda. Why is education so different? Why do we begin our year in August/September and end it in June? Why couldn’t we transform our school year to begin in January and end in December? Would it be impossible? What is keeping education from doing this?

The new year will start whether we are ready for it or not. Instead of waiting until June to finish our schooling, why can’t we finish it in December – have exams and begin our new year in January? What is keeping education from joining the rest of the world and following a yearly schedule that is more closely aligned to the calendar. We’d get rid of all the problems with birthdays – born in X year, you begin school instead of having a cutoff of, like, September for students.

I’ve thought about this for quite awhile, ever since I began having to deal with budgets that would begin in August and end in June but really didn’t happen that way since they ended with the Dec cycle. So, as I prepare to go back to school, knowing that I have about 3 weeks to finish my course and then exams begin, I really wonder if this is the best for students. Why can’t  we finish everything up, write exams and be done with the year like everyone else? January would see us beginning another year, students would be moving on to a new grade in time with a new year. We might even be able to do some moving of holiday time so that there is a bit more time off now or at other times of the year instead of the huge break in July and August when students lose so much. We are no longer an agrarian society yet our school system is still being run like we were.

Would changing the way our system was organized allow us to break the mold in other areas? Would we be able to redesign how things work and take into consideration what works best in each area? I mean, what works well in cities might not work as well in the rural areas. Do we all have to be cookie-cutter replicas? Education the world over looks very similar, from what I’ve seen. Why is that? Why is it we seem to have only one formula for schooling?

Tomorrow, ready or not, school will begin for many educators and students. Life will once again fall into a familiar pattern as education moves forward to the end of yet another year – in June. Maybe we need to disrupt that pattern. I mean, for the first time in history, there will be more people living in urban areas than in rural which could give way to a whole group of new developments and changes. Could 2008 be the year of the great educational reform?

My resolutions for this year are pretty straightforward because I’ve decided that I need to focus on a few things and do them well instead of the usual list of 10 that I don’t really do at all. My #1 resolution is to take care of my health. I’m reading RealAge by Michael F. Roizen and looking at how my “habits” are affecting my body and my life. I not promoting this. Instead, it is a read that is giving my ideas about my health and the choices I make. #2 resolution is to blog/write frequently even if it is a short post. Sometimes I have so many ideas I want to discuss that I am not sure which to follow and end up doing none. Since joining Passionate Teachers and Fireside Conversations – both educator Ning sites, I have decided to dedicate a portion of my morning to writing/commenting. #3 is spending more time with my family. To do this, I will have to prioritize what I am doing and learn to really stick to my schedule. #4 – the last one – quit talking about web2.0 and starting implementing it with my staff, students and other administrators. First step, setting up sessions with teachers to explore. Second, putting teachers in contact with other teachers. Finally, begin doing presentations to others about the everyday uses of the technologies.

That’s it. 4. Each one requires that I pay attention to details – something that isn’t a strong trait for me but will be essential if the use of technology is to become a norm for our students. It will require teachers overcoming their fears about technology and doing things a bit differently but, unless these steps are taken, things will continue at the glacial pace they are moving. I want my daughters to be exposed and use the skills they have developed outside of school in their daily school lives.

People often have goals/resolutions but they don’t take the time to get to the specifics which undermines their goals. So, for me, each of the goals above will be fleshed out and be broken down into smaller, achievable goals. As my friends, I hope that some of you will call me on these goals and help me to keep them. I’ll share my specific goals using google docs if that helps.

2008 is indeed my year!

The new year has arrived and I’m spending time back in my hometown visiting family. It’s always nice to come home to take some time to just visit and catch up. It gives me time to do some reading and blogging and just reconnect with my family – dysfunctional as we are. As I drove home, a 6 hour trip, I was reflecting on all the things that have taken place during the past year and looking forward to where things might be going in 2008.As I look back at 2007, I marvel at all that has happened since I began really blogging in January 2007. I mean, I’ve met and interacted with a whole variety of different educators and technologists from around the world. I’ve learned a great deal about what tools are available and some of the great things that are being done in classrooms all over the world. I’ve been able to interact and expand my knowledge of teaching and learning and the impact that the technological tools are having, or could have, on the classroom.

As an administrator, I find myself to be a somewhat oddity in this blogosphere ether that we inhabit. I’ve come across a few regular principal bloggers but the list isn’t very long. Ive also read many a blog where principals are one of the main stumbling blocks in getting technological tools into classrooms. As my last post indicated, I’ve come to realize that these tools will become necessary components of teaching and we need to become active in promoting use before someone else comes to tell us what and how to use them. As an administrator, I’d better be assisting my staff in working with these tools and looking at ways to help them become part of the teaching pedagogy in the school.

As I look forward to 2008, I see ever so unclearly that we need to reconceptualize the way we go about doing “school”. As the web grows and tools become more available, it will be necessary to decide what and where these tools will be used. I mean, just look at the tools available at go2web20.net and you’ll see that there are multiple sources available for anything that you wish to do. I spent a few days just surfing and checking out many of the sites that are listed on this site. Some I found to be very userfriendly while some just didn’t do what I wanted them to do so I looked for another tool.

The following is just a fraction of what is available.  I found MeeMix radio to be very good and have used it a few times. I thought Gorillaspot has some good potential for creating online video especially in my Communication Production Technology class. We may use this to create our online trailers that the students are suppose to do. I’ve also added the liveZuu widget to see how it might help. I’m not sold on it but will be taking a closer look. I thought the  was a good idea and would work in an office or classroom setting. I’m going to give it a try after Christmas with the first staff birthday.  I’m also giving meemi a try just because it sounds like something that a might work for a group project. Mind42 is a free online mindmapping site that looks like it has potential. I won’t really know until we give it a spin in class! Scribblink is an online whiteboard that I’m going to give a try. It sound like something that would be very useful when teaching a distance ed class. Converttube  provides a way to convert youtube and such videos to other formats. Storyofmylife looks like an interesting site especially with all this focus on storytelling. I haven’t really looked at it closely but it looks very inviting. Mygetgo is another online organizational site that allows you to add your information and content. Much the same to netvibes and pageflakes. I like the backgrounds and will fiddle a bit with the modules before I give a screenshot.

Whew. I really didn’t mean to go that far but I just get carried away when I see what is available for use on the net and I’m always weighing the benefits of what I look at with what I’m already using since recreating a new startpage or adding yet another site does take a great deal of time. Right now, my main focus as an administrator is having staff use various online applications on a regular basis so that they become use to the routine of checking for updates, information and email more than once a week!

Looking back on 2007, I see that education and educators have made progress in using the technology tools but we haven’t re-visualized school by including them in the day-to-day happenings of our classrooms and our lives. It’s not that we throw out all we are doing but we need to reflect on what is happening around us and explore how it can assist us in what we are doing. Banning, confiscating and outlawing technologies won’t stop their use while letting them drive how and what we do isn’t right either. One of my greatest worries for the upcoming year is that instead of educators adopting these tools and using them, they will be “required areas of study” and become the “essential learning tools” that teachers will be mandated to use, following the prescribed online curricula that will be supplied. We have an opportunity to be proactive innovators but our time is dwindling. It can’t be long before someone, probably an administrator, figures out it might be easier to track if curricula are being followed by tracking usage of recommended online sites through a database, using particular tools to demonstrate and show particular things and having students complete specific information sheets to determine comprehension.

Rest assured, that administrator will not be me.