Not So Distant Future

What kind of difference can fifteen minutes make?

Yesterday, I was delighted to chat via Skype with David Jakes, Patrick Higgins, John Maklary, Robin Ellis, and Joel Adkins during a workshop for Teacher/Leaders in our district.  The theme of our workshop was connections and how teacher leaders in a school help begin epidemics, springing off the idea of connectors, mavens, and salesmen in Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point.   

During the conversation, we talked about the benefits of connecting with other educators, but also some of the obstacles.  David Jakes’ comment particularly resonated with me.   He commented that he refused to accept the statement that there isn’t enough time.   He asked if we couldn’t make 15 minutes in our day for learning for ourselves.

I’ve been thinking about that whole issue of time for teachers.  Educators are very accustomed to taking care of others, and sometimes we forget to put the oxygen masks on ourselves first, as the cliche goes.  

And while I know that our time is finite, hearing David’s challenge caused me to ponder what it would be like for each educator to carve out that fifteen minutes, to sit with a cup of coffee and just learn something–to create that “space” for ourselves, instead of dashing about declaring we don’t have enough time to learn or add one new thing. 

It strikes me that by making that time in our day, setting some boundaries for it, and making it a routine, we could each build a practice that was rewarding both in terms of learning, but also in terms of supporting ourselves.  

This time of year, it’s sometimes hard to get going in the mornings.  Many mornings I think of the scene in  All That Jazz, when Roy Scheider prepares for work the same way each morning, and at the end of his somewhat bleary-eyed routine, stands in front of his mirror and says, “It’s showtime, folks.”  

But I’ve found a way to motivate myself by listening to podcasts on the way to work.  My commute isn’t very long–in fact, it’s just 15 minutes.  But in that fifteen minutes, I learn from some of the best educators in the world, some of the best writers for the New York Times, and I always walk away with an idea to try, or a new way to think of things, and then I can’t wait to get into the library.  So I know the difference that fifteen minutes can make.

Carrying that idea further, what if we provided personal “learning time” the same  way we utilize “uninterrupted sustained silent reading”  time in classrooms?   We could call it ”uninterrupted sustained silent learning.”     What would it be like to hand that time to students and to teachers in a school as a principal, and say, this is your fifteen minutes?  This is YOUR time to learn what YOU need to learn.  

So….what would you do with your fifteen minutes?

Thanks again to David, Joel, Patrick, Robin and John for joining us yesterday–as always the conversation has deepened my own thinking. 

(Postscript:  And in some random coincidence, when I was linking to David’s blog to add to this post, I discovered he had written a post about the Tipping Point–I hadn’t even realized that when I invited him to participate in our workshop!)

My role is about to change.  After 17 years of being a librarian with a physical library, our library is undergoing a major renovation and we’ll be closing in about two weeks.   At that point, we’ll be rooming in with our ninth grade library, and have to navigate a construction zone to work with the grade 10-12 students.  

I’ve been thinking this may be a unique opportunity to become a virtual librarian for awhile and explore what that is.   Recently we discovered that instead of opening back up in September, as I had anticipated, we won’t be able to open until December.  The thought of not having a physical space for a year has been rather daunting, and I know it will offer a lot of challenges for our whole campus.

So I’ve been putting a lot of thought into our virtual services and how I can “take the library to the students” rather than the students coming to me, so that we can still provide good service to our students and staff.    Since Cathy Nelson was so very kind enough to comment about this in a recent post, I thought I would expand on some of the ways I hope to do this.

One thing that’s important in virtual learning is a good web presence.   We need to make sure things we do are clickable, and that support and help are clickable, so deepening our website is something we’ll be working on.   Adding more e-books to our collection, identifying more virtual ways to access information, and building good pathfinders will all help with that.   I’m hoping this will also be my chance to take time to really learn html and enhance my web design capabilities (anyone interested in helping me with that project?)

Other than working with classes on research projects or multi-media projects, a tremendous amount of what we do each day is troubleshooting technology needs with students or making book recommendations.   So I want to find ways to provide help with that remotely, when I’m not able to reach a class directly.

We’ve been piloting using Skype on our campus, and this may be a perfect opportunity to test its power as a live reference and book recommendation tool.  What would it be like to have a open “Skype” line for teachers or students to message us with questions, book requests, etc?   Can we use a webcam to humanize our services even when they are from a distance?

The other opportunity I really see here is the chance to teach side by side in the classroom with teachers.  Now that our campus has added mobile laptop labs in anticipation of our closing, I’m planning to go to them to work on information literacy lessons, projects, etc.   I’m thinking this may really open up some collaborative opportunities to create more of a partnership with our teachers.

 I know I’m really going to miss the students in our space, together.  Although the 9-12 students can all access the ninth grade library where I”ll be, it’s much smaller, and so I know there will be a limit to the number of students who can be there.   Our seniors who are currently in the library every day will be graduating and another class of seniors halfway through before we reopen, and that will feel like something we’ve missed–those familiar faces in our familiar space.  

I’ll miss having everything I need at hand–miss having the variety of literary choices we’d normally have, miss all the activities we host in our space like Poetry Cafe and Dylan Day and teacher breakfasts and workshops, miss it being a gathering place for teachers and students alike. 

But in the interim, we are going to open an “internet” cafe type of space in our interior courtyard, and be there during lunch periods to provide service, answer questions and issue laptops, as well.  So that create times where we’re readily available to students, and running the internet cafe will open up new understandings I’m sure.  

And I’m sure we’ll find many ways to take the activities to the students in the classroom while we are without a physical space to host them.  I’m looking forward to seeing how we can use web tools, classrooms, and outdoor spaces to provide library services in the interim! 

We’ll also really have time to build some professional development opportunities and collaborate with the ninth grade staff, which I’m looking forward to.

So, as Cathy says in her post, wish us well in our virtual journey as our new physical 21st century “Research Center” comes to life.

Library services are changing tremendously.   I recently wrote about an article by Bob Hassett in which he eloquently writes that the library is “everywhere,” takes place all the time, and is composed of every student and teacher.

And as the Grinch says about Christmas, maybe libraries come without ”ribbons” or “tags,” maybe they come without bookcases or walls–maybe now libraries  “mean a little bit more.”

 Lee Wilson has an interesting post on managing information overload that has spurred my thinking of late.   The premise is that we no longer really have to “save” and “store” information, magazines, etc., because we can look things up easily when we need them if we have good information search strategies.

As I’ve been weeding our library the last few weeks prior to our upcoming renovation, thinking about this post has made me a little more ruthless in what I discard, in the realization that of course, students too will be looking first online, so there’s not the need there used to be to keep certain barely used books “just in case” there is a future information need.

Further, his post (and our lengthy renovation) spurred me to apply some organizational tools to my own work flow.  I’m still working through rethinking that, but one thing I did was look for a tool to manage the vast number of sticky notes that tend to accumulate on my desk. 

Stickies is the handy little program I’ve found to keep sticky notes on your desktop (and yes, I know the Mac has had this for awhile).    You can add floating notes that reside on your desktop, file them, sort them, color them, etc.    I’m already finding it a helpful way to keep up with what I need to do, and there are a lot of positive benefits–my desk is neater, I’m saving paper, and it feels great when I can delete a note because I’ve completed the task.

Next, I’ll be rethinking some magazine subscriptions at Wilson’s suggestion, since shuffling articles I want to finish reading  is the next source of clutter on my desk; though I’m not sure I’ll follow all the suggestions, because I do like some serendipity!

In a follow-up post, Wilson also shares an excellent list of websites with tools to help manage work efficiency that are well worth exploring. 

image credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/indieink/1420629617/

Garr Reynolds writes thought-provokingly on Presentation Zen about the concept of beginner’s mind and how we learn.

Reynolds writes:

The meaning of the beginner’s mind does not mean to retreat to the naiveté of a child. It is not about being simplistic or ignorant, it is about approaching life and its challenges with curiosity and enthusiasm. . . . The point is that we adults should maintain our curiosity and that sense that anything can be done, that sense that anything is possible. A sense that we all had as children but eventually all but lost as people mocked our enthusiasm and optimism. Those who succeed and change things are the ones who do not let the world change their mind. . . .

A child or a beginner says “why not?” An “expert” says “it can’t be done.” Shunryu Suzuki put it best in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind:

‘In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities,
in the expert’s mind there are few.’
—Shunryu Suzuki”

I think this is the very thing that trips all of us up when trying to convince teachers to reenvision their classrooms through the use of technology. Teachers are often accustomed to being considered the “expert mind,” so it is not just that we are asking teachers to see the uses of a particular tool in the classroom–what we are really asking is for is an entire paradigm shift–for teachers to approach their classrooms with a beginner’s mind, a child’s mind.

Children learn by playing, failing, experimenting. They don’t know what is possible, so they attempt things that we would consider impossible, or unwise. They approach the world differently than we as “expert adults” do.

The question is–what do those habits of mind cause us to miss?

In his post, Reynold’s links for more information to this lecture by Abbess Zenkei Blanche Hartman:, who further explains Suzuki’s work on beginner’s mind:

“When he spoke of ‘beginner’s mind,’ I think Suzuki Roshi was pointing to that kind of mind that’s not already made up. The mind that’s just investigating, open to whatever occurs, curious. Seeking, but not with expectation or grasping. Just being there and observing and seeing what occurs. Being ready for whatever experience arises in this moment. “

And how, if teachers or we ourselves are coming from a paradigm of expert mind, do we invite them to approach their classrooms with beginner’s mind? We can’t necessarily meditate in a workshop, obviously.

I’m thinking of ideas like these:

• Start a workshop with play. I think the only way this really would work is that the play has to be outside the area of expertise of the workshop participants. Give them a mystery object to explore, pull up a web 2.0 tool in a foreign language, find some way to begin a workshop by invoking a sense of play. This is risky and I think of all sorts of reactions teachers/librarians would have, but, it could lead to a discussion of the idea of openness and play and the barriers to that.
• Start a workshop talking or writing in journals about children and play. Have teachers recall a moment in their childhood that involved play. What did that feel like? What feelings does it evoke even thinking about it. Share a story about your own children and observations of them at play.
• Talk about learning and frustration. When do we learn by play and when does it become frustrating? What are the habits that frustrate us, like comparing ourselves to others, thinking we should get it faster, not understanding something, perceived lack of time, etc.? Then talk about that in terms of learning as children through play.
• Be invitational. Let workshop participants be independent and move at their own pace. Provide the opportunity for them to work together to problem solve.
• Dialog with people outside the field and create ways for teachers to do this. It moves the teacher out of the expert role, but opens up new and playful possibilities.
• Be open-minded as a presenter. But–think less is more. Ever watch a child at Christmas or on a birthday open up the first toy and start playing with it, while the adults encourage them to open the rest of the gifts? Maybe it’s overwhelming to have that huge amount of “input.” Slowing down and seeing one thing at a time has value. Sometimes we try to get teachers to open all the ‘gifts’ at once, and it’s overwhelming. Sometimes you have to share the whole toy catalog, but sometimes, you need to explore one gift and all it’s possibilities.
• In daily practice, when approaching teachers, keep a beginner’s mind. Sometimes perhaps because they don’t know the tools or research process as well, they may propose things that an”expert’s mind” might think are unworkable. But….can we let that beginner’s mind they may be approaching the problem with push our own thinking forward? Can we listen carefully to their perception of it and find a way?
• On a school-wide scale, principals can support play and innovation and learning. But in some schools more than others (and I would guess this gets more difficult as you move to high school and college level teachers), the culture of play and beginner’s mind is almost completely lacking. Being invitational can create a culture where change is possible.

In the conclusion to her lecture, the Abbess writes of a wonderful poem by Mary Oliver:

“In her poem ‘When Death Comes,’ Mary Oliver has a few lines that say, ‘When it’s over, I want to say I have been a bride married to amazement, I’ve been a bridegroom taking the world into my arms.’ This is beginner’s mind. . . .Just how amazing the world is, how amazing our life is. . . . Can you live your life with that kind of wholeheartedness, with that kind of thoroughness?

This is the beginner’s mind that Suzuki Roshi is pointing to, is encouraging us to cultivate. He is encouraging us to see where we are stuck with fixed views, and see if we can, as Uchiyama Roshi says, “open the hand of thought” and let the fixed view go. This is our effort. This is our work. Just to be here, ready to meet whatever is next without expectation or prejudice or preconceptions. Just “What is it?” “What is this, I wonder?”

So please, cultivate your beginner’s mind. Be willing to not be an expert. Be willing to not know.”

How can we all be “willing to not know?” and to approach how we learn and teach with a beginner’s mind. This, I believe, is the truest challenge.

Image credits:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikmartin/439986197/in/set-72157602784604042/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikmartin/439986173/in/photostream/

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Since reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, I’ve been thinking about how we can be more mindful about what we do.  So in honor of Thanksgiving, I’m going to share a few sites that allow us to give something back.   Enjoy.   And thanks for reading.

Plenty Magazine — I just have run across the magazine in the last year, and it is a great source of ideas for environmental living and buying.

Free Rice  — This site that uses vocabulary building exercises to solicit donations of rice has gone viral at my campus, but in case you haven’t discovered it, it’s a fun way to give.

The Miracle Foundation — a local woman from our community traveled to India and was moved by the plight of orphans there, so moved that she started this foundation to help build orphanages for children in India. 

The Nobelity Project — another local resident, Turk Pipkin and his wife and children toured the world, interviewing Nobel Prize winners, and made an excellent film, the Nobelity Project.  If you purchase the film for your school, another dvd is funded for a school that can’t afford it.  The site also links to many other excellent organizations that the Nobel laureates support or run.

MercyCorps Kits – Mercy Corps works to support those in distress and poverty worldwide, and these kits allow you to give a “gift” related to a particular need.

Kiva.org – This micro-lending site allows you to support a project by contributing towards a micro-loan for a particular individual of your choice.

This year, I’d especially like to also give thanks for the educators who work tirelessly and with great dedication to teach our children.  And particularly, I’m thankful for the network of educators who share across blogs, and twitter and Ning, helping all of us to become better at what we do.

Happy Thanksgiving!

 Today the library held our first “virtual” author visit via Skype.   One of our sophomore English classes, accompanied by teacher Kristy Robins, interviewed children’s and ya author Cynthia Leitich Smith (author of Tantalize and Rain is Not My Indian Name), by means of the text-based chat feature of Skype.

 The engagement level of the students really illustrated the power of bringing an expert into the classroom.  Smith shared insights on how she writes, inspiration for characters in her most recent novel, clues that were embedded in her novels, and her varied career choices.

As for logistics, I set up four generic Skype accounts, and temporarily installed the software on several student stations in our computer lab (since Skype is still being piloted in our district due to chat policies).   Students brainstormed a few questions in class the day prior to the Skype chat, and then we used four scribes along with a teacher account to ask the questions.  We also projected the chat, so students could either gather around their scribe or view the chat on the “big” screen.  

Students were able to add more questions as the chat progressed, and as it went on, it became more spontaneous.   It was difficult for the author to keep up because the students were so eager to ask their questions, but she systematically responded to every student’s question, (and even continued responding after the students left so all their questions would be answered) and you could see students light up as their question was answered, even the humorous ones. (like do you eat garlic?–she does by the way.)

Hearing directly from an author(whose book is actually set in Austin) how she selected characters, how she named them, and how she got started writing was really powerful, and started conversations outside of the chat window as well.   For example, when students asked which character was her favorite character in Tantalize, for example, and she selected what they considered one of the minor characters(Clyde), there was much discussion in the room about it “offline.” 

One of the best parts of the chat was that students were so engaged.    The room was filled with students (and a group of teachers who had come to watch) talking, laughing, exploring how Skype worked, giggling when Smith answered their question, and figuring out what to ask next. 

   The chat turned her books into living things for the students(no pun intended) because by interviewing her, they could see the act of creation, the choices she made, the intentionality behind the writing.   All in all, it was a success–at the end several students asked, “When can we do that again?”      How often do we hear that about a learning activity in our libraries?

In Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, Sir Ken Robinson astutely makes the case that unless we understand the education system that the future demands of us, then our efforts to create testing systems will not prepare us for that future.  

He points to the increasingly rapid rate of technological change that is driving cultures around the world and changing the needs of the workplace, pointing out that employers “want people who can think intuitively, who are imaginative and innovative, who can communicate well, work in teams, and are flexible, adaptable and self-confident.  The traditional academic curriculum is simply not designed to produce such people.”

In the midst of perusing Robinson’s book, I read today with dismay that the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges in partnership with the American Association of State Colleges and Universities has announced a new “voluntary system of accountability” or VSA for colleges(most likely to avoid this being legislated like public schools have endured).  

The accountability system will standardize several aspects of college information, some of which I don’t disagree with one way or another, like better information about costs, student and family information, etc.  

But, and this is the part I find appalling, the colleges will require students to take one of several standardized tests across all academic disciplines to measure student progress. (Basically, the Texas TAKS test has come to colleges.) 

Colleges participating have four years to figure out how to administer the test before they have to publicly report the scores.   Granted, this is a voluntary accountability system, but some 200 major universities(including University of Texas) are participating, and it is likely this will pressure private colleges to participate as well.

Two of the tests are prepared by or administered by ACT or SAT, according to an article in the Baltimore Sun, and most of the testing choices consist of multiple choice tests.   Goucher College President Sanford J. Ungar voices the concern which mirrors Ken Robinson’s:

“How do you measure citizenship?. . . ”How do you measure values? How do you measure inspiring a spirit of lifelong learning?”

The dean of John Hopkins University, Adam Falk concurs:

“The more we rely on standardized testing as our bellwether for the quality of education, the more we will value in education only those things that can be measured on standardized tests.”

This is exactly what Sir Ken Robinson writes about, as we continue to use a strategy from the past(multiple choice, standardized tests of traditional skills) to measure what we will need in the future.

He writes,

“Education and training are meant to be the long-term answer for all of those asking how they are to survive the coming turbulence.  But they will not provide the answer while we continue to misunderstand the question that this new revolution is presenting.” (p. 24) 

and further:

“These standards were designed for other times and for other purposes.  We will not navigate through the complex environment of the future by peering relentlessly into a rear view mirror.”(p. 16)

Yet once again, we have failed students because we are failing to understand what is needed and what lies ahead, and the way we are measuring them doesn’t apply to the needs of the future.  Here’s the multiple choice test we should be giving them, because at least it speaks to their futures:

I’m a parent, and I don’t want my son to attend a college where the way they assess what he has gained in college is a standardized, multiple-choice test, because I want more than that for him.   I want him to explore, find his way, cultivate the passions he discovers along the way, and to feel free to do that.  I wouldn’t think of assessing a college by how many students there passed a standardized multiple choice test. 

There’s some notion this whole movement comes from parents who are eager to intervene and compare colleges in some scientific manner, when at best, choosing a college is a personal decision for each student.  In fact, most parents I know are tired of testing, tired of having their children subjected to test prep curriculums, skill drills, and frustrated with the system, not clamoring for more.  I have heard in dismay as parents talk about how to better prepare their children for the tests, not for learning or deeper thinking, because that’s where the emphasis is, which saddens me.

Because at heart, all of us know it is not best for children.  Do we want to be sure all of our children are learning?  Yes, we do.   Learning.  All of them, in every school, everywhere, deserve that.  

But learning, as Ken Robinson points out so eloquently, is so much more than you can test on a standardized test, and my fear too, is that colleges also, will value what is tested, rather than testing what is valued.

How have we gotten so far away from what is meaningful assessment in education?
 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/quse/350806666/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasmeet/104390023/

   Time is almost up for nominating your favorite edublogs for the Edublogs “Eddies” for 2007.

There are lots of categories of blogs to choose from, from new blogs, to teacher blogs, to library blogs, as well as a nomination for your favorite blog post of 2007.

The deadline is November 21st, so time is running short!

It’s hard to compare blogs, I realize, since each one is so different.   But on the other hand, it’s a great way to recognize those people who inspire you, motivate you, push you in your thinking, entertain you, teach you, and challenge you, and a way to give a little nod back.

  Probably one of the most frequently asked classroom and library questions about a project, paper, or even when a student is asked to check out book is–”How long does it have to be?”  There are lots of things embedded in that question that bother me.

First off, there is the notion kids have that length equals quality.   I’m sure we’ve enforced that notion ourselves by assigning lengths for papers, powerpoints, # of pages read, etc.  in our attempts to satisfy the students’ “need to know.”   Kids like that concrete definition and aren’t very satisfied by a vague answer.   So they pad their papers with inane expansions of their topic, find thin books with large type so that the book is “long enough,” fill their powerpoints with unnecessary bells and whistles so that they have enough slides, and on and on.   We all know that drill, and it can get downright amusing at times.

Secondly, their question bothers me because of the word “have.”  Students don’t ask us how long it could be, but how long it HAS to be.   The whole question doesn’t conjure up the picture of an assignment in which the students are so engaged that the idea of length doesn’t even occur to them, but rather the image of something onerous, something imposed on them from “above,”  something that as dutiful students they will try to fulfill, without really understanding the why of it.

One of the things I think is really valid about using blogging with students is that the writing is authentic.  Sometimes you have something brief to say, and sometimes it’s lengthy, but always, the length is determined by the content, not the other way around.

Which brings me to the real point of this post, which is brevity.  I’ve really been thinking about lately how we could use brevity and design better in schools.

Can we design mission statements that are short and easy to remember, more like a slogan than a statement?

Can we give students assignments where brevity, clarity, or simplicity of design are the point?    I have in mind assignments like Dan Meyer’s Four Slide contest (where participants were asked to represent themselves in just four, well-designed slides), or assignments like creating a sixty second video message, like these Library of Congress PSAs on literacy.   Or a story in a touching, but brief slide show like Alan Levine’s of his dog Dominoe(using slide.com).

   The point is, we teach students how to expand on their ideas, how to find lots of sources, how to write longer essays, how to read longer books, but when do we teach them the real power of brevity?   

Have them represent themselves in one slide, not four.   Have them read a one page short story or a picture book if they are in high school and consider how shorter stories still manage to convey the whole narrative.   Have them write a story that has just two words.  Have them create a brief public service announcement, a one page ad for a magazine, a powerpoint with just four slides….you get the idea.

If part of web 2.0 is helping our students become effective communicators, then we need to teach them the power of the blank slide, like in the Dominoe movie, or the power of silence, or spaces between things, and how that also conveys something about our human story.  These are things that good storytellers just know. 

Image credits:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/docnic/152907531/

http://flickr.com/photos/cogdog/882977676/in/set-72157600975093412/

   At our campus we’ve been working on a professional development strand on student voices, and as I wrote about recently, held student panels in order to get feedback from our student body.

One thing I learned during the session is that our students, too, are suffering from information overload and we need to be providing more help and to provide more time when possible. 

What have you heard from students about how they learn?  What are things you’ve tried or would like to try in the future to increase student engagement?  What were the results of what you have tried?  `

Any tools you’ve discovered along the way that have been especially effective?  Looking forward to a discussion of things, small or large, that you’ve learned from your students.

Image credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/xurble/376588066/