Not So Distant Future

“I remember thinking that the textbook, however it manifest itself, should become a meeting place, where students come and discuss, right there at the content.” — David Warlick

I ran across David Warlick’s comment about textbooks in a post today, and it resonated because I’m teaching a workshop tomorrow for our staff on how to use wikis.   I’ve been thinking about how to create a context for the workshop for understanding what wikis can do, beyond just “host” web content and beyond just talking about a web 2.0 tool.

Warlick’s vision of a textbook which is itself a “networking” site or meeting place intrigues me as an entry point for talking to teachers about wikis, because they give teachers the power to let students create that sort of “textbook” for themselves, that is both content, and interaction, both static and dynamic, both authoritative and student-created.

Wikis are one of the simplest web 2.0 tools on the surface, but as the authors of Wikinomics point out, one of the most powerful tools in the new “economic democracy”.

How much more meaningful would a textbook be if students were an actual “part” of  using it, writing it, and interacting within it?  How much more meaningful would the information be to them?  Intriguing idea.

I failed some teachers the other day.   I failed to recognize a potential problem ahead of time and didn’t dedicate my best practices towards resolving it.

After the fact, I realized it was a difficulty I see with research assignments fairly often.  (Even when I do recognize the difficulty ahead of time, it’s not always something I am able to resolve because it depends on collaborative planning sometimes.)

I’m always pleased when teachers ask students to investigate topics instead of teaching the topic themselves directly because I think it puts students in a more active role in the learning process.  

But my issue lies in approaching students with pre-defined topics.   I think there’s some important scaffolding we need to do to make assignments like that more effective.   And I think I fail when I don’t approach teachers with ideas for how to do that.

On frequent occassions, I find myself helping students who are attempting to research a topic that they fundamentally have no clue about, to be blunt about it.  It is like the time a student came up to me in the library years ago, and said to me in a somewhat exasperated tone of voice, “There is just nothing in the library on my ‘guy.’”  Having heard that comment many a time before, I asked who she was researching, thinking we might have to do some deep investigating.   Her answer was  “Frude.”  

After puzzling over it for a minute, I found out that this gentleman was actually “Freud,” so naturally we did have plenty of information about him.   But the fact that she was assigned a topic about which she knew absolutely nothing and that didn’t grow out of her natural curiosity in the course, meant that the name had no context for her, and so she had nothing to go on except a misspelled name.  I don’t tell this story to ridicule this student at all, by the way.

I just think too often this happens to students.  Sure, some of them are proficient in Google or Yahoo or using a library catalog online.  But if they don’t understand what they are looking up, when they hit a roadblock, they have little in the way of alternatives.  (Of course, they do have their own networks who can sometimes help them unmuddle the question.)

To me, this is the fundamental problem with assigning one or two word “topics” to students or having them draw them from a hat, or whatever the methodology, rather than having students select topics from the unit of study themselves.   And by select I don’t just mean pick from a list, but perhaps by skimming ahead through the next chapter of their history textbook and picking out something that picques their interest, or  brainstorming questions with their class that they might be interested in, or clipping articles out of the newspaper that catch their interest and then building up a file of things they are interested (or do this on del.icio.us or Google reader or Diigo or whatever online tool they choose).

On the other hand, I do think there is value to letting students start out with a question or topic of their choice (within parameters) and not defining the steps too specifically at first.   I think there is a balance to challenging them to investigate and inspiring them to be detectives and scaffolding them.   Are we modeling for them what we do when we are stuck?   Do we show them how we ask our network for help, our librarian, our friend down the hall–do we model for them what sites we start with when we are puzzled?

We want to model good sources and strategies for them to an extent, but we also want them to learn to follow leads and be independent learners, and I think that balance is tricky.  I don’t think just tossing them out on Google with a vague topic is the answer, but I think we can also squelch their investigative curiosity by making a research process too “step by step.”  

Wes Fryer and Scott Weidig have been having an interesting exchange about this idea of “procedural” learning versus “navigational” learning in regards to teachers, but I think it applies to students as well.   (To summarize and oversimplify, Wes defines procedural learners being those that want to have a series of steps to follow, and navigational learners as being those who figure it out by “doing” it and experimenting.)

In their conversation, Scott asks:

“I guess that I am thinking that if we look at how young children, who very much want to learn and I feel are a great model of what an investigative thinker/learner is/should be, learn (navigationally) is there a point in the education cycle where we teach that out of them and create a procedural learner in its place? Are we creating this cycle by in essence teaching goal setting and breaking of topics/ideas down into more manageable ‘goals.’”

I think an area often neglected in teacher training (and in staff development) is about the whole nature of research and how we teach it and use it in the classroom.    Even if the assignment is fairly straightforward–I want students to investigate “x” and share it with the class–How do we strike that balance between covering the content we need to, and helping students be investigative and curious?  How do we tap into their curiosity?  Can we engage students better by giving them some choices?  Can we arouse their curiosity by our own passion for the subject?   Can we connect it in to what they already know, or ask them to make those connections before beginning?  

And as they move through their research,  do we model how to problem solve?  And have we created a situation where they are invested enough in it to even WANT to problem solve?

As guides,  how do we know when to intervene in their process and provide them some context during their investigative process so that they are more successful–what Carol Kuhlthau calls the “zone of intervention?”   Can we make assignments defined enough for our curricular needs, but open-ended enough that students can follow what I think of as the serendipitious paths of information that might arise along the way during their search?   

And how can we use tools that allow us to see what students are thinking as they move through a research process, so we can even understand the barriers they are encountering–journaling on sites like Tumblr?  using blogs as reflective tools during their research process?  Twitter for micro-reflections?  Skype or IM in the library so students can just instant message a clarification question? 

The simplest things can trip any of us up.   The notion of “have to” versus “want to” can slow any of us down in our work.  The questions of invitation, of context, and of exploration seem significant ones if we are to inspire student investigation and curiosity, (or teacher investigation, for that matter.)   If we want to create curious and investigative adults as Scott writes about, how do we support those traits in our own assignments and interactions with students?

 Skype seems to be the tool of choice for creating more global connections for educators.   It’s excellent for quickly contacting experts in other school districts, for joining in workshops as a guest speaker, for coordinating plans between presenters who live in different cities, and for coordinating global education projects, etc.

But some school districts have concerns about the software on the network.  (including mine). 

  We know many of the educational benefits of Skype–we have used Skype to skype in an author for a virtual author visit with our sophomore English classes, used it to Skype in several great speakers to our District Leadership team meeting, and used it within the district to communicate across the street with our learning center in answering a reference question.   

I know that some reservations can be handled with careful policies–such as having teachers initiate any use of it, using generic “skype names” when having students participate (like our author visit), using polite protocol, like asking permission ahead of time before Skyping someone, etc.   I share some ideas for that in an article I wrote a few months ago for School Library Journal on how we used Skype for our author visit.

But since it’s free and the main tool used by many schools involved in global projects and communication, it’s hard to easily replace with another one(which might involve cost for the other end user or involve them downloading and installing other software.)

I also think that it’s important to balance the needs of student learning in this 21st century environment with the issues of any network, risk vs. safety as Tim Stahmer has mentioned before.  Sometimes those things come into conflict, but I’m hopeful that there are “third ways” to solve some of those conflicts, by using best practices.

So I’d like to take a general survey out there and ask for comments about the use of Skype in schools.

There are concerns in our district and elsewhere about how Skype runs on a network, so it’d be helpful if any of you “techie types” or network administrators respond to that concern.  But I’d also be interested in knowing more about educational uses you’ve had for the tool.

Thanks ahead of time for the feedback!

In their book, Innovation, Carlson and Wilmot remind us “customers aren’t virtual.”  They remind us of the importance of watching customers use a product, rather than just asking them about them. 

As they point out, “The sooner you get out and interact with customers, the better.  They will give you critical information about the marketplace and customer needs.”  (p.120)

I’m frustrated with the way our databases work, and with selecting choices that students will really use.   So, for one, I need to listen to our customers (students and staff) about which ones are useful to them.

And as a customer, I need to do a better job letting vendors know when I have issues with how their products work.  So in the interest of communicating with vendors, I’m opening a dialogue here.

No matter how useful some of our databases are,  I still find most of the interfaces a tremendous obstacle for students.  For one thing, it’s too cumbersome a process in most of them for students to click through the beginning screens to get to the search mode.   Why can’t databases create widgets like Google’s search box that can sit on the front page of your website?

 Why do they sort the information into so many lists of choices?  That’s fine to do for the advanced screens, but why can’t the front page of most databases have a clearer, simpler design for students?  They just want to do a search and their first efforts are fairly straightforward and simple, and there’s no need for so many choices and bells and whistles.   Why can’t they look for those as they need them?

Why can’t library catalogs work more like Amazon, for example?  Why can’t students review books they like or rate them at least?  The interfaces are starting to improve, but are students being asked their opinions and needs?

But the larger question is, are database companies out there observing students using these tools?  Do they ask libraries with heavy use of databases about how they work often enough?  Are they following the tenets that Carlson and Wilmot recommend and observing end users enough?

 I want to offer our students these resources, but they should be much easier to use.  This has long been a problem, but pre-Google, we could still encourage students to use databases for the best results.   But many times, even as a librarian, it takes me a great deal of time in a database to find what I need.   And I’m an experienced searcher.  Google and other search sites have made it so easy to find information, that no wonder students are reluctant to use databases, even if the information they contain is unique, important, and factual.

Based on Carlson and Wilmot’s suggestions, I plan to spend more time simply observing students using these tools, so that I can make some very specific recommendations to vendors about their products.

So, if you were going to improve databases or catalogs, what suggestions would you have for their designers?  

How are libraries changing?  Well, since my library is in boxes, it’s a question I think about a lot.

Today a teacher across the street emailed me (and then Skyped) a reference question, which I knew was in a book that we had packed.  So, like an intrepid journalist, I followed up online, checked many of our databases, used Google, tried different search terms, still to no avail.

Next I thought to dig deeper into the web, and check major statistical sites that I knew of, like University of Michigan’s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Statistical Abstracts, but still no dice.

I recalled that the New York Times now has free archives, back to the 1800’s, that are keyword searchable, so tried there, and found some inkling of what I was looking for.  (That would depend on if the teacher wanted students to gather the information themselves, or just wanted a chart which showed it already collected.)

After an hour of searching, I reaffirmed that the book source I knew was probably one of the best for finding the information.   But it was in a box.

All of which is a good demonstration that not everything is online still, and sometimes we need the BEST tool, not just any tool. (And that tasks we assign students that we think should be easy are sometimes very challenging!)

And then I thought of my Twitter network, which contains many librarians.   I sent out the book title, and within a minute found a librarian(thanks Jill!) who had access to the book and was able to look up the question for me, and got some great recommendations from others as well(thanks techchicks!)

So even though I didn’t have the book in hand, or hardly any books for that matter, I still have library services because I have a network.  

Doug Johnson wrote recently about the decline of print encyclopedias, and wondered if students have the same fondness for World Book online that he did poring over the pages of a set at his home as a child.  I doubt that they do.   And while I believe that online resources are incredible tools, it is simply that we need to use the “best” tool–whether it’s a book, a network, or a database–and part of being information literate is knowing what the best tool might be, and where to try next if that tool doesn’t work(or is in the physically limiting state of being in a box!)

Our profession has long revolved around knowing how to find things as much as “safeguarding” the things.    And networking is just another powerful tool–in fact one of the most powerful since we can collectively work on solving a problem together.

Libraries are an important mix of all of the new technologies and the traditional, and we have to be willing to maximize the use of that mix to serve our customers.   And we have to, both teachers and librarians, work to help students maximize that mix. 

If students rely on just one type of tool or one skill, (which sometimes they tend to do), they won’t have the confidence of knowing they CAN find what they need.   We need to encourage them and scaffold them in using the full range of information tools out there–from the innovative and cutting edge to the traditional and tried. 

We all have to “roll with” the changes in our current information environment, but being informed searchers is an increasingly important part of that, that I fear gets neglected too often.

In their book Innovation, Curtis Carlson and William Wilmot talk about the difficulty many organizations have with adapting to change.

They point out, “A fundamental reason for this failure…to keep up is that they are, by definition, built to fight the last war. . . . They have well-defined organizations and processes designed to achieve those earlier objectives, but these very organizations and processes now resist the changes needed to exploit the new opportunities.” (p. 36)

One of the important components for innovation that they define is the importance of collaborative teams working together on key problems.   Collaboration is a skill we spend a lot of time talking about in education.   We work on identifying collaborative opportunities both offline and online, learn how to design more collaborative lessons and develop rubrics to evaluate collaborative efforts of our students.

And more and more, we talk about the importance of professional learning communities in our schools and the powerful learning that can take place when teachers work together.

Yet, as Carlson and Wilmot illustrate in their book, are our “systems” aligned with the goal of teacher collaboration?

They share an anecdote about an attempt by a university dean to create a center for joint research.  The center ultimately fails, because the professionals can’t seem to work together on a common problem.  The authors point out:

“. . .The university was not aligned with his goal.  The reward systems in his university, such as getting tenure and salary increases, recognized individual contributions, not team performance.”

As we ask teachers to work towards learning in professional communities, are we doing anything as a system to recognize or reward teachers for “team” work?   Is there any compensation, professional evaluation or reward system related at all to group efforts?  Certainly, the intrinsic rewards of learning are important, but what are ways we can support that sort of team effort systematically? 

If we are expecting to change the way teachers work together, then how do we align our systems to support our goals for professional development?

“You gotta serve somebody….”  Bob Dylan

Who do we actually serve in our schools and who should we be serving?   What changes in our thinking when we apply the notion of customer service to the school environment?

In their book Innovation:  Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want, Curtis Carlson and Wililam Wilmot raise three central questions about customer service that guides their innovation model: 

• “Who is your customer?
•  What is the customer value you provide and how do you measure it?
• What innovation best practices do you use to rapidly, efficiently, and systematically create new customer value?”

Taking these questions separately–

“Who is our customer?”

Obviously, it should be students and secondly their parents and families.   But are the decisions we make in line with the view that students are our customers?  Are we providing the kind of service that we would expect if we were customers to either our students or parents?   And does this analogy completely play out?   (Obviously customers aren’t required to be somewhere, nor required to shop en masse, nor to follow pre-defined rules for shopping, etc.?)    But how does our thinking change if we think of our students as customers?  What are the obstacles getting in the way of this kind of thinking?

“What is the customer value you provide and how do you measure it?”

Big question.  In recent years, we’ve viewed this from a very cut/dried perspective in terms of measurement.   But don’t we need to define what value we are trying to provide before we just start measuring it?  Is all of the value something that can be measured in one objective test?  Are we measuring ourselves as schools?  If we set up a  mission statement that we want to achieve a goal, do we come back at the end of the year and really look at whether we did some things towards that goal, or is it just a glossy statement?  

The same is true in our classrooms or libraries?  If we have some goals for our own learning spaces, did students help define what is of value to them?   How do we assess how we are doing?   Do we lay out some specific goal posts for ourselves in addressing the value we are planning to provide?   And once we do that, how are we measuring it?  

Our campus Vision committee this year has formed an assessment committee to work on defining our mission more clearly and then also outlining ways that we can assess our growth as a school–not just with standardized tests, but in taking a look at many different areas of our campus that fit into the mission.   This is a grass roots effort, and we are learning as we go, but it’s giving us the chance to really talk about how we could measure our success in different areas, and address weak areas as well.

“What innovation best practices do you use to rapidly, efficiently, and systematically create new customer value?”

Do schools think of themselves  as creating “new customer value”? ( I do think librarians tend to think this way, as we are used to being in the business of promoting student literacy, and have the flexibility to introduce new customer services fairly easily. ) But in general, how flexible are our school systems in introducing new customer value?   Do we even consider that as part of our mission?  

I think within specific classrooms, teachers do grow and consider this part of their work–introducing new concepts, methods, and tools as ways of creating value for their students.  And I think inside individual classrooms, if a school environment is not too controlling or limiting, teachers have tremendous flexibility in always growing their teaching and exploring new methodology and philosophies.   But are they getting the institutional support they may need to do that?  And is the school as a whole utilizing the best innovation practices?

Carlson and Wilmot suggest some innovation strategies that can be helpful, like the importance of “innovation champions.”   When I think of school districts or individual schools that are making exciting changes, it seems that in their system somewhere, there are innovation champions supporting that.

They have other excellent recommendations that I’ll share in a later post that I think have many applications for our schools.

So, who are we serving?

How do we support innovation in our schools?

In 1963, Fred MacMurray, in the film Son of Flubber tells us in a dramatic courtroom speech what we should do.  

He tells us that we are living in a time of fear….fear of smog, fear of bombs, fear of bugs, fear of falling hair.   

When asked by the prosecutor if he would continue to encourage his students to experiment, he tells the courtroom that his students may not be studious, but that they were unafraid.  And that because they were unfraid to make mistakes, he tells the courtroom, they may someday save the world.   The professor’s unwavering faith in teaching his students’ to learn through exploration and experimenting is undeterred.

How do we handle the Professor Brainards in our schools?   Do we squelch or encourage them?   Do we question their way of viewing the world?  Do we only believe things when we see them with our own eyes?   Do we support, tenaciously, the power of experimentation for our students?  Do we believe that by sowing the seeds of innovation, that the fruits  of our efforts will later crop up?  

In 1963, Professor Brainard understood.   Do we, 48 years later?

“It’s my responsibility to see the change I want. I can’t just sit around and wait for others to change it.”   Meghan G.

The Many Voices of Darfur Project is asking for your students’ comments during the next two days on their blog to raise awareness of genocide in Darfur.  

The project, if you’re not familiar was begun by students in a 3rd grade class in Florida and 8th grade class in Maryland and has been joined by a number of other classes.   (Find resources for students to explore on this issue here. ) 

The comments already on the blog (from third graders through high school students) are already powerful ones, like the ones below.

“We, who wake up every morning with everything, complaining that we have nothing, while they, in Darfur, wake up every morning in constant fear, because that is their life. . . .When we do nothing to help, we are the ones to blame.”  Hillary in Maine

“Spread the awareness, and let people know about the genocide in Darfur. Let people know about all of the starving kids and families and all of the murdered people and all of the black Africans that are living in refugee camps. And all the other comments that kids are leaving on this blog are unbelievable, because so many people care about this project. And so do I.”  Pebbles

What a powerful moment–for a student to realize that student voices CAN change the world.   Please ask your own students to comment and add their voices, and be agents of change themselves.

“In our youth our hearts were touched with fire” (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.)

What are you passionate about?  That’s the key to the “passion quilt meme.”   The idea is to pick a photo from Flickr (or take a photo) that reflects what you feel passionately about regarding your students.

At a recent Austin citywide art event, First Night, attendees were given chalk to decorate the First Street bridge.  While walking across it, I ran across this image, sketched in chalk there.   It captured me because it conveyed so much about my views of education.

What we can give our students is a belief in their own abilities and in the possibilities before them–belief that isn’t confined by borders of any kind, neither physical nor intellectual.   And we can show them a world that is filled with kindness and support and hope.   We have to believe in the best of them in order to reveal to them their own potential.

Thanks to Robin Ellis for tapping me for this meme.   A further way to extend this is to stitch the photographs from this meme into a “quilt” and that project has already begun.  (If the photo you use is your own, tag it with passionquilt08, so that it can be found on flickr easily.)

Here are the rules:

1. Think about what you are passionate about teaching your students.
2. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
3. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to this blog entry.
4. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

I’m going to tag:

John Pederson

Patrick Higgins  (oops–after I posted this, was reminded that Patrick has already posted his photo!  I’m just tagging him again so that if you haven’t seen his photo, you’ll go visit it now ;))

Scott Schwister

Arthus Erea

quotation credit:  http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/passion