Not So Distant Future

Yesterday, I took the library to the students.  As those of you who read my blog may know, we’re closed for a renovation, and I’m currently working out of the ninth grade center library, which is a trek from the main high school.   

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So in an effort to bring services TO the students, I’m experimenting with various methods of outreach.

We’re deep into a major project on Vietnam, and students are involved in creating a digital biography of a soldier from the Vietnam wall, so I went to visit a couple of classrooms that were using mobile labs, so that I could offer tech support, answer copyright questions, etc. 

It was fascinating being in the classroom with the teacher as opposed to being in our computer lab.  As I walked around the room, students were asking lots of questions(more than they normally ask when I do a walk through in the lab).  And it was fascinating because I could see how the teachers partner on this assignment and share materials and students openly back and forth between their rooms.

I also was learning a lot about how students are doing their “work” differently.  A couple of students were looking at the html code of a website on Vietnam and discussing the code.  I asked the teacher about it, and she told me they were building a website about their soldier instead of a video presentation.   We talked about code copyright, a discussion I had seen going on online a few days ago.

The other teacher told me that her students were using their phones to take photos of the title page of the books they were citing, so that they didn’t have to write down the title and author for their bibliography work later.  I thought that was pretty clever, and one I hadn’t thought of.

As I was rereading part of Wikinomics last night, preparing for our panel on wikis at TCEA 2008, (Using Wikis to Connect, Collaborate and Connect) I was struck by this quote:

“The future, therefore, lies in collaboration across borders, cultures, companies, and disciplines.  Countries … that turn inward will not succeed in the new era.”
I think this applies to schools as well.  If we turn inward, or ignore the tools students are using, or aren’t willing to be open to learning about them, we won’t succeed in the “new” era of collaboration and ubiquitous technology use.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit, because at the beginning of our session, we’re going to talk about the power of the wikis, and I’m going to use Wikipedia as a leaping off point, and share ideas Will Richardson showed us about the discussion tab on Wikipedia.   But I’m aware the conversation may start to derail into a debate over the merits of Wikipedia, even though I’m using it as a metaphor for the power of wikis for collaborative knowledge building.

My take on Wikipedia, and most other tools–is that we need to teach students more informed uses of these tools and to be information literate, but we also need to learn from our students.  It’s likely they know more about using Wikipedia than we do, for example.   (In fact, one of the interesting things about our session tomorrow is that the teachers involved are fledgling users of wikis, are interested in the pedagogy, and we wanted to demonstrate how we are all learning about these tools together.)

The real power of tools like wikis lie in this democratization of contributions.  And for us to believe in that, we have to trust our “customers” as Tantek Celik, of Technorati,  points out in Wikinomics.  We have to believe in our students, believe that they have something to contribute.  Yes, they may sometimes need guidance, support, training, scaffolding, but, they do have things to contribute and their voices matter.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

–When Death Comes by Mary Oliver

Yesterday, while live blogging with Maura Moritz’s class at Arapahoe High School, I realized just how imperative it is for me to have those moments of Symphony–those “aha” moments when everything comes together in a rush. During the class, the students were struggling with the question of whether it is better to live for today or to live for the future.  Their question seems to revolve around the challenge in Mary Oliver’s poem.  

And no matter their answer, it seemed to me they were trying to avoid simply passing through the world….that they wanted life to be significant and meaningful. They wanted to be married to amazement.

How often do we as educators forget to live with amazement?   Drowning in paperwork, the multi-variable needs of our students, the crush of so many papers to grade, the demands of our own lives, it’s easy to lose track of what brought us to the classroom doors.  

I realized while blogging with the students what brings me to those doors is that there is always something new.   And for myself, I have to keep it new.   I’m a librarian now, but in the teaching I still do, I am most happy when I am reinventing ways to share things, when I am discovering new tools or new ideas or new books or planning new projects with teachers.   I’m happiest when I am learning, too.

It’s easy to let rigor mortis set in.  To do the same thing day after day, year after year, and to let that content become solidified.  That’s really much easier than rethinking what you do.   That’s the easiest thing to do in any job.

But when we look back over our long lives in our careers, whatever they are, I’m sure the most satisfying moments for most of us are those that stand out, that inspired us, that challenged us, that brought out the best in us.  Those are the moments that we tell stories about, that we think about years later, and that keep us going.  

In The Big Moo, Seth Godin writes about the importance of renewing ourselves in his chapter, “Get Out.”   He points out, “you may be the master of your domain in  your office, but chances are you’re also a victim of your mastery.”   He challenges readers to:

“Go out and get some inexperience.  Go back to square one.  Put yourself in a position to discover something new.”

Like the exercises in Daniel Pink’s Whole New Mind, Godin suggests activities that help you see anew, like going on a field trip to somewhere you’ve never been, or engaging senses you don’t usually use(closing your eyes, for example) or just plain wandering.

What about visiting another very different school, if you’re a teacher?  What about working with someone you’ve never worked with before?  What about letting students select the text you’ll read together?   What about renewing yourself by giving yourself permission to attend a conference somewhere far away?   What about wandering through an art museum instead of doing the grocery shopping? What about giving yourself permission to play?  What about the things you love?  What about the things our students love?

Not only are we jaded about learning at times, our students can fall into that attitude as well.  How can we challenge our students to “get out” of their comfort zones, to see the world, to rediscover that sense of amazement they felt as children in kindergarden.  How do we give them time to do that?  How do we help them see “anew”?

 It brings to mind a slogan I love from Mabry Middle School, “Making Learning Irresistible for Over 25 years”

Learning should be irresistible.  It’s the most invigorating creative act we have as human beings.   So, as Seth Godin says, we must “get out!”  We must refresh ourselves, sharpen the saw, invite newness in, be willing to change, and embrace our lives. 

As Mary Oliver asks us in her poem, “The Summer Day”,

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

We just have this one time with our students.  We just have this one life ourselves.  What do we plan to do?

Some credits:

Thanks to Clay Burell and Diane Cordell for sending me in search of poetry.  And homage to Diane’s excellent post.  Thanks to John Pederson for sending me to the big moo.  And thanks to all of the amazing educators and students at SLA and Educon who inspired me to keep looking anew.

Image credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/stateoftheart101/296605924/

How do you empower students to engage with a text in such a way that they can come to their own understanding of it?

 I just participated in a fascinating live blogging experiencewith Maura Moritz’s and Karl Fisch’s students at Arapahoe High School.   The students were using the inner/outer circle discussion method in their classroom to discuss the book.  While the inner circle held a discussion in the room, the outer circle was live blogging their discussion and holding their own with a few of us from outside the classroom (Jen Wagner) that had been invited to join them.  

The students probably don’t even think of what they are doing as that extraordinary because they have been using this method for a few weeks to study the book Whole New Mind.  But to me, it was invigorating to be listening in and participating with their discussion of Pink’s chapter on “Symphony” from my desk in Austin.

We were discussing Pink’s chapter on symphony, in which he talks about the power of bringing seemingly unrelated ideas together to create something new, to see relationships anew, to re-see. 

 It was fascinating seeing students struggle with that chapter, trying to determine what it meant to them, and for myself, to figure out what it meant to me in a way that I could communicate.

The multi-layered levels of this discussion were fascinating.  Students seemed engaged in the live blogging, and had a foot in their classroom(multi-tasking as an assignment!)  Interestingly, their perspective  on Whole New Mind differed widely from that of other teachers I have talked to about the book.  

Yet, you could witness the students’ understanding grow as they listened to others in the live blog or in their classroom, because it was in written form.  I really liked the idea of the conversation being a written one, something that they could refer back to, that their other classmates could read, and that others outside of the school(including the author, I presume) could engage with later on.

I also noticed that students were eager for us to help tie their understanding to things they know and could relate to, like sports, or school.   Which again, was an interesting reminder that we need to connect  to what our students are familiar with in order to build new understandings. In the book Made To Stick, Chip and Dan Heath write about appealing to a customer’s personal interest as a way to make ideas sticky.  And I could see that as we live blogged, my own understanding was also more personal;  an interesting point to remember as we are trying to get students engaged with a text–make it personal?

The best part about it as a visitor was being embedded in a discussion with students.  (I fear I wrote too much, but it was out of my enthusiasm for Daniel Pink and wanting others to share it, rather than out of a teacherly urge.)   The technology removed the barrier of me standing at the front of the room as an “educator” or a “guest” and allowed us to jump right into the discussion at hand.  As Arthus talked about at Educon, we were all speaking with an equal voice in the live blogging, all equal partipants, each with the same “rights” to contribute.

And as we explored the idea of symphony, I realized how much I value that trait.  I really live for  those aha moments when you are able to connect unrelated ideas together and make something new.   By live blogging the chapter, I really engaged in it more deeply than I had before, and it reemphasized to me how powerful engaging students in a conversation with a text is.  

This summer, at the NECC conference, I was sorry to have missed the first “Educon” — an informal gathering of educators/bloggers who had only previously met virtually –who were meeting in Atlanta to talk informally about education. 

Tomorrow I’m leaving for an experience I am very excited about–and the seeds of which were planted at that first meeting.   If you aren’t familiar, I’m heading to Educon 2.0, which takes place at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, and is composed entirely of conversations about education (and I hope will lead to many actions as well!)

I’m nervous but excited to be hosting two conversations.  The first conversation on Saturday at 2:30 will be “Extreme Makeover: Library Edition” and will be hosted by Joyce Valenza, Cathy Nelson, and myself (this will my first time to meet Cathy also!).   We’ll be having a conversation about Library 3.0 and what that can look like, and ways to start getting there.

The second conversation I’m hosting is Internet Filtering and Intellectual Freedom, which takes place on Sunday at 2:30.  I’m following a session by Tim Stahmer on the balance between access and safety.  Hopefully our conversations will build upon one another.   The goal of my second conversation is to begin building a shared “go to” site for information about best practices in schools regarding the issues of filtering.   We know the problems–but what can we do to insure that our districts follow “best practices” and that we have examples to share?

Chris has already established wiki links for each session and every session at the conference will be Ustreamed.   Check out the agenda and links for all of the sessions here.   And since it’s on a weekend, this means if you want to follow a session from home, no worries!   Plus they’ll be saved for later viewing as well.

The most inspiring part of the conference is the roster of attendees and presenters(if you can call leading conversations presenting?).  I’m going to get to meet so many bloggers and teachers that I’ve read about or admire.  We’re going to get to have a tour of the Science Leadership Academy, and I’m really looking forward to seeing practice in ‘action.’

And on a related note, I’m wondering why within our campuses, we can’t host an “educon” for students–why not have a day where our students present workshops and learn from one another?   One of the other sessions I’m very excited about will be hosted by Arthus Erea, a high school student from Vermont who will be attending the conference.   What a great example–I can’t wait to hear his session!

And the very best part of all of this is that it’s a group of peers who have come together to learn from one another.   Peers learning from peers–all of us there because we are passionate about education.  What could be more inspiring?

Quite a bit of conversation has been circulating around the blogosphere lately about personal learning networks and how to move them into the professional practice of teachers.

Scott Schwister pushed at that idea in a “must read” recent post, asking “How do we show the learning that happens through personal learning networks?”   He concludes by asking, “What is it going to take to bring professional learning networks in from the cold? Can the learning that occurs in a PLN be shown in a way that makes sense—and makes a case—to someone not already involved in their own network?”

My pushback to his post–if you’ll excuse me for citing myself but I am going somewhere with this–

“When we think of teaching something, we often talk about connecting to something our students already know and scaffolding their learning that way.

We can’t ignore the fact that most teachers already do have personal learning networks–maybe they are within their own buildings, but those are networks, nonetheless.

Perhaps building on the notion of the teacher down the hall connects into that.

When we talk about personal learning networks, I think we’re really thinking of something more far-flung.

But although this may seem obvious, I think for a personal learning network to really be personal, it has to fit the needs of the person who creates it.

I think this is partly about creating opportunities for teachers–opportunities for them to get professional support, share ideas, and learn.

But for something to be an opportunity, there has to be a perceived need. “

I’ve been thinking about Scott’s question while reading Made To Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath.  The authors write about what makes ideas appealing enough to move us forward.  In their chapter on emotion, they invoke Mother Teresa’s eloquent words–”If I look at the mass, I will never act.  If I look at the one, I will.” 

The idea of building a learning network seems overwhelming in the “whole” and those of us doing workshops have a network built already that we are sharing in conversations and workshops.  But how did we get there?  One by one, we built those connections.   I wrote a post a few months ago about specific steps teachers could take to build a network, trying to get at that idea of breaking down into the details.

I think as we talk with teachers about building a caring professional network, we need to help them look at the one, not the mass, as they begin.   We can’t get so carried away with our own enthusiasm that we don’t help them find entryways.

In the chapter in Made to Stick, the authors highlight a number of important factors in making a message stick that resonated with me in relation to personal networks.    Some of the factors are things I wrote about on Scott’s post, like connecting to ideas that teachers already know( like their within the building networks).    Bringing home how it will help a particular teacher and appeal to their own interests is also a significant way to make the idea of a personal learning network stick–it has to be personal to them.   

But, and this seems important as we work with teachers as a whole–stickiness also has to do with the identity of the group as a whole, according to the authors.  When making a decision, we may consider our own interests, but we may also consider how we fit into a group–asking ourselves, for example, “what do “teachers” who follow best practices do?”  Or “what do 21st century teachers do?”   The work Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach are doing in this regard is an excellent example of helping teachers develop that identity.

 But associations can backfire too, as the authors point out.   (If someone in a workshop doesn’t consider themselves a 21st century teacher because they are reaching retirement age, will they buy in to that identity?)

The authors also point out that sometimes the “curse of knowledge” interferes with our ability to see. (p. 200)  Teachers are familiar with teaching ‘as it is’ and we know our jobs ‘as they have been.’   How do we push beyond the status quo, and ask “why?”  Why teach?  Why are we here?  Why are students here?  What are we hoping to accomplish?  The authors point out that “Asking ‘Why?’ helps to remind us of the core values, the core principles, that underlie our ideas.”(p. 201)  Drilling down through these questions may allow us to better explore what would make our classrooms more effective places for students, who are our customers, and sidesteps what the authors call the “curse of knowledge.”

Lastly, the authors circle back around to Mother Teresa’s words.   When we make the experience more particular to one person, it has more of an impact.  What if we ask teachers to think of that one student that they didn’t quite know how to help–and what it would have been like if they’d had a network of excellent and experienced teachers they could have asked for help?    Or what about that one lesson that they’ve struggled with conveying to their students?  What if they had a network of people to inspire them with a way to teach it?

I believe there is tremendous power for educators in building learning networks.   But if we bandy about the term it loses meaning(if it had any for teachers to begin with.)     I think part of making this happen is breaking it down from the global to the particular.

We don’t tell students, today we’re learning all of algebra, and algebra is really important.  We show them, step by step, day by day, particular detail by particular detail.

So, in a very roundabout answer to Scott’s question,  I think we need to keep it real.  I think we need to keep it specific.  I think we need to keep it personal.   I think we have to tie it into what teachers already know.  I think we have to tap into the need.  I think we have to help teachers identify what is in it for their students.  And I think we have to model being a connected, global teacher and invite them into that experience.

I’m still thinking about this–as Scott wrote, there’s a lot here to be delved into.   I know how significant developing a learning network has been for me in the last year.  I have felt more challenged, inspired, pushed, and enthusiastic than I have felt since college.   I’ve read more, written more, learned more, grown more, and shared more than I have had the opportunity to do in many years.  

So, what next?   Where do we go from here?

I don’t often write ’inside info’ kind of posts, but in the last two days, I witnessed an amazing example of a learning network in action.

Twitter, a site I’m a huge fan of as many of you know, announced it would be going down for maintenance for most of Saturday.   Since a number of us rely on twitter to keep us “in the loop” with a network of colleagues, a plan spontaneously hatched on Twitter for our whole network to “move” for the day to a different site, Pownce.

However, there’s one problem–Pownce doesn’t give unlimited access.  You have to be invited, and each person only gets a few invites.

So, harnessing the power of web 2.0, a wiki was set up(I believe by Derrall Garrison), where you could post your email if you needed an invite to Pownce.

Once on Pownce, our learning network explored the tool and evaluated what they liked/didn’t like about it or how they could use it on their campus.

The amazing thing is that through the power of connections, and knowing a few handy tools, we literally MOVED a whole group to a new site within a day.   We problem-solved, collaborated, and brainstormed in order to stay connected because it was important to our own learning. 

This is the kind of a learning experience we would want for our students–for them to spontaneously identify a problem and possible solutions, to find the right tools to achieve those, to have the freedom to try out solutions, and to evaluate their choices.    Even as an adult learner, it felt so empowering and energizing to be a part of this team approach.  Imagine how powerful this would be for our students or other teachers on our campuses.

Do we give them enough opportunities to harness their own learning this way?  

(P.S.  By the way, Twitter didn’t end up going down, but through networking, we have a toolkit of ideas for “back-up.”)

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!)

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/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikmartin/439986177/in/photostream/

   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/

Our campus staff development started its second strand last week–centered around the theme of authentic student engagement.  (Our staff development period is built into the school day once each week).

  To begin the series, we on the staff development committee decided to invite panels of students to speak to our staff about how they learn best, their interests, and obstacles to learning.  We met with students ahead of time and gave them a framework of questions to work from, like how  they learn best, what are obstacles to learning, etc.

Over two days, rotating panels of four students spoke to the faculty in small groups, with time for question and answer from teachers.

It was a fascinating and engaging exchange–both for the teachers and the students.   The panels had a consensus on some things–like preferring hands-on learning or participatory lectures or group work, while not on others (some thought they should have iPods in class, others didn’t.)  Students overwhelming preferred to have quiet music playing in class–saying it helped them focus.  As one student commented, silence is uncomfortable, so students start talking–the music helps “fill the void.”

They also had very specific advice about what makes group work better(smaller groups particularly–no more than 4 to a group and almost all of them preferred working in pairs).  

The meaningfulness and length of homework was a big topic of conversation as well, with some students reporting as much as five hours a night of homework.   One student pointed out that past two hours of homework, she really wasn’t learning because she was too tired.    Others commented that they found it really valuable to have teacher websites where they could get help or download materials.   All of them felt that homework was most valuable when it was meaningful and concise, and several mentioned finding online assignments very motivating.

We learned that students at our high school have study groups on Facebook for Spanish and Latin, among other things.  We learned that they find powerpoint meaningless and overused–one student pointed out that ‘You can make a powerpoint without even knowing the topic.’   So they were interested in using a larger variety of media and in having choices in what projects they did.  They liked the idea of choice and “feeling like they are in charge for a second.”

One student suggested that when projects tap into his own passions, they become much more meaningful for him. 

Students also liked teachers who shared their passions, and teachers who engaged them personally in some way.  As one student pointed out, ‘When I know my teacher cares about me, it’s really hard to let them down.’   The power of relationship was a really significant part of the comments students made, and how significant that was to their learning.

We’ve summarized the student responses in a Google Document .  

This week in our staff development workshop, our tech coordinator, Joel Adkins, will be showing teachers websites that students use–particularly Facebook–so that we all have a better understanding of the tools that are important in their lives, and we’ll be discussing what the takeaways from the student panels were.

Joel is sharing part of an excellent powerpoint by Mary Madden (created for librarians, coincidentally ) about the Pew Internet Study and teen use of the internet.  

So the question becomes, how can we incorporate what they are telling us (and showing us) into our teaching/libraries/labs/schools?