Not So Distant Future

  What is the real  shift in how our students learn and how we teach? 

I spoke on the phone recently with a good friend of mine who taught with me an eon ago   She went back to teaching last year for the first time in 15 years, and commented to me that when she taught before, the internet didn’t exist, and how much it had changed her practice and ability to find new connections for her students.   It really drove home for me the fundamental change that access has provided for educators.

I’m following several passionate conversations about how our students learn and how we teach in the blogosphere lately, and have been thinking about Doug Johnson’s presentation at NECC, as well, where he talked about how the digital generation learns, all of which resonated with my own experience.

Considering how we can extend the focus of learning with web 2.0, Will Richardson asks:

“Through teaching them to use these tools to publish, are we also teaching them how to use these tools to continue the learning once that project is over? Can they continue to explore and reflect on the ideas that those artifacts represent regardless of who is teaching the next class? Can they connect with that audience not simply in the ways that books connect to readers (read but no write) but in the ways that allow them to engage and explore more deeply with an ongoing, growing community of learners? Isn’t that the real literacy here?”

He envisions that the change isn’t just the ability of students to publish, but to connect, and to reflect, and to be able to continue that life-long skill of reflection long after the class or assignment is over.    He wonders if it is too easy to fall into the trap of using new tools just to produce different products for a wider audience.

David Warlick extends this conversation. 

“What I seem to read in in his[Will's] examples was an insistence among educators — traditional and progressive — to work toward final products. Instead of a book report or a graph in colored pencil, it’s a video or a podcast.  In RL, so much of what we do never really gets finished.”

He goes on:

“I would rather not look at the production of a video or a podcast as the end of an assignment, but as the beginning or continuation of a conversation.

We are so focused, as educators, with what is learned. I wish we were more focused on learning.”

Why are things we do in education so finite?  This assignment is over, that grade is turned in, this project is done, this course is over.  Now we can move onto something unrelated.

(I know from working with students on their projects how easily the idea of completing the project distracts them from their process but that is another post.)

Where educators can and are most helpful is on keeping the focus on the thinking process involved.    And we need to make sure that just because the students’ product is shiny and pretty, that there is thinking behind it and that it isn’t “the end of the road” for that assignment.

   How can we refocus students on the process? How can we extend the conversation beyond the specific project?  And how can we connect cross curricular content so it’s more meaningful, as it is in the “real” world?

I think one of the powerful things about blogs and also about social networks, is that you can create an ongoing community conversation as a class or as a school, which can serve to unite those discrete assignments or efforts into a more unified and continuous learning experience.

One of the most effective models I’ve seen for continuous learning and a focus on process and conversation is a strategy that several of our English teachers use, called Occassional Papers.  I don’t know that my description is going to really do it justice here.  But as I sit here and think about it, an occassional paper is like a blog post (except they were doing this well before blogs!)   

Students write on a topic that arises for them….often a personal reflection, something they’ve realized or learned.  The teachers in the class also write Occassional Papers.   The students and teachers read their paper to the class, and then the class discusses the paper, ask questions, explore their ideas.   As the semester goes on, this experience builds a community within the class.   The teacher shares their personal reflections just as the students do, a participant in the process as well.  

Why do I bring this up here?  Because as I was reading what Will, David, and Clay Burrell had to say, I realized that what our teachers like Bill and Valerie and Carra  are modeling in their classroom is the focus on the process, the focus on continuing the conversation, and on connecting.   And that’s because the pedagogy is there, behind the scenes.   Students are writing authentic pieces for an authentic audience, and sharing it with their class creates a connection and ongoing conversation built on reflection.

Web 2.0 tools give us a similar ability to engage in an ongoing, extended conversation, but beyond the walls of our own classrooms, libraries, or schools.   It extends the power of our network.   And I would say, it can become, as it has in political realms, a galvanizing force as we collectively share our inspiration, ideas, and efforts.

Christy Tucker sums it up excellently:

The network isn’t just a source of information; our connections actually help us make sense of that information. We see patterns in what people talk about and how they discuss it, and that helps us in our sensemaking. . . .

If I understand Will correctly, he’s hoping we can teach students to use the network as a way to make sense of the vast amounts of information now available to us. What the technology lets us do is connect with people so we can understand more and keep learning. We don’t have to stop learning when a course is finished; we can keep interacting with our network and learning together.

Learning together–isn’t that what education should be?

Images:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/mworrell/266913194/;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mworrell/266180687/

Will Richardson has been struggling  quite a bit lately about how to bring about changes in education that better reflect the sort of connected world that our students are growing up in.

Then yesterday, he got an email from Senator Lamarr Alexander’s office asking him (as a blogger) to join a conference call today about the America COMPETES Act, which has been cosponsored by several senators on both sides of the aisle.   So before the call, Will is seeking input from educators about the Act, which provides funding for national math and science initiatives, support for teacher training at various federal agencies, additional state monies,  and increased support for AP and IB programs,  etc.

Swing by Will’s blog and leave your comments.  (He has links to explanations of the Act there as well if you want to read more before commenting).

Will Richardson talked about friction points caused by new technologies and the rapid pace of change.   When I heard Lawrence Lessig talk at U.T. about copyright, he was talking about how innovators created this new system of copyright because the law wasn’t changing fast enough to meet the web 2.0 environment.

As I sat there listening to Lawrence Lessig in the auditorium at U.T., I noticed how many students in the audience had their laptops open, listening, taking notes, but also browsing, chatting,  and checking email, and it really hit home.  Colleges are already dealing with this in their classrooms and we will be soon.

The largest friction point for me is how is my job and teaching going to change and will it be valued, and if so how?  I earnestly believe that it will be valued, that students need guides and support and that what we all do is critical to that.  But it can be unnerving to contemplate.   And yet seeing all those students with laptops in the lecture hall, made me believe ever more strongly, schools have to be getting ready for this, because it creates a pretty different paradigm for our classrooms and libraries.   (And the changes aren’t all about technology, but about our students’ culture and world–the changes are about people.)

     And I wonder as we face these “friction” points of change, how we can soften our practices and ourselves and say “yes, and….” instead of “yes, but…”  (Avish Parashar writes that, “‘Yes and’ is a conversation; ‘yes but’ is an argument.”)  

How we can soften our practices and support one another because we will all need that support, from the techie types to the nontechie types, because change can be difficult and frustrating.  There are roadblocks of all kinds–technological, student behaviors, financial, infrastructure and people who will say “no”.

The process of change is tremendously difficult in every field, as all of us know.  Hundreds if not thousands of books have been published about dealing with change, and I would say it is one of the most difficult challenges.

But everyone is good at something and we all contribute value,  and so we can use our contributions to continue to build a powerful learning community.   But we have to remember to say “yes” to ourselves first, and then “yes” to others we work with and “yes” to being open to exploration–not to change our core beliefs necessarily, but to support each other as we go through our own learning adventures, and to support our students in theirs. 

Two books I can recommend on this topic–Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson, and Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes by William Bridges. 

As Gandhi said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

Your thoughts?

photo credit: “Be the Change” http://www.flickr.com/photos/damodhar/227559318/

 I’ve been trying to assimilate some themes in what Will Richardson talked about on Tuesday and things I heard at the TCEA conference as well.  Some reflections in no certain order–  

How our students learn is changing.   How we learn is also changing. (In a presentation at TCEA, Ysleta ISD called it “PJ PD”—Pajama Professional Development—because you can take professional development courses online in your pj’s.) 

Will Richardson shared MIT’s Open Coursewhere, where every course at MIT  is available online.  The Open Courseware Consortium site links to open sourceware college courses around the world.  (Five universities in the U.S. offer courses compared to 222 in
China)  

  There are a lot of opportunities for global connections for our students. These connections can make things more real and bring world events closer.  Our students are programmed to “wait and learn” (and are we also?)  How can we change our classrooms and our own professional development models to reflect more active learning styles? 

Passion is important. 

The importance of students as editors is growing.  They need to be able to edit Wikipedia, edit their own published work, edit for appropriateness, etc., because with sites like Lulu.com, they can print their own books.  

  Students can get “learning” from lots of places, 24/7.  So do we.  That changes our mission, doesn’t it?  Because we no longer have to carry the responsibility of being the sole purveyors of information, but we do need to provide guidance, community, and feedback.  We have to become more literate in how to manage all this “stuff” and we need to help students learn to manage all this “stuff” as well.   And that is going to be a challenge. 

It already is a challenge.    And in terms of libraries, I think more than ever our role involves helping others manage all this “stuff,” providing support, feedback, collaboration, guidance, and community.  What challenges or thoughts did you take away from the sessions? 

   In his workshop, Will Richardson mentioned that one way to network outside the campus is to become “clickable” or findable on the web.

You could create your own blog (at edublogs.org or blogger.com) or a wiki (at pbwiki.com or wikispaces.com)–or you could create a learning laboratory for your students on PageFlakes.

Page Flakes (similar to Google home page or My Yahoo) lets you create your own personalized news and media page.  You could create one for your class or subject area, and pull in only articles, video, and photos that relate to the topic you were studying or to your course.

The example Will gave involved a unit on Darfur, where he pulled in information from many different sources.  Each time a student views your  page, it updates the information for them.

You can add pages, delete pages, delete areas of the page, rearrange the page, etc.

You can try it without joining–try the “add a flake” button at the top of the menu or try clicking “edit” above each area to customize it.

If you wanted customize it to a particular unit, you can use the “Add feed” feature and just enter the website that you want it to pull information from.  

So if you wanted to pull in information from a blog or a news site, you just type the url and it finds the “news stream” or feed, which you can then add to your site.  (Or you could use the RSS feed feature if you want to try something more advanced.)

Creating a flake would allow your students to access your page from home or school and see the content you were interested in them knowing more about.

flickr image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/supamb/

I’m thrilled to say that Will Richardson is coming to our campus for the day tomorrow to share with our staff.

One of the reasons I am excited about this opportunity is because of what he calls butterflies.   He’s interested in those possibilities about teaching that get you so enthused that you have butterflies in your stomach as the ideas start flowing and connecting.    When working with students, aren’t those the best moments, too–when students start connecting ideas together and the class just flows?

A couple of months ago, Will directed readers of his blog to this quote from Chris Lehman, principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia:

It’s really not about the computers. School 2.0 is older than that. School 2.0 is the tradition of Dewey. School 2.0 is born out of the idea that active, engaged, constructivist learning will lead to active, engaged students and people.

That is what gives me butterflies–thinking about how we can help students become more active and empowered participants in their own education.  It feels like we are moving as a campus towards some important conversations.

I’ll be interested to see what the day brings.

I’ve been “tagged” by another blogger, Karl Fisch, at the Fischbowl as part of a Five Things meme.  A meme is  sort of a thematic internet project.  From Blogjargon, it’s defined as “an idea, project, statement or even a question that is posted by one blog and responded to by other blogs.”

In any case, the tagg-ee (me) has to share five things about themselves that readers of the blog might not know, and then tag five other blogs. 

So, here’s a go at my five things:

1.  I have a strange fascination with the Iditarod dog sled race and Alaska.  My favorite books about it are Edges of the Earth by Richard Leo, and Winterdance by Gary Paulsen.

2.  I’m a huge old movie buff.   Give me a film with Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Katharine Hepburn or Cary Grant  anytime and I’ll happily while away an hour or two. 

3.  I was never planning to be a librarian, although I can recall organizing my sisters’ book collection in Dewey Decimal order when I was a kid.   Then I forgot about librarianish things for the next fifteen years of my life, and became an English teacher.   Frankly the organizing part of being a librarian is not my favorite aspect–it’s about finding things and about sharing things.  (and the internet!)

4.  My favorite conference is the Internet Librarian West conference….great sessions and great energy, every time. 

5.  When I was twelve, we took a five day backpacking trip to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.  I swore I would never do that again unless on a mule.  But it did enhance my love of travel and of all things John Denver-ish.

I was ridiculously excited to be tagged by another blog.  I must be a geek.  

Now I get to tag five bloggers…..

A shout out to Christian, Will, Joel, Micki, and Kristin.  I would also give a tap to Karl at Fischbowl, but he’s already been tapped, so I selected two of his teachers’ blogs(Micki and Kristin) that show a real and thoughtful struggle about how education is changing. 

Will Richardson may have already been tapped, but since I read his blog daily, I wanted to recognize that.  Christian is working on school design for the 21st century and has some fascinating thoughts, and Joel is our instructional technologist here and has started his own blog that I wanted to recognize.

Check them out!  (Sorry, I couldn’t resist the librarian pun.)