We talk a lot about change around here. By we, I really mean me and assume there’s some of you here to. But talk, as they say, is cheap. There’s a point where it has to start costing. Or paying. Or doing something other than being a mere utterance.

I’m excited that my talk is one step closer to action.

Last night I held our first District Technology Committee meeting for Oak Lawn-Hometown District 123. I know there are some in the educational technology sphere who think there shouldn’t be such an existence of such a committee. Those individuals think that by starting a technology committee, we make technology a separate entity. I think otherwise.

Our committee is charged with creating a Five Year Technology Plan for our district. Obviously, that means we’re going to be looking through more global lenses and avoiding getting too specific about exact technologies to be put in place five years from now. Things change too fast for that. True, we will need to make some decisions about specific hardware to be purchased. If we kept waiting to predict the next thing, we’d end up always holding to the hope of what might be rather than moving and getting devices in the hands of our students. There will always be a better version just around the corner, but at some point you have to jump in the water if you want to get wet.

So, our plan has three pillars upon which we’re building. We’re going to begin by creating our district’s vision for learning with technology, then we’re going to create a professional development plan for our staff, and we’re then going to create scenarios to reduce our student to learning device ratios. At present, we lack the first two, and our student to computer ratio for computers four years old or younger sits at an average of 9:1. We must address that.

Our district is about to embark on significant curriculum work to align to the Common Core Standards. Our plan will partner technology with our curricular goals in a way that will make our technology a conduit for our learning experiences. Our focus will be on the impact these learning experiences will have on students and how we are creating well educated students in an ever changing world.

There’s lots of work to be done here. Lots of exciting, challenging, fascinating work.

I can’t wait.

Thanks to AGrinberg for the use of the Flickr image.

“Everyone must leave something in the room or left behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.”  -Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury

I’ve found myself lingering on this passage of late. Running it over and over in my mind. Poking at it to see how it moves as I hold it in the hands of who I am. And I wonder at what I’ve found. Both with the passage and with myself. Because I wonder what it is that I am. The gardener or the greenskeeper.

Most of us put our foot forth into the ring of education to make a difference. We want to spend the time we must away from our houses, our spouses, our children, doing something that will have meaning. We want to shape the world around us. To leave something others will see well after our hands have left the clay we are fashioning. And yet, I wonder, if I do enough to be the gardener. Or if I’ve risked becoming the greenskeeper.

We enter the profession full of spark and want and parched with a thirst that we believe will never be quenched. We step through the door on that birth of our career with thoughts that we will change the world. Or many tiny worlds. That we will be the gifted gardener who plants brilliance that blooms forth with shocking, stunning beauty that the world can’t help but marvel over. I certainly did.

But then the years mount. And difficulty and challenge sow the seeds of weeds that threaten to choke down that which we pour ourselves into day after day. And we begin to wonder if we’re planting anything at all. Or we stop planting entirely. We start cutting. And trimming. And instead of gardening, we only prune. True, we still find satisfaction in keeping the garden manicured, but still, we only maintain. We stop our starting. And risk becoming the lawn-cutter who “might just as well not have been there at all.”

I don’t assume this is your story. And it’s far too early to declare it’s mine. But it’s the right time to ask which you’re becoming. Which I’m becoming. And to resolve.

To be the gardener.

Thanks to Stuck in Customs for the use of the Flickr image.

Life is unexpected. Just when you think you’ve crested a hill and can look long at the path stretching before you, opportunity arises and you find yourself taking a road unanticipated. I won’t say I’ve taken the one less traveled by, but I have taken another.

Today, I officially began my job as the Director of Technology and Communications in Oak Lawn-Hometown District 123. It is a role about which I am incredibly excited. Because there’s great opportunity here. And I earnestly believe I can seize it.

I’d like to say I’m beginning this position with a long list of answers sitting at the ready for implementation. But that would be a dishonesty. Because at this point, I have more questions than answers. I’m hoping, however, that the right questions can prove more powerful than me thinking I have the right answers. I’m hoping such for what it could mean for our students, our staff, and our community. And what it could mean for learning.

It seems to me as I’ve observed the advent of modern technology increasing in utilization in education, there has grown a rift between those in the Director of Technology role and many of the others in an educational institution.  Somehow the two sides seem to be at odds.  Neither understands the other. As it is most often manifested, the one side is prone to thinking in terms of restricting what takes place in the technological environment, while the other side believes those running the technological environment know very little about education. I know I’m speaking in broad generalities, but it is what I have observed in many places.

I don’t want that to be my case.

I was a classroom teacher for eight years before I left one of the most incredibly rewarding professions in the hopes of making a difference on a broader scale. However, I learned quickly that there is little more rewarding than directly investing in the lives of students in a classroom each day. It is simply an amazing endeavor. I left that not to take a position where my actions matter little to the experience of students and those who are working so hard to help them learn how to learn. I left teaching with the hope that I could make a difference in a different way.

It is now, standing once again on the edge of great new change, that I begin with questions. I’m hoping these are the right ones. Or at least the ones that will lead me to the right ones. And the right ones are those that will make a difference in the lives of the students, staff members, and community where I have the privilege to serve.

As is always the case, your input and help in crafting and molding both these questions and my potential to make a difference is extremely important to me. Here is my beginning.

1.  How is what we’re doing with technology making a difference for learning?

2.  How can we support teachers and do everything we can to help them help their students learn?

3.  How can we support teachers as they continue to learn?

3.  Does the environment we create build trust?

4.  How can we communicate more effectively and better meet the needs of our community?

5.  Are we reliable?

6.  Are we making a positive difference?

I hope these questions guide the work that I have ahead. And I hope I keep questioning the questions. And I know I will keep learning.

Justin and Sandra,

First of all, let me applaud you and your efforts to engage and inform through the use of Twitter.  There are many government entities who are not willing to do so.

Let me also encourage you to actually engage and not just inform.  You will certainly find a host of passionate, candid individuals in this space, as you’ve no doubt already encountered.  They may well offer you more than you bargained for when you created your account.  Understand these are people who believe passionately in students, their possibilities, their potential, their ability, and their education.  And many of them are frustrated with the present state of education.  As frustrated as you likely are based on your recent tweets.  You’ve now provided them an outlet to unload their frustration.

I hope you will stay around.  I hope you will respond to the questions, the challenges, and even some of the pointed criticisms.  We don’t get enough of that from our government officials.  You have an opportunity to help remedy that.  I hope you actualize this opportunity.

I would also offer this one last piece of unsolicited advice.  Be careful of your words.  I know that is your profession, and that is why you work where you do, but I still offer the advice all the same.  When you make statements like, “we need to stop lying to students” you step upon very uneven and potentially damaging ground.  Because the statement immediately begets the question, “who are the we that are doing the lying?”  Are you insinuating that you are lying to students?  Are teachers lying to students?  Are administrators lying to students?  Are parents lying to students?  Are we all lying to students?  That’s a tough way to begin a constructive dialog.  Especially given the history of honesty from our politicians.  So please, weigh your words and expect them to elicit a very real, genuine reaction from the community.  If you want that reaction to be constructive, I’d encourage you to frame the questions and statements in a more measured manner.

I honestly appreciate your presence here.  I look forward to seeing what you do with it.

Ben

You can find the official twitter page for the Department of Education Press Secretaries at http://twitter.com/EDPressSec

Thanks to Star Dust for the use of the Flickr image.

I have been in education for ten years, and I haven’t thought enough about that question.  I’m now in the second week of the course, “Curriculum Theory” in my JHU-ISTE program, and we’ve started wrestling with some tough questions about curriculum.

The first being the title for this post.  What is curriculum?

It seems the answer can’t be cleaved from many political influences in most cases.  That’s fascinating- that so many will battle so hard over the very definition of something I find could be rather to entirely simple.  The more I delve into the topic, the more I find myself forced to simplicity.  In my opinion, curriculum is…

All the stuff our students learn.

That’s it.  Simple.

Where it gets exponentially complicated starts with the very first step away from the definition.  Who gets to pick the stuff the students learn?  Much more difficult and political.

Some say that the curriculum we choose is broken down into three parts; the written, the taught, and the tested.  Sure that’s part of it, but curriculum is much more than that.  It’s ALL the stuff our students learn.  That means both the intended and unintended.  When we start picking exactly what the stuff is that the students will learn, we begin formulating a construct that students will engage when learning.  Obviously, there will be written curriculum that is to be taught and then tested, but there is much more to it than that.  Because it’s the bigger construct of the scope of the curriculum that will likely have the greatest impact on a student.

What I mean is, if we set up a curriculum that focuses on finite, rote recitation of facts as a major outcome, we will intend to have students complete our institution’s educational scope and sequence with a specific knowledge base we’ve predetermined.  However, what we most likely will not intend for students to learn is how to game our system.  This is happening quite often in educational institutions who most value specific, information-based learning outcomes as students figure out how to work the system, or “Do School” as Denise Clark Pope suggests, and their final proficiency may say much more about how they learned to exploit than how they learned to learn what was intended.

Things continue to grow more complicated when we take another step back and look at some of the umbrella questions surrounding curriculum and its inception.

For example, the question was posed in our class last week, “Whose values should be reflected in the content and processes of curriculum?”  That question, frankly, is kicking my tail.  I’ve thought on it quite a bit, and I still don’t have a good answer for it.  I’d like to say mine, but mine probably isn’t yours, so why do I get to decide it’s mine and not yours?  I might say the learners, but what if collectively, they decide they don’t much value education in general?  Where does that leave us?  I could take the cheap way out and say society, but who in the world can say exactly what the values of society are?  Like I said, it’s kicking my tail.

Another step back.

Look bigger than just the curriculum.  Look at schooling in general.  What exactly is the purpose of school?  I’ve written about this before, and I still believe in what I wrote in that post.  It is all about learning.  That is the purpose.  However, if learning is the goal, what is the conduit?  That, I would have to say, is democracy.

This gets us nowhere easier than previous topics.  As Deborah Meier has stated before, democracy is an incredibly difficult process to understand.  There are fewer more important revolutions in the history of mankind than the information revolution.  That knowledge and learning and information moved from the privileged few to the masses means more for the progress of citizenry than perhaps any other reform.  However, learning in a democracy means dealing with difficult issues.  The tyranny of the majority.  The repression of the minority opinion.  The absolute need for empathy.  These are not always addressed in the democratic learning institutions where our students are learning.

If we teach in a democratic institution, then what exactly should be taught?  What subjects should students learn?  Yet another question to which I don’t have the answer.  I’d like to say students should learn what is of interest to them, but that if rife with complication.  I know if I had been given the opportunity to pick that which I would learn when I was in middle school, none of the subjects would have had any academic value.  I can assure you this, though, they would have been interesting.

Should we continue on with the just in case model; giving students a bit of everything just in case they might need it some day?  Should we move to the just in time model that delivers knowledge and learning right in the time when it is needed?  Do either really offer a true solution?

I can absolutely see the need for students to learn how to communicate dynamically, and it is likely there is a certain level of mathematics and science that is needed to succeed in our world, but other than that, what should we teach?  Citizenship, vocational skill, world languages, finance?  What about specific classes in project management, collaboration (the real kind, not just cooperative learning), critical thinking, etc.?

Obviously the more I write, the less I seem to know.

One last point before I bring this rambling, stumbling wreck of a post to a close.

What about me?  What do I do that makes a difference in the lives of learners today?  That, is a very valid question.  I’m the Instructional Technology Coordinator for a K-12 district in Illinois.  I have held this position for two years now.  I’d like to say that in that time, I’ve managed to facilitate great change in the way students interface with learning through technology.  For a host of reasons, I simply can’t say that with truth.  I face the same challenges many of my colleagues face in this profession.  I try to jump many of the same hurdles.  I’ve found there are reasons why I never went out for track in school.

I do believe we can engage our students in new and emerging ways.  I also believe there’s much we can be doing to better some of the old ways.  I will not stop fighting for what I believe is best for our students.  And that is, simply, learning.  I try to ground the work I do in that bedrock.  Many days I fail.  That doesn’t mean I will give up the trying.  As long as I’m in this position, and as long as I’m affiliated with the work of educating students, I will continue to fight for their learning.

Obviously, this is some kind of fragmented post.  But these are the things I’m wrestling with.  If you have any thoughts on one, a few, or all of the topics raised, I would greatly appreciate your sage wisdom.  Or even more questions.  Those seem to be what I can handle best at present.

Thanks to kevindooley for the use of the image.

I simply don’t believe you will find a better About Me page than the one found here.

The page belongs to Aaron Iba, the now former CEO of AppJet, the company who created EtherPad.  Iba’s product was acquired by Google for a reported $10 million, and I would imagine he is quite happy with the entire experience.  Work hard to create a product people love, get recognized for your work, and then reap the benefits of the risks and chances you’ve taken to produce something of value for the world.

Had I not read his About Me page, I would have assumed Iba had a successful experience in school.  I likely would have assumed he was what many consider a model, high-performing student.  I should have learned by now not to make such assumptions.

While I do not know his full story, I do know what he chose to share with us.  That at some point, someone, quite possibly a teacher, felt that Iba didn’t fit in with the other students and needed help.  I wonder who it was that really needed the help, Iba or the system?  It seems yet another example of how students who don’t fit the system are given no shortage of extra attention and energy in an attempt to get them to reshape and resize so they will fit into the containers we’re building for them.  Sometimes, I fear we forget that we should be building the containers around the students, not trying to build students who fit our containers.

It brings to mind the story Sir Ken Robinson tells of Gillian Lynne.  The educational world found Gillian an underachieving student who couldn’t sit still and focus.  She was underperforming in the container they had built for her.  When Gillian went to get evaluated because of her “issues,” she was found to have a most curious set of skills that didn’t fit well in the educational system.  She had energy and creativity, and she was born to dance.

I don’t know Aaron Iba’s full story.  I don’t know what happened outside of the information he shared on his About Me page, or the story outside of his recent success with AppJet.  I don’t know if he became a model student within the system later in his educational experience.  But I do know that the system didn’t like him early in his education.  Someone, somewhere, thought there was something in him that needed fixing.  Somehow, I doubt as he continued in his education that he cared much to make himself fit into the mold of what others wanted him to be.  I don’t think he would have created something so profoundly creative if he had.  The same can be said of Gillian Lynne.

I wonder how many Gillian Lynnes or Aaron Ibas our educational system has stolen from our world.  How many have been taken and made into something they were never born to be.

I wonder how many we can steal back.

Thanks to Chuckumentary for the use of the Flickr image.

I read a great post by a student in my grad class last week that has me thinking again about the idea of a backchannel.  I wrote about this a while ago, but it seems the topic has surfaced again recently about the value of a backchannel.

The past several conferences I have attended have tried to implement a conference-wide backchannel discussion, and most have failed.  Whether due to poor wifi, poor implementation, or simply lack of interest, it seems to me the idea has started fading a bit.  I don’t know if I think that’s good or bad.

Certainly the story that surfaced this week about the backchannel gone bad at the Web 2.0 Expo is evidence of how this idea can be a complicated matter.  This spurred much discussion on Twitter, and the experience leaves many wondering what is the value in having a simultaneous chat running while a person is presenting his or her ideas.  I still believe, if done well, the chat can add a great deal for both the presenter and the conference attendees.  I really do.  However, as some have noted recently on Twitter and in other conversation spaces, it seems that often times the backchannel fails to connect to the message being presented and breaks down into a virtual cafeteria where the kids are all talking about any and all topics other than the ones being presented.

I found the post above by Michael to be most interesting.  It leaves me wondering what the role of this experience could be in the classroom.  Could it be that if we built this the right way, kids could greatly benefit from the chance of moving from passive listeners to active engagers of what is happening around them?  The idea of allowing students to backchannel during a read aloud is fascinating to me.  It takes courage for teachers to try such a thing, but if, like Michael, the end turns out to yield something of value for students, I think we should try it more.  Allow them the chance to mix their ideas with their peers in a nonconventional way to see what the recipe ends up making.

Maybe it won’t work for your students, or your teachers, or your presentation audience, but I still do believe there’s something to this idea.  It just takes some work and effort to keep the connections aligned with your learning goals, and obviously sometimes we fail at that in our endeavors to get students to invest in their learning through technology.  But if our work with technology does indeed increase student investment, then I say turn on the backchannel and see what you can hear, so to speak.

Thanks to tranchis for the use of the Flickr image.

I wrote a post this week for my Tech & Learning blog entry about books.  If you haven’t read it, I would love to get your thoughts on the topic.  The more I’ve thought about it, the more I wonder if the question simply doesn’t matter.  Bud Hunt responded to the post on Twitter by saying,

He makes a good point.  I was certainly leaning this way when I wrote the original post, and I’m close to there.  But, I just wonder about the scores of people who feel so passionately otherwise.  Are they misguided, or is there something to their argument?

If you get the chance, I’d love to hear where you stand on the question.  Feel free to comment here, or comment over on the T&L post.

Thanks to Gibson Claire McGuire Regester for use of the Flickr image.

I was eating breakfast with my dad last weekend, just sitting enjoying the beautiful Sunday morning meandering through the topics of our lives, when half way through my plate of banana nut pancakes the conversation turned to politics.  My father, never one to hold back an opinion, began to passionately engage the conversation.  He worked hard to prove his point, and when the “it’s a matter of fact”s came out, I knew all was lost for our peaceful breakfast.  But I noticed, more than I ever have in the past, that his matters of fact were, in fact, matters of assumption.  I raised the point with him.  He didn’t care much for the point.  And I realized there, in that moment, how bad things have really become.  Because we’ve pushed our assumptions of others to the point of assigning them the value of fact.  I fear that while that has likely always been present in human logic, it is becoming more prevalent.  And I realize…

We are a polarized people.

Let’s try an experiment.  See how bad it is.  Read both of the following observations.

The Obama Administration recently set up an email account the public can use to report misinformation they hear about the present health care reform initiative.  The White House blog explains that a great deal of erroneous information is being disseminated through “chain emails or casual conversation”.  The blog maintains that the White House can’t keep track of all this misinformation, so they would like for us to help and report anything we hear that “seems fishy” to the email account they have set up.  Because of the current laws with electronic communications and the requirement that all such records be held permanently, the White House will ultimately have a list of people who have reportedly disagreed with their policy.

The Bush Administration set up a list of suspected individuals who could potentially commit acts of terror against America.  The list was collected through various means, including phone taps and individuals who were reportedly observed engaging in suspicious activity.  Many of the individuals on the list were prohibited from flying within the United States.  The Bush Administration ultimately collected a list of people who they then monitored based on suspicion.  The ACLU maintains the list has grown to include over 1,000,000 names.

Consider your reaction to both stories at this moment.  I’m nearly certain you are currently forming an argument in your mind defending one of the two scenarios and finding fault with the other.  There’s a good chance you might even be working on your rationale to post below in the comments.  You might have even found yourself, at some point through your reading, uttering a “come on” in your mind or even aloud.

And that’s my point.  Think about it.  You are forming a position very likely based on the administration you believe in and support.  You might even find yourself irked at me for bringing up the scenario, or even in your estimation, misrepresenting one of the two sides.

The scenarios aren’t the point.  The point is how much we assume when we read them.  It seems we’ve become a polarized, perpetually skeptical people.  We believe in “our side” and view the other side with an air of uncertainty to the degree that we assume the worst of their intentions.  And we convince ourselves we’re right to do so.

I had the incredible pleasure of hearing Deborah Meier speak a month ago, and one of her most poignant points was that we’re failing to teach empathy in our pursuit of democracy.  I believe she’s absolutely correct.  We’re forgetting that there are multiple sides to a story.  We’re losing our perspective.  And it isn’t just happening in politics.

I see this mindset increasing from a trickle to a torrent in education.  Each interest group grows increasingly more skeptical of the others.  Teachers assume administrators are determined to fleece them at every opportunity.  Administrators assume teachers want to preserve only that which is in a teacher’s best interest.  Parents assume teachers want to take the easy route.  Teachers assume parents don’t respect teachers as professionals.  Technology administrators assume teachers won’t do what it takes to properly use available technology.  Teachers assume network administrators only want to lock down a network to make their job easier.  It goes on and on.

It’s quite sad, really.

Where is the empathy?  Where is the perspective?  Where is the consideration in our own position for those who maintain another?

I earnestly believe we have the capacity to change.  Quite honestly, I earnestly believe we have to.  We can’t continue to allow this state we’re in to perpetuate to the point of eventuality that it has started.

We have to start seeing both sides of the coin.  And I would hope we would feel compelled to allow this lesson to be learned by our students.  Because if we don’t, the polarization might well turn into sure schism.  It’s dangerously close here where we now stand.

We have the means to be better.  I hope we’ll exercise those means.

Thanks to jonr for the use of the Flickr image.

I’m of the conviction that the term “Web 2.0″ is inherently problematic.  There are many who maintain that the nomenclature provides a needed context for the changing nature of the web.  I would maintain it does much more to deter understanding than provide any functional enlightenment.

Proponents of the term state that the nature of the web has evolved in an organic fashion, and thus, we must qualify that new nature.  The web is now interactive, collaborative, and dynamic instead of static, nonreciprocal, and isolated.  While I certainly acknowledge the fact that the web has evolved over the past ten years, it remains, at its very core, still the web.  The addition of the 2.0 on the term only serves to confuse.

I heard, on quite a few occasions, teachers at a recent technology conference utter their confusion at the term.  One teacher asked where the url was for the web 2.0.  Another teacher stopped a panel discussion focused entirely on “Web 2.0″ tools to ask “what in the world” the term meant.  I think that is the rule, rather than the exception in the circles of general educators.  It’s a problem that the term immediately confuses and alienates the very people who would be best served to make use of the tools and concepts the new nature of the web presents.  If we used terminology that is exponentially more clear from the outset, such as “Interactive Web” or “Social Learning Web”, we would effectively make more headway and likely allow more students access to these experiences in their everyday learning opportunities.

I think the naming is likened to the naming conventions of cars.  Hear me out on this.  Cars have changed dramatically over the last 100+ years they’ve been around, yet they remain, at their very nature, still cars.  If at every iteration of change, we added the requisite 2.0, 3.0, and so on, what number would we be up to today?  When I’m going to go out and get something out of my car, I seldom yell out to my wife, “I’m going to run out to the mid-sized Japanese import car 10.0 and get the baby’s blanket.”  I just say car.  Because that’s what it is.  Yes, there are different kinds of cars.  There are Fords, Chevys, Hondas, Toyotas, Bugattis, and hosts of others.  There are even different types of cars beyond a manufacturer’s name.  We have SUVs, hybirds, pickup trucks, sports cars, minivans, and the like, but those naming conventions make sense.  They call the cars what they are.  We already have the equivalent in our web naming structure.  We have blogs, wikis, content management sites, social networking, learning networks, and so on.  All of these, at their nature, remain aspects of the web- a changing web, yes, but still simply the web.

A term like web 2.0 begets the notion that there will imminently be a 3.0, 4.0, and beyond.  The convention serves those within a specific group much more than it does those who need to understand the concept the most.  The term serves as a layer- an immediately unnecessary layer at that.  The convention allows those inside the realm of understanding to point to those outside and express how much the outsiders need the insiders in order to understand and be enlightened.  I’d rather we just all moved forward together in a way that makes sense and promotes progress rather than bifurcates.

And I really don’t take this issue as another instance of “let’s fight over the name of something” as much as that might appear what this post is all about.  Okay, so maybe it sort of is, but it isn’t just about the name.  It’s about what happens as a result of the name.  The web is, in my opinion, the greatest development in modern history.  And unfortunately, too many aren’t using it as such.

I know this one post won’t serve to change the way most people use the Web 2.0 term, but I hope it will give cause for some consideration.  The English language is a precise language.  I truly believe if we used it as such here, we would see one roadblock removed from the progress we should be making in engaging our students in dynamic learning.  And I’m entirely in favor of doing that which removes roadblocks and moves progress forward.

And now I’m stating such- on the web.

Thanks to xxxtoff for the use of the Flickr image.