This week I had the distinct privilege of presenting two sessions on Communication and Collaboration at District 30 in Illinois with Andy Kohl. Although we had enough material to last us through the day, we tried to cram it all in a 90 minute time slot. Needless to say, we didn’t get to everything.

I think the conversation was outstanding, and I believe we should all take the time to wrestle with these ideas together with other staff members. I’ll share the session notes and presentation here, and please feel free to use anything that will be useful for you. And really, I mean it, go have these conversations with other members of your institution. I think you’ll find it an excellent opportunity for growth and learning for everyone.

Introduce Moodle and backchannel to attendees. Invite them to join in the process, building collaborative notes.

9:30 – 9:50 = Introduce ourselves. Introduce Moodle and Backchannel. Ask teachers to define collaboration. Use Etherpad to have them build this definition together.

9:50 – 10:00 = Review the definition and reflect on the process with them.

- What was different about this experience?
- How could this look different for the classroom?

- Discuss portions of the Panitz article.

Review questions asked in the article.

Students must learn to routinely ask questions such as: “Are we thinking clearly enough? Are we being accurate in what we say? Do we need to be more precise? Are we sticking to the question at issue? Are we dealing with the complexities of the question? Do we need to consider another perspective or point of view? Are our assumptions accurate or are they faulty? Is our purpose fair-minded, or are we only concerned about advancing our own desires? Does our argument seem logical, or is disjointed, lacking cohesion?

In other words, these important standards of thought must be applied to all of the important structures of thought: to its guiding goal or purpose, to the central question, to the information used with respect to the question, to the judgments that are made with the information, to the concepts inherent in the judgments, to the assumptions that underlie the judgments, and to the implications that follow from it.”

10:00 – 10:20 = Roundup of tools which can help provide these learning experiences for kids.

- Moodle
- Wikis + Google Sites
- Google Docs
- Blogging

- Look at the bowdrill video from YouTube. Talk about this as a collaborative experience for this student. Use this as a transition to the topic of communication.

10:20-10:40 = Discuss how communication has both changed and stayed the same.  Show “Can This be His Home.”  Discuss the result of new mediums and the “four resources model”.

10:40 – 11:00 = Time for teachers to work on a lesson example or retool an existing assignment.

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We only got to the point where we showed “Can This be His Home.”  Lots of good stuff in the Four Resource Model.  Maybe we’ll get to it next time.

Thanks to American Backroom for the use of the Flickr image.

The term gets quite a bit of air time these days.  I defy you to go to a conference and avoid hearing the word less than a dozen times.  Go to a session on wikis, and it’s a collaboration bonanza.  People love to talk about it.  People love to challenge others to use it.  People love to say how important it is for kids to learn through it.  Problem is, I’m not sure people actually know what it means.

Go ask five people right now and see if you get a clear, common definition.

Ask yourself, and see if you have a clear definition.

We most certainly live in an age where it’s never been easier to stand in a space and mix our ideas together with others.  There’s great power in the act.  We’re certainly made smarter and sharper and our learning is grown richer because of it, but I fear we’ve done a poor job really understanding the what and why of the whole idea.

I think we should stop and clarify with our staffs and even our selfs.  We should let them wrestle with it.  Let them see that we aren’t just talking about cooperative work.  Collaboration and cooperative learning are two very different ideas.  Certainly the circles of their constructs overlap in Venn Diagram fashion, but there’s more in the separate circles than there is in the overlap.  We need to understand the circles.  Find their boundaries.  And then find what it is that makes collaboration such a powerful force in learning.

I’ll admit, I’m still fighting with the circles myself.  Still struggling to understand the space between the two.  Still working to see what would happen if we found ways to really let our learning step out of the cooperative and move into the collaborative.  Where would it take our students?  Where does it take us?

If you really want to wrestle with the ideas, I don’t think there’s a more challenging description of the two than what Ted Panitz has framed up.  I’d strongly encourage you to go read it.  Then wrestle with it.  Let it work on you a bit.  Then come back and share your thoughts on it.

Can we hope to get our students to engage and collaborate using the tools we champion when we ourselves haven’t clearly established our own vision of what is evidenced when collaboration takes place?  If we aren’t clear on what we expect to find when it happens, should we be advocating for it?

I know there’s great power in the process.  I just believe we have to understand what it is that comprises it.  And then, maybe, perhaps we can all get a little nutty and actually start thinking about assessing it.  Now wouldn’t that be a novel idea?

Thanks to caribb for the use of the Flickr image.

*This is a reflection post required for my JHU-ISTE Leadership program.

This post is being completed for the course “Curriculum Theory.” We have been exploring various curricular theories and programs, and this week we are to reflect on the following two questions:

* As a school administrator and instructional leader, what instructional technology would you expect to see in the written, taught, and tested curriculum of a school or school district striving to meet the needs of 21st century learners?
* What instructional technology would you promote to differentiate instruction for all learners?

The first question is certainly something I’ve discussed at length in the past. I don’t believe we should start with the technology first. I believe as a school district, we should first establish our learning goals, and then work to establish an ecology that helps us best meet our goals. I believe we’re past the point of teaching students specific technology competencies. I believe the technology is simply another option we choose to exercise when working to improve the learning experience for our students. I wrote about the way we started on this work in this post.  I still believe this is the approach to take. Establish the institution’s vision for learning, and then find the way to build the resources needed around the vision.

Developing an environment that is rife with opportunity for students to learn and extend beyond the classroom is also growing increasingly important. This discussion about the spaces in which we learn by David Jakes is a way that I see technology moving beyond the focus on tools.  The way the conversation is framed focuses entirely on how digital spaces and physical spaces merge to create an opportunity for students to engage the process of learning. In my opinion, this is the need of students today. Our mandate is to move the focus from teaching to learning, and then from the traditional means of learning to a more dynamic, individualized mode of learning that allows students to learn when and where they want outside of the classroom.

I believe creating such an environment will also provide the opportunity for students to differentiate the way they learn. By using ideas like the recorded lecture becoming the homework, we can then move the individualized the transfer of learning in a classroom without taking up so much time with traditional instruction that leaves the collective intelligence of the classroom passively sitting and receiving information from a single source. Utilizing techniques like this with a combination of the physical and online environment means learning can become much more customized for students.

It is my honest belief that too often we approach technology backwards. We look at the tools, get excited, and work to shoehorn them into what is happening in the classroom. We focus more on the instruction rather than the learning. We get caught up in “Web 2.0 Whirlwinds” and “Tool Smackdowns” so that soon we misplace our focus on the tools and not what is taking place with the learning.

I absolutely believe in the power of technology-rich experiences like digital storytelling to engage literacy, wikis to engage collaboration, student-created media to engage creativity, primary sources available online to engage information fluency, and many other such technologies when they are working to engage the process of learning. When our focus is leading students on the journey of learning how to learn, and we choose technologies that help us advance that goal, that is when I think technology is the most meaningful and relevant for our schools and our students.

I have to establish from the outset, I’m not yet determined in my thinking on this topic. I’m also not sure that the conversation will get us any further than what Mr. Jakes likes to call a “taffy pull.” But it might. Might not, either. We’ll see.

Many of us are moving in and out of a very large space that extends well beyond us. We move through the space with great fluidity, and each movement we make creates waves that extend outward and touch the movements of others. Our ideas make connections, and the connections form a web of interconnected knowledge and thought that soon can’t be separated one from another. Many call this a network.

I really like George Siemens’ explanation of our connections and the networks they create.

Thinking of it as the way we identify and arrange the inputs, or nodes as Siemens calls them, creates in interesting point of discussion. Because we arrange the nodes the way we desire and the way we think best meet our needs, does that mean the network belongs to us? Should it? Can it?

The creation of a network is an inherently personal experience. We are innately involved in the process. However, does our involvement ultimately yield a network that belongs to us individually? Many are prone to calling this concept a “personal learning network.” I wonder if that’s accurate.

I keep returning to what Dave Cormier said in a recent “Not EdTechWeekly“. He maintains that it isn’t a personal network as the network doesn’t belong to us. We belong to it.

This is where the taffy pull pundits enter and say it doesn’t matter and the conversation is circular and recursive and won’t really get us anywhere. I’m not so sure I agree.

Because if we started looking at the network as something we belong to, rather than the possessive way we tend to describe it, we begin to realize just how much of what takes place in our lives, and our thinking, and our relationships don’t really belong to us personally, they belong to all of us collectively.

I’m writing this post. I can easily say it’s mine, and grow possessive of the content, or general lack thereof, and chide anyone who I think is using it unjustly. I can place my personal value in this network on what I’ve produced, and expect others to see my value in the same way.

Personally, I think that’s an awfully dangerous place to be. Because I have no idea how much of this post is really mine. In fact, I’d say most of it came from my interactions in a learning network at some point in time and that really makes it yours as much as it is mine.

And that’s why I think the personal might matter. I am personally part of the network, but my ideas and thoughts, and my learning are also part of the network. They aren’t entirely mine. Yes, I shaped my specific nook of the network to fit my needs, but it still remains a part of the whole. If I go away, the network remains. My arrangement of the nodes may disintegrate, but the nodes themselves will still exist.

And knowing that frees me to learn and contribute collectively in the network and rid myself of any potential conflict I might have about gaining value in the network by what part of it all I own. Or how I’ve assembled my part. Or how important I think I am based on what I’ve created, which is probably influenced by the network far more than I could ever realize.

I don’t know. Maybe I have this all wrong. Maybe the conversation doesn’t really matter.

But I’ve a sneaking suspicion that it does. That it matters quite a bit.

Thanks to eskimoblood for the use of the Flickr image.