Collaboration

Feb 18

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.

Technology and Curriculum

Feb 07

*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 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.

Who Do We Belong To?

Dec 18

network
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.

Our Ideas are Interactive

Nov 29

Living together - 187/365

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.