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.

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 am required to write my educational philosophy for the administrative program I am currently enrolled in.  This exercise has proved itself quite a bit more challenging than I anticipated.  I’ve done this before, years ago, when I completed both my undergraduate and first graduate programs.  Things have changed since then.  I’ve changed since then.

What follows is my first iteration of my philosophy as it presently stands.  This will be revisited at the end of my program, and I’d imagine I will, as I have already done, make changes.

Feel free to poke at it, push it around, and outright tear it to pieces as you deem fit.  I know I have.

Educational Philosophy

I believe the purpose of education is learning. It is both that simple and that complex. While there are many ancillary benefits derived from an educational experience, if the process occurs devoid of learning, it is simply not education.

While learning is paramount to education, the process of learning is framed in a myriad of constructs. I believe the most imperative construct is the democratization of information. Learning takes place in a manner that allows all people the right to access and potentially understand all available information. Information is no longer held exclusive for the privileged, but rather, it is available for all who desire it.

This democratization comes at a great price, for the responsibility of understanding can be overwhelming. The enlightenment of understanding that there is more than that which I have, or choices other than that which I choose, or even needs greater than that which I can give, requires a democratic education to teach not only understanding information but also empathy.

If we are to bring the learning and understanding of available information to all, regardless of one’s station in life, we must also teach that each is going to approach and consume the information uniquely. We do not all live identical lives, therefore, we do not all learn and malleate information identically, but rather quite individually. Our individuality causes each of us to bring our own bias, experiences, culture, values, strengths and weaknesses into our learning and understanding of the world, and acknowledging that every other person does not learn, experience and see the world the same as I do helps fight repressive, oppressive assumptions about the way others should behave and act upon information.

If I had but one line to use to build my philosophy of education upon, it would be, education is making learning available to all who desire it; teaching them that through the learning, we can achieve both understanding and empathy that will move every individual who seeks to be moved.

Thanks to aussiegal for the use of the image.

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.

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 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.

There exists a philosophy of technology that states we should be dedicating specific time in our school day to teach students finite skills of operating computing technology.  That in order to prepare our students properly for the world, we must teach them how to word process and how to operate Power Point and how to keyboard.  The computing instruction is an end goal.  The students should learn these skills because the skills themselves are the important part of technology, and if we don’t stop throughout the day and teach them how to specifically operate the tools or applications within a computer, we will be failing to equip our future.

I’ve had discussions with individuals who say they’d rather see the students learn technology skills in isolation, and it isn’t necessary to embed or even relate this instruction to curricular content or goals.  The important part is that students learn how to operate the computer and properly work the word processing application.

I’ve found this to be a fairly popular philosophy and culture in many circles of public opinion.

So, you are in this conversation with someone.  Someone who believes adamantly that we must focus time and energy and effort on explicitly teaching students how to operate specific technology.  Someone who says we should have a checklist of computer proficiencies for each student so that we will know they can operate a computer successfully.  That if we fail to do so, we will be failing to prepare our students to succeed in the future.

And you respond by saying…

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Thanks to Flickr user wZa HK for the use of the 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.

The average American student will take American history at least four times in the span of his or her education.  How many of those people can now recall why the Battle of Quebec, fought in 1759, was an important event in American history?

I was talking about this concept with a teacher this week, and his response was, “Ah, a perfect point for why we need repeated practice.  Just like in sports, there’s a lot of value in having our students repeat content, like repeating a skill in practice for any given sport.  If we repeat it enough, each time the student will get it a little better than the time before, and eventually he or she will master it.”  A little paraphrasing there on my part, but the essence is captured and preserved entirely.

This conversation immediately brought to mind the recent tension between the content-focused camp versus the skills-based camp.  And that gave me pause to reflect.

In my estimation, this is one of the foundational, keystone issues we’re facing in education today.  Do we focus on the skills of learning how to learn, or do we focus on the content that we believe students need to know in order to be able to apply skills contextually?  Or, as many advocate, do we need to accept these two aren’t mutually exclusive and strike a balance between the two?  Balance sounds great, but if we’re going to advocate for balance, that means we’re accepting that we need some foundational level of content with which to bestow upon our students.

How do we decide what constitutes the foundational content knowledge?

Just this morning, Karl Fisch posted these thoughts which show how so much of the content we typically classify as foundational is becoming even more immediately available, if such a thing is possible.  If content is that at the ready, do we continue spending time trying to get students to repeat until “mastery?”

For the record, the Battle of Quebec in 1759 was the turning point in the French and Indian War (part of the Seven Years War for friends across the pond).  The outcome of the war gave England control of land that sustained people who would eventually revolt and form their own country- America.  Most history teachers find this of paramount importance, and worthy to be committed to memory.  I’m willing to bet at least a few of you easily found the information using Google.

So, I’ll repeat.  How do we decide what constitutes the foundational content knowledge that every student should know without assistance?  Should there even be such a thing?

Thanks to Nathan Dainty for the Flickr image.

I know that I should, and I think that I do, but I’m actually not entirely sure what the title of this post means.  It sounds cool when you say it, and part of it is partly the title of a new project I played 1/3 of a part in starting.

A few months ago I began working with two of nature’s finest geniuses, Andy Kohl and Scott Meech, on a podcast endeavor.  I’ve always wanted to be part of such an experience, and after three shows, I’m certainly glad we took the leap.  I can say this is yet another of a drove of dynamic learning opportunities available as emergent technology continues to become less emergent and simply more accessible.

Andy, Scott, and I are engaging in dialog about the changes and shifts of education and our current culture.  We’re also learning a whole lot along the way.  It is honestly amazing what can happen when we stop and take the time to learn from one another, and I don’t just mean the three of us, I mean all of us.  There is something so refreshing and challenging about honest, open discussions, and I hope we can encapsulate that environment in our podcast.  When people are willing to leave ego behind and admit there is still so much to learn in life, the opportunity for growth is exponential.

If any of you have ever given thought to trying such a project, I simply can’t encourage you enough to take the chance and give it a try.  It’s an incredible experience.  For those of you who never have had the inkling, that’s why we’re here.  Give The Ed Revolution a listen some time, and let us know what you think.  We want to engage our educational community in relevant, meaningful discussions, and your voice can help make the conversation all the better.  Viva la revolution.